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Campbell’s Fresh Brewed Soup: How It Works

October 19, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · Leave a Comment

This post brought to you by Campbell Soup Company. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Stuff Parents Need.

I am sure you have heard all about the product I’m going to feature today, because it’s been all over social media, and it’s causing people to scratch their heads in a bit of confusion. Campbell’s has released a new product, Fresh Brewed Soup, made with a little help from a Keurig machine. Is this genius or something else???

I tried it out for you and I want to show you exactly how it works, and give you a few tips for ensuring you have the best experience (and spoiler alert…it is, in fact, genius!).

First, here’s what comes in the Campbell’s Fresh Brewed Soup container. You get a packet that you pour directly into your mug, and you get a K Cup that will produce the broth.

I think one thing that is giving people pause about this innovative idea is a concern that their soup will taste like coffee, and that the coffee they brew later will taste like soup. Friends, there is a REALLY easy way to make sure this doesn’t happen!

Just take 30 seconds before you begin to clean out your K Cup holder area. If your Keurig gets used as often as mine, it is likely in dire need of a cleaning, anyway. I gave the cup holder area a good wiping down with a paper towel, and then a put a cup under the holder area, and simply ran a bit of water through it. You could either pour water yourself or turn on your Keurig and let hot water run through. Either way, this whole effort takes you 1 minute. Totally worth it!

Once you have cleaned out your K Cup holder, pour the contents of your packet into your mug. Now it’s time to brew your soup! The packaging suggests brewing it on the 8 ounce setting, which is the standard coffee cup size (for me that’s the one in the middle when you are choosing sizes).

Once the broth has been brewed over the soup mix packet in the mug, you need to let it sit for about 3 minutes. This is the perfect time to remove the broth K Cup and wipe it down again just like you did at the start. This is really the key to ensuring that you don’t have flavors mixing together in ways you don’t want them to, and since you are standing there waiting for your soup to finish, anyway, its not really a hardship to do.

The final product has a nice, rich flavor! I tried out the Homestyle Chicken Broth & Noodle Soup Mix, and the only suprising thing for me was the small size of the noodles. The taste was great, and actually, I really liked those small noodles because they weren’t falling off my spoon!

I made myself a mid-afternoon hot snack in just a few minutes and took it out on my back porch to enjoy while I did some planning for enrichment lessons for my oldest, which I had the time to do it thanks to Campbell’s Fresh Brewed Soup. The weather had that slight chill to it that made the soup taste SO perfect!

And this morning, I made the main component of my child’s lunch for school in hardly any time at all! Her soup is waiting for her in a hot thermos; it will be such a delicious treat for her, and it was honestly a treat for me to make because it was so easy! 🙂

Animal Prints and Lace: Welcome Fall 2015 Fashion for Girls

September 23, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · Leave a Comment

Thanks to FabKids.com for providing Layah’s great style shown below. Referral links included. I’ve been a happy customer of FabKids.com for over a year, and I love sharing about them!

Happy Fall!!!!! I’ve been in the best mood all day because despite the pumpkin-spiced EVERYTHING you’ve been surrounded with for the past 3 weeks, fall didn’t actually start until today.

Layah selected an outfit from FabKids.com earlier this month and I promised her that she could wear it on the first day of fall, even if the weather wasn’t really ready for her boots.

Oh, and they are quite some boots!

She’s rockin’ the Leopard Faux Fur Fuzzies from FabKids (currently priced at $34.95) and she did not care that today’s temp will top out at 84 degrees. It’s fall, so the fur is coming out! 🙂

And what about that lovely green lace you spy? This is the green lace dropwaist dress with black leggings. You can buy the dress for $26.95, or as a VIP member, get it with black leggings for just $29.95! 🙂

If you aren’t familiar with FabKids, it’s a VERY laid-back subscription service offering boys and girls clothing in sizes 2T-12. On the first of the month, you’ll be presented with a look book, filled with awesome outfits you can customize to your liking (for example, you can choose from a selection of bottoms to pair with your top). If you don’t see anything you like, you click a button and skip the month. If you like something, you can put an outfit together, usually for $29.95. If you totally forget to skip or choose, you’ll have $29.95 credit in your account waiting for you to spend at your leisure.

FabKids.com has all sorts of great clothes that are on-trend, comfy, and best of all, that don’t require a trip to the mall. If you need to make an exchange, it’s hassle-free (I speak from experience!). I highly recommend this great company; my girls get compliments on their FabKids outfits all the time!

And if you like really great deals, this site often has really good sales! I actually purchased a TON of stuff on the site earlier this month when they had a huge Labor Day sale (VIP members got early access to it so I had the best selection!).

