Diaper Wars review 1: Huggies Little Snugglers

Positives

Softness
Softness is important to me, I don't like putting hard scratchy diapers on my baby's soft smooth skin. My motto is if I wouldn't want it against my skin I don't want to put it on My Little Guy. Huggies Little Snugglers are very soft and comfortable. Both the outside and the inside are very soft.

Absorbancy
I had wondered about the absorbancy of Huggies because of all of the trouble I was having with my little guys diapers leaking so I went off Huggies for a couple weeks and then came back to them after trying a few other brands. I have now seen that Huggies Little Snugglers are very absorbent. They can hold a lot of pee in them. They do hold up over night even when my little guy sleeps 10-12 hours.

Fit
These diapers fit well. There is a very stretchy band on the back so they can fit snugly around the waist without sacrificing comfort. The legs are also stretchy so you can easily adjust how tight the diaper is. There is a decent amount of extra room in the bottom of the diaper to hold in baby's excretions.

 Stretchy band in back

Stretchy sides

plenty of room in bottom

Wetness Indicator
I love the wetness indicator on these diapers! The way that it works is that there is a yellow line on the outside of the diaper extending from the front to the back. When the diaper is wet the line will turn blue. It is easy to read and shows up even if there is only a little wetness. That is pretty important in the first few weeks when you don't really know what you are doing and have a hard time telling if your baby has peed and you are supposed to be recording how many times they have peed every day. I definitely recommend these diapers for the first month or so with your first child.

Deals
I see coupons for Huggies all the time.Usually for $1-3 off. On amazon right now there is a coupon for $2 off Little Snugglers. For those who don't know (I didn't know until today, I looked it up for this post :) ) if you go to www.amazon.com/coupons you can find manufacturer coupons for use on Amazon.


Rewards Program
Huggies does have a rewards program.You earn points by entering codes from diapers and wipes, and other Huggies products, and inviting friends (by the way send me your email address if you want an invitation, you get 10 points for signing up through an invitation). Apparently you can also get points for reading articles and writing reviews but I'm not sure how that works because I haven't done it. As far as the rewards go you can get shutterfly products like photo books and photo prints, magazine subscriptions, and things for your children.

Negatives

Blowout Rate
Well for a while there I thought these diapers would get a bad rating for blowout rate because he was having at least 1 blowout every day, but about halfway through testing he stopped having blowouts. So I'm now thinking that the blowouts may have been a phase he was going through. I am not sure if other diapers would have done a better job of containing the blow outs or not, all I know is that these diapers did not contain them much at all.

Price
Prices are for size 1 diapers for equal comparison.
Walmart - Box of 168 diapers for $33.50 = $0.20/diaper
Amazon - Box of 136 diapers for $28.99 = $0.21/diaper
Target - Box of 168 diapers for $34.99 = $0.21/diaper

*Prices reflect the price at the time I checked, they will vary. I am not  responsible for difference between these prices and current prices.

Conclusion

Overall not a bad diaper, it is name brand so it is pricier than the off brands. Is it worth the money? We shall see as we look at how it stacks up to the competition.



 Other Posts to Check Out:
Diaper Wars
Diaper Wars: Pampers Swaddlers Review
Diaper Wars: Parent's Choice Review
Diaper Wars: Luvs Review
Diaper Wars: Pampers Baby Dry Review
Diaper Wars: Up and Up Review

Super Yummy Healthy Smoothie

The other day I was looking in the fridge trying to find something for lunch and all that looked good was string cheese and pretzels. I knew that I needed to add a little bit more protein so I decided to make a smoothie with a protein shake. It turned out absolutely yummy so I thought I'd share the recipe with you guys!

