Here at ChiIL Mama, we're excited to try out the Obol "The Original Crispy Bowl" made in the USA. It's the favorite for cereal lovers around the world and we'll be reviewing it shortly. Inspired by a playground slide, its Spiral Slide Design changed the mundane cereal bowl into an everyday kitchen sensation. The pleasure of eating cereal at the table, while watching TV or even is bed is easy,
just Swoop n Scoop.
I have a daughter who dawdles with her cereal then leaves the 2nd half because it's soggy. This sounds like a quick fix! Check back soon for our full review. In the meantime we have a discount code for you so your family can try it for yourselves.
Crispy cereal...your way, your pace.
Watch the Obol on ABC's The Chew:
Save 10% at obol.co Signup for instant discount code.
Over the years, it's been our pleasure to be part of Influenster. They've sent us numerous Vox Boxes of fun products to review. This time, we got to review Dessange Shampoo, Conditioner and Color Correcting Cream for blonde hair. This fabulous French brand is new to the US, but they've been a European favorite for years.
Disclaimer: Thanks to Influenster and Dessange for sending review samples our way. As always, all opinions are our own. I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.
I'm a natural blonde, but decided to go over to the "dark side" for a few years with a blueblack dye. So the past year I've had to bleach my hair repeatedly to strip out the black, then re dye it as close to my medium blonde natural color as I could find. Dessange helped my hair shine, and look amazing, on the parts that were damaged by the treatments AND my own natural color that's grown in.
The color correcting worked fast and well to eliminate any harsh or brassy look.
DESSANGE Paris California Blonde Brass Color Correcting Creme
Product description
DESSANGE Paris introduces the California Blonde collection, a nourishing hair care system designed to moisturize and protect color treated blonde hair. Blonde is a fragile shade that can lose its luster, fade, and weaken with time, so it is important to protect your shade as soon as you color. The special formula, enriched with passion flower extract, delivers infallible shine and luminosity for a radiant blonde color.
A weekly in-shower treatment formulated with Linseed oil and blue pigments to neutralize brassiness and nourish the hair.
You can see the shine from this "illuminating" shampoo and conditioner. They smell luxurious, too.
DESSANGE Paris California Blonde Illuminating Shampoo
Product description
DESSANGE Paris introduces the California Blonde collection, a nourishing hair care system designed to moisturize and protect color treated blonde hair. Blonde is a fragile shade that can lose its luster, fade, and weaken with time, so it is important to protect your shade as soon as you color. The special formula, enriched with passion flower extract, delivers infallible shine and luminosity for a radiant blonde color.
This brightening shampoo gently cleanses and nourishes hair to enhance shine, color radiance and softness.
Check it out for yourself! I'm glad I did.
DESSANGE Paris California Blonde Illuminating Conditioner
Product description
DESSANGE Paris introduces the California Blonde collection, a nourishing hair care system designed to moisturize and protect color treated blonde hair. Blonde is a fragile shade that can lose its luster, fade, and weaken with time, so it is important to protect your shade as soon as you color. The special formula, enriched with passion flower extract, delivers infallible shine and luminosity for a radiant blonde color.
This ultra-nourishing conditioner wraps hair with moisture from root to tip, smoothing and taming dry, unruly strands.
Disclaimer: Once again, thanks to Influenster and Dessange for sending review samples our way. As always, all opinions are our own. I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.
A family's a family no matter how big. So if you win,
you can bring them all... for FREE!
ChiIL out in Chi, IL
with
ChiIL Mama and ChiTAG
a winning combo!
Disclosure: It's been our pleasure to team up with ChiTAG for many years now. Thanks to them for providing us with tickets for our giveaway and for review purposes.
**ENTER HERE. ChiTAG2014 Free Weekend Family Pass**
ChiIL Mama's ChiIL Picks List For Fam Friendly Fun
Yeah, yeah. I know we do a LOT of Family 4 Pack Ticket Giveaways and those of you with bigger families just buy a few extra tickets if you win. No big deal, eh? Well, here at ChiIL Mama we've been giving away FREE weekly sets of tickets to Chicago Toy and Game Fair for YEARS, and it's an expansion pack!!
We pick a new winner EVERY week until ChiTAG and you can bring an unlimited number of family members with you as long as you all come in together, for 1 day or the whole weekend! Sweet eh? Enter here for your chance to win and also follow us on FACEBOOK and TWITTER for FLASH Giveaways where you just need to be the first responder and you're in! We dig ChiTAG and our family looks forward to it every season. It's a GREAT place for photo ops, smoking deals on toys and games, and family fun. Also check out my coverage of the Play Chic Fashion show. Fun fun. Click HERE for ChiIL Mama's 2013 ChiTAG photo filled coverage and Click HERE and scroll down for a blast from the past with 19+ original ChiTAG features.We've also embedded a few of our favs below.
