When I was invited to a 3 course meal with drinks in a posh hotel I knew immediately that TinyMe was a brand that cared. Ionela made sure that everything was okay every step of the way, and really looked after my friend Julie (who cannot drink) during the event. Ben had flown all the way over from Australia, and despite suffering from the jetlag/time zone difference, spoke passionately and clearly about the company. For me he carried with him an important message that it had grown from one member of staff, with one product in a spare room. That is has grown to 3 partners (dads of 14 children between them) and about 30 staff members. At the heart of the business are a strong family ethics and proudness in their designs.
The company, originally called Mooo in Australia, are a mix of Geek and Cute. I first fell in love with their cheeky monkeys and then discovered that I could design a “Tiny Me” (that is design an image that matches your child) in less than 60 seconds – and then personalise the products with it (and names). Being family-orientated they know what us parents want too – with a range of name labels, height charts, bags, calendars, wall stickers, wooden jigsaws and much more.
What really interested me though, were the personalised books. My youngest has special needs and finds it difficult when things are out of routine. Lately we have been travelling to London a lot more and so I thought that the perfect gift for him would be the TinyMe “Party Time in London” book. This is just perfect because it has landmarks in the book that my son has seen and can help remind him where we are talking about. The magical thing about this book is that it has my son’s name in it; in the title and throughout the book. He can now tell people what his name is if asked and is starting to recognise it written down too – so to be able to identify it in the book will really help with this – and make him feel very special.
I placed the order and it came within 6 days (and that spans across a weekend) – very good considering that it had to be made (personalised) and come from Australia. It was well packaged, with no risk of damage, but with very little no recyclable material. The quality of the book is amazing, and the images stunning. However, it did come with a leaflet explaining that if I were not happy that if I wasn’t 100% happy with the quality of any item within 30 days of receiving it then I could receive a refund or replacement – now that is the faith that they have in their products.
The book was easy to read and there were lots of mentions of my son’s name. I loved that there was a little worm telling us facts about London throughout the book, as well as pictures of iconic places. There is a gorgeous simple of map of London too. Another useful thing about this book is the fact that the monkey becomes “sad” as my son is also learning about emotions – I will not spoil the book and tell you why though.
You may have read that I am making a TRH Christmas Book Advent Calendar and this book I decided to put with the Robin. I made a Robin TRH craft because I really associate Robin’s with their red breasts with Christmas, but don’t see many crafts with them.
I simply got my boys to paint the toilet roll holder brown, then added a red circle for a redbreast, some googly eyes, an orange diamond folded in half for a beak, and brown tissue paper for the wings and over the head.
You don’t have to make your TRH to the Christmas theme – you may want to do one related to the book – such as this monkey.
You too can WIN a personalised (large) copy of the book.
CLOSES: December 1st 2013 0:00am
UK entry.