Category Archives: Product Reviews

Kids n Pets Odor and Stain remover Review

Review/Giveaway! How to Get Rid of Urine Smell from a Mattress and other places!

*I’ve decided to turn this review into a Giveaway!! See at the bottom of the post how you can enter to win a free bottle of Kids n Pets Stain and Odor remover :)

If you’re a parent, you’ve no doubt dealt with bed wetting. Even if your child isn’t out of diapers yet, you have or I’m sure you will have a blowout from time to time. Now I don’t know about you, but to me, mattresses are really hard to clean well. I have a shampooer, but even with that, it just doesn’t seem to get the smell of urine all the way out.

Ekid is our middle child and he has had a really hard time getting over the bed wetting at night. He never did hold it well at night. In fact, up until about a year ago, he couldn’t go a night without wetting the bed most nights ( he is 6 now). As far as protecting the mattress goes, I tried those vinyl sheets, fitted and zippered…..They lasted all of a week before ripping or the fitted one sliding all over the place and of course on a night that he would have an accident…… I did finally find something that works pretty well though, Washable bed pads like the hospital uses.  They can move around, but still, it’s been much better than the other 2 options I mentioned, especially if you put it under the sheet.

So, before the washable bed pad that I now use and even at times after, we still have had urine get directly on the mattress. Well, when I was at the store awhile ago, I saw this stuff that’s supposed to get rid of the urine smell and make it disappear. I thought I’d give it a try. The first time I used it, I was sold!  It takes awhile to dry if you are using it on a mattress since it soaks in there pretty good. And I ended up using the whole bottle on pretty much the whole mattress except around the very edges, because, well, when Ekid pees he goes A LOT and there have been many a time where I didn’t clean it up right away and just put a blanket over the top and had him sleep on the other end only to have him pee that side too (usually when I thought he was finished with the bed wetting so I didn’t have the pad on.)

So what is this wonder product? You have probably heard of it. In fact I feel kind of silly that I didn’t know about it until last year…. Kids n Pets Stain and Odor Remover

This stuff is awesome, and you can use it on the mattress, floor, couch wherever! I haven’t had to use it for pet urine yet, but I imagine it works just as well.

So here’s how I do it. I admit, it would be much better if it were a spray bottle for large areas though. I did see that they do have a spray one on Amazon.com so I’ll have to buy from there next time. I bought mine at Fred Meyer but they only had the squeeze bottle.

 

 

Kids n Pets Odor and Stain remover Review

 

 

Now pour Kids n Pets onto the urine/pee areas (which in my case was the whole mattress).

Pouring Kids n pets onto the urine areas

Make sure to soak the areas well so that it reaches down to the source of the urine smell! Like I said, I used a whole bottle to cover the whole mattress.

Using Kids n Pets to remove urine smell on a mattress

I also used it on a spot on the floor where someone took off their pee soaked underwear and laid them on the carpet in the middle of the night…….

IMG_7412

After all that, just leave it to dry. The urine smell really will disappear as the mattress, or whatever you use it on, dries! If you sniff it while it’s still wet, you’ll still smell the urine a bit, but it will go away. Also, since it takes so long to dry, I stick a heater on in the bedroom to speed up the process.

Well, I hope this is useful to you! I know I’m so glad I found this awesome product. The links to the product are Amazon affiliate links, so I do make a little bit of money when you buy from them, but if you do buy through one of those links, I thank you so much. You can also find Kids n Pets at the store. I haven’t calculated if it’s more cost effective to buy from the store or through Amazon yet though.

So, here’s the deal with the giveaway and how to enter.

One entry per action that you do below! And please let me know in the comments each action you did. You can go to the top of the post to find all the share buttons!

  1. Leave a comment telling why you would love to win and/or
  2. Share this post on Facebook and/or
  3. Tweet this post on Twitter and/or
  4. Follow me on Twitter and/or
  5. Pin this post on Pinterest

That’s it! Have fun and please be sure to leave a comment for each item you did!  Entry will close April 29th and I will draw the winner on May 2 :)

Fitness Goals for 2013 and My Favorite Workout Video!

Karen Voight Burn and Firm Workout Video

Hey there! So I don’t like to make yearly “resolutions” because I think that sometimes causes the mindset that I’ll wait till the first of the year to change.