ChiIL Mama's son, Dugan, showing his mad Diablo skills at the Cat & Mouse booth.
Where else in Chi, IL can you chiIL out with Storm Troopers, mosh with Moshlings,
aim to break Guinness Book Records with Girl Scouts and more!
(We're also happy to spread the word about this awesome giveaway from ChiTAG.)
For the very first time, we're giving away a three-night stay in Chicago for the VIP Giveaway of a lifetime! A family of four will win VIP access to #playCHIC, the #TAGIEAwards, and #ChiTAGFair along with meet-and-greets with our notable guests and a gift bag full of goodies. The winner will be chosen Monday, November 10.Hotel and travel vouchers included. Like ChiTAG on Facebook for more info and Enter HERE.
Remember to check back with ChiIL Mama early and often. It's REWARDING!
Disclosure: It's been our pleasure to team up with ChiTAG for many years now. Thanks to them for providing us with tickets for our giveaway and for review purposes.
I'm all about keeping my kids Deet free and Guardian limits the bites without toxic chemicals.
Parenting is full of tough choices. Hmmm. Poison or Pests?! DEET or skeets?! How about neither!! Here at ChiIL Mama we LOVE to ChiIL out outdoors, go fall camping, & hit the archery range.
Guardian Repellent Wilderness 8 hour DEET free works GREAT. I'm stoked to know it's out there. Disclosure: Thanks to Influenster Guardian VoxBox for our complimentary sample for review purposes. As always, all opinions are our own.
Joy! I keep my kids far away from DEET but we love to spend time enjoying the great outdoors with our big dogs, and it sucks to get swarmed by blood sucking mosquitos & ticks and come home itchy and covered in bites. Guardian's got your back! This product works great. Highly recommend it. Thanks to Influenster and VoxBox for sending a complimentary sample our way to review. So stoked to know there's a non toxic solution to the bug battle that really works.
Disclosure: Once again thanks to Influenster Guardian VoxBox for our complimentary sample for review purposes. As always, all opinions are our own.
Here at ChiIL Mama I'm an avid photographer. So if you know me personally or professionally, you already know I take a LOT of pictures on a daily basis. My in laws joke that I have THE most well documented kids EVER. But I know I'm not the only one. Many of our readers are documenting childhood moments all the time too!
Sometimes it's overwhelming to get all your photos off the phone or camera cards and into a hard copy for yourself or relatives. So we were excited when Collage.com offered us a couple books to review. We haven't tried them out yet, but it sounds like a simple process. We'll be checking it out in the next few weeks and letting you know how it goes. In the mean time. We've got a great discount for you. Disclosure: As members of the US Family Bloggers Network, we've been given 2 sample photo books for review purposes and a discount for our readers. As always, all opinions are our own.
Deal: Use this link for 51% off a 20-page 11.5"x8" Hardcover Photo Book From Collage.com Creating a photo book just got a lot easier. Collage.com's new One-Click Photo Book is the fastest photo book builder available. Our innovative auto-placement engine instantly suggests a perfect layout, placing photos of any size in chronological order over the desired number of pages. This puts your photos front and center - No more shoehorning them into prefab templates. Best of all, our aerial overview allows you to quickly swap and resize photos from any page instead of making you work one page at a time.
Create a professional photo book with a single click using Collage.com's One-Click Photo Book. Select photos of any size from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, or your computer and they will instantly suggest a clean, professional layout that you can further customize. Disclosure: Once again, as members of the US Family Bloggers Network, we've been given 2 sample photo books for review purposes and a discount for our readers. As always, all opinions are our own.
There are few back to school supplies we truly can't live without. Name labels are one of them, and Kidecals are our favorite, hands down. They're easy to apply and have serious staying power. And they have awesome design choices like MUSTACHES!
ChiIL Mama's readers can use the code: ilovelabels for 15% off any orders on their website.
Disclosure: Thanks to Kidecals for providing us with review samples and a discount code for our readers. As always, all opinions are our own.
Highly recommended. ChiIL Mama's ChiIL Picks List. Back to School Basics We Can't Live Without.
We've tried numerous labels over the years and some are impossibly hard to peel off the backing and frustrating to apply. Others fade and fall off after a few washings. Kidecals are the best out there. We tagged stuff with Kidecals two years ago, and the labels are still well stuck and unfaded!
We also love that they'll let you add a name and phone #--key to getting lost stuff found! You can even glam up your keyboard, personalize party favors, embellish a chalk board, or jam out on jams or other canning projects.
