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Frugal Novice

iCandy Stroller Review & Diaper Bag Giveaway!

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I love well-designed products. When I was pregnant with J we spent a lot of time hunting down a stroller and highchair design that we both liked, which is a lot harder than we thought it would be. iCandy, a UK company that debuted in the U.S. in 2010, provides products that don’t make you choose between form and function. You can see below what the strollers look like for yourself – they’re sleek and have great solid color schemes. One of my favorite features about these strollers is that they incorporate a parent-facing seat option to promote parent-child interaction. That’s one thing I really wished our stroller had, because once we stopped using the infant carrier J always faced away from us while we were out and about.

The Apple multi-mode travel system has a lightweight aluminium frame, forward and rearward facing seat unit and all round suspension. For your newborn, the stroller has the option to add its own unique iCandy apple bassinet and to make life simpler just add an infant carrier car seat (sold separately) for the ultimate, stylish, complete travel solution. More details on the iCandy Apple – which possesses the unique ability to grow as your family grows, converting from a single seat or bassinet to a double tandem stroller – are available here.

Extra lightweight and versatile, the iCandy cherry travel system is available in a choice of two chic color options – liquorice and fudge. An infant carrier car seat is easily attached with the use of infant carrier car seat adaptors (both sold separately). For more info on the Cherry, iCandy’s extra-lightweight travel solution, please visit this page.

The Pear, which can be used as either a single or a double stroller, is the ultimate travel solution for families expecting twins or a second child. With the addition of the PIP converter, the Pear boasts 20 practical seat configurations – the most of any double stroller on the market!  See more details here.

iCandy has received multiple awards in the UK, including Best Travel System/Best Push Chair from Mother & Baby magazine; Editors Choice/Best Buy from Pregnancy, Baby & You magazine; Best Buy from Prima Baby & Pregnancy magazine; and Best Buy from Practical Parenting magazine. Additionally, iCandy has never had a single product recall in its entire history of operation.

Today iCandy has given me the opportunity to host a giveaway for one of their diaper bags!

Win It

The iCandy diaper bag retails for $57.99 and follows suit with the rest of the company in providing a stylish design with amazing functionality. Carry all your essentials in this lifestyle changing bag. Features include an adjustable shoulder strap, two outer zip pockets, mobile phone pocket, insulated double zip outer bottle pocket, wide, double, zip opening to the main compartment which contains a padded changing mat, mesh side pouches and a wipes/tissue dispenser.

How To Enter

Mandatory Entry: “Like” iCandy’s Facebook page and write this on their wall: “I got a sweet tooth for the iCandy I saw at FrugalNovice.com!” Comment on THIS post letting me know you’ve done so. This contest is open to all U.S. residents. Entries will be accepted until midnight CST on Friday, February 25.

Bonus Entries

(Only valid after the required entry has been completed)

Please leave a comment for each extra entry – if you blog about this giveaway and get 3 entries, for example, comment 3 times.

Note: iCandy provided the diaper bag for the giveaway. All opinions included in this post are honest and remain my own. I was not compensated monetarily for this post.

Friendly Friday 2-11

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Welcome to Friendly Friday!

Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog, too! Just get the InLinkz code and copy it directly into your post. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting the list is a great way to get even more traffic to your blog and make Friendly Friday more beneficial for everyone.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.

To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.

When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select three blogs at random and will feature links and a write-up for those blogs in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight some of those each week. Say hello to the lucky chosen 3 for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):

Extreme Personal Measures is where Denise chronicles her life in Florida as a wife and mom who works outside the home, and she offers many other topics such as being pregnant, etc.  She offers giveaways and reviews as well as “How To’s” and DIY projects.  Denise shows how to make Valentine Sugar Cookie Pops which would make great Valentine Day gifts or treats for school!

Susan at Charm of the Carolines tells about her blessings in middle Tennessee and shares recipes, pictures, and things that inspire her.   She shares Southern wit, history, cherished family traditions and even grandma’s recipes for Sunday dinners.  Reading Susan’s blog is like taking a trip to the south and sitting on a front porch swing, listening to stories about the past and present.

