I was brows­ing the web today for a smart and fun present for a good friend of mine who just had her first baby. You know the sit­u­a­tion: it has to be prac­ti­cal, fun, orig­i­nal, use­ful, cool… and cost some­where around max 25 euros (since MANY friends tend to have kids this year). Via the great Dutch web­plat­form Trotse Moed­ers (‘Proud Moth­ers’), man­aged very well by a newly found IRL friend of mine, I stum­bled upon some great hand-made Nappy Wal­lets from the Aussie Mum-invented brand ‘Belly Bumps To Baby Hugs’- and thought — hey! This is a winner!

The Nappy Wal­let will hold (sur­prise..!) those nap­pies any new mother sim­ply needs to bring as soon as she leaves the house, plus all the other essen­tials: wipes, small tube of nappy rash cream and other small items that are use­ful when one is out and about. And has it has small pieces of rib­bon at the bottom,one to attach the keys to and the other to attach a dummy to. Fin­ished off with a handy strap, so it can be hung on the stroller.

Handy to just grab and go — and makes that big, bulky, heavy dia­per bag, that I used to lounge around, history!

As I’m sure my friend has bet­ter things to do right now, with a 2 day old baby in her arms, than read my blog, I am pretty sure it will still be a sur­prise when she unwraps it. But I’ll surely ask for a review again a few months’ down the line, when the Nappy Wal­let hope­fully has come to good use!

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Play­group plan­ning should start already before the litte ones have arrived! For me, it felt com­pletely nat­ural to stay in touch with the other par­ents in my prenatal/birth class, that I and hus­band fol­lowed dur­ing the preg­nancy.   After our babies were born, we got together to see who had been hid­ing there inside each of our bel­lies, and to share experiences.

Form­ing a play­group from a pre­na­tal class often works very well: the babies are all around the same age and born within a cou­ple of weeks of one another), you usu­ally live rel­a­tively close to each other and are on maternity/paternity leave in the same period.

Did you also form a play­group with the bud­dies in your pre­na­tal class?

Photo: we extend our thanks to Heal­ing­dream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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I need to find around 20 Mums — and Dads! — who would be will­ing to take part in a user test for Mum­my­Mug, which we will run in June.
It is part of a last val­i­da­tion test before we ramp up pro­duc­tion, and sim­ply con­sists of using a Mum­my­Mug at home for a week, and then telling me about the experience.

So, where to start look­ing for these test pilots? Of course it needs to be par­ents with small kids, who like to drink tea and cof­fee, and who prefer­ably are mem­bers a group that meets up any­way, so I can ben­e­fit from con­nect­ing with sev­eral peo­ple being in the same place at one time.

In other words: I need to find a play­group!  As Eleonore is already push­ing 5 and goes to school, the ones I used to go to are no longer active.

Some­one gave me the tip that many play­groups nowa­days are reg­is­tered on MeetUp.com.

OK, said and done: I sim­ply ticked in ‘Play­group’ in the search-field, and… voila, 2,615 results, includ­ing one in Ams­ter­dam. with 161 participants.It has a 5-star rat­ing, so it must be fun!

I’ve fired off an email to the group organ­iser, and now I can only wait and see if they are happy to check out me and my MummyMugs.

Because I totally respect that these groups are of course not for com­pa­nies to con­tact with­out per­mis­sion. I hope they agree to see me — to be continued!

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I just had a lovely email exchange with Louice, who runs 2 vol­un­teer led baby and tod­dler groups in a Berwick-upon-Tweed in the North of Eng­land. 40 fam­i­lies use the group she has started to get together, sup­port each other and have fun.

Pre­cisely what play­groups are all about — see my pre­vi­ous blog posts on cof­fee morn­ing / play­group safety, what to serve and other tips.

Due to safety rea­sons, Louice avoids serv­ing hot drinks to par­ents in her groups. Smart.

But she inquired about the Mum­my­Mug to be able to instead serve hot drinks safely — smarter!!

As they oper­ate on a shoe­string bud­get, we have dis­cussed a coop­er­a­tion whereby we could con­sider spon­sor­ing the group with mugs once it reaches the market.

Let’s hope we can make that hap­pen! I can’t wait to hear the sto­ries and see the pics from the happy faces of Mums and Dads finally being able to enjoy their tea again. Thanks again Louise for get­ting in touch!

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Yes­ter­day, Susan Fox of 24/7 Moms sug­gested in an inspi­ra­tional post that as Mums, we should start with the end in mind and define a “Mom Mis­sion State­ment”.

