If you noticed recently, I started running again.

Usually I would find myself just running (in my minivan) to the nearest fast food restaurant during my lunch hour to avoid trying to find a parking spot downtown, having to go out in the cold, or making the excuse that I didn’t have time to do anything else but a drive-through because I needed to get back to work. These were my excuses anyway, even though on the inside I was just craving Wendy’s sea salt french fries with two sides of ranch.

But those cravings didn’t do anything but make me lazier, while pretty much putting all my ‘baby weight’ I ever tried to lose, back on.

Nice.

I don’t know how it is for you, but for me to make lifestyle changes where weight is concerned…I need there to be what I call, life events. Not just, “I want to lose weight” but actually physical events where I force myself to do things that in my current state wouldn’t feel comfortable with doing. Events with deadlines.

Previous events that worked for me:

Break-ups usually were a good one in and after college. Some people stay in their jammies and slippers while sobbing over chick flicks and eating pints of Häagen-Dazs. Not me. I ran. And while I ran I imagined myself in the cutest mini-skirt and tank top when the time came that I might accidentally run into my ex at a bar. Happy to say, that imagination became a reality once, and it felt AWESOME!

Not the same night, but my great friend Barbie was there with me on that 'awesome' night .

Wedding. You don’t get many times, if any, where the party means all eyes on you. And just knowing pictures of this day would surface time and time again in albums, on your wall at home, tagged online, etc. and never wanted to look back and say, “UGH…let’s not look at those.”

One of the best days of my life, celebrating with the love of my life.

Double whammy: Honeymoon. This is a two-for-one where not only you want to look good in your dress, but shortly after you will be spending the week in a bathing suit. And again, pictures of this event would surface too.

On our honeymoon in Barbados.

But then what? Babies!!

Pregnancy brings all kinds of prettiness, let me tell you. Had to say good bye to the belly ring and hello to the stretch marks. (Still want a refund on my belly butter for that one.) And usually during this time of my enlarged-self, the last thing I wanted to do was weigh-in in front of complete strangers (aka nurses), but month-by-month I had to do it and watch the scale roll in higher and higher as they jotted it down, calculating my above average percentage of weight gain. Yes, gaining weight during pregnancy is good for growing babies. But eighty pounds in my first pregnancy…not so much.

1st Pregnancy. This was not my last trimester either.

And you know darn well, well at least with me….I had no urgency to lose the weight when we knew we wanted to have a second child. I lost a bit to be comfortable with myself again, but there was no big commitment to the gym, a track, or love of working out when bottles and diapers were consuming my life.

2nd Pregnancy. With stretch marks Photoshopped out by Dave the photographer.

Last summer, wearing the only suit I dare to be seen in...one with a skirt.

Past summer with baby Tanner.

First summer on the boat with my boys. I was a bit thinner then than I am now, having to wear less clothes seems to do that. I call this my hibernating season but both of these seasons, far from my goal happy weight:).

But now, with two amazing boys and no plan for any more pregnancies, I decided it was time that I needed to create new ‘life events’ that would encourage me to be healthy again….and since I didn’t see any in my near future…I decided it was time to create them.

Introducing my forced life events:

#1: I signed myself up for my first half marathon, the Bayshore half-marathon in Traverse City.

#2: I coerced my husband to RSVP us to a firefighter wedding in the Caribbean with gobs of other firefighters on his department. Yes, forcing myself in a bathing suit in front of ALL of them.

Now if that is not incentive for losing weight and getting back in shape, I don’t know what is.

Both of these ‘life events’ will be occurring in May.  So, last week began my official 18-week half-marathon training program.

Happy to report that my first week, I clocked 6.5 miles on the treadmill, 10 miles on the bike trainer and 5 marbles in my ‘Gone’ weight loss jar.

35 more to go…..and many, many, many, more miles to log.

But already feel better. And now I find myself when I am running (well jogging/fast walking at this point) imagining myself in that cute mini-skirt again…on the beach this time…and not for any type of revenge….but for just ME instead.

