My Blankee: Repurpose that car seat in style

Baby Allegra is using a lot of her older brother’s hand-me downs. Which I am fine with (and she doesn’t care anyway). But when it came to using something like her brother’s infant car seat, I wanted to girlify it up a bit.  Rather than buy a new one, we are using an adorable Infant Car Seat Cover from My Blankee ($99), with a hood. I picked the Watermelon Retro Dot Velour — a snuggly white velour with brown, pink and celery green polka dots, it’s pictured to the left, (with a JJ Cole Bundle Me on top of it.)

Installing My Blankee’s Infant Car Seat Cover was easy. I have a Graco Snugride Infant Car Seat, but this car seat cover will fit most types of infant car seats . The infant car seat cover slipped on easily and stayed on securely. The hood was a little harder to attach. You pull the attachments out of the hood that it came with — I had to unclick it and it was a little stubborn. Then use the regular hood attachments to attach the new hood (that part was simple). The hardest thing was actually picking what pattern and fabric I wanted. Click here to see the choices. You can also get a large and extra large size car seat cover (to fit a convertible car seat).

We also checked out one of their cute pillows. Covered in blue raised dot velour fabric, trimmed with satin, the small pillow (8" x 8")  was perfect for my two year old — he loved cuddling with it. My Blankee has a lot of marvelous products for baby, like cuddly luxury blankees, baby clothing (check out the creative hooded baby capes), children’s clothing, as well as baby bibs, hooded towels, and bumpers and dust ruffles for cribs. They also have spa quality robes (which would be a great gift for a expectant mom’s hospital stay). You can also get adult- sized blankets. Since I spend a lot of time in my recliner nursing Allegra, a plush throw from My Blankee could come in handy during the many, many late night feedings!! You can personalize a lot of their fab products, like blankees, bibs, pillows, and crib sets. How awesome is that?

Constance Zimmer, Tori Spelling, Cynthia Daniel, Gwen Stefani and Angelina Jolie are all fans of this company’s products.

Shop My Blankee.

Comments

Please Be Careful on February 6th, 2008

Aftermarket covers are not recommended. There are no manufacturing standards for aftermarket products. They are not crash tested. They don’t meet the fire retardancy requirements of FMVSS 213. They can affect the routing of the harness- especially the universal ones. There’s no way they can line up properly with all seats. They may be too thick and compress or slip in a crash. There’s simply no way to know how they will perform or possibly cause failure in a crash. Don’t use them, don’t make them, don’t sell them, and don’t recommend them (CBB!). NOT SAFE

Julia S on February 6th, 2008

I have a friend whose husband works at the Graco plant in Ohio. Their seats are tested using their covers and the covers are designed to work with the seat so that in the event of a crash, the cover will not interfere with the safety of the seat. The type of fabric is important (something slippery could cause slippage of the infant) as well as the amount of padding and location of the padding. Anything that goes between baby and the seat or baby and the straps could potentially lead to the baby being ejected from the seat.

Yes – a custom cover is adorable and fun – I’ve drooled over more than a few myself, but it isn’t worth potentially negating the safety of the child seat however. If you look at the Graco website – they have several very cute car seat cover designs now and many other car seat companies are following suit with trendy styles and colors to appeal to more fashion savvy parents and keep things safe.

An after market cover is simply money wasted on looks.