Honest Beauty Free Trial Offer

September 22, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · 3 Comments

Referral links may be included. All thoughts and opinions about Honest Beauty are my own. Honest Beauty posts are not sponsored by Honest Beauty or The Honest Company.

Have you heard the great news about the launch of Honest Beauty? This is a line of beauty and skincare products from the makers of The Honest Company. I am SOOOO excited about this line and I am eager to try out pretty much everything they’ve got so I can tell you what to get and what, if anything, to avoid!

Let’s start with the Honest Beauty free trial, because that’s the very best way to start your relationship with this company: with free gifts!

For $5.95 (this is to cover shipping costs) you get 3 skincare products and a really cute faux leather makeup bag.

You can take advantage of the free trial offer by going through my link (please and thank you! They reward folks for spreading the word by giving credit back to their site…you can do the same thing once you join!). Once you get signed up you will get to select your skin type and then your trial will be on its way.

Now this part is important: this is a TRIAL. Meaning, there is something coming later! If you love your products, GREAT! You don’t need to do a thing and you will be all signed up for the Honest Beauty bundle, which offers you any 3 makeup or skincare products in their line for $50 (which will save you money over buying those items individually). If you do NOT want to get the bundle, no problem! But within 7 days of receiving your freebies, you need to call Honest Beauty at 1-888-678-8873 to cancel. Based on my experience with their parent company, The Honest Company, you are NOT going to get any hassle from folks about canceling; it’s very refreshing! If you know up front that you aren’t going to get the bundle, I’d go ahead and call in on the day your package arrive, just to ensure that you don’t forget. But I think you are going to be in for a treat if you do decide to subscribe (take it from someone eagerly awaiting her first bundle!).

As I try out various Honest Beauty products, I’ll be putting together more reviews for you, so be sure to stick around. Let me know if there’s a particular product you want to see reviewed ASAP! I’ve already reviewed the Honest Beauty Lip Crayon, so check it out!

Honest Beauty Lip Crayon Review: An Honest Assessment

September 21, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · 2 Comments

I purchased this product on my own as a happy Honest Company customer. All thoughts and opinions about Honest Beauty are my own. Referral links may be included.

Friends I am SO excited to let you know that The Honest Company has launched Honest Beauty, which is a sister company solely focused on makeup and skincare products. Just as you will find with The Honest Company products, Honest Beauty products are honestly free of ingredients that aren’t good for our bodies or for our planet. This is shockingly hard to find with American cosmetics and skincare products, so I have been really eagerly awaiting this launch so that I can start the process of trying out pretty much everything they make!

My very first purchase was the Honest Truly Kissable Lip Crayon in Blossom Kiss ($18). Notice that fact that for every product, Honest Beauty shows you what it looks like on models with different skin tones. I found this feature to be enormously helpful! 🙂

I have found that I prefer shopping for Honest Beauty lip crayons at Walmart.com and there are a few shades on Amazon, as well. Y

Check out my video review where you can see what it looks like when applied!

I’ve been wearing this product for about 4 days now, and I love it! 🙂

Update: I now also own Sheer Chestnut Kiss and I wanted to show you how the shades compare:

Chestnut Kiss is much more peachy and Chestnut Kiss is more brown. Both are quite understated, as far as their level of intensity. As someone with fair skin with blue undertones, I prefer sheer blossom kiss to sheer chestnut kiss, personally.

Honest Company Dish Soap Review: An Honest Assessment

September 14, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · 3 Comments

Affiliate links included. I make all my Honest.com purchases and review them to help others out! 🙂

I’ve had Honest Company dish soap for a long while now, and it was on my list of things to share with you about that I would NOT recommend. And then I realized that others must have felt similarly, because the bottle design AND the formula changed.

So I ordered the new Honest dish soap, and have been using it for a few weeks. The price went down (actually, I think the price, itself, stayed the same, but the number of ounces in the product increased). I’m going on memory so somebody correct me if I’m mistaken about that.

I really like the improvements made to the formula of the dish soap. I think it cleans great now and the scent is also really nice (I tried lemon verbena).

The packaging is another story. Aesthetically, it is also a big improvement. I love that the bottle is tall and also clear. It has a really fresh, really pure look and the graphics are better than the old design. The problem lies with the hole where the dish soap comes out. It’s too big, and so dish soap pretty much spews out of it every time you use it. I have more dish soap than I did with the old design, but it’s getting used at a faster rate because every single time I use it, even now that I know to be careful, more comes out than I want or need.

So would I buy the product again? It’s hard to say. Again, I think the formula works great, but in order to not be dissatisfied overall, I’d need to move the contents into an entirely different container. And if I’m going to go through all that hassle, I’ll probably just buy something different altogether. But that’s just me.

If you want to try the Honest Dish soap, I recommend that this item be one of the + 3 items in your bundle due to it’s low cost. You can have up to 3 +3 items included with your order, and those items get marked down by 25%. This is the place to put your lower cost items.

