We added a couple more critters to our ark farm…2 new kittens!
Meet our fluffykins:
Princess Moonstone, a fiesty female!
Severus, a mellow male!
Photos are my daughter’s.
Tag Archive for Family Stuff
Wordless Wednesday – 2 New Kittens
Kohl’s Cares Campaign – A Review
Kohl’s is one of my favorite stores… not only because they offer a great variety of fashion but because of their low prices and great deals! But Kohl’s is awesome because they also give back though their Kohl’s Cares campaign.
Kohl’s Cares Campaign features merchandise for children and 100 percent of the net profit benefits children’s health and education initiatives nationwide.
Items available through the Kohl’s cares campaign for the Summer 2012 campaign feature Vibrant Guy Parker-Rees illustrated Books, Coordinating plush toys, and tote bag.
Kohl’s Cares Cause Merchandise for Kids Books include:
- Down by the Cool of the Pool – Children will love to sing and dance along as the story comes alive with animal sounds and celebration!
- Giraffes Can’t Dance – This adorable story will teach children about the importance of individuality in a tale of a giraffe with two left feet.
- Dinosaurumpus! – Read this fun story aloud to children and watch their excitement as they get a glimpse into the life of a dinosaur. Who knew dinosaurs could dance? This book and coordinating plush are available exclusively at Kohls.com only.
NEW ITEM: Down by the Cool of the Pool tote bag – Resourceful and cute, this multi-purpose tote bag is great for the pool, a sleepover or even a trip to the grocery and features a vibrant illustration from Down by the Cool of the Pool – a must have for summer!
All items are ONLY $5.00 each
Kohl’s Cares Cause Merchandise for Grown-Ups
Kohl’s is treating adults to a tasty way to support children’s health and education with two cookbooks that are great for the entire family. Beat the summer heat and treat friends and family to a variety of homemade popsicles featured in POPS! Icy Treats for Everyone by Krystina Castella. Adults can also learn to master the art of outdoor grilling with Good Housekeeping: Grilling cookbook. Each cookbook is available for just $5 – a real value!
In addition to the merchandise program, Kohl’s Cares features the Kohl’s Cares Scholarship Program, which last year recognized more than 2,100 young volunteers with a total of $410,000 in scholarships and prizes; the Associates in Action program, which encourages associate volunteerism and provided more than $10 million in grants last year to youth-focused nonprofit organizations and fundraising gift cards for schools and youth-serving organizations. For more information, visit www.Kohls.com/Cares.
OUR REVIEW:
We were very excited to have the opportunity to review items from the Summer Kohl’s Cares Campaign. We received a plush monkey and two books (Giraffes Can’t Dance and Down by the Cool of the Pool). The monkey plush is so cute…my youngest (3 years old) totes it around everywhere and has deemed it her best friend. The books are also a favorite in our household. The stories are very cute and the illustrations are wonderful. The illustrations make the stories pop to life…my children absolutely love hearing the stories again and again.
I would not hesitate to purchase more from this series…not only because the kids love the books and plush but because all of the profit goes to charity. I actually went to Kohl’s today and stopped by the Kohl’s care campaign Kiosk to grab a tote bag…and to my disappointment the entire Kiosk was empty. So…this must be the hot campaign this summer. I hope my local Kohl’s restocks so that I can get some more goodies real soon! Stop by your local Kohl’s and check out what they have to offer!
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.
Green Smoothies & Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead
A couple of weeks ago at the homeschool convention the documenatry Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead came up in a couple of conversations, including one with my friend Audrey, who I was working with. It is a documentary about an Australian man who is overweight, became sick enough to be put on medications due to the health issues he was experiencing. He decides to go on a 60-day juice fast of green smoothies in order to improve his health. Juicing enables nutrients to get into the blood stream, unlike food that needs to be chewed, swallowed and digested.
Audrey is very health conscious, more so than me and had watched this documentary. I don’t think it was the movie that made her start drinking green smoothies as I have seen her drink carrot juice type drinks before. Well, she ended up bringing her older daughter and I a green smoothie on Saturday of the conference. I liked it and thought I could/should start drinking them too, but didn’t until nearly a week later.
Last weekend we finally watched the documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. It was really interesting. Inspiring even and amazing how much weight this man dropped. He was eventually able to get off all medications and get rid of his illness. He completely changed his lifestyle.
