Thank You for Your Votes!
By Heather Ledeboer | Category: Press | Posted Monday, May 31, 2010
Thank you so much for all of your votes!
Today is the last day you can vote, AND the last day you can use your 10% discount for voting.
We will contact the winners of the two $25.00 gift certificates tomorrow, and announce them in our June newsletter!
Weekly Giveaway – Snacker Catcher
By Heather Ledeboer | Category: Mom 4 Life News & Giveaways | Posted Friday, May 28, 2010
Congratulations to Krista, who won the Hipster Bibster by Bebalee. All Hipster Bibsters will all be 10% off this week (until Thursday night).
Visit our contest page to read the winning story.
Order your KinderKord right here!
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Vote for us at Pregnancy & Newborn and help us, while making yourself eligible for great prizes!
THIS IS THE LAST FRIDAY TO VOTE (last day to vote is May 31)!!
Take our survey and be entered to win a $25.00 Mom 4 Life gift certificate and get an automatic 10% discount code! The 10% off code that you will get if you fill
out our survey is only good until the
end of this month so don't delay!
Snacker Catcher by Bebalee Retail Value: $6.99
How do you win? At the bottom of all of our product pages, we feature five products. Which one is your favorite? Leave a comment right here to tell us. You have until Tuesday evening, June 1, to enter. Good luck!
How to: Homemade glass cleaner
By Heather Ledeboer | Category: Healthy Living, Moneywi$e, Recipes & Kitchen Tips, The Journey of Motherhood | Posted Thursday, May 27, 2010
You may recall that one of my goals this year was to start making my own cleaning products. The reason for this is two fold:
1) I want to have products in my home that are safe for our family and don’t add extra allergens.
2) I want to save money.
The first homemade cleaning product I tried was a scrub that would be used in place of Comet. I love this easy, inexpensive mix. Just this week I let a friend of mine try it. She cleans houses for a living. After using it she was so impressed, she asked me for the recipe!
Now that spring is here, I am noticing that my windows are *ahem* not very sparkly. So I decided to whip up some glass cleaner. This glass cleaning recipe is so darn easy that you will have NO excuse for not giving it a try:)! Ready?
1) Find a spray bottle (I used my empty Windex bottle).
2) Fill it half way with water.
3) Fill it the rest of the way with white vinegar
All done!
This mixture works wonderfully, has no after odor and no chemicals. Plus it is CHEAP! I buy my vinegar at Costco. You can get (2) 1 gallon jugs for $3.99. Now lets say that you used this vinegar ONLY to make glass cleaner. Once you mixed the vinegar with water (1 to 1 ratio) you would get 4 gallons cleaner total. One gallon = 128 fluid oz.
This means you would get 512 oz. of glass cleaner for $3.99. Compare this to buying a 32 oz. container of Windex at Walmart ($2.48) or Target ($2.49). To get 512 oz. of Windex you would pay about $39.84! This means that making your own glass cleaner is a savings of 898%! I will never buy another bottle of Windex again.
Another alternative is the E-cloth. I have these for cleaning and they work really well! You
can get one for glass and polishing for $9.99 (they have other options
depending on what you are cleaning). Because it can be washed and reused
needed, you will find your costs being saved in the long run. You can
see Ashlyn with the blue E-cloth in the image below (at her feet). And sorry, you can’t hire her to clean your windows–we keep her far to busy cleaning our house!
Happy spring cleaning!
How about you, do you have any favorite methods for cleaning glass?
Making a homemade dress and shirt bag
By Heather Ledeboer | Category: Home Crafts, The Journey of Motherhood | Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2010
This weekend I went yard sailing. I love, love, love yard sales! There is something about the welcoming gesture of a sign on a lawn saying, "Come! Come walk on our grass and look at our things. Come talk to us and poke around our stuff. See if we have something you need."
When I go yard sailing, I try to start with a goal in mind. This is an attempt to keep me focused and provides an added challenge that I enjoy. This weekend I was hoping to find an extra Pack N Play. We don't have any more cribs in our home, instead Quinten sleeps in our walk-in closet in a Pack N Play. As handy as this is, I would love to have an extra for grandma's house or to have on hand when friends come over.
Unfortunately, I didn't find a Pack N Play. However, I did find a Leap Pad complete with several books that would be perfect for car rides. The downside to all the books and cartridges that came with it was the challenge of how to keep them together and accessible.
I pulled out my bag of left over clothing scraps from my memory tree and homemade bookmark projects and found a really fun and simple solution.
For Ashlyn's bag: I took a summer dress and turned it inside out. Lining up the shoulder straps and with the back zipper lined up on one side, I sewed a straight stitch about half way down the dress. Next, I cut off the bottom section of the dress below the seam and inverted the dress right side out. Along the top edge of the dress and under the arm holes I sewed the top shut. Now the "dress purse" is ready for its contents. Simply unzip and fill!
*Had I wanted a purse that didn't completely close I would have left the top open and would not have needed to use a dress that had a zipper.
Below you can see the zipper that was originally on the back of the dress but is now on the side of the purse.
For Hunter's shirt bag: I buttoned up a shirt and turned it inside out. Next, I sewed a straight stitch along the top and bottom of the section I wanted to use as a bag and cut off the extra fabric above and below the hem. Then I calculated how wide I wanted the bag to be and sewed another seam shortening the width and positioning the buttons along one side of the square. After cutting off the extra fabric, I unbuttoned the bag, turned it right side out and re-buttoned.
To access the contents, unbutton!
The bags are certainly are not perfect but they were fun and the kids loved seeing the way their clothes had transformed into new helpful bags.
If you have a sewing machine and some to-small clothing perhaps you can find a way to re-purpose them. Let me know what you come up with!
Maybe next week after my yard sailing I can write instead about the great selection of cribs I discovered down the road;)! By the way, I am starting to play around with a new iphone app to help me find local garage sales. Don't you just love technology!?
Leading Moms in Business
By Heather Ledeboer | Category: Seasonal Contests | Posted Monday, May 24, 2010
Last year, you voted us #17 out of 200+ businesses, in the 2009 Leading Moms in Business competition, sponsored by Startupnation!
Would you vote for us again in 20010?
It is really easy! No registration. No survey. Just a quick click of your mouse. You can vote once a day if you want, and choose to get a daily reminder e-mail (if you want).
Thanks!
