Our Babydoll ram has been losing some of his fleece. Our oldest son decided to collect it and wash it.
Steps to follow when washing Babydoll sheep wool:
1. Filled the sink with hot, hot water. He said he got it up to 180′ F.
2. Then stir wool around.
3. Put a tiny bit of dish soap or laundry detergent in the water. Keep stirring. Not too hard.
4. Change the water. Repeat the process.
5. Lay out to dry on top of dryer.
Here is what it looked like:
Kind of disgusting, isn’t it?
Calling all Rainbow loom lovers! There is a great new product out on the market to use to organize and display your creations! The Original LOOM BOOM!
This is a great product to create, collect, and store your rainbow loom creations! You can stack your bracelets on one the handle Loom Boom and then showcase them , collect them, or bring them…anywhere you want!
We were elated to be able to review the loom boom! Our house is overrun with bracelets and rubber bands from the rainbow loom craze! We have 3 rainbow looms in our house so you can imagine our stock of bracelets!
We LOVE the fact that the Loom Boom is portable and big enough to store the bracelets and he collection tray at the bottom is great for storing unused rubber bands, loom rings or projects in the making!
The other fact I liked as a mom was that it was invented by a child! How great to be able to say to my children that a fellow rainbow loom enthusiast invented this product!
We have been looking for something similar and my daughter had even dabbled in making a holder out of duct tape but once we got a hold of this product we were sold! This is such a great invention!
Loom Boom can be found at your local Learning Express or Michael’s stores. I have also seen it at Amazon and Toysrus.com!
To find out more about the Loom Boom please visit http://theloomboom.com/
Ah! Love is in the air – Valentine’s Day is coming!
I remember the days of being Sweethearts – going out to dinner, flowers, & candy. My…My… can things change once kids enter the picture. Valentine’s Day has changed in our house, we now celebrate as a family. Here’s a few inexpensive ways to make Valentine’s Day a family event!
1.) Make heart pancakes for breakfast – Make your favorite pancake mix, add a few drops of red food coloring. Stir up the batter good and cook them. When they are done cooking, take a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out your heart pancakes.
2.) Heart shaped sandwiches for lunch – This is a good craft as well as lunch. Build your favorite sandwich and then use the heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out a really cute sandwich.
3.) You need flowers for Valentine’s Day – Material needed: a few sheets of colored tissue paper and a pipe cleaner for each flower. Take the tissue paper and lay them on top of one another and then twist a pipe cleaner in the middle. Fluff out the tissue paper to make tissue flowers.
4.) You can’t have Valentine’s Day without chocolate – My favorite is chocolate covered strawberries. Buy strawberries at your local store and a bag or a few bars of your favorite chocolate. Using a microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate in 30 second intervals at first. Stir the chocolate. Once the chocolate starts to melt only microwave about 10 seconds or less, be careful not to burn the chocolate. Use oven mitts to take the chocolate out of the microwave, it will be very hot. Then dip your washed & dried strawberries into the chocolate, I sometimes use a spoon to coat the berry. Place the chocolate strawberry on wax paper to dry.
Enjoy celebrating Valentine’s Day as a family!
Enter Melissa & Doug’s “Terrific 25 Gifts” giveaway! They are giving away one item everyday (started November 5th), then on “Black Friday” one lucky person will all 25 gifts!
Here are just 1 of the prizes you could win! It’s the Turn & Tell Wooden Clock
Head over to Melissa & Doug’s Facebook Page today, here is the link! www.Facebook.com/MelissaAndDoug . GOOD LUCK! Let us know if you win!
Hobbies are usually our way of doing something we enjoy in our spare time. What’s spare time you ask? Good question! But that’s not what my post is about. I have had a lot of hobbies over the years, nothing overly serious or out of this world but things I have enjoyed and gained pleasure from.
Childhood Hobbies
When I was growing up I was a part of Girl Guides and 4-H. I believe those groups helped make me a more rounded person, especially in my interests and hobbies. We always had projects on the go. I sewed, embroidered and even knitted. I still remember going to my grandmother’s to get help with a knitting project when I was making slippers. Going to my grandparents house was a highlight when I was a child, not just for knitting help. They were very involved and loved taking me places. Shopping, church, bingo - www.galabingo.com/mobile/bingo - in the church basement…my grandmother was a social butterfly. But I digress…
Hobbies Before Children
Before I had children one of my hobbies was crafts. I actually worked a Franks Nursery & Crafts for over two years until I quit when I was six months pregnant with our first child. Let’s just say I spent a good amount of money there! I would use my discount and any coupons we were allowed to use and stock up on craft items. I think this year we finally finished up what I had left of all of those supplies.
