Have I mentioned my Kiwi Crate subscription before? I think I may have once or twice. Kiwi Crate is a subscription-based service that sends a box of craft supplies and instructions for two children’s craft projects to your house every month. I initially joined when it was featured as a deal on Plum District for half-off for three months and I recently renewed my subscription at full-price.

My kids love it and I love it, too.

A lot of the reviews I’ve read have said that the service is great for non-crafty parents who want to do art projects with their kids — which I certainly think is true — but I consider myself to be pretty dang crafty and it works really well for me too. Yes, I could scour the internet for kids craft projects every month (or I could think up some projects myself). And yes, I could go to a couple stores and buy all the supplies for those projects (and I could hope not to forget anything). If I was careful I could probably pay less for the supplies than the $19.95 I spend on our Kiwi Crate. I do all those things sometimes, but it takes a fair amount of work and advanced planning.

The days I really need those carefully planned and prepared projects are the days my kids are bored and at each others’ throats and they are driving me absolutely bonkers. Do I have the time and patience to plan and execute a clever and engaging project on those days? No. No, I do not.

But now that we are getting the Kiwi Crate, I can pull out a box filled with all the supplies for a fun project or two and we can distract ourselves by getting our craft on! It’s fun for them, and it’s fun for their crafty mom, too.

The boxes are themed and come with clear, illustrated instructions. Each project is also rated on a “messiness” and “grownup involvement” scale which is a nice touch.  The kits we’ve received so far have focused on space, the ocean, pirates and wind. Though the projects lean toward the crafty side, there is a bit of a science tilt to them as well. They don’t realize it, but through Kiwi Crate projects my boys have learned about jet propulsion, object density, inertia and the scientific method all while honing their manual dexterity and spacial skills. Shhhhhh! They just think they’re having fun.

The boxes are designed for kids aged 3-7, which is the exact age spread of my boys. The activities can be simplified for three-year-old Augie when necessary, but seven-year-old Wyatt can run with them and focus on the areas that most interest him. Though the web site says the boxes are intended for one child, we have always had enough supplies for both kids to complete each project. The projects that don’t have two full sets of supplies lend themselves nicely to sharing. If I had more than two kids I would order the sibling add-on kit to avoid disappointment and squabbles.

I’ve been really pleased to see that the kids like to play with their completed projects too. One of the activities in the pirate kit was to decorate a treasure box, hide it and then draw a map to help a friend find it. My kids played hide and seek with that treasure box for an hour! They don’t do anything together for an hour! They have also happily fished for sharks and raced wind power cars side by side. Nice!

The quality of the supplies in the kits is very good. Each kit has sufficient materials to complete the projects but they throw in a lot of extras too. For example, when a project requires 4 sheets of paper we find 16 sheets in the box. This lets the boys choose the colors or designs they like best, gives them the freedom to experiment without fear of “messing up” and allows them to explore the materials outside of the scope of the project. Each box also has at least one higher ticket item that’s designed to last a while and can be used to create a great art supply box — scissors, tape, paints, pens, oil pastels or nice crayons. My kids love dipping into our pile of leftover materials (pictured below) and mixing them up with our other art supplies to come up with new creations.

So what’s not to like about Kiwi Crate? Nothing. I honestly tried to think of something I didn’t like about this product and I couldn’t come up with anything. I can just about always come up with something bad to say about products I review, but not this time. I really, really love our Kiwi Crates.

Do you want to try one now? After I decided to write this review, I spoke with the folks at Kiwi Crate and they have kindly donated a crate for me give away to one Wendolonia reader. Woo hoo! If you are ready to buy you can also click on any of the links to the Kiwi Crate site in this post and get $10 off your first month. (I will also get a $10 credit if you do this.)

How to enter:

To enter please do at least one of the following:

1. Visit the Kiwi Crate site, then leave a comment below answering the following two questions: (1) what kind of crate would you like to see Kiwi Crate create next? (2) why do you want to win a Kiwi Crate? (This is required for entry in the giveaway.)