Kidecals on the Oregon Coast. We tagged all our luggage, water bottles, and outerwear and didn't lose a thing at the airport, on the drive, or at the Pacific Ocean beaches--even in a beach house we shared with 8 people & 2 dogs!
Kidecals in the kids cozy loft in our cabin near Mt. Hood-a gorgeous glacier covered volcano. The kids tagged their luggage & "snuggles" in case any Ugly Dolls went adventuring.
Kidecals are great for tagging towels, picnic stuff, and water gear! (Mt. Hood/Trillium Lake--Oregon)
Kidecals rock for back to school. The kids tagged their new backpacks, water bottles, outerwear and all their school supplies.
We've sent our kids and Kidecals off to numerous overnight camps, out of town and back to school, and miraculously, all our stuff came back! Sure, some things inevitably had to be rescued from the lost & found, but with Kidecals on our side, that was easy, even with lookalikes. Check em out here and stick with the tried & true, Kidecals.
Disclosure: Once again, thanks to Kidecals for providing us with review samples and a discount code for our readers. As always, all opinions are our own.
ChiIL Travel Kids and ChiIL Mama are giving away rafting trips! If you're considering a Buena Vista, Colorado getaway before August 31, 2015, enter here to win a FREE 1/2 day Browns Canyon trip on the Arkansas River for 2 people. Our family went White Water Rafting last summer in Vail, CO and it was a high point of our trip for our then 10 & 12 year olds. My husband and I had both been rafting multiple times but it was the kids' first foray into the fabulous fun of Colorado White Water rafting. Get out and make some memories of your own. We'll even help some of our readers do it for FREE! Disclosure: ChiIL Mama is happy to partner with US Family Bloggers for this giveaway. Thanks to The Adventure Company for providing the trip. All opinions are our own.
ChiIL Mama's daughter, Sage, and husband, Dug, enjoy some river fun in and OUT of the raft during the still waters between rapids. Photo Credit: M. Hripko (a fellow rafter brave enough to bring his camera!)
WIN a Free 1/2 day Browns Canyon trip on the Arkansas River for 2 people ($134 value). EnterHERE. Entries accepted through midnight August 4, 2014.
This popular trip is 9.5 miles of exciting class III whitewater, spectacular canyon scenery, and amazing mountain views! Meet in the morning or the afternoon at our Adventure Base Camp in beautiful Buena Vista, CO. Minimum age of 6.Offer expires 8/31/2015.
NOTE: Winner must agree to Post a Trip Review on Trip Advisor. Special Offer For All Our Readers: FREE WETSUIT PACKAGE (a $16 value - see coupon for details).
The rivers in Colorado are certainly flowing this summer! As a result of the above average snowpack we received this past winter and the cooler spring temperatures that prevented rapid early season snowmelt, river flows have been very sustainable this season.
Photo Credit: The Adventure Company
Since 1987, The Adventure Company has been setting the standard for top quality white water rafting! In order to ensure our guests have a safe and fun trip, we only hire guides that have at least four years of commercial white water guiding experience. As the only company in Colorado with this strict guide experience policy, our guests will have an expert guide even on a beginner trip.
The Adventure Company guides are able to share their knowledge of the river, canyon geology, point out wildlife, and tell stories to their guests because their high level of experience and confidence means they are not just focusing on getting through the rapids. Our guides know the river like the back of their hand and they give their guests an education and fun experience.
To ensure the safety of our guests The Adventure Company takes extra measures by doing the following: -ONLY hiring guides that have a minimum of four years of commercial white water rafting experience
-Adhering to state regulations regarding river flow cutoff levels for commercially guided trips
-Employing an expert "safety kayaker" on trips to direct and assist any guest if they become a "swimmer" and are no longer a "rafter." This helps ease the guest and ensures that their time in the water is greatly minimized.
-We add a 2nd guide to the boat for added safety and security during high water if our guests are challenged in any way, of a young age or elderly.
-Keeping our boats on the river close together and establishing an organized sequence so that should a rescue arise, our boats have the ability to help each other very quickly.
-Training for safety and rescue protocol and requiring our guides to be CPR/First Aid certified. Most of our guides also have advanced certifications and Wilderness Medicine training
-Ensuring our equipment and rental gear is always updated, maintained and operable.
Photo Credit: The Adventure Company
Disclosure: Once again, ChiIL Mama is happy to partner with US Family Bloggers for this giveaway. Thanks to The Adventure Company for providing the trip. All opinions are our own.
Enter HERE for your chance to win This NEW Out of This World Shower Curtain: Solar System! (MSRP for $43.95).
