Nephew No. Two's Birthday

Another birthday approaches, which means that another birthday card has been made.  After a slight lull in November, which sees only one birthday, the madness continues a-pace with five birthdays in December.  This is going to involve some work with the old paint brush!

The first birthday is next week and is my little nephew's, who is going to be nine.  LB is an absolute character and I happily spent a couple of hours creating his birthday greeting.  He is a huge Super Mario fan, as all my nephews are.  So I continued the Mario theme, started with my earlier birthday card to his brother LJ in November.  This time I went for my own personal favourite Mario character, Yoshi.

With zero money in the bank (minus zero actually, which is even more depressing!),  I put my much needed thinking cap on to come up with a present.  I knew that a book would always go down well, as all my nephews are keen-bean readers.  So yesterday, with a whole £3.00 in my pocket, (scrambled from the change jar), I headed down to my local Oxfam book shop on Stockbridge High Street.

It was a bitterly cold December day yesterday, with the frost nipping at my nose all the way to the store.  The sight of the lit up Oxfam shop was a really welcome one.  The store was busy with couples and families browsing through the eclectic mix of books.  In the children's section, at the back of the store, I was delighted to find a little toddler sitting reading a book with her dad and flipping between English and her parents' home language.  She was chatting away about the animals in her book.  She knew to speak to me in English, and at the same time replied to her dad in his language.  Really amazing stuff to see dual language emerging, and so natural!  She was an absolute sweetie and bright as a button!

I love having a good rummage in this book store, it is clean and tidy, well laid out and I can indulge my love of books without breaking my (piggy) bank.  Whenever I do buy something, I know that I have helped out a good charity. Oxfam do amazing stuff with the donated items they receive, if you are interested, check out this article about how much they achieve from one bin bag of goods Oxfam Article.

It didn't take much looking to come up with a few good options.  I eventually settled on Grimble's Christmas, by Clement Freud.  A really funny tale about a boy who has very forgetful parents, so forgetful in fact, that Grimble thinks they have forgotten about Christmas!  I think it should appeal to LB's sense of humour. I duly paid my £2.49 and left with .51p in my pocket, which will go towards the postage. 

My paint brush is now at the ready for the next birthday; JW's!