2. Post about about Kiwi Crate on Twitter and include the hashtag #kiwicrate in the tweet. (extra entry)

3. Post about Kiwi Crate on your Facebook wall and tag Kiwi Crate in the post. (extra entry)

I’ll close comments Friday night (April 6, 2012) at 9:00 pm and select 1 random winner shortly thereafter. The winner will have 48 hours after I notify them via email to respond with their mailing address. If I don’t hear from you an alternate winner will be selected, so be sure to leave your email address and then check your email.

I hope YOU win!

P.S. Kiwi Crate is hosting a nice giveaway of their own this month: one winner will receive $500 to spend at Plum District, plus they’re giving away a crate every week. Sign up here.

Disclosure: I’m writing this review because my kids and I all love our Kiwi Crate subscription. I purchased our subscription and have not received any compensation to write this review. I have arranged this giveaway with the generous people at Kiwi Crate because I like their product and I think you will enjoy it too. Because I’m a Kiwi Crate affiliate, we will both receive a $10 credit towards our subscriptions if you purchase something via my link.

When I was offered a chance to try out the Lysol No Touch Kitchen System I was pretty neutral on the idea. “Eh…dish soap,” I thought. But when I mentioned it to my germaphobe husband he was intrigued so I decided to check it out.

The No Touch Kitchen System is designed to serve three purposes: dish washing, hand washing and surface washing. It does a good job of accomplishing all three. The coolest part is that it dispenses soap when you wave your hand under the spout — similar to the dispensers you may have encountered in public bathrooms. Augie in particular loves these dispensers (he calls them “robot soap”) so this has been a big hit with him. We used the system for about a week and a half before I sat down to review it and this is what I found:

Pros:

• My kids really want to wash their hands. Really, really, really! I used to have to nag them to wash their hands. Now I have to nag them to stop washing their hands.
• I love being able to wash my hands without touching the soap dispenser. This is particularly handy after I’ve been handling raw chicken or something equally nasty.
• The soap itself works well and it bubbles up nicely.
• I love that this soap dispenser takes the place of two others (hand soap and dish soap) next to the sink.

Cons:

• The dispenser spits out too much soap — about twice as much as I normally use. I found that we ran through the bottle of soap that came with the dispenser really fast (in just over a week) and it also makes it difficult to completely rinse your hands when you wash them.
• The refills are pricey. The 8.5 oz refills cost about $3.50-$4.00 depending on where you buy them. I normally pay about the same amount for twice as much soap.
• The sensor is…well…sensitive. A few times when I was washing a big sink full of dishes I’d get too close to the sensor on the front and it would dispense soap when I didn’t want it to. Once it squirted out four doses before I could stop it and it was a pain to clean up. Annoying.

Want to see how savvy you are about kitchen germs? I took the Undercover Kitchen System Challenge on the Lysol web site and scored a 6 out of 8 points, so I’m not doing too badly, but there’s definitely room for improvement.

For a chance to win a No Touch Kitchen System with a year supply of soap complete these two steps:

• Share the Undercover Challenge with your friends below
• Tell us that you did AND tell us your kitchen cleaning challenge below

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Lysol. The opinions and text are all mine. Official Sweepstakes Rules

Early on in my career as a mom — I think Wyatt was around a year old — one of my co-workers recommended that I check out her friend’s blog, Rookie Moms. I started reading it regularly and was excited to learn from Heather and Whitney who I thought were the smartest, most daring and knowledgeable mothers in the whole world. It seemed like they knew how to do everything I was struggling with: balance work, family and relaxation, deal with sleep issues, go on fun outings. And they showered every day too!

Imagine my surprise when I figured out that not only were Whitney and Heather first-time moms like me, but that their kids were actually slightly younger than Wyatt! “How on earth do they know all that stuff?” I thought.  I’ve known both of them in real life for three years now, and I still think they’re super smart about this parenting stuff. And now they’ve written a book that proves that they know what they’re talking about. Yesterday, their second book Stuff Every Mom Should Know was released and I was thrilled to get my hands on a copy.

This little book is jammed with clever lists written in Heather and Whitney’s funny and conversational style. Things like:

• How to build a kick-ass blanket fort
• Comebacks for unsolicited parenting advice
• How to meet other moms
• Three foods your teen should be able to cook
• Ten last-minute Halloween costumes

My personal favorite at the moment is “How to make a long wait fun”. I will be trotting those ideas out (finger puppets! paper race-track!) the next time we are waiting in line at the post office or there’s a back-up in the kitchen at a restaurant.