Thanks for listening!

-Andrea

What life events do you have coming up?  What are you doing to get ready for them? Please feel free to share!

On this new cleaning and organization kick I am in, I realized one problem I was having in this department, is I just didn’t like doing it!

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Really, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home from work is clean, so I found myself running around like a sweaty banshee hours before company would be coming over, or spend whole days catching up on laundry, with piles of clothes sprawled on our bed just waiting on me to finally fold them.

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And with the ‘I just don’t like doing it’ mindset, I realized the reason why I don’t like it is because my methods of cleaning were far from perfect, no matter how much I scrubbed things, the no-good products I’ve been using were just laughing in my face while I sat filthy, defeated hovered over our toilets in disgust. I knew there had to be a better way.

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So I decided to take my cleaning mission to the streets, or maybe just to my online followers, friends and everywhere in between and ask them not just what they use, but what cleaning products they LOVE, techniques that work and tips and tricks they live by.

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I was OVERWHELMED by the responses, and realized that I’m not alone in this journey. Some girls had excellent ideas for one room, but were looking for answers in another. And vice versa. So, this guidebook allowed me to compile the best answers for each room into one source, for all of us!

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I hope you enjoy it! Plus there are links to some great coupons too!

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And please if you have any ‘must-have’ tips, please feel free to leave them in a comment below. I can already see updated additions in the future.  Feedback and comments are always appreciated too!

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And if you find it useful, please feel free to share and ‘Pin It’ too!

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To download a copy of the FREE e-book, all you have to do is enter your email on the top right-hand side where it says:
Sign up & Download the FREE Crazy Cleaning Guidebook!

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You will receive the e-book link in your email with your confirmation email. (Please make sure you confirm your subscription by pressing the ‘confirm follow’ button first. If you are a wordpress.com user, you will not get a confirmation email when you subscribe, so you can then proceed below.

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Already a subscriber?
If you see ‘You are following this blog ‘ on the right hand side on the blog, or are reading this by email you can click here to proceed.

Update: Look what I found! Proctor and Gamble (P&G) which owns many of these cleaning products and other household, and beauty products has a site specifically for brand samples and coupons. And they deliver them all straight to your door. Perfect find if you want to try some of these winners before you buy them, and when and if you do buy them, use a coupon! Click here to learn more.

Really short-term update! Looking further on their site, they will be issuing a big Sunday paper coupon book this Sunday, January 29 in most large daily Sunday papers. It’s called the P&G Brand Saver booklet and it features over $101 worth of coupons! So look for it this Sunday!

The countdown begins!!

Next week officially starts my 18-week training program for my HALF MARATHON at the Traverse City Bayshore Marathon!

Here is the current fabulous schedule that I’m using. Click here for my training schedule.

For my last couple 10K trainings, I used Hal Higdon’s training schedules.

Which also means it will be my 16-week weight loss CRAZINESS with the celebration party being in Now Jade Riviera Cancun. Ok, well maybe it’s not MY party but a wedding for good friends, but I don’t have to tell my mind that.

So to make it a bit more fun, these will reside next to my scale in the bathroom. The ‘Empty’ jar holds 40 glass marbles and stones, signifying each pound of weight I would rather not have. Every time I lose a pound, one of those bad boys are moving over to the ‘Gone’ jar. It is on like Donkey Kong!

And yes, I know there are a TON of marbles in the ‘bad’ jar right now

I would be extremely happy with 30 of those bad boys moving over (wedding weight) but why not try for my senior-year college days at MSU when I really didn’t have to wear a skirt-bottom bathing suit. That is where Riveria Cancun kicks in. A couple weeks before my half marathon, we will be sun-bathing here, along with 50-100 others from the local fire department.

So you see, it would be quite nice to shop from the Victoria Secret bathing suit collection again. . Just for ol’ times sake!