I had a commenter once advise me not to always think that anything cheaper than $7.20 (that’s the per item cost for your budle items) needs to be +3, and I think she was really on to something. She said that she adds up the total cost of the items in her bundle and if the total cost is greater than what she is paying for the bundle (bundles are $35.95) then she is satisfied that she got a good deal. With more and more items available that are under $7 retail, I actually think she’s on to something, because I have quite a few of those items that I love…more than the +3 spaces I usually have to offer.

But with all of that said, at $3.95 the Honest Dish Soap is one of the very cheapest items on the entire site. So I would firmly say that this one should go in your +3. If you need to put some low priced items into your bundle, at least save those spots for items that are $6.95 or even $5.95. You’ll get a better overall value. 🙂

Want more suggestions for what to get and what to avoid? Check out my list of Honest product reviews. I also have information about how to get 3 free trials of products from the Honest Company for anyone out there who is brand new to this great line of eco-friendly and affordable products!

New My Little Pony Toys: Sweet Apple Acres!

September 14, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · Leave a Comment

Product provided for review consideration. Additional product purchased on my own because Applejack is amazing. 🙂

I have to give a big thank you to my BFF, Leslie, who encouraged me (and by that I mean yelled at me) to start watching My Little Pony with my girls. I’ve been going through the episodes with them for about 6 months now (maybe longer, actually!) and that show is GREAT! The episodes are funny and thought-provoking, and provide a lot of great material for discussion.

They also provide a lot of great inspiration for play! And it seems that for me, I have TWO areas of weaknesses when it comes to buying toys for my girls: one is stuffed animals, and the other is My Little Pony.

A few days ago I was out running errands and while I was inside one of the big box stores I thought I’d just see if there might be any fun Apple Jack toys. And yes, there was something SUPER fun!

I bought the sweet apple juice stand because LOOK AT APPLE JACK! She is in mid-buck! 🙂 Those apples on the tree come off, too, which means my youngest can have her favorite pony kick that apple tree again and again and again.

I also bought it because I knew something extra awesome was headed our way from Hasbro.

Sweet Apple Acres! Hot Diggity! 🙂

Please note the AWESOME figures included: Granny Smith and Crimson Gala!

Y’all Granny Smith is one of my FAVORITES. She crosses the road like a BOSS with that walker. And she has a lot of hilarious lines, too. My youngest absolutely adores Apple Jack, so to be able to play at Apple Jack’s farm is SO fun!

The set includes a picnic blanket, a bushel of apples and some yummy treats and a table so that you can get ready for the Apple family reunion or for Apple Bucking Day. There’s even a cute little chipmunk included, although I really wish they had inclued Winona, Apple Jack’s pet dog, instead. Oh well!

The Sweet Apple Acres Barn play set is available from most national retailers for $19.99 and the set I purchased with the bucking Apple Jack is available for $9.99.

Who is your favorite My Little Pony of the bunch? Mine is Twilight Sparkle, although I have such a soft spot for Fluttershy! 🙂

(Giveaway!) Our Best Swimming Lesson Yet: How Kidizoom Action Cam Helps!

September 12, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · 12 Comments

Thanks to VTech for supply a review and giveaway unit. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

Friends, my husband (bless him) has spent the past 6 weeks taking our 6-year-old to the gym 4 times a week to give her private swimming lessons. The process has been nothing short of arduous for him, mostly because for the first 3 weeks of lessons, she REFUSED to actually go underwater (a critical component of learning how to swim!).

During this period of time, I had agreed to check out the VTech Kidizoom Action Cam, simply because my girls love to grab my phone and take videos or pictures, and I loved the idea of them having their own device that they could play with and that was built tough so that I wouldn’t worry about it being in little hands.

When I realized that the Kidizoom Action Cam has a waterproof case, I sent it along with my daughter to her lesson and suggested that she try to record some videos of her swimming. She thought that was the coolest idea she had ever heard, and so when she got to her lesson with her dad, this happened:

The camera provided her with a focal point, and the idea of having a video of her swimming underwater was so cool to her that she kicked the fear right out of the pool and got to work. This was a HUGE breakthrough; Tim was really beating his head against the wall about how to get her to go underwater. We weren’t expecting a camera to be the trick, but it was!

The girls have been playing with their camera daily, but they especially like to use it when the family is doing something extra fun. We had a pinata as part of my birthday celebration, and that was a fun opportunity for the girls to practice their video skills and their photography skills. Darah captured her little sister taking a crack at the pinata:

They also were able to practice using some of the funky features that allow for altered shots. This one was a favorite!

The girls were also quick to discover that the camera also has three built-in games. When you add this to all the spcial effects features, this has become one highly entertaining device.

