Tag Archive for Review

Homemade Caramel Candy Recipe – Wordless Wednesday

Homemade Caramel Candy FFR

My daughter was on a baking spree last week. Remember she made the homemade chocolate chip recipe, then what does she go and do? She made a homemade caramel candy recipe. She was making homemade twix bars for our tea party and needed caramel to make them. So she did what any person does these days and turned to Google. She searched for “homemade caramels” and found a recipe for caramels…highly comparable to the brand name caramels you buy for caramel apples in the fall, only now we don’t have to buy them anymore because we have a non-GMO version. B substituted the corn syrup for honey and the regular sugar for organic sugar and the results was a soft, smooth, yummlicious caramel treat. Granted for the purpose of the this post, the caramel candy shown in the photo is more like a caramel square than caramel candy – and eating that much would be a very, very rich treat.

Yum, yum, yum!

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Part 2 ~ Polly Pocket Review

 

Back in August we participated in a Polly Pocket campaign, to review product. Well, this is PART 2! The campaign is still going on and we received more products to complete our Polly Pocket review!

Polly pocket continues to delight my children. The dolls are not too large and store nicely. In this portion of the campaign we received the Polly Pocket Playtime Pet Shop Play Set and a Polly Pocket DVD.

The play set is very nice and I love that it folds up when not in use. It is a bit larger than the other Polly pocket sets we received but the girls LOVE it! My girls especially love that it is a pet shop… they love animals! When we initially got the set the girls went and pulled out all of their Polly pocket sets and made a little village with the new set and all of their previous sets. It was so nice to see them playing together. Since we received the product the girls are STILL playing with Polly pocket the only difference is the toys have moved from the living room floor into their bedrooms, but no difference in excitement and play. This is so nice to see from a mom’s point of view; I love seeing my children getting along and playing nicely.

One other item we received was a Polly pocket DVD. This was a cute little DVD that shared short clips of Polly in action…the cartoon Polly pocket. My daughters wanted to know if she had a full-length movie out so they could go rent it. They really liked the animated version of Polly.

Overall this was a great campaign packed full of great products that kept my children entertained and let their imagination run wild while playing with the play sets! Thank you Mattel and Polly Pocket!

“I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Mattel Polly Pocket. I received a product samples and a promotional item as a thank-you for participating.”


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Fellowes Laminator Video Review

As a homeschooling mom, I have had projects over the years that needed laminating but I was rather frugal and settled for a roll of contact paper and a pair of scissors. It worked great for the first set of flash cards I made of the alphabet and numbers for our girls, but as the babies arrived and I became busier with children, the extra time I once had to sit and cut diminished, a laminator would have come in very handy.

Fellowes Laminator

The Fellowes Saturn2 95 Laminator is very small and compact. It doesn’t take up much space at all. A definite plus as I don’t have a lot of flat surface to store that and our printer. Right now it’s stored beneath my little table/desk, but we used it at the dining room table. It is also lightweight so moving from room to room it isn’t an issue at all.

The laminator came with 3 packages of laminating pouches 25 – 9 x 11.5 hot laminating pouches, 25 – 4.5 x 6.25 pouches and then 10 other laminating pouches, which I haven’t figure out what to use for yet. We used the smaller size to laminate a few farm stand signs for selling produce.

How it Works

The Fellowes Saturn2 95 is very easy to use. My girls have used it successfully. You simply put the item you want laminated between the pages of the laminating pouch and you slide it in the opening and wait for it to come out the other side fully laminated. Simple as that.


Laminator Review

We love it. It is going to be a great addition to our office equipment enabling us to laminate flash cards for the kids or signs for our businesses. There’s a photo story of how we laminated market signs above. I am pleased with the laminating results but not the type setting of the words. Those were off. But hey, it was our first time and nothing is ever perfect the first time around, right? Video review is below:

As for the laminating machine? It’s definitely a keeper. Wish I had it 15 years ago when I spent hours making our first flash cards.

Two thumbs up from me!

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.


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Day Out With Thomas 2012 Opening Weekend

Day Out with Thomas 2012 begins Friday and goes through Sunday, and then again next Saturday and Sunday at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union. The event includes a train ride with Thomas, unlimited rides on all other trains and streetcars, puppet shows, live music, magic shows and more!

Thomas & Friends – Day Out With Thomas 2012 – Mystery On The Rails Tour 2012

To find out where a Day Out With Thomas event is in your state, visit http://www.ticketweb.com/promo/dowt/index.html

All Aboard for Day Out With Thomas

ILLINOIS

Union
August 19-21 & 27-28
Illinois Railway Museum

Each event includes:
25 minute ride with a full size Thomas the Tank Engine™, Storytelling, hands-on arts and crafts, and much more!


