The past few months I’ve been exploring social media online and having a lot of fun with it, not to mention learning a lot!  And I’ve found that there are a lot of smart, funny mompreneurs out there to connect with. In fact, many of our Kai Kids suppliers are also blogging, tweeting and posting on Facebook.

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 !

We just received our issue of Canadian Gardening magazine and they have a great spread in their November 2008 issue on Canadian eco-friendly gifts made by artists. We made the cut, as they featured one of my favourite products in our online store, a unique, gorgeous piece of art by Toronto artist and mom Sandra from Petit Flaneur.  Sandra creates one-of-kind canvases using non-toxic paint, wood veneer and fabric scraps. Some have a garden theme, some feature birds, and all are lovely and are perfect for kids rooms as well as other spots around the house (the garden ones would look amazing on a kitchen wall).  They are small, and a perfect, and very original Christmas or new baby gift!

A few weeks ago I wrote about how i tried a new recipe that my kids really liked, especially my Big Boy. It was pretty easy to make, and helped me use up the pumpkin that came in our organic food box that week. A reader named Char emailed to ask for the recipe. Sorry Char, it’s been a hectic time, and i’m only getting to it today – a few days before Halloween. I hope you still have some pumpkin around!

It is from the October issue of Chatelaine magazine. One caveat: the kids really loved it, but my husband and i found it a little bland. I think you could safely add a lot more salt and maybe some coconut cream or a little more coconut milk and perhaps some fish sauce too. I was going to type the recipe in here, but then I realized it was in the mag’s online recipe database! I hope your kids like this recipe as much as mine did (one note, i halvedthe amount of jalapeno it called for).

Launching a business is all consuming! But now that it’s been a few months and our organic baby clothes store Kai Kids is up and running well, Peter and I thought it would be fun to write a blog about our business, new products we are thinking of adding, our kids, and our adventures in green parenting. Plus, we wanted somewhere we could start a conversation with you – our customers and potential customers! We hope to hear from you in this space: what you are trying at home with your own children, products you’ve heard about and recommend we stock, what you think about our lines and more.

We just added two new lines to www.kaikids.com: Earth Friendly Baby and South of France. Since our son Kai was born three years ago I’ve struggled to find natural soaps, bubblebath and chemical-free skincare for our family that smelled nice and were affordable. It’s been particularly tough to find bubble bath that passes the judgement of both me and Kai! A lot of the natural, organic bubble baths just don’t foam up, and you end up wasting a lot of it trying to work up some bubbles. Earth Friendly Baby is a popular, award-winning natural baby skincare line from Australia that we are proud to now carry at Kai Kids. They do not contain any artificial colouring, parabens, sodium lauryl sulphate, petroleum-based ingredients, or any synthetic fragrance and detergents. And no animal testing has been conducted on any of their products. So we’re going to use their bubble bath and see! We are also stocking their Organic Shampoo & Body Wash formulas in two scents: Lavender and Chamomile. This line is quite new to Canada so we are looking forward to hearing what you think of it!

South of France isn’t a baby line, but we thought we’d stock their quality, natural soaps nevertheless. They are quite a good value as they are large, very hard bars of 100% vegetable soap that last and last. With lovely scents like Lavender, Honey and Lemon Verbena, each bar contains soothing olive oil and moisturizing Shea butter infused with natural fragrances and essential oils. Although made in the U.S., these rich lathering, bars are produced using a traditional recipe from Provence. And the company ensures their soap is not tested on animals, is biodegradable and they also use recyclable packaging.

-N