If you want to benefit from Whitney and Heather’s wisdom too, head on over to Amazon or your local bookstore to pick up your own copy of Stuff Every Mom Should Know OR you can enter below to win one of three copies of the book.

How to Enter:

Leave a comment below telling me something you think every mom (or parent) should know. While you’re at it, you might want to take a minute to check out the Rookie Moms on Twitter, Facebook or their blog (but that’s not required to enter).

I’ll close comments Friday night (March 30, 2012) at 9:00 pm and select 3 random winners shortly thereafter. Winners will have 48 hours after I notify them via email to respond with their mailing address. If I don’t hear from you an alternate winner will be selected, so be sure to leave your email address and check your email.

I hope YOU win!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been playing around a bit with a new toy, the Heart De Sand Pan Sandwich Shaper.While my kids and I love the adorable heart-shaped sandwiches this shaper makes, there are a few things about it that I definitely do not love so I thought I’d take the time to do a review.

Let’s start with an overview of how this tool works.

The tool consists of two plastic pieces, a lid and a base. These are pretty durable and hefty and they’ve held up well when I’ve run them through the dishwasher.

To make the sandwiches, you’ll need two pieces of bread and some sort of filling. I’ve been using Trader Joe’s Fiber 100% Whole Wheat bread. It’s soft enough to work for the sandwiches, but hippie enough to satisfy me as a mom. Start by putting one of the slices of bread into the base of the shaper.

Then, put the lid on and press down enough to mark the sandwich shapes on the bread. This will show you where to put the sandwich fillings.

Next spread the filling into the center of the sandwiches. I’m using white bean dip here, but I’ve also used peanut butter and jelly. I’ve tried lunch meat and cheese too, but I’ve found that softer fillings work much better. When I took these photos, I was making a bunch of these sandwiches in assembly-line fashion so I’m squeezing the dip on using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off to speed the process up. If I were only making one batch of sandwiches, I would have just spread the filling on with a knife.

Once you’ve got the fillings on the bread, put the second slice of bread on top of the first one.

Then press down as hard as you possibly can with the lid of the shaper.

When you take off the lid, the sandwiches will be sealed and cut.

And in addition to five teeny, tiny, extremely cute sandwiches there will be a crap-load of bread left over. I’m guessing about half the bread I used is sitting there as scraps. Now, I can usually find a way to use scraps — either by tucking them under the shapes I cut out when I put them into the bento box, putting them inside a sandwich or by eating them along with another meal — but this is a lot of awkwardly-shaped bread to use up. So far I’ve been sticking them in a bag in the freezer to grind up into breadcrumbs the next time I make meatloaf or meatballs or something but there is enough leftover here that it makes me reluctant to use this shaper.

Next let’s talk about the price, which is $22.00. I purchased this sandwich cutter with a credit I received as a JBox.com affiliate so in a sense, it was “free” for me. Since I had the credit and there wasn’t much else I wanted to spend it on, I didn’t mind the cost, but if I were paying cash there’s no way I would have spent that much money on this tool. It’s fun and all, but I could get a heck of a lot of other bento goodies for the same amount of money.

So do I recommend this product? It depends. I really, really like the sandwiches it makes and Augie, who’s not usually that keen on bread, eats them up every time. On the other hand, the waste and the price are both pretty high. I guess I come down as neutral on this product.

Disclosure: As I mentioned, I bought this sandwich shaper with affiliate revenue earned by readers making JBox purchases via the links on this site. If you purchase something using the links in this post, I will receive more affiliate revenue and the cycle will continue.

Our family loooves robots. My children ask for robot birthday parties and robot beds. One of Augie’s first words was “robot” (pronounced “rommer”, but close enough). We enjoy heading out to robot fights for a little family fun.

So despite the fact that I feel like this blog has been a little too heavy on reviews and giveaways lately, when I was presented with the opportunity to review a new Mechatar robot aimed at 6-12-year-olds, I couldn’t help but say, “Heck yeah! Bring it on!”

