One of my twitter followers @kikicomp up in Norfolk has tweeted “need something for a 3 yr old boy as its my lads bday on the 13th & granny needs ideas”. So here’s some ideas for Granny….or anyone else looking for wonderful birthday or Christmas present ideas and inspiration for three year old boys – or girls.

One of my favourite toys for boys aged 3 has to be the Carpenter’s Belt, pictured above at £12.99 and you can’t go wrong with the little kids cricket set at only £4.99. Or you could build a Teifoc terracotta castle with your little boy – we have them on special offer at the moment!

Looking for something more educational – check out our beautifully patterned magnetic wooden letters at £12.99 or the wooden calendar clock which can help little one learn how to tell the time, dates and months – also at £12.99. If you can afford to spend more – the £49.99 Branching Out Oldfield Farm (below) from John Crane is amazing. We sell the animals too, and farm people, tractor etc.

As the weather gets better, you can’t go wrong with a space hopper (£12.99) or how about a first bike? We have the latest craze in first ride-ons – wooden bikes without pedals, at £58.99. You also can’t go wrong with a £4.99 robot pincer hand, extremely popular with all little boys aged 3, 4 or 5. My four year old son loves his and even uses it to help tidy his room (result !)

If your little boy likes cars, how about the London Car Set (above) from Le Toy van at £16.99. We also do lots of cheaper stocking filler pocket money type toys like little wooden play cars, delightful wooden sailing boats, a mechano type build your own tractor and some really snazzy red, silver and blue pull back (and whizz forward) racing cars.

There are lots more toys on www.tishtashtoys.com – pop over and have a look around and if you like the toys and would like to earn extra selling them to mums and dads in your area, then get in touch info@tishtashtoys.com

Don’t forget you can follow us on twitter. We are @tishtashtoys.com and we do special competitions, giveaways, discounts and more. Tweet us if you’re looking for a better price, we’ll see what we can do!

From Monday March 1^st Tish Tash Toys agents will no longer be required to pass on individual customer details when placing orders. You will simply place one order for all the items you require. You will receive the same level of discount as you currently do. This will save you a lot of time and make ordering much easier.

To further simplify ordering, head office will no longer be taking card payments from individual customers. You will just make one payment for your your online order. As a part of running your own self-employed enterprise, it will be your decision which payment methods you accept. You may choose to just take cheques or cash payments or you can set up your own card payment service.

One of the easiest ways to take card payments is to set up a Paypal account. These are free to set up. When you log into Paypal you can very simply request payments from people by emailing them. Your customers do not even need a Paypal account to pay in this way. They just pay using their card.

It’s even easier if your customer has a PayPal account – when they place their order with you – simply give them your email address and they send a payment to you. This has the added bonus of not dealing with people’s credit/debit cards, which of course has security implications. You can then give your customers the reassurance that you do not keep their card details (on bits of paper etc!)

So – when you are at a party or an event, all you need to do is ensure that those customers who wish to pay by card give you their email address on the order form – so you can email them their Paypal invoice. Our current order forms request card details which will change when we reprint them. In the meantime, ask customers to just provide an email NOT card details.

We think you will find it a lot easier to send a quick email to a customer who wants to pay by card rather than having to record and process complicated card details and all the card errors which often occur and can take several days to resolve!

An almost identical card payment service is available from Google Checkout. It depends which one you prefer.

You can of course just take cash payments, and cheques direct to yourself. You can also ask customers (who don’t carry enough cash) to make a simple online banking transfer – into your bank account. If you do large events – you can hire card terminals for the day. We’ve done this for baby shows etc – see 123 Send There is also an increasing number of options to take card payments via Smartphones eg i-phone or Blackberry’s.

Click here for more info on becoming an agent for Tish Tash Toys.

