Science Diet Ideal Balance Dog Food – A BzzAgent Opportunity

I’m sure you remember I joined BzzAgent a while back.  Well, I just got to test Science Diet Ideal Balance Dog Food – Chicken & Potato Dinner.  My dog Max loves it!  I don’t feed my family processed leftovers, so why should I feed my dog it?  The first ingredient of his new food is Chicken.  The Ideal Balance food is grain-free too!  This food does not have corn, wheat, soy, beef, artificial colors or flavors.  Ideal Balance does have fruit, veggies including cranberries, along with of course chicken.  My little guy Max can have a sensitive stomach to certain foods.  He’s in love with his new food.  Yes it can get pricey, but it’s a lot less expensive than vet visits.  They also have this food available for cats!  Here’s a picture of Max.


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2012 Wildflower Reference Guide

This is great for you and your kids.  I can see two plus’ to this already!

A)  You need to be outside to use this reference guide

B)  You and your kids are learning and it’s fun! Kinda like a treasure hunt!

Go an get your Wildflower Reference Guide at http://shop.wildseedfarms.com/inforequest.asp


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Free Bloomin’ Onion at Outback!

Tuesday, March 20th is the first day of Spring!  Hooray!  Go and celebrate with a FREE Bloomin’ Onion from Outback Steakhouse!

Here’s what you need to do!  Tell your server that you’re there to “Bloom Into Spring”.  That’s it!

There are other coupons on their site also!

Happy Spring!


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$1000 Grand Event Giveaway is Here! Enter Today!

It has been fun (and time consuming ;)) to participate in many blog hops and joint giveaways with other bloggers. It has been very beneficial to my blog all the way around. Meeting new people, finding new blogs and offering YOU a way to win some great prizes or CASH! Without further adieu here are the details for the $1000 Grand Event Giveway! Enter today!

ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR GIVEAWAY!

You know you neeeeed it…

Well a great group of bloggers have come together to give it to you!

Welcome to the Grand Event Cash Giveaway!

1 Grand Prize: $500

1 2nd Place Prize: $250

5 3rd Place Prizes: $50

Moms with Voices Media is hosting the GRAND Event Cash Giveaway. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can be entered to win a Grand Prize amount of $500, Second Place Prize of $250, or FIVE third place prized of $50!

This giveaway runs from 12:01 AM 3/17/2012 – 11:59 PM 3/31/2012. With so many different ways to enter, why not come back and do a few each day along with your daily entries!

RAFFLECOPTER FORM


a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway


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Couponing for Good: A Donation to Turning Point #CBias #AllYouCFK

I never thought about couponing for charity until I became involved in the Champion For Kids All You Couponing for Good campaign. Without a doubt it is an awesome idea, one I want our family to implement on regularly basis, which is why I am trying to get myself and my crew organized to hopefully do a monthly donation. Ask me next month to see if I have followed through! Better put it on my calendar to remind myself…..seriously.


Photo above shows most of the things we gave, but chips, tomato sauce and juice boxes are missing.

Shopping & Donating

If you haven’t read my first post about our shopping trip for our donation items, please read it here and see my complete shopping trip here. I was considering giving our goodies to our local food pantry but because I don’t have a car during the day, I decided to give our couponing for good donation to Turning Point instead because their hours were easier to coordinate with my husband’s work schedule.

Women’s Shelter

This week my children have all been sick in one form or another so unfortunately they did not go to the shelter with me. 🙁 Oh some of them wanted to but I really didn’t want to be the cause of others getting sick with runny noses, stuffiness, wooziness/dizziness and headaches! We’ll just keep those germ bugs to ourselves! Yesterday my husband was home all day because I had a meeting and needed the car, so after that was over my oldest helped me load up the car with what we had already purchased at Walmart, juice boxes and juice/vegetable boxes I picked up at Costco, plus a few extras I took from our own pantry. Then I drove to Turning Point to drop off our goodies. Champions for Kids encourages SIMPLE service projects like this to help children (and women in this case) in our own communities.

I have never been to a women’s and children’s shelter before but was kind of surprised at the surveillance cameras outside, the door buzzer and locked door. I found it sad and scary – not for me, but for the women and children (workers too) who sought refuge there. The building was well taken care of and clean. I am always timid when it comes to asking if someone would mind me taking their picture so I never did ask the ladies working there. Maybe one day I will once I get to know them better. It might be a great blog post to interview them!

After I rang the buzzer and was let inside, the woman who let me in asked if I needed a cart, which I was grateful for and I only dumped one bag off the cart while rolling it in! I had to carry two bags, but the lady took those from me when I reached the door that she so kindly held open for me.