We received Wrexx, the red robot. He’s really cool looking with black and silver accents and wheel-like “legs”. Wyatt, my six-year-old, was able to figure out how to remove him from the box on his own, turn the robot on and play with it a little while I looked over the instructions. The robot moves by rolling it’s wheels and it works well on both linoleum and carpet which is awesome. What is not so awesome is that he only moves forward and turns in one direction. Without a reverse, it’s almost impossible to remotely free the robot when he bonks into a wall or a piece of furniture without physically lifting him up and turning him in another direction. Annoying.

The robot uses a loud, deep, semi-mechanical voice to give you instructions. He also let’s you know when he finds the remote which is nice because you aren’t left guessing about wether or not the two pieces are communicating with each other. It also lets you know when he’s lost the signal for the remote which happened frequently. We found that turning the remote off and on fixed the problem but it was annoying for me and frustrating for the kids. A few days into playing with it, I hit on the idea of changing out the batteries and that seems to have helped a lot.

One note about batteries: the remote takes 3 AAA’s and the robot itself takes 4 AAA’s, for a grand total of 7 batteries! Yow! When Wyatt accidentally left both on overnight, that completely drained them. We have switched almost entirely to rechargeable batteries in our house so it wasn’t too painful but finding seven rechargeables that weren’t being used was a challenge.

The cool feature of this robot is that there is a corresponding online game for kids to play. Connecting the robot to the computer to play the games was a little difficult. When we connected the Mechatar to the computer using the included USB cord for the first time, it didn’t automatically install the client software as it said it would. After searching the instruction manual and the web site, I still couldn’t figure out how to install the client. Finally in a fit of frustration, I jammed the USB cable as hard as I could into the toy and it sunk in another 1/4 inch. That did the trick! The computer recognized the Mechatar and I was prompted to install the client.

The game is really slick and it was definitely Wyatt’s favorite part of this toy. It involves “battle practice” which is less about fighting and more about strategy. The graphics show that robots fighting with each other, but the game is primarily about figuring out which weapon in your arsenal will beat the weapons of the robot you’re fighting. Players accumulate points for accomplishing tasks and then they can use those points to buy more weapons, upgrades for their robot, or missions that they can download and complete with their toy offline. You have to “buy” all the offline missions, which I didn’t particularly like. The toy comes with a code that gives you fifty points, but even with those freebies it took quite a while to accumulate enough points to buy an offline mission. As a parent, I think the cool thing about this toy is how it blends that online and toy components, so I don’t understand why they make it hard to do that part.

The toy is definitely the weakest part of this package which is unfortunate because it has the potential to be really cool. When I asked him about it, Wyatt told me he liked the game way more than the robot toy.  When I asked him if he would like the robot if it didn’t come with the game, he said “No. The remote control never lasts long enough. I can’t even get it across the whole living room!”

For $39.99 the robot/game deliver an OK value as long as you incorporate the online component, but I think it could be great if they fixed some of these problems.

The Giveaway!

Good news! In addition to sending me a robot to review, the folks at I Love Robots have offered one up for me to give away to a Wendolonia reader. If you have or know a child who would like a Mechatar as a holiday gift, enter to win it! Or, if you’d like to buy one now use the coupon code “MECHMOM” for a 10% discount at iloverobots.com (valid until 11/30/11).

To enter, visit http://www.Mechatars.com to see the full line up of interactive robots. You will need to click on “play now” button, and then the “register” button but you do not need to submit any information. Tell me which Mechatar you’d like to win in the comments below. We’ll select one commenter at random on Friday, September 30 to receive the prize.

I was selected to participate in this sponsored post series by Clever Girls Collective. I received a Mechatar robot to test and I was compensated for hosting this giveaway, but I am expressing my own honest opinion about this product!

Thank you to LUNA Protein for providing me a LUNA Protein sample pack to review. The opinions I’ve expressed here are solely my own and represent my honest viewpoint.

I have to be honest: I would never hire myself to write a review of protein bars.

I don’t go to the gym, I don’t lift weights, and I don’t enjoy eating protein bars at all. In fact, when my kids asked me what a protein bar was, I described them like this:

“Well, they’re made for grown-ups and they have protein and vitamins and stuff in them, but they taste really yucky on their own so they cover them in chocolate to make you want to eat them.”

Would you hire me? Yeah — probably not.

