I love wooden toys, especially wooden toys of high quality that can be passed down from generation to generation. Here is a list of a few of my favorite wooden toys.

Pastel Toys

Pastel Toys are heirloom quality wooden toys handmade by disabled adults at their own self-sustaining community, a kibbutz, in Israel. It is quite a special community which manages to make the life of these disabled adults rich and meaningful by giving them work they can manage, somewhere to live and support from a community of people with similar situations as their own. So Pastel Toys are not only beautiful fresh colored wooden toys, but also a product of a community well worth supporting. Many of Pastel Toys products can be found at Giggle. (Enter “Pastel Toys” in the search field.)

Pintoy

Pintoy construction toys look beautiful with their natural and painted wood. There is everything needed to create a great big construction site in this series; a crane, a digger, a dumper truck, loaders, trailers, a set of construction equipments consisting of pneumatic drills, compactor and Compressor, wheelbarrow, pick and shovel, 2 traffic cones and 2 barriers. There is also a set of workers consisting of three workers and a Forman. You’ll find the Pintoy construction toys at Just Playing Toys.

Heirloom Rattles

A nice wooden heirloom rattle, that will last a lifetime and can be inherited by the baby’s own kids, and grandkids, in the future, is priceless. The walnut wood rattle from Nico & Zoe and the handmade heirloom hardwood rattle from A Toy Garden, are both simple, beautiful rattles made by natural wood, with round shapes and smooth surfaces. These are great ideas for baby gifts if you’d like the gift to stay in the kid’s family for generations.

Ostheimer

Ostheimer keeps the feel and look of wood in their toys, by only applying transparent paints and not totally rounding the figures edges. The surfaces of the toys are still smooth and soft to handle. Ostheimer wants kids to use and develop their imaginative abilities when playing with their toys, and this is why the silhouettes of all the figures are simple, and the details are very few. In this way they create a perfect environment for the kids to play in, without giving all the details, so the kids mind will work on creating their own little world for the figures! Ostheimers figures can be found at Myriad Natural Toys & Crafts. The Nativity story figures could make perfect gifts for the advent calendar, resulting in a beautiful Nativity scenery Chritmas eve.

Sevi

The well-known company Sevi has long traditions in making quality toys. Amongst their selection in wooden toys they have series of musical instruments. The instruments are colorful and full of cute details. You can find the Sevi instruments and other toys by Sevi at Au Bois Jouli.

Eco-friendly Wooden Puzzle Toys

The smooth, round edged wooden puzzle toys from Craftbury Kids are so elegant end cute, and will look fantastic on the shelf if the nursery or kids room. The natural wood is beautiful, but if you desire some colors, you could paint the different pieces in different colors of tox-free paint yourself! These puzzle toys are available in Pig, Tortoise, Rabbit, Lion, Cow with calf, Ocean with boat and fishes and Farmhouse with animals and a field with trees.

Skipper Pirate Yacht

Graham And Green has an aesthetic pirate-themed traditional wooden toy yacht. It is made from plantation grown hardwood and sail is made from genuine sailcloth. It is a beautiful toy of fine quality. (Via Notcot.)

Plan Toys

Plan Toys in general are great toys. I love the look of Plan Toys, and the attention the company gives to detail in their toys. They simply make beautiful designed children’s toys with a very modern touch. Oompa Toys has a great selection of Plan Toys.

The Sole pull cloth is a very exclusive silver ball with different colored fabric pieces for the baby to play with. It comes in an exclusive white and natural colored wooden box and was designed in 2005 by the Italian company De Vecchi.

It is a beautiful toy which might be best left to serve as an ornamental piece.

The Sole Pull Cloth is available at Moss, where the Sonaglio rattle and the Carillon musical toy of the same style, and probably collection, are also available.

Pastel Toys makes simple and beautifully designed heirloom toys great for both playing and decorating the nursery. The toys have an old yet fresh and modern look, and is a great decorating and toy alternative for parents who would like to use baby colors, but aren’t keen on the usual baby blue and pink.

Besides being beautiful and fun the Pastel Toys products has a special background as well. All the toys are made by special need adults in the Kishorit kibbutz in Israel.

