Is it Mum, Dad, the Nanny or Babysitter? Or someone else?

Take our quick poll and tell us now!

If you are looking for a bit of reading inspiration check out the new Findababysitter.com child care book store featuring our personal reading list for babies and toddlers – and our customer picks! Something we missed? Share your favourite kids classics with us now!

The Findababysitter.com team heads north to the Just So Festival this weekend. It’s a fantastic child friendly family festival affair in a woodland setting, near Leek in Staffordshire.

We’ll be manning (that should be nanny-ing) the lost child tent. We recruited some fantastic nannies from a well-known child care website! We hate to blow our own trumpet, but the website came up top trumps – we received stacks of fantastic applications within just a few hours of posting our nanny job advert. We received CVs from local nannies with excellent experience, references and childcare qualifications. We interviewed our shortlisted candidates over the phone and made our final nanny selection after checking references and documents and checking that our nannies were up for the challenge of a weekend camping out in the rain. This is no ordinary nanny job!

If you are going to the festival, make sure you come and say hello. We have an exclusive Just So Festival treat for parents – plus balloons for the kids. You’ll find us at the lost child tent in the Jitterbug Glade.

If you spot and snap the FAB-van en-route or the FAB team at the Just So Festival this weekend, be sure to send us your photo and we’ll pick one lucky snapper to win a year’s free access to Findababysitter.com. Here’s our route to the Just So Festival!

Keep your eyes posted on our Facebook page for festival photos and updates over the weekend.

We are stoked and look forward connecting more and more UK families with Mrs. Doubtfire’s on their own doorstep and strengthening our UK wide childcare coverage over the coming months and years. We pride ourselves in providing an affordable and easy to use service for our 30,000 carer candidates and 20,000 parents and this mini milestone means a lot to us. At this rate we may even reach our next 50,000 by the end of the year. Imagine that.

We’d like to thank our loyal customers, our investors and the team for their continued support (and hard work) and we are proud to be a Smarta100 winner this year. Watch this space for stacks of Findababysitter.com world domination news over the coming months.

We continue to focus on providing a free service to help childcare candidates find local employment and to provide a highly competitive and flexible service for our parents. As ever we welcome your feedback and look forward to enjoying your continued support.

To celebrate our modest milestone and thank our loyal carers and parents (and welcome our growing number of new members) we’d like to give you the chance to win one of five £50 vouchers to spend at your favourite high street store M&S (prize as voted for by our Facebook fans).

To be in with a chance of winning all you need to do is login to your account or create a free childcarer profile or sign up as a parent before the end of July. Everyone that signs-in or signs-up in July will be automatically entered and we’ll pick five winners at random and will contact them via their registered email address next month.

Please tell your friends too!

To appear alongside companies such as zopa.com, Bulldog, Huddle, Zoopla is an honour. And to think we are being judged by the likes of Deborah Meaden is fantastic.

If you like us please vote for us by clicking here. You never know – maybe we could be the smartest business in the SMARTA 100 Let’s hope for a clear majority, but we won’t mind sharing a prize.

Thanks for your support!

P.S. If you really like us please join us over on Facebook and help us raise £500 for the NCT Cheeky Monkeys Tea Parties. All you have do do is “Like” us on Facebook and we’ll donate £1 for each new fan. Plus you can win DVDs for the kids if you post something clever the kids have blown you away with on our Wall. Find out more at www.findababysitter.com/advice/help-raise-500-pounds-for-nct-win-dvds or simply join us on Facebook here.

Previously on Findababysitter.com, Basic access allowed you to contact unlimited childcarers and post a free trial job. If candidates responded to your trial job you had to purchase Premium access (or above) to read these replies. Some of you were not too happy about this, so we made some changes to the way things work…

• 5 day Basic access now lets you post up to 2 jobs on the jobs board and allows you to read replies, just like our other price plans.

• We’ve also dropped the price of Basic 5 day access from £6.95 to just £2.99 so you can give the new look Basic access a test drive.

• All price plans come with our full money back guarantee.

Please note that our prices page still includes the old prices and terms but we’ll be updating that in the next few days so don’t be alarmed.

We hope these changes make Findababysitter.com better for you and hope you will tell us what you think. Keep the feedback coming and thank you for your support.

Ben and the Findababysitter.com team

www.findababysitter.com

Share the priceless, cute and funny things your little monsters says about mum and win one of three daily £25 FAB Ultra Access Prizes and the main prize of a £250 voucher for mum to spend at Marks and Sparks.

