Tag Archive for Cleaning

CLOSED Week 3 Giveaway of Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive!

Posted by html404 on April 25, 2011
in All Natural Products, Cleaning, Contests, Giveaways, Giving Back/Charity

Congratulations to Tamara for winning the Week 3 giveaway for Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive!

Thanks to all who entered and to Scott Naturals and TheMotherhood for sponsoring this giveaway! #12 winner chosen by Random.org.

Please note this week’s giveaway ends on Saturday night instead of Sunday night this week due to having to get next week’s giveaway winner’s info in by next Friday, May 6th!

Green Cleaning

Over the years of our journey to using safer, green products in our home, I have eliminated many of the chemical products in our home – going back to using what many of our grandmothers and maybe even mothers used. I do not remember my mother using very many chemical based cleaning products in our home growing up, now that I think about it.

Now, we use the basics of soap, water, baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice and thieves cleaner. This not only saves us money but is better for health.

Hot soapy water is enough to clean most things, it is usually the tougher stains that need a little more to get surfaces or floors clean, and a bit of muscle behind your scrub brush.

Baking Soda is an abrasive substance and is very good at scrubbing out dirt and grim with either vinegar or lemon juice. We can get strawberry stains out of the counter tops with lemon juice and baking soda. This is also a good way to clean the tub and grout around the tub tiles, floor or toilet. Plus baking soda is a deodorizer too.

Thieves Cleaner is a green cleaner. As many of you know we have used thieves cleaner and essential oils since discovering mold in our home (if you do not know this story click on the tab at the top of the page that says, “Health Scents”). We continue to use it because we like it. It smells good and is safe for even the children to use. Plus it is effective in hindering the growth of mold. I use it to clean our mirrors, windows, floors, walls, sinks, and tub. It also gets out some stains if used in its concentrated form. Not to mention the fact that I should be using it around my window sills where condensation collects during the winter months, but have been rather slack this year. 🙁

Essential Oils. We diffuse essential oils in our home to purify the air and for the aromatherapy.

Vinegar. I you happen to be one of those people who do not like the smell of vinegar or how it makes your home smell…join the club! You can mix a couple of drops of your favorite essential oils in with the vinegar to give it a better aroma.

God wants us to take care of what He has blessed us with the land, our earthly possessions and our families. Therefore, it is important to choose cleaning products that are not only good for the earth but for our the health of our families too.

Week 2 Winner

Winner of Week 2 Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive Giveaway is……….

momznite!!!!!!!!! Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations to momznite! # 7 as chosen by Random.org.

Thanks to all who entered and to Scott Naturals and TheMotherhood.com for providing this great prize package!

Week 3 Giveaway of Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive!

A 12 pack of toilet paper, a 6 pack of paper towel, a package of napkins and flushable moist wipes. Cool, eh? Yeah, we thought so too!

You may also choose to participate in the Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive between now and September 30 and enter to win a Ford Fusion hybrid car! Once you pledge to take the 4-Week Test Drive, coupons for each product are available –http://www.scottbrand.com/community/savings/scott

Scott’s Press Release says:

According to a recent poll, one third of consumers believe eco-friendly products don’t work as well as “regular” ones. That’s why Scott Naturals is on a mission to get people to rethink their notion of environmentally friendly products. As the world’s first line of “hybrid” paper products, including bath tissue, paper towels, flushable moist wipes and napkins, the Scott Naturals brand combines the green benefits of recycled fiber with the quality people want, making it easy to take a green step forward. If every American pledged to use Scott Naturals for four weeks, it would save two million trees. Starting on April 4, as part of the “Take the 4-Week Test Drive Sweepstakes,” Scott Naturals began challenging Americans to test out its line of hybrid paper products for four weeks and enter for a chance to win a new hybrid sedan.

Our Review of Scott Naturals Paper Towels

We were satisfied with the performance of Scott Naturals paper towels. They are comparable to other brands we have used. Scott Naturals are fairly thick and absorbent. They function well when used for cleaning. They do not seem to tear too easily. However, they have a pretty rough texture to use for napkins (if you have ever done that when you have ran out of regular paper napkins!) or to wipe a child’s face while dry, but are fine if moistened a bit.

Overall we are very satisfied with Scott Naturals paper towels.

The Giveaway

Enter to win a Scott Naturals paper products!

Mandatory Entry: Tell me which products you want to try the most from Scott!

Extra Entries (Please be sure and leave a comment and link for extra entries):

5 Entries: Visit http://www.ScottBrand.com/4WeekTestDrive to help increase the amount Scott Brand will donate to National Wildlife Federation. Scott Naturals will donate $1 per unique click to the NWF, up to $25,000. You can do this as many times as you like!