If you are interested in doing something similar, I got all the jar materials at Hobby Lobby. Jars were 50% off, scrapbooking stick-on letters and found these marbles in a jar near the floral section.

Kindest regards,
Andrea

This city girl turned country bumpkin decided almost three years ago now that she wanted to eventually start living a bit greener. It all started when my first child, Brody, was born and I started making all of his baby food. I ordered a cute baby food making book, food storage containers, and started making frequent stops to the produce section and never looked back. I actually loved it!

What I didn’t love, was all the food scraps I was throwing away in the trash each week. It saddened me and I just felt guilty. In doing so, I remembered that my Nana (your version of a Grandma always had a cut milk carton under her sink to collect her food scraps and then would frequently empty that in a compost pile out back at their country home in Gladwin. I remember thinking that as a child, it was pretty cool that she could turn food into dirt. And if I was a girl and thought that…I know my boys would love it even more.

My concern was…….I am not big on disgusting things, and hey…the green concept is great…but the food rotting and stinking….not so great. So my research started on what I could do to keep up with composting without it getting too gross that I would want to give up on it within a year or two. So in my months and months of research , I thought I found my answer.

The NatureMill Pro XE Composter looked too good to be true. It was perfect! Available through Williams-Sonoma and other places, this baby was clean enough to sit right in your kitchen and makes composted dirt in just two weeks! I just have to put the food scraps in and voila! I was sold. I even was going to go with the upgraded model because it has a lifetime filter, while the standard edition you have to change after a couple years. So for months, this was my answer. I saved the money up and this past Saturday, it was time to purchase…

But.

I didn’t.

I realized as I was looking at this state-of-the-art machine online…I questioned if this machine that plugs into a wall outlet, and does all the work for you, if this was going to make memories like those I had when I was growing up? And how ‘green’ can I be when I’m using electricity as it churns like every four hours of the day, plus all the ‘green’ I’m giving up for this expensive composting gadget. So, I sat back looking at my computer screen visualizing what process my sons will like better… pressing a green button that says ‘Go’ and that’s it, dirt in two weeks….or getting to actually mix green waste (foods, vegetables, etc) and brown waste (leaves, clippings, straw, etc) and see it actually composting down each week. And there was my answer.

So I spent the next hour looking at the different types of composters and which one my sons would like the best.

Without further ado…

I would like to introduce to you, the EnviroCycle Composter.

It got delivered to our door today. So exciting! This bad boy spins on a wheel base to compost. We just need to add a 50/50 green waste to brown waste and spin it about three times a week, more if we want to have it compost down faster. This won’t be a problem, because Brody wants to turn it every time he sees it .

In about six weeks, we should have dirt, and then we just wheel it over to where we want to dump the dirt and open up the hatch then start the process all over again.

Plus, the base isn’t just to hold the spinning wheels, it collects the ‘compost tea’ that leaks from the barrel. I never even knew such a thing exists. But you mix this concentrated tea with 10 parts water (10 to 1 ratio) and you can use this to feed your plants, flowers and trees. So we get a two-for-one with being greener in the Ness household. Tim even liked the idea using the compost tea to liven things up. I’m hoping too that all this dirt will eventually lead to me having my own garden! Yay!

We couldn’t wait to get started, so it came right out of the box and ready to use.

Here is a video tour of our first day of composting!

I’m heading to the Farmer’s Market on the Capitol Lawn on Thursday to get a ton of fruits and veggies for the house, but also to start the process again for making a ton of baby food for baby Tanner! Perfect timing, and looking forward to composting all the food scraps rather than throwing them all away this time! Yay!

I also got this book, a quick read to teach myself more about the composting world. So I can teach Brody and Tanner a thing or two about the process while we do it.

Who would have thought this city girl would be so excited about dirt. I guess  that is what I get for living with all boys .

Don’t you just love Summer! Not only do you get the great weather, the kids playing outside and in their bathing suits…and in our case the constant changes of the Little Swimmer diapers …But also all the goodies that kids crave this time of year like Popsicles, slushies and most of all…

ICE CREAM!!!

