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Green Your Summer Giveaway Hop! Dozens of Prizes!

May 30, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 99 Comments

Welcome to the Green Your Summer Event! The Blogging Mamas Network has come together with like-minded bloggers to make sure your grass isn’t all that is green this Summer!

Each blogger in the Event is bringing readers a great green prize to win. You have until June 13th to enter, so be sure to hop around to them all and find great eco-friendly products to help you go green!

While you’re hopping, be sure to enter the TWO Grand Prizes for to Green Your Summer for Mom and Baby! You’ll find prizes including a Lunette Menstrual Cup, Amber Necklace and Bracelet Set, a Merino Wool Sleepsack, re-usable Snack Pouches, and earth-friendly Vinyl Wall Decals from Walls Need Love!

Stuff Parents Need Giveaway:

Today I’m absolutely thrilled to bring you not one, but TWO fantastic DVDs, both with an Earth-friendly focus!

First up, The Magic School Bus: All About Earth. Darah and I have watched this at least 6 times together, and we both give it two enthusiastic thumbs up! This great new release from Scholastic features 3 all new, never been released episodes of the long running Emmy Award-winn science adventure series. It also includes a bonus fourth episode, for a total run time of 90 minutes.

The second DVD is actually a musical DVD, and it is called Marsh Mud Madness. This is from the children’s music entertainer Roger Day, and all 12 songs featured on the DVD are about plants and animals that make up the Atlantic ecosystem. It looks like the PERFECT video for any child who loves to be outside and who frequently gets dirty during play time!

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win a copy of Marsh Mud Madness AND a copy of Magic School Bus: All About Earth!

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_____________________________________ Disclosure: I received complimentary products for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own. According to Jenny, So Easy Being Green, the Blogging Mamas Network, and the Green Your Summer participating bloggers are not responsible for sponsors who do not fulfill prize obligations. _____________________________________ Linky:

Van’s Offers Great Gluten-Free Snack Options for Summer (Giveaway)

May 29, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 83 Comments

It is very likely that you personally know someone who has some sort of gluten sensitivity. That person might even be someone in your immediate family. My mother-in-law cannot eat wheat, so we try to remember to have some wheat-free options on hand every time she visits.

I recently got to experience what it was like to not only be wheat free, but also gluten-free. Tim and I practiced the Paleo diet for about a month, and one of the things you avoid on this diet is gluten. While it was tough to break old habits and stop eating things I was very used to eating (pasta, bread, carbs of all shapes and sizes), I was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find YUMMY food that was gluten-free in the stores. When I asked my mother-in-law about her experience finding such products, she said that it has become significantly easier over the past few years, as awareness and diagnosis of the allergy has increased.

Gluten-Free Snacks

Van’s Natural Foods is a brand that I have purchased before and will definitely purchase again. They make a wide variety of nutritious and delicious products, including two gluten-free options I wanted to highlight today. And trust me when I say that you don’t need have a gluten sensitivity to love these. They are DELISH!!!

First up are the Van’s Whole Grain Crackers. Lately I’ve been pairing these with hummus and just keeping a platter on the dining room table for snacking throughout the day. We’ve tried the Multigrain flavor and the Say Cheese flavor, and I would buy them both again! These retail for a very reasonable $2.99 and are made with gluten-free oats, brown rice, millet, quinoa and amaranth. They are free of artificial colors, flavors and preservatives, which makes them very clean-eating friendly, too! Don’t they look yummy?

The other product we have been enjoying, especially around 3pm when you hit that slump in the day, is the Van’s Whole Grain Snack Bars, which retail for $4.49 per pack. These contain more than four times the fiber of other gluten-free bars on the market today, and they are nutrient-rich. I will usually split one with Darah along with a glass of milk. They are very satisfying!

One of the reasons I’m particularly fond of these snack options from Van’s is because they pack so much nutrition into products that are very fun to eat. I think that’s a big improvement over things like popsicles, which are of course also fun to eat, but typically just full of empty calories.

What are you serving up for snack time over the summer? Any suggestions to offer to others as they make their grocery lists?

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win 2 coupons for free whole grain snack bars and 2 coupons for free whole grain crackers (ARV $14.96)!

Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my page.

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I received complimentary products for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

What I Would Do With $1Million plus $5,000 Every Week for Life (Giveaway!)

May 28, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 28 Comments

Special thanks to Publishers Clearing House for sponsoring today’s discussion.

When we purchase lottery tickets, I call it “cheap thrills.” I find the entertainment value in dreaming up how we’d spend the money to be worth the $2 we spend on the ticket. This is the same reason why I always enter the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes. There is no charge to enter, and somebody’s going to win…it could be me! And win or not, it is so much fun to dream.

publishers clearing house sweepstakes

The current sweepstakes from Publishers Clearing House is AMAZING. It’s called the Win $1 Million plus $5,000 Every Week For Life Mega Prize. And I think you can guess what the prize is, no? You get a check for one million dollars AND you get $5,000 every week for the rest of your life (which adds up to $260,000/year, by the way).

Now, a million dollars is nothing to sneeze at. It will change your life, for sure. But to be honest with you, it isn’t going to RADICALLY change your life. I suppose it could for a brief period of time if you blow through it quickly. But if you use it judiciously, then your lifestyle probably won’t change too terribly much, aside from the fact that you might be able to retire from your job. But when you add $5,000 each week on top of that, you can really start to do some interesting things!

Here’s what I would do if I won the prize.

1. Get a REALLY GOOD financial advisor. This is the most important step you can take, and it would be something I would do before letting any of my family or friends know that we had won. Tim and I would want to develop some sort of game plan to maximize so that we can do great things for as many people and causes as possible.

2. Tithe. As a Christian, I do believe that it is important to give back, not only to your religious community, but also to causes that address issues of injustice in the world. I would immediately begin tithing 10% of the $5,000 every week (so $500/week). Half of that would go to my home church, and the other half would go to various nonprofits. It would be a lot of fun to be able to send a $250 check to a different nonprofit every week, I think! I would probably even blog about which nonprofit I was supporting each week and why to encourage others to give!

3. Soundly invest the 1 million dollars. I basically wouldn’t touch this money but would have a plan in place to let it grow as much as possible so that we can do more with it in the future.

4. Pay off our debts. We have a mortgage on a house in Memphis. I still have school loans. Those are our only debts, thankfully, but they still hang over us and the total is still quite hefty. I would put our weekly money toward paying off the debts first and not use any of it for a frivolous purpose until the debts were cleared. That’s the honest truth! That means that Tim would still go to work and I would keep right on blogging!

5. Once our debts our paid, take our extended families on a really nice vacation. This would be the big splurge for us! We’d love to plan a vacation for my family and another vacation for Tim’s family. Creating memories together are one of the greatest gifts you can give each other, and we’d have an absolute blast planning something truly fantastic.

6. Regroup. After the tithing, the investing, the debt repayment and the vacations of a lifetime, we would regroup to determine the best way to use the funds coming in moving forward. No doubt a percentage of them would be put into the million dollar investment account, a percentage would go to family members to help with debts and/or college savings accounts, and a percentage would go toward larger gifts and contributions to nonprofits that mean a lot to us (such as our alma mater, Rhodes College). We would also assess our current work situations at that point and determine if we want to retire. 🙂

I’ve entered this contest, myself, and let’s be real: I hope I win! But I also want you to get to have as much fun dreaming up your plans as I did dreaming up mine. So I want to share with you how you can easily enter the current Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. It’s pretty simple, actually. Just enter your information on this form. That’s it! 🙂

Now it is your turn to dream! What would you do with 1 million dollars + $5,000 each week for life? I would SO love to hear your answers!

Publishers Clearing House (PCH) has awarded over $240 million in prizes over the year. No purchase is necessary to enter their giveaways, but should you choose to make a purchase, 100% satisfaction is guaranteed on any purchase you make through the mail or through their website, pch.com. PCH has an online game network where someone wins a prize roughly every 10 minutes. The winner for the Win $1 Million plus $5,000 Every Week for Life Mega Prize will be announced June 30th. There will be a winner. Why shouldn’t it be you???

The Questions I Have When I Need to Know Now (Giveaway!)

May 28, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 59 Comments

How many times in a typical day would you say that you turn to the internet to get the answer to a question you have? I actually wrote down every query I had in a single day. It was A LOT, and yet, I’d say this was a very normal day in terms of the number of times I sought information online! Want to hear what I was asking the world wide web to help me figure out?

freezer breakfast ideas
enzo’s chattanooga store hours
can you grill beet greens?
grilling tips for chicken
natural toddler allergy remedies
how much zyrtec to give a 12 month old?
Can you use All Free & Clear on cloth diapers?
gymboree coupon code
Setting up Google AdSense with DFP

So this tells you that yesterday, in addition to just hanging out with my family, I was doing a lot of cooking, a bit of worrying about my sick baby, some cloth diaper laundry, a little shopping and finally, some work on Stuff Parents Need advertising.

Now, the world would not have ended if I had not been able to get answers to my questions, but the fact that I was able to find out exactly what I needed within just a few short minutes every time I approached a search engine made it so that I accomplished much more than I probably otherwise would have! I learned how to earn more money thanks to my DFP search, I SAVED some money thanks to that coupon query, I cooked some YUMMY food for my family, and I found some tips to try to get my Layah Bug feeling better faster.

I often wonder what people did before the internet came to be. Of course I know, as I was already 13 years old when dial up service and AOL chat rooms made their debut. People certainly made do by calling family and friends, guessing the answer, or just putting the question on the back burner until they had time to do more research. But I have to say, it sure is nice to know now!

In honor of the new, lightning fast MSN, which is the perfect tool for helping you get the answers you are seeking when you need to know now, we’ve got a fun giveaway today!

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win a $25 gift card to the Microsoft Store thanks to #MSNKnowNow.

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Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my page.

This post was created in partnership with MSN. Find out more about the all new MSN experience at allnew.msn.com or see it in action on Windows 8, Android, or on iOS at msn.com

Kung Pao Crab with Soba Noodles Featuring Annie Chun’s

May 23, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 134 Comments

What’s your favorite type of cuisine? My all-time favorite is Chinese food (though admittedly, it is the American version of Chinese food). But I have a growing love for all types of Asian cuisine, as well. Thai food, for example, has some of the brightest and most exciting flavors out there (fresh basil, lemongrass, yum!). And I started craving sushi when I was pregnant with Darah and haven’t stopped.

In all the examples listed above, I have found that making my own version of these types of foods usually doesn’t end very well. Because I lack the right ingredients and the right cooking techniques, I’m rarely satisfied with the end result. I had pretty much reached the conclusion that if I wanted Asian food, I should just pay the price for someone else to prepare it for me.

Annie Chun’s is an Asian foods brand found in most supermarkets, and they want to change the perception that preparing Asian food at home is difficult by providing some of the tools that kitchens like mine really need. Annie Chun’s offers a variety of really delicious cooking sauces, noodles, soups and a whole slew of convenience foods for when you are REALLY stretched for time and can only manage to get something in the microwave (been there!).

We have been sampling a few different products over the last month, and I have to say, I have been really impressed. The Annie Chun’s line has 6 different types of noodle bowls. I tried a few of them, and the one that I’m really eager to stock up on is the Peanut Sesame Noodle Bowl. In just a few minutes I can have a VERY flavorful dish ready to serve, and the portion is generous. I have actually used this as a quick side dish for Tim and I to share alongside a piece of chicken. But it is also terrific on its own.

The other products I wanted to highlight for you are the Kung Pao Sauce and the Soba Noodles (also known as buckwheat noodles). I actually came up with a recipe using both ingredients and simply by cleaning out my fridge and freezer! You can make lots of substitutions as you see fit; simply see this recipe as an inspiration!

Kung Pao Crab with Soba Noodles

Ingredients:

16 oz crab (I used frozen)
8 oz frozen peas
1/2 – 1 red or orange bell pepper, cut into short strips
1/2 onion, diced
1/4 cup Annie Chun’s Kung Pao Sauce
greens of choice, such as bok choy or kale
Annie Chun’s Soba Noodles
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp vegetable stock (can substitute chicken stock or water).

Ingredients for noodle sauce:

1/4 cup Annie Chun’s Kung Pao Sauce
1/2 tsp ginger paste (can substitute with 1/4 tsp ground ginger)
1 heaping tbsp peanut butter or almond butter
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce

At first glance, this recipe may seem to have a lot of ingredients and be a bit cumbersome. But it really is the result of me trying to use up what I had on hand in the fridge and freezer and grabbed what I knew I could throw together. You can substitute the crab for another meat, or swap out some of the veggies with whatever you have on hand or like.

I began by cutting the crab into bite-sized chunks. I used my Kitchenaid Professional Shears to make this work a bit faster! I use these for SO much in my kitchen. If you don’t own a pair of kitchen shears, let me STRONGLY recommend that you put them on your wish list!

Then I cut up bell peppers and your onions. I happened to have small bell peppers on hand. Next, add peas. I only had about 2 oz of peas, which is why they don’t look very prevalent in the dish. I would have used more if I had them on hand! I then mixed everything together.

The dish looked decidedly lacking in the green department, but then I remembered that I had some kale. I washed, dryed and then chopped up the leaves (remove the stems from the kale, as they are a bit tough to eat). Then I added the Kung Pao sauce. It was ready to go!

Next, I heated up the skillet on med-high with 1 tbsp oil (I used olive) and 2 tbsp vegetable stock. I added the stock because I knew the kale was going to need a bit of moisture to help it wilt. As I waited for the skilled to warm, I also got a pot of hot water boiling for the noodles. Quick tip: put a lid on your pots and pans while they are heating to get them hot faster!

Once the skillet was ready to go, I added my crab mixture, gave it a good stir, and then put the lid on and set the timer for 5 minutes. I opened the lid twice during the cooking process to stir everything around. If you think your mixture is starting to stick too much, just add another tablespoon of stock.

When the water for the noodles was boiling, I added the entire box of them, gave them a stir, and let them cook for 5 minutes, also. Drain and rinse under cold water once the noodles are done.

While the crab mixture and noodles were cooking, I made noodle sauce by combining all the noodle sauce ingredients listed above together in a bowl. I poured the sauce over the cooked, drained and rinsed noodles and coatedthe noodles evenly with the sauce.

Annie Chun's Kung Pao sauce as an ingredient

Then I placed the noodles in a serving bowl, and topped with the crab mixture. What a healthy, colorful and packed-with-flavor meal!

Want to hear my opinion on the dish after trying it? I thought the noodle sauce was AMAZING and the soba noodles were surprisingly yummy. Will definitely be buying them again. In fact, I’ll make some version of this recipe again sometime this summer. I think I’d like to try the Kung Pao sauce with some chicken next time. The crab tasted good (no regrets!) but I bet the chicken will taste even better.
Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win a variety of products from Annie Chun’s!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my page.

I received complimentary products for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own. This post contains affiliate links.

Time for Some Ca$h!!! $200 PayPal or Amazon Gift Card Giveaway!!!

May 22, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 6 Comments

If you had your pick of $200 via PayPal or via Amazon gift card, which would you choose?

Spend some time thinking over the question carefully, because you just might win!!!

Fill out the rafflecopter form below. Simple as that! Good luck!!!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stuff Parents Need is not responsible for prize fulfillment. Any questions related to the giveaway should be directed to Stacie at simplystacieblog@gmail.com.

3 Tips to Get Rid of Mosquitoes in Your Yard (Mosquito Treatment Giveaway!!!)

May 19, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 24 Comments

Here in eastern Tennessee, the mosquitoes are already out, and man are they hungry! I seem to be in the most fortunate category of people who are extremely delicious to mosquitoes. I’m sure you are jealous! Last summer, every day I would get bitten by at least one mosquito in the time it took me to go from my back door to the car (9 seconds…I’ve timed it).

Darah and Layah both really love to play outside, and I want them to get to enjoy the beautiful weather and get to play in the yard, with their splash table, and with the kiddie pool. And I want this all to happen without them being bit by mosquitoes like crazy. Also, I’d like to avoid that fate, myself!

I recently connected with Arrow Exterminators, a pest control company with offices in 9 different states (Alabama, Arizona, Flordia, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas). They came out and provided a mosquito treatment to our property, and they also taught me quite a bit about their services and what strategic steps I can take to help reduce the mosquito population around my house. I highly recommend this company, but even if you don’t live in their service area, you can still learn some great tips from them, so keep reading!

I have never had my yard sprayed for mosquitoes out of concern that very toxic chemicals would be used. I was really relieved to hear that Arrow uses products that are registered with the EPA and that is designed to bond to foliage, and not to people! Once the area that has been sprayed is dry, it is completely safe to walk around on (even barefoot!). In my experience, it takes about 4 hours for the product to dry. I also thought the fact that the person spraying our lawn wasn’t wearing special clothing or a special mask was very telling. If he trusts the chemicals enough not to be “suited up” and he sprays them all day, every day, then there’s little to worry about!

I was also concerned about the cost of the treatment. For a yard my size (which is admittedly small) and for the Chattanooga area, the montly cost of a mosquito treatment would be $55. Honestly, that’s not a price I would have paid before having kids, as I personally don’t like to spend a lot of time outside, but it is something I’m strongly considering now. Because my kids like to do this. A lot.

The exact cost for your property to be serviced is likely not going to be the same as mine, but Arrow can provide you with a free estimate.

I asked Arrow for some tips on helping me make the very most of my monthly treatment, as well as some good general tips for keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Here’s what I learned.

Tip #1. Eliminate as much standing water on your property as possible. For example, if you have empty pots on your deck that just collect rain water, turn them upside-down. If you have larger water containers like a kiddie pool or a splash table, it isn’t necessary to empty them daily, but they should be emptied once a week. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in standing water, which is why it needs to go! If you have something like a pond in your backyard, Arrow has specific chemicals it can use that targe mosquito larvae and that won’t harm the pond plant life.

Tip #2. Do you have any areas of your back yard that are overgrown? Mosquitoes rest on foliage, and LOVE to congregate on bushes, trees, or better yet, clusters of such things. We actually got rid of a lot of overgrowth this past winter, and I think that is going to help us significantly. If you ever needed a good reason to do some cleaning up in your yard, now you have it!

Tip #3. Mow your grass BEFORE you have it treated for mosquitoes. The product adheres to the blades, so if you cut your grass right after your treatment, your results will not be as optimal. Unfortunately, we were due for a grass cutting when our exterminator came over, but we let the grass continue to grow for about 5 more days so that we could get as much as possible out of that treatment. It has been 2 weeks now, and even though we have cut the grass, I am still not noticing nearly as many mosquitoes in our yard, so I’d say our treatment was successful!

If you live in an Arrow Exterminators service area, please do get in touch with them to get an estimate on servicing your yard. Your body will thank you for the lack of mosquito bites it will have to endure this summer!

I received a complimentary treatment for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.

LEGO Storage: Box4Blox

May 12, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 144 Comments

LEGO Storage

Is this a familiar sight in your home?

What you see scattered across my living room floor is a huge collection of 20+ years old space themed LEGOS that Tim’s mother so lovingly stored away in her attic until it was time to pass them on to her grandchildren.