The toys are cut out of wood, sanded and painted by hand by the residents. All the items receive individual attention and there is a great focus on quality. The kibbutz is made by the non-profit organization Kishorit and is a community where adults with mental problems are able to live by themselves, have a job and help each other. A job at the Pastel Toys carpentry is only one of the jobs Kishorit can offer their residents.
Pastel Toys is available at e-giggle.

Lilipad Studio is located in a small town called Hailey not far from Sun Valley, Idaho. In a large studio adjacent to her home Laura Higdon, together with local artists, makes unique and modern heirloom quality furniture for kids.

The furniture is made using custom-designed stamps which are made from original motifs and illustrations inspired by Asian block printing traditions, Easter European textiles and American folklore imagery. The lovely mixture of patterns and colors, inspired by different cultures and times, makes the furniture something out of the ordinary. Even though they have an “old” heirloom feeling about them they are as modern as can be.

Continue reading ‘Lilipad Studio Beautiful “Green” Children’s Furniture’

If you are looking for a durable and long lasting christening gift, a silver item would be a great choice. The silver gifts are durable and the fact that silver has such a great value to us, often makes us take extra good care of such gifts since they are usually kept even though they might have seen some wear and tear.

A great and unusual gift idea is the Silver Baby Rattle and Whistle Keepsake from Silver Insanity. The rattle is not only beautiful but it features some great functions as well. The shaft is a whistle and the jump ring on the top of the rattle makes it possible to wear the rattle on a chain. A silver pacifier clip e.g. would make the perfect accessory for the rattle.

Snugglebug Baby makes super cute silver pacifier clips. They come in many different designs for both boys and girls. The Snugglebug Baby pacifier clips are very strong and durable. One of these clips will make the perfect accessory for the silver rattle or a great gift all by itself.

Automoblox is not your normal toy car. These cars have a unique, simple and very cool design. They are made out of parts and can be taken apart and put together just like a real car. This allows you to design your own cars by taking existing cars apart, switch the parts around and put new cars together. For this you will of course need more than one of the Automoblox cars. The more cars you have, the more design possibilities you will have.

The body of the Automoblox car is made out of wood and under the hood you find the engine parts. These parts will help you combine any car that you would like to make. The engine parts and the car as a whole was made in cooperation with a child psychologist which has resulted in fun toys with a high educational value. Automoblox inspires creative and imaginative playing and helps develop skills as shape recognition, color matching and fine motor skills.

At Automoblox you can see the specifications for all the Automoblox car models. Each car has their own Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) just like real cars. This will surely increase their collectible value and it also allows you to register your cars online! The VIN contains information about your car. It can tell you the make, year, model, color, place of manufacture and what number your car was to roll of the assembly line.

It is possible to buy extra accessories that allows you to make any car into a 6 and 8 wheeler. This makes building Automoblox cars even more fun.

Automoblox has quite an unusual philosophy when it comes to the durability of their toys. It is unusual for mass producing toy companies to want anything other than cheap and effective production. Durability often gets very little attention. Automoblox’s philosophy is to make heirloom toys with a great durability. “It is better to have one great toy instead of 10 cheap ones.”. Automoblox wants children to bond strongly with their toys and hopes that they might want to keep them as they grow up and pass them on to their own kids. All the Automoblox car parts are incredibly strong. The wheels for example are nearly impossible to break. They are literally bulletproof!

You can read more about the Automoblox toy cars and purchase them at Automoblox.

Bank In Form Of A Pig, as this beautiful piggy bank is called, is a part of Harry Allan’s first product series Reality.

In the Reality series Allan borrows existing objects, and does so with precision. This very exclusive piggy bank and the rest of the products in Allan’s Reality series are full of details, like the hair on the little piggy, and organic shapes.

The piggy bank can hold more than 10,000 dollars in bills, but I wouldn’t recommend keeping those amounts in it for a longer period of time!

The gold piggy can be purchased at Where Did You Buy That.

If you are interested in special piggy banks you should check out this mechanical bank at Banks Banks Banks. The mechanical bank can be personalized.

Via BornRich

A really great way to preserve your kids artwork is to have Totally Out Of Hand make beautiful pins from them.

The silver pins are great to have for both kids and parents later in life, but the silver pins can also serve as personal and soulful up-to-date jewelry. In stead of buying jewelry that is designed to look naive and cute, you can have genuine naive and cute jewelry made from you own kids artwork.

The silver pins will make a great and personal gift for e.g. christening or grandparents.