Why, you ask? Because no matter how clean your house is, the air is recirculated, and indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air. If you’re in the greater Boston area, you could win a heating/ac system that would help clean the air inside your house, which could reduce indoor allergies and asthma issues. Without chemicals that could trigger other allergies, even!

What I really like about this giveaway is that the two companies are working together to create a Boston indoor air support site that will give you tips, tricks, and ideas on how to keep the air in your home clean. I’m really impressed with the work that went into the survey, site, and that they are running such a big give-away. We don’t have any indoor allergies nor any environmental allergies, but I would love to have central AC!

If you live in the greater Boston area, go enter the contest, and even if you don’t, go visit the Boston indoor air support site, and learn more about how to keep your house and kids safer from environmental and indoor allergens and pollution.

Do you remember that feeling of squickiness and shame when the school nurse found out you had lice? ick But now parents are not only worried about eliminating the lice and nits, but also worried about using pesticides on their children’s heads in order to kill off the lice. Everyone needs to comb every strand of hair, but coating the head in olive oil or mayonaise and then a hair thingie for 3 hours seems to work, but not everyone can do that. The kind folks at MomCentral have teamed up with Lice MD to show parents that there’s an alternative to pesticides sitting on their pharmacy shelf.

LiceMD Hair Lice & Egg Treatment was easy for me to find on the pharmacy shelves, it was right near all the pesticide-filled treatments. The pricing is also comparable, which was encouraging, as many natural products are priced significantly higher than the non-natural products. Plus at Lice MD.com you can download a $1 off coupon (but only if you are using Windows).

LiceMD has created a product that has many advantages over pesticides, and even some over the oil-on-head method. The product eliminates lice in 10 minutes after it has been applied (much nicer than 3 hours!), and also super-conditions the hair to make it easier to comb through. The LiceMD Hair Lice & Egg Treatment includes a patented lice comb, and after the treatment has sat for the 10 minutes, you need to comb every section of hair very carefully. They suggest using bobby pins to section off the completed hair.

You do need to check your child’s head daily for 10 days and also wash bedding and clean your house, but because LiceMD Hair Lice & Egg Treatment has no pesticides it doesn’t contribute to pesticide-resistent lice, and also can be used more than once if the lice recur.

My children didn’t get lice during my review time, but I’m very impressed with the LiceMD Hair Lice & Egg Treatment and the information on the LiceMD webpage. This is good information to be saved for later use! It’s nice to know that companies are making pesticide-free options for lice treatment!

I heard from Mom Central that Ponds is having a contest so you can win a lavish trip to London!

If you are over the age of 40, you can make a video from one of the songs from the Mamma Mia movie. You can audition in New York City, or you can do it at home and send them the video. Winners are going to win a lavish trip to London to live the life of the 3 Dynamos at the World Premiere of Mamma Mia!

You know, it’s been a while since I wanted to be older, but now I wish I was over 40! C’mon folks, go enter the contest, you can audition on 4/28 in NYC or submit it online by 4/30 – so you have a little more than a week. Winners will be posted on the Ponds site on May 23. I can’t wait to see some videos!

Just as I was running low on cleaning supplies, I was offered the opportunity to review the new “green” cleaners from Clorox in collaboration with Mom Central. I had previously reviewed certified Organic cleaners, so I was interested in seeing the differences between other natural cleaners, Green Works Clorox products and the “regular” Clorox products.

Living “Green” has become a hot cause, whether it’s buying a Prius, watching An Inconvenient Truth, or Global Warming as the focus of the newest Maximum Ride novel. More and more companies are touting a certain percentage of recycled paper, less packaging, and being “natural”, because that’s what consumers say they want. Just as granola bars filled with chocolate and sugar are “natural”, most products have “natural” cleaners mixed in with the chemicals. What exactly makes a cleaner “green”? Clorox and other companies are hoping to regain customers who may have read about the evils of bleach and are trying to lower their use of chemicals, but who either wish to purchase cleaners at their regular supermarket and/or are not interested in making their own cleaners.