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Learning a New Language


Ever since I was a little girl taking fourth grade French, I have been interested in languages. I took French from 4th-12th grade and even tried to do a correspondence course on top of my college work – I went to an itty bitty school that did not offer languages. After all that, I am still not fluent in French. I was a good student, my school’s program just was not set up to allow for students to become fluent speakers of the language. 🙁 That’s the sad part. I was always told that total immersion was the best way to learn a new language. In that line of thought our tenth grade class went on a Quebec trip to “learn” French. Imagine my disappointment (and others) while trying to speak the language to the locals they spoke back in English! That’s right they could tell we were not French speaking and probably didn’t want us butchering their lovely language. It defeated the purpose of our whole trip though. I did have a friend who went on what was called a French Immersion trip, which was longer than the week we took to go to Quebec, as I believe it was a 6-week long course. She was not suppose to speak English at all during that whole time so she learned a lot more French that way.

The plus side to all of that is that I can pick out words in print or understand some of what is being said when people are speaking French, if they are not speaking too rapidly. And I do remember enough that I can toss out a phrase or question and have my family look at me blankly because they have no idea what I just said. My husband being the goof ball that he is will usually come back with, “Donde es la bano?” (“Where is the bathroom?”) in Spanish because that’s about the only thing he knows. 😉

Now that I have children, I really try to encourage their interests. My oldest daughter has long been interested in learning Spanish. We have tried kids vocabulary books, a small little Spanish program on cassette and asking our Spanish speaking neighbors how to say certain words. But nothing has been consistent or easy, as those of you who have studied another language know. It takes a lot of discipline and a real interest to learn a new language. So much of what we have done has been things that were done when my daughter was younger, as I have never wanted to spend a lot of money on Rosetta Stone type programs in case they sat and collected dust. “O me of little faith” I know, but I’ve been there and had that happen.

More recently though when my daughters expressed an interest in another Spanish learning resource, Lightning Fast Spanish, I was willing to give it a try. As the title denotes, it sets children and adults up for success to learn every day words in it’s easy to follow activities. My daughters have only looked at it, as have I. We have not been consistently trying to work at memorizing any words or phrases.

Each lesson is broken down into:
Concept
Preparation
Conversation
Vocabulary

The lessons cover topics like: different pieces of clothing, colors names of places or places to go timing of events, getting dressed, brushing hair, packing lunch, comparison words, toys, food, items you see walking around the block, games sports, playground equipment, body parts, school activities, dinner time vocabulary, household items etc. are covered in these 15-lesson book. Plus there is 20 pages of fun activities and games for additional practice – bingo, scavenger hunts, the Hokey Pokey (remember doing that song in Music class? I do!) twister and more.

What is great about this 63-page book is that each of the activities and lessons are stand alone so you can start anywhere. Other advantages is that the book is short, as are the lessons and it’s every easy to understand. Best of all it is very budget friendly – $14.95 for a paperback version or $9.99 for the ebook. It may be purchased on Amazon.

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.


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Memory Foam Slippers Review & Giveaway

During the winter and cooler days my feet tend to get cold. Having a nice wooly pair of socks or slippers helps keep them warm, especially on hardwood floors. As you all know, there are many different slippers to choose from and I have tried multiple brands and styles in my life. From ballet slippers to the slip on kind my grandmother wore. My favorite use to be ballet slippers but they were never warm enough. Sure were comfortable though! I had never heard of Memory Foam slippers until I entered a Nature’s Sleep giveaway a few months ago. Then I learned of their slippers and somehow got a chance to review a pair.

Memory Foam Slippers

I always thought Memory Foam was overrated until I won a Memory Foam product (stay tuned for an upcoming post about this product!). Can you say luxurious and comfortable? That’s how I feel about Nature’s Sleep Memory Foam Slippers too.

The slippers are basic in design with a softer sole made of thermoplastic rubber bottom and then the Memory Foam materials – upper/inner sole 80% cotton/20% polyester; lining 100% polyester. When the slippers arrived I was not the first to try them on, my oldest son was and if only I had video taped him! He put them on and said, “Ahhhhh…” in a sigh type voice. Then, of course, the rest of the children had to try them too and every single one of them that tried on the slippers had similar reaction. It was actually a few days before I got to try them out myself because some little person always had them on! As you can see from the photos, they’ve been worn.

