Canadian Mom Blogger - Product Reviews, Travel, Food and Parenting
The last year at Mommy Kat and Kids was packed with some amazing experiences, but it wasn’t until I looked at each month of 2013 that I realized just how fabulous it truly was. Come check out some of my top adventures from 2013!
The year kicked off with a bang as I headed to the Ford NAIAS event in Detroit, Michigan. It was fascinating learning about the process of making an F-150 at the Deerbourne plant and exploring the fabulous Henry Ford museum. [Read more…]
Welcome to the iPad Mini Back to School Giveaway hosted by This Lil Piglet, Sober Julie and Simply Stacie, along with several other bloggers who made this giveaway possible! One lucky reader will win a 16GB iPad Mini valued at $329.
As far as my boys and I are concerned, our stuffies are part of the family. Zackary and Benjamin both have a large collection of stuffed animals and while some of their stuffies are casual friends at best, certain stuffed animals are so important to my boys that the plush toys are carried everywhere. And it’s not hard to know where that loyalty came from…Good Luck Bear and Mr. Moose are actually my stuffies and while I don’t carry them around, they’re always up in their own special spots on my desk. Who says stuffed animals are just for kids?
Of course, since the boys take their stuffies adventuring with them almost everywhere, the fabric often ends up getting completely filthy. And while some plush toys can be washed and dried without issue, others lose that appealing soft fluffiness after being machine-washed. So when I heard that the second Maytag Blogger Challenge was to get our family of stuffies clean and fresh WITHOUT washing them, I couldn’t have been happier.
Laundry is one of those things that almost every busy mom somewhat dreads, and I am no exception. No sooner have I worked my way through the mountain of clothes in the basket than my boys decide that putting on three layers of their best clothes and jumping in mud puddles is a really, really good idea.
Of course, the twenty-year-old washer and dryer I was using didn’t make the job any easier, so when Maytag gave me a chance to discover that laundry didn’t have to be a chore by participating in the Maytag Mayhem Blogger Challenge, I absolutely leapt at the chance.
The challenge started with the delivery of a brand new Maytag Maxima XL Front Load Steam Laundry Pair and before these stylish units were even installed, I could tell that they were something special. With features including 12-hour Fresh Hold, Steam for Stains, PowerWash cleaning, Allergen Removal cycles and Wrinkle Prevent options, these machines were designed to make laundry a pleasure instead of a chore!
Once the machines were installed, it was time for my first challenge to begin. The mission? To wash four varied loads of laundry using the different cycles to see how the Maytag Maxima XL Steam Laundry Pair made washing and drying clothes quicker and easier.
Load One: The Black Load
This load of clothing had plenty of my favourite clothes including my best black sweater, two of my fanciest black dresses and a pair of black dress pants. This was a big load of clothing that was absolutely filthy owing to a lot of recent travelling and while I want these clothes clean, I also want them treated gently. I chose the PowerWash setting for washing as it is especially designed for thoroughly cleaning large loads with a built-in water heater and a thorough rinse for removing stains. At over two hours estimated wash time, it was a longer wash cycle than I was used to and I was excited to test it.
A few things about the washer caught my attention as soon as I added the clothes and started adjusting the settings. The customizability on this machine is amazing! My small town has very hard water, so when I saw the Maytag Maxima XL Front Load Steam Washer let me select the hardness of the water, the soil level and the water temperature to optimize the wash cycle, I was absolutely thrilled. [Read more…]
I always seem to have a hard time writing about my experiences at blog conferences, but it’s not because I have nothing to say. To the contrary, it’s because I learn so much that I have trouble narrowing down exactly what I want to share. And at no conference do I have a harder time with that than BlogWest. I’ve attended BlogWest 2012 as a panellist and BlogWest 2013 as a speaker and conference ambassador and both times the sheer volume of knowledge I gained left me overwhelmed for weeks afterwards.
There were a few key learning moments from the conference that really started to stand out to me over the last couple of weeks, though. These were my top three BlogWest 2013 takeaways:
