EcoTools EcoPouf Dual Cleansing Pad

This is one of those impulse buys I made one day while looking for a new mesh bath pouf at Target. I don't know about the rest of you but I just can't seem to find any that hold up, they always seem to come untied and then they just fall apart and this is one of those times I am helpless as I just can't put those things back together in a way that is at all useful beyond finishing up my current shower. I was rather intrigued when I came across the EcoTools EcoPouf Dual Cleansing Pad, after all it had a loofah on one side and a mesh pouf stitched down to the other side as well as a sturdy fabric tag to hang it by and an elastic band. I really wanted to give this a try so I looked at the price, $3.99, granted a bit more than my usual bath poufs but this looked far more durable so I figured it was worth a try. I went home excited to try this new gem out.

I will admit I haven't specifically used the loofah side as thus far I find the mesh pouf side to be good enough for a light exfoliation and I honestly just keep forgetting to go with the loofah side for a deeper exfoliation when I am in the shower. I have not yet had any problems working up a decent lather with either a bar of soap or a heavy moisturizing liquid soap, I have tried this baby out with 2 different natural bar soaps as well as with a heavier Dove body wash. Though I have only had this a few weeks now I am fairly confident that this little gem will likely become a must have in my beauty arsenal.

* I was in no way compensated for this review. I purchased this item with my own money due to my own curiosity in this product and how well it would work for my needs/wants. I am only posting this review to assist others in their own quest for the right items to add to their own beauty arsenals. 

WildRoot Naturals Vanilla Bean Lip Balm

This lip balm is where my dedication to WildRoot Naturals lip balms all started, the vanilla bean lip balm. Not only does WildRoot Naturals name imply that all of it's products are all natural but they really are, I have even witnessed some of the products being made right in front of me. I will say I still remember the heavenly smell of the stress & headache relief pillow inserts being made.

The vanilla bean lip balm is handmade with coconut oil, bees wax, organic Shea butter, organic cocoa butter, vitamin E, and vanilla bean flavoring. Those are the only things in this lip balm. This lip balm goes on smooth, smells great and really does help moisturize your lips. It doesn't feel tacky or waxy. It just feels great on your lips. To me this lip balm is a steal at only $3.00 a tube. I can honestly say I have tried dozens of other lip balms by just about everyone out there from cheap drugstore lip balms loaded with chemicals to very high end organic lip balms and everything in between, yes I have even tried a number of lip balms that were over $10 and even around $20 a piece over the years in my quest for the best lip balm for my chronically dry lips. I am thankful that the best product I have found is all-natural and affordable. I love this lip balm so much I give this out as gifts so much I bought 7 gift bags of lip balms for holiday gifts, well one bag was for me of course.

I will review some of the other varieties at a later date.

* I admit that my first tube of this lip balm was given to me to try out the product before it went to market, but that said I have lost count of how many tubes I have purchased since then (28 this holiday season alone). I received no compensation for writing this review, nor was I asked to write this review. I am only posting this review to assist others in their own quest for the right items to add to their own beauty arsenal. 

Starting up some product reviews.

I just got inspired to do some product reviews for some of the products I have tried and love as well as some things I try and don't love. I will try to include Skin Deep scores as well as a description as to what I like and/or don't like about each product. I have recently tried a few new products and have some more coming soon so it seems like a good time to start up such an adventure.

I owe my inspiration to start doing product reviews to a friend who makes my absolute favorite lip balm ever, Rebecca. If you want some truly awesome products that are great for you check her out, Wild Root Naturals. Thanks Rebecca for both the inspiration and the wonderful products you make, I love you and your products so much. 

Back to Homework Time

It has been busy around here lately as we adopted a retired greyhound whom we needed to help nurse back to health and then getting into the groove of a new school year. The new school year and the increased work load that has come along with it has been keeping me very busy. I have a very active, some say hyper active, 6 year old so finding ways to help him learn all his sight words and spelling words has been challenging to say the least. Flash cards have always worked out to some extent but aren't really something he wants to do so I embarked on a mission to find some better ways to learn all these words, especially all those spelling words.

I found an idea for a game called Bang! which uses jumbo popsicle sticks with one word on each stick and while my son enjoyed this game he really loves to win so I eventually took out the Bang sticks and just left the word sticks but to get him to try all the words we allow him to steal our sticks if he can say the word on our stick. This is a pretty big hit but he gets tired of it quickly so it wasn't the only solution necessary, especially since I still need to worry about spelling.

Enter Scrabble Junior and a vis-a-vis marker to write the words on the board. He was not so fond of this but a friends son is enjoying this game.