Ingredients:

1 serving protein shake (I used Arbonne Figure 8 Go Easy Ready to Drink Vanilla Protein Shake because that is what I had on hand, you can use what you have or ask me if you are interested in more info on Arbonne's protein shake, I believe they are vegan and gluten free)

Frozen Fruit of your choice (The ammount you use depends on how much smoothie you want. I filled the blender because I think it is still yummy the when it is no longer frozen, so I make a big batch and drink it for a couple days. I used strawberries and peaches because I love that particular flavor combination. I freeze my own fruit and stock up when it it is fresh and on sale. This way I know exactly what is going in my food and it is actually cheaper than buying the same fruit pre-frozen)

Orange Juice (I just use a little bit to make the smoothie thin enough for the blender to mix it)

Sugar (to taste, I think I used about 2/3 c, forgot to put in picture :) )

Bananas (I used 2 pretty ripe bananas, they aren't in the picture because I took the picture after I was done and the bananas I used were the last ones I had in the house)

Optional: Fiber Supplement Powder, Flax Seed Powder, Wheat Germ (I didn't use any of these this time, but ma next time to make it even healthier)



Process

Dump the protein shake, fruit, and orange juice in the blender. If your protein shake is powdered add some water, juice, or milk to thin it down enough to blend. I have never had a blender that could just puree frozen fruit without some liquid. If yours can you don't need as much liquid but you may want to add a little.
Blend until smooth.
Add sugar and blend until smooth again, repeat until you like the taste.
Enjoy!

Verdict:

Yummy!! I absolutely love smoothies and have for years, but I usually don't add protein shake. Using the protein shake makes it a more viable option for lunch instead of a snack. I had 2 cups of this, a string cheese, and some pretzels for lunch, then I had some more that night and the next day. I thought that the bananas successfully hid the protein shake. If I had used a powdered shake I would have wanted a few more bananas.

 

Yum! 

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Simply Klassic Home, 

Diaper Wars

When I was pregnant with my little guy I wanted to know what the best brand of diapers was so I could register for that brand. So I did some research on the subject and what I found was that there was no best brand. Some people absolutely loved a certain brand and would only buy that brand, other people absolutely detested that brand and would only buy another brand. Some people bought and used whatever was cheapest. The thing I came away with was that every child and family is different and you have to find out what is best for you and your little one. Well this was entirely unhelpful as far as registering but it did give me an idea for an awesome baby shower present. There were 3 other girls at my church who were pregnant at the same time I was so I bought 1 pack each of several different brands of newborn diapers and divided them up between myself and the 3 other new moms. (I also wrote verses and encouragement on the diapers so we would be encouraged when doing the dirty work those first few days, and I included a pack of sensitive wipes) It was a pretty good gift and well received, but unfortunately did not give me the desired results of knowing which diapers would work best for my baby. The reason for this was that my little guy was born 2 weeks early and it took him a little while to start pooping and peeing like he was supposed to. He only had 1 poop in the first 2 weeks home and when he peed it was just a tiny little amount (yes I talked to the doctor and we were keeping an eye on the situation). So anyways I used the variety of diapers those first few weeks because they were open and I didn't want to run the risk of him growing out of them before I could use them. So because there was barely anything in his diapers when they were dirty I didn't have much to base my evaluation on. I ended up deciding that I liked Huggies the best because the wetness indicator was the easiest to read and most accurate. This was important to my sleep deprived brain. Well time went by and my little guy got much better at eating and so therefore better at filling his diapers. A couple weeks ago I noticed that I was changing at least one blow out diaper every single day. This seemed a little much to me so I began to question whether I was using the best brand of diapers for my little guy and if my sleep deprived mind's random choosing of Huggies was actually the best choice. So I decided to redo my evaluation. Over the next couple weeks I will be posting my evaluation of several different brands of diapers including the name brands (Huggies, Pampers, and Luvs) and a few store brands (Parents Choice, Up and Up, may do a few others, we shall see). I will be evaluating for softness, absorbancy,  fit (for body shape comparison m little guy is 4 months old. He wears size 1 diapers and size 3 mo and 3-6 mo clothes. He is long and skinny - 25 in long, 12 lb 13 oz), blowout rate, price, deals available, availability on Amazon (Amazon mom has some of the best deals around, may do a post on that soon) and any other criteria I feel is worth mentioning. I hope this info helps you as much as it does me. Feel free to comment and let me know if there is any brand or criteria you want me to add!

