Green Mountain Company Free Trade Coffee

If you read my main blog, you will know that this summer, we had a major change in our eating habits.  We decided to try out a more paleo focused lifestyle, or a more whole food focused lifestyle.  We started buying more from local farmers, growing some of our own things, and buying grass fed/pastured meats and eggs.  No more processed foods.  No more garbage.

One of the only things left on our list to replace was our coffee.  We were still working our way through the BUCKET of Folgers that we had been drinking for some time.  It was coming to an end and I had been looking into buying some organic free trade coffee.

I swear, it's like BzzAgent read my mind!  I hadn't heard from any of my sample/review companies in months {this was prior to being contacted by crowdtap and truvia that I last wrote about} and out of the blue, I get this email from bzzagent asking if I'd like to join a campaign to try some free samples of Green Mountain Coffee's new Fair Trade line of coffee!

Was there even a question as to what I would say?!

The box arrived pretty quickly after I accepted.  I always get so excited when I see that little angry bumble bee in my mailbox!

I promptly ripped open the box to discover the goods inside.  There was a booklet talking about the importance of free trade coffee and Kelly Clarkson's involvement in the movement with the Green Mountain Coffee Company, another booklet with a BUNCH of 50% off coupons for new Keurig machines, and most importantly, SIX single serve K-Cups for us to sample and sip!  Heck yes!

All set up for brewing!  I could hardly stop to take a picture! ;)

Is it me, or does it seem to take a lifetime for things to happen when the anticipation is killing you?!

While we wait for that to brew, maybe you can check out the fair trade story over at ChooseFairTrade.com for some reasons on why buying fair trade is such a big deal!

We like to drink our coffee bulletproof, around here, so into the blender it went with some grass fed butter and some coconut oil!  We also like to cheat sometimes and add a little maple syrup for a treat. Yum!

Blend, baby, blend!!  Have I mentioned how much I LOVE my Blendtec?!  Gah!  It's the best thing ever and that is a lot coming from this kitchen appliance junky!

After it was all beautiful and creamy and frothy, we poured it up and prayed that The Sophster would give us a couple of minutes to enjoy our cup o' fair trade goodness!

Verdict?  Mmmmm!  Good stuff!

Overall, it was well balanced and pretty tasty.  My only con with this, is that it is not organic, but fair trade is most definitely a large step in the right direction!

I co-hosted a tea party themed baby shower about a week later, so I packed up my little Keurig machine and the other four k-cups and spread the GMC {Green Mountain Coffee} fair trade love all around!  It was gone in no time and everyone really enjoyed it!

Big big thanks to BzzAgent.com and Green Mountain Coffee for sending me these samples for absolutely free and letting me share my opinion on them!  Also, for spreading the fair trade love around!  

Taking The Sweet Switch - A Truvia Review

When I created this blog, I was on a serious roll with sites like Crowdtap and several other sites that offer consumers free samples of various items and ask only for your reviews and that you share their product via your social networks.  Things eventually got overwhelming for me, though.  Between a beautiful summer outdoors with the family, friends, keeping up the house, switching around our diet, and keeping up with Our Life with The Sophster, I stopped interacting with the review sites.  It was what was best thing for me at that time.

Anyway, I received an email recently from CrowdTap with the opportunity to participate in a Sample and Share for Truvia!  The Mister and I made the switch to Truvia some time ago, so I thought this might be a great way to start back with the CrowdTap community.

I received my package from Crowdtap and immediately called my coffee drinking partner to set up an afternoon coffee date and challenged her to make the #SweetSwitch with me!

She came over, we put the coffee on, and anxiously waited for it to finish brewing.

While the coffee brewed, we talked about all of the other possible ways to use Truvia.  You know, baking, tea, dumping the packet into your mouth like those colored tubes of sugar we all ate as kids...except, you know, better for you. ;)

The coffee was finally done! We quickly poured ourselves a cup and ripped open our Truvia packs to dump in our cups!  The Sophster was even trying to get in on the action.  Sorry Sophster, mommy doesn't know if I could handle you on java speed!

Overall, it was a pretty good cup o' joe!  While we are not really into artificial sweeteners so much anymore after making the switch to a more paleo focused lifestyle, I would say that Truvia is the way to go for sure, if you need some added sweet to your coffee or need to substitute refined sugars in your diet.

Thank you CrowdTap and Truvia for giving us the opportunity to Sample and Share!

It's a cake...No, It's a Smore's...No, It's a Kake!

Tasty Kake, that is! :) Tasty Kake has released a new line of kakes called their "Kandy Bar Kakes", and I was lucky enough to get one for free in my Influenster Spring Fling VoxBox!


