Quaker journey

Last year my husband and I resolved to live a healthier lifestyle.

And, well, we do. But there's always room for improvement! I know darn well  that while we make our own bread, our own laundry soap, compost and recycle religiously and heat with wood that we cut off our own land, we're still not living as earth-friendly and healthy as I would like. I'd love to introduce my children to a more farm-based and agriculturally driven life, but I've proved quite spectacularly that I cannot garden worth a hill of beans (yes, pun intended) and my husband falls silent when I talk about getting a few hens.

Y'know, for eggs.

He knows me well enough, though, to know that if he agreed to a couple of chickens, it wouldn't be long before I'd have sheep and a couple of turkeys. Or maybe a mule. Ooh, a mule!

Reining myself in is always a problem.

Maybe the ticket is starting small. Small changes. Like serving oatmeal more. The kids already like it, and it's healthy and satisfying on a cold morning.

Lynn from Walking With Scissors has been blogging over at quakerjourney.ca, talking about simple changes her family is making to live a healthier lifestyle. And you can win prizes by reading her stories and commenting on them!

Easy-peasy. Like small changes. Small changes that can change everything.




Disclosure: I am participating in the Quaker Journey to Wellness program by Mom Central on behalf of Pepsi Co. I received a gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

Shutterfly - making memories!

Shutterfly is offering bloggers an amazing offer – 50 free photo cards!




And I have a confession to make – I am the world’s WORST when it comes to sending out Christmas cards. Procrastinator extraordinaire. I usually end up addressing them around the twentieth, swearing to myself that this year will NOT be a repeat of last years fiasco, and then they hang out in my car until…oh, the middle of January? And then the holidays are over and I realize I’ve been a douchebag again. But these cards are going to revolutionize my tardy habits, because they’re A) GORGEOUS – not your usual cards at all, and B) my kids will love them and bug me until I actually MAIL them.

So I'm using a cute product, and kid nagging to get me to my goal. Hmph. Well, if it works....

And LOOK at these!

How cute! Not the usual Christmas cards at all.

And Shutterfly also does neat things like baby announcements  and photo calendars - really, they'd be great for Christmas presents too! Really, go check them out! Some gorgoeus, not-forgettable-on-the-car-seat designs!



Disclosure - I signed up for a Shutterfly promotion and was compensated with 50 free holiday cards. All opinions are my own.

Cookies to lose weight?

 Smart for Life the "Eat Cookies. Lose Weight." program from television fame? I tried it last week.

Well, I should be more specific. I received a box of the different products to try out, with the specification that I would blog about my experience.

My box included:
2 four packs of underWAY, a supplement drink infused with special HeroFiber and heart-healthy vitamins. It works naturally to suppress your appetite and quench your thirst. The two flavours I received were acai-pomegranate and grape. The acai-pomegranate was odd, almost fakey-flavoured, but the grape, if ice-cold, was yummy. Grown-up (and good for you!) grape drink!

Cookies: Boxes of chocolate-chip and oatmeal-raisin. The chocolate-chip was good with a carob-y flavour. The oatmeal-raisin was...interesting, but didn't pass muster. A bit too dry and chalky and well, diet-ish!


Cupcakes: Carrot and double-chocolate. The carrot was great! Light, not-too-sweet, and had a vague flavour of almonds, which I enjoyed tremendously. The chocolate was good - very good at first bite, but there was an odd after-taste that lingered, and I found myself not wanting to finish the whole thing.


Soup: Mama's Chicken Noodle. This was great stuff. Packaged so I just needed to add boiling water, the broth was thick and full of flavour, and there were lots of veggies and noodles. Yum! I would definitely enjoy that at lunch everyday!

Cereal: Chocolate Berry Crunch. This was good, with a nice deep chocolate flavour and whole dried raspberries. I really liked that it didn't look particularly diet, with the bright berries and the dark cereal. It looked like a treat.

Bagel: I didn't eat this.

Crunch: This was a bag of nugget-like bits, probably good for people who get muffin or pastry cravings. My kids (who espied the chocolate stuff, and who could blame them??) were divided on these - my daughter liked them, but my son was disappointed that they didn't taste like the cupcakes.


Smart for Life programs involve meal replacement foods, such has cookies, cupcakes, shakes, cereals, bagels that help to control hunger while providing you with proper nutrition and quick, safe weight loss goal results.

