Eco-Store USA Giveaway!

If you read my post a couple of days ago about my quest to have a chemical free home. You will know why I was very excited when Melissa at Eco Store USA contacted me to ask if I was interested in reviewing their products. I of course jumped on the opportunity and was even more excited when I found out they were going to give me the opportunity to do a giveaway so that one lucky reader will have the opportunity to also try the products.

First, let me tell you just a little bit about the company.
Eco Store USA is an extension of a 20 year old company that makes plant and mineral based Household Cleaning, Baby and Personal Care products that contain No Nasty Chemicals(tm).

They are an e-commerce site that has recently launched at the MEIJER grocery store chain in the Midwest with plans to expand nationally. Yea! So excited about the idea of having more options when shopping for these types of products...

Okay so now on to the products. Melissa sent me two different things..
First let's talk about their All purpose cleaner..



As I've mentioned before, I typically use vinegar and baking soda for most of my cleaning. But, the problem has come when I need something a little stronger for things like the calcium build up that I get in my sinks and toilets. Most cleaners burn my throat.. No, I'm not drinking them... But when there is a strong chemical present, my throat burns, just from the fumes. When I used the spray cleaner. It worked just as well as any other spray cleaner that I've used, without burning my throat. It even took care of the light pink ring in my toilet... Yea! SOLD...

The product that I am most excited to tell you about is the Baby Moisturizer that they sent me.
If you don't know already, you can read about why I am so insistent on using chemical free products on my children HERE.




In the past, when I've used natural products for babies, there have been two things that I haven't been crazy about. One, they often seem "clumpy" and two, they often smell like "dirt". Now, I've still thought that the health benefits outweigh the costs so I've still used these products and with the strong reaction I have to scents, the "dirt" smell was still better than the scratchy eyes and scratchy throat that I get from chemicals and perfumes.

But this stuff is AMAZING!! Is it horrible that I've used more of it on myself than my kids? It is so utterly smooth and it has such a crisp smooth smell that I am in love. I have used it daily as my moisturizer and my skin feels great and has a wonderful glow.. I have to see if I can get this stuff by the crate. It would make awesome baby gifts.

I also plan to try their dishwashing detergents and laundry detergents in the near future..

Okay, okay, on with it... What you really want to know about, is the GIVEAWAY right? Well, Ecostore USA is giving me a 25 dollar gift certificate to give away to some lucky reader. You don't know how bad I wanted to keep this for myself. However, this giveaway is open to anyone in the continental US.

So how to enter: The usual, leave me a comment with your e-mail address..

And for additional entries:

For 5 additional entries, become a follower of my blog so that I can inform you of other great giveaways like this.

For 5 more entries, Go over to Ecostore's BLOG and sign up for their newsletter.

For 5 more entries, tell about my giveaway on your blog..

So, possibility of 16 entries. Yea!

Leave me one comment on what you did and the total numbers of entries you're entitled to and a winner will be chosen at random using www.random.org on 8/8/09.

Since Ecostore is new to this area, they have been doing a lot of giveaways. I was sad to see that I had missed a chance at a $500 gift card. But, you can add them on Twitter
and Facebook

So what if I'm a tree hugging hippie..

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about my experience with Endometriosis. When she asked why I had never before, given her this information, the only thing I could reply was... fear.. Fear that I will be not taken seriously because I will be seen as a tree hugging hippie. And if the truth be known, a tree hugging hippie would not be the worst thing that I could be mistaken for. But, just to head off any misconceptions.. I will start by saying.. I believe in the use of antibiotics... as a last resort. I am a fan of my friend the epidural. A BIG FAN! I use cold medicine.. in moderation. I felt guilty about my ton (literal ton as in 2,000 pounds) in diaper waste that I created with each of my children. I didn't feel like cloth diapering was a realistic option since we were always on the go with Adam being a youth minister so for a while, I used recyclable diapers. It eventually became too much of a burden on our budget so I decided to make changes where it was less costly. I would like to buy all organic food but, it is not something that I can afford to do at this point in my life so I pick and choose the things that I think are most important. But, it is a personal conviction of mine that I find some sort of balance between taking care of my family's health, making wise spending decisions and taking care of God's creation that He loves so much. And yes, in my eyes, that means conserving. And why we're at it.. If you just called me a liberal... Can you please explain to me how CONSERVING can be anything but being CONSERVATIVE? I really don't care for the assumption that I'm politically liberal because I care about the environment and btw, if you look up the word "liberal" in the dictionary, you will find that using it in that way is a severe misuse of the word, thank you very much. And if you do want to know my views on politics...THEY STINK and are most often twisted around someone's pocketbook.

So, off my soapbox and back to the experience..
If you've been here before, you've no doubt heard me mention my quest to have a chemical free home. It is not possible for me to totally explain what started me down this path but, it began with the desire to not just treat the symptoms of the cause of the Endometriosis that I had been diagnosed with that doctors said had most likely left me infertile (read that story HERE) but, to discover the cause of the Endometriosis. In my research, I discovered that the occurrences of Endometriosis has risen by 50% in the last 25 years. Because of a book I read, "What your Doctor May Not Tell You about Pre-menopause", I became pretty convinced that this rise was due to hormone imbalances due to exposure of chemicals that women have encountered through what we breathe, eat, and absorb through our skin. Yes, that was the shocker to me that chemicals could be ingested through my skin. If you are having trouble sleeping, if you are suddenly having skin problems, if you have painful periods, if you're periods are irregular, if you are having serious problems with PMS, or any other issues that could be hormone related., I highly recommend this book. It answered so many questions about what was going on with my body. Anyway, to make a long story short, after following the recommendations that Dr. John Lee gave in this book, I have two healthy children and very regular, pain free cycles, something that had never happened prior to obtaining this information. Not only did I become convinced that these hormone imbalances were the cause of female problems but also certain types of cancers.

When I was pregnant with Chloe, I saw a news broadcast about a frightening study that had been done on infants in where it was found that in infants under eight months old that had baby products used on them (lotions, shampoos, etc), those infants had four times the level of chemicals in their blood as the babies who had not had these products used on them. You can read about that HERE. Fortunately, I have a strong
adversion to certain scents and have never used much of these products anyway, but, after hearing this information, I made a concerted effort to buy chemical free products for my children.

So, with that information and so much more, I have decided that my best hope is the to take the information as it comes (as overwhelming as it can be) and do the best I can do. I pick the things that seem the most harmful and do what I can afford. And for the rest, I feed my children lots of foods with nutrients like antioxidants that will hopefully counter the things that I can not remove from their lives. If that makes me a tree hugging hippie, then I stand guilty.. But before you judge or criticize, please keep in mind that I and other moms like me are just trying to do the best we can to take the best possible care of our families.

Blessings,
Dana