The Great Cloth Diaper Hunt (updated)

I need to write a post about finding the right diaper for your family and your baby and even one about the wonderful diaper/baby stuff giveaways I’ve been enjoying*, but this isn’t it.   Instead, I wanted to draw your attention to something that I’ve never participated in before, but looks like a lot of fun.

The Great Cloth Diaper Hunt seems like a fun way for online diaper shops, diaper makers, and blogs to advertise goods and services while allowing participants to win free diapers and cloth diapering supplies.  First you have to register.  From there, we will be figuring this out together.  I do know that I will be looking for this symbol on lots of different websites:

                                             

. . . and trying to win great prizes!  Just so you know, I’m not earning or winning anything by sharing this with you; I just didn’t want to keep all the fun to myself!  Oh, and it starts November 1st.

 

NEW!  While searching for that cute little symbol above, I stumbled across Cute Caboose which is having its own special diaper giveaways all month for those who follow the clues and find the hidden diaper-owls on their site (and tell them about it). So, there you go (and this time I DO get something for telling you—an extra entry into their giveaway)!

 *Yes, I’m a little obsessed with cute cloth diapers and winning prizes, but it’s a lot better for our budget for me to try to win theses fun goodies than to talk myself into buying them.  James appreciates it!

Are you in the market for a car seat? Win one!

                        

Clara is going to outgrow her car seat within the next few months, and we are going to need something bigger that will still live up to my safety standards.  I love the safety features of the Safety 1st Complete Air Car Seat as shared by The Shopping Mama.  Right now on her blog (through November 16) you can enter to win a car seat of your own.  If you have a little time, browse around The Shopping Mama’s other giveaways as well.  You might find something you really want (and win it!).  Have fun!

It’s still autumn in our yard!

October 12th, a day when it would not be improbable to have snow, when all of our neighbors have already lost the leaves from the Alaskan birch and aspen trees, our yard is orange and yellow and golden and sunshiny.  We have some pretty petunias, snap dragons, and pansies still surviving the frosty nights.  There is a thick carpet of gold leaves from the mountain ash that just now decided to become a beautiful bower of autumn’s last stand.  I am loving it.  The gorgeous light reflecting off the leaves fills our normally dark living room with a warm glow.  I don’t know why we have been blessed with one of the most beautiful summers and now autumns of my memory, but I am thanking God for it

When winter comes, as it must, I will let out a contented sigh.  This Autumn seems to be like the “finale” in a fireworks display or the encore at a concert.  The soft, pure snow will seem as perfect as the silence after the last firework crackles in the sky or when the lights come on after the lovely strains of concert music die away.  I thank God for His design in nature.  And I hope I will always have a mountain ash in my yard to enjoy in the autumn.

Happy Birthday, James!

James celebrated his 29th birthday on October 3.  I made him a cherry pie.  Here are a few photos we took to remember his first birthday with our sweet daughter.

Our family.  Aw!

Here Clara realized that those things look like fun for grabbing!  Yikes!  (Today she upended a bowl of hot soup on my lap, splashing herself as well!  I’ve got to watch that girl!)

She was really enjoying the dinner.

 

Especially since she got to sample lots of things from Mama’s plate!

We love you, James.  Thank you for being such a special husband and daddy.  May God bless you with many, many more special years to come.

Three Quick Plugs

I have become terribly addicted to entering online giveaways recently, because . . . it works!  God has been so good in giving us some special things for our family: cloth diapers, an EmmaLu carseat cover, and an ecousable water bottle, for  starters.  As I said before, I do not want to bug you all (mostly friends and family hoping to learn more about our life and see pictures of Clara) with notices of giveaways and baby stuff blogs to link to, but every once in a while I find something that is either too fun to pass up, or something you all might enjoy too.  Here are three quick things I’d like to share with you (hint:  if you like to do Where’s Waldo and I Spy all three things are right here on our blog if you can find them).

                                 

Ugg, the makers of soft, comfy, warm, sheepskin lined boots are giving away a free pair of Whooga boots every month to people who have a link (like the one above) on their blog or website.  Click on the link to find out how you can enter.  It’s very simple.

 

                       

Madsen Cycles is doing something similar in giving away one bike per week to people who link, tweet, and subscribe to their website.  Look at what a neat bike that would be for going on family bike rides or picking up groceries!  Check out how you can enter as well.  If you notice in my sidebar, my Madsen link is small and unobtrusive, so they have many varieties to fit your blog style.

