A sweet little link for your bink

One baby item we use daily and just love is our Bink Link, in fact we love it so much we have 2!! A Bink Link is a fashionable soother clip made of a colorfast cord, wooden beads and lead and paint free metal clip. It was created by a mom who saw a need for a cute soother clip that would be safe enough for little ones and not easily break. On one of our Bink Links I keep a soother attached and use it for when we are in the car or when I am carrying baby K in a baby carrier. It's nice because I always know that I have a soother when I am going out and never have to search the house for one. When K is crying in his car seat I am able to reach behind me and feel for the Bink Link and put the soother back in his mouth with little trouble (though I don't recommend this while driving unless you are also one of those one hand on the wheel and one hand in the backseat pro drivers haha jk) Also if K feels up to it he can find the soother himself and put it in his own mouth. When he is in the baby carrier I don't have to fish between us for the soother I always know where it is. On our second Bink Link I keep a little wooden toy so I can clip it to K while he is in the car seat or shopping cart cover and never have to worry about loosing the toy and it keeps him happily entertained. Even though Bink Link is not a teething toy, baby K LOVES to chew his Bink Link and would happily chew on one for hours without a toy or soother if we would let him. It has held up great to all the chewing, no paint has come off and it still looks great. Bink Links have been tested for safety and comply with all ASTM standards and is CPSIA safe. They are definitely top quality and we could not live without ours. The only problem I have ever run into is that K can sometimes pull them straight off his clothes and the one with the toy on it he has recently pulled so hard that all the beads came flying off!! (He was really reefing quite hard on the thing!!) I think it was just a freak incident though as we use the soother one all the time and it is fully intact and I have quite a few friends who have them and have not had a problem. It has been pointed out to me on more than one occasion that baby K is freakishly strong for a baby, really he is. :O So unless you also have a freakishly strong baby I wouldn't worry. Because the cord just came un-knotted I should be able to put it back together as I do have all the pieces, luckily I was right there when it happened and was able to scoop them all up before he ate one or we lost one. I will comment back when I have a free minute to try and fix it but it should really be a quick fix. Bink Links come in 15 different color patterns; they have boy, girl and neutral choices. We have Skully and Gumball and they are both super cute and really vibrant, I'm lusting after the super cute Grape one we've come across online but they don't look like Bink Link carries it anymore. :( Do you have a favorite? Let us know what it is!!


Bink Links retail for approx $15 US/CAD they can be purchased directly from their US based store or see here for a list of retailers in both Canada and the US.


*UPDATE- We have been contacted by the new owners of Bink Link about the Bink Link baby K broke. (they have kept the business in the family ) Kathi has told me that her "six foot four and two hundred fifty pounds of muscle can't pull the Bink Links apart. I do think that was a freak accident. That is not a common problem and no baby should be able to do that. We recommend parents inspect them before each use in case something is wrong with one of them. In any event, we are ALWAYS happy to replace any Bink Link that breaks at no cost." Thanks Kathi!!!*

Going paperless in the kitchen

In the past few years we have been trying to go more green little by little. One of the decisions we have made is to get rid of paper towels and napkins. At first I didn't think we could and the daddy was dead set against the idea but now it seems so long ago that we even used or bought paper towels/napkins, except for the occasional kids birthday party. If you are deciding to go paperless in the kitchen you need to have a plan that works for your family. We have a large supply of face cloths for the kids already that I use for wiping off messy hands and faces. I went out and bought even more dish cloths and towels as well as cloth napkins. For us more is always better. I like to have a large supply so we never run out. We have two drawers in our dining room off the kitchen counter; one is for face cloths and one for all the kitchen cloths (cloths, towels, napkins). I buy white kitchen cloths and towels so if the kids are helping me sort it's easier. When the kitchen cloths start to get nasty and stained I take a fabric marker and mark them with a B and we use them for cleaning the bathroom or rags for anything else undesirable, I keep these ones in a closet across from the bathroom. I have just been buying our facecloths and kitchen cloths in a big cheap package from Walmart, we also have some cloth napkins from Superstore. I just buy whatever is the cheapest and looks nice. One of the problems I ran into was we are a large family and we generate a large amount of laundry so the cloths always seemed to get lost in the laundry pile. I needed a solution that didn't take up any space, that everyone could follow, was easy, worked well and looked good too. I saw some ladies online raving about Sweet Slings Kitchen Wet Bags and after checking out her Hyenacart I knew I had to have a couple.


I purchased 2 bags with a kitchen friendly theme; one with apples and one black and white one with knives, forks and spoons. Usually after using a cloth we hang them up to dry and when they have dried we throw them downstairs to go into the laundry. Now when they are dry we put them in a Sweet Slings Kitchen Wet Bag hanging in the kitchen, when the bag is full I take it down to the laundry room and dump the cloths out straight into the washer and add in some towels to make a full load. I replace the bag in the kitchen with the second clean wet bag. On Sweet Slings hyena cart they show the bag being hung on the stove handle but I tried that and everyone in the house complained so I have moved it to out freezer door which is on the bottom of our fridge. This seems to be a better solution for everyone as it's not in the way of the stove drawer and I think it also looks better. I am so happy with this system, it's made using cloth work so much better for us and I LOVE my new wet bags. We have the wet bags have two button snap tab handles for hanging and they are 13"x 20", they come in many sizes, style and patterns, they also wash very well and still look fabulous many washes later. Preschool L recently had a party and I think almost every mom at the party asked me about them. I am mulling over getting another one for the bathroom cleaning cloths and one for the side of crib for night time changes, I just need to decide on prints.


Sweet Slings Kitchen Wet Bags retail for $18.00US and can be purchased through their Hyenacart, Etsy or Lilypad Landing all three links can be found here. Sweet Slings also sells wetbags for diapers, diaper stashers, unpaper towels and more. Be sure to "like" Sweet Slings on Facebook you can get notified of all their contests and sales. If you have any questions on our paperless set up or how we do things please drop us a comment and we'd be happy to answer.