All that being said, LUNA sent me a box of their LUNA Protein Bars and I approached them with an open mind. I’ve had LUNA bars in the past and they were OK, but not something I would ever seek out or purchase. I was willing to have my mind changed though.

I decided to think of the them as a filling, chocolatey between meal snack. You see, I’m one of those terrible mom cliches. I fix my kids a healthy breakfast every morning and pack up lunches for them. But in the morning rush I often forget to eat breakfast myself. Then around 11 am when I’m at the park with Augie or out running errands I realize that I’m starving. So I put the LUNA Protein bars in my bag to have on hand for a mid-morning snack.

So what did I think?

Eh. They were all right.

They were filling enough to tide me over until lunch but they were still under 200 calories. Each bar has 12g protein, 3g fiber, calcium and folic acid. They’re high in sugar — averaging 14g per bar — and that makes them really, really sweet. But even with all that sweetness they still had that yucky protein bar flavor. Of the five flavors I tried — Cookie Dough, Mint Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Chocolate, and Chocolate Cherry Almond — the Chocolate Cherry Almond was my clear favorite. It was almost delicious, but not quite.

Would I buy them? No, probably not.  (Sorry, LUNA!)

The Giveaway!

OK, so have I sold you on these bars? Would you at least like to try them? If you are a protein bar lover, you might get your chance!

LUNA is offering 5 LUNA Protein Prizes to Wendolonia readers. Each box includes a sample pack of LUNA Protein as well as a bonus treat from LUNA.  The giveaway will be open to U.S. residents only.

To enter: Please leave a comment below telling me your true feelings about protein bars. Do you like them? Love them? Do you think they’re kind of yucky like I do?

I’ll close comments on Friday, September 2 at around 9 pm, then I’ll randomly select 5 winners. Please be sure to enter your email address when you leave your comment. Winners who don’t respond to the notification email within 48 hours will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected. Good luck!

Please click here to learn more about LUNA Protein. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own. #cleverLUNA

At the beginning of this year, one of the goals I set for myself was to learn to make marmalade and/or pickles. I was actually pretty nervous about this project because I had the idea that canning was really hard and I was afraid I’d kill myself or my family if I didn’t get it just right. When I blurted out my fears on Facebook, Shae Irving responded with enthusiastic encouragement and helped convince me that not only was canning doable, but that it was also pretty fun. Since then, I’ve made 8 different kinds of preserves and  Shae — who has offered advice, encouragement and inspiration — has had my back all the while.

Now you can have Shae at your back too! She has written a wonderful eBook called Hitchhiking to Heaven Prizewinning Recipes 2010 and she has offered to give a copy of her book to one lucky Wendolonia reader. Yay!

The book offers up the seven recipes that earned Shae ribbons at this years Marin County Fair, plus a ton of advice and tips to ensure that each recipe you try will be a success. Shae has already written a heck of a lot of books about topics that require almost as much precision as making a good batch of jam, so you can be assured that she doesn’t gloss over the important details that will transform your preserves from pretty good to top-notch. At the same time, her writing style is also conversational and accessible. Reading her recipes recreates the experience of being in your friend’s kitchen while she gives you a run-down of how she makes her favorite dish.  Recipes included in the book are:

• Meyer Lemon Marmalade
• Double Meyer Marmalade (Lemons & Rum)
• Red Wine and Clementine Apricots and Prunes
• Apricot Jam
• Wild Blackberry Lime Jam
• Strawberry Balsamic Black Pepper Jam
• Apple Earl Grey Almond Jelly

All that and only $9.95! And because it’s an eBook, you can have it in your hands 5 minutes after you decide to buy it.

I can’t wait to make Shae’s recipe for Meyer Lemon Marmalade (Best in Show, yo!). I’m already mentally cataloging the people I know who have Meyer Lemon trees in their yards so I can hit them up for freebies.

So how do you get your copy of this fantastic book? Head on over to Shae’s blog for ordering info, or take a second to enter the giveaway here.

To enter: Please leave a comment below sharing your canning successes (links to recipes/blog posts welcome!) or if you’ve never done any canning tell me what you’d like to try your hand at. Or you could tell us why you enjoy canning because I’m interested in that too. I’ll choose one (1) random entry from those that are submitted before Friday, November 19 at 11:59 pm PDT and announce the winner on Saturday morning. Good luck!

