Green Virgin Products review and giveaway

As part of our quest to eliminate toxins from our home I needed to change our deodorants. One reason is we were still using anti-perspirants which have aluminum in them and that is toxic to our bodies. For another even just plain deodorant has undesirable chemicals, which I would prefer to avoid. Now I have tried many natural deodorants in the past 8 months, none of which worked nearly as well as I liked. I mean sure they worked just fine if I was just in the house, but the minute I stepped out into the desert awaiting me on the other side of my front door the magic stopped.

Another large change that needed to be made was our laundry detergent, and let me tell you I've tried dozens of laundry solutions from making my own soap, to buying expensive natural detergents, to using soap-less washing methods. Again nothing was working for more than a few washes. Talk about frustrating!

Not only did I want a natural, non-toxic product but I also wanted a reasonable price tag.  This is where Green Virgin Products comes in!  They only sell all natural, eco friendly, and non toxic products for your home and body AND at the best possible price!  I was sent products to help with the immediate needs of my family: a mineral salts deodorant stone and a bag of soap nuts.

I'll start with the deodorant stone.   This little white stick was quite honestly the best natural deodorant I've tried!  I simply wet the stone, and apply to my underarms after my shower.  It works very well, keeps me clean and odor free until I get back into the shower.  This is not to say I don't sweat, because certainly I do, however I do not worry about sweating.  That's a natural reaction of the body and who am I to interfere with it?  What I do not want is being all smelly after playing with my kids outside, and Green Virgin Products' mineral salts deodorant stone is just perfect for that! My older boys are also starting to get to where they need some deodorant from time to time, and I do NOT want to start them so young with all the toxins in commercial deodorants, well ideally I don't want them filled with toxins at all but that's not my decision once they are grown up.  I have been using the product for about 3 weeks now, and have yet to find it has failed me, nor does the stone look as though it has shrunk at all.  I think this one little stone will last me a year or more easily!  You can purchase the stone at Green Virgin Products by clicking any of the links above, and the stone retails for $5.99.  Seriously, you tell me where you will get a year's supply of deodorant for just $5.99?  What a great deal, and even better is that it's all natural, non-toxic, Eco-friendly, and leaves no residue on your skin or clothes!  That's right ladies, no more white lines on your clothes, no more little gummy balls of deodorant left over from the morning's application, and no icky feeling on your skin after application!

The second product that I tried was the Soap Nuts, which are a dried, de-seeded berry from the Chinese Soap Berry Tree, these berries have a high saponin content which is a natural surfactant (the active ingredient in detergents).  The Soap Nuts are hypoallergenic, all-natural, Eco-friendly, organic, AND work in all temperatures of water!  I have used them to wash my towels in hot water, my delicates in cold water, and even just our regular warm water washes for our everyday laundry and every load has come out clean, and soft without any additional additives!  Yup, you read that correctly, no fabric softener, no vinegar, no nothing except 3-4 soap nuts in the little bag!  I was also able to wash 3 loads of laundry with the same little bag of soap nuts, can you do that with your laundry detergent? Now soap nuts have many other uses besides laundry, I threw a few into the silverware basket of my dishwasher, and then ran a full load of dishes - the dishes came out sparkling and there was nothing else added except a vinegar rinse! Of course the soap nuts are good for more than just dishes and laundry they can also be made into liquid soap for any number of uses! 

After making boiling several soap nuts in water for a few minutes, I used the resulting liquid (once cool) to wash our 7.5 month old puppy who decided that rolling in mud would be fun.  Not only was she clean, but her fur was soft, and she was not itchy at all like she is after a trip to the doggie day spa for a bath and pedicure.  I also used this liquid soap in a bucket of hot water to mop the kitchen and batroom floors, I was very pleased with how clean they were, without any sticky residue and with no need for rinsing.  After seeing how well it did on these tasks I decided to mix a few drops of essential oil into the liquid soap and use it to make my kids a bubble bath.  It makes great big gobs of suds, and the boys had tons of fun.  It didn't irritate their skin, and they enjoyed being able to have a bubble bath for the first time in months.  This liquid soap does not contain preservatives so it will spoil after a few days, so I recommend only making a little at a time, and storing it in the refrigerator to extend it's life a bit. 

I simply can not say enough good things about Green Virgin Products!  They have a great selection of products, which are all on my list to try, and I am seriously in LOVE with the soap nuts and mineral stick deodorant! 

Would you like to win your own prize pack?  Green Virgin Products is offering one lucky reader a prize pack containing one Kilo pack of soap nuts, and two Mineral Stick Deodorant Stones, don't forget to stop by their facebook page and thank them for the awesome giveaway!


a Rafflecopter giveaway
Disclaimer: I received the abovve mentioned products for free in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions are strictly my own.  Also, the above links are affiliate links, and I may receive a slight monitary compensation for any purchase you make. 

A Laundry Review & Giveaway: Naturally Active Pure Oxygen Whitener

I am a mother of boys, three of them, and boys get dirty and get stains on their clothes.  Sometimes I even get stains on my clothes from my children.  It used to be that this wasn't an issue for me, I'd just spray some sort of stain remover on and then wash my clothes.  Well, now that we are taking the chemicals out of our home, those sorts of stain removers are no longer in my supply cabinet.