Comfortable. Comfortable. Comfortable. Did I say comfortable? Oh yeah, I did! It feels like you are walking on pillows. They are very basic looking but my style goes for comfort more than fashion usually anyways so that does not bother me at all. I would definitely buy these as gifts. They are priced affordably at $25 for the open toe version and $30 for the closed toe version. Plus, both qualify for FREE shipping on Nature’s Sleep website. Please Note: This may only be for regular priced items, not discounted items so please check before you assume. The choice of colors is limited: pink, pale blue and sand. Sizes range from small to x-large. I got size medium and I wear a size 9 shoe.

Nature’s Sleep also offers quality memory foam mattresses, as well as pillows at their online store at www.Nature’sSleep.com

Be sure to enter the giveaway below to win your own pair of Memory Foam slippers! If you can’t wait, shop Now 50% off BEARS50 at Nature’s Sleep.

Giveaway

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Good luck!


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Earth Day 2012 Giveaway – $50 Gift Certificate to UncommonGoods!

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. 😉

You can purchase your own kit here($25).

Crystal Explosion Kit Review

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.


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Food Fights Review & Giveaway

I am always hesitant to read parenting books because after being a parent for so long you kind of get into your own groove. Our groove tends to be very different from most, as it should be because every family, every child and every parent is different. None of us are cookie cutter parents or we shouldn’t be! We each have to develop our own style of parenting that fits us as individuals and our children.

Book Reviews

You all know that I do a fair amount of book reviews, but I do not do a lot of parenting books. Guess they scare me! Ha! No seriously. When I was a young mom I tended to want to do what every good parenting book said but parenting just does not work like that. I gradually learned that we get ideas from other parents, books etc. but we tweak them to make it work for our individual family.

Food Fights

Food Fights is the book I mentioned at the beginning of the week and shared a juicy update about. It offers parenting tips on how to pick food battles, dealing with the mine fields of TV dinners, fast food, eating out, sick kids and so much more. This book is written by two pediatricians, Dr. Laura A. Jana and Dr. Jennifer Shu. I know how picky some children can be and thought this book would be a great one to share.

What I Liked

The facts they shared throughout the book were very interesting and helpful.

It has a beautiful cover of a darling baby.

Spoke out against feeding kids junk food, soda pop and sugary juices.

Encouragement to feed your children fresh fruits and veggies.

Supportive of breastfeeding.

They were concerned with childhood obesity, but our food system has a huge part in that! Read labels!

What I Didn’t LikeBeware I go into a tangent!

The book discourages breastfeeding your child at bedtime/naptime. This one gets me riled up! I have breastfed eight children for 1-3 years each and have breastfed them all to sleep at some point or another and it DOES NOT make them dependent. Babies and children are already dependent for pity sake! Arggggh……..’Nough said.

Ok, I realize this next one is a can of worms in certain circles – what kind of milk do you serve your children? Rhetorical no need to answer, however, have you ever heard of not feeding children over 2 whole milk, only skim? Hmmm…..that’s a new one to me. Raw milk is better, but even our family doesn’t buy raw milk because of the price. That’s why we need a cow!

Another myth the book advises against is drinking well water. Oh really? I grew up in the country and that is the only water we had and I am fine (ok that’s debatable sometimes! Ha!) as are my parents, my sisters and all those that lived around us. Since moving to a rural area we now drink well water. Ummmm….so far none of us are any worse for doing so, but the authors claimed it was dangerous to drink well water. Did you know that Chlorine and Fluoride are NOT good for you and that they are chemicals? Just do a little research and you’ll learn ALOT.

The last two items are certainly personal choice but ones I happen to disagree with. First one, you shouldn’t make your children eat if they don’t want to both hunger wise and what you serve them. I understand and agree that if they are referring to not being hungry, but not when it comes to what is being served. We are a family of ten and neither my daughters, who now cook, nor I will make ten different meals. That is ridiculous. Therefore, our kids are required to eat whatever they are served. Period. If they really dislike it then they are required to eat bites according to their age. For example: If our four year old did not like what was for dinner he would be required to eat four bites, our six year old would need to eat six bites and so on.

The book has merit and will be helpful to those parents searching for a solution to “food fights”.

Enter to Win!

If you are interested in owning a copy we are hosting a giveaway and I will mail you your copy in a 2-3 of weeks, whenever I close the giveaway. Just fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter. Thanks!