Knowing this moment was going to come, I always wanted to be able to make our own ice cream at home so a couple years ago I started hinting to my husband that I wanted to get the Ice Cream Maker attachment to my KitchenAid Mixer.

This thing makes it easy to enjoy your own ice cream at home with just a few ingredients…PLUS you get to make it a fun thing to do with your family! Kids enjoy making things from scratch and in this case watching it freeze and grow from milk to ice cream.

I was in my local World Market store this week and came across cute containers on sale of Vanilla Ice Cream Starters and Chocolate Ice Cream Starters for ice cream makers. Not only did I pick up a couple of each, but also gave me the idea that making homemade ice cream should be part of our weekend since Brody and Tanner’s cousins, Kyle and Sarah, were staying with us along with Aunt Leslie and Grandma.

To prepare, I took the freezer bowl out on Friday and stuck it in the freezer. Pretty much all the preparing I had to do. . It has to be in there for at least 15 hours and recommended to have your freezer on the coldest setting.

On Saturday, after a great day swimming and having fun at a family reunion, it was time for some ice cream making fun!

Here is a photo tour of how we made our homemade ice cream:

Our three easy ice cream ingredients:

Our toppings, plus maraschino cherries!!

The KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker comes with a new attachment (the drive assembly) to secure onto your mixer’s motor head.

In a large mixing bowl, we combined one of the Vanilla Ice Cream Starter packets with a cup and a half of Half-and-Half whisking until the mixture has dissolved.

Then we just stirred in a cup and a half of Heavy Cream until all of it was combined.

Freezing Time!

Taking the freezer bowl out of the freezer, you just place the ‘dasher’ tool (comes with it) into the freezer bowl. Secure it in place on your mixer. We have the tilt-head mixture, so you then just lock it in place matching up the drive assembly to fit in the grooves of the dasher tool. Then just turn it on to Stir (Setting 1).

I recommend to pour the ice cream mixture into the freezer bowl from a bowl or cup that has a spout. Pouring it just from the mixing bowl got a bit of it on the counter top the first go at it.

And that’s it! Now it’s time to watch the magic happen.

Let it go on stir mode for 10-15 minutes. The kids loved watching it get bigger and fluffier.

Voila! Yummy vanilla bean ice cream!!

Since the kids wanting instant gratification, we took it from the freezer bowl into the kids bowls and added some chocolate syrup, sprinkles of their choice and of course topped with cherries! YUM!

‘Mommy, spoons please…..”

To get the fun scoop-able ice cream, you just stick the ice cream in an air tight container and freeze it. Once frozen you can make it even more fun by folding in a cup of your favorite fruit, a half a cup of chocolate chips, nuts or peppermint! Using the World Market Ice Cream Starter packets, this homemade ice cream recipe yields one quart. There was plenty for all of us, including the adults and still had some left over to store in the freezer, this includes giving my nephew Kyle a second helping!

With the ice cream maker you can make tons of flavors! The KitchenAid manual comes with its own recipes, plus there are a ton online. Experiment and have fun knowing your kids will have fun too!

YUM!

“Where’s ours?”

Next year, Tanner and Sarah!!

Happy Scooping!

If you participated in my recent post and submitted a video to method laundry detergent, there is a great chance you are in the final crowdsourced video! The new video is below, but make sure to watch it on method’s facebook page and you get a $2 off coupon at the end. WOOT!

Also a big congratulations to Nancy Ness, who won a free bottle of method laundry detergent from my post giveaway. I hope you are enjoying the ‘laundry room love.’

We were so excited to make the Spring Chick pops for Easter holiday that I figured since I was at Michael’s, why not load up on some other ingredients to make some of the other adorable cake pops too.

The cake pops that caught my fancy right off the bat, were the super-cute Cupcake Pops. They are perfect for any occasion and since they look like mini cupcakes, they must be better for you than regular cupcakes, right? Let’s just go with that theory .