To be in with a chance of winning all you need to do is tell us the funniest thing your little monster has said to mum or said about mum (or grand mum, dad or grandad).

To enter simply send your little monsters funniest or cutest quote with his or her first name (or nickname) and age e.g. “Fraggle got wobble tummy” Dotty aged 2 (Fraggle is her granny).

Post your entry on our Facebook page, tweet your entry to @childcareuk on Twitter (please use the hash-tag #fabmum), post it as a comment right here on Fablog, or you can email us here. If you want to melt the judges hearts you can optionally include your own little monster photo with your entry on our Facebook page or as a link accompanying your entry.

Up to three daily winners will be selected from Monday 1st March up to Mothers Day on Sunday 14th March. Daily winners will each win 60 Days Ultra Access to Findababysitter.com (worth £25) and the funniest little monster quote will win the main prize of a £250 voucher to spend at M&S. Send us your entries any time and enter as many times as you like. Terms and conditions apply, click here.

More info and terms and conditions are available over on Findababysitter.com.

Submit your entry by posting a comment right here!

Good luck – The FAB team

Thank you.

Have a great night in or out (you decide).

Ben (23 month old Dotty’s dad probably going out with Dot to eat with friends)

The FAB team

www.findababysitter.com

Moving in to 2010 we’d like to dedicate Fablog to our childcarer community and childcare advice. Between all of the FAB Live in Nannies, Live out nannies, Part time nannies, Childcarers, Babysitters, Au Pairs we’ve calculated there is a million trillion hours of childcare experience (ok we made that up) and we’d love you to share just some of it here. We’d love to hear your childcare tips and advice. If you have something you’d like to share or something you want to talk about please write a few words here. Drop us a line here, by email, Facebook or Twitter if you’d like to write your own guest post.

Update your FAB profile and help FAB families find you – a few extended tips from today’s FAB News newsletter.

1. Our FAB mums told us (in a recent survey) they’d love to see more FAB profiles with fantastic profile photos, and truly personal descriptions. It’s not mandatory, but we agree a well written and passionate profile, with a (flattering) photo means a lot to mums. If you have your own kids or pets let’s see them too – show your family side. To update your profile login to FAB and click on My Profile.

2. With Valentine’s Day just a few weeks away don’t forget to update your availability and tell us where you can work so we can help to connect you with FAB families in your area. To update where you can work login to FAB, click on My Profile and then click on the Where I can work tab – then enter the area you can work in e.g. Manchester or Birmingham and click ‘Add’. You can add as many areas as you like as long as you can travel there for a FAB job.

And a final thought – if you are a FAB parent reading this you are most welcome to contribute here too.

And finally, finally, if you missed our newsletter today don’t worry it will be with you tomorrow – including half price 30 day premium access for parents and much more.

See you soon!

The FAB team

2009 has been a great year for FAB and we’d like to thank all of our loyal customers for their support over the past 12 months. We’re hoping to make 2010 an even better year for our customers and this is where we need your help.

What have your experiences of FAB been like – what do you really think? Do you have a great idea that would help improve the service? If so, then we’d love to hear your feedback via our end of year survey. A few straight forward terms apply, see below*.

There are just a few short questions to answer and we’re offering one lucky customer a great prize of a £250 M&S Gift Voucher!

We’d love to hear from you.

Take the survey now!

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year!

The FAB team

*The boring bit. The survey closes midnight Sunday 10th January 2010. All surveys will be treated anonymously and your personal information will NOT be shared with any third parties. A valid email address is required to enter the draw to win a £250 M&S Gift Voucher. The winner will be selected at random from all qualifying surveys submitted before midnight Sunday 10th January 2010. The competition winner will be contacted via the email address provided by the 31st January 2010. No prize substitutes or alternatives are available.

1940s - Train sets such as Hornby and Tri-ang Railways were popular as well as dressing up kits

1950s - Board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble and Ludo were popular in this decade

1960s – Action Man and skills-based games such as Twister, Operation and Mouse Trap were favoured by the children of this era

1970s – Drawing games were on the wish list in this decade – Etch a Sketch, Magna Doodle and Spirograph were popular as well as Star Wars toys

1980s – Car racing sets such as Scalextric, Total Control and Hot Wheels were a hit in this era as well as construction sets such as LEGO bricks

1990s – Cuddly toys such as Beanie Babies, Furbies and Teletubbies were a hit in this decade as well as computer consoles such as the Nintendo Game Boy and the Sega Megadrive

What will you be buying for your kids this Christmas? Tell us here.