Some of the individual crafty things I enjoyed were: painting plaster Christmas ornaments, cross stitching, latch hook and sewing.
Hobbies After Children
My hobbies after I had children did not change too much, I just added baby books (for the first three children anyways) and photo albums for each child…well, up until our fifth. We got a digital camera when I was pregnant with our sixth so the last three children’s baby and toddler days are in digital format needing to be printed out and put in albums. We were going to start scrapbooking but that fizzled out before we really go started.
Hobbies take time and money, those two things are precious commodities these days.
So what are your hobbies?
This is a sponsored post.
Kwickeye is a social platform that lets you follow products/services that friends want for their kids and also makes it easy and fun to surprise moms and kids with the things they love!
Kwickeye has a “quick add”, or “Kwickadd” as they like to call it, button that is very easy to install, much like Hootsuite’s or Wishlist’s, simply drag it to your bookmark toolbar and voila! it’s installed. This makes it convenient to add products you like from any online store to your Kwicklist. Your Kwicklist enables friends and family to see the products on your list and allows them to comment, provide recommendations or opinions or maybe even purchase the product for an upcoming gift! You can also receive surprise notifications of an anonymous gift!
Kwickeye was founded by a mom – Gayathri Santhanam, an entrepreneur with technology background. She has two adorable kids, Aadit(6) and Anishka(3). She lives in the San Francisco BayArea. The site was featured on CNBC as one of the most promising startups globally.
You can find Kwickeye on Facebook here.
Kwickeye has a wide variety of products displayed on their site. From clothes, books, toys to organizational tools for mom – I found a fabulous daily organizer from Pottery Barn on that I would love to put in my office. I also found eco-friendly clay, Pure (organic snack bars) and sweet clothing for children.
I like the idea of Kwickeye and can see how helpful it would be to busy moms, moms with family close by and far away and be a general help to moms who attend a lot of birthday parties. Moms and kids could just look up their friend’s lists and pick a cool gift based on their Kwicklist. Eliminating unnecessary gifts and returns. Bonus!
Back to school time! We received a fabulous back to school kit from our the KIWI shop that included eight back to school products. KIWI is a natural, organic online shop offering eco-friendly, organic products for parents, kids and the home.
Below are the products we used and reviewed:
Wean Green 4 oz. Wean Cubes, 4-Pack, Garden – I loved these little glass cubes! Not only are they cute and colorful but great for little snacks. I wouldn’t necessarily send my children to school with them because of the glass material but from a storage stand point they are great containers to have in the cupboard. Though a little pricey.
LiceLogic Repel Conditioning Hair Spray – I don’t think all the girls have used this product yet but one of them said they did try it and liked it. We’ve never had an issue with lice but now that we have this hopefully we will continue to enjoy a lice free life!
Facial Gel Cleanser – I know one of my girls has tried this product and she says she liked it and how it made her skin feel softer. She was experiencing a bit of a pimple outbreak on her nose and forehead and she stated this Gel Cleanser was helping get rid of it.
Eco Lunchbox – made of stainless steel and very sturdy. Love this as well as the crocodile one for younger children.
Safari Bento Box, Green Crocodile – is super cute and our son loved it for his new Vegetable Crayons!
Vegetable Crayons – My almost 3 year old loved “his” organic vegetable crayons! They were easy for him to handle and fun to use. The only thing negative I noticed is the colors are not as dark as the crayon, even the dark blue and green or red for that matter.
Kids AlternaVites STRAWBERRY 30 CT – all of our children liked the AlternaVites, except for our 14 year old. They reminded her of the antibiotic she use to have to take before she went to the dentist (she use to have a heart condition). All the children who liked the AlternaVites, asked to have their vitamins. That’s always a good sign in our house….when they don’t run away when it’s time to take any sort of supplement! 
Artterro Handmade Paper Bookmaking Kit – Our children enjoyed working on the bookmaking kit together. The only thing the younger children needed my help with was the book binding. This kit makes a great rainy day craft project or a 90 degree plus day.
We really love the product mix offered for back to school! It was fun for all of us to go through the products and test them out.