1 Entry:Follow Faith and Family Reviews On Twitter

1 Entry:Like/Friend Faith and Family Reviews on Facebook.

1 Entry: Like Scott Naturals on Facebook and leave a comment on their wall saying- Faith and Family Reviews sent me.

2 Entries: Follow Faith and Family Reviews on Google Friend Connect (on the our right side bar).

2 Entries: Tweet about this giveaway. Up to three tweets per day. Include a separate comment for each and your tweet url with your comment. You may write your own tweet or use this one:

Enter Week 3 #ScottNaturals paper products! http://bit.ly/ScottNaturalsGiveawayWeek3 @faithfamilyrevw! Please share! #ScottTestDrive #Win

5 Entries: Blog about this giveaway and link back this post.

1 Entry: For every comment you leave anywhere else on this blog, but please leave a link with your comment!

Details:

This giveaway will run from April 25th, 2011 to April 30th, 2011 (Please note that it is Saturday night not Sunday night this week!) at midnight CST. The winner will be chosen through Random.org. Scott will send one winner their prize. Winner will be contacted via email on or before April 27th, 2011 and will be asked for their contact and other pertinent info. Winners will have 48 hours to send me their e-mail at [ffr] [giveaways] [at] [gmail] [dot] [com] (without spaces and parenthesis). Please note: This giveaway is offered to USA only.

Thanks and have fun!

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review and is being compensated by Scott Naturals andTheMotherhood. 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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Spring Cleaning: A Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on March 28, 2011
in Cleaning, Monday Motivation, Organization

On Saturday my five older children were away with my husband at the Liberty Day conference for a history, fun filled day. They came home animated and talking non-stop about how much fun they had, who they got to talk to and what dresses they wanted to make for next year!

Meanwhile back on the home front I was home with the three younger ones. It is not very often I have just the three younger ones by myself. My what fun we had! I did a little craft with them – stay tuned this Thursday for a new thirfty tip. We read, we colored, we had a picnic lunch and supper and I even managed to clean when the little ones played.

Organization Brings Peace

While the children played, I got the boys room cleaned and organized. Packed away clothes, got a couple bags ready to give away and summer clothes are standing by.

I don’t know about you, but when things are neat, clean and organized I am at peace. Chaos runs rampant in our home with ten people doing ten different things and I relish in the times when there is calm and I get to have things the way I like them.

Spring Cleaning is My Monday Motivation

This week spring cleaning is my Monday motivation. After getting the boys room organized, I decide it was time for spring cleaning before the warm weather is here to stay.

This morning I was able to get our linen closet neat and tidy. It was overflowing due to certain little people just shoving things in there without folding them.

The upstairs bathroom got cleaned over the past three days.

Two bedrooms, the bathroom/laundry room and the rest of the downstairs left. Slow and steady wins the race, right? I am feeling good about our progress so far and am hoping we can get the cobwebs vacuumed, curtains washed and really clean house by the end of the week, if not before.

How about you, have you started any spring cleaning or spring projects around your house? If so, please leave a comment to share what you have been working on!

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Easy Ways to Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly

Posted by html404 on January 20, 2011
in Cleaning, Eco Friendly Products

Easy Ways to Make Your Home More Eco-Friendly

We all want to do our part to protect the environment and preserve what God has given us, but without a large hole in our pocket book. It may seem difficult, if not impossible with the high cost of eco-friendly products these days. But doing your part doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. Baby steps in the right direction make a big difference, you just have to know which ones to take.

Use less water.

Saving water is all about small steps, here are a few that will help save big.

– Shut off the water while you brush your teeth
– Take showers that are a minute or two shorter
– Only flush the toilet when you need to
– Only run full loads of laundry and dishes
– Buy from sustainable producers. These are farmers, ranchers, and other producers that use techniques that pollute less and use less water. You can do some research online or ask at your local organic market to find these products.

Use less energy.

If you don’t have the money to buy a hybrid car or convert your house to solar power, you can make a big difference with small changes like these:

– Buy energy efficient appliances. They may be more expensive, but in the long run make up for the increased cost in lower energy bills.
– Unplug chargers when you’re not using them. Cell phone and other chargers use up powers even if there’s nothing attached to them.
– Put devices with remotes, like T.V.s, VCRs, and stereos, on a power strip and turn it off when you’re not using them. These devices use a lot of power to run the remote receiver even when the device is off.
– Walk or ride your bike for short trips.
– Buy local products. It takes energy to transport food and other products across the country. Buying local not only supports your local economy, it helps them use less energy. Support small, local farms!

