Do you enjoy shopping for toys and gifts from home? I do! Do you appreciate simple, natural toys that will stimulate and delight your child without expensive batteries, noisemakers and cheap plastic? I do!
I happened upon A Toy Garden just a few months ago and was charmed by the extensive selection of beautiful toys, many of which are made here in the USA. Everything in the store is meant to inspire hours of creative play, and A Toy Garden is family owned and operated.
Sonya, the creative and generous lady behind A Toy Garden, sent our family the very popular herbal bean bags to review: one set is made of brightly colored cotton fabrics, the others are fruit and veggie fabrics. These lovely sets are handmade by Sonya herself; each includes 8 bean bags and retails for $20.
The bags are filled with dried beans and fragrant herbs like lavender, mint and chamomile. They measure 3.5 inches square. The bright patterns and fruit/vegetable prints are colorful and very appealing. My children love to “divide them up” before playing by picking their favorites.
Sonya had a few suggestions for how to enjoy the bean bags: tossing, stacking, counting, juggling and hauling around in toy trucks. As children are wont to do, mine came up with a few of their own.
Inevitably, there was a bean bag war in the living room. They have a blast with these!
One of the bean bags was damaged during shipping and a small side seam opened up. And after several days of enthusiastic play from my children, a second bean bag seam opened up in one place. I put both of these bags aside and temporarily closed the holes with tiny safety pins; when I have a spare moment they should be easily repaired with a needle and thread. After asking Sonya about it, she assured me that “if one ever rips or develops a hole, I replace it for free.” Sure enough, Sophia sent me an email to say she will mail two replacements. UPDATE: It’s November 11th and our two replacement bean bags just arrived. Great customer service!
We keep our Toy Garden herbal bean bags in a big basket in the living room, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that my toddlers have played with them every single day.
Delightful wooden toys, natural paints, instruments, dolls, gnomes, trucks, dress-up and more….you can spend a really long time at A Toy Garden and still not see it all! I love that they sell wooden blocks of all shapes, sizes and colors; this is one of the most durable and timeless toys you can buy; ten years ago when my oldest was a baby, my mother bought them a set of wooden blocks. To this day, they still play with them and even incorporate other toys (like Legos, Hot Wheels and Little People) in with the blocks. A good set of wooden blocks is an investment I would encourage any parent to make.
And look at the toys I discovered in the Christmas section! An articulated dragon pull toy, a child’s bead and felt cardinal wreath, a cozy bunny rabbit Advent calendar and a handmade acorn Advent ladder:
If you are looking for high-quality, long-lasting, made in the USA toys to tuck under the tree this Christmas, please go check out this wonderful family-owned business!
And while you’re here, enter the giveaway: Sonya is going to send one of my readers (U.S. only) a set of 8 herbal bean bags, just like I reviewed. And next week, a Toy Garden is sponsoring ANOTHER giveaway on my blog for a $25 “Black Friday” gift card! Make sure you subscribe to my blog by email so you won’t miss the second giveaway.
*GIVEAWAY CLOSED*