Because this is an eBook giveaway you can enter no matter where you are in the world. Woooo!

Recently Kelly Lester at EasyLunchboxes.com asked me if I was interested in reviewing her lunch box system. I’ve been seeing these lunch boxes on the bento blogs for a while now and I was curious to see how they would work for my family so I was happy to accept the offer. I was sent a set of four lunch boxes like the ones pictured above and a cooler (mine was red, not blue) to try out.

The boxes consist of two pieces. The main component is the box designed to hold food which is divided into one large and two small sections. A single lid covers all three sections. The boxes are dishwasher and microwave safe and they stack neatly when the boxes are full. They also can be stacked in a nested fashion to take up less cupboard space when they are stored.

I’ve been using these boxes for about two months now, so I’ve really put them through their paces. I’ve sent them to school with my six-year-old many times and I’ve packed lunches for my husband a few times. I’ve also used them to pack meals for my toddler and I to share two or three times.

Some of the things I particularly like about this product:

• These boxes really do make lunch packing easy. Packing bentos requires a bit of planning and strategy to get everything in the box and keep it from moving around in transit. I’ve been doing it for long enough now that it’s second nature to me, but the divided sections in this box allow me to relax a bit and add items to the lunch a bit more recklessly. Yep — you read that right. I said “recklessly”. Woooo!
• The boxes are good quality. They’ve been through my dishwasher many times now and haven’t warped at all. My husband also heated his lunches in the microwave a few times and the boxes didn’t get bendy or wobbly in that disconcerting way that makes you feel like you’re eating melted plastic.
• I like that they stack. Since these boxes are on the larger side, they could have a really big footprint in my lunch box cupboard, but when they’re stacked they don’t take up much room at all.
• I also appreciate that I can send a full day’s worth of food and without having to pull out several boxes and lids.
• They’re plain enough looking that big kids and grown men aren’t going to be embarrassed by them.

Some of the things I didn’t particularly like:

• The big box can be tricky to pack bento-style because of it’s large size. It’s obviously designed to hold a sandwich and if I’m actually sending a sandwich it works wonderfully, but when I’m sending a more bento-style lunch I’ve occasionally had trouble getting enough food in there to keep everything from moving around in transit.
• I’m not so keen on the cooler bag. While it works just fine at holding the lunchbox and keeping it cold, its square shape made it tricky to get the zipper around the 90 degree angles at the corners. My six-year-old brought it home partially unzipped a few times because he had trouble with it and stuff spilled out into his back pack. It’s also kind of blah looking which makes it a tough sell with my kid.
• The large size of the lunch box makes it almost impossible to fit it into any other cooler bag. So even if you’re not so keen on the cooler bag, you’re kind of stuck with it.

In Conclusion:

I really like these lunch boxes! They very quickly became staples in my lunch box collection and I find myself reaching for them several times per week. There are a couple  minor annoyances but they’re just…er…minor. Whether someone is new to bento-packing or lunch box collector like myself, I think these boxes are an excellent option. At $13.95 they are also priced very well — especially compared to similar options.

Another thing you should know: due to a very busy back to school season, the boxes have been back-ordered for a few months, but they’re just about to come back into stock. As a thank you for being patient while they’re back-ordered, EasyLunchboxes.com is running a deal — order a set of boxes by Wednesday, November 10, they’ll throw in a lunch cooler for free. So if you’re thinking about ordering, now is a good time to do it.

And now for the good part!

EasyLunchboxes.com has offered to give one of you a container set and a lunch cooler in the color of your choice.

To enter: Please visit EasyLunchboxes.com and then leave a comment here sharing something you learned about their products. I’ll choose one (1) random entry from those that are submitted before Wednesday, November 10 at 11:59 pm PDT and announce the winner on Thursday morning. Good luck!

This giveaway is offered to US & Canadian residents only. Please do not enter this giveaway if you have won or received free product from EasyLunchboxes within the past 3 months.

I also am participating in the EasyLunchboxes.com affiliate program. If you purchase a product from their site by following the links on my blog, I will earn a small commission from the sale.

If you’ve been reading this blog for anything length of time, you may have picked up on the fact that I’m a bit of a lunchbox freak.

