Product Reviews

Healthy Eating, Lifestyle, Motherhood, Product Reviews, Sponsored, Things to do
Summer Picnic with Kids
- 6:06 pm
- 7 Comments
- by Adanna Dill
So I have a really good weekend story to share but you have to promise to read all the way to end (or you will miss the best part). Saturday was hot here in New York City, so hot that I didn’t take the kids outside so they stayed in and enjoyed The Super Knight’s leftover ice cream cake and watched Zootopia. That worked on Saturday but by Sunday they weren’t having it, they wanted to get out of the house. Since we had a really nice picnic last Sunday, I figured we do it again this week.

[Tweet “#UnleashClean at your picnic with kids because there will be spills and maybe an uninvited guest! “]

Now a summer picnic with kids seems really simple right? but it’s not. My kids are super picky about everything from finding the perfect spot at the park to what we should eat. Oh, did I mention the dragon flys the size of my head buzzing around that makes it even harder to find the right spot?

First things first, we I decided that since it was so hot we needed to keep our snacks light and healthy. I packed fruit cups with green grapes and strawberries, sour cream flavored popcorn and sea salt crackers that I topped with olive tapenade. To make sure that the fruits remained fresh, I placed a Viva towel in each up and covered with cling wrap. Over on Snapchat, I shared the refreshing mix of seltzer water with strawberries, mint leaves, and blueberries that I made in a big mason jar for us.

Once we found the perfect spot I laid out our spread and decided to relax for a bit until the little ones insisted that we get up and blow some bubbles together.

Well with no support our blanket blew over, thankfully not completely but enough that our drinks spilled. Fortunately, I had Viva Towels that I’ve mentioned a few times before on hand. I love Viva Towels because they are strong and durable like cloth. The Viva Vantage towels are perfect for cleaning more grimy dirt like dirt on our picnic blanket because of it’s a scrubby texture

I love the job that Viva Towels do so much that I even packed some and folded them as napkins.

Anyway, the kids went right back to alternating between playing and snacking (especially The Princess Fairy she loved the snacks).

I settled in with a magazine until my daughter looked up and announced that there was a raccoon in the tree above staring at our picnic. I thought she was joking until I made eye contact with him myself. A seriously chilling moment guys!

[Tweet “I #unleashclean at our Sunday picnic and a raccoon showed up”]

Listen, you may think I’m a wuss and I know it’s not cool to show your kids your fear but there was something about the way that raccoon that scared me. He looked like he was ready to come get our picnic AT THAT VERY MOMENT. I’ve never packed up so quickly in my life. It’s hilarious in retrospect but as I put all out things away and he started moving around in the tree and the fear in my body was too real.

I explained to my kids that raccoons are nocturnal and although they are sometimes spotted during the day that could be a sign that he’s sick. They both felt really bad and thought he was cute. Me on the other hand, I couldn’t stop thinking about his claws and the eye contact we made but I hope he’s okay and if he was sick they were able to get him help. We told a couple who were playing nearby with a ball just so they didn’t accidently hit him and they immediately went over to bring it to the park’s staff attention. This lead to a small crowd gathering around the tree (which I am sure scared the raccoon).

Needless to say, after the raccoon showed up at our picnic, I’m probably done with picnics for this summer. I think we can find something else fun to do.

Ever had an uninvited animal show up to your picnic?

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
Lifestyle, Product Reviews, Sponsored
Rattling Inspiration: Creating A Blurb Photo Book
- 2:27 pm
- 0 comments
- by Adanna Dill
I’m so excited to share my new Blurb photo book with you in this sponsored post. Thank you for your support!

If you can’t tell by now, I am in love with the simple joys of life. That’s why I enjoy blogging because I can share the beauty in even the most mundane parts of motherhood and hopefully spark that feeling in you too. Of course, I don’t feel this way daily but when I need a dose of sunshine and inspiration myself, I like to look at some of my published posts and remind myself that I could create something beautiful just from a tiny idea in my head. I wanted to print out some imagery from the blog to make a little makeshift mood book and then as the universe would have it, I got the fantastic opportunity to create a photo book using Blurb, an independent, creative book-making platform.