When it comes to saving energy and water, it’s a great idea to get the kids involved. You can even make it a game. Have them track how much water and electricity everyone is using. You can compete to see who uses the least water. You can often count on your kids to help keep you on track when given the task.

Reuse.

Most of us know the three R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle, but when we work on conserving, we often leave reuse out of the picture. While you can often find tips on how to reuse common products from other people, what you need most is creativity. With a little thought there are many items around your home that can be reused – toilet paper holders can be used to sow seeds for the vegetable patch. And old yogurt containers can be cut into strip to make plant labels. Old food jars can be refilled with homemade foods or can make great impromptu vases.

Use environmentally friendly products. When you go to the grocery store, you probably see more and more “natural” or “eco friendly” products every time. There are generally two big problems with these products: 1. Just because they’re more natural than regular products, doesn’t mean they’re entirely natural. 2, They’re often expensive.

If you want inexpensive, natural, safe products, why not just make them yourself? Vinegar is a great way to clean and disinfect glass and other surfaces. Need to remove stubborn stains? Just add some baking soda to your vinegar cleaner. Some quick searching online will lead you to hundreds of other natural safe home-made cleaning products.

We all knowing that going green means better for the environment, but it’s also better for you. Conserving resources also helps save you money, which is something most of us are happy to accomplish for our families.

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on November 29, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Cleaning

Sorry I missed last week’s Monday Motivation, but things really haven’t changed much. We had a busy week working on blog stuff, giveaways, writing reviews, besides getting ready for Thanksgiving. Plus this week I am back to work full throttle with my client I took some time off from (but still worked 4-8 hours/week so it really wasn’t a vacation. It was a semi vacation.)

Monday Motivation two weeks ago:

~ Cleaning and purging. Cleaning Walls and hoping to start painting! But I fully realize that my aspirations are much greater than I could ever humanly accomplish with this large family of mine. So by God’s grace, I will get done what I am meant to get done. Some of the walls got cleaned….and got dirtied again…as far as we’ve got. I received a Merry Maids gift card in the mail that I fully intend to use in December! Thanks to the Munchkins, Inc. (I cannot even remember what I did, but I did something in the blogging world and forgot about this little stipend of a Merry Maids gift card. What a wonderful surprise to find that envelope in the mail! I have never had a cleaning company come in and clean my home so this will be a new experience. I feel like I have to clean in order for them to clean! Bizzare, I know. Anyone ever use a cleaning service before?

~ I start a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) course this week and have a few meetings away from home. Thankfully, my husband’s work schedule is flexible that he is able to be with the children while I am gone.This went really well. Sir Eats Alot did great at my four hour meeting and again in the evening during my class. The class is going to be very beneficial, I think. Looking forward to the next 8 or 9 classes spread out over the next few months.

~ Finish up our business plan finally and finally submit it. This is my weekdend project.

~ Get to the Thrift Store. Nope, didn’t get there. Too many things at home to keep us busy.

~ 77Kids holiday charity event! Looking forward to that! Thanks to The Motherhood and 77Kids. As you already know, we enjoyed this outing very much.

Hope you all are staying motivated as we head into winter. I’d love to hear some of your ideas for staying on top of things and keeping your motivation running so you remain an effective mommy/parent/friend/sister/daughter etc.

This week’s Motivation:

~ Ongoing: Cleaning and purging. Cleaning Walls and hoping to start painting! But I fully realize that my aspirations are much greater than I could ever humanly accomplish with this large family of mine. So by God’s grace, I will get done what I am meant to get done.

~ Finish up our business plan finally and finally submit it. I really mean it this time. My laptop crashed this week so I even paid to have my hard drive ripped so I could finish it this past weekend. My goal is November 30th at the latest.

~ Get to the Thrift Store and YMCA.

~ Play Christmas music every day and watch at least one classic Christmas movie.

~ Hopefully get my laptop back in one piece saving on the expense of purchasing another one. If we do have to purchase another one, we are going to get a Mac (Apple MacIntosh). We’ve heard how little they crash.

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on November 8, 2010
in Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

Ok, I missed last week’s motivation, but I was trying to start my vacation, well, from one client, however, I kept myself busy with another client’s stuff and farm and family stuff! What can I say? I can always find something to do! We even went to see a house near where we hope/plan to farm next year, but we really need to get this house fixed up before we can even try show it!

Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ This week I am very thankful for two friends, Sarah and Professor, who have agreed to review products and write reviews. As an introduction, Sarah is our pastor’s wife, mom to seven and a former nurse. She enjoys gardening, healthy living and eating. Professor is my neighbor and friend who is mommy to three and an English Professor at the University of Phoenix online.

