Faith and Family Reviews: Product Reviews You Can Trust

CREST Whitening Strips Put to the Test

Posted by html404 on December 7, 2012
in Personal Care Products

We were given the opportunity to participate in a review tour with Crest. They sent us a bottle of teeth yellower and then a package of Crest Whitening strips called, Crest 3D White Professional Effects Whitestrips, so we could see the reaction of others to yellowed teeth versus white teeth. One of my daughters tested the product out for us.

CREST Whitening Strips Put to the Test

Before photo with CREST yellowing.

First she put the yellow coat on her teeth and waited about five minutes before removing it. My other daughter’s reaction to her extremely yellowed teeth was hilarious.

Of course she was moving when the picture was snapped and caused the photo to be blurred but we can’t reenact a response like that!

Afterwards she used the Crest whitening strips to get the desired white effect and everyone’s reactions were much better. The entire process took about thirty minutes give or take since she took off the whitening strips about five minutes before the suggested time.

After with CREST whitening.

Compared to going to a dentist and getting your teeth whitened for the holidays CREST whitening strips is cheaper and much easier. Despite any discomfort involved in the taste of products, she would be willing to do it again since the after effect of having whiter teeth really does improve your entire personal appearance.

So as Crest’s slogan goes:

I participated in this campaign for One2One Network. I received product to facilitate my review and by posting, I am eligible for incentives. All opinions stated are my own.

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Melissa & Doug’s Terrific Twenty Giveaway is Back!

Posted by Brande on December 6, 2012
in Blog Stuff, Contests, Fun Stuff, Giveaways, Holidays, Kids Stuff, Kids Toys, Shopping

Melissa & Doug’s Terrific Twenty Giveaway is back! Head over to Melissa & Doug’s Facebook page or here’s the direct link for the entry form. Enter to win a new prize everyday!! Don’t forget to check out the Terrific Twenty on Melissa & Doug’s website!

I receive nothing for doing this post except an entry into the blogger’s sweepstakes.

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Introducing a New Reviewer/Contributing Writer!

Posted by html404 on December 5, 2012
in Uncategorized

As you know, I announced on Saturday that we are looking for reviewers. Thanks to a friend and colleague’s referral we have found someone very quickly to fill the gap in our baby/maternity reviews! So we are very pleased and happy to introduce a new reviewer/contributing writer – Kim (aka 278Wife in her posts)!

Here’s what she has to say about herself:

I am a stay at home mom with a very active three year old son and a baby due in April. We love to go to museums, playgrounds, the zoo, and have playdates. I love to shop for bargains and do crafts such as crocheting, quilting, and anything with my Cricut. We also do lots of kid crafts at home and I’m constantly on Pinterest looking for new ideas!

Please give her a warm welcome with lots of comments on this post and her awesome reviews to come!

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TVGuardian

Posted by html404 on December 5, 2012
in DVDs & CDs, Family Stuff, Movies, Techie Stuff, Technology/Electronics, TV Shows

I don’t know about you but if I had the opportunity to have a filter for foul language and sexual content I’d probably watch more TV with my family. The American Family Association just sent out an email featuring TVGuardian, a filter doing exactly what I want it to do. However, it is not available for online streaming (Netflix, Hulu etc.). We don’t have cable or satellite, or even a TV for that matter, as we do most of our movie/TV watching online from our computer. So in an appeal to garner more interest in sites offering online streaming I am blogging about TVGuardian to recruit any of you using online streaming to contact the sites you use to ask them if they would consider getting TVGuardian. I have tried contacting ClearPlay to see if this is something they would be able to do but have never, ever even received a response. 🙁

So if you are a person who utilizes online streaming sites, please appeal to those sites to offer TVGuardian as a choice because until there’s a need these sites are not going to do anything. IMHO. (in my humble opinion.)

Nope this is not a review or paid ad. I wrote about this out of my own interest. I have no idea how well it works but if it filters out any foul language I’m in, as film producers are slipping more and more into movies these days. It isn’t cheap but I think the cost is worth it in the long run.

