Yummy Mummy recommends MyWishWand

MyWishWand is ideal for busy parents who need to find suitable gifts for children. Cass Payne felt she had to set up the website when her children started going to their friends birthday parties and she realised how hard it was to find a present that she knew would be loved (and hadn’t already been bought by other parents!).

To find the perfect gift and buy it online. For the site to do better than existing online gift "wishlisting" services, it has to be easy to use to be easier to use, have a broad range of products, and be able to find the perfect gift for busy parents.

Use the gift ideas lists and the gift finder tools to get your imagination going.

Cass points out that 50 years ago the "Wedding List" was frowned upon, but today we wouldn’t be without it. MyWishWand is all about helping busy parents – making it easy to find a gift and buy it with a couple of clicks. It is a better option than dashing around the shops the morning before the party with no idea what to buy (and the nagging doubt that whatever you do buy will have been bought by at least four other parents). The site also encourages children to add wishes for ‘intangible’ gifts (like a hug from Grandma) to their lists.

"It's so nice to see a community of WishWanders growing," says Cass, "It love feeling that I'm helping people out and making gift-giving a real pleasure. I've also just started offering a free personal shopper service, so if members are stuck for finding the perfect gift, they can email me and I'll find it for them."

If you are looking for Peppa Pig to Tipees, Transformers to PopCorn Makers, Arts & Crafts to Outdoor play MyWishWand has it all.

Present Gifts

What is the best way to get a present for someone you know?

Say it's your daughter, who is an early teen. Do you have a clue?

Is it better to ask what they would like or what they feel they need in their life than to guess and risk wasting time, money and personal stress in buying an unwanted gift?

One solution is to let your children create their own "wishlist" where they can choose what they would like. Then they can let members of their friends and family see the list.

You can then "grant the wishes" on the list, thus avoiding duplicate presents for children and ensuring it was a wanted gift.

The commercial side of this is how the list is picked. The child or adult can search a selection of recommended retailers for the gifts they like in the virtual shopping mall.

You can also have gift ideas suggested using the gift suggestion tool - this is based on supplying information such as gender, age and personality traits for the person for whom you wish to buy a present.

Try it out at MyWishWand...

Christmas presents and getting the right gifts

The best way to get gift ideas for your children, friends and family is to use the mywishwand "Gift Ideas" tool. Enter the age, gender and personality traits of the person you need ideas for presents for, then submit. Mywishwand checks a database of retailers to get the closest match of gifts.

Your children and other family members can register for free and create an online wishlist so that getting a christmas present or birthday gift for your nephew or granny becomes so much easier. You can grant a wish from someone's wishlist, which will remove that item and leave the rest of the desired presents for someone else to buy.

This idea found popularity in online wedding present lists and has now been extended by online retailers to include birthday presents, christmas gifts, gifts for anniversaries and special occasions.

What Mywishwand adds to this is being able to generate gift ideas for those friends and family members who always pose a gift selection challenge. If you still don't know what present to buy, just check their wishlist!

MyWishWand

Mywishwand takes the stress out of finding the best gifts for occasions. The organisation also promotes recycling of old toys by donating to hospitals, doctors surgeries and green recycling organisations.

Mywishwand also donates a percentage of any profits to charity and is keen to promote gift-sharing and recycling with schools.

The philosophy helps ensure the gifts or presents you buy are going to be loved and will save time from visiting many shops. It will stops you buying the same present for someone and helps stop the 8 million toys that get dumped annually.

Children enjoy creating their own wishlists and as a parent this could be used as a reward system where your child could choose a gift to be awarded if they do well.