Here is what we needed:

• 18.25 – ounce box cake mix
• 16-ounce container ready-made frosting
• flower-shaped cookie cutter (1.25″ wide by .75″ deep)
• 32 ounce chocolate candy coating
• 16 ounce pink candy coating
• lollipop sticks
• toothpicks
• M&Ms or similar shaped candy
• sprinkles
• Styrofoam
• Pans and Bowls and Spoons and Smiles

And again, these Cake Pops recipes are coming from the Cake Pops Cookbook by Bakerella. Love it, and definitely worth the price it sells for on Amazon.

Since we already went through how to make the cake balls from my previous post, you can click back there for reference. Once you reach the step of making the cake balls, come back here to proceed.

Once the cake balls are formed, they will need to be covered with plastic wrap and stored in the fridge for several hours or in the freezer for no more than fifteen minutes. (My cake balls were slightly bigger than 1.5″ so this recipe only yielded 28 cake balls, the recipe in the book says it should make 48 but honestly I don’t think even if my balls were smaller that it would make that much)

Now it is time for the fun part! Shaping them into cute little cupcakes.

I bought this adorable flower shaped cookie cutter at Michael’s. It actually came in a four-pack with other cute shapes including a butterfly and a daisy (which means just more cake pop shapes in the future .

Take all of your cake balls out of the freezer or fridge. Take one of the chilled cake balls and roll it into a cylinder shape so it fits nicely into the cutter.

Push one of the ends to make sure the mixture is filling the entire cutter and to make one end have a flat surface. Shape the top of your cupcake into a muffin top. When you are happy with the shape you can gently push the bottom of the cake ball out of the cutter and lay flat side down back on the baking sheet.

Once your cake balls are all shaped into cupcakes, return them to the freezer for 5-10 minutes to keep them firm.

While we were waiting for the cupcake balls to get firm,we got out the decorations we needed.

After this picture was taken, I decided to switch the candy coating into smaller bowls to make it easier for dipping. It is recommended that once the candy coating is melted for it to be 2-3″ deep.

So for now, it is time to melt the chocolate candy coating. Put it in the microwave on the defrost setting and stir it every 30 seconds until completely melted.

Now it’s time to dip! Take a few cupcake balls out at a time (move remaining pan of cake balls to the fridge so you don’t over freeze).

Holding the muffin top, dip the bottom side into the chocolate coating just to the point where the muffin top starts.

Once dipped, turn it upside down and swirl your hand in a circular motion to let the chocolate slide down. When the coating hits the bottom of the muffin top, you can stop.

Note: You are almost certain to get chocolate on the tips of your fingers during this process, so have a dish towel ready to wipe them off. Do not use water because it can make the chocolate unusable.

Place the half-dipped cupcake ball on the muffin top side back on wax paper cookie sheet, or another plate.

Immediately dip a lollipop stick 1/2 inch into the chocolate candy coating and insert stick more than half way through the ball from the flat chocolate bottom while the coating is still wet. Brody kept on rubbing his belly at this stage and kept calling them his ‘yummy chocolate cakes. ‘

Let the chocolate candy coating dry completely. Then start to melt the pink candy coating and get the rest of your decorations ready since you will need to decorate with sprinkles while the pink candy coating is still wet.

The decorations are ready! Can you find the hidden Mickey? .

Holding the lollipop stick, dip the muffin top into the pink candy coating. Tip it upright (if starts to drip a lot, it means the coating may be too warm so flip it back and let it cool off a bit). Use a toothpick dipped in candy coating to help get any spots not filled in.

Place the M&M (M side down) onto the center while coating is still wet and sprinkle away!

Put finished cupcake pops in Styrofoam to dry. As you can see, this is one of the things I forgot to buy at Michael’s, so I am reusing a Styrofoam block for one of my Christmas decorations. Hey, it works .

TA-DA! Cute Cupcake Pops.

