Moody Sisters Organic Skincare Review + Special Offer!

I got a special treat in the mail the other day! Whitney, of the Moody Sisters on Etsy, sent me a couple of samples of their Fabule$$ organic skincare products to try out and review for the blog. She sent me a bottle of their Refreshing Daily Toner and some Almond Lotion Whip!

First off, a little about their products; the two sisters from here in Washington State decided to develop a skincare line of their own because of their different "moody" skin types. Their products have been designed for difficult skin types and are 100% green and vegan which means free of chemicals, preservatives and animal by-products! Safe for you and the environment - I love it! You can also email them with your specific skin needs and they will create custom products specifically for your skin type!

Since I had my baby back in July and have been breastfeeding the past few months I am looking to put as few bad things in my body and on my body as I can so that I can have the purest, healthiest nutrition for my baby. I have also been all out of whack as far as hormones go so I have been breaking out a lot more and I loved using the toner because not only was it refreshing, but it made my skin feel less oily and much more clean when I used the toner after washing my face.

And the lotion whip is awesome! It smells delicious, I love anything Almond, but it left my skin feeling very soft for a long time. Plus, I feel good about letting my daughter put some on too because its chemical free! She is in that, gotta do everything mom does phase, including make up and everything else I put on! I think when I make an order I want to try out their deodorant and diaper rash cream!!

So the Moody Sisters have a special for all of you, my Fabule$$ readers, since we are all about saving money around here, if you make an order within the next week (12-13 to 12-20-2011) you can enter the code FREESHIP in the comments section at checkout to receive free shipping on your order!

Now please know that since the Moody Sisters products are created fresh within a week of your order then you may or may not receive your order by Christmas. I recommend ordering ASAP as their last shipping day before Christmas is a week from today, 12-20-2011! Remember if you have any special requests, contact them on Etsy before placing your order so they can set up a custom listing for you or answer any questions you have.

Oh and when you are fresh out of your products, you can mail the clean bottles and jars back to the Moody Sisters and receive 10% off your re-order! There we go tying in the Green Living - Trash Diet theme again, isn't it great?!

Make sure you also "Like" them on Facebook so you can stay up to date on specials and giveaways!

*Disclosure* Moody Sisters provided me the two samples photographed above for my review; no other compensation was received and all opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

Our Trash Diet: Week 3!

Hey Guys!

Sorry I am so behind on updating you on our Trash Diet progress! Adjusting to life with a new tiny person has been fun but challenging and unfortunately sleep has taken priority over blogging the last couple of weeks!

That doesn't mean that we have been slacking in the garbage department though! This past week we saw a lot less visitors so luckily our garbage production was reduced as well. We only took out our garbage and recycling bags once this week, which I think is awesome! Usually we empty both twice per week so once is wonderful. We filled our compost bin again as well and again it was super smelly but luckily the filter on our bin is so great we don't smell it at all when it's in the process of being filled!

We also emptied our diaper pail for the first time which is a garbage bag that ends up being about 3/4 full with used diapers. This was the first time we have emptied it since Mason has been born though so that is about once every 2 1/2 weeks. As he grows the diaper pail will fill quicker though so in a few weeks I do want to try cloth diapers part time to see how I like it. So if any of you hear about a good deal on a starter set of diapers please let me know! I know we can also buy them pre-owned from craigslist or ebay and just buy new liners.

Speaking of ebay and craigslist; this is another way our family greatly reduces waste and saves money. Most everything we buy in our family comes 2nd hand. Whether I find it at a thrift store, buy it on craigslist or even pick it up off a curb for free, we very rarely pay retail for anything! I also donate old clothing and household supplies to our local thrift store (which in turn gives me a coupon to shop with!), sell it on craigslist/ebay and take my children's items to a local consignment shop once per week. We save a lot of money this way and my kids are very well dressed little munchkins. I got a sideways look a few weeks back because my 3 year old was in 7 For All Mankind jeans, but little did they know I only paid $4 for them at Goodwill!

Here is a small list of ways you can reduce waste in your home and save money as well. Most of these things you probably already know but maybe you haven't seen one or two!