All wooden toys will be biodegradable (on the landfill site/tip) unlike plastics so automatically a better choice for the environment. Well made wooden toys last a long time and can be passed down to generations, given to charity shops etc extending the life of the toy. Tish Tash Toys chooses toys from several suppliers so here’s some info on the environmental qualities of each one:

John Crane/Pintoy (toys which start with the code JC in the catalogue and on the website). Click here for more info on this supplier – http://www.tishtashtoys.com/blog/2008/09/john-crane/

I’m Toy are a leader in wooden toys in Germany & Holland since 1987. I’m TOY incorporates fine craftsmanship, colourful design and intrinsic learning values for children 3 months and above. All their toys are made from replenishable woods and natural materials.

BJ coded toys are from the supplier Bigjigs. Their toys come from different toymakers for example Hess-Spielzeug makes the pacifier chain:

The award-winning German toy manufacturer Hess-Spielzeug have been producing high-quality wooden toys since 1991. With its extensive collection of colourful‚ innovative and child-friendly designs‚ Hess-Spielzeug has grown to become one of the leading European manufacturers of quality wooden toys for babies and toddlers.

All Hess toys are made in Germany under environmentally friendly conditions and using only carefully selected materials. The toys are made from high-quality European wood (such as beech and maple) from renewable resources. All paints and stains are water-based and 100% non-toxic and saliva-resistant. All other materials used such as strings‚ elastics and glues are also non-toxic and child-safe.

Heimess use native, renewable woods, such as beech and maple. Our traditional wooden baby teether is from Heimess. More info here

SANTOYS – classic WOODEN toys made from sustainable plantation trees and coated in non-toxic PAINTS.

For those of you who don’t know much about me, I must tell you I LOVE CATS. I have had a cat since I was ten or eleven and got my first little black and white kitten for my birthday. I named her Kerry after a lovely girl I’d just met at a new school I started. Kerry and I went on to become best friends at school and my cat Kerry was my best friend throughout my early teens. Unfortunately she injested rat poison when she was just 5 and suffered a horrendously painful death. We were never sure which neighbour was using poison but I’ve never used it myself – I use humane rat traps.

When Kerry was quite young – we somehow aquired Katy – more of a family cat than my own. Beautiful long haired lively loving tabby. We lost her at three though as she was knocked down by some teenagers driving too fast in the lane behind our village home.

My next feline friend came into my life when I was working as a veterinary nurse in Liverpool, in my early twenties. I’d been given random wild creatures to take home, nurse and ‘learn on my feet’ so to speak. But Maddy (above with baby Tash) was the first cat I had responsibility to nurse back to health. She’d been brought in one night after being found crumpled up on the side of the road, having being hit by a car. After three weeks not eating, I managed to get her to have a meal and she never looked back. Then as no-one came to claim her, she came home with me. Maddy was a wonderful companion for 13 years and passed away in 2008.

When Maddy was about three or four – I came out of a five year relationship and moved into my own place. I saw an ad in a shop window for kittens and went to see them with a good friend Mary.

She took two home and so did I. My two were named Robbie and Macy and Rob is still with me now at the grand age of ten. Sadly, we lost Macy at three to acute kidney failure. Robbie is sitting proudly above and also pictured at the top with Natasha and Aleck.

And the newest kitten on the block is my daughter’s first cat – Gabriella (above). Natasha was very lucky to be allowed her first much wished for cat on her 8th birthday and Gabby is already 6 months old, how time flies! She’s a rescue from our local East Devon Cat’s Protection, found under a rabbit hutch in a garden in Cullompton at a day old with her two sisters and a very bedraggled tired mummy cat. She’s the first tortie – or tortoiseshell we’ve had and is such a lovely affectionate girl. Natasha and Gabriella already have a wonderful bond.

I’ll leave you with this photo (below) of me about to burst preggers with Tasha – 8 years ago. With my three cats at the time – Maddy on the left and the two boys Robbie & Macy.

Are you looking for a flexible job, something fun where you are in charge for a change! Being a direct sales agent for Tish Tash Toys could be the perfect solution giving you the opportunity to start earning extra straight away.