Check it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

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Kombucha Tea

Posted by html404 on December 5, 2012
in All Natural Products, Food and Treats, Health, Health and Nutrition

A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo with a “Science in a Jar”….it was Kombucha. The object inside is called a “scoby”. Kombucha is made out of tea. We are making a baby scoby now through what is called the fermenting process. Kombucha tea has many health benefits, not the least of which is that it is a great probiotic and liver cleanser. Flavored Kombucha tastes very good. We originally learned about Kombucha tea last fall when we attended a fermenting class hosted by a friend.

My daughter found a great website that explains it all. Check out the Kitchn on How to Make Kombucha Tea.

Everyone but my one daughter and I thinks Kombucha tea is “scary” or is “just plain wrong”, but they haven’t tasted it yet so we are really hoping to convert the rest of the family to partake in this nutritious drink! I’ll let you know how it goes. We have to wait a week before our mama scoby makes a baby scoby so we can make some flavored Kombucha for the rest of the crew.

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National Geographic Giveaway Fixed

Posted by html404 on December 4, 2012
in Uncategorized

Just wanted to let you know that I fixed the National Geographic Super Reader Kit giveaway Rafflecopter! That’s what I get for doing it late at night…ha!

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National Geographic Super Reader Kit

Posted by html404 on December 3, 2012
in Animals, Books, Education

We love books here at our house and it has been an educational goal to instill a love of reading and learning in our children. After all if they develop a love of books they can learn almost anything on their own simply by reading. We have a reading program we use in our homeschool that has been effective with our girls but not so much our boys so we’ve been supplementing their reading with other books they want to read.

A few of weeks ago when we received a package containing the National Geographic Super Reader Kit our children sat down right away to read the four books it contained! They love animals and learning more about them. We also have a couple of children who are weather watchers, like their daddy, and they liked the weather stories told in the Wacky But True book.

We didn’t agree with the evolutionary slant of some of the books, but thankfully our children know what we/they believe. That would be the only reason we would choose not to use or recommend it to other Christians. We’d at least give an advance warning of it containing evolution.

Here are a few of the children’s thoughts about the books in the National Geographic Super Reader Kit:

Castle Book

My 13 year old daughter said she learned stuff in the castle book that she didn’t know before. That’s huge as she is a voracious reader and has read many castle/medieval books.

Shark Book

An interesting book about sharks, which included Bethany’s shark attack was featured in the movie “Soul Surfer”. The children really liked this book.

Animal Stories Book

This book is about bad behavior in animals. One dog almost set the house on fire and died. Some of the bad behavior turned out to be good, like a naughty little orangutang who was kind of like Curious George and got into things, but actually saved a man’s life.

Wacky/Crazy But True…Book

The children thought this book was awesome. Full of fun, wacky/crazy but true facts and snippets about science, history, geography etc.

Overall our children really did enjoy the content of the books, we really didn’t use the extras because as I said they sat down right away to read the books and there was no need to give them motivators of stickers or book marks. Not to say it wasn’t cute or a great idea, our children just already love to read, but I can see how it may be motivating to those who are struggling with reading.

You may Find National Geographic online at:
kids.nationalgeographic.com/superreader
kids.nationalgeographic.com
Facebook.com/NatGeoBooks
Twitter.com/NGKidsBks

Thumbs up from us!

Three of you have the opportunity to win a kit of your own. Just fill out the Rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received this product for free from the sponsor of the Moms MeetSM program, May Media Group LLC, who received it directly from the manufacturer, National Geographic. As a Moms MeetSM blogger, I agreed to use this product and post my opinion on my blog. My opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of May Media Group LLC or the manufacturer of the product.

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Vamping Up Egg Production

Posted by html404 on December 3, 2012
in Animals, Business, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff

Jr. vamping up egg production by helping collect eggs.