- Stop drinking bottled water. Our country is hugely dependant on bottled water but this creates a ton of waste and you are probably just drinking filtered tap water in the bottle anyway. You know that Fiji water in the cool square bottle? It comes from FIJI - think of the jet fuel that just went into the atmosphere from that plus if the bottle doesn't get recycled its even more waste! Our family invested a whopping $4 on a Brita pitcher deal a while back and I take a water bottle with me when I leave the house with clean water and no waste or money spent!

- Give up Starbucks, Brew at Home! This is a big one in our home. We used to go to Starbucks every morning - $4 per drink/$8 per day/$2920 per year plus that's 2 disposable cups per day! 2 years ago we decided to stop and start brewing at home. We still drink fancy coffee but its only about $8 per lb and that lasts about 3-4 weeks so we cut the cost of our coffee addiction substantially! We also use a gold cone filter in our coffee pot, which means we don't have to buy or use disposable filters! More savings! *If you can't give up the Starbies, at least take your own mug, they'll give you a discount if you do!

- Stop using paper towels. This has been difficult for our family and we haven't stopped buying them totally but we have reduced the amount we use a lot. A 6 pack of paper towels lasts us about 6 months in our home. We actually prefer to wipe the counter clean with a dish rag and some natural cleaner. Plus now the paper towels we do use can now go into the compost bin with our food scraps!

- Reuse your plastic grocery bags. I almost never get plastic bags anymore since I keep my reusable shopping bags in my car at all times, but inevitably we end up with a few every now and then. You can reuse plastic bags by lining small trash cans, using them as doggy doo cleaner uppers and even as packing material when you are shipping something! Or you can always take them with you to the grocery store and recycle them before you shop.

- Eliminate Soda from your diet. This will save you money, reduce waste and your waistline will thank you for stopping! If you can't stop the soda, at least make sure you recycle the cans and bottles.

- Take the bus, ride a bike or walk to run errands or go to work. You'll save on gas and if you can walk or ride your bike to and from the grocery store your body will get good exercise as well! Plus this will help you to stay on budget because you don't want to lug a ton of heavy bags up a hill! We are lucky enough to have 2 grocery stores and a Rite Aid all within walking distance from our home. If you don't have that option, limit your outings every week and bundle them all into one or two days. Hit up your grocery store deals, drug store deals and your trip to the bank all for one day and plan your route out! If you drive in a counter clockwise direction then you won't have to idle in your car waiting for a left turn signal; instead you'll get free rights on reds!

- Grow your own! If you have a yard, grow a garden and maybe even start a compost pile for natural fertilizer! You'll save money on produce and your crops will be the sweetest thing you ever tasted. If you have never had a homegrown strawberry, you haven't lived! Don't have a yard? Do you have a window? You can grow herbs indoors year round and save on spices!

These are just a few options for going green and saving green! What things do you do around your home to save money?!

If you missed my first 2 posts about our Trash Diet, you can read them HERE and HERE!

Disclosure: The Glad Products Company has provided me with trash disposal products and a home visit from the City of Seattle to help with this program. I was not compensated in any other way and all opinions posted here are 100% my own.

Our Trash Diet Update!

Hi All!

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted about our family's decision to go on a "Trash Diet"? Well you can read about all the details HERE! I missed updating you on our progress last week because I was in the hospital on trash day giving birth to my beautiful baby boy!

Even with being in the hospital and having lots of visitors I think our "diet" is going well so far! We have implemented a few new changes to our home to help us reduce our waste and also save money at the same time! We even got Grandma in on the process! She is from another area of the state where they don't have a recycling service yet. (By the way, I can't believe that, I know we would recycle less or not at all if we had to take our recyclables to the station ourselves. Central Washington really needs to get a recycling service.)

First off let me update you on our recycling progress. We were always very good recyclers before but with our home visit and some new knowledge about what is recyclable we have been sending even more to the recycle side of the trast vs the garbage part! I am happy to say that we only sent 2 full bags of garbage to our can this week and we FILLED our recycle can to the top! We did have a lot of boxes that we broke down but I think that we definitely made progress on that end!