~ Since we were so busy last week, this week we will be staying home except for our outings to the YMCA to swim, which we all love. The children are improving. Two of them passed the swim test to swim in the deep end, so now they can really work on their endurance. We might even try the open rock climb this week. Rock climbing is on the agenda for this week! And the boys are now going under water, one of the girls has been brave enough to go off the diving board so our YMCA membership has now become our Christmas gift to ourselves!

~ Getting some client work done and preparing for some time off from one client for the month of November. Puttering on other business projects. This is ongoing.

~ Hopefully complete and submit our business plan to the Farm Business Development Center.This is ongoing as I figure out our projected income and expenses! The end is nearer than it was though.

~ Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. So thankful we live in a small house that it will just take a little direction and participation from yours truly to hopefully get things in tip-top shape, well, as much as they can be with ten people living in under 1200 sq. ft! We’d love to entertain over the holidays and are simply not comfortable doing so until we purge and clean! The children have worked hard to keep things going while I was pregnant, worked and healed from having Sir Eats Alot, but I am well now and raring to go! Let’s see how much Sir Eats Alot cooperates. Ongoing, ongoing, ongoing…..

~ We are also revising Tuesday’s column to include health posts, so it will be Health & Garden Tuesday. I know we all desire to remain healthy during the winter season, so we hope to share what we are learning about building up our immune system and preventive ideas as well. Have some extra things to share that others have learned or are learning in this column as well. I just have to get the posts written up.

This week’s Motivation:

~ Swimming.

~ Field trip to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry.

~ Lunch with Friends.

~ Getting rid of a mouse critter in our garage! One of the girls spotted it this morning….eeeewwwwwwww!

~ Regular every day stuff – refereeing, teaching, training children to be the best they can be with God’s help.

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on October 25, 2010
in Baby Products, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ This week we have a mommy blogging event that TheMotherhood.com and Wendy’s have coordinated. So we will be going to lunch with grandma and other mommy bloggers. As I already stated, this went very well. I think we bloggers and our friends and family packed out Wendy’s!

~ We also have another CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Agricultural Farmer Training) Field Day to attend. Looking forward to that. Besides getting a little lost due to not knowing the road I needed to be on turned right – no signs saying it did so – we enjoyed the afternoon outside in the fresh air learning about tomatoes, the farm, meeting new people and talking about farming.

~ Writing our business plan and submitting it is a priority so we can see where it takes us and hopefully allow us to plan for the approaching new year. Still working on this after a full week last week! Ugh, gotta get it done.

~ De-junk. Organize. We already have two big bags and a box to giveaway and I hope to have more before Vietnam Vets pick up comes this week. We just don’t want to be cleaning stuff we don’t need. It is so crucial for our sanity to get down to bare minimum. Just the basics here please. But do you know how hard it is? Hard. Believe me! If you are the praying kind, please pray that we discover what our bare minimum is for our family and home. We got rid of a bunch of things, but have a lot more to sift through, so this is ongoing.

This week’s Motivation:

~ Getting some client work done and preparing for some time off from one client for the month of November. Puttering on other business projects.

~ Hopefully complete and submit our business plan to the Farm Business Development Center.

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Aroma Home Screen Wipe

Posted by html404 on September 18, 2010
in Product Guides 2010, Technology/Electronics

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.

About Aromatherapy

Aromatherapy has been used for healing since the first century. In 1937, the word “aromatherapy” first appeared in print in a French book on the subject: Aromatherapie: Les Huiles Essentielles, Hormones Vegetales, by a chemist named Rene-Maurice Gattefosse.

Used primarily to alter mood or cognitive function, aromatherapy is known to have positive therapeutic effects on adults and children alike. Enhanced relaxation is one of the most popular and effective uses of applied aromatherapy. The basic mechanism is the influence of aroma on the brain through the olfactory system.

Source: US National Library of Medicine and How Stuff Works

About Aroma Home Screen Wipe

These fun animal Screen Wipes have a chamois tummy and will clean and help reduce static on all computer monitors, laptops, TV/LCD screens and even car windscreens! They comes with a little zest of fragrance.

Available in sixteen fun animal designs these are an ideal gift for the person who has everything. The designs are: Pig, Lion, Cow, Bunny, Duck, Poodle, Monkey, Gorilla, Giraffe, Elephant, Brown Horse, Black and White Horse, Tiger, Schnauzer, Cat, and Westie. You may buy them here for $11.99 each.

