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Look to kids' passions for holiday gifts

01.01.70

To the uninitiated, buying gifts for kids can have the impression like a treasure hunt without a map through store aisles and websites chock-a-block for the holidays. But sussing out clues may not be as difficult as it looks.

Has the girlish recipient ever offered you one of his homemade cupcakes? Have you seen her separate around on a little ride-on bike? Is the living reside often strewn with building bricks or stacking blocks?

Random buyers looking for presents for children they don't identify well need only focus on general interests. Mom and dad will probable take on the "it" gift of the season, or farm it out to grandma, leaving lots of space for other shoppers, whether the giftee is a builder, baker or bookish.

If that sounds too ornate, reach for the classics -- in books, clothing or toys, said Rachel Jarrett, common manager of the children's department for the sale plot Gilt Groupe. A sweater with room for volume variation, or mittens or hats, for example. Try toys in wood, including eco-clubbable bamboo.

Source: CBS News

Lovers of LEGO will want to make a stop at Stamford museum

01.01.70

Bill Probert surveyed the scenery, his right foot perched on the bottom rung of a pornographic ladder, his right hand resting several steps above.

His workspace of about a dozen tables stretched out before him, with mostly vacuous spaces awaiting the farm he had yet to create, the tracks he had yet to lay and the flatulence turbines he had yet to install.

"I could probably do twice the scope of this layout with just my own stuff," said Probert, 51, a Fairfield inhabitant who for the past 10 years or so has used his fondness of LEGO model construction and trains to create "trainscapes" at sites such as the Stamford Museum and World Center.

On this day, he was back at the center, where the exhibition "All Aboard with Bill Probert and Friends II" is on-going to Jan. 2, in conjunction with "Visions of Gingerbread III: The Sweetest Architects ." It was a day before he expected some of his colleagues from the New England LEGO Users Crowd and I LUG NY, the New York TriState Area Lego User's Assemble, to arrive and bolster the scene.

Source: Ct Post