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My Very First Easter Story Sticker Book

Posted by html404 on March 18, 2013
in Books, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Gift Ideas, Holidays, Kids Stuff, Reviews

Easter is less than two weeks away and this is my first post about anything pertaining to Easter. We don’t even have any plans yet either, which is how it has been for the past few years. Our children, however, have been enjoying My Very First Easter Story Sticker Book by Lois Rock; illustrated by Alex Ayliffe.

This is a traditional Easter story book about Jesus dying on the cross, however, it leaves out why He died. Yes, He died to make the world a better place, but He died for our sins. That little piece of truth was missing, which was disappointing and seemed dumbed down, in my opinion.

My Very First Easter Story Sticker Book has a twist on the traditional books, as it has an activity at the bottom of each page and children can put stickers in the appropriate pages.

My almost 7 year old and 5 year old loved this book. They really enjoyed putting the stickers on the pages and were eager to finish putting them on – I made them do it in stages so to make it last longer. They just finished it up tonight.

This book may be purchased through Kregel Publications for $5.99 and is paperback.

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Walgreens Pharmacy, App and Rewards

Posted by html404 on March 18, 2013
in Health, Health and Nutrition, Organization, Shopping, Uncategorized

My mother-in-law is in her 80s and is on a lot of medications for various ailments. I’m not sure how she keeps track of all of them, seriously. When I found out about the Walgreens app I wondered if it could assist her in keeping track of her pills all in one place. She shops at Walgreens all the time and has bought her prescriptions there for many years.

The Walgreens mobile app certainly has plenty of helpful features to keep track of all your prescription needs. Like most apps, it is downloadable from iTunes and all you have to do once it’s downloaded to your phone is create your account…

Then choose Pharmacy or Refill by Scan or Pill Reminder on the home page according to your current need and go from there. Of course, there are other options too, but for the purpose of this post we are sticking to prescription needs.

There is even a Web Pickup option, which is rather convenient. Order via the web and it will be ready for pick up at the store. I thought this was great since my husband runs a lot of errands for his mom and we could place an order then pick it up for her.

The Pharmacy section also gives you access to Refills, Pill Reminder, Transferring Prescriptions from one pharmacy to another, if need be, as well as Refill for a Family Member, which is what we would want to use for my mother-in-law. You can also check for prescription history and status updates or receive alerts. All in one convenient place.

Through Walgreens innovations you can even just scan a prescription to get it refilled.

The Walgreens app is pretty easy to use, in my opinion. It is very straight forward.

So if you are already a part of the Walgreens Community, I would highly recommend you check out their app for a #HappyHealthy way of organizing yours and your family’s prescription needs as well as their Balance Rewards program for additional ways to save money when you shop at Walgreens – Find out about my recent Walgreen’s shopping experience here. Thanks to #Cbias for this opportunity to learn how to manage my mother-in-law’s prescriptions.

I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias® and Walgreens #cbias #SocialFabric. All opinions are my own.

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day

Posted by html404 on March 17, 2013
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Holidays, Seasonal Stuff

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Or as some say, Happy St. Paddy’s Day! Especially to all of you who are Irish!

Today is usually a day when you can witness the Chicago River being green. Yesterday they dyed it that color in celebration of today’s Irish holiday. The St. Patrick’s Day parade was also yesterday, plus there are other special celebrations of this day going on around the city. Visit the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day 2013 website.

To be honest we have never really done much other than maybe wear green for St. Patrick’s Day. I have witnessed the Chicago River being green, but have not attended the parade or any other of the St. Paddy’s Day festivities.

Here are some fun facts about St. Patrick’s Day (source: Chicago Tribune):

– There are some 36 million people in the USA who boast of an Irish heritage. 9x that of the population of Ireland itself!

– St. Patrick’s Day was originally a religious Christian holiday. The holiday honored St. Patrick who shared his Christ with Ireland in the fifth century.

– Today the holiday is a celebration of everything related to the Irish.

– March 17, 1762 marked the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in the world. It was held in New York City.

So do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Are you wearing something green, cooking something green or attending any St. Patrick’s Day festivities?

Another inspired post from Mama Kat’s writing prompts: Write a blog post inspired by the word green.

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Ecigarettes Giveaway

Posted by html404 on March 15, 2013
in Giveaways, Products for Dad, Products for Mom

As you know, my mom is here, and yes we are having a great visit! Mostly staying at home and spending time together, but we have spent Saturdays thrift store shopping. The children are asking, “Why do you have to leave?” 😉 She leaves on the 24th. Anyhoo, last week Mom received a box of ecigarettes to try – they even arrived right on her birthday! Great timing, eh? So she’s been using them and our review will be forthcoming later in the month or in April. For now, please feel free to read the Green Smoke review on ecigarettereviewed.com

My hope is that Mom will use ecigarettes to slowly reduce the strength of the nicotine and eventually quit! Her quitting smoking has been my wish since childhood though, so we’ll see where that goes. At least she’ll be able to smoke in public places that doesn’t allow smoking, keeping her out of the cold in the winter.

