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Time for Patio Furniture!

Posted by html404 on March 28, 2012
in Furniture, Home

I don’t know about where you live but here in Chicago we have had some amazing weather this March! While this week has been on the cooler side with a bit of rain, we have still been able to go outside and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine. Yesterday we even got for a walk. It was incredibly windy and I’m sure I burned of extra calories pushing two little boys in a double stroller! Ha!

With the warmer weather comes thoughts of trips to the zoo, picnics, barbecues and cook outs (open fire). Our family loves to eat meals outside in the summer. At our old house our patio was very open and did not allow for much privacy during dinner for conversation; but that goes with living in a townhouse subdivision. At our new house we have a delightful little patio that overlooks the back fields and is pretty much private. We love it!

There has always been a picnic table adorning our patio, however, when we moved my husband took it apart and gave the pieces of wood to our sons to use for their “creations”. Since then I have missed having something on the patio to sit on. While we do have a few lawn chairs, I have always looked at *real* patio furniture with a bit of envy and regret. The picnic table was practical and functional, but a wee little part of me desired something “prettier”.

Now that we actually need patio furniture I would love to get something a bit more sophisticated than our old picnic table. I really like one of the sets of patio furniture from Bridman. Of course, it is one of the more expensive rattan garden furniture sets…..my mother always did say I had expensive taste! The thing is we’d need something this size for our family, if not bigger when we entertain.

Look at this one has two more places, which help would help when company is over! But what a price tag they have…..woooowhee!

It’s time for patio furniture, however, it probably won’t happen this year so here’s to dreaming about new patio furniture……

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Compost – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on March 28, 2012
in Farm Stuff, Gardening, Wordless Wednesday

I know, this is disgusting. Our boys are in charge of taking the compost or kitchen scraps out and one day during the winter this is how we found it. We need to add more brown to our compost pile. Sad state of affairs. That’s why I am considering recruiting some worms to do the work or at least help. Just call me a worm farmer now. 😉 Not really.

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Losing Weight & Essentialzymes – Part 4 of the Slique™ Series

Posted by html404 on March 27, 2012
in Health, Health & Garden Tuesday, Health and Nutrition

This is my very belated Health and Garden Tuesday post from two weeks ago. I had sick children that week and loads of catch up to do besides, so bear with me as I gather my thoughts and share my journey to losing weight (or lack there of).

First the product, then my story.

Essentialzymes

Essentialzymes are two capsules that you take before your meal for digestion and to add enzymes to your digestive tract. Here’s the product description:

Essentialzymes-4 is a multi-spectrum enzyme complex specially formulated to aid the critically needed digestion of dietary fats, proteins, fiber, and carbohydrates commonly found in the modern processed diet. The dual time-release technology releases the animal- and plant-based enzymes at separate times within the digestive tract, allowing for optimal nutrient absorption.

They really have no taste, obviously since you swallow them whole. I take them before meals with a glass of water. I do know the days I was doing the Slique™ Challenge, I truly experienced more energy, feelings of fullness and more regularity.

Lost My Motivation

I shared that I was participating in the Slique™ Challenge, well once I sent my photos in they requested that I retake them holding the newspaper, as I had sent in the photo of the newspaper in separately because I didn’t know I was suppose to hold it! I kind of lost my motivation then because it took me a month to decide to take photos, to participate and then blog about it. I have been thinking about it more and since we probably won’t be able to attend Young Living’s annual convention in Utah in June, which was a huge motivator… that and winning the $5000 cash prize….I have decided not to continue. I may purchase the products as I need them, but I won’t be purchasing the Slique™ kit every month.

Losing Weight & Measuring

I gained 5 pounds last time I weighed myself a week ago. 🙁 Blah. I have yet to weigh myself again. I hate this whole process.

I measured myself a week ago Saturday and made my little notes of it, so we’ll see it that helps noticing any change. As of last week, it seemed like certain measurements had increased but not all. Go figure.

My Struggle

My struggle is lack of consistency when trying to do a program like this. I cheat. I miss my regular food. I fall off the wagon and do not get the results I want because I am not being faithful. Vicious cycle and I don’t want to waste money if I am not going to stick with it faithfully. I know it could work if I would discipline myself and eat different food than my family but we just are not set up to do that. Seriously. And to be honest, I must not want this enough or else I would stick to it. For example, when I want something like wanting to earn an income from home, I’ve never quit and I work hard to supplement our income.

Lack of Exercise

I am lacking in exercise. It’s been beautiful out but I still have yet to get for a walk. Oh I did shop at Costco today! Whoopie! (this was two weeks ago now!) I long for the days when gardening will be my exercise! Who has time to add yet another thing to do in a day, I’d much rather multitask and count it as 2 or even more things.

