Archive for html404

V8 V-Fusion Refreshers

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product and a gift card 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.

V8 Vfusion Refreshers

We recently tried V8 V-Fusion Refreshers and were pleasantly surprised by their yummy flavors.

What are V8 V-Fusionยฎ Refreshers?

New V8 V-Fusion Refreshers are a light and crisp juice drink with a 20-25% blend of fruit and vegetable juices that come in four delicious โ€“ and unique โ€“ family pleasing flavors. Made with both fruit and vegetable juices, V8 V-Fusion Refreshers are naturally sweetened, contain no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives and are an excellent source of Vitamin C.

V8 V-Fusion Refreshers are available in four tasty flavors, Black Cherry Berry, Cranberry Grape, Tangerine Passionfruit and Peach Strawberry, providing premium juice refreshments that will make the whole family happy.

We received Tangerine Passionfruit and Black Cherry Berry in 46 oz bottles. The ingredients of these two V8 VFusion Freshers are as follows:

Tangerine Passionfruit: Water, reconstituted vegetable juice blend, (water, concentrated juices of sweet potatoes, carrots), reconstituted fruit juice blend, (water, concentrated juice of apple, tangerine and passion fruit), sugar, contains less than 2% of citric acid (for flavor), natural flavoring, passion fruit concentrate, vitamin C (absorbic acid).

Black Cherry Berry: Water, reconstituted vegetable juice, (water, concentrated juices of purple carrots, sweet potatoes, carrots), reconstituted fruit juice (water, concentrated juice of apples, cherries, strawberries, red raspberries, black berries), sugar, contains less than 2% of citric acid (for flavor), malic acid, natural flavoring (contains pomegranate juice), vitamin C (absorbic acid), natural flavor.

All these ingredients do not look so bad to the naked eye, but the natural flavoring is obscure so I’d like to know what exactly it is, pretty please, V8?

V8 V-Fusion Refreshers Review

I turned to my dear husband for V8 VFusion Refreshers review photos, because as you know he adds a definite umpf to my blog posts. ๐Ÿ˜‰ Remember, he’s the one who turns his nose up at most veggies, so getting him to drink something with the word vegetable in it was progress in and off itself. The children are easy!

V8 Refreshers photo 2

Hamming up his taste testing….

V8 Refreshers photo 3

Tentatively bringing the cup to his mouth….

V8 Refreshers 4

Taking a drink…..

V8 Robert's satisfied look

Mmmmm…..surprisingly good!

V8 Refreshers satisfied look 2

Ahhhh…..the Black Cherry Berry is refreshingly good!

Therefore, we have a winner! Both the V8 V-Fusion Refreshers Black Cherry Berry and Tangerine Passionfruit were a big hit among the children as well. They even asked if we could buy more. We found the V8 V-Fusion Refreshers were tasty, tasting more like fruit juice than vegetable juice. Personally, I preferred the Black Cherry Berry over the Tangerine Passionfruit because the Tangerine Passionfruit flavor tasted something like peach to me and I’m not a huge peach fan. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop me from going back for more later in the evening!


signature

What Are Your Hobbies?

Paid Disclosure

Hobbies are usually our way of doing something we enjoy in our spare time. What’s spare time you ask? Good question! But that’s not what my post is about. I have had a lot of hobbies over the years, nothing overly serious or out of this world but things I have enjoyed and gained pleasure from.


Childhood Hobbies

When I was growing up I was a part of Girl Guides and 4-H. I believe those groups helped make me a more rounded person, especially in my interests and hobbies. We always had projects on the go. I sewed, embroidered and even knitted. I still remember going to my grandmother’s to get help with a knitting project when I was making slippers. Going to my grandparents house was a highlight when I was a child, not just for knitting help. They were very involved and loved taking me places. Shopping, church, bingo – www.galabingo.com/mobile/bingo – in the church basement…my grandmother was a social butterfly. But I digress…

Hobbies

Hobbies Before Children

Before I had children one of my hobbies was crafts. I actually worked a Franks Nursery & Crafts for over two years until I quit when I was six months pregnant with our first child. Let’s just say I spent a good amount of money there! I would use my discount and any coupons we were allowed to use and stock up on craft items. I think this year we finally finished up what I had left of all of those supplies.

Some of the individual crafty things I enjoyed were: painting plaster Christmas ornaments, cross stitching, latch hook and sewing.

Hobbies After Children

My hobbies after I had children did not change too much, I just added baby books (for the first three children anyways) and photo albums for each child…well, up until our fifth. We got a digital camera when I was pregnant with our sixth so the last three children’s baby and toddler days are in digital format needing to be printed out and put in albums. We were going to start scrapbooking but that fizzled out before we really go started.