Posts to Come:
Diaper Wars 1: Huggies Review
Diaper Wars 2: Pampers Swaddlers Review
Diaper Wars 3: Parent's Choice Review
Diaper Wars 4: Luvs Review
Diaper Wars 5: Pampers Baby Dry Review
Diaper Wars 6: Up and Up Review
Diaper Wars 7: Huggies Little Movers
Diaper Wars 8: the New! Huggies Little Snugglers #MC #sponsored
Diaper Wars Wipes Edition: WaterWipes Review  #WaterWipes #IC #ad

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Frugal Girls

Bad Habits for Organization

I just noticed a bad habit that I have that is horrible for my organization. When I am done dealing with a bill or receipt and it needs filed I drop it on the floor. The floor? Really? Why would I do that? This is a bill or receipt, something pretty important, and I drop it on the floor to be walked on. I am crazy. I think this habit comes from when I am reorganizing my piles (I know I am not the only one with piles sitting around my house) I will organize things into piles on the floor because that is my biggest work space, then I will deal with each pile and put it where it needs to go. Apparently this habit has now morphed into just dropping random important documents on the floor and walking away. Yes, I did that today. When I realized what I had done I was horrified. I now have the document on the couch. Not a huge step up I know, but slightly better. I think what I need is some sort of basket to put the things to be filed in next to the couch so I am not dropping important documents random places. Hmm, I will have to look into that. What bad habits do you have that affect your organization?

Rice Bar Carry In Meal

I told you the Cinnamony Goodness post other day that I would post about the rice bar we had for the small group party.

I got the idea for this from WBCL's Kitchen Caboodle Mid Morning program. We were planning a small group party at our house and we wanted to do a carry in type dinner. They left the theme up to me because we were hosting and I remembered the kitchen caboodle program.

The way that I did it was I sent out an email saying that we were doing a rice bar and I would provide the rice, dessert, and 1 topping and everyone else could bring whatever they wanted that went on rice.

I made both white and brown rice, Peanutty Goodness (Asian Peanut Beef, will post that recipe soon :) ), and Cinnamony Goodness. I also provided hot drinks, water and homemade grape juice.

There were 3 other couples who brought food and they brought Coconut Curry, Asian Yuminess (thats what she called it :), it was meat, beans, and broccoli with soy sauce), and Mexican Rice Bowls. We had so much food and so much fun! I wish I would have gotten some pictures of the bar so you could see what it looked like, but I was too busy cooking and socializing.

So what about you? What would you do for a carry in theme?

Linked up To:
Frugal Girls, A Pinch of Joy,

Family

What does family mean to you? I have discovered over the years that family means different things to different people. To me family is very important. Family is the people that you love and support no matter what they are like or what they do. Whether you agree with them or not you love them and support their decisions (and yes, it is possible to love and support someone even when you disagree with them). If you have a choice whether you see family or friends you choose family, actually there really isn't a choice (in a good way, I wanted to see them). To me family is really more like FAMILY. It only falls below God on the importance scale. When I got married I encountered something different. What do you do when your FAMILY time clashes with his FAMILY time? Is his (or her) family Family like yours or is it Family, or even just family. And what about your new immediate family which is made up of you and him and in the future your children. How do you rank the families? Who gets first dibs? What if you don't get along with each others families? This is a very hard question and one I, and my husband, have been struggling with for 3 years now. It is especially difficult if you have difficulties getting along with a specific person in your spouses family. I have a problem like that. Today I found the answer in the Bible (a great place to turn to for answers, I just haven't known where exactly to look, but today it just sorta crept up and surprised me :) ). I have been struggling lately within myself with how to deal with this person in my husband's family that I sometimes find difficult to love and respect. Ephesians 2:14 says (NASB) "For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall". And verse 19 says "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household". I know some of that is a little bit hard to grasp, but here is what it meant to me today. We are FAMILY (now I want to break into song :) ) It doesn't matter how I feel about this person, they are my FAMILY, there should be no barriers or dividing walls. When we married our two families were made into one because Jesus is our peace and we are all part of God's FAMILY. So his family is my FAMILY, I need to love them and support them and spend time with them in the same way that I do with mine. Now this may not clear up all the conflicts regarding time, but it does help better my attitude. I will try to never again think "You mean we have to leave the FAMILY party to go see your family?" (Not that I specifically thought that, but i may have felt that. Dear God, please help me remember this lesson and help me change my attitude. Amen.