On to hangman, this is the real winner in our house especially since we have a travel hangman from Melissa & Doug so we can practice spelling words in the car when we travel. Of course I don't drive while I play this with him in the car. I write the number of blanks down on the white board area and tell him the word and he has to spell it. Every wrong guess I turn over a piece of the man and I do this for all 10 spelling words (without resetting the man between words) to see if he can get all 10 words before I can hang him. This has really speeded up the process of learning to spell our words.

Of course come Thursday we do still have to do a paper and pencil practice test to make sure he can do well on his test in class. Leading up to that paper and pencil practice test I do allow him to trace the words using a dry erase marker at least once everyday to get used to writing the words, no my son does not have the neatest handwriting and this helps a lot. I either use the dry erase envelopes or nice glossy page protectors to slide a sheet with the words written out in the teacher specified font on lined paper (I finally found a font for my computer so now I can print the list out in grey for him to trace over instead of me having to write it out by hand myself, no my writing isn't the greatest... it's good but not as good as a teacher).

All of that being said since he is so active and we have a lot of homework I am going to try to find more active ways to do our studying. I'll try to keep you posted on how that goes as I just began making a list of ideas that I can try for spelling, sight words and even math. 

Our new shoe cabinet

Here is a picture of our new shoe cabinet. It is so nice to have a place for the little one to put his shoes so they aren't literally all over the house, it was always like a scavenger hunt when he needed to find his shoes and we were always tripping over them. This beauty holds a minimum of 12 pairs of shoes and has a drawer at the top that we are using to store all of our sunglasses, yes we have tons of sunglasses living by the beach. All I have left to do with this little corner of the house is to add pictures to the picture frames. It's nice to have the entry way basically done. I also still need to paint the doors on the closet and the decorative cement walls, but that is it for this room.






Here you can see the wall all taped off to see how it would fit in the entry way. This picture was taken before I painted the wall and put the light switch plate back on the wall. 

Our new kitchen island, stools still to come

Here is the kitchen before we added the new island. You can see I used painters tape to mark off where the island would go. I did this to get a feel for if the island would disrupt the traffic flow or make it too difficult to access the stove, dishwasher or refrigerator. I also played with where the tape was a bit to work out a good placement for the island, probably not entirely necessary as we were only adding a freestanding island and therefore could move it later if necessary. Of course once you get your stuff on the island it is more difficult to move and I wanted to make sure everyone was going to be ok with the addition of a kitchen island. 

Here you can see the storage area where I am storing my baking pans and sheets and carriers and all of that good stuff, freeing up space for other things.

Below, you can see the back side of the island where the stools go. I ordered a pair of metal stools, slightly industrial and modern yet still look a bit like they belong in a farm house, they should be here next week.

The house is really starting to take shape and feel like a home already. 

Our new house, a work in progress. The playroom/kids guest room.

This is the playroom/kids guest room in our new house. This room took a lot of coats of primer and a lot of patching of walls and even the door to the room. This room had writing on the wall and everything, right down to bright orange walls and bright yellow trim. What a project this room was. Oh lets not forget the disgusting dark blue carpet, thankfully that was covering up a terrazzo floor. The terrazzo does need some serious work but as it is currently just being used as a playroom I figured that can wait a bit.

Our "little man" also picked out the color for his playroom, ok he really picked out 2 colors for his bedroom so I decided to put one color in each room. This room is Valspar Summer Breeze and we loved this color so much we painted our bedroom the same color. I know the room looks pretty good in this picture, but the terrazzo still has more adhesive to be removed and it has pits in areas of it and it has a rough area where it meets up with the tile in the hallway so there is still a ways to go, but it has definitely come a long ways already. I am really happy with how far this room has come in the short time we have owned this house, oh the joys of a fixer upper. I should say for those of you who are debating buying a fixer upper please really think about what you are getting yourself into and what level of time and skill you have. Also realize it will cost more and take more time than you expect, but that being said if you are confident this is a good path for you to go down remember that in the end you will have a house that really suits you.

Here is the glorious before picture. I will admit this room kind of scared me as far as just how much work needed to be done to it, but it is now in such a better place that I don't cringe when I go in the room because I know how much work needs to be done. Now I cringe for a whole other reason, the mess all over the room.  :-) I guess that is all "kids" rooms though, you just never know what kind of mess you will find in their rooms when you enter that door. In his defense though as you can see there really is nothing for him to store or put most of his toys away in so I totally understand the problem in this current situation but we do need to work it out soon as we are getting a dog in just over a week and everything is fair game to a dog, at least in the dogs mind.