Our donation was appreciated and I was told to keep an eye on their website to stay current with their needs. It felt good to help a local organization assisting women and children in need of shelter from domestic abuse and violence.

Champions for Kids

To learn more about Champions for Kids visit:
Website: http://championsforkids.org/
Twitter Handle: https://twitter.com/#!/champions4kids
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ChampionsForKids

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own. #CBias #AllYouCFK


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Are You Green Contest

SWF ice-cream giveaway
Get your button here

Are you green? Do you love ice cream? I do! This is a fun little contest by one of my favorite authors Suzanne Woods Fisher. Have fun!


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#HealthyHabits & Oral Care Challenge Update

Nearly a month ago we started the Healthy Habits & Oral Care Challenge, if you missed my first post about the Healthy Habits & Oral Care Challenge, please go back and read it here. We had our ups and downs of changing our individual daily habits, after all isn’t that why we give a challenge at least 30 days? I have heard some say it takes up to 90 days to successfully start a new habit or break an old one, while others say 2 weeks. Who’s to say, right? We are all different.

Depending on my work schedule, I improved my goal of getting back to brushing 2x/day and flossing at least 1x/day, even though I know our panel of experts recommended flossing 2x/day, but I wasn’t flossing at much, if any before the challenge. I was pretty much able to rinse 1-2x/day as well, just not consistent with the 2x/day recommendation.

My children were pretty stellar and I think some advancement has been made with certain ones that were really struggling. Consistency is key. A couple of the children really did not care for the mouthwash or were afraid of swallowing it (they know too much and read labels!). Another one of my children thought the toothbrush she had was too soft or not soft enough? I cannot remember now and she’s in bed early because she’s sick. 🙁 But that is just a personal preference.

I really liked the flavor of the alcohol-free mouthwash we got. Not sure if my husband even tried it (I don’t keep tabs on his oral care! :)), he’s putting the little ones to bed so I can work so I cannot really ask him right now! I think overall everyone in our family has been pleased with the experience. It has made us more aware of how important it is to be a good example of practicing healthy habits to the younger children and showing them good oral care.

Tips on Getting Your Kids to Brush, Floss and Rinse

● Make oral care fun (e.g., make it a game; brush, floss and rinse to music; etc).
● Reward their behavior (e.g., give gold stars for good oral care).
● Show, don’t tell – make oral care a family affair.
● Involve them in their own oral care routine by providing products like LISTERINE® Smart Rinse, which can make the daily routine more fun,
provides 12-hour cavity protection for kids and strengthens teeth 99 percent better than brushing alone.

These tips were provided by Dr. Kaneta Lott, DDS (pediatric dentist).

Need oral care products? Shop here.

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing and participating in the Healthy Habits for a Lifetime Oral Care Challenge. We are being compensated by Johnson & Johnson and TheMotherhood. 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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Kids Consignment Sales!!

Don’t pay full price!!!  Kids grow in leaps and bounds, why pay full price when they just grow out of them within a few months?!  I found this site this morning  http://kidsconsignmentsales.com/.  You choose your state and it gives the current sales coming up!  In fact, I thought I knew about all the sales in my area.  Low and behold, there’s another one, really close to my home.  There are lots of sale starting soon for spring & summer clothes.  I’m heading to one this afternoon!  I love these types of sales and I hope you can get some good buys in your area too!


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How to Shoot a BB Gun – The Joys of Living in the Country

Our oldest son has challenged us more in homeschooling than any of our girls ever did and in order to get him to read we had to come up with certain incentives that were of interest to him and made him want to read for the end result. For him it was getting a BB gun. Even the promise of a $50 bill did not motivate him! He had to read a certain amount from January until his birthday in February then he could have his BB gun. He made the goal and on his birthday or the day after my husband took him to Farm & Fleet to buy a BB gun. However, he could not shoot his BB gun until he finished a certain amount of books….let’s just say he kicked his reading up a notch because this past Sunday he (and the rest of the family too) got to shoot his BB gun. The joys of living in the country affords us new experiences we would never had if we still lived in our townhouse subdivision and I have to say our children are happier for the change!

The Target
– Nothing fancy mind you, but it worked for us!

The Master Teacher – An awesome Dad! (a must-have!)

The Students – Eager boys (and girls in our family’s case)

Teaching Safety – Especially to our younger crew (and NO we did NOT shoot at the target with them behind it! That’s why we were teaching THEM about safety as cute as they were trying to hid behind the box!)

Ready, Aim, Fire! – The REAL fun!

That about says it all! My husband was the only one to hit the target. Our two sons and one of our daughters hit the box when my husband decided that might be an easier target to start with. The rest of us missed!


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Wordless Wednesday – Who Do You See?


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