NCT goodies

I attended my first ever NCT nearly new sale recently, it was great! It was sort of like a car boot sale, but organised, which I loved, and with (obviously) just baby gear. As much fun as car boot sales are, you have to wade through tonnes of crap to find what you're looking for. There were many "alternative" items for sale, lots of slings and cotton nappies, you wouldn't see them at your standard car boot. When it said on the flyer "only quality items", I didn't believe it til I saw it, but it's true.

Not only does a percentage of the profits go to to the NCT charity (a cause I believe in, as in our modern culture it isn't mother, aunties and sisters teaching us to breastfeed, it's unpaid organisations like the NCT. I found these invaluable) but there were bargains galore!!

A crisp £50 note (ok, five tens) saw me leaving with the following:

two copies of Annabel Karmel's toddler meal planner, great recipes even for baby led weaners. One for me, one for a BLW friend.

a pair of clark's in the next size for Boy

a pair of winter boots in this size for Boy

pirate PJs for Boy

two bambino mio nappy covers for Missis

a rainbow coloured fleece nappy cover for Boy

a new nappy bag in brown and pink with lots of accessories

a box of breastmilk storage bags

an 18-36m gro-bag for Boy with spaceship of it

an array of stunning gypsy-style baby girl clothes from companies like mini-mode and monsoon, places I'd never be able to afford to shop in usually. I'm more of a George (asda) Cherokee (tesco) kind of girl.

And now that we know Missis is a girl, we have a tonne of boy's clothes I've lovingly saved that we no longer need (well, jeans, vests and pjs can be saved & possibly jazzed up with a little customization) I'm even thinking of registering as a seller for the next one, since ebay is a bit of a hassle, paying to list items and having to post stuff off, and to give it all to the charity shop seems very generous!! This is a great middle ground, 25% of anything we make goes straight to the NCT, and I don't have to get up at 6am (voluntarily) and freeze my ass of at a carboot where there's not guarantee I'd even shift any of it.

Here are some of our "quality" items;

a moses basket saved for Missis who spends approx 30 secs asleep in it before waking when put down. By the time she's learned to self-soothe, she'll be too big for it.

a mamas&papas highchair that is IMPOSSIBLE to clean and impractical in a variety of other ways, but very funky.

an as-new pushchair. Slings ROCK!

more items of clothing than Mariah Carey has in her walk-in, in various shades of blue. Many were gently used donations from friends or presents from family.

a set of walkie-talkies, I mean baby monitors. Our babies are LOUD.

some pregnancy manuals. I read them to death last time, never even opened them this time!

too small nursing bras

three pairs of maternity jeans that I couldn't pass on to my pregnant cousin as she's nearly a foot taller than little old me!

pop up travel cot

c-section soother belt: bought off ebay, never used

Since I started drafting this post, I have registered as a seller! There are some pretty strict rules so that quality can be maintained at the sale. Such as; I can only sell 100 items, a maximum of 30 being clothes, which must be ironed (!! they never ave been before!!) and on hangers. Then there's the tags! Cereal-box cardboard, a certain size, with secret codes & info galore, attached with safety pin or string; NO sticky labels! Hopefully I'll have time to sort all that out before next weekend....my back room looks like a jumble sale!