Hobbies take time and money, those two things are precious commodities these days.

So what are your hobbies?


signature

Fencing – Wordless Wednesday

Our version of fencing!

Fencing Oh My 2013

Fencing supplies from Premier One.

Loony Acres Fencing_

Hubby pounding t-posts.

Baby boy helping fence_

Baby boy helping. Sorry the photo is blurry. I was disappointed when I went to download it. ๐Ÿ™

Miss Moo and fencing_

End product – fenced in pasture for Miss Moo! And we need to move it again since she has just about sufficiently cut this pasture down. Since she respects the electric fencing, we only needed to put up one strand of fencing compared to three strands or 4-7 strands for escapee horses and goats!


signature

Picking to Win with Capri Sun Big Pouch

CB-sponsored-post-white-script-400

Capri Sun Big Pouch

Our teens and tweens sampled three flavors of Capri Sun Big Pouch products this weekend for the first time. GASP! I know! They’ve had regular Capri Sun pouches, just not the Capri Sun Big Pouch. Capri Sun Big Pouch Fruit Punch seemed to be the flavor that was enjoyed the most, as Capri Sun Big Pouch Maui Cooler and Capri Sun Big Pouch Strawberry Kiwi were more faintly flavored according to my crew. Our teens enjoyed drinking Capri Sun after our “Pickers Adventure” and after working hard fencing for a couple of hours. We had to put up more fencing for our cow since she grazed through her new pasture this week. Oh the joys of rotational grazing! Capri Sun Big Pouch products are available at Walmart for just 88 cents a piece!

Capri Sun Big Pouch and American Pickers on History

Mike Wolfe, creator and star of American Pickers on History, in conjunction with Capri Sun Big Pouch are sponsoring a contest called Picking to Win with Capri Sun Big Pouch for you all to enter! The grand prize is a trip to Nashville, Tennessee. Contest winners (and 3 guests) will meet and do a half day pick with Mike Wolfe, creator and star of American Pickers on History. How exciting is that to all you pickers and history lovers! To enter the contest all you have to do is go to the highlighted link above, enter your name, email, address, birth date, phone number and agree to contest rules. Then upload a photo from your picking adventure of what you found on your pick and you are done! Takes no time at all.

100 other winners will win a picking kit. The items included in the picking kit Capri Sun Big Pouch contest are: Messenger Bag, Magnifying Glass, Gloves, Bandanas, Flashlights, Journal, Pen, T-shirt, Kid Pickers Book (signed by Mike Wolfe, creator and star of American Pickers on History) and Carabineers.


Capri Sun Big Pouch Pick Adventure

Capri Sun Big Pouch #Shop Pick

As I mentioned in my intro, we went on our own picking adventure. We love antiques and history so my teen “Om” and tween “JAG” helped me pick in the barn we are renting. When we made the agreement to rent the barn it was “as is” so a lot of OLD stuff was left in there. We assembled our own picking kit of gloves, a bag, flashlight, pen and notebook. My son and daughter grabbed a Capri Sun Big Pouch Strawberry Kiwi and our picking kit, then we headed to the barn.

We discovered a couple of old milk cans, an old gas can, thermos and bridle or halter as shown in the photo collage above. We have no idea the value of any of these items but we’d love to find out! I entered the photo of my son in the Picking to Win with Capri Sun Big Pouch contest. Be sure to enter your own picking photo!

Feel free to follow Capri Sun Big Pouch on Twitter (Please use hashtags #shop #CapriSunPickers and #cbias) and Facebook. Have fun picking!

What are your favorite places to pick? Your favorite pick items?


signature

A Surprise for Lily

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.

A Surprise for Lily

This review was written by my second oldest, “B”.

A Surprise for Lily is another great book. The fourth in the series written by Mary Ann Kinsinger and Suzanne Woods Fisher. I really like the Lily Lapp books. Lily has grown and matured so much throughout the series. A lot happens in this installment.

Lily’s cousin, Hannah, and her family moves away and her grandpa passes away. I really felt bad about it for Lily because Hannah was her best friend. Lily misses them very much. Lily’s brother, Joseph, finds/gets a dog which he names Dozer, short for Bulldozer. Joseph loves his pup and makes excuses for every naughty puppy thing he does, such as: stealing boots, pulling clothes off the line and digging in the garden. Lily does not quite appreciate Dozer’s talent for getting into mischief. ๐Ÿ™‚ I like Dozer, but could understand why Lily found him annoying. He caused Lily and Mrs. Lapp an awful lot of extra work.