These are the cute lollipop gift boxes I found at Michael’s. Great to let the kids decorate with stickers or could be fancy too by wrapping a big ribbon around it for holiday/celebration gift-giving.

And just in case you were wondering ….these cupcake pops are Brody approved!!!

To get egged up for Easter, I wanted to set up multiple activities that we can do throughout the month to celebrate this wonderful holiday. And since Brody loves to help in the kitchen, including baking, I knew this had to be a part of the mix.

Back around Christmas time, when shopping for family and friends, I came across an adorable ‘Cake Pop’ cookbook by Bakerella. I was actually purchasing it for someone else, but when it came in the mail through Amazon, I couldn’t part with it. I know, bad me. But then to make me feel better, I said to myself…”Andrea, if you give this adorable book away, you are taking away all the fun cake pop making you could have with your family.” See, I wasn’t selfish at all – I had to keep it for my kids’ sake. So I felt better, and the book stayed mine.

So, I figured I would give you guys a photo tour of our first Cake Pop making experience. It was so much fun!! We decided since it was Easter, we would make the Spring Chicks first.

What we needed:

• 18.25 oz. box of cake mix
• (ingredients of what is needed to make cake on the back of the box)
• 16 ounce container ready-made frosting
• 48 ounces yellow candy coating
• lollipop sticks
• Syrofoam block
• toothpicks
• orange rainbow sprinkles
• yellow rainbow sprinkles
• orange wildflower sprinkles
• black edible ink pen (or black/dark small sprinkle balls)
• bowls and pans and spoons and smiles

So first, we had to bake a cake.

I chose Rainbow Chip cake mix to make it more festive and fun for the holidays. But you can use any cake/frosting flavors. It does suggest if you use a light-colored cake mix, to use a light-colored frosting too.

my little helper, Brody and my lazy dog (in the background .

Mixing. BTW. I got my amazing KitchenAid from Amazon a few years ago, refurbished for like a third of the price. Would you have been able to know the difference if I didn’t tell you? #WINNING!

Pouring into greased 9×13″ pan

If you didn’t know this already, Brody loves “Cake!!”

After the cake is done baking. It needs to cool completely. So time to go separate the tiny sprinkles into colors .

All above ingredients were purchased at Michael’s. From left to right, orange wildflower and/or daisy sprinkles for chick feet, yellow rainbow chip sprinkles for chick wings, and orange rainbow chip sprinkles for chick beaks. Sucker sticks and yellow candy coating for melting. Now set aside and time to go back to the cake.

Cake crumbling time! That is right, a beautiful cake now has to be torn apart and crumbled. It was easy to cut it in big square pieces. Then over large mixing bowl tear a section in two and crumble together by rubbing your hands together. Try to keep crumbling so no large pieces are left, you can use a fork to help you with larger crumbs.

Cake is crumbled, now time to add the frosting! We chose Pillsbury Cream Cheese frosting. You add three-quarters of the container into the bowl and stir with a large metal spoon.

Once done stirring, its time to make the cake balls. So get two cookie sheets ready and cover them with wax paper.

Directions call to make them 1.5″ round, and that they would make 48 cake balls. This didn’t happen for me. I thought I was making them 1.5″ but I probably made them bigger because this recipe only yielded 28 cake balls for us. But we didn’t need that many anyways and Brody loved the ‘BIG chicks.’ Once cake balls are formed, they need to be covered in plastic wrap and sit in the fridge for several hours, or in your freezer for no longer than fifteen minutes. Your choice.

Once you are ready to turn these bad boys into chicks, you melt the candy coating in your microwave. It is recommended to choose a bowl that allows the coating to be three inches deep (for easy dipping). We microwaved on defrost setting, stirring every 30 seconds until fully melted.

Take a few cake balls out at a time. (If they were in the freezer, then move the remaining balls into the fridge so they don’t freeze.)

Take a sucker stick and dip into candy coating a half of an inch deep and insert the stick into the ball more than half way through.

