Archive for Eco Friendly Products

Earth Day 2012 Giveaway – $50 Gift Certificate to UncommonGoods!

Posted by Theresa, Owner on April 20, 2012
in Contests, Eco Friendly Products, Education, Faith and Family Reviews Friday Giveaway, Fun Stuff, Gift Ideas, Giveaways, Kids Toys

We love educational products and tools. UncommonGoods not only has educational toys, but also gifts for plant lovers, hummingbird feeders and unique home accessories. Many handmade and eco-friendly products all very different. Recently we were able to review two of their educational kits for kids – Cheesemaking and Crystal Explosion….And UncommonGoods is providing a $50 gift certificate for one happy winner of our Earth Day 2012 Giveaway! A great way to start off Earth Day weekend!

Cheesemaking Kit Review

We have always been interested in cheesemaking so this was a cool kit to do. My older girls actually did this one and we let the younger children do the Crystal kit.

The kit gives you a choice of making mozzarella cheese or ricotta cheese. We chose mozzarella since we eat more of it than ricotta. The instructions were very well laid out, easy to follow and included photos so you could actually see if your cheese was doing what they said it should at each step.

Everything you need is in the kit except for a gallon of organic milk and a pint of half and half. Those need to be purchased separately. Each little tablet shown has to be cut into quarters, so you can actually make 30 batches of cheese with this kit – bonus!

One of my daughters was worried that the cheese did not turn out, but once we tasted it was fine. We lightly salted it when we tried it and liked that better than plain.

This kit is for older children (teens) to do on their own or for younger children to assist a parent due to needing a heat source, like a stove or microwave. We really try to limit our microwave use.

The girls enjoyed their cheesemaking experience. Now we need our own cow so we can truly make our own cheese. ;-)

You can purchase your own kit here($25).

Crystal Explosion Kit Review

Our children have been studying rocks and have been fascinated by what they are learning. The Crystal Explosion kit was very fun for the younger children.

The crystals (bath salts) were a bit messy but the enjoyment the children got from completing the crystal experiment far outweighed the small mess on the table!

Again, this was another kit that is very easy to use. Instructions are easy to follow. Due to hot water being required, some parental guidance and help is required.

It was fun to wake up to the crystals in the refrigerator. We still have them in there! Every now and then the children will bring me the cup and say, “Mommy, look at the crystals” because they are in awe. ;-) Very cute.

To order your own Crystal Explosion kit visit this link. It is available for $17.99.

Both of these kits are winners in our house and we give them two thumbs up. Thank you UncommonGoods!

Now you can enter our giveaway….


Earth Day 2012 Giveway – $50 Gift Certificate to UncommonGoods

Enter to win a $50 gift certificate to UncommonGoods! Open to the USA only. Winner will be contacted in 2-3 weeks, if not before.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Pasta Prima – 100% Natural Pastas & Sauces!

Posted by Brande on April 5, 2012
in All Natural Products, Contests, Coupons, Eco Friendly Products, Food and Treats, Free Stuff, Giveaways, Health and Nutrition, News Worthy, Organic

In my online travels, I found Pasta Prima on Facebook.  I went to Pasta Prima’s site and was very excited about my finds!  My house LOVES pasta, so finding this brand was a huge plus for me.  According to Pasta Prima’s site they are 100% natural and they are a Green Company!  LOVE IT!

To make it better! On Pasta Prima’s Facebook site they have a giveaway! 5,000 people will get coupons for FREE Pasta Prima Ravioli!  They sweepstakes ends April 20th.  Once you submit your information, you get a $1.50 coupon!

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Pre-Order KIWI’s New Cookbook!

Posted by Brande on March 31, 2012
in All Natural Products, Articles, Books, Eco Friendly Products, Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Health, Health and Nutrition, News Worthy, Organic, Recipes, Shopping

I just got this email!  KIWI Magazine is all about natural and organic ways of living.  LOVE IT!  They just came out with this cookbook for families with food allergies.  It will get released on April 10 but, you can pre-order it through Amazon.com.

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Sibu Beauty Review

Posted by Theresa, Owner on March 30, 2012
in All Natural Products, Eco Friendly Products, Health, Health and Nutrition, Personal Care Products, Reviews, SALES

I was recently given the opportunity to review a Sibu Beauty product called Sea Buckthorn Revitalize & Renew, a liquid supplement for skin, hair and nails. I loved the look of the company and their commitment to sustainability and environmentally friendly practices.

