Skip to content

Check out our Pajama Party loyalty program and remember that all orders over $75 ship for free🚚

The Cozy Blog

A Variety of ways to help children

A Variety of ways to help children

During the month of November, The Cozy Shop will donate a pajama item for every one purchased to the British Columbia chapter of Variety – the Children’s Charity. It is the third charity we have been able to partner with since kicking off our Buy One Give One initiative earlier this year.

Variety – the Children’s Charity was founded in Pittsburgh in 1928 by a group of 11 theatre owners and showmen who were part of a social group, calling themselves the Variety Club.

When one day they heard whimpering coming from the auditorium of the Sheridan Square Theatre, the men discovered an abandoned baby who had been left with a note from her mother saying that her and her husband could not care for this, her eighth child.

The men took charge of raising this child and named her Catherine Variety Sheridan, after their own group. This act of selflessness has inspired decades’ worth of community service around the world devoted specifically to children who are sick, disadvantaged, or live with disabilities.

Today, Variety – the Children’s Charity has a network of 40 offices in 11 countries, across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. For this initiative, The Cozy Shop has teamed with the British Columbia chapter. Like Catherine, millions of individual children around the world have been given the gift of a better life because of the generosity of Variety’s donors, sponsors and supporters.

At any given time, Variety is in the process of implementing different programs with different goals. The Variety Care Program offers life-saving medical services and equipment for children and aids them in their subsequent recovery.

Through the Variety Freedom Program, children’s lives are changed by offering items and services that provide independence, mobility and freedom. The Variety Future Program enriches children’s lives by granting them items and services that provide communication, education and self-esteem.

Lastly, a new program started in 2022 is the Variety International Children’s Fund, whose core purpose is to deliver imperative mobility, independence and social inclusion to children the world over, providing many more children with the gift of mobility.

Variety focuses on four primary steps in its approach to helping children. The organization first sets out to create and deliver an inspiring future for children. It then seeks to motivate people to be engaged and to guarantee the delivery of that future.

The next step is to manage effective delivery of that future through a strong, transparent governance regime to ensure maximum benefit and social impact. Finally, the fourth goal is to build, encourage and thank a team of people dedicated to being a key part of creating the inspiring future for children.

The pajamas donated to Variety B.C. as a result of your purchases throughout November will be given to the children they work with at their annual holiday event. The Cozy Shop even got a shout-out on Variety's website:

https://www.variety.bc.ca/events/the-cozy-shop-bogo/

For more information about Variety, visit https://www.variety.bc.ca/   

Read more



Create the perfect cozy kit

Create the perfect cozy kit

We get told all the time that it’s important to prepare and always be ready for emergencies, disasters, and surprise visits from the in-laws. And while there’s plenty of instructions out there on what to include in a general emergency kit, there’s far less literature available on how to put a cozy kit together. Such a kit would really come in handy any time the family is feeling a little blue or restless or when other plans fall through, like the annual BBQ bash getting rained out. Get a wicker basket or one of those big plastic hoarder bins and fill it with some or all of these items so you can be ready to go into cozy mode whenever you need to!

The situation: No access to streaming services

The Cozy Kit item: A binder of old DVDs

 A lot of people will tell you that DVDs have gone the way of the dinosaur but they’re still making them and you probably have a bunch kicking around and taking up space. If you’re not especially tied to box art, you can take all those DVDs out of the case and put them into the kind of binders that we used to keep CDs in (explain to your children if they ask). If you want to go really nuts, you can even include a small, inexpensive DVD player with necessary power cord and HDMI cable. Great for when the streaming services go down. 

 

The situation: Family is feeling bored and competitive

The Cozy Kit item: Board games

Nothing says family bonding like screaming at your dad for somehow ALWAYS getting Boardwalk AND Park Place. Seriously though, when technology fails, board games and puzzles will always be there to provide a structured and heavily competitive activity that multiple people can distract themselves with for hours at a time.

 

The situation: Kids need a QUIET activity to pass the time

The Cozy Kit item: Books

Throw a couple of classic paperback novels in the kit for adults and some picture books for the kids. Even if they are books you’ve read before, a familiar story can provide a special kind of comfort that nothing else can. And maybe the power will be back on before you make it to the end…

 

 

 

The situation: Canceled plans because of inclement weather

The Cozy Kit item: Photo albums

As the tail end of the hurricane rips through your neck of the woods, causing the weekend soccer tournament to be canceled, it might be the perfect time to break out the family photo album for everyone to check out. Kids love to look through old photos because they’re like treasures from a past they never knew or might not remember. It’s a great bonding experience for the whole family, presuming there’s no photos from your college days in there.

 

The situation: A tumultuous evening

The Cozy Kit item: New pajamas

This one is obvious. Although, you can still treat yourself with a bit of advance planning. Put some brand-new PJ sets into the cozy kit so that when you do have to bust it out for some glum reason, you’ll be greeted by some sleepwear you’ve never even gotten to try on before. Bonus points if it’s a matching set for the whole family! Christmas is saved!

 

The situations: A bad case of the munchies

The Cozy Kit item: Nonperishable snacks

Snacks make basically any situation better. You waited forever for food to be delivered only for the order to be canceled and now the whole family is cranky and complaining? Cozy kit time! Put some nuts in there if no one has allergy issues, or maybe some Goldfish crackers or anything you like really, so long as it doesn’t turn into a moldy surprise in a few months.

 

The situation: A sudden drop in temperature / impromptu picnic / pillow fort emergency

The Cozy Kit item: A blanket

Blankets are a staple of any emergency kit and so there should definitely be one in your cozy kit. An old blanket is both comforting in its familiarity and incredibly versatile. That blanket can also be used for picnics, pillow forts or even to project a movie onto. And best of all, if the blanket is big enough, the whole family can get cozy together as the apocalypse continues outside.

 

Conclusion

A cozy kit may sound silly or like something you don’t really need to keep around, but it’s ultimately just an easy way to improve the mood for you and your family during an otherwise tense or stressful situation. Check out some of our favorite brands or our onesies to be the first item in your kit.  

 

 

 

Read more



Feeding Generations of children

Feeding Generations of children

In Montreal, the Generations Foundation has tackled this issue head-on since 1999. Under the leadership of founder Adrian Bercovici, the organization has provided nutritious breakfasts, hot lunches and snacks on a daily basis to over 7,700 schoolchildren in 96 schools and learning centers since its inception.

Read more



    We may collect personal information on our website. To find out more about the categories of personal information collected and the purposes for which such information will be used, please refer to our Privacy Policy or contact us directly.