Back to School - Etsy Style

My little dude is starting Kindergarten soon and we've been trying to get him all ready to go. It had been awhile since he got all new clothes and I just realized that he's made the jump to the BOYS category *moment of silence please*. And here's what I found in the big boys section. Sport tees. Sport jerseys. Some more sport tees and some track pants. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not by much! And I guess that would be fine, except we are not a sport family. My husband sneaks a football game here and there, but my son could not have less interest in wearing anything with some sort of ball on it. The whole experience left me really depressed. Walk over five feet to the "Baby Boy" section and you've got dinosaurs, bugs, robots, and of course, sports. But the variety in big boys was sports, motocross, skulls. It kind of made me angry too, because what does that subliminally say to our boys? You should be interested in these three things! It'd be like walking into the girls section and everything said princess, diva, sweetie...oh wait. *sigh* We put a bunch of plain tees on our list and I decided to go online to find some tees that were more my boy's style. He has a variety of interests, from space to sharks to bones to roller coasters. And while there are several really great brands who make amazing graphic tees for boys (I love Appaman, Lucky Fish, Monster Republic to name a few) , I'm just not willing or able to outfit my son entirely in $40 t-shirts. So I headed to Etsy with this in mind: the shirts had to be under $20, had to be something my little would absolutely love, and it had to be easy to care for. Here's a few of my finds:

1. Shark On A Bike tee by Dark Cycle Clothing, $18 - I love that this is on an American Apparel shirt, so I know exactly how it will fit, and I know it will last multiple washes.


2. Science Geek tee by Critter Jitters, $14 - My son thinks this one is hysterical! But was bummed that I couldn't read the russian words (I'm such a disappointment, I know)


3. Dragon Kind Smaug tee by Crowsmack, $14.95 - I love the way this dragon is illustrated, my son just loves that its a dragon.


4. Skeleton Diagram tee by HappyFamily, $14 - This one is just cool.

All of these Etsy sellers had several awesome tees to choose from (some really amazing ones for girls too! maybe I'll have to do an all girls post next) and I'm so happy that sites like Etsy are enabling not only these small businesses from selling these kinds of things, but also enabling us consumers to be able to buy "outside the box" a bit. Happy shopping!