This was the first time I visited Organic Valley’s Website! Shame on me, right!?
We are all trying to keep our families happy and healthy, well Organic Valley will help. They have a fantastic website and even two apps for Apple devices (Organic Valley and Organic Moo Can), they are FREE and you can download them from Organic Valley’s Site! **Sorry, they don’t have it for Android at this time**
On this site you can Find your Farmer, Organic Valley Products, Recipes, Reason to Choose Organic Products, and more. Organic Valley’s website is full of wonderful information.
Head to the Tab “Community” – on the right you can a subscribe section. Enter your email and zip code. It will then take you to where you can sign up for newsletters and the “Farm Friends Welcome kit” – “The Kit contains Rootstock Magazine, a Kid’s Activity Booklet, a Go Organic! bumper sticker, and a booklet of useful Organic Valley coupons.” Sound good to me!
Head to Organic Valley and start your next organic journey!
After our Blogger Olympics, we ate dinner at Surf Burger. It was so funny because being the social media mavens that we are all of us could be seen with our phones tweeting, posting to Facebook and Four Square what we were doing! I had their Surf Chick, which came with their stick fries and a grilled chicken sandwich. It was very good. The service was friendly and very hospitable too.
Brandcation would not have been possible without all the awesome sponsors our hosts worked with in providing so many of our activities. So I hope you will join me in giving them some social media love.
Event Sponsors:
Adventures Unlimited: Post coming up this afternoon, but we spent all day Saturday here on a beautiful piece of property! In the air and in the water…
Portofino Island Resort: Which I already posted about here.
Dunkin Donuts: Sadly, I don’t think I ate a single Dunkin Donuts bagel, but I hear they were delish!
Jambu: They sponsored our Blog Olympics which I posted here.
Hotel Coupons: A great place to save money and start planning your next trip!
Circle PR: Thanks to these ladies we got to see dolphins in real time.
Dole: Fruit breakfasts thanks to Dole.
Star Gazing: This was amazing and would have been the coolest homeschool field night! Dewey even had an accessory that allowed us to connect our iPhones to the telescope to take photos and videos of the moon!
Brandy Goleman Photography
Swag Sponsors:
After dinner at Surf Burger, we all gathered in one condo in our pjs for a Swag Party. Jambu Footwear had provided bags and our event hosts had filled them up with goodies from all the sponsors listed below. There were some oooos and ahhhhhs as well as a few squeeeeees as things were handed out! (Right, Jenn? ;-)) I haven’t even tried everything yet.
Brandy Goleman Photography
Sorry for the red eye, tried editing and I blackened whole heads!
Mogo Charm Tervis Water Bottle – This kept my water for hydration on the river while tubing Capsul Cases The Village Company Hasbro Kidz Bop – My little ones are loving rockin’ to this. Carex – Definitely a handy little kit to have in the medicine cabinet. Lush Gourmet Foods – They’ve got yummy sugar coated nuts! Nivea - My daughter and I haggled over the lip glosses. Lady Fortunes Pami Pocket - I ditched the little compact wallet I took to Florida for this, as it was perfect to hold my cell, cash and identity during all of the fun activities over the weekend.
Photos are mine taken with my iPhone, except the full view of the Jambu bags and the first photo of the swag party those are Brandy’s, since I left our Nikon home…good thing too because I didn’t have much time to take photos!
Thank you to all of the above sponsors for taking an interest in 32 bloggers who went coastal in Pensacola, Florida! We appreciate all you gave to make this event possible!
I was one of the last ones to arrive at Brandcation on Friday afternoon. There were about four of us who were latecomers. After we arrived it was basically time to start Blogger Olympics. We were all put on teams in advance according to condos. 4 condos = 4 teams. I was on Lynsey’s team, Beachin’ Bloggers in blue, along with my other condo mates. Then the other three teams were: Trisha’s team was SEO’s in white, Kim’s team Ladybugs in red (they had adorable red wings even!) and Nicole/Blondie’s team Snark Attack in pink. Our four team leaders are also the fabulous women behind this event.
We did everything from a digital scavenger hunt to building White House sand castles, water relay, a hula hoop competition (my teammate Denise won that one! Yay! She rocked!) to the Hawaiian relay (had to dress in a grass skirt, necklace and coconut bra thingy!)
Jenn, my teammate, getting read for Hawaii!
We laughed, cheered and I even chased Alison to try and get a photo of her fruity drink for the digital scavenger hunt. Just plain old fun!
In the end, the SEO’s won. Runner ups in order: Snark Attack, Ladybugs and Beachin’ Bloggers. We were last, but hey that didn’t affect our level of fun!
A sheep trophy was awarded to the winning team, the rest of us received a Brandcation medal for our prize.
You are going to be hearing a lot about Brandcation. We had amazing sponsors and all of us really want to show our appreciation to each and everyone of them. Jambu Footwear was the main sponsor of the Blogger Olympics. Check out their snazzy footwear and please consider following them on Twitter and Facebook too.
Nudge your kids with a Nudge Tee that is! So, what has your child accomplished on their own? Brushing their teeth? Making their Bed? Feeding an animal? Reading or writing? Celebrate with them! For $20.00 you can praise their efforts, and by wearing one of these tees they can let everyone else know of their good doings!
Guess what! They have them in adult sizes also! If your husband’s like mine and doesn’t like washing dishes. Get him a shirt that says “I wash dishes”! lol……! I Love You, Honey!
My Review:
Here’s the shirt my daughter received from Nudge Tees.
Granted we are still working on this, but she’s getting better. I would have shown my daughter in her new shirt Nudge Tee shirts as my daughter achieves more accomplishments. I love these shirts and what they do to boost my child ego.
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.
Mother’s Day is coming! What a better way to celebrate than to receive a new shirt celebrating motherhood! Head over to PeaceLoveMom and get one today!
