If you follow us on Twitter @mommytesters then it’s no secret that we are major Kiwi Crate fans.

If by some horrible misalignment of the stars you’ve never heard of Kiwi Crate, they send out monthly themed boxes of crafts for kids ages 3-7.

A while back I ordered a 3 month subscription to Kiwi Crate for Kayla because she is absolutely obsessed with craft projects.  It’s her favorite activity at school and ever since she was old enough to string a couple of words together she would say “Do art”- it was all she wanted to do.  Sadly, she happens to be the daughter of a less than crafty mother.

You can tell from the picture below that Kayla has learned to recognize that green box and is over the top excited when it shows up each month.

I love the bonding, learning and creative development that doing these types of projects offer.  However, the thought of spending what little free time I have at a craft store tracking down obscure materials is downright unappealing and knowing me I’d inevitably forget some crucial component…

That’s where Kiwi Crate comes in.  Each crate contains all the materials you would need to complete the projects as well as very detailed and easy to understand instructions.  At about $20 a month including shipping I personally feel like I’m getting a deal for the lack of hassle and the amount of entertainment the crates provide for Kayla.

A few weeks ago we showed you a pictures only preview of the firefly project from the June “busy with bugs” crate.  You can see how much joy Kayla got out of that project here: Kiwi Crate June box

Kiwi Crate recently opened their Celebration Shop which sells individual projects to be used during birthday parties or for party favors.  They also sell gift crates as a nice option to give when you’re on birthday party number 7 of the month and you’re running out of original ideas.

When our friends at Kiwi Crate offered to send us the Fairy Fun Gift Crate I was pretty excited because I knew it would be right up Kayla’s alley.  So what was in the box?

Each box usually comes with 2 great projects which vary in complexity, time to complete and level of parent involvement.

I have no problem admitting to the rookie mistakes I have made as a mother…and there have been plenty!  One of them was collecting a pile of adorable and incredibly impractical denim jeans for Kayla.

The closest she has come to wearing jeans is the jeggings from Baby Gap.  Why?  Leggings are just so much more comfortable and give her free range of motion to play.

For the last few years it has become my mission to track down the cutest leggings I possibly can.  When I discovered the adorable, customizable leggings from Polkadot What I was pretty excited and had to share!

Polkadot What is all about expression.  You can sit down with your little girl and choose exactly what will be on their leggings.  If she’s into hearts and stars, no problem!

You can pick 2 of their fun shapes, all of which have meanings behind them like hearts for lovable and polkadots for happy.  You mix and match on their site and then they ship them out to you within a day or 2.  

Polkadot What sent us these super cute leggings and as you can tell our kid tester had so much fun goofing around in them!

3) Where are the vegetables?

I really try hard to make sure that nearly every meal I offer is balanced and includes a vegetable and at least one fresh fruit.  On really rushed evenings I sometimes find myself putting together a dinner plate and then realizing that I’m missing a food group.  I like the reminder that filling all those divided compartments gives me to diversify what winds up on Kayla’s plate.

Honestly I can only say good things.  I love that unlike plastic plates the Din Din doesn’t get scratched to bits by toddler forks because those scratches become bacteria hotbeds.  I like throwing it the bottom rack on the dishwasher and watching it come out clean and dry each time.  I also love that unlike muffin tins the compartments are sized differently so I can put larger main course items in those and save smaller ones for something like a dipping sauce.

The Innobaby Din Din stainless divided platter sells for about $15 and you can find it right here: Get my Innobaby Din Din  

– Jillian

Seriously!
Zooligans Review and Giveaway
If you’ve visited the children’s shoe section at your local department store lately you might notice a trend for kids shoes these days… it seems the more bling, sparkles, neon writing, flashing lights and licensed characters the better.

Since my daughter is (hopefully) not a Real Housewife in training, I look for more simple yet very cute things when shopping for her.  When I found an adorable new kids shoe line called Zooligans I knew they were on to something.

Zooligans are high quality animal inspired shoes for kids.  Their designs are sweet, incredibly detailed and childish in a good way, just like kids shoes should be.

I’ll admit that I do a fair amount of clothing shopping for Kayla in Target (Tar-jeyy) since they usually have great things for little girls.  One thing I won’t buy there is sneakers.

If you pick up the sneakers you’ll feel that most of them are actually pretty heavy.  Their cheap clunky soles give the shoe the bulk of the weight.   Now imagine your twenty or thirty something pound child wearing them – they’re almost like cement shoes!

Years ago, one of our mommy testers had taught me that light, flexible shoes were the only way to go.  Zooligans are pretty light and have amazingly flexible soles.  You can actually take the shoe and bend it almost all the way in half.  These shoes are so well thought out that I was actually pretty shocked.

I have bought all velcro closing sneakers so far for Kayla.  While they were easier to close than tying shoelaces they were still a pain to get on.  You’d have to loosen the strap pretty far to make the opening wide enough to put a chubby little toddler foot it it.

Zooligans have wide openings and longer velcro straps to make putting them on and adjusting them to be snug easy.

From a child’s standpoint these shoes are irresistibly cute and detailed – Zooligans sent us the Sparky the Puppy shoes and he even has little nostrils on his adorable 3D nose.  Kids also love the paw print soles.

Kayla is currently obsessed with making footprints on the ground and when she saw that she could actually make what looked like paw prints with her Zooligans she was ridiculously excited.  Kayla begs to wear her puppy shoes every day and I have a feeling your child will too.