Sibu Beauty

Sibu Beauty products all started with a meeting between Sibu’s founder, Bruce McMullin and an ayurvedic specialist (which is Ayurveda, which literally means “The Science of Life,” is an ancient healing science from India Source) in Calcutta, India. This specialist told Bruce about a “powerful holy fruit, the Sea Buckthorn berry” and Sibu was founded in 2003.

Sibu has a complete line of products including: facial cream, body cream, balancing facial cleanser, hydrating serum, replenishing night cream, sea buckthorn seed oil, age defying eye cream and a bar of facial soap. Products range in price: $6.95-$50.90. They even have a couple new products not in their brochure.

All of Sibu’s products are chemical free, contain no artificial flavors or colorings and no preservatives. The company seeks to use the sea buckthorn berry responsibly and in a sustainable manner. Sibu Beauty also practices fair trade in that they offer fair wages to the people of Tibet who harvest the berries, environmentally safe processing techniques and healthy, safe working conditions. (Source: Sibu’s product brochure & website)

The company’s founder is committed to giving back to charity, which you can read more about on their website under the “Giving Back” tab.

Sea Buckthorn Revitalize & Renew

Sea Buckthorn is suppose to improve skin tone and texture, supports hair and nail growth. It is full of Omega 3, 6, 7 & 9 fatty acids. Omega 7 is rare, but supposedly vital for cellular support. It is also a powerful free radical scavenger.

Ingredients: Besides the Omega fatty acids, sea buckthorn fruit puree, apple juice from concentrate, white grape juice from concentrate, acerola fruit juice from concentrate, evaporated cane juice, banana puree, sea buckthorn oil seed oil, natural flavors, pectin, xanthan gum.

Sibu Beauty Review

I am pretty skeptical by nature, but have had such a dry face this winter that I was willing to try anything to help alleviate the flakes and scales! I received a 25.35 fl.oz. bottle of the Sea Buckthorn and started taking it….oh nearly a month ago, I guess. I have taken a tablespoon or so each day, pretty consistently but have missed days and think there might be just the slightest change, maybe. Definitely no overnight differences or incredible results by any means.

By my last tablespoon, which I took yesterday, I think I was finally getting use to it’s unusual flavor. I am not a huge peach or apricot fan and I would have to say that Sea Buckthorn reminded me of a mix of those two fruits. I would literally shiver after drinking it, but I persevered because I wanted to be able to give an honest review of how well it worked. I could have easily given up the first day! ;-) Just goes to show that if you keep trying a food/drink you can start to kind of like it, even if you didn’t in the beginning.

I like the idea of this product, but the ingredient “natural flavors” is always something hidden. While the ingredients are not organic, two of these products have a low score on EWG.org (Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic site), so that is very good. The other products were not showing up in the database.

Overall, this was an ok product and I am glad I tried it. However, ultimately I think beauty products are a personal choice and we have to find what works best for us. For more information about this product please visit: www.SibuBeauty.com

Sale & Discount

Right now they have a sale going on until tomorrow night:

20% OFF Sitewide + Free Shipping!
Use coupon code SIBUDEAL20 on checkout.
Free shipping offer excludes Sibu Raw. Offer ends March 31st.

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Annie’s Homegrown Organic Pizza & Giveaway

Posted by Theresa, Owner 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.

Read more

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

Posted by Theresa, Owner 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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Preventing Mold on Berries

Posted by Brande on March 20, 2012
in All Natural Products, Cleaning, Eco Friendly Products, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Food and Treats, Gardening

I had a friend of mine sent me an email about preventing mold on berries.  Not sure if it works, fresh berries don’t stay in our house very long.  They are usually gone before any molding sets in. Here’s the tip:

Prepare a mixture of one part white or apple cider vinegar and ten parts water. Put the berries in the mixture swirl them around.  Drain, rinse (if desired) and pop in the fridge.  The vinegar kills any mold spores and other bacteria that might be on the fruit.

I can see how the vinegar would kill the mold, it works great as household cleaner.

Has anyone done this and does it work?

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Thieves Household Cleaner & The Spring Cleaning Giveway Hop

Posted by Theresa, Owner on March 10, 2012
in All Natural Products, Blog Stuff, Contests, Eco Friendly Products, Home

It is exciting to be a part of another giveaway and blog hop. This one is the Spring Cleaning Giveaway Hop! Our hosts for this event are MamaNYC and Sweeping The USA! We have some awesome giveaways and the GRAND PRIZE iRobot Roomba, which is a robot that will actually vacuum your floors!