The purpose of this post is to share an opportunity for those of you who have loved ones who smoke or who are trying to quit, so you can share with them this ecigarettes giveaway and they too can use them to reduce the amount of nicotine they smoke.

Ecigarettes Giveaway

Ecigarettereviewed.com is giving away 8 Green Smoke starter kits between 3/15 and 3/31. #GSGiveaway

About the Green Smoke Pro Starter Kit

– The Green Smoke Pro Kit offers a long and short battery, two packs of cartomizers, a USB charger (with car and mains adapters) and a USB cigarette.

– It has three varieties of tobacco flavor, Absolute Tobacco, Tobacco Gold and Red Label Tobacco (which is modeled after Marlboro Red), as well as Mocha Mist, Menthol Ice, Vanilla Dreams and Smooth Chocolate.

– Green Smoke cartridges are available in five different strengths. The most nicotine-heavy option has a concentration of 2.4 percent (Strong), going down to 1.8 percent (Full), 1.2 percent (Light), 0.6 percent (Ultra-Light) and Zero.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This is a partnered post on behalf of ecigarettereviewed.com.

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Goat Milk Soap – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on March 13, 2013
in Crafts, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Handmade Items, Wordless Wednesday

Ta-da….Goat Milk Soap curing for 4 weeks. We are going to melt it down again and put it in molds tomorrow to sell at two events this weekend!

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Kidz Gear Headphones

Posted by html404 on March 11, 2013
in Fun Stuff, Music, Reviews, Technology/Electronics

Kidz Gear headphones are a line of headphones made just for kids. We’ve been testing out a pair for a few weeks now and we’ve come to the conclusion that they get two thumbs up from us! All of my kids have been using them for school and love them.

The volume and sound that the headphones give is adjustable so older kids can have a louder sound, while your younger child can still have a low sound. All while still giving off a high quality sound.

The overall quality of the headphones themself, is worth the $19.99, but in the hands of young children under eight, they are easily breakable. So we’d recommend that only older kids use these. Otherwise please do make sure that your children know that these headphones aren’t indestructible and may break if misused.

Special features include; a limited lifetime warranty, five colors (pink, orange, blue, green, and purple), and come with an audio control cable. They work with iPads, iPods, iPhones and many other audio devices.

We’ve tested them out on my daughter’s iPod, my iPhone, and our various laptops and they work great.

You can find Kidz Gear Headphones at gearforkidz.com

Oh and these headphones have a lifetime guarantee! If the headphones get broken, Kidz Gear will replace them for free! Bonus, eh?

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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5 Things to Do in Our Town During Spring Break

Posted by html404 on March 11, 2013
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Home, Kids Stuff, Seasonal Stuff, Travel

We do not have a lot planned while my mom is here. Our beast is out of commission. It broke down a couple of weeks ago right at the end of a farmer friend’s driveway when we were visiting to learn more about goats. Our 14 year old has been interested in goats for…oh…about five years or more I’d say. We gifted her an educational goat class through one of the local farm organizations one year for her birthday and this year we plan to give her a goat. So what we’d do, but what another family chooses to do on Spring Break will probably completely different.

Here are 5 things to do in our town during Spring Break:

1. Go to the theater. Surely there’s one family friendly one playing.
2. Visit a park. Depending on the weather you might be able to hit a few during the week of Spring Break.
3. Go to the Farmers Market.
4. Coordinate a visit to a local farm. This is for the sake of other families since we live on a farm. But even so we enjoy visiting other farms and learning from them.
5. Travel to Chicago to visit a museum or Shedd Aquarium. This is something we plan to do in the fall when the public schools are back in session and the crowds are minimal.

So what is there to do in your town during Spring Break?

Inspired by another one of Mama Kat’s writing prompts: 5 things to do in your town during Spring Break. Mama Kat’s prompts sure came in handy when it came time to do up blog posts in advance for my mom’s visit!

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Love in a Broken Vessel

Posted by html404 on March 10, 2013
in Books, Reviews

Love in a Broken Vessel by Mesu Andrews is a biblical fiction novel. My husband loves the minor prophets and I’ll have to admit that I’ve never really fancied them. I enjoyed reading through many of them when reading through the Old Testament because they were quite often the shortest books! Ha! I have found it takes a lot of brain power to try and wrap my mind around God’s prophecy concerning Israel. Biblical fiction helps me put it into perspective for some reason.

This book captivated my interest for the very same reason Rebekah by Jill Eileen Smith did. I enjoyed reading Mesu Andrews’ “take” on the prophet Hosea’s obedience to marry a prostitute, make her his wife and to love her as God loves Israel. Can you imagine receiving a command like that? It seems unfathomable, doesn’t it?