Many of our agents are busy Mums, some with a job as well, who find that running their own Tish Tash Toys business is a way to make money and lots of new friends too! You can simply pass a catalogue or two around friends and family and take orders or create a more profitable career. There is the potential to earn a lot more if you arrange toy parties, visit playgroups and attend school fairs.

If you are looking for a way to earn extra working from home, then becoming an agent for Tish Tash Toys could be the perfect solution for you. Tish Tash Toys is a family business based in Devon, which was set up almost five years ago by Sharon and Daniel Pavey. They have two children of their own, Alexander is four and Natasha (or Tish Tash !) is seven years old.

There are currently around 150 Tish Tash Toys agents across the UK. Agents choose when and where they work, from toy parties and coffee mornings at local baby groups and nurseries to exhibiting at fetes, fairs and baby shows. You can be confident about selling good quality toys from a range of suppliers from Pintoy and Plan Toys to Manhattan Toy and Le Toy Van. Most of the range is environmentally friendly, with a good selection of traditional and wooden toys.

Want to chat to someone about becoming a work at home agent? Click here.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at Tish Tash Toys.

Our Valentine’s gift to all our customers is this pretty children’s heart necklace! Simply place your order betwen now and Monday 15th February 2010 and receive this adorable wooden gift worth £3.99 absolutely FREE!

Don’t forget we are looking for more agents too at the moment so please click here to read more if you are looking for a part-time job.

Mood Foods is my new favourite online food store! Since my local Tesco in Honiton stopped selling my favourite Lizi’s Granola breakfast cereal, I had to search online for it and found and ordered some from Mood Foods.

As my daughter’s school here in Devon is having a Yummy Mummy Market on Saturday 20th March – I thought I’d drop Mood Foods a line to see if they could donate anything for our raffle.

To my surprise a massive box arrived the other day full of lovely things like sample packs of Lizi’s Belgian Chocolate Granola (above) and Nairn’s Oatcakes.

I love the idea behind the Mood Foods website – that the food you eat can have a big effect on your mood and how you feel.

Do you need to roll yourself out of bed in the morning, stumbling around till you’ve fuelled up on coffee to get your engine revving? Does your concentration desert you mid morning till you’ve had a sugar fix then you’re back on track?

Caffeine is probably the most widely used behaviour modifying drug in the world. We reach for a cup if we are feeling tired and irritable to give us a boost and help us concentrate. Too much caffeine though and we can get symptoms such as anxiety and nervousness.

Many people are also worried about food additives and their impact on health, the dangers of some food additives and preservatives and the benefits of organic food.

Obesity and depression are at an all time high. The statistics make pretty grim reading.

There’s growing interest, and research, in how food and nutrition can affect your emotional and mental health and we’ve only just begun to understand the powerful links between nutrition, mood and mental health.

More and more people today are shunning pills and potions and looking for self help and natural approaches to help them feel happy and healthy. One self-help strategy is to change what we eat.

Take a look at the Mood Food website and be inspired by all these wonderful healthy foods & thanks again guys. Really appreciate the donation.

www.moodfoodcompany.co.uk

Thank you to Laura at www.laurasjewellery.folksy.com for sending us such a lovely raffle prize for our Yummy Mummy Market on March 20th. Laura sells a range of her handmade jewellery (like these Devil Duckie Earrings above) on her folksy site and also over on Etsy.

Laura describes her creations as “A delightful mixture of cute, kitsch, unique, funky and sometimes a slight vintage feeling all rolled up in to wonderful pieces of jewellery.”

She adds “I started crafting jewellery for friends and family, I mainly made pieces which I thought suited their personalities. One day, my mum suggested retailing it. “

I met Laura on twitter and you can chat to her too – @LaurasJewellery

Thanks again Laura & if you are reading this and could donate a little something to the raffle at our market (details here) like Laura did – then please tweet me @tishtashtoys