Zooligans come in a bunch of animal and color options like monkeys, koalas, pandas and many more and are available in toddler sizes 4-12.  They retail for about $48.  You can find them on Amazon.com right here: Get my Zooligans

Our pedicure kit for the kid testers

Recently my daughter Kayla developed an intense interest in nail polish.  She had been asking me about my “pink toes” and chatting up any cashier who had interesting nail art.  I have never performed a manicure or pedicure on myself or anyone else but after days of hearing “Mommy can I please have nail polish on my toes, pleeeeease!”  I broke down and decided to make my first attempt on Kayla’s little toes. 

I took her out to our backyard, sat her on a lounge chair and produced a bottle of the only color I’ve ever used, Essie Fiji. I went to work trying to paint those teeny tiny toe nails while Kayla watched in pure delight.  A few seconds into painting she said “Mommy, what’s that SMELL?”

I had been so focused on trying to do a good job on her toes that I had forgotten about the awful and intense odor that nail polish gives off, especially to a tiny little nose that has never smelled the inside of a nail salon.  I immediately felt pangs of mommy guilt and embarrassment for exposing her to those fumes.

Frustrated and still feeling quite stupid for not thinking about this before offering to paint her nails I started searching for non-toxic nail polish and that is when I found Piggy Paint.

Piggy Paint is made especially for little girls (or boys!) and unlike those kits you find in some stores that are “kid nailpolish” because they have licensed characters on them but are still filled with toxic junk, Piggy Paint was created because of the exact scenario I explained above.  The nail polish is water based rather than solvent based, hypoallergenic and gives off very little odor.

If you’re questioning whether you should consider using a water based nail polish then take a look at this picture in which you can see the solvent based nail polish eating through a foam plate – how disturbing is that??

I reached out to the folks at Piggy Paint to see if they would let us test out their nail polish with our girly kid testers and have a mani-pedi party and they happily agreed.  We mommies set up a mini spa for the girls and got to work soaking their little hands and toes, and letting them attempt to file their own nails.

We did the actual nail painting inside to see if we would encounter fumes and you really had to stick your nose directly up to the bottle to smell anything at all.  Even then it smelled nothing like conventional nail polish.

Piggy Paint doesn’t last quite as long as regular nail polish but seriously, what 5 year old needs the staying power of a gel manicure?    It’s pretty much a guarantee that your child will want to change up their polish color or design before it chips away.

Piggy Paint comes in a rainbow of colors and they make their own nail polish remover which is also far less harsh or fume filled than conventional polish remover.

There are also nail polish pens for less mess and more independence for older kids as well as some neat nail art appliqués.  Quite frankly we’re considering sneaking in some piggy paint time when the kids are asleep!

You can purchase Piggy Paint directly on their site as well as find retailers right here:  Shop Piggy Paint

-Jillian
Piggy Paint Review , Piggy Paint Non Toxic Nail Polish

Living in San Diego sun protection is constantly on my mind.  It’s not a seasonal thought, it’s a year round issue.  To complicate things, I’ve got a little fashionista on my hands.   My 3 year old daughter Kayla has recently developed an opinion of her own when it comes to clothing and that includes swimwear.  It’s probably my fault as a veteran of the fashion industry, but don’t tell my husband I admitted that.

We have done nothing short of pure bribery to try to get her to wear a rash guard for the added protection from the sun and have struck out every single time.  So much so that I recently donated a pile of rejects because it was becoming more painful to try to convince her to wear one for more than ten seconds than to be a helicopter mom with the sunscreen.

Each time I’d manage to get one over Kayla’s big melon head (yes, my kid has one) she’d pretty much freak out and then we’d get to do the whole thing in reverse while she screeched until she was free from the rash guard.  So when I was contacted by Mompact to review SwimZip I was hesitant but excited to see that they offered rash guards that I thought were actually were cute since truthfully, most of the ones for girls I have seen are tacky looking.

Besides the aesthetic appeal what makes SwimZip so different is the zipper that runs the full length of the rashguard.  It got me thinking…if there wasn’t a big head/small hole issue then perhaps I’d have a prayer of getting Kayla into it without me aging 3 years in the process.

I think you can tell from the pictures how this experiment in rash guard wearing went.  Kayla was hesitant when she first saw it, obviously traumatized from past experiences but when I showed her the zipper and the clever zipper garage to keep it from irritating her chin she was willing to try it on.  Five minutes later she was still wearing “My pretty ruffle swim shirt” and couldn’t put her shoes on fast enough to get out the door to the beach.

We spent a few hours there, Kayla got to spend some time in the water and enjoy the awesome playground that’s right on the beach. I felt better about Kayla being in the sun with her back and shoulders covered.  I still slathered the rest of her body that was exposed in Babyganics Sunscreen before we left and reapplied while we were there but I found myself being less of the paranoid sunscreen wielding mother that I usually am and it was kind of nice for all parties involved!

SwimZip’s UV 50+ fabric did it’s job and Kayla came home minus any hint of browning or a burn on her and without desperately trying to remove the rash guard even once.  Quite frankly, I’m still in awe.

SwimZip has styles for boys and girls and sells for $14.99-29.99 If you have a little one who refuses to wear a rash guard I highly recommend you give them a try.  You can get your own SwimZip swimwear right here on their site:  Shop SwimZip

You can keep in touch with Swimzip and Mompact on Facebook right here: Mompact on Facebook , SwimZip on Facebook

-Jillian