Review: Walmart Beauty Box *September 2016*

The Walmart Beauty Box is a subscription box that comes out 4 times a year and it's only $5 for each box. The Beauty Box is free you just pay the $5 for shipping and handling. Every time I get one, I think they can't add more to the box and this time I was surprised at just how much was in the box for a $5 fee. 

The boxes themselves are cute and there's always a little tissue paper in the box covering what they sent. 

This month when I opened the box, I have to say I was surprised to find so many samples of products. I love trying all these new to me products that I would never have tried if I hadn't received a sample or a full size product in one of these boxes. 

So here's what was in the box...

Village naturals concentrated mineral bath soak

Swisspers exfoliating cotton rounds

Cetaphil moisturizing cream

Vaseline Intensive Care, advanced repair lotion

Dove Advanced Care cool essentials deodorant

Dove pampering body wash, sweet cream with peony

Eucerin eczema relief body cream

Vitabath Bath and shower gelee

Simple Micellar Water- Make Up Remover

I was really happy with all the samples. I have a full size bottle of the make up remover because I use that. I also have a full size tube of that deodorant because that's the one I use. But Everything else is either a new scent or a brand that I haven't used before. I think for $5 this is one of the best subscription boxes out there for beauty products. 

Do you have a subscription to this box? Are you thinking of signing up for one now?

Sam's Club: Moms and Dads Welcome Baby Box

A few weeks ago I found a link to sign up for a free baby box for new parents. You didn't need to be a Sam's club member or sign up for anything else, so I signed up for it because there's always people around here having babies. There's 2 new babies in my courtyard and I'm sure their mom's would love some free samples. 

It came in a cute box and had 3 freebies inside it. 

Inside the box was a newborn diaper sample, a baby book and a baby wipes sample. 

Not a bad freebie from Sam's Club. 

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.
Did you know you can sign up at Tomoson and get free products too. You can also sign up at these sites and get products at a great discount. No Kidding Coupons, AMZ Review Trader, and Elite Deal Club.

This week I received:

A sample bag of Beneful dog food.

Tampons and liners.

2 Sample doggie poop bags.

A $5 Amazon gift card from Crowdtap. It used to be you'd get a $5 gift card for every 1000 point you earned on the site but now it take 1500 points to get a $5 gift card so I probably won't have one each week now.


Did you receive any freebies this week?

Recipe: Fajita Chicken and Vegetables

I love Fajitas but I'm trying to cut out the bread, tortillas, rice and noodles down from most of my dinners. So I came up with this so that I still get fajitas just without the tortillas and it came out really good. 

Recipe:

3 Chicken tenders or 2 chicken breasts cut into chunks

1 bell pepper- chopped into 1 inch slices

1 yellow onion cut into 1 inch slices

2 TBSP. oil

1 cup mushrooms chopped

1/4 cup slices black olives

Fajita seasoning pouch

1/2 cup cheddar cheese grated

1 cup of Guacamole

1/2 cup homemade or jar salsa

1 can refried beans

salt to taste

Heat oil in large pan. Add bell pepper, onion and mushrooms to pan and saute until tender. Remove vegetables from pan and add chicken. Cook until almost cooked through, add vegetables back to pan and add fajita seasoning pouch. Let simmer for 4 minutes. Add to plate and top with a pinch of grated cheese and a spoonful of black olives. Serve with homemade or jar salsa, guacamole and refried beans.

Ken found a new product called Fajita simmer sauce by Ortega and that's what we used. It was good. There are other packets of fajita seasoning in the store that you can use or you can use Chili powder and cumin. 

This ended up being really good and I didn't even miss the rice or potatoes that I usually make with dinner. I'm still learning to make diabetic friendly meals but this didn't make my blood sugar spike so I'm calling this a win. 

Favorite Picture of the Week

My brother and his best friend went and got matching tattoos. It's a Maltese Cross to symbolize my brother being a retired Fire Fighter and his best friend being an Army Medic. I think they came out good. 

I'm A Guest Reviewer At I Smell Sheep!

Book Description

In her twenty-fifth adventure, vampire hunter and necromancer Anita Blake learns that evil is in the eye of the beholder...

Anita has never seen Damian, her vampire servant, in such a state. The rising sun doesn’t usher in the peaceful death that he desperately needs. Instead, he’s being bombarded with violent nightmares and blood sweats.  

And now, with Damian at his most vulnerable, Anita needs him the most. The vampire who created him, who subjected him to centuries of torture, might be losing control, allowing rogue vampires to run wild and break one of their kind’s few strict taboos. 