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Simon and the Easter Miracle Review


Synopsis:

The gospels tells of Simon of Cyrene – “”a man coming in from the country”” – who was ordered to carry Jesus’ cross. Over the centuries, his story has been woven into Polish folklore: When Simon the farmer brings his wares to market, little does he expect how he will be involved in the events of that very special day, nor how his produce – of bread, eggs and wine – will become important symbols of Jesus’ passion and resurrection, remembered throughout the ages. Together with sophisticated artwork, this picture book retelling of a traditional European tale is both thought provoking and engaging, with the events and meaning of the first Easter at its heart.

Our Review:

What a wonderful thought-provoking book! My children enjoyed the wonderful story and the vivid illustrations.  The book was engaging to all of my children ages 3, 6, and 8. I especially liked that the book was in large format and hardcover…this let all of the children be able to read the book along with me and no one was craning their necks to see the pictures!

This is really a good book to read and then to discuss the passion of Christ with the little ones. It gives a different perspective and invokes thought about the Gospel for little minds. It truly weaves the Easter miracle and the message of peace in its words.

Being of Polish heritage I liked the fact that this was taken from Polish folklore…something my children and I discussed after we read the book. My children and I often read literature and tales from different cultures so it was nice to add a polish Gospel story to our repertoire.

For more information about this book or other Kregel publications visit www.kregel.com

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.

 


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Going Green with The Gigglin’ Garden Gang #GoGreenNGiggle #Cbias

As you all know, we are all for going green and living a healthy lifestyle while making use of the earth’s resources in a responsible and sustainable way. We desire to be good stewards. You are also familiar with our farm journey. That’s why when we were introduced to The Gigglin’ Garden Gang we were excited because it was right up our alley!

In recent years our family has enjoyed planning, preparing and planting our garden. This “Go Green and Giggle”® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set fits perfectly with our fun family activities, but first I had to buy it.

Shopping Online for the “Go Green and Giggle”® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set

First I went to GigglinGardenGang.com. They have some fun music playing that my little guys zoomed over to the computer to “see” being so use to music videos we watch. The website is very easy to navigate and very pleasing to the eye.

To order the product I had to click on their Amazon link to the left side of their home page:

Once I clicked the link it took me to The Gigglin’ Garden Gang’s Amazon shop:

From there is really was a piece of cake, click add to cart:

Amazon will then confirm that the item is in your cart:

After that just click to place order:

Completing the order was a matter of imputing credit card info or editing personal information. I really did not have to do much because we do have an Amazon account so most of my information was already stored. It really is that simple and took less than 5 minutes to do! I love shopping online, can you tell? 🙂

Green Children-Friendly Activities

If you are looking for sustainable activities to do with your children on Earth Day, which is only a month away, the “Go Green and Giggle”® Book & Tote Garden Activity Gift Set is the perfect one to choose! Our children loved it! Of course, I only bought one so they all had to share. It contains the “Go Green and Giggle”® Book, the tote, the greenhouse with six soil wafers, sunflower seeds, a sticker, a coloring sheet of Sunflower Suzi and a CD featuring Sunflower Suzi singing cute little songs – a Theme song and a Go Green and Giggle Rap & Instrumental – my children loved listening to it! We played it a few times while doing our planting activity and they just asked again as I was typing.

The kit unpackaged.

My four year old holding the greenhouse.

Individual components of the kit. The sunflower seeds were tucked safely on the back page of the book by Sunflower Suzi after all she is providing them to us, right? 😉

The soil wafers up close.

The sunflower seeds.

We added warm water to the soil wafers. The children took turns and actually did very well pouring the water! Very little mess, surprisingly! lol!

Each of the children planted a seeds. We actually had 7 sunflower seeds in our package. Our oldest did not participate. She was on her laptop!

As you can see from the greenhouse tray there are actually 12 cells in which to plant. The directions recommended taking it off, but we kept it on and decided to plant the extra sunflower seed as well as some snap peas. My daughter experimented last year with seed saving and these are actually seeds she saved from our snap peas. We hope to do more seed saving this year! All a part of stewardship and being sustainable.

Baby even helped!

Ta-da! All done with the planting!

We really had fun. I read the book to the children, then they sat and read it. Very cute illustrations and funny little jokes that made us giggle! We hope to get permission to use those in our farm newsletter in the future!

What a great rainy day activity too! I was glad to be able to keep my children busy this morning since they couldn’t go outside!

Connect with The Gigglin’ Garden Gang Online

To connect with the Gigglin’ Garden Gang on their social media sites, please visit:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/GoGreenNGiggle (@GoGreenNGiggle)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sunflowersuzi

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for signature