Mommy Katie tells about “life and where life can take you.”  The Texas Panhandle is home to Katie, the wife of a former Marine, and their two kids, one of which has CCAM (cysts on his lungs). Their family has been affected by the economy, and so Katie stays at home with their beautiful kids during the day and then works in the evenings.  She shares reviews and giveaways as well as their life.

Now that you know about these 3 wonderful blogs, it’s time for you to join in! Add your family-friendly link below and we’ll see you back here every Friday! And don’t forget, you can get the InLinkz code to share the link list on your blog, too.

All three hostesses appreciate followers through GFC and Twitter, and we’ll follow you back – be sure to leave a comment with your URL and/or Twitter username.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!



(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

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I’m outnumbered in my house, and with two three boys (aged 22 months, 3 1/2 years, and, you know, 29 years) residing with me, they start to take over the home decor:

A large LEGO head resides on the top of our bookcase along with vintage cameras:

Our coffee table is perfectly set with trains along the “track”:

Of course, we like to be coordinated, so the train theme continues to our end table:

The throw pillows in our chair are complimented by Mr. Bear and a Bilibo:

C-3PO hangs out in our bookshelf in case he feels like reading a little To Kill a Mockingbird:

And Hobbes (sculpted by my husband in a college art class) hangs out with a complete collection of, you guessed it, Calvin and Hobbes:

Don’t worry, though. I managed to get some Valentine’s decor in this year. So girly, right?

Ahem… bet you didn’t know there were LEGO Valentine kits!

I never would have guessed how much I could grow to love boys’ way of decorating, but I wouldn’t change a thing. :)

Except maybe the dinosaurs in the middle of the kitchen that I stepped on. Barefoot.

CNA Boutique Winners

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There were FIVE winners for this one!

Congratulations, ladies!!

Freshology Winner

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Without further ado, the winner of the Freshology meals is…

Congratulations, Cheryl! I hope you enjoy your meals from Freshology as much as I enjoyed mine!

Homemade Valentine’s Pouches – Easy, Cute, & Cheap!

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Like I mentioned in my Menu Plan Monday post, we were snowed in almost all of last week. By Friday we were starting to run out of ideas, so I decided to get creative and come up with a craft project. With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to make something for the boys to take to their friends at day care. This is something easy, inexpensive, and it provides a little bit of a twist on the traditional Valentine.

I wasn’t well-stocked with art supplies, but I looked around and found some unused sponges (thank goodness for being lazy about housework!):

I used scissors to cut out some shapes. At first I tried cutting the sponges dry and then after a minute of seeing how impossible that was going to be, it finally dawned on me to wet the sponges – then it was much easier!

Then I found some paint – I had red & white, so I mixed different amounts together to get some pinks to work with too:

Then J got to work stamping paint onto folded cardstock.

He made a LOT (C wasn’t too interested, so J did all the stamping):

and he was pretty proud of his work:

Instead of stamping the designs on like you normally would, we did it with the fold at the bottom, so we could turn the Valentines into little pouches to carry treats in. I hot glued the sides and attached ribbon as a handle – super easy, and cute!

We’re going to stamp a J or C on the backs of the pouches and write a little Valentine’s message to personalize them. You could do all kinds of fun things for the design, too! What kind of Valentines are your kids going to take this year?

Christi

Celebrating Home’s Bean Pot – Review & Giveaway

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I had never heard of a Bean Pot until this review, so I was intrigued to try one out. I went to the Celebrating Home site to choose one to review, and had a really hard time picking one because there were so many really pretty designs:

Eventually I settled on the Somerset style:

I was impressed by the quality of this piece and love the clean lines and warm feel to it. The color is a little more yellow in person than I expected it to be from the site, but it’s still a good color that fits in well with our other dishes. I love that it’s a lidded dish and the handles make it easier to carry.