Cinnamony Goodness from pinterest

Today I made this awesome yummy cinnamony goodness bread. I found the recipe for it here and pinned it on pinterest so I would remember later (click the red p button if you want to follow me on pinterest ). So today I pulled up that recipe and made it, but I adapted it a little so I will post what I did. It is like a cinnamon roll in loaf form (which actually makes it slightly easier to make because you don't have to roll, it up and cut it with floss, and more of it is inside which we all know is the good part :) ). It turned out awesome! So anyways here is what I did.
First I made the dough. I made the dough in my bread machine, because I am busy and I don't have time to knead the dough and time its rising (we were hosting our family group party here and I had to clean and cook today, so I really didn't have time, not that I have a whole lot of time other days either :) ). So anyways, I used the recipe from the bread machine cookbook to make the dough. This step takes about 1-1.5 hours depending on how fast you are at throwing ingredients in a pan and how fast your bread machine is.
Then I put flour on the counter and rolled the dough until it was thin (maybe 1/4 -1/2 in thick, i didn't really measure it)
Then I melted somewhere around 2 T of butter and poured it on the bread and spread it around with the back of a spoon.
Then I mixed a little bit of cinnamon and a lot of sugar together (sorry, I am one of those cooks who just kinda looks at it and thinks it looks about right, so no I did not measure it, If you need help making cinnamon sugar contact me and I will measure it for you :) ) and sprinkled the cinnamon sugar over the butter and spread it so there was cinnamony goodness covering all of the dough.
Then I cut the dough in strips around 2 in wide. I peeled them off the counter, piled them together and cut them in squares like the original recipe suggests. Sorry I didn't take any pictures my guests arrived during step 2 so I was doing all this while talking and entertaining, maybe I will make it again soon and get pictures then.
Then I put the squares in a bread pan and baked it at 400 degrees. I have no idea how long it baked because like I said I had guests here and I totally forgot to set a timer, and just remembered it partway through diner and checked on it and it was perfect, so I got lucky. I think it was probably somewhere between 1/2 hr and 1 hr but I'm not sure, so if I were you I'd check it a couple times and when it looks well risen and nicely browned on top it is probably done. I also stuck it in while the oven was preheating and that didn't seem to hurt it in any way.
I served it with cream cheese frosting.

Verdict:
Pure Yumminess! We had 5 couples and 3 kids here (all of the kids were under the age of 3). And everyone loved it. My husband said it was "seriously good". The one thing I might have done differently is when I was rolling out the dough, I would leave it a little thicker. When you are peeling up the strips the dough thins out a lot more and it seemed like the dough might have been a little too thin making the pieces a little hard to peel apart, but this didn't affect the taste at all just the serving. I also might try a few variations on this, like using different types of bread dough, I would really like to try it with honey oat dough. Also in the comments of the original post one lady said she tried it with savory spices instead of cinnamon sugar and it worked out really well to make a sort of gourmet bread. I think the idea of parmesan cheese and maybe a few spices that sounds yummy too! I will have to try it, and hopefully get some more pictures for you guys.

Here is the only picture I got of it. This is a picture of what was left after everyone left. I think that the only reason that there was any left is because we had so much food for supper everyone was stuffed. We had a rice bar, remind me to post about that, totally fun, and yummy!

