We recently returned from visiting my mother-in-law. Despite the fact that she's my MIL, I still love spending time with her. She's great with the girls and is always so helpful. As a bonus, she always makes a point of stocking the fridge, pantry and bathroom with our favorite products.  Since starting my blog, she kind of has an insider view of some products I have come to love.

It was kind of ironic, however, because during the trip I had the opportunity to sign up with MomSelect (BSM Media) for the All Small and Mighty campaign. It was convenient too because during a prior visit, All Small and Mighty was a topic of conversation for us. And wouldn't you know, there in her laundry cabinet was exactly what I would be reviewing.

Although she is the master of removing difficult stains, we don't always spend our time sitting around talking about laundry detergent.  She's small in stature and was starting to get frustrated with the migration that detergents were making to those super-sized bottles.  Reaching the cabinet above her washer is a stretch but when you're grabbing for a giant bottle it's even worse.  That is assuming that the bottle even fits.  Well, she found All Small and Mighty and said it's 3x the detergent strength with a small bottle good for 32 loads.  She likes the product but also loves the size.  During that prior visit, we happened across it on sale at Sam's Club and she bought enough bottles to last her for at least a year - if not more.  She likes it that much.  As a person who likes to be the first to try new stuff out, this was a demonstration of how I, too, am influenced by someone else in the word-of-mouth experience.

Having tried it, I agree with her - It is a great product.  It's effective for our family and doesn't cause skin irritation as some brands do.  Because I'm frugal, I purchase a few different laundry detergents depending on which is on sale.  However, I typically stick to the same few; All Small and Mighty is on that select list.

When I returned from vacation, one of the super-sized bottles that is good for 96 loads was waiting for me - thanks to MomSelect (BSM Media). Unlike the small size my MIL fell for, the 96 load bottle is a bit bulky bottle.  Since it's a 3x concentrate, at least it's not as cumbersome as some of the competition.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about it since it's a product I sincerely like and would buy anyhow.  But given the choice, I would stick with the smaller, more manageable size and couple it with coupons.

Think you would like to try it? MomSelect sent along two extra coupons good for One Free All Small and Mighty 3x Concentrate (coupon value up to $6.50).  Here's your opportunity:

The Prize: Coupon for One Free All Small and Might laundry detergent (2 winners!)

Participants -

...must provide an email in the first comment, email me directly with an email address or have email accessible from their profile. Winner has 72 hours from posting/notification to respond. If winner cannot be contacted, I will move on to the second random selection.

Sometime on July 10, 2009, two winners will be chosen at random (using random.org) from all valid comments left.

How to enter:

(1) Visit the All laundry website.

(2) Come back here and tell me which scent or variety of All Small and Mighty that you would like to try.

-- One Entry:  If you have a blog or website, add my button to your page. (Here's the code:)

-- One Entry:  Publish a blog post regarding this contest and link back to it.

-- One Entry:  Digg, Stumble or share on Facebook. (Be sure to leave your ID for that service.)

-- One Entry (Daily):  Follow me on Twitter and Tweet this contest with @SahmReviews referenced. Comment with your Twitter ID or leave a link.

-- One Entry: Subscribe to my feed via RSS or email.

-- One Entry:  Follow me using Google's Friend Connect feature.

-- One Entry (Daily): Read any of my non-giveaway reviews and leave an appropriate comment on that post. Come back here and leave a comment stating which product/post you left a comment on.

On a side note, I was also sent a Hayden-Harnett Ibiza convertible tote along with this.  I'm not a shoe and purse kind of person and I'm not into fancy brand-name stuff like this.  But thanks to my fondness for tote bags, I'm in love with how versatile it is.  I totally get why it's cross-promoted with a 'small and mighty' product.  I haven't had a chance to use it yet but when I do, I'll post a review for it!

Thanks to MomSelect (BSM Media) for the All Small and Mighty detergent, the Hayden-Harnett tote as well as the additional coupons for the giveaway. 