That is where today's review comes in!  See I have a really cute skirt than I love to wear, and it's a very light shade of khaki, really it's just barely darker than an eggshell type color.  The last time I wore it my toddler wrapped his hands around me and got a nice yellow mustard stain on the back of the skirt.  I didn't know about the mustard until after I took the skirt out of the dryer, and by then it's usually too late to remove a stain.  I tried several tricks and nothing worked. 

Then my Healthy Child Healthy World party kit arrived, and inside were some products for me to try, and to give away to my party guests.  The first item I decided to try was the Naturally Active Pure Oxygen Whitener by ecoSTOREusa.  I took out that lovely skirt with the bright yellow mustard stain, and applied a paste made from the Naturally Active Pure Oxygen Whitener and plain water.  I rubbed it into the stain let it set a minute, and then rinsed it away. 

This is where things get weird, at least to me, the yellow stain turned a sort of rust red color and I thought oh great I just made it worse (not that the skirt was wearable at all at this point).  So I tossed it up over the shower bar to dry and figured I'd try something else later.  When I went back to take it down after it had dried the stain, both yellow and rust red, was GONE!  That's right GONE!  A set in, two week old, yellow mustard stain was gone and I could once again wear my lovely skirt.

About the Product:

That red bar at the bottom of the package there reads "No nasty* chemicals" and if you read the back of the package it says "NO toxic petrochemicals, NO phosphates, NO nitrates, NO chlorine, NO EDTA, NO obtical whiteners, NO dyes or synthetic perfumes." 

This is from the Company's What We Stand For page: 

We believe in the realities of today and the possibilities of  tomorrow.

• We are Accessible: Success comes from sharing our expertise and experience.
• We are Human: We are welcoming and care about all of our customers.
• We are Open: Transparent details, complete disclosure of our product ingredients.
• We are Encouraging:  We believe in educating, interacting and communicating.

We believe in quality products that are healthy and offer value for the dollar. In today’s growing world of conscious consumers and label readers, No Nasty Chemicals™ resonates.  And it isn’t just a slogan.   We provide products that are:

• Safe and healthier for you and your family (and even your pets)
• Effective (perform as well as, and sometimes better than, the “leading” brands)
• Cost effective (value for the dollar)

We continually strive to bring you the most natural products that we can without the use of unnecessary or unsafe chemicals. We are:

• Committed to helping people make healthier lifestyle choices
• Dedicated to helping you reduce unnecessary and  potentially harmful chemicals in your life
• Determined to not only offer healthier, safer products, but to educating the world on eco-friendly products that contribute to healthy lifestyles and the sustainability of our planet and its fragile resources.

Ecostoreusa is an extension of EcoStore New Zealand and all ecostoreusa products are made at their Michigan manufacturing facility. They are committed to providing Earth friendly products, that are made from plant based ingredients.

What I love:
Obviously I love that there aren't any yucky chemicals in the product, but beyond that I love that the product works exactly as it is intended to!  I also like the price tag!  A 35.3oz (1Kg) canister of Naturally Active Pure Oxygen Whitener will only cost you $7.85 with free shipping if you spend 25.00 or more in their store!  ecoSTOREusa carries a variety of products for your home, bath and body, hair, baby, and pets all with the same No nasty* chemical guarantee!

Go ahead and check them out today!  You can check out their website here, their facebook page here, and follow them on twitter here.

I have good news, ecostoreusa has offered my readers the chance to win their very own canister of Naturally Active Pure Oxygen Whitener.  You may enter using the simple rafflecopter form below. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway Disclaimer: I was provided with the product for free as part of my healthy child healthy world party kit, I was not required to write a positive review (or any review for that matter), and all opinions expressed within are my own.

Double duty

As I posted earlier, I decided that this year I was going to do a bunch of handmade gifts this year for Christmas. We did not solely make gifts, but I did considerably reduce the number of "Made in China" tags that were going to be brought into our home. Part of my motivation for this was to be frugal, and part was to avoid the endless clutter that always happens at Christmas.

I will be posting some of the gifts that I made here, and this is the first of those posts. I have been having difficulty lately in teaching my young boys the need for modesty when getting out of the bath. They like to get out of the tub, dry off in the towel, leave the towel on the floor, and then come out and ask me questions before going to their room and putting on their PJ's. Now I realize that as a parent I can continually tell them not to do that, and I can explain why, and I can even apply a consequence if they disobey, however I don't think in this case a consequence is needed. Instead I asked myself what tools I could give them to help them to remember.

So to both fulfill that need as well as my need to reduce waste, and clutter I decided that I would make them each a bath robe. Now because they are so close in age I aim to keep gifts similar or identical wherever possible. So I purchased red flannel and cream bias tape for both robes. I used a scrap piece of the flannel to try my hand at machine embroidery, which I failed at doing. So to distinguish one from the other I used the remains of some gold puff paint that was leftover from a previous project. Here are the results, and they are a hit with the children. They keep them hung up on the bathroom door so they are always convenient when they get out of the bath.














What do you think? Both functional and fun? These were a bit tricky in spots, but the came out well I think.