Disclosure: ChiIL Mama is happy to partner with single mom & serial entrepreneur, Kimberly, the mastermind behind ShowerSmarts™ educational shower curtains. Thanks to ShowerSmarts™ for the opportunity to review and host a giveaway. As always, all opinions are our own.
We just got theOut of This World Shower Curtain: Solar System design shown above and the kids (and adults in our family) are already absorbing a cosmic amount of knowledge. Your eye will be drawn by the gorgeous, colorful art and the facts will follow! The sky's the limit. We're impressed that the curtain is machine washable, and eco friendly! This company just launched in late February of 2014, so YOU can be one of the first to have one of these lovely, smart art curtains!
About the Curtains:
The curtains are made out of durable and long lasting fabric, with original designs from local artists. Our curtains are printed in the U.S.A. and ShowerSmarts™ is part of the movement to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Plus we are environmentally friendly. What do I mean by environmentally friendly? Our curtains are printed with water free digital printing/drying/labeling, plus the dyes are 100% environmentally safe.
It's Curtains for The Summer Slide With ShowerSmarts:
Everyone's heard the buzz about the dreaded summer slide. You know, that phenomenon where kids backslide as their brains go on vacation, and they lose up to 2 MONTHS of learning they have to do over in the fall. In a report from the National Summer Learning Association they state that "A conservative estimate of lost instructional time is approximately two months or roughly 22 percent of the school year." Well, ChiIL Mama's got a great idea to share, that will put slides back on playgrounds and mountain tops where they belong, and keep kids learning in a fun and playful way so subtle they'll hardly notice.
A Word From The Founder:
I'm Kimberly, a single mom and serial entrepreneur in sunny Southern California. I am so excited to announce the launch of my new business, ShowerSmarts™!
Six years ago I decided to take my daughters to Costa Rica for a vacation. It was my first vacation out of the country as a single mom. I was both really excited and scared, but mostly proud...proud that I was breaking personal boundaries. I decided to buy a map of the world on a shower curtain, so I could show my girls where we were going, but also to start planning new places to go and visit. My girls loved the shower curtain. They started referring back to it for homework, quizzing each other and me on the countries of the world. I was amazed by how much we were all learning almost by accident. After the plastic curtain wore out I started looking for other educational shower curtains. I just couldn't find what I was looking for. I wanted something educational, beautiful, and environmentally friendly, and that's where ShowerSmarts™ was born.
I researched the educational standards of children in elementary school, and I came up with the first four educational concepts and hired local artists to bring my visions to life. I have learned a lot since launching. For example, as time passes adults forget the multiplication table and where each state is in the union. What I realized is everyone can benefit from ShowerSmarts™. No one is too young or too old, education is for all of us.
ChiIL Out With ChiIL Mama's Countdown to Summer Giveaways
School's out for summer, here in Chicago, and we're celebrating with LOTS of giveaways for babies through adults. ChiIL Out with ChiIL Mama all summer long, in Chi, IL and beyond! Giveaways are open to anyone in the US. Enter through midnight on summer solstice, June 21st.
Check out more inspiring ShowerSmarts designs below:
Disclosure: Once again, ChiIL Mama is happy to partner with single mom & serial entrepreneur, Kimberly, the mastermind behind ShowerSmarts™ educational shower curtains. Thanks to ShowerSmarts™ for the opportunity to review and host a giveaway. As always, all opinions are our own.
LAST CALL: Vote for your favorite Red Gold Easy Aioli flavor for a chance to win a $250 Aioli Party Prize Pack. Contest ends May 28, 2014.
It's Foodie Tuesday again here at ChiIL Mama. One of the fun perks of being a top blogger is all the sample deliveries that arrive on our doorstep.
Today we're featuring Red Gold and their rockin' Aioli Sweepstakes.
We've been giving you the heads up on this one via our social media channels, but this is a good one and we don't want our readers to miss out. Enter today.
Disclaimer: ChiIL Mama is happy to partner up with Red Gold and share this sweepstakes with our readers. We have been compensated with an Aioli Party Pack.
Three (3) Grand Prize Winners will receive a Cuisinart® Elite Griddler, a Red Gold® Apron, a 5 pack of Red Gold® products and an Aioli spreader.
Looks like we backed a winner. Garlic is our fav as well as the current frontrunner. Vote for your fav and get a chance to win THIS smokin' prize pack.
Summertime is coming up fast... and Red Gold has loads of tasty recipes for you. For summertime and beyond...
Disclaimer: Once again, ChiIL Mama is happy to partner up with Red Gold and share this sweepstakes with our readers. We have been compensated with an Aioli Party Pack.
.jpg)