It’s been nearly six weeks since our hens started laying. I can’t tell you how much we have been enjoying our farm fresh egglicious treats! Our homemade waffles, pancakes and baked goods are so much more light and fluffy. It’s amazing. And the girls have been saying they notice a difference in how the eggs cook as well.

Our original flock of hens.

I was slightly ambitious and marketed our eggs right away and quickly sold out of them! Yeah, even before we had eggs to fulfill orders….but we have a waiting list in case anyone dwindles off! Incredible, eh? We even had someone stop by the other day and asked if we have eggs – that’s with no signage whatsoever except for the farm magnet on our van which only states our farm name and phone number…no products but I guess they can see chickens when they are out. 😉

All my marketing efforts were simply via email and we have a paid listing on Eat Wild ($50/yr) and Local Harvest ($25 suggested donation/year), but only one egg customer came through Eat Wild and she’s on our waiting list. Gotta love free to low cost marketing.

So based on this experience we will be increasing our flock for 2013 and have already started. We have a broody hen setting on two eggs now. It’s kind of an experiment because we came across two fertilized eggs while candling them so I decided it won’t do any harm in letting a hen sit on them to see what happens.

Broody hen update: The hens are sitting on the eggs but they don’t seem to be sitting on them consistently so I think we will be looking to borrow or rent an egg incubator to hatch out a batch of fertilized eggs. It’s kind of disappointing not to have one devoted hen unless something went wrong with the eggs or something. We may try again…we’ll see.

Candling to those unfamiliar is simply putting a light under the egg and slowly turning the egg to see if you find a dark spot, otherwise known as the fertilized egg. Candling is also used to detect any defects or cracked eggs.

Our hens have laid up to 17 24 eggs a day, then we had that cold snap and their production trickled back down to several a day. Then we (or my hubby did with Peanut’s help) winterized our coops since we will be over-wintering 32 hens/roosters and two turkeys and today we are back up to 15 eggs in a day. So we should be able to supply our egg customers with eggs this weekend. Yay! I am so excited to finally see our hens start paying for their keep! 😉

New flock of 100 red sex-links, not a heritage breed, unfortunately.

Please Note: this was written weeks ago and just kept getting pushed back. And last week we purchased a flock of 100 one year old hens, sooner than we thought we would buy more chickens, but when the opportunity came from an area family farm we know and trust and with people waiting for local eggs we just went ahead and did it. The “new” hens are giving us 60-70 eggs a day and I really need to get marketing them as a few leads fell through from our waiting list. I have a couple of leads to follow up on and we have an event on 12/15…but I won’t be taking two week old eggs there because our slogan is “Fresh. Local. Every Time.” and I don’t want to be accused of not having fresh eggs.

Turkey egg and yes, they are a brown speckled egg.

Brownie, our turkey hen, also started laying…but bah-humbug she’s not very maternal. 🙁 Disappointing to say the least but we have a farmer friend who asked if one of our daughters would be interested in incubating turkey eggs for her and we’d split the hatch, which will be a very cool farm, homeschooling learning experience! Farmer C has heritage breed turkeys which is what we wanted to try next year so here’s to hoping it all works out and goes well. We might even try and incubate some of Brownie’s eggs as we do want to do Midget White Turkeys again. They are very yummy! We ate one for Thanksgiving dinner!

Tom and Brownie, our Midget White turkey breeding pair.

Tom, our turkey tom, is still strutting his stuff. 😉 Every day this is what our pair of turkeys looks like with Tom following Brownie around.

So we are really vamping up egg production around here!

Oh and we finally got our electric fencing, but have yet to get the solar panel up and running. Technically we aren’t suppose to use the fencing or the solar panel during the winter or with snow, but we haven’t had any heavy snow yet….so we are keeping it up until the snow flies at least.

