What The Twins Wore For: Their First Birthday Portraits (KyNa Boutique)

In the Netherlands they have a tradition whereby children wear a crown on their birthday.  Traditionally they are decorated and bear the number that corresponds with the birthday in question and whilst I had every intention of channelling my inner Let’s Do Something Crafty and breaking out the glitter, in reality I only made it so far as splashing about a bit of gold paint (most of which hit the floor rather than the card anyway) and breaking out the sellotape.  Nonetheless I thought that they looked fab.

KyNa Boutique kindly offered to dress the twins for their birthday portraits and after browsing their fab little independent online clothing shop I gladly took them up on the offer.  I was excited to see some of my favourite smaller brands – JNY Designs, Gardner and the Gang and Indikidual, as well as Maxomorra whom I reviewed back in the summer, and spent an agonising hour or so trying to decide precisely what to order.  I loved an awful lot of the selection but I wanted the twins to coordinate in colour and style without actually matching, as I don’t often dress them identically.

It took a while but with my partner Kirsty’s help I eventually selected two fab JNY Designs long-sleeved t-shirts.  I liked that the colours were identical whereas the designs themselves were quite different – raindrops for one and dinosaurs for the other.  I made my order and turned off the laptop for the night.  Imagine, therefore, my surprise to answer the door to a beautifully-wrapped little parcel less than forty-eight hours later.  That is faster service than you get on the High Street and all from a work-at-home mum!  I’ll be honest and say that I keep a little mental list of retailers on whom I can rely to deliver at a moment’s notice because I’m the sort of person to spend weeks angsting over a purchase rather than actually, you know, ordering it, so a swift delivery when I finally make my mind up is really important to me!

I’m an enormous fan of buying outside of the High Street – it’s fun to dress children a bit differently from their peers, and there is so much out there if you only look around.  Not only that but it’s nice to support the small businesses, ‘real people’ rather than massive corporations.  I love that my little purchases are a financial ‘we believe in you!’ to a mum whom I may never meet, who had the drive and ambition to set up her own little shop.  I don’t think that I’d ever be brave enough to go self-employed but if I were, I’d love to have a little clothing shop and I’d stock the same sort of brands as KyNa.

What do you think of the twins’ first birthday outfits?  Note that trousers were clearly optional..!  Do you have any clothing recommendations for me?