 

 

Last but not least, Swagbucks is my new favorite thing.  Swagbucks is a search program (I believe it runs through Google) that allows you to search for anything you would normally search for, but rewards you randomly with Swagbuck “bucks” which you can save up and redeem for all kinds of things.  I’m amazed at the gift cards.  Save 45 Swagbucks and turn them in for a $5 Amazon gift card or turn 70 Swagbucks in for $5 Paypal dollars anywhere!  Wow!  Just for using a search engine!  It’s fun!  I downloaded their new toolbar, and I have received special Swagbuck codes to plug in to get free bucks all month. 

 

My tip for maximizing your Swagbucks earning is to download the toolbar and use the Swagbucks search engine  instead of the web address window.  For example, when I want to go to gMail, Facebook, Amazon, etc. I “search” for them instead of inputting “www.facebook.com”.  Very often, I’ll earn one, two, or even three Swagbucks just for going somewhere that I go to all the time anyway.

 

If you’d like to be nice to me, joining Swagbucks from my referral link, helps me win more Swagbucks.  I do hope you’ll give it a try.  So far, I’ve earned $15 in Amazon gift cards and $5 from Euphoria Baby.  At the rate I’m going, I will be able to get a significant discount on Christmas gifts this year!

P.S. Do you think I said Swagbucks enough in these three paragraphs?  Swagbucks!

Take me out to the fair!

 

Last Friday, my family (mom, dad, brothers, sister-in-law, brother’s mother-in-law, husband, and daughter) ALL converged on the Alaskan State Fair.   For Alaskans, the state fair is a BIG DEAL.  We have no theme parks, children’s museums, walking streets, or petting zoos in our area, so it is pretty hard to resist the one time of year when we can go to a place and eat lots of greasy foods, pet sheep noses, and ride Farris wheels.  Although many years it can be rainy and miserable, we were blessed with a lovely day.  And all of us had a lot of fun together.

This year too, we had a new church booth at the fair which my parents put a LOT of work into.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it; it was pretty neat looking.  I spent part of the early afternoon (while James and Brady were still at work)  helping at the booth and talking to people while Clara slept or went around the Fair to experience it with different family members.  Here she came back with her very first balloon.  This day had a lot of firsts for Clara.

   

Later, Mom, Aspen, Oletta (Aspen’s mom), and I went around looking at some of the sweet specialty shops available while Mom carried Clara in the Mei Tai.

We went to check out the giant vegetables too.  Alaska cannot grow many warm climate vegetables well without a lot of help, but it sure has the cold varieties down. Plus, with our super sun exposure, they can get REALLY big.  We commonly break records for giant rutabagas and turnips and such. 

But this year was a big one for us Alaskans as we broke the world record for giant cabbages twice!  Once with a 125 lb cabbage and again with an 127 lb cabbage!   Here’s the photo taken by yours truly of the biggest cabbage in the world EVER (can you find my shadow : )

Here are the other large veggies Alaskan farmers brought in.  AND, big news for our family, there in front, that green bowling ball thing with the red ribbon?  That says “Kuenning” on it.  Yep!  Its a kohlrabi grown by my own mother!  It weighed in on the official scales at 5.31 lbs.  The sad thing is that we ate the really big one before Mom knew that there was a second veggie entry!

Yay, Mom!

About this time, James and Brady arrived, and then the party really got going.  Hi, Sweetie!

The day was “Aviation Day,” and we got to watch hot air balloons and helicopters and such fly over.

We also ate lots of yummy food.  Here Dad is enjoying one of the best fair treats available: a custardy cream puff drizzled with chocolate.  Mmm!  Too bad Adam isn’t interested.

I LOVE Adam’s expression in this one.  James and I crack up when we see it.  “Please Sir, can I have some more?”

There were all kinds of events and animals to see.  I am kicking myself for missing the photo opportunity of Clara seeing, hearing, and (sometimes) touching live barnyard animals for the first time.  Her eyes got so big when she walked into the big barn and heard the animals.  These pigs are getting ready for a race (that we missed).  There was just so much to do!

Here they had an entire building set up for kids and families to explore that was FULL of reptiles and amphibians flown up for the occasion.  Like I said, we don’t have aquariums and children’s museums, so stuff like this is really exciting.  

And creepy?  Many were poisonous.  Um, I live in Alaska because there are NO snakes.  We don’t need to import them thank-you-very-much! : )

Hey I got a picture of Brady and Aspen.  Hi, Guys!  Dippin' Dots, Huh?  Mmm.