Here are some cut and paste facts about the Tasty Kake Co.:

The Tasty Baking Company, founded in 1914 and located in Philadelphia, Pa., is one of the country’s leading bakers of snack cakes, pies, cookies, and donuts. As a subsidiary of Flowers Foods, the company has bakery facilities in Philadelphia and Oxford, Pa. that offer more than 100 products under the Tastykake brand name. Celebrated for their freshness and quality ingredients, the Tastykake line includes such classics as Krimpets, Kandy Kakes, Juniors, and Kreamies. For more information on Tasty Baking Company, visit www.tastykake.com.

And about these new fangled Kandy Bar Kakes:

Kandy Bar Kakes are the best of both worlds. Light and fluffy chocolate enrobed cakes come in a unique kandy bar shape with a delicious créme filling made with your favorite candy flavors. Available in S'mores, Peppermint, and Peanut Butter flavor.

Available at grocery and convenience stores across America.

When my very first VoxBox arrived a few days ago, I immediately tore into it to check out all of the goodies that Influenster and 5 other outstanding companies had given me the chance to sample and review!

I just so happen to be completely having my...ahem...week of womanhood, this week, so when I saw that Tasty Kake, it was going DOWN! At first, I thought I would devour it all myself, but then I remembered that I am trying to get my weight back on track...and also that sharing is good {lolz}, so I shared with Mitchy and the Sophster. The Smores Tasty Kake is made with real Hershey's cocoa and topped with graham cracker crumbles, with two cakes and a fluffy marshmallowy creme filling in the middle! We all enjoyed it. Sophi enjoyed it the most. :)


After it's all said and done, I'd give the Smores Tasty Kake a solid "B". For the calories {260} and the fat {11g}, I think I could enjoy something more organic and healthy {maybe some organic dark chocolate?}, or some of the yummy chocolate that my secret lover little brother's girlfriend brings me from Germany. Either way, the Tasty Kake Smores Kandy Bar Kake definitely takes care of my menstrual cravings! Nom! Nom! It gets a thumbs up from this gal!



This post is sponsored by Influenster.com and Tasty Kake. I received this Kake complimentary and for my opinions. My opinions are all my own. All the time. :)

Old Navy Beach Beauty Swimwear Partaaaay and Review :)

So I had an awesome chance to hook up with Crowdtap.com and Old Navy, recently. I got to pick THREE of my girlfriends and go have an in-store party, try on suits, dance in the aisles, and just all around have a great time! It ended up being myself, Sophi and two of my girlfriends {Kim and Tabatha}, and my other girlfriend couldn't make it because she came down with the plague...ok not really...but it was a seriously nasty 24 hour virus. Yuck.

So anyway, the girls met me at my place and we started with a glass of wine before pouring our white, beginning of summer bodies, into bathing suits and then taking pics to post all over the interwebz.



Check out the Sophster modeling with the mannequins. This kid makes me laugh so much.


We ended up having a lot of fun trying on suits and modeling them for customers and employees. We had the dressing room girls rating our suits on a 1-10 scale. We also live tweeted pics and updates of our adventure! Overall, I really liked three out of the six or seven that I tried on. The suits, to me, seem like they are pretty good quality for the price range. My only complaint would be that, I am a tall{ish} person and it feels like the one pieces are fit for a more standard size torso, so the suits feel like they should come up more in the chest area, but when I pull it up, it doesn't create a good scenario for the lower region...yagetme???

Here are some shots of our fun:



A big Thanks goes out to Emma, who helped us with a lot and let us party down and get silly in our local Old Navy store for a couple of hours!

Let me not forget to say that, aside from getting bathing suits, we each got to pick out a pair of the many fun colored flip flops that Old Navy offers, a beach towel{I picked a pretty chevron pattern}, and a REALLY NICE beach bag. All for FREE!! Also, Emma {pictured above} was so cool about my other girlfriend not being able to come. She actually let us pick out a suit, flops, towel, and bag for her, so she didn't have to miss out entirely. I love our local Old Navy!!

The suit I ended up bringing home was the one I've had my eye on for at least a month now. It's the first one piece I've worn since I can remember, but I'm really comfortable in it. I also ended up getting the adorable bathing suit that the Sophster is modeling in these pics. I am a sucker for nautical theme, and this suit was too cute not to buy. Plus, with the $72.00 I saved on my free stuff , how could I not spend $12 on something for my girl?! I washed our suits before we wore them to the beach yesterday, and hung them dry. They did not shrink or fade in the wash. I also got several compliments on my suit while at the beach. Here's our final store shot of all of our goodies and a couple of beach shots from yesterday with Soph and I in our new Old Navy swimwear:


If you're interested in the chance to score some awesome free gear like I do, go checkout crowdtap.com. sign up, and start earning points towards cool stuff!

Kammi :)