Friday, August 16, 2013

Do you Bulu?

This post contains affiliate links

Have you tried Bulu Box? Bulu Box is the first health, nutrition and weight loss discovery box designed to help you feel your best. Each month, you’ll get a custom box filled with a new mix of 4 to 5 premium samples from top brands to try, and the Box comes in two versions - a general heath & nutrition box and a weight loss focused box.


I signed up for a 6 month subscription for the weight loss box, and my first one arrived today! My box contained:

GU Chomps - high performance energy chews in Strawberry 
PowerIce - frozen electrolyte bar in Orange Blast
EatGreenTea - organic whole leaf edible green tea
Twinlab Power Fuel - pre-training formula drink mix in Electric Blue Raspberry
Thera-Gesic Pain Relieving Creme 
Shapeology Burn Blend - weight loss supplement


There was also a card with a checklist of healthy items to keep in stock for your kitchen, as well as a couple yummy sounding recipes - but as a vegetarian I won't be trying either of them. 



Overall I am pretty thrilled with this month's box, though I am unable to use the Power Fuel or Burn Blend due to the caffeine content so I will be passing those on to the hubby. The energy chews will be perfect on my 3-Day next month, and I will likely also take the pain relieving creme 'cause my knee will likely need it. I look forward to enjoying the PowerIce after my next run or bike ride, and as I love to green tea I am looking forward to adding the edible tea leaves to my next smoothie!

I should have expected that a "weight loss" box had a high probability of having stimulants in it, but it was certainly still worth the value I paid, especially since I picked up my 6 month subscription for only $30!

So have you checked out Bulu Box? If so, what do you think?

This post contains affiliate links

Monday, August 05, 2013

Lifeway Kefir

Disclaimer: this product was provided by Influenster for my honest review and opinion.

I recently received a voucher from Influenster for a free product of my choice from Lifeway Kefir (as well as a second coupon to save $1 on two products). I was pretty excited to give it a try to I walked over to the Target across the street and picked up the Low-Fat Raspberry Smoothie as I thought that *might* be the flavor that my husband would also enjoy the most. I could not have been MORE correct, we both LOVED it! The first taste was a little odd as it's a very thick consistency (not quite yogurt, but certainly thicker than the average smoothie) but the taste is marvelous. The bottle I thought would last us a couple weeks was gone in less than a week, and I'm now looking forward to trying more of their products. I am especially intrigued by the frozen kefir and will be looking for that next time I journey over to Whole Foods for sure.

Did you also receive the Lifeway Kefir voucher? If so, which product did you try, and how did you enjoy it?

Disclaimer: this product was provided by Influenster for my honest review and opinion.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Update on Palmolive Fresh Infusions

I have been using the Palmolive Fresh Infusions Lemon Tyme dish soap for a couple weeks now and I have to say I am impressed so far! The smell is quite nice (no strong chemical or soapy smell) and it gets the job done nicely. It even works well to let the crockpot or large pots & pans soak for a while - and let's face it I am HORRIBLE about letting things 'soak' for far too long.

I have not tried it for anything but dishes at this point - my regular blue Dawn gets used all over the house for spot removal and laundry - but for a dish soap it does the job without making my hands dry and it smells nice so I call it a win! I have yet to try the other scents, I let the hubby pick out which one to try and this was his choice.

Now available at Walmart!

Disclaimer: this product was provided by Influenster for my honest review and opinion.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Palmolive Fresh Infusions

A few days ago I was cleaning out my spam folder and found an email from Influenster telling me that I was selected to try out the new Fresh Infusions line from Palmolive. Imagine my surprise today when I opened my mailbox to find not one but THREE full size bottles of dish soap!






The three scents are Lemon Thyme, Ginger White Tea, and Lime Basil and they all smell incredible. When I first opened the box the lemon thyme had leaked just a tiny bit (the lid was not completely closed) and I was quite surprised by how good it smelled, more like fresh cut citrus than soap or a faux/chemical lemon smell.

I can't believe I'm actually looking forward to doing some dishes so I can try them each out! It will take my ages to get through all this dish soap but at least my kitchen will smell fresh and clean in the process ;)

Let me know if you are interested in trying out Influenster, and I can send you an invitation! This is the second time I have been selected to test out new products and it's a lot of fun, plus it introduces me to things I wouldn't normally tried (I'm pretty loyal to the original blue Dawn so I don't know that I would have picked these up) and I've found some new favorite items that I now can't live without.

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

January Julep Maven - It Girl

This month's Julep theme was Neons & Nudes - neither of which are my favorites - but I liked the It Girl offerings so I made a switch from my usual American Beauty.






Inside were three polishes (2 neons, 1 nude), a sheet of the new "swatch me" stickers, and three neon pony tail holders. The bottles also have one of the stickers on the lid, which is a new feature from Julep that makes it easy to swatch the top of each polish bottle so you can easily see which bottle is which color when they are stored standing upright in a drawer or container. I love the concept, but I already swatch my bottles with contact paper and a hole punch (paint the polish on the contact paper, and when it dries punch out a circle to stick on top of the lid) so the extra sheet will likely never get used. I've read that they will be including the stickers on all new bottles from now on,  so we'll see if my compulsion to have everything match will get the best of me since the stickers are difficult to remove! Yep, I might be a little C-D-O (like OCD but with the letters in alphabetical order - as they should be!)


Quick swatches of the new polishes:
2 coats of Amelia
3 coats of Nina
3 coats of Nikki
2 coats of Color Club's Tweet Me (since it arrived the night before)

Nina and Nikki both tried to a satin finish, not quite a matte but not the usual Julep shine either. They are not nearly as NEON as I was expecting, and I'm honestly quite happy about that fact as I wanted more bright cheery color than in your face, day-glo 1980s style so they work quite well in that regard. I'm interested to try them over white "undies" to see if that makes the color pop more as well as to avoid having to do three coats - especially since Nikki still has a visible nail line after three coats in the swatches above. The only minor complaint I have at this point is that I had painted my toes with Nikki and the removal left a pale yellow tint all over, it looked like a highlighter had leaked all over my fingers! Nothing that a good scrub with soap and a nail brush couldn't fix, but it took a surprising amount of remover to get the bulk of the color both off my toes and my fingers from using the cotton balls. I'll be sure to go with my usual method of soaking small bits of cotton in remove and leaving on each nail for a minute method, rather than trying to use one cotton ball for more than one nail, as that's how the transfer occurred.

Since receiving this order I also got my "end of the year" sale order of Olivia and Mischa, so expect more swatches soon!

*Disclaimer - links contained within this post are referral links, and I will receive credit for anyone who signs up and makes a purchase.