Then we all walked over to the carnival part of the fair.

We actually watched someone WIN that giant tiger.  Oh my.  It was as big as the man carrying it!

Then we tried putting Clara on my back.  Do you think she likes it?

Well, she fell asleep . . .

Even through the screaming and commotion.

Here is a photo of Justin Spurlin’s (Aspen’s brother) beautiful bronze cast artwork (I hope I got that right).  Instead of being put on display with the crocheted doilies and amateur photography in one of the buildings, it had it’s own special display outside of the art guild building.  Impressive!

Then we saw some hula hoops laying randomly on the ground and Mom had to show us her stuff.  She’s good too!  Giant kohlrabi growing, hula hoop rotating, is there anything she CAN’T do? : )

Go Brady!

Way to go, Adam!

And then Clara got to see her first fireworks.   I’m not too sure what my little monkey thought of that here, but at least she’s snuggled into my chest again and could burry her nose in my shirt whenever.  She’s so cute!

And Isaac watched the end of our fair day explode in the sky.

Good day.  Good memories.  I’m glad we shared that together.  Can’t wait for next year when I get to experience it with an 18 month old!  Won’t she adore the cows!  Aww!

Look What I Won!

So entering giveaways really does pay off! About a month ago, I saw a notice that said Today’s Mama was hosting an Oxiclean sponsored giveaway (anyway, I think that’s how it worked). After registering for a Today’s Mama, I answered Oxiclean’s question about what was the most surprising thing about being a mother (or something like that). I answered:

Being suddenly on call 24/7. No time off, down time, or quit time. It was a shock with an infant. I do get breaks, but I love it.

The next day, I received an email telling me that I had won (I’m sure my name or number was drawn at random) 6 brand new bumGenius diapers (3 organic, 3 regular) from Banana Peel’s Diapers! These have a value of $123.05!

A few days ago I received my special “fluffy mail” package containing these:

I was so excited to receive a fun variety of colors AND the organic diapers came with snaps, which are the hip new thing (they are fazing out the organic ones with Aplix—Velcro type fastener—and they are on sale everywhere). So I felt honored, blessed, special, and taken care of all at once.

For those NOT in the cloth diaper world, bumGenius, although developed at home by a mama, like most other brands, is essentially the “Pampers” (dare I say it?) of cloth diapers. They are high quality, cute, from a well reputed company, cute, and every cloth diapering mom knows the brand well. The basic diaper has a waterproof outer shell, sewn to an inner stay-dry fleece liner with a pocket where an extremely absorbent micro-fiber insert can be put in (or two for night times) to soak up the wetness.

Clara in her FIRST bumGenius!

I have been avoiding synthetic materials on Clara since she was born (except for disposable diapers :( ), so I didn’t jump on the bumGenius bandwagon right away and wanted to try their organic diaper first. We bought a used one to try a few weeks ago. Their organic variety has the same waterproof shell, but with layers of stitched organic cotton for absorbency on the inside and no pocket. The layers are cleverly added so as to allow air between the layers so they don’t take forever in the dryer as one dense mass.

After trying the regular diapers, however, I can see how nice it is to have no worries of having wet fabric against Clara’s baby soft skin and of being able to double the absorbency any time I want by adding more layers in the pocket. For these reasons, they work great as nighttime diapers for us right now. I don’t have to stumble out of bed at five AM with the worry that maybe she’s fussy because her diaper is too wet or because of damp pajamas. They would also be good for outings for some of the same reasons (pockets and fleece do not guard against poopy diapers though!).

However, I don’t think that in normal use, having wet cotton against her skin is awful. She doesn’t get rashes or irritations because of it. The organic diapers are even easier to use than the pocket diapers because there is no stuffing after washing (or un-stuffing before washing). They are slightly trimmer and aren’t bumpy (as when a novice like me stuffs the inserts badly). And they are organic and perfectly free from anything to do with petroleum!

These aren’t my everyday diapers, especially since I only have seven : ) ( I’ll share with you soon what I DO use all the time). These are a very nice treat, though. They are wonderful for outings, baby-sitters (i.e. grandmas), nighttime, and looking cute (We brought our pink one to a professional photo shoot the other day)!

Mostly I wanted to write this as a great big THANK YOU to the lovely people who made this all possible for me. : ) I am a very happy owner of my new bumGenius diapers. I will take good care of them so as to enjoy their soft fluffiness for a very long time.