I ended up deciding I wanted to start drinking green smoothies. I wanted to do it for 60 days too, until I remembered that I am still breastfeeding and couldn’t. In a fast, like a juice fast, your body goes through what is called a detox. This is when your body releases toxins that are stored in your body. I would hate for my son to be affected by any toxins released into my breast milk as my body detoxed. That’s why I decided to start with one green smoothie a day and hopefully increase that after a while. I actually persuaded my husband that he needed to start with me! Because it’s much more fun to do something like this with someone rather than by myself. Yes, he actually agreed to start drinking green smoothies! He who has an aversion to any green vegetable except broccoli and kale soup! 😉 We also decided the children should join us. On Sunday all of us started drinking green smoothies….until my Bosch blender stopped working on Tuesday morning, but the part arrived yesterday so we are good to go again.
You can watch Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead too for free at this link: http://www.jointhereboot.com/
Green Smoothies
All I do for our green smoothies is use what we have on hand as far as vegetable and fruits go. At the beginning of the week we had carrot juice, bananas, grapes, orange juice, spinach (store bought), romaine lettuce, broccoli slaw, our spinach and arugula from the garden. I decided for the children and husband’s sake we’d start with the smoothies being on the sweeter side first and slowly decrease the amount of fruit we add.
I simply put the carrot juice in the blender first then added enough fruit and veggies to fill the blender, depending upon the consistency of the smoothie I would add more carrot or orange juice and blended it until it was smooth, not chunky. Everyone mostly liked the smoothies, even my almost 2 year old had 4 helpings of it! Though it was a little glass. We really only had 1 or 2 say something negative and 1 of those two outright didn’t like it, but we motivated him to drink it. My husband really liked the one batch that had more grapes in it, as he couldn’t taste the greens at all, even though the smoothie was indeed the color green.
Now I’m off to make our smoothies….
What have you been doing for your health and wellness?
Melissa & Doug Giveaway on Facebook!
I’m a HUGE Melissa & Doug fan and wanted to share about this great giveaway! Every week they pick a new winner for a great Melissa & Doug Camp Sunny Patch Product – virtual camp for you and your kids! I missed the first 2 weeks, eek! Forgive me! The sprinkler above was for the week ending the 19th. According to their terms page here’s the weekly line up:
6/21 to 6/26 – Spark Shark Floating Target Game
6/17 to 7/3 – Happy Giddy Bug Net
7/5 to 7/10 – Speck Seahorse Sand Ice Cream Set
7/12 to 7/17 – Winner’s Choice Role Play Costume
7/19 to 7/24 – The Box Girls Camp Bunk Box of Questions
7/26 to 7/31 – Backyard Explorer Role Play Costume
8/2 to 8/7 – Spark Shark Fish Hunt Pool Toy
8/9 to 8/14 – Activity Cones – Set of 8
8/16 to 8/21 – Trunki Prize Pack (includes 1 Trunki Suitcase, 1 Trunki Saddlebag, 1 Trunki Tote Bag, 3 packs of Trunki Stickers)
8/23 to 8/28 – USA Map Floor Puzzle
Let me know which Melissa & Doug Giveaway your kids would love!
BRAVE in Theatres June 22!
This is a rare Movie Monday about Brave…
Have you heard of Disney/Pixar’s new movie coming out next week? Have you watched any of the clips? I’ve received several to share but they usually get cast off for something else I have to work on. But today I am sharing one! Do the happy movie dance for me, ok? Ha-ha!
It is about a new princess, Merida, who seems to have a mind of her own. Very strong willed, passionate and courageous.
This looks like it will be quite the movie! What do you think of this hilarious new “Summer Games” clip?
It’s also a bit gross in parts with some little boy humor, eh?
Brave will be in Theaters near you on June 22. Check your local listings. In the mean time be sure to check out the movie’s Facebook page.
Father’s Day Frosty Weekend & Giveaway!
This weekend is Father’s Day! What plans do you have? We do not have anything fancy planned, just a quiet day at home. Simple is our motto these days. However, if you are still clamoring for a gift for dad, perhaps you would like to give a gift that gives back. Wendy’s has something that you and your whole family can do that will also help other families! It has a yummy factor too!
Now through Father’s Day, anyone can help children in foster care find permanent, loving homes. Wendy’s is inviting all of us to help continue it’s Father’s Day Frosty Weekend tradition – for the sixth year in a row! Wendy’s is raising money for Wendy’s Wonderful Kids. This is a program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, which focuses on helping children in foster care find their forever homes.
Here’s what you need to know:
Who: Everyone! And dad, too!
What: Help Wendy’s make a big donation to Wendy’s Wonderful Kids, the signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption that is dedicated to finding permanent adoptive families for children in foster care. They want to beat last year’s $1.4 million donation! Let’s help them get there!