57 comments

Each year when the warm weather hits, our driveway starts to look like a scene out of CSI.  Multiple chalk outlines of various sizes of bodies.  And oddly surrounding it are flowers, suns, houses, bunny rabbits and bears.  Yes, children live at our house.

When I was a kid, if we wanted to write on the sidewalk, we found a soft rock and scratched away.  Today, you can walk through a neighborhood and easily determine if children live there (and often about how old those kids are) simply by analyzing the writing and pictures on the driveway.  We had chalk when I was a kid - school chalk, chalkboard chalk - but nothing like this.

Participants -

Sometime on July 9, 2009, two winners will be chosen at random (using random.org) from all valid comments left.

(1) Visit the Crayola website.
(2) Take the Outdoor Challenge pledge.

(3) Come back here and tell me which Crayola Outdoor product would inspire the most creativity on your sidewalk.

-- One Entry:  If you have a blog or website, add my button to your page. (Here's the code:)

-- One Entry:  Publish a blog post regarding this contest and link back to it.

-- One Entry:  Digg, Stumble or share on Facebook. (Be sure to leave your ID for that service.)

-- One Entry (Daily):  Follow me on Twitter and Tweet this contest with @SahmReviews referenced. Comment with your Twitter ID or leave a link.

-- One Entry: Subscribe to my feed via RSS or email.

-- One Entry:  Follow me using Google's Friend Connect feature.

-- One Entry (Daily): Read any of my non-giveaway reviews and leave an appropriate comment on that post. Come back here and leave a comment stating which product/post you left a comment on.

Once again, thank you to Crayola for providing the products for this review as well as the additional ones for the giveaway.

61 comments

It's been a while since Ally McBeal was on prime time television.  I watched it occasionally but was never a die-hard fan.  I'm pretty sure if we had a DVR back then, I would have been a junkie about the show.

But no matter what level my interest in the show, it was impossible to escape that dancing baby thing.  Well, thanks to BuzzParadise and Evian, I'm having flashbacks... check out their latest teaser video.  (How ironic that it's called "Baby Dancer.")

This is just a teaser for Evian's Live Young campaign. As long as the videos are cute and don't go the way of Logitech's botched Remote Disasters idea, it should be pretty entertaining. For the record, the Remote Disasters website was a video campaign but either the videos were poorly executed by horrible actors or were just outright fake (or both). Either way, I hope Evian's people do a better job than Logitech's did!

Thanks to BuzzParadise for inviting me to participate in this media campaign. This is only my second BuzzParadise campaign and the first one that had non-product compensation. Just know that my opinions are still honest and sincere and I wouldn't be posting something that I didn't think fit the scheme of my blog. If you're interested in becoming a BuzzParadise VIP, drop me a comment with your email and I'll send you an invite!

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I can't tell you how many times I said to my mom "I'm always the last to find out."  She would reply "Well, if you would move closer to home then you might hear it sooner."  She wasn't bashful of sharing how much she hated the time when we lived in Los Angeles...

While it was easy to ask about when a wedding was scheduled for or when a baby was due, it was much more difficult to bridge into conversation about more serious issues, like health concerns.  As an example, one of my aunts here in Iowa was diagnosed with breast cancer while I was living in Los Angeles.  I wasn't around to see what she endured and I've never felt comfortable bringing it up.  All I know is that she persevered and is one of the positive statistics... a cancer survivor.

When Mom Central asked bloggers to spread the word about Look Good...Feel Better, I realized that I never really gave much thought to whether she suffered the side effects common to chemotherapy.  Look Good...Feel Better is a not-for-profit organization that helps cancer victims deal with the image issues resulting from cancer treatments.   It started when the president of the Personal Care Products Council inquired about getting a make-over for a woman so depressed as a result of her cancer side-effects. When they saw the transformation that the make-over had, emotionally more-so than physically, they committed to creating the Look Good...Feel Better program.  In conjunction with their 20th Anniversary Celebration, they are sponsoring a contest for program graduates and cancer survivors.  Five women will be selected as the "Women of Hope is Beautiful".  According to the rules, the contest will be open until August 15th and the five winners will receive a trip for one to New York, NY to attend the DreamBall on September 24, 2009. If you know someone dealing with cancer, check out the Look Good...Feel Better website.  If you know of a cancer survivor with a compelling story, have them enter the contest!

