I’ve just been reading up on vintage baby clothes and retro clothes for kids. What a great idea! Kids’ clothes are typically so boring. I love seeing creatively dressed children walking around in town. And I love the idea of taking fashions from the past and turning them into something cute for children today.

Of course, you can go totally wrong with this approach to baby style as well. You can end up making your child look way too cutesy by dressing him or her up in clothes that were meant for another place and time. If you don’t have a good sense of vintage personal style yourself then you may want to stay away from this option!

In my opinion it’s probably best to save this kind of stuff for special occasions and dress-up days. There’s a time for kids to be in jeans and a time for them to look super cute. The smart parent knows which time is which. Done correctly, though, I think you could get some adorable scrapbook memories out of these types of outfits.

What do you think? Are vintage and retro baby clothes a waste of money or are they worth it for your kid to look cute?

Tags: baby clothes, children, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, Parenting, retro clothing, style, vintage

I recently wrote an article about child prodigies which was really fun and interesting to research. There are truly some amazing kids out there! Since I was researching this topic anyway, I decided to see if there were any Yahoo! Answers questions related to it. I like to be able to share knowledge about the things that I’m researching if I can.

Indeed, there was a question over at Yahoo! Answers asking if people knew what the age limit was for someone to be considered a prodigy. The question seemed to hint at a misunderstanding by the asker who thought that a “child prodigy” and a “prodigy” where different things which they aren’t.

I answered this question, hopefully clearing up that misunderstanding, and provided information about the age determinants that help to define a child prodigy. My answer was chosen as the best answer for this topic.

Tags: child prodigy, children, kathryn vercillo, prodigies, smart kids, Yahoo Answers

I went to a really fun local circus show not that long ago. Everything about the show was great but I have to admit that one of my very favorite parts was before the show even began when a clown came around and paitned my face with a beautiful little flower design.

I love to get my face painted. That probably sounds silly since I’m all grown up and face painting is for kids right? Well, I think that we should all try to capture the magic and fun of childhood as often as we can and face painting does that for me. I think it’s fun. And beautiful. And filled with fantasy.

Besides, did you know that face painting wasn’t always for kids? In fact, the history of face painting is a really long one and only the last two or three decades of it involve face painting as a fun activity for children. Prior to that, face painting was used by adults for reasons including spiritual ceremonies, entertainment, inclusion in sports activities, tribal affiliation symbolism and camouflage purposes for war and hunting.

Those are some pretty intense things to think about considering how fun face painting is today!

Tags: children, culture, face paint history, face painting, history, history of face painting, hub pages, kathryn vercillo, society

I don’t have children of my own but I spent several years working as a foster parent, taking kids into my home. One of the things that I always tried to do was to make sure that the bedrooms that I offered to them were nice. Not fancy nice or filled with nice things – just pleasant places to be, places where they could feel safe and comfortable and maybe even happy.

There were a lot of ways that I did this including trying to personalize their rooms with photos and making sure that the beds were comfortable. But one of the easiest ways that I did this was with paint. I love painting rooms different colors and believe that a kid’s room should be painted to express his or her personality.

For one foster child, we did the room in blue and red because he was a big fan of the University of Arizona Wildcats and that was his favorite color. I also had a smaller bedroom where kids who weren’t going to be with me long stayed. That room was very small but I tried to make it seem bigger and brighter by painting the walls a sunny yellow and doing cloud-like blue-and-white paint on the ceiling.

I think that decorating any kids’ room should be fun. And it should be something that kids get to help with. And it should be something that you do again and again. Check out my recent article on The Best Colors for Decorating a Kids’ Room to get some more inspiration!

Tags: bedroom, children, decor, decorating, design, kids