Some say love is a great motivator, but hatred gets the job done, too. And when Anita joins forces with her friend Edward to stop the carnage, Damian will be at their side, even if it means traveling back to the land where all his nightmares spring from...a place that couldn’t be less welcoming to a vampire, an assassin, and a necromancer.

Ireland.

Denise B and I both wrote reviews for this book for I Smell Sheep. I'm a guest reviewer over there today so head on over there and check out the double review from both of us. 

Happy Raturday!

*Photo courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"I is a rat burrito"

*Photo courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

*Photo courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"I'm pretty sure the aliens won't want to probe a rat."

*Photo courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

"This cake batter needs more rat hair."

*Photo courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Where's George?

Have you herd of Where's George? No? Well it's a website that let's you add the serial numbers of your paper money and track when someone else adds that same serial number to the site. I added 11 bills ranging in value from $20 to $1 dollar bills to the site a few years go and tonight I received an email that someone else has one of the $1 dollar bills and added the serial number to the site. If you click on the picture it tells you when I added it and how many miles it's traveled since I added it. 

There's all kinds of info on the site about the bills I entered. All the data can be found on this page about them. How many other people have found the bills and entered into the site that they have it and where it went after they had it if someone entered the serial number into the site. 

I thought it was kind cool the way people are tracking the paper money they have. The way I found out about the site was I got a few dollar bills with Where'sGeorge.com written on the paper money itself. So I went to the site to see why people were writing that on the money and added the serial numbers of the money I had so the last person who had the paper money I had just got, could see where it was now. 

I thought it was kinda cool. Have you heard of this site? Have you entered any money into the site? Would you?

Favorite Video of the Week

I love watching kids try new foods. But this, was so funny.

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

Did you know you can sign up at Tomoson and get free products too. You can also sign up at these sites and get products at a great discount. No Kidding Coupons, AMZ Review Trader, and Elite Deal Club.

This week I received:

A sample of Truvia sweetener

A coupon for a free small bag of Lays potato chips.

And a $5 Amazon gift card from Crowdtap.

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Recipe: Roasted Zucchini

Ever since finding out that I have diabetes, I've been trying to make more vegetables and less rice, noodles or dishes with a lot of carbs. So I've been looking into ways to cook vegetables and roasting them really seems to be my new favorite way. Now this might not seem like a big deal to you if you've been doing this for a while but it's new to me because my mom told me to just cut them and throw them in boiling water and boil the hell out of them. It also boils the taste out of them. lol 

So here's my recipe for Roasted Zucchini. 

1 Zucchini- cut into 1/4 slices

2 TBSP. oil

1/4 tsp. Smoked Paprika

1/4 tsp. Onion Powder

1/4 tsp. Garlic Powder

1/4 tsp. Season Salt

1/4 tsp. Thyme

Place sliced zucchini in a large bowl and add all ingredients. Toss until well coated. Place zucchini in a single layer on a foil lined baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. 

Do you have a tasty zucchini recipe?

Amazon's New TOS and What It Means For My Reviews *UPDATED*

**UPDATE**

So today 10-6-2016 I received an email from Amazon.

"Hello,

Based on a policy change to our Community Guidelines, some of your reviews will be removed. We recently updated this policy to prohibit incentivized reviews, which includes those posted in exchange for free or discounted products. Incentivized reviews posted prior to this policy change are being retroactively removed if they are excessive or do not comply with the previous policy.

Your reviewing privileges will not be affected by this action, but you will not be able to resubmit the reviews that were removed.

To learn about our review policies, please see our Customer Review Creation Guidelines."

So I went and looked and they deleted over 100 of my reviews. Poof! Gone. Completely uncalled for. I'm sure I'm not the only one, I'm sure hundreds of people are getting this email and completely shocked that their reviews are now gone too.

--------------------------------------

So yesterday Amazon changed their Terms of Service so that they no longer accept reviews for products that were given to people free or at a discount. A few people tried to submit reviews yesterday anyway and posted the email they received which said something like, "We're sorry, we could not accept your review because we no longer accept reviews for products that were given free or at a discount."

Others have said that over the last year that Amazon has decided to erase all of their reviews and in some cases ban them from writing anymore reviews at all.

Here's a link to the new TOS in case you're wondering what I'm talking about.

But here's an excerpt from the new TOS.

"Customer reviews are one of the most valuable tools we offer customers for making informed purchase decisions, and we work hard to make sure they are doing their job. In just the past year, we’ve improved review ratings by introducing a machine learned algorithm that gives more weight to newer, more helpful reviews; applying stricter criteria to qualify for the Amazon verified purchase badge; and suspending, banning or suing thousands of individuals for attempting to manipulate reviews.

