Mila & Pheebs create stationery and activity boxes for children. They contain a mixture of stationery, crafts, stickers, and fun items, based around a different theme each month. It’s £10 per month plus £2.99 P&P.
While I love anything craft/stationery related, this particular subscription box is aimed at children. My six-year-old daughter Little C is crazy about stickers and arty creative things, so this is a perfect match for her.
It’s October and Halloween is coming! This month’s theme is Midnight Madness, and is full of fun and spooky things to do.
*Note: For some reason a couple of this month’s pictures are blue tinted. I have no idea how this happened, but suspect I accidentally hit the blue filter on my camera. The reason I didn’t notice was because I was horribly sleep-deprived having driven 260 miles in the middle of the night after about three hours’ sleep. I’m fairly sure the only reason the pictures aren’t the wrong way up is because it doesn’t matter which way you hold the camera. Anyway, enough complaining, on to the review!
Here is the mailing box. (It’s not actually blue. See note above.) It fits perfectly through the mailbox.
OK then!
(And no more blue pictures now.)
Inside the lid is the contents list.
And here is the lovely newsletter. It’s full of bright colours, along with silly jokes guaranteed to make your children (and you!) giggle, plus fun facts and useful dates. The font is also very easy to read, perfect for kids who are getting going with their reading skills.
Everything is packed beautifully!
Every Mila and Pheebs box contains stickers. Who doesn’t love stickers? This month there’s a sheet of lovely shiny Halloween-themed stickers, plus some of those chunky stickers in the shape of friendly bats, with a couple of moons and stars for good measure.
One of this month’s two craft kits is a scratch art magnet kit.
I’m sure you know how it works. The coating is scratched away with a plastic scraper to reveal colours underneath.
Tu-whit tu-whoo! We even had a handy magnetic surface to display it on.
What funky sugar skull highlighters!
They are just the right combination of creepy and fun, and of course the colours are fantastic.
You can also have a bit of a bonus educational moment taking about where sugar skulls come from and the Mexican Day of the Dead.
These also came in very useful for the next craft.
A spider cross stitch kit! He’s a very friendly spider. It comes with embroidery thread in Halloween-y colours (no boring black here!) and a child-safe plastic needle.
The highlighters were great for adding some extra colour.
This was a bit of a joint effort. Little C has done some sewing with my mother (who is much better at it than I) but she hadn’t done anything like this before. Fortunately the precut holes make it relatively easy!
Here is this month’s Iwako eraser! What a gorgeous little owl.
Iwako erasers are tiny collectible cute and kawaii erasers that some from Japan. There are hundreds of varieties, and are far too nice to ever use. This little guy will be added to our growing collection!
As to adding to collections, this cute pumpkin paperclip has been added to Little C’s personal collection!
This is simple but a lot of fun. Black card and chalk is perfect for making spooky night time scenes. And now schools no longer have blackboards, using chalk on a black background is a pretty novel experience for kids!
Mila and Pheebs always include a couple of blank cards. Look at the lovely embossed owls! Perfect for spooky Halloween greetings!
This month’s colouring pages and wordsearch and crisscross sheets! These are such a lovely idea, and the perfect starter word puzzles for young children.
As a bonus, here is a picture edited by Little C herself. She was definitely inspired by the spooky theme!
Another wonderful box from Mila and Pheebs!
One of my favourite things about Mila and Pheebs is that their themes are completely neutral, and will appeal to any and all children.
I’m a huge fan of creating your own greetings cards, and I think it’s wonderful that a couple are always included. I always encourage Little C to draw cards for friends’ and family’s birthdays, so these are a welcome addition to our stash of blank cards.
It make a terrific monthly treat, and if you’re quick enough at the mailbox to grab it before your child does there are lots of times it’s very useful to have one tucked away for a rainy day!
This would be a terrific box to keep kids occupied at a wedding. It would also be great for for travelling, such as a long train journey or flight. Add in some extra paper and colouring pens, and you’ve got something fun to keep the kids occupied on holiday when you don’t want to haul along your entire collection of art supplies. With the exception of last month’s box the crafts and activities are all completely mess-free, so also would work well in the car. As long as carsickness isn’t an issue of course!
(As an aside, regarding playing with stuff in the car, we have one of these. This is an affiliate link but we really do have one, it’s absolute genius, one of the best things I’ve ever bought for long journeys.)
You can also buy one-off boxes which would make lovely gifts or even very fancy party bags.
As Christmas is coming this would also make a lovely stocking filler. In fact, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Christmas-themed box!
The website says it’s aimed at kids from around six years old, but I reckon a four- or even three-year-old would have a lot of fun with this. Stickers and drawing suit practically any age! And even though the word games might be slightly beyond their skills, most kids are starting to look at letters and things at school, so they would still be a nice learning tool. Get hands-on folks!
Part of the point of a subscription box is that you are paying for someone else to do the work for you, and in this case it’s selecting and producing a lovely themed box of stationery. I do think it’s good value, not least because there are items that you can keep and use again and again.
I don’t know about you, but there’s no way I have time to track down and organize something like this that brings little C a great deal of delight. These boxes are charming, reasonably priced, and offer fun, creativity, and even some sneaky educational value!
As a final note, Mila & Pheebs is created and run by a lovely mummy, Alexis, who also manages to wrangle gorgeous twin girls at the same time! Do take a look at her Facebook page, you’ll find info about her shop and company, and terrific behind-the-scenes stuff.
In the season of Trick or Treat, Mila and Pheebs is definitely a treat!
I’ll end with a message from Little C.
A different version of this review first appeared on allsubscriptionboxes.co.uk.