Skeptic that I am, my first question was “what does Clorox consider natural?” Thankfully, they have that definition posted. The goal of Green Works is to have cleaners that work as well as “traditional” cleaners, be made from plant & mineral ingredients, be biodegradable, not be tested on animals, and be made with sustainable resources. The one area where I would disagree with them about “natural” is petrochemicals (chemicals derived from petroleum): Clorox is minimizing their use so the Green Works line is 99% petrochemical free, where I would expect a “natural” product to be 100% petrochemical free.  The ingredient list for Green Works is much shorter at least:  coconut-based cleaning agent (non-ionic surfectant), corn-based ethanol, essential lemon oil, filtered water, and biodegradable preservative.

Beyond the question of Natural – how do the cleaners clean? I took three tricky areas in our home, and tested them with the Green Works cleaners: our stove, which is white and constantly in use, the window behind where our 4 year old eats, and our bathroom, which is used repeatedly by 5 humans and 1 cat. The stovetop was sprayed, let sit, and then sprayed and wiped. A bit of the cooked-on gunk needed some elbow grease, but overall the Green Works Natural All-Purpose cleaner cleaned it very well. The Green Works Natural glass & surface cleaner cut through the finger-marks and chocolate trails on the picture window, and left it streak-free, without the nauseating ammonia scent – the light lemon scent is much nicer than ammonia for eating and cooking areas! In the bathroom, there were a few areas that needed to soak, but in general the all-purpose cleaner got rid of the icky bathroom dirt easily. Because there was no risk of mixing ammonia and bleach accidentally, I was able to clean the bathroom without opening the window to ventilate in 10 degree weather, a big bonus!

The big benefit I found with a different brand of natural cleaners was that I felt comfortable with my daughters using them on their own. While I wouldn’t feel comfortable with my daughters using the Green Works line unsupervised, I’d rather have these cleaners in the house than the traditional cleaners! If you are used to traditional cleaners, the Green Works line is a great way of reducing your ecological footprint without requiring major lifestyle changes and without giving up real cleaning power. Additionally, the lemon scent feels clean, with none of the bleach or ammonia odor that comes after using traditional cleaners.  Green Works is a huge improvement over other cleaners, but each family needs to decide which cleaner is right for them.  Is Green Works green enough for you?

The Gaggle of Girls were given the opportunity by MomCentral to test-taste and review the new juice drink called Froose. Before I get into a detailed review, let me say that we received 12 boxes on Saturday. After dinner on Sunday, there were only 2 juice boxes left.  I could end the review right there!

Mom and inventor Denise Devine has worked for years to create Froose, and has ended up with a patented juice drink that manages to be both healthy and yummy! Quite an accomplishment! She has found a way to allow kids to drink juice without the empty calories and kids ODing on sugar. In addition, Froose is helpfully packaged in 4.23oz/125ml containers; the perfect size for kids – most juice boxes are too big, and we end up with half-drunk juice boxes around the house.

Froose has some great health benefits over most other juices:

• Allergy friendly and Kosher certified pareve (no dairy); Gluten Free (top right on box!); no soy; no peanuts/tree nuts; no fish/shellfish; and no berries (there’s elderberry in the Pear for color, but that’s in a different food family)
• No corn syrup – sweetened with Organic Brown Rice Syrup
• Organic whole grains – Organic Brown Rice Flour suspended in the juice
• Added vitamin C
• Many organic ingredients
• Complex Carbs, not empty calories

Those were the aspects most important to us – check out the Froose website for more healthy benefits.

We had 5 tasters lined up, and 3 flavors of Froose: Perfect Pear, Playful Peach, and Cheerful Cherry. LG and MG are our main juice-drinkers, so they were begging for a juice box as soon as they arrived. MG even found a pencil to open the packaging… Everyone has now tasted Froose, and we all have our favorites!

MG chose the Playful Peach Froose flavor first, and found that it tasted remarkably similar to her most favoritest drink in the world – mango nectar! The whole grains in suspension creates a thick mouth feel similar to a nectar-style juice. It’s not overly sweet, but it is sweet enough for young palates. The Playful Peach was a big hit with MG, LG, Dad, and me. (BG doesn’t like mango nectar, and declined to participate with this flavor) This is one of the best juices I’ve ever tasted. I hope it will soon come in quart-size aseptic containers like rice milk and soy milk! (evil mommy thinking it would taste good with rum…)

LG chose the Perfect Pear Froose flavor first, and thought that it tasted very yummy. The thicker juice gives it the mouth-feel of drinking pears – and like the peach, it was just sweet enough, but with a slight tang. This flavor got an enthusiastic thumbs up from all 5 members of the family. I don’t remember BG ever drinking a juice box before, and she scarfed down her Perfect Pear box! She is the fussiest of the 3 girls in regards to texture and taste, and the Perfect Pear flavor of Froose wowed her. That’s a great recommendation for other kids with sensory issues! “Perfect Pear Froose, the juice that won over a juice-hater!”

