Cool Mom Staff | 7/531 | Cool Mom Picks

5 tips to help you take better holiday photos of your kids

We know the holidays are full of photo opps, and lots of parents taking advantage of them. We also know that kids can be notoriously difficult to photograph, especially when there are presents and cookies to distract them from being their adorable selves on camera....

Last-minute holiday shopping help: We’ve got you covered, parents! | Spawned Ep 136

by Cool Mom Staff | Holiday Picks, Podcast

Every year, we do an entire show dedicated to help you with your last-minute holiday shopping. Lucky for you, we’ve got an entire holiday gift guide full of awesome gift ideas, many of which are from handmade artists, indie artisans, and small businesses. So, on...

How to make the most of the holiday (and not lose your mind) | Spawned Ep 135

by Cool Mom Staff | Podcast

We know that the holidays can be a busy, stressful time for lots of families, which is why we thought it might be helpful to discuss ways we try to make the most out of the holidays (and not lose our minds) with our own families on our latest Spawned podcast. In this...

How to be a bare minimum parent with James Breakwell | Spawned Episode 134

by Cool Mom Staff | Podcast

If you’ve heard of helicopter parenting, well, sorry to say, we’re not talking about that today. We’re actually talking about the polar opposite (or well, close enough) with the hilarious social media sensation and author James Breakwell (aka...

5 things parents need to know about administering over-the-counter medicine to kids | Sponsored Message

by Cool Mom Staff | Tips + Tricks

This is a sponsored message on behalf of KnowYourOTCs.org With cold and flu season officially here, parents are doing their best to help their kids when they’re not feeling well, which often means giving them over-the-counter (OTC) medicines to help relieve...

This baby and toddler subscription is like a 3-year Montessori education | Sponsored Message

by Cool Mom Staff | Baby, Toys + Playthings

This is a sponsored message from Monti Kids Kids learn through play. And this is the season so many parents, grandparents, and caregivers have play on our minds. Enter Monti Kids, the only at-home Montessori learning toy subscription program that’s designed and...

Introducing our 2018 Holiday Gift Guide! Whoo!

by Cool Mom Staff | Holiday Picks

It’s true! Our 2018 Holiday Gift Guide is here! Can you believe it’s our 13th annual holiday gift guide? We’re a teenager! This year, we’ve scoured the web to find literally hundreds of gifts for everyone on your list. And when we say everyone, we...

10 things we wish we had spent way less time on when our kids were babies

by Cool Mom Staff | Baby, Food + Recipes

Now that our kids are older, it’s easy to look back and ask ourselves why we spent so much time thinking about things that didn’t really matter that much in the long run. Oh to have all of that time back! One thing we know parents spend a lot of time thinking about:...

Kids and video games: What parents need to know | Spawned Episode 133

by Cool Mom Staff | Podcast

With the holiday season in full swing, we know lots of parents are seeing video games on gift wish lists. We also know parents, like us, have so many questions about them. What are upsides and downsides? When do we know too much is too much? Will Fortnite ever go away...

Hi! We’re Kristen + Liz!

Kristen Chase + Liz Gumbinner of Cool Mom Picks

We started Cool Mom Picks in 2006 to help make life cooler, easier, more organized, more meaningful, and more fun for parents of all kinds.

Trivia: It was called Cool Mom Sh*t for the first two days. (Yeah, we rethought that.)

We had no idea our site would grow to become a major lifestyle network, that we'd end up sharing our finds with the TODAY Show and Martha Stewart, that we'd be able to make a real difference for so many small businesses and women-run companies, or that we'd end up with an incredible community of the coolest readers on the planet. (If we do say so ourselves).

But we did.

And we still love what we do every single day.

We're so glad you're here.