About

Hi High End Mamas! My name is Afia Umm A, and I’m a mum of one who, since being pregnant with my little one, have struggled to get things for my baby and home and nursery set up that fall in line with the strict aesthetic I’ve curated for my home. 

I love luxury, whether that be luxury clothes, luxury décor or food, and for me, apart aiming to purchase items that will sit pretty in my household, it also means I highly value sustainability and natural, hard-wearing materials. I try to stay away from plastics, and lean more towards wooden items for toys and furniture with my little one and natural food-safe silicones, rubbers and glass containers for food preparation and serving up the solids, for example. I also believe less is more so it doesn’t have to break the bank of you don’t want it to.

I believe things that are natural are better for children and adults alike, are often made to look better as the designs have to stand the test of time and are good for our pockets in the long run and the wider environment at large. 

I don’t know about you, but I find bright red, yellow, blue and magenta pink plastic toys and clothing unsightly sometimes. And in my home where I want to feel relaxed and able to unwind from the world outside, I want to exist amongst cooler or warm earthy tones to match the serene mood I aspire to create. I don’t want the visual chaos and visual noise of having too many colours all over the place. I want the rooms in my home to create focus and lack visual vomit wherever possible, and this involves carefully selecting the items I purchase for my baby, from a market that’s saturated with acrid and bright but unnatural materials and colours. 

I appreciate that these things are made bright to capture the attention of the children and to in turn support their developmental milestones, but I would rather opt for painted or dyed wooden textured toys, colourful hardboard books and recreational activities that colour can be introduced into their lives. 

I would liken the use of bright colours with how the food industry uses brightly coloured food packaging, packaging used to usually dress up ultra processed foods that aren’t good for us, to entice us (and our children from their young and innocent infancy) to consume them and later subscribe to a culture of consuming fast, cheap and quick-gratification inducing goods. I don’t want this for my baby, I want her to be in an environment built around conscience, well thought out and slow purchases that she can benefit from as she grows older.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a person who grew up in a home with magnolia walls in the living room, but other rooms where blue and other room was terracotta, with blue curtains in the living room and burgundy sheets in the bedroom. For me there was no consistent colour theme in my family home growing up as items in the home were acquired based on their low price point commonly and not how well they were made or how they looked. Inferior goods often didn’t stand the test of time and were noticeably never were things of beauty, which made for clutter in the home an perpetual eye-soar. I believe in the principle that buying cheap isn’t cost-effective in the long run may lead you to buying the same item twice, and so it’s better to buy high ticket items with the intention to hopefully buy them once in a lifetime, future-proofing purchases, so they can last over the years while little one is growing (rapidly) , and hopefully they can be reused for additional siblings later down the road, or due to them being well made and maintained in tip-top condition, if appropriate, they can be regifted to another family, or sold for getting some of your money back and not end up in landfill.

Yes, this might come across very first-world-problems-esque, and that’s because it is. I appreciate that having children is expensive for some and some parents struggle with the plight of providing meals, clothing and adequate shelter for their families day to day and I can only imagine the stress and anxiety this causes, but there’s help out there, and hopefully. if you are one of there’s families or you know a family who has fallen on hard times, then I encourage you to get the help you or they need but also, thinking long term and buying good quality items can help, and you’ll notice you won’t have to find the money to replace things later down the road. Also click here for my article of how I save money in my personal life before having my baby and how I’ve now extrapolated this into into motherhood.

Going forward, I plan to blog my purchases, show items that I might be looking at (wishlist items) and review what I’ve bought for rearing my little one with the hopes of inspiring like-minded mums (or dads) and pointing them in the right direction when it comes to buying items that actually lol good (I’ve had some problems with this but not so much lately, and I don’t want the same for you!)

Thanks for sticking around and reading, until the next post,

Afia 💜