If you would like to win some cool back to school products from KIWI shop, please visit their giveaway to enter: http://www.kiwishoponline.com/back-to-school-giveaway
Keeping my baby safe is the most important thing I can do. I never realized that even clothing can be harmful to a baby’s skin. With Cutie Bees, I never have to worry about the safety or cuteness of my baby. Cutie Bees is a company dedicated to creating safe, eco-friendly, beautiful, and affordable organic baby clothing. They use only 100% GOTS certified organic cotton. I love this since many of the regular cotton made clothes can cause redness, itchiness, or rashes on baby skin. They can also contain harmful chemicals which are associated with dermatitis, asthma, and cancer. With Cutie Bees, their clothes are always free of harmful chemicals.
Besides being organic, Cutie Bees clothes are absolutely adorable! I had the opportunity to review their Pink Lemonade Organic Bodysuit and Pants set. When I first opened it my mouthed dropped in awe of how adorable it was! The bright yellow complimented the bright pink perfectly. The pink stripe across the tummy with the pink bow was a perfect addiction to the bodysuit. The neck was stetchy enough to easily slip over even larger heads. The matching stretchy pants had cute little yellow ruffles around the bottoms of the legs, making it a perfect match to the bodysuit. The only thing I wish it had was some matching yellow ruffles on the butt. I loved how soft the outfit was; it almost felt like silk. This is a very high quality baby outfit. I was very impressed.
Cutie Bees offers clothes for boys, girls, and even neutral items. They have everything from pants and dresses to jumpsuits and onesies. They even have giftsets already made up that would be perfect for any baby shower. I would highly recommend Cutie Bees. Not only are their clothes adorable, organic, soft, and machine washable, they are very affordable. Check out their website, you won’t be disappointed!
In honor of Earth Day, Cutie Bees is currently running a sale. With the code EARTH22, shoppers receive 22% off and free shipping (valid through May 15).
Ta-da….Goat Milk Soap curing for 4 weeks. We are going to melt it down again and put it in molds tomorrow to sell at two events this weekend!
CraftProjectIdeas.com is dedicated to kids’ arts and crafts projects for preschool children through tweens. The website offers step-by-step instructions to inspire kids with arts and crafts. The products shown on the site are all available in the Kids’ Crafts aisle at popular retailers. CraftProjectIdeas.com has a “How To” section featuring basic techniques, a featured material for each month, rainy day projects, seasonal projects, and even a teacher’s corner. There’s also a “Products” section, which shows an array of different materials and craft kits, a “Videos” section showing clear concise directions and what the end project should look like, and a “Store Locator” where you can find a store that carries the products. My favorite feature of the site is the Project Finder search engine. Just choose the age, season, theme, and materials and it will find a project you can make!
I received a wonderful selection of products from them including the following:
I decided to help my toddler make some Valentines for his grandparents with some of the supplies. I had some red and purple foam sheets on hand so we used those as our base. I also had pink foam stickers that he enjoyed sticking on. To add some more sparkle he stuck on a few Large Bling Acrylic Jewels. They were super easy to remove from the sheet, and they stuck on easily to the foam. Then I had him pick out the letters to his name, “R, O, C, K, Y” from the Glow in the Dark Alphabet Beads and we glued them on each valentine. The beads were nice and flat and glued on easily. Finally we used the Neon Glitter Shakers to finish the valentines. I wished the glitter would have come out a little better than it did. You had to hold it at a certain angle for enough to shake out. Overall, we had a blast making them and the grandparents LOVED them!
We also decided to make some picture frames for some birthdays that are coming up. I had my son color the Skinny Sticks with markers and then we glued them into triangles and squares. Then we glued Craft Buttons onto each corner. I loved how flat the buttons were; it made them very easy to glue on. To finish off the triangle picture frame we glued on Shimmer Poms to the Craft Buttons. These took a little effort to stay glued on, but with enough glue they finally stuck. All we need to do is add a picture to the back, and they will be perfect!
All of the products I received were of excellent quality. The colors are so vibrant and the pieces are very child friendly to use. My favorite part? Most of the bags are resealable so you when you are all done with a project you can seal the bag without losing any extra pieces! I am so excited to make even more projects with my son. He loves doing arts and crafts and doing projects teaches him so many skills. The sky is the limit with all of the inspiration from CraftProjectIdeas.com!
<em>Faith and Family Reviews received the following product free from
<a href=”http://www.Craftprojectideas.com“>www.CraftProjectIdeas.com</a> in exchange for writing a
review about these crafting supplies. While we consider it a privilege to
receive free products, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the
product.</em>