Then insert the cake ball into the coating covering the entire ball. To get excess coating off, lift cake ball up over bowl with your wrist down and rotate your wrist until the coating starts to drop off onto the stick, then with your finger wipe off the stick.

Insert sticks when you are done dipping them into Styrofoam to dry. Once candy coating is dry, it is time to give these birds some life. With a toothpick dipped in melted candy coating, put the coating where you would like your chick sprinkles to go. Then put the sprinkle on top and let dry.

Ta-da! Spring Chick complete. I did have a black edible pen to draw on the eyes, but somehow it never ended up in my bag from Michael’s so we compromised and I used little dark green circle sprinkles that we had. No biggie.

Tim thinks they look more like Angry Birds than Easter Chicks. I had to force him not to go get his sling shot . But you could definitely make them too I am sure. Oh the possibilities with Cake Pops!

And since we made more than enough and had a TON of fun doing it, Brody wanted to make sure we gave some to Jessie (daycare) and her family (Tim, Kegan and Kadin). Brody loved decorating the Chick’s box with Easter egg stickers!

All finished! The chicks are resting soundly in their Easter chicken coop and Brody is super excited to deliver them tomorrow! Of course he is excited to eat some more here too!

Happy Easter Month!!

As you know from my last post, the last couple of weeks I have been putting my washing machine through a CRAZY amount of wash cycles.

With this increase in activity, something also has changed. Our laundry detergent!

Before now, I always knew the method brand as those great-smelling, modern-looking hand soaps that adds to your bathroom and kitchen decor.

It wasn’t until recently did I know that method also makes a ton of other products too, including a fabulous laundry detergent! This amazing little bottle is concentrated, so you only need 4 pumps for a single load and one small bottle does 50 loads of laundry.

But the pumping action alone is one of the major selling points to me.

Like other detergent brands we own, you don’t have to twist off the cap, pour the detergent into the cap, pour the liquid-filled cap into the washing machine, then twist the wet cap back onto the bottle…then clean up any detergent drips that went on to the floor, counter top, bottle, etc. You just pump method’s detergent straight into your washer and you are done. It also helps that I only need one hand to do this, because my other hand is usually occupied in holding baby Tanner. You can see this in action here.

Let me just add, that this scent is one of the best detergent scents I have used. We have the Fresh Air scent, and I seriously love walking in and smelling our laundry room and clothes now. Method detergent is HE (high-efficiency) friendly too and it also doesn’t hurt knowing that method is an environment-friendly green product, made with 95% natural and renewal ingredients in a recyclable bottle.

Living out in the country now, I am totally on a recycling, composting, good-for-the-earth kick.

But don’t take my word on how great this detergent is, method is making it easy for you to try it out for yourself!

Just launched today, method is asking for your participation in their upcoming music video “Laundry Room Love.”

Here is what you do between April 4 and April 15 to join in the fun:

1) Go to their facebook page and ‘like’ it.

2) Watch their ‘how to’ video (by clicking on the ‘laundry room love’ tab on the left-hand side) to learn how you can participate in their music video – just by watching it, you get a $2 redeemable coupon for the laundry detergent.

3) The first 200 submissions will be featured in the video and they will ship you a FREE bottle of method laundry detergent! Fun!

4) Once the final crowdsourced music video ‘Laundry Room Love’ is done, they will release it for all to enjoy. If you watch this one too, you receive ANOTHER $2 coupon. It’s a win-win!

And a VERY cool bonus just for my blog readers………….

If you post a comment below and tell me why you would like to try method or why you already love their products, you will be entered to win a FREE bottle of method laundry detergent shipped straight to your door. Now how cool is that?! I will just randomly draw a name from the comments below.

So go ahead, what are you waiting for?

Join the ‘People Against Dirty’ movement!

*Disclaimer: I received the bottle of laundry detergent as a gift to promote the ‘Laundry Room Love’ giveaway. They did not ask me to review the product, I just love it that much that I felt the urge to give it one .