Special Offer: Direct to your living room

Becoming a new parent means revamping your home - whether you're painting the nursery walls or watching your baby redecorate the kitchen floor with his porridge. And once you've got a new addition, you soon find pretty much every room becomes the 'baby room'.

Before you go spare trying to figure out what shade of sofa will match the little one's toybox, take a trip to Living Rooms Direct. This online superstore offers a broad range of living room furniture and accessories to spruce up your main hanging out area - from cosy family-size sofas to funky magazine racks for stacking all those baby catalogues.

Living Rooms Direct are offering one lucky Hype Baby reader $30 towards any item on the site. New mamas and papas might dig this gorgeous notNeutral Wood Block set featuring letters, numbers and images that can be combined to create 3D stories.

To win this $30 voucher, simply email Hype Baby with your name and address and a message of 15 words or less on how your little bubba has transformed your living space. The winner will be notified by email and get a special mention on the blog.

**Update: This competition is now closed.

Going, going...Green!

If you want to do your bit for the planet, declutter your over-stuffed house and make a little money too, you should check out GreenKidsAuction.com. The newly launched online community auction site offers a user-friendly Ebay alternative that’s aimed at helping eco-loving mums and dads ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ unwanted gear. You can put new and gently used items up for sale at no cost and pay a fee of 4.95% billed only when your item sells. And just to put a little polish on your halo, 5% of proceeds will be donated to Healthy Child Healthy World.

All aboard

Happy New Year to all our readers! There’s no time like the present to reorganise your baby’s toys. Nowadays you can find a wide variety of storage solutions to jazz up the nursery or kids’ room. We’ve been carried away by this Guidecraft Train Toy Box that deftly combines two of our toddler’s favourite activities: imaginative play and tidy-up time. The hand-crafted choo choo chest is beautifully designed and features a safety hinge catch and cut-outs to prevent finger pinching. Visit the Guidecraft web site for more storage ideas and a list of sales partners and distributors.

Technorati tags baby toys furniture

High price heels

What do you get for the parents who have everything? Nada. Simply point and click them in the direction of the Posh Tots web site. While the rest of the masses can merely ogle the 'most extraordinary children's furnishings in the world', Mummy and Daddy Warbucks might be tempted to drop a cool $49,000 on this shoe.

Well, it's not strictly a shoe. The handsome construction, cunningly disguised as an item of footwear, is actually a children's wardrobe that appears to be inspired by the nursery rhyme (old lady, too many kids, you know the one). This Whimsical Armoire is custom made upon order and features two sliding drawer doors, a cedar roof and one window nightlight. It's sure to provide hours of fun (priced at about $817 a minute) for future shoe fetishists.