Tim looks at this pile and sees countless memories from his own childhood, as well as memories to come from playing with these with his girls. I see hundreds of choking hazards. And this. I see lots and lots of this:

The LEGOS actually came to us in a nice box, but the only way to play with them every time is to dump them all out on the floor. To which I say, “No thanks!” But once Layah gets old enough to know not to eat the LEGO pieces, I really do want the kids to be able to play with them. So a better solution was needed.

And I found one! Want to see what that giant pile of LEGOS looks like now? Check out Box4Blox!

That’s right. Every. single. LEGO. all nice and neat in this 10 1/4 inch box. And this isn’t just any old box. Oh no! The inside looks like this:

The tiers of the box have graded filters. So when it is time to put your LEGOS away, at first leave out the very largest pieces and then just start piling in the LEGOS, given them a gentle shake every so often so that the pieces fall through to their appropriate level. This makes putting away the LEGOS actually fun! But what I love even more is what it looks like when it is time to get them back out!

All the LEGOS are sorted so that it is so much easier to find the pieces you are looking for. The tiniest pieces are in the bottom green tier. Medium-small pieces are just above in red, large-medium pieces are above that in blue, and the largest pieces can be found in the top yellow tier. No need to dump everything out. Just lay out your trays!

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it???

Darah’s grandparents were so kind to hang on to Tim’s childhood treasures, and now we have a way to store and organize them that really makes sense. I think this a perfect gift option, especially for grandparents to purchase because it strikes this great balance between being very practical (and something the parents will appreciate) and very fun! This product is also made in the U.S.A. which is a really nice bonus!

When Darah gets a little bit older, I’ll be purchasing another Box4Blox set, as we have even more LEGOS waiting upstairs in the attic!

If you have LEGOS in your home, and you are starting to run out of ideas for how to store them in an effective way, then you are definitely going to want a Box4Blox. They are currently available at Amazon for under $45. Put it on your wishlist right now. Or better yet, just put it in your online cart!

I received a complimentary product for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own. This post contains an affiliate link.

Organic Clothing for Kids from Cutie Bees (Giveaway!!!)

May 10, 2013 · by Tiffany Merritt · 84 Comments

Do you ever stop and think about the chemicals that might be firmly entrenched in your baby’s clothes? Cotton is one of the most heavily pesticide-treated crops in the U.S. And those chemicals don’t all come out with a simple wash in your machine, I’m afraid. For some babies, this doesn’t seem to be a problem. But for many, it is the root cause of rashes, redness and irritation. This is what the founder of Cutie Bees discovered just a few years ago when her baby girl was suffering from skin flare ups. Once she started putting her in organic cotton, she rapidly improved!

Cutie Bees in an organic clothing company for babies that focuses on bringing back really cute styles, which is something the founder noticed was lacking in the current selection of organic-only clothing for babies and toddlers. Check out one of the styles that is currently available on the website:

I sort of die every time Layah puts on this bows and ballet outfit. It is so ADORABLE!!! And totally free of the chemicals that are in most other outfits and that have been linked to asthma and even cancer.

And the attention to detail is spot on, right down to the leggings!

This outfit retails for $41.99 and is just one of several very cute options that are brightly colored, fashion-forward, and most importantly, COMFORTABLE for play time and nap time! And right now through May 15 Cutie Bees is offering 22% off and free shipping in honor of Earth Day! Just use code EARTH22 at checkout!

If your child seems to be experiencing sensitivities to certain types of clothing, or if you are just concerned about the chemicals found in many cotton outfits (the chemicals DON’T wash out well…I’ve done my research on it!), then you may want to give organic clothing a try. It is a bit more expensive, but there’s something to be said for having fewer items, and having them all be high quality and SAFE.

Win it!: One lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win the outfit of your choice from Cutie Bees!

Be sure to enter my other current giveaways, found on the sidebar of my page.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received a complimentary outfit for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are strictly my own.