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Looking for Reviewers

Posted by html404 on December 1, 2012
in Business

I need some help and am looking for reviewers. With our farm sort of exploding (have to update you all) I need to do less reviews, though I love them, and free up some time to get things done around the farm, to take on more VA clients and grow this blog behind the scenes. Don’t worry I’ll still be writing and reviewing, just a little less frequently. Soooo….we need a couple more reviewers here at Faith and Family Reviews. Unfortunately it is an unpaid gig, though gift card (nearly the same as cash) opps may come across my computer that I may be able to pass along to you. No promises though on their frequency. And no, we haven’t got rid of either of our current reviewers/contributing writers, they are AWESOME! We just have some gaps that the three of us cannot fill!

Types of Reviewers We Are Looking For

The types of reviewers we are currently looking for:

Expectant Moms (none of us are expecting)
Moms with a baby or child under two (we currently have a huge gap here since all of us here have children over two years old!)
Anyone who loves to read (I love to read but I do not have time to review every book that comes through my inbox! Many of the titles we receive are from a Christian view point. Beware though you may end up getting sent books without even being asked, as this has happened to “Professor” and “Virtuous”.)
Anyone who is really interested in reviewing products

Requirements

Three main requirements are simply availability, dependability and commitment. I don’t expect you to accept every review I send your way but when you do accept a review, it is a requirement that it is completed. And while I don’t expect you to commit for life, someone who is going to be around long term is preferred above someone who is looking for a short term gig.

How to Apply

If you are interested at all please click the email button (@ symbol) in the top right hand corner of this page and I’ll get back to you with our basic requirements. Please include a bit about yourself, your writing experience, if any, don’t be shy if you don’t have any because once you get started the more you write the better your writing becomes…besides I’ll proofread and edit it! 😉 If you do have writing experience, be sure to send links or samples of what you have written.

Hope to hear from some of you soon!

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Junior Edition: Reverse Charades Review

Posted by Professor on December 1, 2012
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Gift Ideas

Reverse Charades ~ Junior Edition

Reverse Charades is a hilarious twist on a classic stand-by (where one person acts out words for the team to guess ~ boring)! With Reverse Charades, the entire team has 60 seconds to act out as many words as one person can guess. It is fast paced, fiercely fun team competition that is an absolute riot with families. work teams, school groups, party-goers or among a few close friends. But be warned… you are in for big ad dangerous does of fun!

Contains:
360 double-sided word cards
sand timer
instructions

Basic rules (from the publisher):
1. Split into teams of three or more. Decide on a number of rounds or a point target to win.
2. 1 word guessed correctly = 1 point. Each team has one minute to guess as many words as possible.
3. Each team selects a guesser (everyone gets a turn) and the rest of the team acts out the words.
4. Shhh! Not a peep among the team members.
5. Ready, set, go!

720 words, for 6+ players ages 6 and up, geared towards Kids & Family.

Our Review:

This was a great game for our family. We brought it to Thanksgiving at my in-laws …and played it with everyone! We played with a total of 4 teams ranging in age from 4 – 65. It really was a great game for everyone.

I am sure you are asking exactly what is “junior reverse” charades. Basically it is the same thing as original reverse charades except it is geared towards children and family. For both versions of reverse charades the concept is very similar to the traditional version of charades… EXCEPT that the “team” acts out the word or phrase and only “one” person guesses. The game is only a slight change to the traditional game but LOADS of fun!

One thing we liked was the “boxed” format. Usually we play charades with everyone throwing ideas in a bowl and one person choosing from what everyone has written…then one person is the timer and so on. With this game everything is done for you (except acting out the silliness). We liked the addition of the double-sided word cards and sand timer…it took the hassle and thinking (time it takes to think of something to put in the bowl for the opposing team) out of the game!

This game will give us material to talk about for years! Everyone had fun with the silliness of the game. I actually think the adults had just as much fun as the kids laughing and acting out fun scenarios! We sincerely endorse this game if you are into silly family fun! If you have a family game night …this should be on your shelf!

For more information on the game and other products please visit: http://reversecharades.com/about-us/

Don’t forget to enter our Reverse Charades Review and Giveaway to win your own Reverse Charades game!

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.