Defin­ing a Mis­sion State­ment might sound as some­thing for­mal­is­tic that only orga­ni­za­tions do.

But I agree that it is a good idea. A good mis­sion state­ment indi­cates what the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion is. Par­ent­ing and fam­ily life eas­ily slips into an end­less, daily rou­tine full of end­less activ­i­ties, where we eas­ily lose direc­tion and keep push­ing really impor­tant things out, as we focus on fire­fight­ing the urgen­cies that keep com­ing our way. Mak­ing a Mis­sion State­ment is of course noth­ing more com­pli­cated than stop­ping and think­ing about what the long term goals are  our pur­pose as Mums, and as a fam­ily. The mere process of doing so gives per­spec­tive and valu­able point­ers at every cross-roads for which direc­tion we should take.

A Mis­sion State­ment for Moth­er­hood requires that we ask our­selves what the goal of par­ent­ing and of hav­ing a fam­ily really is.

Susan con­cludes that her Mom Mis­sion is that she wants her chil­dren to suc­ceed in school, to learn to read and study. She wants them to learn to han­dle their finances when they are older, learn to con­sider oth­ers before them­selves and to have a sense of grat­i­tude. To make friends, eat healthy and play sports; to learn that say­ing “sorry” leads to last­ing rela­tion­ships. To cook for them­selves, to do laun­dry and clean a bath­room. She won­ders if her goals for her son should be the same as for her daugh­ter.  She breaks down her ques­tions into cat­e­gories: Aca­d­e­mic, spir­i­tual goals, life skills, friend­ship  and fam­ily fun goals.

I think Susan is off to a great start. What my child should take with her into adult­hood is of course an essen­tial part of what I like to achieve as a Mum and I can sub­scribe to most goals on Susan’s list. And if I had a son, I would cer­tainly not leave out the cook­ing and the laun­dry skills!

But when I keep on think­ing, I con­clude that I am more on a Fam­ily Mis­sion than a Mum Mis­sion.

My Mis­sion State­ment would be about all the peo­ple in the fam­ily — thus also about the goals for Mum and Dad as a per­sons in their own right, and these can­not be seen sep­a­rately from what the kids should learn or do.

The dynam­ics and inter­ac­tion between all fam­ily mem­bers would also stand cen­tral in my Mis­sion State­ment — how we share respon­si­bil­i­ties, share ben­e­fits and how we com­mu­ni­cate with each other. How we bal­ance the time, energy and money we spend on activ­i­ties inside and out­side the family.

I would also not leave out how we, as a fam­ily, relate to the world around us. How ‘green’ we should aim to be, and how we should view our respon­si­bil­i­ties vis-a-vis peo­ple around us.

And finally — I would like to empha­sise the value of liv­ing together in the moment — not only get­ting some­where.

Seems I have to have a good chat to my hus­band and my daugh­ter before I dig any deeper into this!

Thus — to be continued.

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In the last cou­ple of weeks, I have had the priv­i­lege of being fea­tured on three online plat­forms for women — for Mums, for female entre­pre­neurs and for those who count them­selves in both categories.

I was fea­tured with a Mumpre­neur Pro­file on Anto­nia Chitty’s Fam­i­lyFriend­ly­Work­ing web­site.….

.… m y sto ry was pre­sented in a great blog post on Mum­s­LikeYou last Fri­day (6,000+ users and 40,000 — 60,000 monthly hits).…..

.….and I was pre­sented as the Mem­ber of the Week of the boom­ing net­work driftig.nu for female Swedish entre­pre­neurs, with 6,000+ mem­bers and a real trea­sure of encour­age­ment and inspir­ing advice.

Of course great expo­sure for me and the Mum­my­Mug to a rev­e­lant audi­ence within net­works much big­ger than my own. The fea­tures gen­er­ated about 500 vis­its to this site and many inter­est­ing com­ments and new leads to help me build my business.

I can only say — thank you! And I here­with return the favor. Please visit the sites above. You’ll not regret it.

Of course it did not hap­pen by itself. Yep, I did make the first cold call con­tact with the women behind these sights and I sim­ply asked for the pos­si­b­lity of being fea­tured. They were all quick with feed­back, gen­er­ous with their time and with their sup­port in terms of lend­ing me access to their platforms.