Each Smart for Life cookie are made with extracts from all-natural ingredients including organic fruits, vegetables, wheat, milk and eggs. The program requires you to eat 6 cookies a day, drink 8 glasses water a day and a small dinner. For more information, check out the Smart for Life website.

You can learn more about Smart for Life and underWAY products, at www.smartforlife.com and www.under-way.com.

Would you like to try it?
You could win a case of underWAY

If you like to enter to win a case of underWAY to try, please leave a comment sharing "why you’d love to try underWAY and/or Smart for Life products."

I will select 10 lucky winners on August 4th.

Comments will close at midnight. Contest is open to Canadians only. (Sorry, Americans!) And you may enter the contest on multiple blogs but are only eligible to win once as part of the underWAY blog tour contest.



Disclosure - I am participating in the underWAY program by Mom Central on behalf of Better Health Beverage, LLC. I received a gift card as a thank you for my participation. The opinions on this blog are my own.

Harumika

My son was pee-green when the box came, and didn't even lose interest when we slipped off the wrapping to reveal a headless dress dummy form and bits and slips of fabric.*


Rosey was too busy oohing and aahing over the silky, colourful squares to even shove his hand away. 'It's mine', she informed him. 'Mama got it for me.' Then she sat down and handed the body over my way, ready to learn how it worked.

I'd been sent a Harumika Starter Kit for her to explore, and she was eager to figure this out. She'd seen the commercials, of course, so using the stylus tool to tuck the edges of the fabrics around the bodice and using the stickers to create many, many different outfits was easy for her to figure out.

Now, Rosey isn't really a fashionable child.  I like to think I dress her well, and every once in awhile she'll ask for something with a flower on it, or lip-gloss, but she's never been one of those kids with a closet-ful of princess dresses and earrings in every colour.

And she still isn't, but this toy remains one of her favourites. She loves mixing the fabrics, creating new outfits, making choices. I can give her this and a few new scraps of fabric and she's off for at least an hour.

And then just yesterday she asked me if her nightgown matched her blanket.

Y'know, the important style questions.

*I did ask him about this later. Turns out he thought it was something Star-Wars related - The Dressing of the Clones, perhaps?? - and wanted to see if the colourful pieces would fit his Star Wars things.

Disclosure: I was sent a Harumika Starter Kit, with the expectation that I would blog about my experiences with it, good or bad. I was not otherwise compensated for this post.

hydraSense

My daughter was three and a half months old when she caught her first cold. Old enough to not panic us (after all, she was our second child! We'd been through this before!) and yet new and young enough to completely panic us. (She's so snotty! And unhappy! Hon, do you remember C being this MAD about not being able to breathe through his nose?)

Babies and colds are two things that shouldn't go together.

It was the middle of the night. So, I ran the shower hot and closed off the bathroom and held an angrily ANGRILY crying baby (who really just wanted to go to sleep, damn it, and WTH was with these parents she'd gotten?? Didn't we know that LOUD RUNNING WATER was not conducive to sleep?)

It would have been so much easier if we'd had something that worked especially well on babies sensitive and small noses.

Like this one: The hydraSense® Nasal Aspirator.

Developed with pediatricians, hydraSense® is the leading brand in saline solutions for the whole family. The hydraSense® Nasal Aspirator is a gentle and safe way to relieve your baby’s nasal congestion quickly and effectively. It helps to maintain clear breathing and to facilitate eating and sleeping. Its soft nasal tip is specifically designed for babies’ delicate noses and its transparent design allows for you to see the amount and type of mucus that is being removed. hydraSense® Nasal Aspirator has a protective single-use filter that traps excess mucus, providing hygienic aspiration. The tip and base of the aspirator are easily removable for effective cleaning after each use. Unlike squeezable nasal aspirators, the hydraSense® Nasal Aspirator allows you to control the strength of the suction with your aspiration.


Although I'm certain CERTAIN R still wouldn't have liked anyone messing with her nose, this sounds like it would have soothed her chokey-stuffiness and maybe soothed the wrath of the hungry and sleep-deprived.

Video about how to use the product can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE-yk6wvCKE

I wrote this post while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central and received a Mom Central gift pack to thank me for taking the time to participate.