Summer may be officially over 10 days from now, but that doesn’t mean that your kids won’t be able to find awesome things to capture, inside or outside. The Kidizoom Action cam comes with ounts so you can attach it to a bike or a scooter. And if you have any travel opportunities coming up and your hotel has an indoor pool, bring along the action cam and the waterproof case.

Perhaps one of the things I love the very most about this product is the price tag: under $60! You do have to upload your videos frequently since the amount of storage is on the small side, but as long as you remember to do that after your kids have finished playing with it for the day, you’ll be fine! You can also just get a microSD card of up to 32 GB if you want more storage. Easy peasy!

Win it!

One Lucky Stuff Parents Need reader will win a VTech Kidizoom Action Cam!

Kidizoom Action Cam

Be sure to enter to win my other current giveaways, found on the right sidebar of the blog.

(Giveaway Alert!) Cooking Shortcut: Trying the Pressure Cooker for Busy School Nights

August 25, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · 1 Comment

Complimentary product provided for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always.

We’ve been back in school for a week now, and I’m still getting my bearings since daily homework is now part of our reality. I now call 3-5pm my “sprint” in the day, because I really have to be on top of my game to make sure that homework gets done, the kids have some chill time, and I get dinner on the table by 5pm (because my kiddos are SO hungry by that point, even with an after-school snack!).

One new tool I’m trying out in the kitchen is the Clipso Pressure Cooker from T-fal. I tend to think of a pressure cooker as something that grandmothers use to make pot roast. I’ve never even owned one until a few weeks ago! But it turns out that our grandmothers were on to something, as a pressure cooker is designed to help you speed up the cooking process without drying out your food (so it’s GREAT for meat dishes!).

There is a bit of a learning curve with pressure cookers. When you get one, it’s important to spend a bit of time with the instructions so that you can get to know how the equipment works and how to use it safely. I have challenged myself to use it for every dinner prep this entire week to help me feel more comfortable with it.

But to provide some inspiration, last night I made a delectible Indian dish, Chicken Masala, using the pressure cooker. I was able to use the pot just like a conventional pot while sauteeing onions and garlic, and then once I added all of the other ingredients, including an entire fryer chicken (cut into segments) and used the pressure cooking capabilities, my dish was done in 20 minutes. Chicken masala is definitely NOT a 20 minute meal, and yet, I was serving it to my family on a Monday night at 5:15 pm after starting the entire process at 4:45pm. Winner, winner, chicken dinner, indeed!

The T-fal Clipso is available in Macy’s retailers and Macys.com for $99.99. For more information please visit, www.t-falusa.com. If you’d like more weeknight recipe inspiration, follow T-fal on Pinteret!

Giveaway Alert!

Right now, T-fal is hosting a great Back2School Photo Contest! All you need to do is share a photo on Facebook, TWitter or Instagram using the hashtag #TfalBack2School that demonstrates how you are getting ready for the school year. Here are some ideas to get you started: a room in your home that you recently organized (or that you need to organize!), a favorite lunch box idea or weeknight dinner, or what your homework station looks like. One lucky Grand Prize Winner will get a Back2School package worth over $1,000 and 5 runner up winners will win T-fal packages values at $500 each. Woo hoo! Full details and entry information is on the T-fal Facebook page.

School Deals Under $20 at FabKids (and Awesome Fringe Boot Alert!)

August 21, 2015 · by Tiffany Merritt · Leave a Comment

Sample products provided for review purposes. All thoughts and opinions are my own, as always. I’m a proud FabKids customer! Affiliate links may be included.

FabKids, month after month, never fails to impress me. Have you tried the brand, yet? You definitely should! You can become a member for free, and then evey month at the start of the month you can select one outfit for just $29.95. You can choose to skip the month with a simple click of the button (trust me, I’ve done it several times!). The clothes are so fun and on-trend, and you KNOW I love not having to leave the house to do my shopping!

Also? FabKids has really brought their A-game when it comes to shoes. I mean, look at these fringe boots, y’all!!!

Darah loves them, and can you blame the girl? She also got a very school-worthy plaid dress, but the plaid is definitely made with the children of 2015 in mind, because the clors are on the wild side!

You can purchase the dresses by themselves, or go ahead and get the leggings to pair with them (my girls LIVE in leggings, so that’s a must for us).

School Deals Under $20

While you are checking out all the great outfits, be sure to look for the special school deals. Now’s a GREAT time to stock up on clothes for the fall and even next spring, because the prices are awesome!

Dresses from $15
Girls tops & Tees from $10
Leggings 3 for $19
Tutus from $8
Sneakers from $19
Boys tops & Tees from $6

And there’s a sale section on top of the school deals ! Y’all… GET OVER TO FABKIDS and look around! You can thank me later. 🙂