Travelling with your Mini Treasures

A certain person here from Mini Treasure Kids is about to travel from Melbourne to Rome via Hong Kong with 4 kids under 4 years of age including twin 9 month olds. This article is for Conie and anyone else who needs some tips on travelling with kids:

Choose books and toys wisely. Try wrapping a couple of little “plane” presents pass-the-parcel style to add to the excitement and get them in a good mood. Keep a couple of toys aside to be unveiled at that magical moment when you most need them.

Teach your kids things such as: how to do up buttons, zippers, shoelaces, tell the time and how to write their name, even reading the flight safety instructions is educational and entertaining and will keep them occupied for a while.

Using the travel blanket tucked over the top of the seats can create a nice little tent which kids will love and may even encourage them to fall asleep even if the cabin lights are on!

Take a portable DVD player. Put some kid’s music, songs and stories on your iPod for them to listen to. The Leapfrog Leapster Game is brilliant; it doesn’t take up much room but with a few cartridges will keep the kids entertained for hours.

Pack two complete changes of clothes for the kids and one for Mum and Dad. There is nothing worse than sitting in wet clothing for a 24 hour flight.

Pack the good old baby wipes! Even if your kids are too old, baby wipes are great for not only cleaning hands and faces, but wiping down toilet seats, tables and trays etc. And they are great for refreshing during a hot day or a long flight.

Don’t forget restrictions on baby formula, milk, juice and other liquids you can read about here. This website also has some information on security screening and x-ray at the airport with kids and babies.

Finally, expect that there will be some problems but if you have an easy-going attitude and “go with the flow” the kids won’t sense your stress and everyone will deal with any hiccups much better.

For more reading have a look at Delicious Baby, a brilliant blog for parents who want to travel with their children.

There is also a great article on Kidspot - Top Tips for Travelling with Children.

Conie will be travelling with her family to Italy for the Pitti Immagine Bimbo children’s trade fair held at the end of June. More on that to come in our next post!

What are your tips on travelling with children? Leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you!

Random Acts of Kindness

We have a very special announcement to make here at Mini Treasure Kids.

You have probably heard of the phrase “Random Acts of Kindness” (or RAK) – probably in Australia most well-known for the Channel 9 TV show.

However, you may not know there is a World Kindness Movement which brings together various Random Acts of Kindness movements around the world with member countries celebrating World Kindness Day on November 13^th every year.

Around the world there are various organisations around the world committed to spreading kindness, such as the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation in the USA, The Kindness Offensive, a group based in the UK who practise large scale acts of kindness, such as cooking 500,000 pancakes on Pancake Day in 2009.

In Australia there is The Australian Kindness Movement which gathers stories about acts of kindness and is also a resource and information website.

We at Mini Treasure Kids really love this idea. We have decided to conduct our own little random acts of kindness so from time to time you will see a story here on the blog, a mention on Facebook, a giveaway or anything else ‘random and kind’ for our lovely followers.

We invite you to follow this blog to find out more – http://www.minitreasurekids.blogspot.com/

Our very first random act of kindness was inspired by the response to our recent MTK Love It! Competition. We had a big influx of entries and a lot of lovely comments about our clothing. We would like to invite anyone who entered to email us directly for a super special surprise – info@minitreasurekids.com.

Stay tuned, we look forward to bring you more random acts of kindness!

Mini Treasure Kids Search for a Model Competition

At 9am on Monday 28th March the very first Mini Treasure Kids Search for Model Competition officially starts. We are so excited to be searching for one boy and one girl, aged between 3 and 6 years old to feature in our Winter 2012 photo shoot.

Contestants need to live in Melbourne, Victoria or be willing to travel if you child is the winner.

The photo shoot will take place in late May 2011 (exact date TBA).

To enter, simply visit our Facebook page www.facebook.com/MTKAustralia - click on the 'contest' link below the profile picture, fill out the entry form and upload a photo.

The competition runs for 2 weeks, with entries closing Monday 11th April. We are then going to open up 10 days of public voting during which time you can vote for your favourite little MTK model.

After this, the judges will chose two winners and announce the winners on Wednesday 27th April.

One boy and one girl model will each win:

• a $300 clothing voucher to be spent at Mini Treasures online Boutique
• Photos of the photo shoot
• Guaranteed exposure in Studio Bambini, the number one junior fashion magazine in Australia.

As a thank you we are giving away a $25 MTK boutique voucher for everyone who enters to spend at: www.mtkboutique.com

Kids in Style

It’s hard to believe it has been a week since the Kid’s In Style (KIS) Trade Fair in Sydney.

If you are not a retailer or wholesaler you might wonder what actually goes on behind the doors of a trade show.

At KIS basically the large open floor of the Hordern Pavilion was transformed into the ultimate shopping experience with little ‘rooms’ or shops where exhibitors displayed their shiny new things whether it be children’s clothing, shoes, toys, bedding, baby items and accessories. KIS is a little different from a mainstream trade show; all the exhibitors are chosen by a Jury to attend and must show a high quality product and good design.

For MTK we loved sitting and chatting to our existing retailers and lots of new ones. We love to keep in touch and chat about their business and our clothes. We were very pleased to hear people comment quite often about how gorgeous and lovely our upcoming ranges are!

Of course, it was fun to check out the other exhibitors – our favourites were: Old Soles and Minimink.

Here are some pictures of our little 'room' and if you look carefully you can sneak a peak at some of our upcoming ranges!