Well, I am on a mission this year to get fit. Not only lose weight but just get in great shape overall like I used to be.  So I pulled out a workout dvd that I’ve had for a few years, but haven’t used in a long time! Anyway, I got it out just before Christmas and when we got home Christmas Day after stuffing ourselves at my parents house, I decided it was time to start working out. So last the week before last, starting Tuesday night, I worked out 5 days in a row! Pretty cool! The first 3 days I think I only did the cardio section, just trying to get the moves down and then I did lower body/abdominals and then upper body. So then I took 3 days off over New Years, and then started again on Wednesday last week doing the whole circuit the first day, then Thursday I did lower body and cardio, and the same on Friday, and then I ended up taking a break Saturday and Sunday.

So this week I have worked out yesterday and today so far. Yesterday I did just the cardio section and it kicked my rearend! Today I did cardio and upper body. So I’m feeling pretty good about the way this week is shaping up so far.

So, what workout dvd am I talking about? Well, it’s called Karen Voight: Burn & Firm . I really enjoy working out with her. She seems real and not obnoxious as I’ve heard some workout dvd instructors can be. I really have not worked out to any other dvd yet, so I don’t know what some of the other trainers out there are like. But Karen is wonderful and I plan on buying some of her other dvd’s to keep a good variation to my workout routine.

So I didn’t measure myself until Friday, but I don’t think I’ve lost much of  anything yet anyway. My plan is to document on this blog weekly about how things are going and give my measurements for the week. I ended up throwing away my scale last week, only because it is sooooo old and I need to get a new one. I do know my beginning weight though, but I’m not going to focus on weight at the moment. Only measurements.

Also, I have not changed my diet much, aside from naturally not eating as much now that the holidays are over. This week I decided to do Slim Rite drink in the mornings though (store brand similar to Slim Fast). And I may try doing green smoothies next week. We’ll see.

But I am loving working out. And this workout dvd is great for someone like me who is just starting getting back into it. I will say that some of the movements take some time to master, but they aren’t overly difficult, just a bit for someone who is a little uncoordinated lol. A few years ago when I first bought the dvd, I kind of gave up on it partly because of that. But this time around, since starting with doing just the cardio section and just taking my time and not worrying if I mess up, I have actually picked up pretty much all her movements and I can do most of them with confidence now!

So measurements…..

Here are my measurements as of Friday, January 4th

  • Waist: 38″ (Ouch!)
  • Hips 39.75″ (Yikes!)
  • Bust 39.75″
  • Underbust 33.5″
  • Thigh 24.5″
  • Calf 16.5″

And what’s my starting weight? I shudder to say on here, especially since I was nearly 10lbs lighter before Thanksgiving…..

170lbs(at 5′ 4″ in height) according to my old scale, which, of course is usually 5lbs less than any other scale I weigh myself on.

So, that’s that for now! I’ll be posting my progress on Friday and we’ll see if all this work is paying off ;)

RockSmith Guitar Games makes an Awesome Christmas Present!

Learn to Play Guitar with RocksmithDisclaimer: Ok, so I don’t want you think I’m just trying to sell you something here. I really think this is a great tool! I do have affiliate links to Amazon.com if you decide you want to purchase Rocksmith, and I do make a little commission if you buy through my links here(and I truly appreciate it if you do decide to do that), but this is something I think would be very beneficial to anyone wanting to learn guitar.

I have a great Christmas present idea for you today.

My husband found this guitar game for the xbox 360 online. He plays guitar pretty well, but wants to learn more and branch out with different sounding chords and all that. So anyway, he found this game called Rocksmith that plays on the xbox 360 with a usb cord that has a 1/4 inch jack(comes with the game) at one end to plug into a real guitar (guitar is not included). Well, of course we have several electric guitars around here. So we decided to buy it, since we thought it would also be great for the boys to learn to play guitar with.

Well, we got it in the mail today. My husband was impressed and Nboy who is almost 9 loves it! It’s really cool because you can start out at beginner level and work your way up to picking faster. It has little stickers with numbers to stick on your guitar so you can see the fret number and be able to quickly move to the number that it shows on the screen. Onscreen, each string has a different color, so you can easily see which one you’re supposed to be picking.

Once you get to a certain accomplishment, then guitar arcade games start to open up. You can also play events, and it comes with over 50 songs that you can play with.

So I have to say, this guitar learning game is really worth the money! If you have kids that love music, or if you yourself want to learn guitar, this is a great game to use for learning at home. I should say though that some of the songs that are on it are probably not the best for kids, depending on what you are comfortable with. I don’t like my kids listening to heavy rock music, and mainly stuff that gives a bad message or that has language. This is rated T, so I’m pretty sure there aren’t any with language really, but there are some songs on there I wouldn’t be letting the kids play to.