I also received two cookbooks with the Bean Pot; I flipped through the recipes and saw several that looked good, but I think the dish could be used for a ton of different recipes that people already have in their collection. One recipe that I plan to try soon is Bean Pot Lasagna:

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb. Italian sausage, cooked & drained
  • 1 9 oz. pkg. no-boil lasagna noodles, broken in half
  • 1 12 oz. container ricotta cheese
  • 3 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded and divided
  • 1 26 oz. jar pasta sauce
  • 1 Tbsp. dried parsley

Directions:

  1. Put sausage in the Bean Pot.
  2. Add noodles, ricotta cheese, 2 cups mozzarella cheese, pasta sauce and parsley. Stir gently to combine.
  3. Cover with lid and bake in oven at 250 degrees for 4-6 hours.
  4. Top with remaining mozzarella cheese and bake five more minutes until cheese is melted.

Doesn’t that sound good – and easy?

The Bean Pot would also be great to use for soups (in fact, I’m planning to use mine to serve our tomato basil soup in tonight). It’s microwavable, oven safe and dishwasher safe – plus, there are other dishes in each of the designs to go along with the Pot, allowing you to really add some charm to your meals.

Would you like to try out a Bean Pot for yourself? You can! Buy one at CelebratingHome.com, or you can win one of your own right here!

Win It

Celebrating Home has provided me with one Somerset Bean Pot for giveaway (ARV $39.99)! This contest is open to all U.S. residents. Entries will be accepted until midnight CST on Sunday, February 20.

How To Enter

Mandatory Entry: “Like” Celebrating Home on Facebook and comment here letting me know you’ve done so.

Bonus Entries

(Only valid after the required entry has been completed)

Please leave a comment for each extra entry – if you blog about this giveaway and get 3 entries, for example, comment 3 times.

Note: I was provided with a Bean Pot  for review, and one will be provided for the giveaway. All opinions included in this post are honest and remain my own.

Menu Plan Monday Feb.7-10

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Menu Plan Monday

This past week I got FOUR snow days. Which sounds lovely, right? And mostly it was – I enjoyed all that time with the boys & Brian (he was home Tuesday-Thursday) but I can’t tell you how good it felt to get out of the house yesterday!

I had planned to cook dinner for my mom’s birthday, but we decided to take them out to celebrate instead. J did help me make a cake for her, though. I said, “I think Grandma would like purple icing. What do you think?” Well, he was just SURE she’d like blue, so we went with that. It’s not the fanciest cake ever but I think it turned out pretty cute:

I cut a template out of parchment paper to make the heart with sugar and then just cut the corner off of a baggie to ice the wording. Not quite the same effect as using my Wilton tips, but it did the trick.

We had a great weekend with my family and now I’m sitting here watching the end of the Super Bowl while I write this. I’m not much of a football fan, but I’m glad it was a close game – during the first half it looked like it was going to be a sweep!

On to our menu for the week – I’m just planning through Thursday because I’m not exactly sure what our weekend plans will be.

Monday: Tomato basil soup & paninis. It’s going to be a cold week again and this has become one of our favorite go-to meals. I also didn’t get to make this last week – I had planned to stop by the store Wednesday to buy some fresh basil and the half & half, but since we were snowed in we changed our meal plans a little bit.

Tuesday: Chick-Fil-A free kids’ meals night! If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know we love this place – well, C has started singing “Chick-a-way, chick-a-way!” over and over again when we drive past it.

Wednesday: Mini pizza pockets. This is a recipe designed to use up some things in our fridge – I have a tube of crescent roll dough, some mozzarella cheese, and mini-pepperoni. I’ll just make some sauce with a 54 cent can of tomato paste and we’ll be good to go. We’ll have green beans (C eats these like french fries, and probably likes them even more) and carrots to go with the pizzas.

Thursday: Chicken stir-fry – it’s been a while since we’ve made Asian food. I almost always wing it when I do stir fry. I use teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, some Chinese five spice, red pepper flakes and sometimes a little garlic or ginger to taste. We’ll have carrots, onions, and zucchini with brown rice.