The Cheerful Cherry flavor of Froose was the last flavor to be tried. BG declined to taste it, and Dad was overlooked. MG tasted a sip of LG’s Cheerful Cherry, but did not want a box of her own (she tends to dislike cherry flavors, however). While I loved the other two flavors, the Cheerful Cherry wasn’t quite to my taste; it seemed quite sweet, but then had a tang that didn’t quite work with the sweetness. LG, however loved the flavor of Cheerful Cherry, and was very happy that her sisters didn’t like it, because then she got a juice flavor all her own! This is one flavor I’m unlikely to order, but LG likes it, so if it’s on the supermarket shelf, we might get a few boxes just for her.

Overall, the Gaggle of Girls were really happy with the Froose juices, and highly recommend them – especially the Peach and Pear! If you want to order some for your family, check their online store for options. I’m going to keep checking for larger containers. Or maybe I’ll order a case of the peach for myself…

We give Froose 4 spotlights out of 5 overall, and strongly recommend getting the Sample Variety Pack from their online store, so you can taste and judge the juices yourself.

The Peach and Pear Froose flavors get 5/5 spotlights, and a lot of extra “yum”s! In fact, we had some members of the Gaggle thinking 5 spotlights weren’t enough!

The Room-A-Day giveaway is a doozy – you can win $25,000 to makeover one room in your house! Wow, that’s a lot for one room! As an added bonus, there isn’t just one winner, there are 16! You can enter on the Room-A-Day giveaway site every day from January 28 through February 15. The final winner will be announced on March 21 on The View.

16 days and 16 winners! Who wouldn’t want to enter and get a chance to have their homes turned into their own relaxing paradise? If you happen to be in the audience at The View, you’ll receive a cool gift bag filled with Kimberly Clark products (Scott tissue, Kleenex, Viva towels, etc). We had an opportunity to check out the gift bag, and if you don’t win, the Kimberly Clark products could at least help you keep your house clean. or cleaner.

What are you waiting for? Go enter!

Cranium Bloom is a new division of Cranium games that are encouraging imagination and non-competitive game experiences for ages 3+. We tested the two
Cranium Bloom products we received with gamers ages 4, 7, 9, and 36. I’ll get to the specifics of each one in a moment, but my overall impression is very good – they are both products that are open-ended, cooperative, and can be played on more than one level. The ability for 4 year olds and 9 year olds to play the same game is a joy. My girls have also brought out the games to play without an adult, which is another joy!

We chose to play the Cranium Bloom, Let’s Play Count & Cook Game first. In this game, each player uses one of the four chef pieces to move around the board to collect ingredients for a recipe. The board has an oval path on it with circular spaces. Circular tiles fill each space, blank on one side and with a picture of an ingredient on the other side. To set up, you put the tiles face-up on the board, and each player puts their chef on any spot they wish.

Now comes the fun part of the Count and Cook Game! Someone chooses a recipe from the recipe book – things like chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, an omelet, or macaroni and cheese. When you’ve chosen a recipe, each player rolls the dice (numbered 1-3) on their turn. We go from youngest to oldest usually so my 4yo LG went first. LG manages to always get one of the ingredients for the recipe on her turn! If we were making peanut-butter chocolate-chip cookies, she would land on the peanut butter, and move that tile over to the recipe book. When the players have collected the ingredient tiles for the recipe, you pull a flap on the recipe to learn something new.

But wait, that’s not all! In addition to the ingredient tiles, there are 2 star tiles. The stars let you add something out of your own imagination to the recipe! I added honey to the Peanut Butter and Banana sandwich, MG (7) added Marshmallow Fluff to the Peanut Butter Chocolate-Chip cookies. You never know what will come out of their mouths for a new ingredient – watch out that they don’t add sausage to your real cookies!

