Anna and I are always searching for beautiful, handmade, unique gifts made from natural & sustainable products that can be enjoyed by children for years to come. No small task I assure you, as there are many people out there who make beautiful creations but not all are suitable for children.
We were approached by a jewellery maker who made lovely sparkly pieces of jewellery aimed at younger people. However these beaded creations provided us with a conundrum - would they survive the onslaught of a toddler? would they still be around for the next generation to cherish? Since the answer to both these questions was - probably not... we had to inform the jewellery maker that although her pieces were beautiful they weren't quite within the ethos of u-ni-k.
Not to sound too fussy but we try to keep to our word. Our gifts should be unique, responsible (made from natural or sustainable material), and able to be treasured by this generation and the next. In addition to this we demand the highest quality for our customers, which with our makers is easy as they believe passionately in their products and always produce pieces that are of outstanding quality. I'm happy to say we still have 100% customer satisfaction after 18months of business!
However, sometimes there are products we'd love to sell to you all but we haven't as yet found them! Here are my top 5 dream products:
1. Husband / Baby Remote Control
Just give me the ability to pause my family once in a while. Just for a little while, 5mins or so.
2. Mind Controlled Coffee Machine
Please I need to be able to make a cup of coffee just via my mind. OK I only need to be able to think, coffee machine on when I hear baby shout 'MuuuummmmmmAAAAA!' at 6am in the morning.
3. Traffic Budger
When we're stuck on the road to the grandparents and everyone has had enough of being in the car. People are starting to pick on each other, kick the back of the car seat in front of them.... Like the Night Bus in Harry Potter I need to be able to squeeze through traffic safely.
4. InstaFine
Some kind of ticketing machine that allows all Mums searching for a Mother&Baby parking space the ability to fine all those men in big cars with no kids that have parked in the last Mother&Baby parking space because they don't have the skill to park their big cars in a normal parking spot! Multiple Mother's with baby's trying to do the weekly shop will be allowed to fine the same car. One Mother&Baby one ticket - several Mother & Baby's later and that fella with the big car would have a minimum of £180 to pay for parking there! Soon we'd have the Mother & Baby spots to park in!!
5. Dinner-A-Matic
A machine that could produce a healthy, balanced, delicious meal within minutes. We could restrict it to just once a week, but give Mum a break by producing a dinner for those days when she's just had enough but wants to lose the baby belly and eat healthy (sometimes that take away does us no favours).
I'd set up a "Especially for Mums" part of the website for products like these! In the meantime we'll just keep selling our lovely baby gifts... go and take a look at www.unikgfits.co.uk
I take photos [as many of you know]. In fact I take LOTS of photos, some of which I think are quite good... so I print them out, frame them and put them up on the walls of my house (yes I have builders in making the house bigger... no not just so I can put more photos up!).
The cheaper inks & paper meant the beautiful colours I see on my screen weren't replicated on the printed photo, my greens weren't right, by blacks had a reddish tint & sometimes the photo looked flat in comparison. The photos on the cheaper paper fade quicker, losing the finder detail. So for me the more expensive, high quality ink & paper will look better, last longer and keep my happy for a lot longer than the cheaper alternative.
This is the lesson I've learnt through trial and error: pay for the quality and don't suffer the heartache caused by the cheaper alternative.
