Tag Archives: Competition

May4

Winner of “Making Household Chores A Little Bit Easier”

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Winner of “Making Household Chores A Little Bit Easier”

Thank you to all of our readers who took part in this giveaway. After reading all your entries, I have to say, it was a pretty hard task to choose the most creative answer! You all had some fantastic responses there, so I had to weigh up the creativity and tie it in with the theme of the post. The winner of this giveaway is….

Jacky! For her answer: “Bin liners! Because whenever I put a new one in it means another bag of rubbish for the landfill.”

Why I picked her answer: it was creative and true – we do have to replace bin liners quite often, and the fact that she was thinking of the environment, which was what the JAWS products were tied to – caring for the environment.

Congratulations Jacky, I’ll be in touch with you shortly. To everyone else, there’s still the “Going Nutty Over Nuts” giveaway you can enter and thank you for taking the time to enter this one, I did wish I could have more than one winner.

Apr26

Going Nutty Over Nuts

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Going Nutty Over Nuts

Due to the rise of allergies, tree nuts, have been shoved aside as part of a nutritional addition to our daily diet. What we seem to forget is that nuts are one of the most healthiest foods to snack on or add into our foods. The best thing is, they taste great too! There’s a myriad of ways to include nuts into our daily diets, by using almond meal instead of flour, by using them as toppings for our ice-cream, or even our humble peanut butter spread. If your child isn’t allergic to nuts, swapping chips or biscuits with nuts for snacking is a great way to curb on less nutritious food and, with a low glycemic index (GI), your child will stay full for longer. According to the Nuts For Life Information Centre, a handful of nuts each day is all it takes to help lower your cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. Even if your child’s school or day care has a nut free policy, there are other ways to include a handful of nuts into their diet each day.

  • Making up a trail mix of nuts and dried fruit for snacking when they get home from school
  • Adding some mixed nuts to their muesli or porridge in the morning for breakfast
  • Sprinkling some chopped nuts onto their ice cream for dessert
  • Adding some walnuts or pecans to your muffins
  • Combining some roasted cashews and almonds with your popcorn.

Developed by the Australian Tree Nut Industry, Nuts For Life is a nutrition communications initiative that provides some useful information about the nutrition and health benefits of nuts. Besides information on the benefits of including nuts into our diets, there are also suggestions on how to include nuts into your diets and some handy nut recipes! So if you’re ever stuck on ideas to incorporate nuts into your family’s diet, you can now have them at your fingertips.

Miss 9 isn’t a huge fan of nuts, until she tried pistachios. She LOVES pistachios. And now, she’s addicted to almonds, especially the vanilla flavoured ones. This is basically how you can make some at home, I got this recipe off a website and modified it a little :

Ingredients:

1 egg white

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups of almonds

1/4 cup of brown sugar

1/4 cup of white sugar

a pinch of salt (omit this if your almond is already salted)

1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Method:

Heat your oven to 120 degrees Celsius. Grease and line a baking tray with baking paper. Whisk the egg white together with the vanilla extract. Add the almonds into the bowl and stir until they are well coated with the egg white and vanilla mixture. In a separate bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients together, then sprinkle over the almonds. Toss the almonds until well coated, then place on the baking tray, making sure they are spread out evenly. Bake for about an hour, remembering to turn the almonds occasionally until they are golden. Once roasted, you can keep the cooled vanilla and sugar coated almonds in a jar.

If you’re a huge fan of nuts and would love win yourself a hamper worth $50 – a hamper of nuts that is, then here’s your chance. There are 4 ways you can enter this competition:

  • Submit your favourite recipe that includes nuts in the comments section,
  • Re-create your favourite recipe with a nutty twist in the comments section
  • Create one of the many recipes found on the Nuts For Life recipe section and photograph your creation, then upload it here and let me know on the comments section which photo is yours.

or

  • Do any one of the above 3 on your blog and share it via the linky tool below.

The best recipe or adaptation wins and will be notified via this post and via email. This is open to Australian Residents only and the closing date will be on 6th May 6pm AEST and only ONE entry per person.

*Please take note that your recipe might be published on the Nuts For Life website.