Our Review

Our family has been using aromatherapy via essential oils for the last couple of years and have seen the positive affects they have on our family. They do indeed soothe and relax. We also appreciate their beneficial medicinal properties as well. So when the Aroma Home Screen Wipes came across our inbox when we were doing our Back to School Product Guide, we were interested in learning more about them. We were sent the pig screen wipe to review. We all thought it was cute, and many of the children asked if they could have it for a stuffed animal! 🙂

Personally, I thought this screen wipe was very sweet and cute. The pig worked well on our computers and my daughter liked it for her note/net book. I loved the smell of the screen wipe – a zest of lemon fragrance – but found that the fragrance isn’t long lasting. That didn’t affect how it cleaned our computer screens though. It cleaned the computers very well of dust particles and did help to remove some static. But if you happen to have little hands that get a sticky spot on your screen on occasion the screen wipe does not work so well for those spots that require a little extra rubbing.

The screen wipe requires sponge cleaning only, so I am still not sure how well that will work over the long term. Therefore, the screen wipe may need to be replaced eventually once piggy’s tummy is pretty dirty and is found to no longer clean screens as well as it once did. That’s just my opinion though, just having the screen wipe for a month.

My younger daughter just came in and saw Aroma Home’s website pulled up and said, “Oh, I want those for stuffed animals! (the screen wipes!)” However, these cute screen wipes are not toys.

To view the whole selection of Aroma Home’s screen wipes, please visit http://www.aromahome.com/gb/screen_wipes.asp

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on September 13, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

mondaybutton

Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Try and adopt a new work schedule amidst nursing a newborn and maybe even a daily walk.

~ Try and start getting caught up on my back log.

~ My nesting seems to have kicked in postpartum and I want to purge our house of clutter and things that just take up our time. Things that are not adding value to our lives. Things like extra clothing and stuff we seem to move around and clean but do not necessarily need. Our house is waaaaay too small to have a bunch of stuff AND ten people, so the stuff has to go since the people are here to stay!

~ One of our computer desks have completely fallen apart, so I have to clean off the cluttered one to fit the desk top PC and find a new place for the cluttered mess! Ughhhhh….we’ve been wanting to do this for the past week, but garbage day is tomorrow so it really needs to be done today.

That’s about it. I could add more, but I am trying to only bite off what I can chew.

This week’s Motivation:

It looks like I am working on the same list as last week’s! I got work done for clients but my own blog stuff took a back seat and so did housework and cleaning….sooooo my list is the same. That makes for an easy post today, doesn’t it?! And I honestly was not planning to do that until I re-read last week’s post.

Gotta run as I have children that need the desktop, our oldest needs the laptop and I need to run to the bathroom (too much info, I know!) before I sit down for another marathon nursing session with Sir Eats Alot. Speaking of Sir Eats Alot, here’s a photo from today:

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Spring is Here!

Posted by html404 on April 6, 2010
in Free Stuff

I have several reviews to get posted, but am finding it hard to get them written up amidst everything else we are currently involved in! We have been having gorgeous weather – 70-80 degrees most of last week. This week we were expecting some of the same this week, but it’s been raining with thunderstorms most of the time.

April 2009 002

We had an “episode” last week, our two year old son gave us a scare with DeCon. My husband had brought home his mom’s shop vac, which she keeps in her garage where she puts down DeCon to control the mice population. There happened to be some on the shop vac and my husband found the DeCon on our floor beside Noah after bringing the shop vac into the house. It was a scary few days, but we are thankful to report that he is just fine. Whew. My poor husband was kicking himself, but it is one of those things that happened…and put our hearts in our throats and our emotions on our sleeves just thinking about losing Noah.

Then we were fortunate to come across a free upright freezer, which my husband and his brother picked up and got set up in record time in our garage. Now we have two upright freezers to help store food for our growing family.

We also came across some farm property for rent. Just land for rent, no house as it is already rented out, but if we were to rent a couple of acres we’d be able to put up a huge family vegetable garden to help feed this crew of ours. We are going to see the property tomorrow, which is fairly close to our house. So I am in “farm mode” again as I try to finish up our online farminars with PracticalFarmers.org, set up our mentorship through our Farm Beginnings facilitator (for those of you unaware, this past winter we won a full scholarship to Stateline Farm Beginnings for beginning farmers and those interested in farming). April 2009 023

So, if I you are wondering why I haven’t posted, you now know why, as this is all in addition to what I do at home for our homeschool and for our clients! Plus, we began our deep cleaning of our garage which desperately needs finishing so we can make room for this new little person growing inside my womb – he or she has begun to make more movements that are more noticeable to me! It is such a wonderful feeling! The weather and my husband’s health has not been very cooperative this week to get the garage done. 🙁