What caught my attention about the Blurb platform, is that I can easily create professional quality photo books and magazines in both print and digital formats. Now, I had a chance to create a book that really reflects my style and aesthetic as I could design it exactly the way I envisioned it in my head, down to the paper quality. That was my first step, ordering a swatch kit to see samples of all Blurb’s paper options before designing on my book. Although you pay for the swatch kit, you receive a promo code that lets you apply the cost of the kit toward your book purchase. My swatch kit arrived really quickly and after playing around with the different textures, I selected the Premium Lustre paper and then moved along to create my book and place my order.

As a mom, I don’t exactly have the time to learn how to use new software to create a photo book so it was important to use a platform with user-friendly options. I used the Blurb’s free book-making desktop publishing software BookWright to make my book which was was really intuitive. But if you’re a design expert (as I wish I was) you can use Blurb’s Adobe ® InDesign ® plug-in or Lightroom ® integration.

I decided to title my book Rattling Inspiration and it features some of my favorite images from this blog. I like to think of Rattling Inspiration as a mix of a portfolio, mood book and a tangible version of the blog. I mean I literally printed the best of the blog and added it to this cool book.

Oh and don’t start thinking “Well, I don’t have a blog this isn’t for me.” You can create a photo book or magazine to share your family’s story in a very unique, creative and compelling way. Imagine what it would be like for your kid to read it when he/she grows up.

I’m really excited to make more Blurb photo books and maybe even a magazine with all of our cherished memories from this summer and our travels.

Have you ever used Blurb before?
Motherhood, Product Reviews, Sponsored
Post-Vacation Cleaning With Tide purclean
- 12:37 pm
- 0 comments
- by Adanna Dill
This post was sponsored by NEW! Tide purclean as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central.

If you’ve noticed things were a bit quiet around here lately it’s because I took the past week off to enjoy our family trip to Chicago. Chicago was a whole lot of fun but we came back with so much dirty laundry that the post-vacation cleaning had me feeling a bit overwhelmed.

In our home, we all have our roles. ~~The kids dirty the clothes~~, I sort the laundry while my husband is the guy responsible for taking them to the laundromat (yes, laundromat because we live in New York City). Once he’s back with the clean laundry we sometimes sit together and chat while folding together or ~~most~~ other times he falls asleep and I end up doing it all by myself.

I’m also responsible for purchasing laundry detergent and other cleaning products. I’m really conscious about the cleaning products that we use so I was happy to try the new Tide purclean detergent. According to the brand “This formula is made with 100% renewable electricity” and made at a zero manufacturing waste to landfill site.

If you follow me on Snapchat you know that I am at Target all of the time, and that’s my favorite places to shop for all things household. I easily found the Tide purclean detergent, the very first bio-based laundry detergent on sale at Target. Score!

My husband is of the “If it’s not broken don’t fix it” school of thought so he wasn’t as open about trying Tide purclean which is made from 65% bio-based ingredients. That’s fair since if the clothes weren’t clean it would be his job to wash them again and who wants to do that? On the other hand, I trusted the Tide brand enough to believe they wouldn’t make a product that wouldn’t live up to the Tide reputation. Our Chicago styled pizza grease and ice cream stains were the perfect test.

I think worrying about whether or not a more environmentally conscious product would be as effective as the old products is a normal concern. When I switched shower cleaner for instance, I worried that without the strong chemical odors I was used to, my shower would never be as clean again. I was glad to be wrong and to see that a more conscious product choice didn’t take away from the cleanliness of my shower.

Just like the shower cleaners, Tide purclean turned out to be very effective. We’re happy that we get to keep the memories of Chicago without the stains.

If you’re a Target Cartwheel lover like myself, take advantage of the Tide purclean 5% discount offer on Cartwheel until 7/30 and the in-store $1 off neck hanger deal at Target:

What’s your family laundry routine?