Our community guidelines have always prohibited compensation for reviews, with an exception – reviewers could post a review in exchange for a free or discounted product as long as they disclosed that fact. These so-called ‘incentivized reviews’ make up only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions of reviews on Amazon, and when done carefully, they can be helpful to customers by providing a foundation of reviews for new or less well-known products.

Today, we updated the community guidelines to prohibit incentivized reviews unless they are facilitated through the Amazon Vine program."

So from this point forward, I will no longer be posting reviews on Amazon for products or books whether I purchase them or not. I don't want to get banned, be sued or have any problems with Amazon since I do purchase from them quite often. I will however still post reviews on my blog so before I accept a book or product for review from this point forward, I will be informing those sending me products and books to review that the review will no longer be posted on Amazon. Sorry but I won't be taking any chances with my Amazon account getting banned.

Review: Degusta Box Subscription Box

So this is my second month getting the Degustabox and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with it so far. This is the box from September and it was a good one. We're really liking these boxes.

In this box was...

A bag of PopCORNers- Popped corn chips. 

A bottle of lemon Sparkling Bitters- Flavored sparkling water.

Toosum- Oatmeal bar. 

2 Packs of BustaNUT- Flavored peanuts. 

Sam Mills Quinoa and Corn pasta. 

Entenmann's Mini Chocolate chip muffins. 

Nando's Peri Peri sauce. 

3 jars from English Provender- 2 chutney's and a lemon curd. 

Michel Et Augustin butter cookies. 

Hak's Ratatouille sauce. 

Zollipops hard candies.
A full size box of Honey Bunches of Oats- Honey Roasted cereal.

Have you thought about signing up for a subscription box like Degustabox? It's $19 a month and as you can see, there's quite a bit in the boxes.

You get 10-15 full size products each month. You don't get to pick the products, it's a surprise but I kinda like that. Most of the stuff this month are products that I've never tried and everything has been great with the exception of the sparking water. It was lemon flavored water with a dash of bitters and it was not tasty at all. Maybe if it was added to a drink of some kind. maybe.

Does this sound like a good box? Would you ever try a subscription box like this?

Happy Raturday!

*Photo courtesy of Martymousehouse.com*

*Photo courtesy of Martymousehouse.com*

*Photo courtesy of Martymousehouse.com*

*Photo courtesy of Me*

The first couch was too soft, the second couch was too hard but this one is just right."

Review: Target Beauty Box

September's Target Beauty Box was their "Fall" box and I paid just over $10.00 with tax for this one.

In this months box was...

A full size Maybelline Mascara. 

A full size S. W. Basics Lip Balm. 

Sample of OGX Renewing Coconut Milk Conditioner. 

A Full size Rimmel Lipstick. 

Sample of Eden Bodyworks JojOba Deep Conditioner. 

Full size Laneige Water Bank Moisture Cream. 

Full size tube of Biore Baking Soda Facial Cleanser. 

I've never tried most of these products so I gladly paid the $10 to be able to try out a few new products and so far, I like all of them. Before I started getting all these beauty boxes I had a few certain pieces of make up that I always bought the same brand, same color, same style. So it's been fun being able to try out 7 different mascara's, 8 different lipsticks and all kinds of face creams and shampoo's that I wouldn't have otherwise tried out. 

Have you tried out a Target Beauty Box yet?

Review: Aaden's Hope by Jacqui Jacoby

Book Description

There is no cure,” Aaden said. “It’s over. Mankind took the hit.”

It took little time for the world to go from cell phones, credit cards and the Internet to barren continents and too few people to count. The very few who remained refused to roll over and die. Now, four years later in a small campground in Northern California, twenty people rely on each to make it day to day.

Before 'The Fall', Aaden Muñoz lived as a laid-back handyman with more music in his mind than crops. Now he serves as an unofficial leader, keeping wheels moving when chaos wants them to stop. Digger “No-Last-Name”, the newest recruit, is an efficient government operative carrying a secret grief no mother should ever have to bear.

The days of keeping the food growing and the supplies coming in are never-ending. Each survivor is responsible to the person next to them, helping them stay safe, healthy and happy. The camp is a place of unity, family and hope … until betrayal comes from nowhere with a knife to decide that maybe, none of them were meant to survive.

