It’s no secret that we’re a little footwear obsessed over here. Before having kids I thought that shoe shopping couldn’t get any more enjoyable, then I started shopping for pint sized versions and it got a whole lot more exciting. I mean, how can you NOT go crazy over cute little mini versions of your favorite styles?

When it comes to shopping I’m a serious bargain hunter (it runs deep in my blood), and you can usually find me making a B line straight to the back of a store to scour the sale racks. So when I visited the DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse Ancaster location a few weeks ago, you can imagine my excitement as I strolled the aisles and found that all the designer brands (over 20,000 pairs in each store) are marked at up to 40 per cent off retail prices, so there’s no need to head straight to the back (although I did eventually make my way back there and found even greater savings to get excited about)!

DSW is the largest shoe store in Canada (20,000 square feet on average) with 23 locations coast to coast, and also includes a Canadian online presence which offers the same great designer brands at warehouse prices (yay for duty-free shopping)! With 2000 styles of top brand name shoes like Kate Spade, Coach, Sam Edelman, Uggs and many more, shoe lovers (like me!) can find great deals on their favorite brands everyday at DSW.

I started this particular shopping day by making my way over to the new DSW Kids section which launched in Canada on March 1st in 8 retail locations (online nationally as well), to check out the more than 300 kids styles with the same top name brands that DSW is known for in their women and men’s footwear. There was such a huge selection of my favorite trends (in mini version) that I literally had to stop and gawk at all of them. Think must-have floral printed wellies, bow-adorned ballet flats, and bright suede sneakers – just to describe a few.

With both my kids in a daycare program and my son starting JK in the fall, indoor shoes have been on our shopping list for a while now so I was on the hunt for some great looking, comfortable shoes that they could wear at school. After narrowing down my choices from the great assortment of trends and brands (and believe me it was tough), I decided on a pair of Naturino gold toe kicks for my daughter and a sleek pair of navy and white Saucony trainers for my son.

Since I didn’t have the kids with me for shoe shopping that day, I took advantage of a tool on the DSW Kids website which makes it very easy for parents to ensure they are getting the right size for their child. The Kids Fitter is a measuring tool that you can print from their website to measure your kids feet and determine the correct shoe size. The website also has an FAQ section with great tips about how to know when your child’s feet have grown and how to measure their feet correctly – very helpful especially when you have little ones that can’t explain when their shoes may not fit anymore.

After securing the perfect pairs of shoes for my little ones, of course I had to look for something for myself and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. I was also looking for a great pair of athleisure footwear that could take me from groceries to errands to the gym (typical mom circuit), and I found the perfect pair of New Balance that will take care of all these necessities and keep me looking good while doing them.

Nothing beats the convenience of shopping for the whole family at a one-stop destination, and now that DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse has Kids added to their lineup of top name brand shoes, we’ll be sure to visit more often just because moms can only make so many stops in one day (1-2 is usually our max)! I’m also a huge online shopper, so for those days when we’ve reached out limit and the kids just don’t want to go anywhere else, I can sit down with a cup of coffee and take care of our footwear needs (and wants) from the comfort of my own home and still find that great deal I’m bound and determined to find!

*Thank you DSW for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.