Update: However, I did take three walks last week with my children and jumped rope another day…..progress!

Moving Forward

I don’t have a definite game plan, except to increase my exercise. I know that works for me and with gardening, yard work, walks, jumping rope….that will all help towards that goal. Plus I’ll be eating more fresh veggies while I am at it!

Losing weight is a journey of an overall lifestyle change, which our whole family has been on for years.

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Taking a Break from Blogging! – Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on March 26, 2012
in Blog Stuff, Business, Monday Motivation

I read an article last week about blogging less. A few different reasons were given, however, these are the ones that struck a chord in me and made think about taking a break from blogging. Here’s why:

1. For higher views on posts.
2. More time to promote posts.
3. More time for the blogger!

Blogging Less & Taking a Break from Blogging

I can burn myself out trying to blog 7 days a week, though lately I have certainly had enough content! Therefore, since my VA business is growing thanks to USA Virtual Assistants, and it is going to be busy this summer with different farm activities getting in the groove of having animals and all; I thought I would try blogging three days a week starting in May, if not sooner. I haven’t decided which days, but I am leaning towards Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so I can truly have the weekends for my family. All too often I spend the weekend doing up my blog posts for the week since I am busy during the week days working on projects for clients. I’ll let you know for sure towards the end of April, if not before.

I would like to catch up on some overdue posts for Alternative Consumer, plus do some other guest posting as well. Most of all I just want to catch up on life at home. After all I don’t have to blog every day to make money, I just need some good old content and maybe I will write better posts if I took some time off.

Taking a break from blogging is my motivation this week! What about you what’s motivating you this week?

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Looney Tunes ClickN READ Phonics Program Review

Posted by html404 on March 25, 2012
in Education, School

I know you all must remember Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Tweetie Bird, The Tasmanian Devil and others. Very funny characters that make you laugh and remember your childhood days of watching these cartoon characters. I use to watch them with my Dad. He loved them and would sit and chuckle over their antics.

My children have had limited exposure to them, only because I am concerned about them learning to talk correctly and well, Tweetie and a couple others leave much to be desired in the pronouncing words the right way.

Nevertheless when we reviewed Looney Tunes ClickN READ Phonics, they loved it!

My Review of Looney Tunes ClickN READ Phonics Program

I really liked how the phonics lessons were organized, repetitive and fun! It is so important to have an element of fun when children are learning or else it just seems like drudgery work. After all we want them to love to learn!

When I set up an account for our daughter, I chose to start at level 10 because she already knew her ABCs and basic sounds, so my review is based on lessons 10-15, as those are the only ones we made it through. Nice features were: you can change settings for slow, medium and fast sounding out, parents may also set the length of the lesson which is a bonus for children with short attention spans!

Sample Lesson from Looney Tunes ClickN READ

The Looney Tunes Phonics Program has a fun little robot character that acts as the teacher. He instructs the children and takes the children through sound lessons first.

After doing some phonics work, there is a little break with the Loony Tunes characters. Then Mr. Robot takes the children through some words.

Again after a short lesson on sounding out words, there is another little break with a show about some of the Loony Tunes Characters. The next phase of the Loony Tunes Phonics Program is sentence reading.

Looney Tunes ClickN READ offers a free sample lessons to review before you make any purchase. There is lots of repetition. The robot talks clearly and concisely. This program is very easy for children to follow along and do their lessons with supervision and after each lesson part they get to practice what they learned by doing an activity where they clicked on a letter sound, word or read a sentence. Upon completion they are told how many they get wrong.

The only negative I see to the program is what I mentioned in my introduction and that is the way Tweetie talks, especially with children who are already struggling to say sounds correctly, but that is all. Overall it is fun, entertaining and educational.

Looney Tunes ClickN READ Phonics Discount!

Get Your Kids Reading With Bugs Bunny and Friends! Get Started with Looney Tunes Phonics for Only $9.95!, plus they have other purchasing options. If you are interested in trying it out, we were given a promotional to share with you of 15% off any purchase through 12/31/12 with the code: 15PERCNS15

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

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Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza & Giveaway

Posted by html404 on March 24, 2012
in All Natural Products, Eco Friendly Products, Food and Treats

Have I mentioned before that we love pizza? Well, we do. Usually we make our own homemade pizza, but we will order out on occasion. We rarely will buy frozen pizza unless we get it on sale and have coupons or something, just because we know we can make what our family inhales…er…eats cheaper at home. We have been trying to buy as much organic as possible.

Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza

Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza comes in four different kinds: Uncured Pepperoni, Four Cheese, Supreme, and Spinach & Mushroom. These pizzas have a rising crust and wholesome organic ingredients, such as 100% real cheese, made with milk from cows not treated with the growth hormones, meats with no nitrates, except for naturally occurring nitrates in sea salt or celery juice powder.

It is a fairly quick meal to make taking 25 minutes or less. The longer it is baked the crispier it will be, so bake according to how you like your pizza!

My Review

Before baking. Our pizza was thawed and I did not take that into consideration when baking, thus we got crispy pizza as you can see from the photo below.

I think we have only ever tried Annie’s bunny crackers and fruit snacks before we tried this pizza. I was excited to hear they had an organic frozen pizza and I have to say that is probably one of the better frozen pizzas I have eaten. My husband brought home Pepperoni. It was very good. It wasn’t as greasy as pizzeria pizzas nor was it the same size as a family sized pizza that we normally get at a pizzeria. This pizza only fed half our family. I chose to have it for a meal two weeks ago while my husband and older children were away at a conference. That was a little disappointing, but I also realize that most families are not our size. However, it only served us two little slivers each. Definitely needed a salad or another side dish for growing little tummies. Good thing I had the younger crew to feed it to! 😉 Nevertheless I would highly recommend the pizza itself and if I didn’t want to cook and wanted to serve a healthy organic meal while hosting guests, I would definitely buy Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza. My husband would just have to take a cooler with him to work in the warmer months because the closest Whole Foods is an hour away. Thankfully only minutes away from my husband’s work place.

Annie’s Organic Rising Crust Pizza is available in the freezer aisle at Whole Foods Market (Suggested Retail Price $9.99 for one 11.5-inch pizza). Learn more at annies.com/pizza. And don’t forget to enter our giveaway below!

Enter Our Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza Giveaway!

Three winners will be chose and each will win one coupon for one FREE Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza. I will mail them out in 2-3 weeks depending upon how busy I am. Open to USA only.

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Going Green with The Gigglin’ Garden Gang #GoGreenNGiggle #Cbias

Posted by html404 on March 23, 2012
in Books, Eco Friendly Products, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Gardening, Gift Ideas

As you all know, we are all for going green and living a healthy lifestyle while making use of the earth’s resources in a responsible and sustainable way. We desire to be good stewards. You are also familiar with our farm journey. That’s why when we were introduced to The Gigglin’ Garden Gang we were excited because it was right up our alley!

In recent years our family has enjoyed planning, preparing and planting our garden. This “Go Green and Giggle”® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set fits perfectly with our fun family activities, but first I had to buy it.

Shopping Online for the “Go Green and Giggle”® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set

First I went to GigglinGardenGang.com. They have some fun music playing that my little guys zoomed over to the computer to “see” being so use to music videos we watch. The website is very easy to navigate and very pleasing to the eye.

To order the product I had to click on their Amazon link to the left side of their home page:

Once I clicked the link it took me to The Gigglin’ Garden Gang’s Amazon shop:

From there is really was a piece of cake, click add to cart:

Amazon will then confirm that the item is in your cart:

After that just click to place order:

Completing the order was a matter of imputing credit card info or editing personal information. I really did not have to do much because we do have an Amazon account so most of my information was already stored. It really is that simple and took less than 5 minutes to do! I love shopping online, can you tell? 🙂

Green Children-Friendly Activities

If you are looking for sustainable activities to do with your children on Earth Day, which is only a month away, the “Go Green and Giggle”® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set is the perfect one to choose! Our children loved it! Of course, I only bought one so they all had to share. It contains the “Go Green and Giggle”® Book, the tote, the greenhouse with six soil wafers, sunflower seeds, a sticker, a coloring sheet of Sunflower Suzi and a CD featuring Sunflower Suzi singing cute little songs – a Theme song and a Go Green and Giggle Rap & Instrumental – my children loved listening to it! We played it a few times while doing our planting activity and they just asked again as I was typing.

The kit unpackaged.

My four year old holding the greenhouse.

Individual components of the kit. The sunflower seeds were tucked safely on the back page of the book by Sunflower Suzi after all she is providing them to us, right? 😉

The soil wafers up close.

The sunflower seeds.

We added warm water to the soil wafers. The children took turns and actually did very well pouring the water! Very little mess, surprisingly! lol!

Each of the children planted a seeds. We actually had 7 sunflower seeds in our package. Our oldest did not participate. She was on her laptop!

As you can see from the greenhouse tray there are actually 12 cells in which to plant. The directions recommended taking it off, but we kept it on and decided to plant the extra sunflower seed as well as some snap peas. My daughter experimented last year with seed saving and these are actually seeds she saved from our snap peas. We hope to do more seed saving this year! All a part of stewardship and being sustainable.