My Review

I love it when a book grabs me in the first few pages and I have to say that this one sure did. In the span of five minutes I was laughing at Aaden's carefree attitude about how he woke up in some woman's bed who he knows is just a fling. The next minute he's watching the news about some new outbreak that's killing people, but he gives it just a passing glance and doesn't really seem too concerned about it. That's when Aaden decides to go camping and things drastically change. People are dying, the first 2 that we read about damn near broke my heart and that was all in the first five minutes of reading this book. To say that I was hooked is an understatement. 

Aaden stays at the place he set up camp and a couple of new people show up every once in a while. Within a couple of years, most people around the world are dead and the ones they come across end up coming back to the campsite with them. They venture out to get supplies every few months and aren't all that worried since they think there really aren't many people left alive in the world. Things heat up when they come across a man and woman and all hell breaks loose after that. The female who calls herself Digger, comes back to camp with them and she has a whole van full of supplies that they bring back with her. You'd think that would make everyone happy but for some reason a few of the other 19 people at the camp aren't so happy. Crazy things start to occur and there's a murderer among them. 

This is a story of what happens after a virus wipes out most of the world's population and a small group of survivors try to make their way towards some sort of future. It's also a story of how just one nutball can ruin a good thing when people are fighting for their lives and their future. 

I give this story 4 out of 5 stars. 

I received this book free in exchange for an honest review. 

Freebie Friday!

Welcome to another edition of Freebie Friday, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a 'Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to samples like these at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.
Did you know you can sign up at Tomoson and get free products too. You can also sign up at these sites and get products at a great discount. No Kidding Coupons, AMZ Review Trader, and Elite Deal Club.


This week I received:

A make up case from Covergirl that contained....

A nail polish
BB cream
Lipstick


Did you receive any freebies this week?

Review: Walmart Welcome Baby Box

I've been subscribed to and getting the Walmart Beauty Box for a couple of years but they also have a Baby Box and it's only $5 every 3 months as well. I signed up for the Walmart Welcome Baby Box and it was free with free shipping. They sent a Free Welcome Box as long as I signed up for their  Baby Registry and was an Amazon Mom Member.  This box is currently sold out.

Inside the box was cute blue tissue paper and several free samples of baby products. I'll be adding these to a box to give to the next mom I know with a newborn. 

Inside the box was a coupon towards fabric softener. 

Newborn baby bottle. 

Pacifier. 

Sample of laundry softener. 

A sample of Cetaphil shampoo/body wash. 

A sample tube of diaper rash cream.

It was a nice box of freebies that I'm sure a new mom will love to get.

Favorite Picture of the week

You can give a dog a comfy bed...but you can't make him lay in it. 

lol 

I was trying to figure out what might have been going through his head when he decided to lay on the floor and rest his head on the side of the bed. Why not just get in the bed? 

Product Review: Finether Minimalist Novelty Design Wood Table Lamp

Product Description

Minimalist design, never out of date. Ideal as holiday GIFT, birthday present. The soft, stable, and non-flickering flight is friendly to the eyes, you can enjoy what you're doing for longer. Buy a table lamp that complements your bedroom's color. Look for a style with a wooden base for a classic feel or buy a wood table lamp for a more vintage vibe. Use the lamp as a gentle nightlight, or to create a romantic atmosphere. Whether in a child's room, near the television or computer, or in your office, the lamp, sitting on its square solid wood base, provides a natural feeling. 

My Review

The lamp came in a secure box with Styrofoam on all sides to protect it. When I took it out of the box, there were two pieces, the stand with the socket and the lamp shade. It does not come with a light bulb. 

The socket is a standard size and my regular light bulbs fit it fine. The stand is sturdy and a dark brown color. The instructions aren't very clear about how to put this together but after messing with it, I figured out that you have to unscrew the small piece from the socket, put the lamp shade on and then screw the top piece back on to hold the lamp shade on. Then screw in the light bulb. 

It comes with a long enough cord to reach anywhere I want to put it in my apartment, but it's going to replace the old lamp that I have in the bedroom. It fits nicely on the dresser we have in there. 

Even though it was packaged very well, there were still a couple of dings to the lamp shade itself and once they are there, there's really no way that I found to get them out without making it worse. 

It does have a nice lighting effect when turned on and works just as well as the other small lamp I have. 

I like the lamp and think it makes a nice light source for a bedroom or kids room. It's not overly bright so it's not good if you're looking for a lamp that is really bright because this lamp takes a 40 watt bulb. 

I give this 4 out of 5 stars. 

Disclosure: I was given this product for free in exchange for an honest review. 

Happy Raturday!

*Photo courtesy of Poppy's Mischief*

"Insert yogies here."

*Photo courtesy of Martymousehouse.com*

*Photo courtesy of Martymousehouse.com*

*Photo courtesy of Martymousehouse.com*