They have a variety of shirts and other products, including short and long sleeve shirts, tank tops, even Maternity! In addition, PeaceLoveMom also has accessories and kids and baby items! Can’t find the perfect gift? They also have gift certificates!
I received this burnout short sleeve shirt. Turquoise is shown here.
My Review:
I received a burnout shirt in a mossy color. For those who are not sure what a burnout shirt is. Here’s a picture.
It’s got a worn out, weathered, vintage look to it. You really can’t tell unless you hold the shirt up. If/when you wear a shirt like this you may want to wear a tank underneath to better cover your undergarments. The weathered look makes the shirt very soft and it’s long enough to keep everything covered.
The shirt says “Peace Love Grateful Mom”, which suites me just fine. As I am VERY grateful to be a Mom!
There are wonderful presents for expecting moms or any moms! Don’t forget Mother’s Day is May 13th! Head over to PeaceLoveMom to order today! Happy Mother’s Day!
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.
We love educational products and tools. UncommonGoods not only has educational toys, but also gifts for plant lovers, hummingbird feeders and unique home accessories. Many handmade and eco-friendly products all very different. Recently we were able to review two of their educational kits for kids – Cheesemaking and Crystal Explosion….And UncommonGoods is providing a $50 gift certificate for one happy winner of our Earth Day 2012 Giveaway! A great way to start off Earth Day weekend!
Cheesemaking Kit Review
We have always been interested in cheesemaking so this was a cool kit to do. My older girls actually did this one and we let the younger children do the Crystal kit.
The kit gives you a choice of making mozzarella cheese or ricotta cheese. We chose mozzarella since we eat more of it than ricotta. The instructions were very well laid out, easy to follow and included photos so you could actually see if your cheese was doing what they said it should at each step.
Everything you need is in the kit except for a gallon of organic milk and a pint of half and half. Those need to be purchased separately. Each little tablet shown has to be cut into quarters, so you can actually make 30 batches of cheese with this kit – bonus!
One of my daughters was worried that the cheese did not turn out, but once we tasted it was fine. We lightly salted it when we tried it and liked that better than plain.
This kit is for older children (teens) to do on their own or for younger children to assist a parent due to needing a heat source, like a stove or microwave. We really try to limit our microwave use.
The girls enjoyed their cheesemaking experience. Now we need our own cow so we can truly make our own cheese.
Our children have been studying rocks and have been fascinated by what they are learning. The Crystal Explosion kit was very fun for the younger children.
The crystals (bath salts) were a bit messy but the enjoyment the children got from completing the crystal experiment far outweighed the small mess on the table!
Again, this was another kit that is very easy to use. Instructions are easy to follow. Due to hot water being required, some parental guidance and help is required.
It was fun to wake up to the crystals in the refrigerator. We still have them in there! Every now and then the children will bring me the cup and say, “Mommy, look at the crystals” because they are in awe. Very cute.
To order your own Crystal Explosion kit visit this link. It is available for $17.99.
Both of these kits are winners in our house and we give them two thumbs up. Thank you UncommonGoods!
Now you can enter our giveaway….
Earth Day 2012 Giveway – $50 Gift Certificate to UncommonGoods
Enter to win a $50 gift certificate to UncommonGoods! Open to the USA only. Winner will be contacted in 2-3 weeks, if not before.
Ever thought of doing a family tree? Well here’s your opportunity! I found a website called My Heritage, from here you can download a free Family Tree Builder 6.0! Here’s what My Heritage’s site has to say, “The best free genealogy software in the world 31,373,916 downloads so far, but who’s counting…”
It also come in 37 different languages, I didn’t even know there were 37!
They have a celebrity and fun section. Where you can make a celebrity morph and look a like meter.
How many times have you wondered… Why didn’t anyone tell or warn me about this!? I think the truth is, they/we don’t want to scare you. I’m sure we’ve all read it or read parts of the book “What to Expect When You Are Expecting”. I read the book, and NO WHERE does it say… because if you sneeze, cough, or laugh to hard once your 7 months pregnant or ove you will…I’m sure most of you know or understand where I’m going with this.
Starting today! April 16th when you answer Platex’s question “What did you least expect when you were pregnant or a new Mom?” you have a chance to win some prizes. There will be daily winners! The grand prize winner will be “flown to LA for the premiere of What To Expect When You’re Expecting. The film will feature Playtex Baby products including the Playtex® Nurser with Drop-Ins® Liners and the Playtex® Diaper Genie® Disposal System!”
Head over to thePlaytex Baby Facebook Contest and share your stories and experiences. So go! Enter! Good Luck! Let us know if you win!
“I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Playtex Baby. I received a promotional item to thank me for participating” www.momcentral.com/mcc,
Remember when I told you about KIWI Magazine’s New Allergy – Friendly Cookbook?
Why not try and win it first? When I read the rules they are only giving away 3, but hey you never know! Hurry because the contest ends on April 13th, which is tomorrow! Log onto Facebook – here’s the direct link!
TOS (The Old Schoolhouse Magazine) revives Molly Green Magazine / Econobusters! Each week Molly Green is delivered to your inbox with tips, recipes and other inspiring ideas related to saving money! Molly Green Magazine / Econobusters offers decorating tips, pet care, health and beauty care for less. Let’s not forget tips on coupon clipping and “Abundant Blessings” (large savings for large families). With a paid monthly subscription to Molly Green Magazine / Econobusters you will receive “FREE Menu-Planning E-Book and Home Work: Juggling Home, Work and School Without Losing Your Balance E-Book“. Let Molly Green Magazine / Econobusters save you money too!! There is also “A Minute with Molly” a free newsletter.
This was the first time I visited Organic Valley’s Website! Shame on me, right!?