Baby even helped!

Ta-da! All done with the planting!

We really had fun. I read the book to the children, then they sat and read it. Very cute illustrations and funny little jokes that made us giggle! We hope to get permission to use those in our farm newsletter in the future!

What a great rainy day activity too! I was glad to be able to keep my children busy this morning since they couldn’t go outside!

Connect with The Gigglin’ Garden Gang Online

To connect with the Gigglin’ Garden Gang on their social media sites, please visit:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/GoGreenNGiggle (@GoGreenNGiggle)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sunflowersuzi

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for

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Hungry for Change: From the Creators of Food Matters

Posted by html404 on March 21, 2012
in Community Issues, DVDs & CDs, Food and Treats, Free Stuff, Health, Health and Nutrition, Movies, News Worthy

I love sharing about new resources that educate people about our current Big Ag food system and anything that helps people realize we do not need big corporations controlling our food. Hungry for Change is a new movie from the creator of Food Matters (another must see!). This is a direct quote from FRESH’s email as I am about to watch the movie with one of my sons and whoever else is propelled towards the sound of a movie playing…..so here it is:

Today marks the worldwide premiere of Hungry for Change, and you can watch it online for FREE until March 31st. Check it out today!

http://www.hungryforchange.tv/fresh

In this movie, you’ll hear the truth behind “diet,” “sugar-free,” and “fat-free” products, and learn what to avoid in your supermarket. You’ll be inspired by transformational stories from people who have recovered from being sick and overweight. You’ll find the solutions to vibrant health for yourself and your family. So, watch the movie and share the knowledge with a friend–it may save a life!

To a more energetic you,

Ana and Crystal
The FRESH Team

P.S. Want to support good food and our work at FRESH? Consider adding to our tip jar.

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Kids & Lemonade Stands – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on March 21, 2012
in Business, Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Fun Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

It has been unseasonably warm here in Chicago and we are loving it so much that my children asked if they could have a lemonade stand! A quick call to the city and we were cleared that there was no city ordinances against kids having lemonade stands. Good thing I had ingredients etc. that they wanted/needed!

Our children made the cookies – oatmeal chocolate chip – and the lemonade (with organic lemon juice and organic cane sugar). They had a lot of fun and made a little bit of money. They are hoping to raise enough for a dog and with their combined efforts up to this point are about half way there if we choose to get a dog from the local dog shelter.

Even though we live in the country our city has about 20,000 and we are considered rural. However, at certain times of the day, especially early morning and late afternoon we get a fair amount of traffic. We had some generous people stop and leave tips. One lady left a $16 tip because she wanted to help the children get their dog! If the weather holds out, the children want to do this right through the weekend and who are we to squelch their entrepreneurity? 😉

Oh and they found that their five year old sister in a pink dress holding their lemonade and cookie sign was a very effective marketing tool! 😉 My husband said, “No one can resist a cute little girl in a pink dress.” So we are shouting out our thanks to our neighbors and those who drive by our house every day for supporting our kids!

One last thing….you know you live in the country when you meet a neighbor for the first time and she gives you a hug! (Really happened! She said she was a huggy person…) Let’s just say we really get a kick out of the friendliness of the people here at our new house/town.

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Love’s Sacred Song

Posted by html404 on March 20, 2012
in Books

Love’s Sacred Song is a fictional account about the wisest king ever to have lived, King Solomon. Mesu Andrews creatively spins a story based on the book of Song of Solomon in the bible.

I loved the character, Arielah, known as the Shulammite woman in Song of Solomon and Solomon’s lover. She was a picture of naivety, beauty and enduring love. I don’t think I would have survived what she was put through in Love’s Sacred Song. She was courageous, full of faith and strength.

In fictional stories liberties are taken to get a point across and I found it interesting how Mesu chose to reveal King Solomon’s weaknesses. I don’t think I would have taken it as far as she did, mostly because it is a very disappointing viewpoint and steals away the beauty of the book of Song of Solomon, in my opinion. It has long been seen as a book about love and the part about Solomon getting involved with a harlot while involved with the Shulammite, Arielah, is not supported biblically and takes away from the mystic of Song of Solomon. At least for me. On the other hand, we do know for sure that Solomon had a weakness for women, as it is stated in the bible that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. I will never get my head wrapped around that fact, however, in light of that I suppose in his weakness Solomon could have sunk to a new low and entertained a harlot. I just never thought of it before. It certainly reveals the struggle of monogamy for one man.

I really did enjoy reading this book, but grappled with certain components of it. It was intriguing, entertaining and certainly not boring.

If you have wondered even a little about the book of Song of Solomon in the bible you will find reading Love’s Sacred Song very thought provoking.

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

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