This is Online Sis­ter­hood in action. The more I explore the online com­mu­ni­ties for women, by women, I see exam­ple after exam­ple of women invest­ing their time and energy in unselfishly help­ing some other woman to find advice, to con­nect, to build their busi­ness, find online friends or a great buy. And, as study after study on the tremen­dous online engage­ment of women, this engage­ment is cre­at­ing real and mutual value; for women per­son­ally, and for their businesses.

Isn’t it funny that we women, who often in the ‘offline’ world are known for the absolute oppo­site to the gen­eros­ity to each other and with­out will­ing­ness to help each other fur­ther on the career lad­der, are engag­ing so gen­er­ously, and at such a mas­sive scale to com­plete strangers online? Per­haps is eas­ier for us women to show this gen­eros­ity to each other when we are meet­ing in the vir­tual world, free from the inher­ent com­pe­ti­tion that occurs when women work or live side by side offline. What do you think?

What­ever the rea­son: online, it’s a brave new women’s world.

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One of the main rea­sons many Mums start a busi­ness is to be more flex­i­ble in com­bin­ing fam­ily and a career.

For me, who used to be a civil ser­vant in the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, start­ing my own busi­ness has not exactly low­ered the amount of hours that I work.

But it as cer­tainly made it much, much more flex­i­ble and I am truly grate­ful for the ben­e­fits it has had for the way I can more eas­ily be there my daugh­ter: I decide when and where I work, I try to com­bine work travel to part­ners in Swe­den with pri­vate vis­its to my fam­ily and I can shift meet­ings around to make sure I can also take Eleonore to her play­dates and bal­let lessons. I work from wher­ever I hap­pen to be and a lot on-the-go via my mobile phone. Read more…

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I guess most of us have a dou­ble feel­ing about New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions. Nor­mally they turn into a bad con­science than an achieved goal. And instead of tak­ing us for­ward,  they make us feel like losers who are so pathetic, we can’t even keep promises to ourself.

Shona  Par­tridge from Women Mean Busi­ness is say­ing: ditch the New Year’s res­o­lu­tions! But nevethe­less take stock of where you are and take this oppor­tu­nity to look for­ward. I  par­tic­u­larly like her tip to con­cen­trate on one or two life areas each quar­ter of the year. Con­sider your health, fit­ness, finances, career, home life, rela­tion­ships and per­sonal dreams — but not all at the same time! Start with the one that would make the biggest dif­fer­ence in your life and start there.

What­ever one likes to call them — goals, res­o­lu­tions, ideas.…. I believe that tak­ing stock of where one is, and chart­ing a way for­ward is use­ful, and why not do it at the begin­ning of a new year? When some­thing is out­spo­ken, it becomes more real.  And if it is sin­cerely meant, just think­ing it it will affect you.

So here are some of the inspi­ra­tional New Year’s res­o­lu­tions I have har­vested from the online com­mu­nity of Mums I’m following:

Anto­nia Chitty, an inspir­ing and estab­lished UK Mumpre­neur with sev­eral use­ful blogs such as Fam­i­lyFriend­ly­Work­ing did a mini-survey and got inspir­ing feed­back from women wov­ing to cre­ate vis­i­ble results and more sales in 2010, to have time for them­selves as well as their busines and to pre­vent that the busi­ness adven­ture makes the fam­ily strug­gle for money. But my favourite one from this one is: I’m going to work smarter, not harder!

Frumpy Mom is deter­mined to set use­ful goals that se can acu­tally meet. Such as mak­ing the kids clean up their rooms every day instead of wait­ing until they look like Tokyo after it was dev­as­tated by Godzilla. And to stop ask­ing stu­pid ques­tions, i.e. “Did you brush your teeth?” and instead issue com­mands. “Brush your teeth.” The one I think I will also put on my list is how­ever “Keep a stash of choco­late hid­den from my chil­dren for emer­gency anti-stress appli­ca­tion”. Which how­ever is in strong com­pe­ti­tion with the one “To never, ever take my chil­dren into a gro­cery store again, unless they are 35 years old and spend­ing their own money”.

Kather­ine from One Work­ing Woman’s blog has an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive: make a fam­ily res­o­lu­tion, such as going more green, eat together reg­u­larly or come up with new ways to speed up morn­ing rou­tines. As she points out, a big bonus to fam­ily res­o­lu­tions: When you do it together, you’re more likely to keep each other on track!