This event will run from March 10-24, 2012. Keep reading to find out what I am giving away, but don’t forget to enter for a chance at our GRAND PRIZE – and hop down the linky list for a chance to win even MORE prizes!

My Giveaway – Thieves Household Cleaner

What is spring cleaning without a cleaner? My giveaway is a 14.4 fl. oz. bottle of Thieves Household Cleaner ($30 retail value), which is non-toxic, chemical free and boasts a proprietary blend of essential oils – so it smells great! No toxic fumes will harm you or your family when you clean with Thieves! Thieves Household Cleaner is concentrate, which means a little amount will ago a long way. Simply put a cap full in a spray bottle and clean to your heart’s content. Thieves can replace all your cleaners in your home as it will clean glass, mirrors, toilets, counter tops, sinks and floors. Some people even use it as a dishwasher or laundry detergent! Our family loves Thieves!

Wanna Win?

Enter to win your own bottle of Thieves Household Cleaner in the Rafflecopter below! Happy spring cleaning! ;)

**Only open to the US.


a Rafflecopter giveaway


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Resurgence of Cloth Diapers: The Ecological and Economical Choice

Posted by Theresa, Owner on March 8, 2012
in Eco Friendly Products, Guest Post, Saving Money, Thrifty Thursday

If you are currently expecting a new baby or are a mom with a child who has not been potty trained, you may have considered the many choices in diapers for your baby. Perhaps you have compared name brand to generic, or plan to purchase whichever diapers happen to be on sale when you need to make a purchase, but there is another option you may wish to explore. More moms than ever are choosing to use cloth diapers for their infants.


The number one reason for choosing cloth diapers over disposables is price. While it is assuredly less expensive to buy a single box of newborn diapers than it is to purchase enough cloth diapers to get a working system going, in just a short time cloth diapers pay for themselves. The average cost of a single diaper is $0.35. It is estimated that normal babies go through 6,000 diapers through their first two years of life. That totals $2,100 in disposable diaper costs alone. Factoring in other variables, such as disposable wipes and rash creams, may put the two-year disposable diapering cost over $2,500 per child.

The average cost of a cloth diaper is $10, but several less expensive diapers can be found. The traditional cloth diapers that must be secured with pins and tucked inside rubber bloomers are the least expensive option, but they are more prone to leaks than the new diapering systems that use pocket inserts or the ease of all-in-one functionality. The most expensive cloth diapering systems may cost around $16 each, but these are adjustable, washable models that may last through several children. Like disposables, these diapering systems have several sizes, but typically children only require them in small, medium and large from birth to toilet training. It is recommended that at least 36 small diapers, 30 medium diapers and 24 large diapers are purchased to keep an ample supply through wash cycles. Even at their most expensive, a total cost for cloth diapers is $1440. The cost of laundering diapers, even at a high-end estimate of $123 annually, does not close the gap in price between cloth and disposables. Cloth diapering systems use cloth baby wipes, and infants are less likely to develop rashes in cloth diapers. This eliminates the additional costs involved with disposable diapers, saving over $800.

Another factor that encourages moms to choose cloth is the environmental impact of disposable diapers. While disposables may offer a certain amount of convenience to busy parents, they pose a definite imposition on the earth. It may take up to 500 years for a single disposable diaper to biodegrade. This is merely an estimate–not one diaper of the millions that have been used has broken down to this day. Disposable diapers are the third most common consumer waste products in landfills today, and they represent up to 50 percent of the household waste of homes with a baby. For earth-conscious moms, cloth diapers offer a superb, reusable alternative to wasteful disposables. They are a perfect way to save money and reduce environmental impact at once.

Holly Adams from Coupon Croc contributed this post. On CouponCroc.co.uk, you can find the best coupons on everything you need to go green.

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Kid-Safe Chemicals – Must See Video

Posted by Theresa, Owner on March 3, 2012
in Eco Friendly Products, Education, Health, Health and Nutrition, Safety

This is a must see video if you are even remotely curious or concerned with the amount of chemicals our children are exposed to today. Thanks to the Environmental Working Group (EWG.org). They also have a site that allows you to look up ingredients, which I cannot seem to find that link right now but will add once I find it:

This video is precisely why we are changing the products we use and the foods we eat. It is for the future of our children and future generations. A change must occur. What will you do?

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