We also have been sucessful in making sure that all of our food waste goes in the food waste bin and taken to the yard waste bucket! Before we would just toss the waste in our trash bin and send some scraps down the garbage disposal in our sink. I am making a concious effort to take all the peels and strawberry tops over to the bin instead of sending them down the sink. Plus now our septic system will be thanking us for this in the long run! But let me tell you, it took all week to fill our 2.5 gallon food waste bin and when my husband took the bag out to the yard waste can it was DISGUSTING and full of fuzzy goo! Luckily it has a filter on top and our house didn't smell bad from it at all. Plus it makes me happy that those food scraps are going to become useable compost material by the end of the process.

In the coming weeks I am going to look into ways to reduce waste and save money at the same time. I am interested to hear how you, my readers, do this in your homes. Do you make an effort to use fewer bottles or not buy paper towels?

With the arrival of our new baby I have also noticed that we are going through a TON of diapers already. Right now I am not motivated enough to start using cloth diapers on him but I am planning to look into part time cloth diapering for him in the coming months. They are a big investment up front but do save money and would reduce a substantial amount of waste going to the dump. Luckily I planned ahead before Mason was born and stocked up on hundreds of newborn and size 1 diapers because I knew that we would be needing them so I saved hundreds already in the process!

Stay tuned to our progress next week!

Disclosure: The Glad Products Company has provided me with the products you have seen above and the home visit from the City of Seattle to help with this program. I was not compensated in any other way and all opinions posted here are 100% my own.

My Family is on a "Trash Diet"

Yep, you read correctly, a "Trash Diet", although not the kind of trash you would think. We are not going to be eating more junk food as a family but seeing how we can reduce the amount of waste that comes out of our home and into the landfill.

The city of Seattle has made a goal to divert 60 percent of its waste to recycling and composting by the year 2012; so we as a family have signed up to be part of the "Waste Less" blogger challenge and have partnered up with King County and GLAD products to learn more about where our trash goes and do our best to send less to the landfill and more to the recycling and yard waste/compost services!

The Glad Products company sent our family a great new garbage can that is motion sensored and divided so we can separate our trash vs. recycling more easily as well as a new compost/food scraps bin and a TON of various Glad products including trash bags, recycling bags and compostable bags to make our transition and goals much easier!

Check out our old garbage system below:

Just a can and a box or paper bag next to the can for our recyclables.

Now check out our new system!

I am so excited to start collecting our kitchen scraps into our little compost collector! This is always something I wanted to try out and now with our new bin it will be easy and not too stinky!

This program couldn't be coming at a better time actually. Where we live has just been incorporated into the City of Kirkland and our garbage service is changing over to Waste Management. We are very excited about this because not only is it substantially cheaper than our previous provider, they also will be collecting our yard waste and recycling on a weekly basis vs. a bi-weekly basis!

We also had a home visit from Tom Watson, who is a representative of the City of Seattle, the writer for the Eco-Consumer column for the Seattle Times and a green living expert on local TV stations!

Tom's visit was great. He took a look at our trash collecting set up and we talked for about 45 minutes on ways that we can reduce our waste as a family including: collecting our food/kitchen scraps for composting, what can and cannot be recycled, where our recycling and yard waste goes when it leaves our cans, where we can recycle our batteries and ways we can save money as a family by living green.

As I said before, I am excited to start collecting our kitchen and food waste for composting. Since I'm due with our 2nd baby any day now I am not ready to start my own compost pile just yet, but with our garbage service all we have to do is collect the scraps and put them in our yard waste bin, bag and all thanks to the compostable bags Glad provided me with! I was excited to learn that our yard waste actually goes to a company in Everett that does the composting for us!

Something I didn't know before was that we can actually put more than just fruit peels and egg shells into our collector. We can put meat scraps, bones, paper towels, napkins, paper plates and even compostable take out boxes into our yard waste.

I also learned that I can put my Starbucks paper and plastic cups into the recycling and that I can now take clean & dry Ziploc bags & any other plastic bags to my grocery bag recycling station at the grocery store.

Stay tuned over the next month as I post about how our families "diet" is going. The first time I emptied our new can our bags of trash and recycling were about equal size.

Over the next month I want to see if we can make the bag of trash about 1/2 the size as the recycling! I am also going to be doing some posts about how you can actually save money by living the green life!

Disclosure: The Glad Products Company has provided me with the products you have seen above and the home visit from the City of Seattle to help with this program. I was not compensated in any other way and all opinions posted here are 100% my own.