Well, I’m done with this post and it’s still snowing. Wish us luck!

Christi

ADORABLE Baby Photos!

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I’m running a giveaway right now for the Baby Bullet system, and one bonus entry option is to submit a photo of your messy baby eating baby food. We have gotten SUCH great entries!

Pop on over to my Facebook page to take a look at these photos; they’ll definitely make you smile! And if you haven’t submitted one yet, just read the giveaway post for instructions on how to do so. We can never have enough cute baby photos!

Here’s our latest entry; this photo is from Kristin – isn’t her daughter McKinley too cute? Love that expression on her face. :)

RedEnvelope Valentine’s Winner

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I hope the winner of this giveaway enjoys their selection from Red Envelope as much as I’ve enjoyed mine! The winner is…..

Congratulations, Aline! Thanks so much to everyone that entered – I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day.

Friendly Friday February 4

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Welcome to Friendly Friday!

Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog too! Just click “Get the code here…” at the bottom of the list. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting the list is a great way for everyone to get even more traffic to their blog.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.

To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.

When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select three blogs at random and will feature links and a write-up for those blogs in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight some of those each week. Say hello to the lucky chosen 3 for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):

Kim at Shop With Me Mama is a stay-at-home mom to two adorable kids. Her blog is filled with giveaways and reviews; right now she has a great Valentine’s Day gift guide that can help you out if you’re stuck on what to get your loved one this year. Kim says she loves to laugh, and her personality shines through her writing. She’s even kind of famous, having been in a Proactiv Solutions commercial recently!

Judy of Judy’s Handmade Creations is one talented lady! She crochets, makes jewelry, and also makes papercrafts, which she shares on her blog. If you ever need inspiration for a project, just check out her sidebar for ideas on birthday cards, embossing, Cricut creations and more!

Donnelle at Sew Me Mine is another crafty blogger. She loves to sew and was inspired by her mom. She’s a stay-at-home mom and is new to the blogging world, but is already off to a great start. You’ll find giveaways, Blogger tutorials, freebies and other resources when you visit.

Now that you know about these 3 wonderful blogs, it’s time for you to join in! Add your family-friendly link below and we’ll see you back here every Friday! And don’t forget, you can grab the code to share the link list on your blog too.

All three hostesses appreciate followers through GFC and Twitter, and we’ll follow you back – be sure to leave a comment with your URL and/or Twitter username.  Hope everyone has a great weekend!

WholesaleCostumeClub.com Review

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Before having children, I never would have thought to look at kids’ Halloween costumes for anything other than, well, Halloween. One day I went to pick the boys up from day care – J & his little buddies were all wearing princess outfits because they wanted to play dress up but there weren’t any outfits for boys. That inspired me to take a look at boys’ Halloween costumes so we could start building a collection of dress up clothes for J & C.

I recently got a chance to review a costume from WholesaleCostumeClub.com, and I let J pick which one we would try. I have to admit I tried to point him toward a couple I thought were especially cute, and Brian attempted to convince him how cool a Star Wars costume could be, but J had his mind made up immediately. He saw the Buzz Lightyear costume and it was love at first sight.

Today is day three of us being snowed in (Texans do not know how to handle icy roads, so almost everything shuts down). Everyone was getting a little stir crazy and then I decided it was the perfect time to work on the review. To say J was excited would be an understatement – he started stripping down immediately so he could put the costume on, and once it was… we had Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!

The costume is size 4-6 and J is 3, so it’s a little big – but that’s great, because I know we’ll get years of use out of it! I love that it’s almost entirely one piece but still easy to put on. The material is high quality and seems like it will stand up well against little boys running around to save the universe. We’re going to try to keep adding to our collection of costumes so the boys can play dress up to their hearts’ content. WholesaleCostumeClub.com has a huge selection to choose from… somehow I think Mario & Luigi will be next on our list!

Note: I received the costume from wholesalecostumeclub.com for review, but all opinions included in this post are honest and are my own.

Christi