This Friday, May 29, Kai Kids will be at the always fabulous Children’s Trunk Show at the Distillery District in Toronto.   This will be our third time at the Trunk Show and it is definitely our favourite shopping show: well organized, featuring gorgeous unique products for babies and kids, and a bunch of really nice parents: both vendors and customers.

We will be there with our Kai Kids booth and will be hauling our pretty, eco maternity and nursingwear so you can try it on,  our standard bestselling stock such as Bambu, Bamboosa and BabySoy, plus a bunch of excellent new items we’ve added to our online store:

•  handmade bamboo and organic cotton baby rattles
• new stainless steel feeding trays, perfect for baby
• organic mesh produce bags just in time for farmer’s markets
• natural, chemical-free hand sanitizer
• new spring styles of sweet and funky non-toxic baby and toddler shoes from

The Children’s Trunk Show is an exclusive shopping event featuring high-quality fashion, jewellery and art made by moms and geared exclusively towards kids and families. 50+ vendors are hand-selected to ensure a wide variety of goods—so you’re sure to find unique and useful gifts for all the children in your life in one place.

Come on out and join us this Friday, May 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., in the Fermenting Cellar at the Distillery District, 55 Mill Street, Toronto. We’d love to see you there!

Cool Mom Picks - Bonbons for babies

They are promoting the plethora of Canadian parentpreneurs out there, which is great, as we all could use a little help promoting ourselves and reaching new customers. Small business is a tough go, and many, like ours, can’t afford to do much, if any, advertising. We rely on word of mouth, or word of “mom” to reach new customers and sell enough product to keep our biz afloat!

If you are a reader of this blog and/or a Kai Kids customer, we’d really appreciate your vote!  All you have to do is go on over to weewelcome.ca and sign up, then vote for Kai Kids! WeeWelcome is a great resource with lots of articles, blogs, forums, groups and contests going on all the time, and a good way to connect with other parents in your city or neighbourhood.

So please vote for us!  We could win $20,000 of advertising in WeeWelcome’s web site, newsletter and printed guides (I can’t even get my head around that figure!) plus a trip to Club Med for our whole family (baby #3 is due soon, so we’ll need it!  We haven’t been anywhere outside Canada since before we got married and had Big Boy over five years ago).

I used to sneak old paintings and those that weren’t my favourites into our recycling bin when my sons weren’t looking. But then I realized that their colourful, abstract (they are ages 2 and 4) paintings would make excellent wrapping paper for gifts!

This reuses their paintings (and gives them a thrill to see their masterpiece adorning a present for a friend’s birthday party etc.), reduces the amount of wrapping paper we consume (I haven’t bought any in two years!) and saves us money. And friends and family love the personal touch and think it’s quite fun to receive a present wrapped in children’s artwork.

Plus, I no longer have to feel guilty about not keeping every “unique: canvas they bring home!

Do you have any good ideas for reusing items around the home and encouraging your kids to reduce, reuse and recycle? I’d love to hear them.

We at Kai Kids will be there, offline, with our plethora of ethically-made, eco-friendly products for babies and toddlers, plus there will be many other companies selling women’s and children’s clothing, giftware, jewelry, stationery, personalized accessories, home decor, and more. Guests can also purchase raffle tickets as there are lots of prizes to be won.

Come on out to The Temple Sinai Congregation of Toronto, 210 Wilson Ave., at Avenue and Wilson.

We hope to see you there!

One day earlier this spring I escaped for a bit of rare “me-time,” and headed to Chapters downtown, sans enfants. I scored several charming books for toddlers and preschoolers that I thought my two little green stars might like. Perhaps yours will, too.  Read the rest over at Canadian Family’s site, where I’m guest blogging this week!

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Plus,  I was invited to be the guest blogger over at Canadian Family’s blog for the week, in honour of Earth Day! My first post went up today: fun ways you can help your kids grow up green. Check it out, and if you haven’t already, spend some time on their site: it’s an excellent magazine and web resource for parents, full of Canadian content, and over the past few months, they’ve really beefed up their coverage of three of my favourite topics: the environment, mompreneurs and social media!

One site that’s become part of my daily routine is Twitter. In fact, now it’s almost an addiction. It took me a while to understand it and get into it, but now I find it fun, useful and informative, as a parent, and an entrepreneur.

If you’d like to follow me on Twitter ( I post about interesting articles I find, bits of my daily life, special sales and new arrivals of eco family products at Kai Kids), check it out: www.twitter.com/greenmum !

Check out their review, which hit the ether earlier today via their newsletter and their website:

 ”not a school day has passed where it hasn’t been incorporated into this Kindervibe momma’s lunch-making duties!”

These handy stainless steel lunch containers are a great size for kids (small, med and large), and the company was started by by two moms here in Toronto! Being parents in biz ourselves, at Kai Kids, we are all about supporting other mompreneurs!