The long awaited baby “sister” arrives and turns out to be a new brother, much to Lily’s disappointment. Poor Lily, she waited so long for a sister.

Other news, Danny started going to school with Lily and Joseph, a new family comes to town, the Hershbergers, who have six children (3 boys and 3 girls). One of the boys, Harvey, who is nine and a bit of a trouble maker…..until Lily’s mother helped the new teacher (Teacher Judith) with English classes and outwits him. He suddenly never acts up again. I don’t think I could have treated Harvey the way Mrs. Lapp did. She did an amazing job.

Aaron Yoder still plagues Lily but she, Aaron, and Harvey actually became friends in this book, after the boys helped Lily in two incidents – both involving Dozer, who she learned to appreciate and love. I loved the fact that Harvey, Aaron and Lily became friends, it showed how much Lily had grown up.

Two thumbs up from “B”!

โ€œAvailable August 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.โ€


signature

Farming is Hazardous

This is a featured post.

I have a farmer friend who gets after me each time she comes to our farm. You see, I tend to wear crocs around the farm. Yep, even around our hooved animals who weigh 1200-1500 lbs. Not ideal to say the least but my feet really like to breathe in the summer months and rubber boots or steel toed boots just haven’t seemed necessary or appealing to wear. And no, that’s not my fashion sense speaking, it’s my comfort level doing the talking.

Loony Acres Fencing_

When my friend was here to help with fencing over a month ago a t-post nearly fell on my foot. ๐Ÿ™ Not a good thing. A couple of years ago while working on another farm I had a t-post go through the bottom of my croc giving me a pretty good cut all because I tried to put the t-post into the ground with my foot, seriously of all things to do, but I did it as an automatic reaction. Farming is hazardous if you are not careful. A lot can go wrong on a farm. Thankfully we do not own any heavy equipment yet, but the large animals pose a risk because you never know what they can or will do. It’s not like we have medical insurance or life insurance that covers accidents, for that matter. We don’t even have a retirement fund come to think of it. It’s not like we view these things as unimportant, we just haven’t had the budget for them in the past five years, not with two lay offs under our belt. However, it is a goal of ours to get these things in place as soon as our income increases to the point of making it possible.

We do have farm insurance, which is helpful and provides some kind of coverage. Nevertheless, it’s a tad bit worrisome at times thinking of all the things that can go wrong when we lack other insurance coverage or funds to cover extra expenses that could occur.

Do you have life insurance? What about medical insurance in light of Obamacare? Are you preparing for retirement?


signature

Why is Organic Dairy So Important? #FightPesticides

This post is part of my application to become a Stoneyfield ambassador and I will receive Stoneyfield coupons for my participation. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Stoneyfield Cow Fu #FightPesticides

Why is Organic Dairy So Important?

I know our family knows why organic dairy is so important but thought I’d share with you our reasons for wanting to eat and drink organic dairy to the point of owning our own cow. As you know, organic anything can be expensive, especially when buying for ten people. A huge reason for our buying a cow is so we could provide fresh milk for our family (and animals because we do share!). You also know from our Mariano’s shop, organic milk is around $7.99 per gallon at Whole Foods and Mariano’s. However, our reason for feeding her organic feed and hay is to be free of harmful pesticides (and GMOs – Genetically Modified Organisms) often used on crops. Now that we have our own pasture and hay, we know without a doubt our milk is organic, free of harmful GMOs. We have been supplementing Miss Moo with certified organic feed because when we brought her home she was underweight and want to fatten her up so she’s a good weight for her age and stage of lactation. We also know exactly what Miss Moo is fed, how she how the milk is handled and how she is cared for. We like knowing where our food comes from, and for our large family that means we are raising our own at this stage of our lives.

Don’t just take my word for it. Research it for yourself.

Resources:


http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/06/07/milk-101-whole-raw-organic-low-fat-etc/

http://www.utne.com/Environment/organic-milk-USDA-amendment.aspx#axzz2f5HSUr2e

http://www.realmilk.com/


signature

Moms.com is Live!

A couple months ago I applied to be a part of a new beta moms forum called Moms.com. I thought it would be fun to be part of a new website for moms as well as earn a little extra money on the side. It has been a lot of fun getting to know the “beta” mom group as we have created content for the site, which is full of topics from trying to conceive to pregnancy, babyhood, toddler, preschooler, big kid to just for mom stuff. In just over a month of working together, I believe we have laughed, empathized and cried together/for one another through sharing our lives and experiences as mothers – from the first day of school memories to reminiscing about our children’s births and so much more. Unlike other mom type sites, Moms.com encourages moms to be themselves and enjoy the daily sharing of our lives without harsh words and criticism for individual parenting choices. All of the mom members so far come from a diverse background and are a variety of ages, yet we have come together to unite as we share our thoughts and experiences about motherhood, as well as encourage each other in the journey of being a mom.