We all loved playing the Count and Cook Game, and in fact I had to stop writing this review twice to play it with the kids after I pulled out the box for reference! My children have food allergies, so they are very aware of food and cooking – they’ve even created a few recipes! However, I think that the Count and Cook Game helps foster an awareness of ingredients, creativity as you decide what to add as a mystery ingredient, and the inspiration to get involved in real cooking in the kitchen. LG seems to understand more that we need each ingredient, and if I’m out of fluff and chocolate chips, and low on peanut butter, I can’t make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies with fluff!

The other thing we loved so much about the Count and Cook Game, is that it is a cooperative game. The players are working together to gather all the ingredients for the recipe, and while the person who finds the last ingredient gets to pull the flap, what is under the flap is read to everyone. Additionally, it’s a relatively quick game, so you can easily play a few games in a 30 minute time span, giving everyone a chance to “win”.

The second product we received was the Cranium Bloom Lets Go To the Zoo Seek & Find Puzzle. This is a combination of an open-ended game and a 24 piece puzzle. The puzzle’s large pieces make it clear that the target demographic is preschoolers, but when you play with the Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle, you can play with a wide range of ages.

My older daughters liked helping my 4 year old put together the puzzle part of the Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle, and then they sat, dry-erase pen in hand, waiting for me to read them a task from one of the two flip-books. The Beginner set of cards contains 15 tasks such as “Circle something Orange”. The Advanced set of cards has a slightly more complex set of 15 tasks, such as “Find something that begins with K” or “Circle 6 gumball machines”. My daughters worked together, helping each other with the different tasks (the kangaroo is hard to find!).

The two task books make it possible to play with the Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle with a wider range of ages than if they had only included the Beginner cards. All 3 of my daughters (4, 7, 9) really enjoyed the searching, the only problem was getting them to stop! My difficulty as the adult-in-charge was that 15 tasks for each level didn’t seem like enough. It felt like I was running out of tasks just as they were getting more and more excited. I realize that I could come up with my own tasks, but it would still be nice to have 30 cards in each set, rather than 30 combined.

The parts of the Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle were very well-made. The wipe-off puzzle fit together well, and wasn’t too tricky. The cards flipped easily in the flip-books, and the tasks were easy for me to handle and for my emergent reader to understand as well. The pen worked really well at circling, and yet wiped-off just fine. We will be bringing it to the next homeschool coop as a game for the four 4yos to play together – I have a feeling it will be enjoyed a lot!

We have had a lot of fun with the new Cranium Bloom products! We give the Cranium Bloom Count and Cook Game 5/5 spotlights – a great game that fosters cooperation, creativity, and cooking – and can entertain kids of a wide range of ages.

We give the Cranium Bloom Go to the Zoo Seek and Find Puzzle 4/5 spotlights. It’s a well-made, fun product that everyone enjoyed across the ages. However, it would have a longer-lasting appeal if there were more task cards.

This has got to be one of the cutest ideas ever for getting kids trained into healthy habits! The cute little squid that surrounds the soap is all rubbery and fun to touch. That attracted the attention of all of my kids. Once you remove the cap, the top of the Squid Soap has a small red dot that will put a bit of vegetable dye onto your child’s hand. If you wash for the 20 seconds recommended, the dot disappears. If they haven’t washed long enough, it stays on.

My usual method of making sure the girls have washed their hands is to buy scented soap, and then sniff their hands. That doesn’t work as well – you don’t have to wash for very long to get the scent. I also noticed that the Squid Soap was eye-catching enough that it disappeared faster than most soaps. I guess that means it was used more! We also liked that it had a light scent and that it is not an anti-bacterial soap. (You can read their FAQ for more information on the dye and soap)

So, we give the idea 5 spotlights – it’s brilliant. Unfortunately, for a total product score, we have to subtract for the implementation of the idea. Our little red dot and the foam ring around it fell off within a few hours of use (normal use for a family of 5, with kids ages 4-9). From what I have heard from other bloggers, our situation was unusual. We live in a small town, and haven’t been able to find Squid Soap at our small local stores to test a second container. A few of our chain stores are on the where to buy page, but our particular stores are probably just too small to stock everything.

If/when I get a second chance to try this product, I will update with new information. We still really liked the Squid Soap, even if it didn’t leave the dot, it was cute, and attracted the attention of the kids. We will buy it again if it isn’t much more expensive than the other soaps.

If you want to give it a try, Airborne has a coupon for you.

Our current rating for the Squid Soap is 3 spotlights – great idea, implementation not as great: