MooBaaKids is one today!

Happy Birthday to... us!

What started out as a little idea last year has grown beyond our wildest expectations. We (there’s the two of us here at MBK HQ) set out to run a not for profit website aiming to keep families with kids aged 0-5 in the loop about what’s on in Skipton, and we’ve ended up a year down the line part of a whole MooBaa community that has developed beyond our direct involvement and which it’s a HUGE pleasure to be part of.

We’ve stayed true to what we set out to do. We still run as not for profit, ploughing any sponsored ad money we have taken back into posters to advertise the site and are proud to play a part in supporting local business in Skipton - encouraging people to make the most of what we’ve got on our doorsteps.

It’s been a busy year for us in lots of ways. We set out on maternity leave with three children between us. A fourth has since arrived and one half of MBK is now back at work. Add to that a house move and you’ll appreciate that at times it’s been tough going trying to keep on top of events, refreshing the blog and responding to all the lovely emails we get as quickly as we’d like to!

But we can’t wait to go forward into our second year, making progress on what we’ve done so far. Since we launched in July last year there have been on average about 3,000 hits per month to the site and its blog, with 4,044 unique visitors. Our facebook page has also taken off, with approximately 650 unique users viewing the wall PER WEEK! and a growing community of almost 450 ‘likers’ of the page.

There are so many people we have to thank but at the risk of sounding like we’ve won an oscar and boring you with reams of names, we’ll try to keep it simple … we’ve had so many amazing prizes for competitions and worked with some brilliant companies and local organisations but we simply have to single out the brilliant people at Bababing who had complete faith in our idea right from the acorn stage. They have given us such wonderful things for prizes that we’re going full circle and have some more BabaBing! giveaways to come this week. Their creative and practical designs are sold across the country and they’re based just down the road in Keighley. If you haven’t already then please check out their website.

Our brilliant poster! Designed by Laura Steele

MooBaa has changed a lot in its first year from its first steps as a black and white web page…we love how its grown and in particular how it looks. This is entirely down to the creativity and skill of Skipton-based graphic designer Laura Steele (laurasteeledesigns@gmail.com). She listened to what we wanted and interpreted it with flare. We love her work. So, if you need anything designing we’d recommend her time and again!

We also want to sincerely thank each and every person who’s emailed with tips, comments or facebooked about events – without this sharing of knowledge the site just wouldn’t work so we thank you for your time and for making sure MooBaaKids is chock full of the sort of really important stuff people want to know about.

There isn’t much more to say apart from happy birthday(!), and we hope that if you have time as a little gift to us you might take a minute to think whether any of your friends or family who don’t already, might like to hear about us and pass on the site details (www.moobaakids.co.uk) and the facebook page. The more the merrier into our second year!

Kate and Angela
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It's launch day!

Hello and a very warm welcome to the launch of MooBaaKids…we’ve run what we’re doing past family and friends and are now throwing open the doors to everyone. Thank you so much for the excellent feedback so far. As a result we’ve had a bit of a facelift, packed in lots more features and are now officially raring to go!

The first thing we hope you’ll notice is the way MooBaaKids looks. This is all thanks to the super creative talent of Laura Steele. She listened to what we said we’d like, sprinkled some magic over it with her own ideas and interpretation and has created an eye-catching logo and colours across the site that really sums us up. We cannot thank her enough for offering to help, praise her work more highly or recommend her freelance graphic design and illustration skills more strongly. You can contact her at laurasteeledesigns@gmail.com

As well as the style, we’ve worked on the content too and added even more. We’ve added six new buggy-friendly walks on our walks page for you to get started with – let’s hope last week’s sunshine wasn’t it for summer! We’ll just quickly point you to the Malham Cove walk as the peregrine viewing point will only be there till 31 July. If the sun does shine again, it’s a great, inexpensive day out for all ages.

We’ll soon be filling in the blanks on our new parklife section with tips on the best parks around and how to get the most out of them as well as working on our community area – how to get linked up with other people and share what you’ve been up to.

New events and activities are being listed all the time and each week with the blog we’ll flag up some local events or other ideas for inspiration (it’s the Yorkshire Day countdown next week, tha knows!) – we’ll let you know via facebook about any big things we’ve added but if you keep checking back, you’ll most likely find new things.

We have already had more than 75 people ‘like’ us on facebook which has totally exceeded our expectations but the more the merrier – everyone’s welcome! And the quicker we get to a 100, the quicker some one gets to win the fantastic BabaBing! changing bag in our prize draw. So its time for you to start spreading the word - get your friends to like us on facebook now! And if you’ve already done that (thanks!), what are you waiting for? Have a leisurely look round MooBaaKids and let us know what you think…enjoy! X