Moms.com Screen Shot 2013-09-14 at 5.08.26 AM

The Site

The site does require you to join if you want to participate in the conversations. Otherwise the site is very much public, not private. Though I just learned they are working on privacy controls, to be released soon, so this is about to change. When you join you will receive an email confirmation with your login information.

The Moms.com site has different sections such as Mom Moments where we can share photos or animated images in a card form with a few words as a description or caption. This section can be used to share photos of family, write an encouraging or humorous note.

The Best of Mom section is a catalog of topics where there are questions broken down and sub-categorized according to the different stages of Motherhood.

Moms.com Catalog Screen Shot 2013-09-14 at 5.36.06 AM

The Find Moms search button on the site allows you to follow other moms, look for moms in your geographical location or for moms with children the same age as yours.

Join Now!

Moms.com went live to the public this week and is open to new members. You can join now!

Follow Moms.com on:

Facebook

Twitter

Google+

Hope to see some of you there!


signature

Homing Pigeon – Wordless Wednesday

A couple weeks ago we had a visitor land on our car. It was a homing pigeon. It has a tag on his leg that one of my daughters looked up and determined it was a racing pigeon from Nebraska. It is very friendly and allows the children to handle it. It has taken up residence with our broilers, which concerns me because it is eating 18% grower feed. What if it gains so much weight it cannot fly? Is that even possible? If it’s too heavy, how will it fly back home to its owner? And why has it decided to “vacation” here? Lots of questions. The children are loving “their” new pet though.

Homing Pigeon_

What is a Homing Pigeon?

When I googled homing pigeon images not many of them were the color of “ours”.

According to HomingPigeon.com a homing pigeon is:

Homing Pigeon – Aves Columbiformes Columbidae Columba Livia

Sixteen ounces of muscle and feather, at times on the wing for twelve hours, flying at sustained speeds of 30 to 60 miles per hour.
Why?
To return home where a special relationship exists between man and bird.

Wikipedia states the sport of homing pigeons was established 3000 years ago. The American Racing Pigeon Union says that in the late 1800’s homing pigeons were imported from Europe. More information about American racing pigeons can be found on www.pigeon.org

I don’t claim to be a homing pigeon expert but I hope that wets your appetite to discover more about these charming birds.


signature

My Husband Lost His Job….Again

Five and a half years ago my husband came home through our front door at about 9am, which was uncharacteristically early considering he left work at 5:30-6:00AM and usually returned at 3:30-4:00PM. When I asked him what he was doing home so early, he replied, “I was laid off.” It was such a shock. Robert had worked at the store since he was in junior high. We worked for the first owner from 1981-2005. Then when the second owner bought the shop in 2005, Robert at times felt he had less job security. But seriously, we never saw the lay off coming.

Robert was out of work for about 20 months. I cleaned houses for a couple of months and started our virtual assistant business. Then his original boss, whom he had worked for over 20 years called him saying he had a new buyer for the store. You see, the second owner still owed the original owner money so when he went out of business in 2009, the store reverted back to the original owner. Clear as mud, eh?

My husband lost his job
He’s trying hard not to crack a smile in this photo in case you didn’t notice. ๐Ÿ˜‰


My Husband Lost His Job….Again

We accepted the job because we had high hopes of the store succeeding under new ownership.

This current lay off was better in the fact we knew it was coming. Robert’s job allowed him to see the numbers in the reports he ran and I’d say early in the summer he called it by saying he gave the shop until mid-August. He was a little off in that he had a job until about the end of August, as he was officially done a week and a half ago.

It’s was a topsy, curvy ride waiting for the axe to fall, so to speak. It is a bittersweet end to a job Robert enjoyed. He really liked this last owner and we thought the store would make it but alas, the industry has changed so much with the advent of the internet. Mom and Pop stores cannot compete with their distributors or online competition. Just look at your home town’s main street. If you have empty store fronts like we do, you’ll see what we are living.

We are not sure what God’s plan is in all of this. It is definitely stretching us.

Robert is applying to jobs. I’m working more. I just learned that I have a job as a hostess of a new moms forum, which will help bring in a little extra money. We are trying to get caught up around the farm while Robert is home…but that is a never ending task because there is always something to do!

Have you ever been unemployed or faced a lay off? How did you survive?


signature