When Patsy Aiken’s daughter, Holly, was young, Patsy made her clothes. When people started asking her to sew for their children, Patsy began a class to teach moms how to sew. Quickly realizing that she was accumulating more clothing than daughter Holly could wear, she started selling the clothes she made to a local children’s store and Patsy Aiken - the business - was born. As the business evolved, Patsy’s clothing made its way to nearly 1,500 retail boutiques and upscale department stores. “We had independent sales reps in the major markets –Dallas, Atlanta, L.A., Chicago and New York and Neiman’s, Saks, and Nordstrom were big customers of ours for many years,” says Patsy. Then, Patsy and her husband and business partner, Joel, made a radical change in their business model. Read the rest »

Growing up, Katherine Hodges favorite thing was to play “store” using her toy cash register. Her first job was working for a family owned specialty toy store when she was 15 years old. Katherine liked the store and the work so much she continued to work there through college and beyond. And in 2001, Katherine and her husband, John, bought the toy store and renamed it Tookie’s Toys after a nickname given to Katherine from her nephews. Clever Parents caught up with Katherine to learn more about how she selects the toys she sells, customer service and tips for non-parents who want to buy a toy for a child. Read the rest »

“There are two types of toys in this world. Those that make a child think, and those that don’t.” This statement is the guiding tenet behind Fat Brain Toys whose tag line is: Smarter Toys = Smarter Kids. After a relatively futile internet search for a GeoMag magnetic building set to round out his set, 10 year old Adam Carson suggested to his father Mark that they create an online toy store to sell the specialty toy. And Fat Brain Toys was born.

From its humble beginnings in the Carson’s basement in 2002, Fat Brain Toys now runs out of a commercial showroom and warehouse and boasts more than 100,000 satisfied customers.

What makes GeoMag, the first toy distributed by Fat Brain Toys, so smart? “It’s intuitive - you pick up two simple components and you know exactly what to do with them. (Kids) know instinctively what to do.” Toys like GeoMag that allow for unlimited creative experiences lend themselves towards the European trend of providing a few ideas and a picture of a model and letting the children figure it out. “They don’t believe in instructions.” Read the rest »

Is your house overrun with testosterone? Are you a mom of boys and want to learn more about what makes your fellas tick? We have just the resource for you. MomsofBoys.org is an informational and support network for moms who have sons, whether it’s one or multiple sons. Inspired by her own feelings of being “overwhelmed by all the ‘guy’ stuff in (her) home — from the way they communicate (or don’t communicate) to the bathroom humor to the athletic cups all over the house,” writer Sharon O’Donnell decided to create an online resource with informational links, humorous articles and quotes dedicated to moms who have one or more sons. “Moms need to know they are not alone in this sea of testosterone.” Through the site Sharon has heard from moms of boys from all over the U.S. and a few countries “and it’s been a wonderful experience for me.”

Clever Parents caught up with Sharon to seek her advice to new moms of a baby boy, the most important lessons she has learned from her own sons and finding time for herself. Read the rest »

You have a family, a job, community responsibilities, and hobbies; finding the right balance between these competing priorities is a challenging goal. According to executive coach Jeffrey Levine, it is also the wrong goal to strive for. His advice: Don’t balance, weave. That is, try and weave the various components of your life together in a way that satisfies your beliefs and aspirations.

Jeffrey is the founder of Executive Dads, an innovative coaching program “designed with the successful professional in mind, to help him or her achieve clarity about what it is they want to create – both at work and at home – empowering them to prioritize and make choices that lead to the life they want - and the work/life balance that they yearn for.” Read the rest »

Retiring from teaching after 30 years, Joy Frost knew she wanted to continue to help children. During her teaching career, Joy had always been impressed by the educational impact that stories had on learning. So in 2001 she set out to create a set of metaphorical stories to encourage positive self-esteem and development in children. The stories address serious issues–the value of determination, dealing with disappointment–by building a fun story around them. Read the rest »

When Jennifer Ludt was pregnant with her daughter, Sophia, she received a burp cloth with a ribbon sewed onto it as a gift and thought, “I could do this so much better.” So she bought a second-hand embroidery machine from eBay and dug out an old sewing machine and Baby Sophia Gifts was born. “(At that time,) I had no idea how to even work the sewing machine!”

All of that has changed since the launch of the business two and a half years ago. Determined to create a high quality product that not only looked great, but would also stay around for as long as a child uses a bib, Jennifer chooses decorator weight fabric on almost all of her bibs. “Some of the canvas fabrics are even meant for outside use, which means they are very stain-resistant. Great looking can also mean long lasting.” Read the rest »