Lisa Ciani goes for mommy res­o­lu­tions. Actu­ally, with­out think­ing of them as res­o­lu­tions at all — just a way to reaf­firm the type of mother she strives to be. More patient; not tak­ing her stress out on the fam­ily. Less dis­tracted and actu­ally pay­ing atten­tion to what is going on — which means pri­or­i­tize and plan.  And here is my favourite: “I’ll stop talk­ing about how tired I am. Really, aren’t all moms tired? Some­times I bore myself with my tales of woe about not get­ting enough sleep!”

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I don’t plan to make this blog a clas­sic prod­uct review plat­form — there are enough good ones out there doing that already. 

But I do plan to share inspi­ra­tional sto­ries of other suc­cess­ful Mumpre­neurs and their prod­uct or ser­vice. First and fore­most, I sim­ply feel tremen­dous respect for what they have accom­plished. I know from my own expe­ri­ence that suc­ceed­ing in prod­uct devel­op­ment, brand­ing, estab­lish­ing an IP port­fo­lio, con­vinc­ing part­ners and poten­tial cus­tomers of your idea, sourc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, going to trade fairs and, last but not least, rais­ing the cap­i­tal needed is a daunt­ing and 360 degree chal­lenge. So, these Mumpre­neurs deserve pub­lic­ity and that we help spread the word about them. I also sim­ply feel extremely encour­aged and inspired, as they are liv­ing proof that they can be done! I hope they will inspire you as much.

Today, I would like to put Solvej Bid­dle in the spot­light. She’s a clas­sic Mumpre­neur and has built her busi­ness while rais­ing two chil­dren, now aged 6 and 4. She is the inven­tor behind Content&Calm Cot­Canopy, which already is sell­ing well in the UK mar­ket. The Cot­Canopy is a clever baby sleep solu­tion; con­sist­ing of a light-weight canopy  that you can mount over your baby’s travel cot, to cre­ate an instant night time feel­ing. It will allow your child to stick to its rou­tine and sleep well wher­ever you go. Check out the video where Solvej explains in her own words what the Cot­Canopy is all about. The awards and press cov­er­age has come rolling in dur­ing 2009, the Cot­Canopy is sold online and also stocked at some major UK retail­ers. Solvej is now busy with expand­ing into sis­ter prod­ucts such as a canopy for the car seat, and will expand into a full prod­uct range.

Solvej orig­i­nally had the idea for it in 2003 when she took her first child, Andrea-Anna, with her on trav­els and out­ings as a baby, and found her­self strug­gling to pro­vide a fit­ting and prac­ti­cal sleep­ing envi­ron­ment for her child. I’m sure you recog­nise the sit­u­a­tion: you are away at friends for din­ner on a summer’s evening and strug­gle with hang­ing up blan­kets for the win­dows to black­out the light. Or your baby wakes up at home in at 5 a.m on a summer’s morn­ing when the sun comes up, but nei­ther baby nor you has had any­where near the amount of sleep you need to feel rested. With the Cot­Canopy, this is no longer a chal­lenge, as the lit­tle one can enjoy his or her own per­sonal dark­ened and famil­iar envi­ron­ment, even when the lights are on or the room is light.

Obvi­ously, the Cot­Canopy first and fore­most helps to us as par­ents to pro­tect a lit­tle one’s pre­cious rou­tine and I think a reg­u­lar, good sleep is one of the num­ber one things we as par­ents all aim to pro­vide for our kids.

But impor­tantly, this prod­uct also has ben­e­fits for the rest of the fam­ily. It avoids putting every­one else in the room in the dark when baby needs a nap, and grants us that flex­i­bil­ity to travel or stay­ing with friends. In all hon­esty, at least I find that it does kind of took some of the fun out of the hol­i­day to turn out the lights at 19h30 while on hol­i­day, and spend the rest of the evening your­self fum­bling around a dark hotel room so that baby can sleep.

Now, that is my kind of prod­uct — it meets the needs of both the chil­dren and the adults in the fam­ily. It is use­ful, it has been designed to meet real needs. And it has been cre­ated and brought to mar­ket with pas­sion and perseverance.

That is inspi­ra­tional! Con­grat­u­la­tions and good luck Solvej.

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For a quick pimp of your reg­u­lar brew — sim­ply spice up the ground cof­fee before you actu­ally brew it. 

Not only do you get great flavoured cof­fee, you also fill your kitchen with intense fra­grances while you make it.

You can of course let your imag­i­na­tion run wild or sim­ply add that one favourite spice.

But if you need inspi­ra­tion, one win­ning com­bi­na­tion I can rec­om­mend is a pinch each of sugar, cin­na­mon, cocoa, anise seed and a pinch of dried orange peel.

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