Linked up To:

Frugal Girls, A Pinch of Joy, 

How to earn Swagbucks for Free post 1

If you don't have a swagbucks account go here and sign up.

Install the Swagbucks Toolbar
It has been a while since I signed up for swagbucks so I don't remember exactly how many points this get this gets you, but I do remember that it gets you some and the toolbar comes in very handy later. I personally recommend installing the toolbar in each browser that you use. For instance I use Internet Explorer and Firefox so I have the toolbar installed for each of those. They also have the toolbar for Safari. As of right now they don't have a toolbar for Google Chrome, but I am hopeful that they will someday.

Open your Internet Browser with the Toolbar Installed
You get 1 swagbuck every day for using the toolbar. Using the toolbar means that you open the internet browser with the toolbar installed and you are signed in.


Answer the Daily Poll
One of the options under Earn is daily poll. Go to the page and answer the question there. This will earn you 1 swagbuck every day.

NOSO
Another option under Earn is NOSO (No Obligation Special Offers). Go to that page. Click Start Earning Now. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click See Next Offer or Skip. Keep doing this until you get to the last page. On the last page there will be a box with words to type into the captcha. Do this and you will get 2 swagbucks. You can do this once a day as well.

Search and Win
If you installed the toolbar there is a search bar on the toolbar, there are also a couple on the swagbucks website. You do not get swagbucks for every search. Swagbucks are rewarded in randomly as you search and you will get different amounts each time you win. The more you search the more you win. I have set my homepage as the search for hotmail (my email provider) because that is what I would go to every day. So I have 1 search every time I open the internet browser. I usually get 1 search win for this every couple of days. Also every time I want to open a new website I search it. For instance if I want to go to ebay, I will search ebay and go through that link. If I want to search for something I will search it and if I can't find that way then I will search Google then search what I want through Google. This adds one extra step to opening every webpage but it really only takes a few extra seconds so I think it is worth it. I usually get 2-3 search wins a day for doing this. This generally earns me anywhere between 7 and 50 or more swagbucks per day, like I said the amount earned varies each time.


Other posts you might enjoy:
Intro to Swagbucks


Linked Up To:
Naptime Crafters, Frugal Girls,

Baby Fascinations

I think my little guy is rapidly following me in my random fascinations. He loves to stare at the handle of his car seat. We have not put any toys on it, or painted any cute design on it (those have both been suggested many times as either why he stares or what we should do to entertain him), I also kinda dought he is doing quantum mathematics in his head, and I sincerely hope he does not dream about it when he gets older :). I don't know what is so interesting, but he does. The other day we caught him smiling at it :). I have started calling it his friend and we now put it up just to let him look at it. And today I was wondering does he think its talking to him when I am talking? He is also now friends with the octopus toy on his play mat :) Ah the joys of a 3 month old randomly fascinated :)

 This is the handle

 This is what he sees

 This is his octopus friend :)

Intro to Swagbucks

I love swagbucks! If any of you haven't heard of it you need to. Basically swagbucks is a search engine with extra perks. As a search engine it is not that great, but the extra perks make it definitely worth signing up for. The perk is free stuff or free money that you get by earning points and redeeming them for prizes in the swag store. The prizes range from electronics, to baby items, to my personal favorite Amazon gift cards! There are many ways to earn point which include searching using the search engine, completing surveys, and installing their tool bar. There are ways to earn by buying things, but I never do those. If you already make a lot of purchases online you can go through swagbucks to earn some of that money back, but like I said there are plenty of ways to earn points for free. I personally have earned over $130 in Amazon gift cards! I will post later with tips on how to maximize your time and get the most swagbucks for the time you are willing to give. For now you can click here get on swagbucks website and look around.

Posts to Come:
How to Earn Swagbucks for Free post 1
How to Earn Swagbucks for Free post 2
How to earn $5 per month with minimal time used
How to earn $20-$25 a month with slightly more time used
How to get free diapers by combining swagbucks rewards and Amazon mom