The fight against cancer doesn't stop there!  Electrolux is doing their part but needs your help. For every lemonade stand opened at Electrolux Appliances or Kelly Confidential, Electrolux will donate $1 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (with a minimum of 10k and a maximum of 15k).  Virtual vendors will be entered into a drawing to win an Electrolux French Door Refrigerator as will people who decide to make a donation.  Actually, they are giving away three - read the contest details for all the scoop.  Sound too complicated?  Nah. I set my lemonade stand up in just a few minutes.  You name it, select the colors, pick some lemonade recipes and, click, you're done.  Go check mine out... it doesn't cost anything to window shop at Nicole's Lemonade Stand.  It's such an easy process and such a great cause, it's worth taking a few minutes out of your schedule to set one up.  You never know... you may win yourself an Electrolux refrigerator as a bonus!

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I attended a baby shower a few weekends ago.  Before becoming a mom, I hated showers because I never had any chance as enjoying all the ridiculous games that guests are forced to endure during baby showers.  It's not about winning, it's about how silly or stupid we all feel when we're trying to guess what type of baby food is in the jar or who can empty a drink from a baby bottle fastest.   As a mom, I now get that doing things that make you feel silly or stupid is really how you are able to enjoy your children.  You know... release your inhibitions and dance around like an airplane with your child.

As we all sat around chatting before the shower games began, we talked about some of the different games that we've played in the past.  Someone mentioned that their favorite game was the one where the host calls out an item and everyone rummages through their purse or bag to find the item.  Whoever matches the most, wins.  I hated that one too because I'm not one to haul around a purse.  Never have been.  During the diaper changing years, I did... by necessity... and it had everything you could think of 'just in case'.  But for the most part, I travel pretty light.

Well, upon reviewing "BagsInABag" for Mom Fuse, I've decided that the product was inspired by that baby shower game.  They are bags filled with a bunch of things that you grumble when you're somewhere and realize you wish you had.  Things like a band aid, a pain killer, a nail file, a cough drop and me, oh, my... tweezers.  Ever have a heel of your shoe break on the way to a meeting?  Some super glue would have fixed it up real nice. 

The BagsInABag product is such a novel concept.  There are a variety of bag designs to choose from - smaller than a child's pencil box.  More like the size of a makeup bag.  Each bag is jam-packed with so much stuff that when I first started emptying it, it felt like a clown car.  Geez, how much stuff can they cram in here? 

Each bag is neatly organized with like items and labeled to help find what you need.  Here's an incomplete sampling of what mine contains:  A bag marked 'tools' contains a few items for nail care, super glue and a pencil.  One marked "Cold" has children and adult cold medicines, an Emergen C sample and Alka-Seltzer.  "Pain" has various types of pain relief medicine.  "Hands" is packed with a rubber glove, nail polish remover pads, hand sanitizer wipes and lotion.  "Cotton" includes Qtips, cotton balls and a tampon.  Each of those bags that I listed has more than just the items I noted and there are also bags titled "First Aid, "Office" "Cough" and "Other".   But you get the idea.  It's one bag with one or two of many different things to keep you well prepared when you're on the go. 

Not every bag contains identical items, but they all contain a variety of things that you probably had not even thought of.  There are bags of several styles, themes and price ranges.  When purchasing one for yourself, consider grabbing an extra to keep on hand as a gift.  As you can see from the photo, mine arrived beautifully wrapped.  It would be perfect for a new bride or mom, a student heading off to college, someone who travels a lot or even a coworker.  If you decide this is your kind of gift, BagsInABag has a frequent flyer program where you receive a free bag after purchasing a certain number.