You will need a real electric guitar or acoustic with a pickup on it.

Next we need to buy the boys their own size guitars! Right now all we have are full size ones.

 Please keep in mind that I was taking pictures with my camera of the tv screen and this tv is fairly old, so the pictures are not the greatest by a long shot!!

Rocksmith gutar game menu

Main menu of Rocksmith


Rocksmith Menu Options

Just a few of the Menu options. Songs: Go here to pick what song you want to play to. Rocksmith comes with over 50 songs!

Gutarcade: Actual games you play with the guitar, while helping you practice!

And Techniques. I haven’t messed with this area yet, but it has different “techniques” you can switch to.


Rocksmith Guitar Tuning screen

Rocksmith tuner. Rocksmith has you stop and make sure your guitar is tuned before you play each game or level or event. This is pretty cool and it seems to tune well! You just pluck each string that it tells you by lighting up the string and if one is out of tune, it will automatically take you to actually tune it.


Rocksmith Game play

Actual game play. The frets are numbered, so when a block comes at you down, say, fret 3, with the top string (red string) lit up, then you press down the top string at fret 3 on the guitar, and then when the block gets to the string on the screen, you pluck the top string with your other hand. It has different levels, so you can have it go slowly at first till you get the hang of it and then you can have it to where the blocks come at you faster and on different frets so you have to play faster.

Anyway, it’s pretty cool and I think, if you are a homeschool family that is into music, this is a great way to learn.

To be honest, we bought ours on Ebay for $39.99 and $4.00 shipping (though, I also bought something else with it, so we got shipping for free). But Amazon.com also has it at a very reasonable price.

Non Stick, Stainless Steel, or Cast Iron Cookware???

I’ve used non stick pans ever since I got married 12 years ago. I think I might have had a metal pan at one time too, not sure if it was stainless steel or not. I’ve always had issues with the non stick coating eventually coming off and having to get new pans whether passed down from my mom, or whatever.

So a couple years ago my mom bought some non stick Pampered Chef cookware for me when I had a party. I think we got them with my half off reward or something. So I was ecstatic! I loved them….for awhile….. I tried to take good care of them, but after awhile one pan that I used quite often started going south. I had had things stick in it when cooking and couldn’t get the cooked on oil or food off very well even when using the baking soda method. So I tried lightly scrubbing with the scrubby side of my sponge (which I know is a no no).

Well anyhow it just kept slowly getting worse and so did my next pan as I started using it more often. Then this year I started using my largest, deeper pan that I hadn’t used much and so it was still in really good shape. But then that one started getting scratches and started sticking, and now it has some light brown patches in the bottom!

So I decided that I am done with non stick pans, no matter how expensive or the quality because I think I just cook too much and the fact that sometimes I fry bone in chicken or pork (which I think has a lot to do with the scratches).

I needed something I could scrub if need be. Like….Really….Scrub…..

So I started thinking about Stainless Steel cookware. But then I realized that they are going to take a lot of oil to cook with if I’m trying to fry things like eggs that stick easy. I don’t want that. I need something that is somewhat non stick and can stand up to hard use.

Then I thought about Cast Iron Cookware . I’ve thought about looking into cast iron before, but now I needed something quick because my 2 smaller pans are shot and my bigger one is slowly getting worse.
So I did my research to make sure that cast iron would be right for me.

Here’s my list of needs as far as cookware goes:

  • Somewhat non stick
  • Affordable
  • Can be scrubbed with steel wool if need be
  • Heats evenly
  • Heavy duty
  • Will last for many years

So, in my research I found that Cast Iron in fact sounded like just what I needed!

Cast Iron:

  • Can be scrubbed with steel wool if needed. Just needs to be re-seasoned afterwards (I can handle that)
  • Eventually becomes pretty non stick once it is seasoned well. (sounds good to me!)
  • Is very affordable. Much less expensive than stainless steel or high quality non-stick pans.
  • Does heat evenly
  • Is definitely heavy duty!
  • Can be used in the oven. (Not one of my needs, but very cool)
  • Can last a lifetime if taken care of! (That’s awesome!)

Now there are some things that you should not do with cast iron, but these pale in comparison to the benefits.