No really — it’s true!

I’ve met very few lunchboxes that I haven’t wanted to fill up with tofu, strawberries and a whole wheat roll, so when the folks at OOTS! contacted me to see if I wanted to try out their Deluxe Lunchbox system, you can be sure I jumped at the chance.

An Overview:

The OOTS! Lunchbox is a hard-sided box with a removable, semi-transparent lid on the top. The version we got was bright green with a purple strap. The lid of the Lunchbox is shaped to keep a water bottle in place under an elastic strap. The deluxe version comes with five inner containers — one big and four small.  It’s made of  BPA-free and phthalate-free polypropylene plastic and safety tested for lead. I washed the inner containers in the dishwasher several times and they didn’t warp. The company says that the inner containers are microwave safe too, but I haven’t tried that so I’ll just take their word for it.

The first thing you need to know is that if you filled up all five of the boxes this set comes with, you will be sending WAY too much food to school for your average kid, especially if you’re only sending him off with lunch. I found that using three of the the boxes — the big box for lunch and the two little ones for snacks — was just right.

I left out the remaining two boxes and that worked pretty well because it gave me a little extra space at the top of the box to pack a drink. It also gave me room for a couple of ice packs — one on top of everything and another sandwiched in the middle of the stack of boxes.

You can still fit an ice pack in the box if you use all the containers, but you would need to use one of the thin, gel kinds because there is only about a half inch of clearance between the inner containers and the top of the lid when it’s fully packed.

Another thing to know is that if you are planning to pack your lunch bento-style, this system will present you with a few challenges. The inner containers are almost twice as deep as the bento boxes I normally use which made packing the food tightly enough to keep it from moving around and mixing together difficult. My beloved silicon baking cups only reached about half-way up the sides of the box, so they didn’t work too well as food separators. The handles that are built into the box lids make it easy to lift the inner boxes out of the lunchbox, but they stick down more than half an inch into the containers so I found myself removing food a few times in order to get the lids on tight.

That being said, having so many separate boxes — all with lids — makes it pretty easy to pack a lunch for kids who don’t like their cheese and crackers to touch their blueberries. If I weren’t a crazy bento-addict I think this would be a non-issue.

Another thing that I loved about this lunchbox is that it holds our wide-mouthed Thermos perfectly. You can see by this photo that the Thermos is exactly the same height and diameter as two of the little inner containers stacked on top of each other. I suspect this is a happy coincidence, but they couldn’t have made this a better fit if they tried. This makes the OOTS! Lunchbox even more flexible and useful than it already is.

If you’d like to see more examples of lunches packed using the Oots Lunch Box visit the Oots page on the Bento Box Gallery. (You’ll also find 800 other photos of packed lunches there.)

Some of the things I particularly liked about this product:

• It’s good-looking — This lunchbox looks cool! It’s sleek and stylish enough for an adult to use, but the bright colors of this lunchbox are cheerful and kid-friendly too. Wyatt thought it was awesome and his five-year-old friends did too. True story: one of Wyatt’s buddies saw him using it at lunch time and asked his mom to ask me to show it to her so she could buy one for him.
• It holds a lot of food — You can really pack a lot into this box. I could easily fit lunch for myself and both of my kids into this box so it would be useful for outings to the park or zoo or what have you. An adult could load it up with lunch and snacks for a full day
• It’s flexible — You can pack as many or as few of the inner boxes into it as you like and configure them in a few different ways. And don’t forget that you can slip a thermos into it and still have room for the big container and two little ones.
• It’s easy to clean — I popped the inner containers in the dishwasher and gave the big container a rinse at night and I was all done with clean-up. No hand-washing required!