Apr20

Making Household Chores a Little Bit Easier

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Making Household Chores a Little Bit Easier

 

I love using environmentally friendly products, especially when they work. And housework is really not an enjoyable task for me, unless of course I’m only cleaning after myself. So, whenever I come across or am given an opportunity to try products that help make life easier for me, I would of course, jump at that chance! I’ve recently been given the chance to try out JAWS – Just Add Water Systems. It’s basically a cleaning spray that offers concentrated refills in the form of cartridges. What’s the big deal? Well, how many times have you bought those cleaning spray bottles and throw the empty ones in a bin? Do you know that in most cases, they are really filled with a mixture of water and chemicals or the cleaning solution? So why add on the cost of the earth, plus the bottle AND water to have a cleaning solution? This is where JAWS comes in. Instead of purchasing a new bottle each time you finish using it, you only ever need to purchase the carrtridges, fill the empty bottle with water, place a new cartridge in and voila, you’re ready to go. The benefits of using JAWS include:

  • Lessening the transport costs and thus environmental costs by transporting the concentrated catridges instead of water.
  • Cost lesser than purchasing pre-mixed cleaning solutions.
  • Less packaging and so less landfill, plus the empty cartridges can be recycled.
  • Non-toxic and biodegradable cleaning solution.
  • Reduce space – the cartridges are small and you can pre-purchase these.

I got to try out the Multipurpose Cleaner/Degreaser, which of course came in an empty bottle and 1 concentrated catridge of the cleaning solution. This is how I put the solution together:

Fill up the bottle with tap water to the level shown.
1.Fill up the bottle with tap water to the level shown.
2. Place the cartridge into the bottle 3. Replace the spray bottle cap on the bottle
2. Place the cartridge into the bottle 3. Replace the spray bottle cap on the bottle
The Mixed Solution
The Mixed JAWS solution

Seeing that it’s a degreaser, I decided to try it on my stove, especially my burner, which you can see, is pretty disgusting.

Cleaning burner

I took the part out, sprayed it with the solution, then scrubbed with a scouring brush. I didn’t need to scrub very hard and was surprised at how easily the baked on grease came off the burner! There was a mild scent – can’t describe exactly what, but it wasn’t overpowering like most chemically ridden cleaning solutions. I’ve also used it to wipe of any oil or sauce splatter on my stove and when wiping down my benchtops. I love the fact that it’s environmentally friendly, affordable, easy to use and effective.This multi-purpose cleaner and degreaser can be used on appliance interiors and exteriors, floors, laminates, range hoods, solid surface counter tops and hard surface outdoor furniture, making it a great all-rounder.

Besides the Multi-purpose Cleaner/Degreaser, JAWS also has other products in its range:

  • JAWS Bathroom Cleaner/Deodoriser
  • JAWS Glass & Hard Surface Cleaner

The JAWS range sells for a small price of $6.99 and the refill cartridges at $5.99 for a set of 2, over at Woolworths. Because it’s a concentrate, you don’t need to use too much to see the results.

I’ve also got a prize pack to give away to one lucky winner. The pack includes, a bottle of the Bathroom Cleaner/Deodoriser, a bottle of the Multi-purpose Cleaner/Degreaser and a $20 Woolworths gift card, all in a sack-like shopping bag. You can’t get more environmentally friendly than that! To enter the giveaway you would need to answer this simple question: What do you wish you don’t have to replace so often in your life?

Here are the terms & conditions:

  • Leave your answer in the comments section including your email address on the comments form.
  • Entry is open to Australian Residents aged 18 years and older only.
  • Entries are open from the 20th April 2011 to the 4th May 2011 6pm AEST and the will be judged on the 4th May 2011. The winning entry will be notified via email and on this post.
  • The most creative answer will win the prize pack mentioned above.
  • We deserve the right to verify the validity of all entries received and reserve the right to disqualify any entrant for tampering with the entry process or for submitting an entry which is not in accordance with these conditions.
  • Only one entry per person.

*Disclaimer: I was given a complimentary bottle of JAWS solution to review. All comments are my own.

This giveaway is now closed. Please click here to find out the winner.

 


 

Oct31

Fridge-to-go Winner

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Fridge-to-go Winner

We’ve picked the winner for the Fridge-to-go give away via Random.org. The number it churned out was comment number 12 – Trish! Congratulations! You will be receiving an email from me soon. Thank you everyone else for participating. Remember, you can try it out for yourself by purchasing one via their online shop – www.fridge-to-go.net.au