At times I detested Gomer, Hosea’s harlot wife. She couldn’t see what was right in front of her – a loving, tender man who loved her with all his heart regardless of her past or her continual gravitation back to her old way of life – prostitution. God gave him an unselfish love for Gomer and she could not see or believe it for what it really was – God’s love pouring out through Hosea. She had so many walls and barriers up around her heart…Yet Hosea pursued her. The picture of Hosea’s pursuing love showed me anew God’s love for us.

Have you ever thought of God as a pursuing beau? It’s a rather beautiful thought. God’s love is so great that he pursues us. What amazing love!

As with Mesu Andrews’ other biblical fiction novels, Love in a Broken Vessel made me want to read the book of Hosea in the bible and try to understand all that God truly accomplished through the prophet Hosea, who had the hard task of delivering prophetic messages to God’s people. This book truly showed that God’s love endures, even when we are unfaithful – like Israel and Gomer were to their bridegrooms – just as the bible teaches.

“Available March 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Flexible Spending Accounts Can Save Your Family 40%

Posted by html404 on March 6, 2013
in Family Stuff, Health, Money & Finances, Saving Money, Uncategorized

It’s been a number of years since we did any health care “shopping” and it really isn’t a problem if you know your way around, however, it can get overwhelming because of the various options available. Something like, Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs), can offer relief from increasing health care costs, because these benefit plans rely on pre-tax money for qualified health expenses.

Not only can you save on FSA eligible products, but an FSA also gives you access to health care services and thousands of everyday products such as sunscreen, contact lens solution, band-aids, heat wraps and baby care – a bonus for families like ours.

How Does FSAs Work?

Each FSA plan year, employers take money out of your paychecks based on how much you choose to set aside. Beginning in 2013, FSA plan contributions are limited to $2,500 per person. Before you get an FSA, it is vital to calculate how much you want to spend using your FSA.

A word of caution…because FSAs are “use it or lose it” any money unspent is forfeited when your plan year ends. Some employers provide a grace period – or an extension of coverage – up to two and a half months. One big deadline coming up is March 15. Do you have FSAs? Better check to see if you need to use any of your FSA funds before March 15.

FSAstore.com is a one-stop-shop stocked exclusively with thousands of FSA-eligible products, a national provider database and a Learning Center that answers FSA-related questions. You can save on FSA-eligible products throughout the year with FSA Store’s special offers. Check these out before your grace period ends on March 15.

This is a featured post.

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Seventh Generation Wipes Review & Giveaway

Posted by html404 on March 4, 2013
in All Natural Products, Baby Products, Cleaning, Diapers and Accessories, Eco Friendly Products, Giveaways, Personal Care Products, Reviews

Wipes are an must-have essential in a home with children, at least they are in our house. We not only use them for diaper changes, but for wiping faces, traveling and quick cleaning. Our youngest son has learned from our example and likes to get wipes to clean himself up and he will even clean with them. 😉 This is what he’s doing with the Seventh Generation wipes. Can you tell he’s very excited about helping me with the new wipes?

We have been using Seventh Generation wipes over the past few weeks. They are thick, have just the right moisture and do not seem to dry out, unless of course you leave the flip-top lid open for a day. The ones we have came in packages of 64. The packages are plastic with a closeable lid. We like them and are very grateful for no allergic reaction from baby, like some generic brands we have tried. They are actually pretty comparable to other name brands, but better in terms of being hypo-allergenic, free of dyes, fragrances, parabens and having less harmful chemicals. They score well on EWG.org, which is the kind of personal care product our family wants to buy. They soft, just not as soft as I would have liked.

Here are some product details:

• Available Packaging:
− 64 ct. flip-‐top
− 128 ct. value pack (2 refill packs with re-‐sealable tape)
− 256 ct. value pack (4 refill packs with re-‐sealable tape)

• Significant environmental savings

• Unscented

• Hypo-‐allergenic

• Free of fragrances and dyes

• Free of parabens and phthalates

• Suggested retail price for 64 ct. is $2.99 and is available at Target, Whole Foods and Diapers.com.

Seventh Generation Wipes Review & Giveaway

You all have the opportunity to try Seventh Generation wipes too! Enter the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win a box of four packages of 64 wipes! Giveaway ends Monday, March 18 at 12:00am. Please allow 4-6 weeks for fulfillment of the prize. One package will be coming from Seventh Generation and three will be coming directly from Faith and Family Reviews as our gift to you – and no they aren’t the ones we were sent for review, those are almost gone already!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing and participating in the Seventh Generation Wipes Campaign. We are being compensated by Seventh Generation and The Motherhood. While we consider it a privilege to receive free products to review and compensation, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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