Some of the things I didn’t particularly like:

• The lids aren’t water-tight — While the lids fit snugly, they are not water-tight. I would not be willing to pack applesauce or yogurt in them — especially for a backpack-swinging kid.
• It’s big — The OOTS! Lunchbox takes up most of the space in my five-year-old’s backpack and because it’s hard-sided you can’t squish it if you need to squeeze a few more things in the bag.
• An ice-pack isn’t included — I’ve noticed that ice-packs are often an after-thought with these big lunchbox sets and this one is no exception. When the box is fully loaded, you can make an ice-pack fit but it needs to be a small one and there isn’t a lot of wiggle room. I would also worry that the cold from a pack — even if you stick it between the inner boxes — wouldn’t keep food items that were farther away from it cool enough to stay safe in a backpack until lunch time. An adult taking this lunchbox to work would probably have access to a refrigerator, but kids rarely have that luxury at school. It would be fantastic if OOTS! would add a custom ice pack to this set to help insure food safety.
• It’s not cheap — The price of the OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe is $46. It’s beautiful, well-designed, and sturdy and I don’t think that’s a crazy price to pay for a product of this quality. If you add up how much money you save bringing your lunch to work or school instead of buying it, you could quickly justify the cost of this lunchbox…for an adult. But for a kid…I don’t know. I would find it really hard to drop that kind of cash on a lunchbox for a boy who has lost three jackets in as many months. That being said, Wyatt has never lost even a decorative pick from one of his lunches, so maybe I would buy him something like this. I guess it would depend on the kid.

In Conclusion:

I’ve packed several days worth of lunches in the OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe and both Wyatt and I have enjoyed the experience of using this cool system. It was easy for me as the lunch-packer and fun for my five-year-old as the lunch-eater. I predict that this lunchbox will be used regularly for quite a long while.

Disclosure: OOTS! sent me an OOTS! Lunchbox Deluxe to test out for this review and I liked it enough to tell you about it.

I’ve been meaning to write a review of Method’s Smarty Dish dishwasher soap for quite a while but I haven’t managed to get around to it until today.

And what better day is there than Earth Day to review an environmentally responsible cleaning product?

OK, there are probably lots of days that would work fine, but since today is Earth Day, I felt it was appropriate. But first, I feel like you should hear the back story.

My husband hates dishwasher soap.

Yes. You read that right — he hates dishwasher detergent. He thinks it all stinks and most brands make him sneeze and give him itchy eyes. Honestly, I can’t blame him for hating it. As the primary grocery shopper in our family, I’ve probably purchased  just about every brand of dishwasher soap available in a regular grocery store and it all affected him the same way. And then, after a while, I started sneezing and getting watery eyes when the dishwasher was running too. Now, part of this is probably caused by our ancient dishwasher — it occasionally leaks and I’m not sure how great the seal is on it — but that doesn’t change the fact that we were really bothered every time the dishwasher was on. And if the soap was having that effect on us, I didn’t even want to know what it was doing to the tiny little lungs of my toddler and his asthmatic older brother!

I started looking around for a more environmentally and people friendly dishwasher detergent. The first three I tried were total failures: one bothered us as much as the conventional detergents, one left a gritty white residue and didn’t get the food off the dishes and one made our eyes sting, failed to clean the dishes and left soap on the dishes. Marvelous.

I complained bitterly to a friend about it one day (in a very stereo-typical house-wifey moment) and she told someone she knew at Method who then kindly sent me a package of Smarty Dish tablets to test.

I tried them immediately and guess what — THEY WORKED! My dishes were clean, my husband didn’t complain about the smell, and no ones eyes watered when they got too close to the dishwasher.

Pros:

First and foremost — they don’t make us feel sick! And my husband has stopped complaining every time the dishwasher runs (which is every day). Yay! Yay for a non-complaining, non-sick husband!

I also like that they come in a little tablet because I’m lazy and it makes it easy and fast to get the dishwasher started when a toddler is trying to grab the soap out of my hands. Let’s see…no phosphates, no bleach, and no other nasty chemmies so they’re not horrible for the environment. I already said that they clean our dishes, right? That’s expected with a dishwashing soap but considering how poorly the other green detergents worked, I think it’s worth mentioning.

And finally, the French translation of the flavor I use (pink grapefruit) is “pamplemousse rose” which is extremely fun to say.

Cons:

It’s kind of pricey. The Method website shows a list price of $6.50 for 20 tablets. Ouch! I buy mine at Target for $4.99 for 20 which is better, but still feels a little expensive to me. It’s worth it to avoid breathing potentially toxic fumes though.

The other con is that it can be hard to find Smarty Dish. The only place I’ve ever seen it is Target and often they’re out of it. I’ve started buying two or three packages at a time because I never know when I’m going to be able to get my hands on some.