When: Father’s Day Weekend (June 16 – 17)
How: There are three ways to donate:
1. Buy any Frosty product: On Saturday, June 16 and Sunday, June 17, for each Frosty product purchased, participating Wendy’s will donate 50-cents to Wendy’s Wonderful Kids. (includes the original, parfaits, shakes and floats).
2. Use a mobile-friendly website to check in at Wendy’s: Wendy’s will donate 50-cents for every customer that checks in at Wendy’s restaurants during Father’s Day Weekend (June 16 and 17 only) using Wendy’s special mobile-friendly website found at www.wendys.com/treatitforward .
3. Re-tweet: Now through Father’s Day, re-tweet one of @Wendys special Twitter posts with the hashtag #TreatItFwd—and Wendy’s will make a 50-cent donation. You can follow @Wendys on Twitter at https://twitter.com/wendys.
Giveaway!
Prize: 3 winners will each win a $7.00 Wendy’s gift card!
How to Enter: Simply enter the Rafflecopter choices below.
Faith and Family Reviews received a $10 Wendy’s gift card for our family’s use and a $7 Wendy’s gift card for the giveaway as a participant in this Wendy’s campaign through TheMotherhood.
Annie’s Homegrown – Bernie’s Summer Road Trip!
Annie’s Homegrown wants your pictures with Bernie the Bunny! They will choose 1 winner each week to win a road trip snack pack. If you one of the early entries you could get a Bernie decal! The contest ends July 31st – Don’t Forget to download Bernie!
If It’s Free! It’s for Me!
I found a new website! Watch out, it’s addicting! It’s called The Freecycle Network. Type in your location and see what people have to “offer” or “want” and they are all free! You will find almost ANYTHING on here. I’ve seen used oil, frozen meats, swing sets, baby items, beds, you name it! You will need an account – if you find and “offer” you’d like you then need to contact the person to set a time / place and go and pick it up! I’ve seen a few “curb alerts” (a curb alert is people that are putting stuff out on the curb or road) in my area. This is my kind of bargain shopping!
Editor’s Note: Our family has used Free Cycle and have got some pretty nice stuff – our recliner is one of them. We have also got work horses which have come in handy now that we have moved! Lots of neat and useful things have been found on Free Cycle. Beware of daily emails as they will over take your inbox! I finally had to unsubscribe due to the emails and my husband’s request! lol! I had him running out to pick up too many things! 😉
Stolen Bunny?
It has been a fairly uneventful week. I took an unexpected break from blogging due to life just happening, but so all of you know I will only be blogging 2-3x per week for the summer – probably Monday, Wednesday and Friday OR Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday some weeks. There’s just too many other things on my plate right now.
The one bit of excitement we did have – besides my daughter’s birthday in which we had a cook out – was Luna, our black and white bunny, went missing. Saturday morning we discovered her gone, plus some sheet metal that was outside the barn was gone as well. This led us to count the chickens and we discovered two of them missing! We ended up calling the police because we felt violated having things stolen, not to mention the fact having had someone on our property. 🙁 The dispatcher was like, “Livestock too?” The policeman who came out was just as baffled as we were, but talked to our neighbors and said he’d file a report in case other thefts in the area had occurred, just in case any of them ended up being related somehow. He did think it was probably local.
Photo courtesy of my daughter.
The funny thing is shortly after the policeman left Luna came hopping across the road and into our field where some of the children were doing their chores. Weird. We didn’t think the bunny had escaped because of the way the cage was so bent and surely the bunny could not have bent up its cage door. However, the bunny went missing again Saturday night even after we moved the bunnies up closer to the house. Yesterday the children spotted her in the corn field behind our house. We are not allowed in the corn field due to the agreement with our landlords and the farmer renting the field, so the children made a trap with apples to lure Luna home. Thankfully she fell for it and they caught her again. We are still very confused by it all and probably will never know what really happened.
It made us wonder about our current location since our property is very accessible and in plain site of a major road, even though we are rural – the city police would not even come out, we had to go through the county sheriff’s department. All of this has made us feel unsafe. Not that we want to move, but if we found something in this area off the main “drag” we probably would consider it.
How about you, ever had anything stolen? Feel free to share in the comments below.
Pottery Barn Summer Reading Challenge
*Pictures are from the Pottery Barn Website*
Select a book, track your child’s progress with the book(s), get a reward! Sounds good to me.
With summer nearing, it’s hard to keep your child still reading. Here’s an incentive and a reading challenge! Download the book list, progress chart, a certificate from Pottery Barn’s Website ( http://www.potterybarnkids.com/design-studio/articles/summer-reading-challenge.html ). Once your reading is done and tracked, you then print a certificate for your child and visit your local Pottery Barn and your child will receive a book! You can also enter to win a backpack with books!
Happy Reading!
