Some favorite product reviews

It's Review It Wednesday and my review is going to be a short one today. I have a pile of work to complete and I'm heading out to Chuck E. Cheese this evening with my daughters and grandchildren. This is our annual tradition, in lieu of trick or treating, since we don't celebrate Halloween. I started doing this with my children back in the mid-to-late 70s and they still talk about it as being one of, if not their most, favorite tradition! They never felt as if they missed out on anything by not doing what the other kids were doing. When they were 7 and 9, we became part of a blended family. My husband and his daughters always participated in trick or treat, so we had a bit of a dilemma. A year or two after we married, I decided to give Bethany and Jessica a choice. They could either go trick or treating with their stepsister, Mindy, or they could go to CEC with me. After a day or so of deliberation, they decided to stick with our family tradition. My husband, in hind sight, now agrees with me about Halloween, and he would choose otherwise for his kids if he had the chance to do it over again. If you want to know more about why I feel this way, please read Taking Candy from Strangers, A Halloween Party Pooper, A Little Innocent Fun, Part One, and A Little Innocent Fun, Part Two.


But back to RIW. 

Actually, I'm just going to post a few more links to some past reviews I believe are worthy of revisiting. These are products I'm still using and loving even more than when I first reviewed them. I hope the reviews will help you make greener choices!


Green Child Magazine -- this is a review of their first issue. Since then, they've incorporated a wonderful column with each issue... Ask Green Grandma!! So, if you have any questions you'd like to see answered in the column, please email me and I'll try to answer them for you in an upcoming edition of the magazine. 


A Warning about Fluoride -- Leaf 'n Bud Naturals sent me some Green Beaver toothpastes to try. What a perfect time to expound on the dangers of fluoride!

GreenPan -- Another warning. This time it's about Teflon. But I offer a non-stick solution in this review.

Well, that seems like enough for one day, don't you think? 

Reviewing it for you,

Hana

Green Grandma on the receiving end of an interview

I was thrilled to be interviewed by Amity Hook-Sopko, editor of Green Child Magazine. Here is an excerpt from the interview, which was posted on their website on October 1st.

Vinegar Fridays: An Interview with Green Grandma

You know Hana Haatainen Caye, as The Green Grandma – Green Child Magazine’s own green living and cleaning go-to source.  She’s also a wife, mother, and grandmother who shares her passion for common sense green and healthy living.  Hana’s book, Vinegar Fridays, came from the most popular section of her blog.

Hana is no stranger to answering questions and dishing out helpful advice.  In this Q & A, she gets to talk about herself for once!

GCM:  Tell us more about Vinegar Fridays and how your blog inspired you to write it.

Green Grandma:  Six months after I started my blog, I launched a weekly feature called Vinegar Fridays. Every Friday, I wrote about vinegar and its many uses and purposes. One year later, I was sitting at my desk staring at a blank screen and thinking, “I have nothing else to say about vinegar!”

I guess I had vinegar burnout, so I wrote a poem to the Green Grandma community announcing the end of Vinegar Fridays. That didn’t go over too well! People were emailing me and calling me saying, “You can’t quit Vinegar Fridays!” So I made them a promise that someday I would put together all the posts into a book. And that’s what I did.

To read the rest of the interview, please click here.

Review It Wednesday -- Green Child Magazine

There's a new magazine on the block and I am so excited about it, I just had to post a review! It is called Green Child Magazine with a great tagline at the bottom of the cover -- raising your child the way nature intended. Wish I had written that!

I couldn't wait to peruse the 78 pages of the premiere issue yesterday. But then I discovered something I wasn't too happy about. Green Child Magazine is actually an ezine, and I hate reading magazines online! Give me something solid to hold in my hands, flip through and highlight for goodness sake. So what did I do? I opted for the non-eco-friendly option and I printed it! All 78 pages. Of course, I set my Energy Star printer on its best ink-saving setting and printed in black ink only only both sides of the paper. Ahhh. Now I have something to hold, flip through and highlight!

Moving on from the negative, I would much rather expound upon the positive things about this magazine...of which there are many.

First of all, the design. This is a classy looking publication! It is professional, snazzy, attractive and, quite honestly, would rival any of the other parenting magazines that have been around for decades. It simply looks that good! And the babies and children are simply adorable!

Secondly, the product reviews, of which there are many! Between the short snippets artfully placed beside product images, there are also some nice full-sized ads from companies I had never heard of, with descriptions of some of their products. Products like Blissful Booty Cloth Diapers and Hip Mountain Mama have great graphics and copy. Good enough to make me want to visit their websites.

Two ads that caught my attention were the ones for Chubby Cheeks all-in-2 one size cloth diapers and LolliDoo Diapers. Chubby Cheeks claim to be guaranteed to fit even the chubbiest little legs and LolliDoo cloth diapers are made from recycled beverage bottles, organic cotton and recycled stainless steel (snaps). How green is that?!

From page 4 to 7, there is a nice variety of kid-friendly, earth-friendly products featured. There are some really unique products like ToothSoap, a non-toxic, gluten free dental product made from 100% sustainable ingredients and created by a SAHM! And then there is the old standard, Rockin Green Cloth Diaper and Laundry Detergent that I know so many of you swear by.

Finally, there are some solid articles on a variety of subjects. With Earth Day and Easter coming up in April, the magazine nicely addresses both with an article on natural egg dyes and ideas for celebrating Earth Day with your family. But they didn't forget this month's special day -- there are several pages dedicated to recipes in an article titled "Vegan Valentine's Day."

On the crafty side -- I loved the instructional article on how to make a marble roller coaster. I have an old wooden Amish marble thingy (I don't know what you would call it) that my granddaughter loves to play with. It could keep her happy for hours if the sound of marbles speeding down the tracks didn't drive me crazy after awhile! So I know she would love to make her own marble roller coaster. The one in Green Child is constructed from pizza boxes and paper towel rolls, among other things.

There is also an interview with Nancy Traversy, co-founder and CEO of Barefoot Books. Quite enlightening.

Other articles featured in this first issue include:

• Stop Poisoning your Home (complete with a handy comparison chart to help you find the right replacements for the toxic products you may still be using)
• Benefits of Cloth Diapering
• The Great Zoo Debate
• 5 Things You Can Do to Help Big

This magazine is packed full of info to help you make greener choices for your family.

I did catch a couple of misspellings and/or typos, but as an editor I can't seem to help that! As a writer, I was looking for names to attribute the articles to and was disappointed not to find any. And as a consumer, I couldn't help looking through the ads wishing some of my favorite companies were featured there. Because, let me tell you, I believe Green Child Magazine is going to be around for quite some time and is going to develop a huge reader base. That's why I hope to see Leaf & Bud Naturals, Green Baby Clothing Company and Happy Baby Company ads gracing the pages of an upcoming issue!

Keeping it honest with reviews,

Hana