  • Do not soak in water as it will rust. Make sure after rinsing with hot water to dry it thoroughly before putting it away.
  • Do not wash in the dishwasher (high quality non stick pans are the same way)
  • Cooking tomato based sauces in it for too long can cause pitting.
  • Not good for boiling water (that’s fine with me, I have Pampered Chef non stick pots for that)
  • Use a pan that fits the size of the stove burner so it will heat evenly. Apparently using a large pan on a small burner may cause the pan to warp.

How does this compare to stainless steel?

Stainless steel pans:

  • Can be scrubbed with scotch brite or nylon net scouring pads, but not with metal scouring pads unless you want your nice shiny pan to get all scratched up.
  • Is great for searing, but definitely not non stick so you’ll need a good amount of oil when cooking anything you don’t want to stick to the pan.
  • Can last a lifetime if properly cared for.
  • Can wash with soap and possibly even in the dishwasher. (I’ve read there is some debate about the dishwasher.)

So I have to say that stainless steel definitely sounds better than going with non-stick pans, but the deal breaker for me is needing something non-stick, so I decided on Cast Iron.

Well, I told my mom about this and she said she thought my uncle might have some. Anyway, she ended up having 2 pans herself that were packed away and she hadn’t used them in years. A small pan and a medium sized pan. She brought them to me and I used the medium sized one as it already had a nice smooth cooking surface and I loved it! I cooked eggs in it right off and only used a little oil and they turned out great. Only stuck a little, but I think with more cooking and seasoning since it had been sitting for so long, it will be fine.

The other pan she thought had had a coating on it and I could see that it looked like it needed a good scrubbing, like the coating was coming off or something, so I am going to get a scouring pad and scrub it nice and clean and then re-season it.

I think me and Cast Iron are going to get along just fine!

The cast iron pans my mom gave me are pretty old and I couldn’t find the manufacturer when I googled it, but here is one company that I have heard many good things about in my research:

Lodge Cast Iron Cookware

I’d love to hear what your favorite type of cookware is and why…….

The Bed Wetting Quest-Washable Bed Pads

Bed Wetting Washable Bed Pad

Ok, so Ekid is 5 and still wets his bed now and then. He has gotten steadily better this year, but last year it was pretty much every…..night…… Ugh! I tried those vinyl fitted sheets but they would just slip off in the middle of the night eventually, or rip. I tried the vinyl sheet that covers the whole mattress and zips up, but that just tore after a about a week, besides the annoying plastic sound…ugh!

I searched and searched for something else meanwhile having to wash blankets and sheets like crazy and shampooing the mattress, which is loads of fun and still doesn’t get the smell totally out….(I did find a wonderful product for getting the urine smell out though)

But a month ago or so I found these pads: Invacare Reusable Bedpads   This bed pad has worked great! it is pretty much like the ones they have at the hospital. I love that I can just put it right on top of the sheet and Ekid can lay on the pad and it is comfortable and waterproof!

He has had a few accidents on it and it has held up beautifully leaving the mattress and sheet nice and dry and so all I had to do was throw the pad and maybe his blanket, in the wash. The bed pad has been washed  and dried several times now and is still in tact and in great condition.

Now I thought at first that it would be better and stay put better if I put it under the sheet, but not so. It actually seems to stay put better on top of the sheet, plus when he wets, he doesn’t get the sheet wet and I don’t have to reach under the sheet to readjust the bed pad.  I do readjust it at bed time, but it stays put really well while he’s sleeping, even though he does move around some.  If you have a real mover, it might not do as well, but I suppose you could put some velcro or something on the bottom of it maybe?

Anyway, I really recommend the Invacare Reusable Bedpads , and yes that link is an Amazon link and I do make a little money if you buy from there, but it really is a great buy as I’ve checked elsewhere but Amazon seemed to have the best price when I bought mine.

Also, check out my post about an excellent product for getting rid of the urine smell for those times when it gets on the mattress anyway ;)

Bed Wetting Washable Bed Pad Underside

Exciting New Review & Giveaway!

Ok, I’m gonna give you all a heads up on a giveaway I’m going to be doing in a couple weeks. I had an idea to do a review on some goat milk soap from here in Oregon the other day, so I ordered some. I’m not going to go into detail about it yet, but I will say that I’ve decided to try some other places from here in Oregon that make goat milk soap, and kind of do a comparison and a review on the one I like the best. Then I’ll do a giveaway featuring a sample of each of the soap companies.

Anyway, I’m very excited about this and I think it’ll be LOTS of fun! I’ll keep you all posted on when exactly I’ll be doing the giveaway!

Well, gotta go! We’re just heading out the door, but I thought I’d type this up real fast first!