For the record, the BagsInABag product wasn't the result of a baby shower game.  It was the inspiration of Debbie (the bag lady) who was compulsively adding stuff to her own purse.  In the same way that the bag is filled with small amounts of stuff, the story is filled with its own little tidbits.  The bags are assembled by C.H.I. Center, a handicapped development program and a portion of the profits from each bag are tithed to Brendan Sail Training Program for Youths with Learning Differences. 

Honestly, you may say to yourself, "I can just make that myself." What makes this unique is that all the samples are individually packaged like you would find in a first aid kit. Everything from the pain killers to the toothpicks are wrapped separately so they remain sterile while also being portable.  If you purchased all these individual packets at your local discount store, it would probably surpass the price of ordering one from BagsInABag. Sure, you can skimp and not add all the same items, but that's what makes BagsInABag special... it contains all those extra items that you wouldn't think to carry around.

I love my BagsInABag tote.  Not only is it useful but it's very cute.  Thanks to Mom Fuse for the opportunity to review this and for BagsInABag for providing one for me to check out.

3 comments

I'm one of those people that is perfectly happy getting as wrinkly as a prune. No, I'm not THAT old. Yes, I'm getting older and my hair looks more blonde than red thanks to lots of unplanned grey highlights. When I'm talking wrinkly, I'm referring to an extended stay in the bathtub with nothing but a glass of Kahlua.

But since I became a mom, my days of relaxing in the whirlpool tub are few and far between. The kids have claimed it as their swimming pool and are constantly asking if they can relax in my bathtub. And by relax, they mean splash around so much that water ends up everywhere, including the ceiling on one occasion. One, and only one, since I threatened to never let them use my tub again if it happened even one more time. If I want to crawl into my tub without interruption, I need to do it well after they fall asleep.

Things have been extremely hectic lately. When we lost my aunt unexpectedly to a motorcycle accident, things got even more chaotic and depressing. While I've been trying to spend more time playing with Miss K, there was one day that I just couldn't. I wasn't emotionally up to it. Guess what I did. It wasn't even half way through the morning and I asked Miss K to relax with me in my tub. With my Noodle and Boo pampering kit in tow, I headed off to rid myself of turmoil.

I lathered my face with the Glowology Sugar Mama Honey Bar and felt encapsulated in the warm suds. I've reviewed Dove products on my blog and I'm pretty particular about the soaps that I use. The Glowology Sugar Mama Honey Bar worked great on my skin and didn't leave that cakey feeling that some soaps do.

What I enjoyed most, however, was the Glowology Sugar Mama Honey Scrub. I coated it on like I do the other sugar scrubs that I use, but was delighted with how quickly it absorbed into my skin. I've read on some packaging of other brands of scrub that it can be harmful to your drain. Don't know why and really don't care because I don't use them often enough to really worry about it. But I do know that the Noodle and Boo Glowology Sugar Mama Honey Scrub isn't one of those because it totally absorbs.

While I was rubbing it on, Miss K asked what it was. I told her it was a kind of soap that makes your skin feel better. When I asked if she wanted to try it, she said "No thank you." I offered to put it on a small part of her arm and she agreed. She said "It's scratchy but I like it. Can I have some more over here?" She proceeded to help herself to my Noodle and Boo products until she had hit every surface that I had. When her sister got home later, she boasted about how soft her arms were and "Do you want to feel?" And by the way, she's asked me several times since then when she gets to use it again. I think I created a monster.

What had started off as a stressful morning ended up being a great bonding experience with my beautiful four year old daughter. It reminded me that sometimes pampering yourself doesn't take much time and that it's worth it. Even if you have a little helper with you... and as a mom, we all know how common that is.

I want to thank Noodle and Boo for providing the luxurious products for this review. If you need a little pampering, drop by their site and see what they have to offer for moms, moms-to-be and even baby. Better yet, leave a bookmark and a credit card for hubby and see if he takes the hint.  And if you're looking for a nice shower gift, treat the mom to a special gift for herself.  She'll be ever so thankful.

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