{Giveaway} UNREAL candy

Happy Candy Month! You knew you loved June for some reason didn't you!?!

To celebrate, the Holland household invited some of our favorite friends over for a little candy taste test. UNREAL candy recently sent us a big box of their candy to see how we felt about candy UNJUNKED. UNREAL came about after its 13-year-old founder asked a simple question ... How do you reinvent candy? 

This has been a question on my own mind after I made the connection between my oldest son's nightmares and major candy producing holidays. The Other Sarah is the one who finally helped me see that the chemicals and dyes were probably the culprit. After asking the question on Facebook and finding out several of my friends' childrens had nightmares after consuming fake dyes and sweeteners, I was convinced.

So, in came UNREAL, candy free from artificials, hydrogenateds, corn syrup, chemicals, GMOs, and promising no sugar overload. I was hooked BUT the question was would our tiny taste testers be as happy without the bright colors and corn syrupy sweetness.

We gave each child sample of UNREAL products including their version of M&Ms, Peanut M&Ms, Milky Way, Snickers, and Reese's. The candy bars were the first to go, followed by the peanut butter cup and the candy-coated chocolates.

We tried desperately to get feedback on which candy they liked best, if they noticed any difference between UNREAL and "regular" candy, but they were too busy chewing and then crying when we refused more samples.

I'm going to go ahead and call that a success. The adults present also scarfed up the samples with the peanut butter cups winning crowd favorite. No one cared about the colors. No one complained about the less sugary taste. Everyone left happy. 

UNREAL Giveaway

UNREAL is giving away one bag of each of their products to one Salt & Nectar reader so you can conduct your own candy month taste test!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

No purchase is necessary. Odds of winning are based on number of entries received. This giveaway is only open to U.S. residents 18 years or older. The giveaway will run from now until Wednesday, June 27th, 12:00 AM CST. One (1) winner will be chosen at random. 

Salt & Nectar was not paid to host this giveaway.

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

Swim Safety Refresher

For most of us, swimming and water activities are one of the great pleasures of summer. We have to cool off from the heat, right? But I was recently reminded that splishing and splashing aren’t always fun and games. Despite working as a lifeguard for 5 years, starting when I was 15 years old, and being trained as a water safety instruction, I really have general memories of all the tell tale signs of what to look for when a child—or any person—is in distress. And I couldn’t have appreciated this reminder more about what to look for from Mario Vittone of Slate.com.

In “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning,” Vittone reports that, “Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect…. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.”

Rather, drowning swimmers generally are unable to scream for help because their body has prioritized breathing over speaking, especially as their mouths rise and fall above the water’s surface and it’s their only chance to gasp for air. A person in trouble also tends to move vertically up and down in the water, like they’re bobbing, trying to push up to the surface for air before submerging. Make sure to read this article for all the signs of the Instinctive Drowning Response.

Because drowning is one of the leading causes of death among children and toddlers and most commonly happens in swimming pools, I felt it was something I needed to re-educate myself on. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, parents should practice “touch supervision” when their littles are in the water. It even recommends enrolling children ages 1 to 4 in swim lessons. This is something I plan to do with the Little Dude this summer to increase his comfort level with pools and the beach and make him more aware of water safety (as much as possible at his age). Not to mention, it’s one of the “layers of protection” recommended for having safe fun in the sun.

Although we don’t have a built-in swimming pool that requires a surrounding fence, inflatable pools still pose a risk because kids easily topple head first into water after leaning on their soft sides—and can drown in as little as two inches of water. Also, I do remember from my days wearing the red swimsuit, that floaties or water wings are discouraged because they give kids a false sense of security and ability. If you need to use a flotation device, make sure it’s an appropriate life jacket. And, of course, I am going to take a CPR refresher course.

What summer and swim safety tips do you follow to ensure the season is filled with nothing but fun?

~ The Other Sarah

The Everyday

Sarah's Favorite Things

If you're not one of the 9 million people who have seen this Ted Talk, now is the time.

A new twist on I Spy.

Father's Day DIY.

French parents believe that hearing the word "no" rescues children from the "tyranny of their own desires."

Yes, please.

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

{DIY} Yarn Art Canvas

Last year Easy Canvas Prints asked if I would be interested in a free photo to canvas for myself and for our readers. Of course, my answer was HECK YEAH!

I immediately called up my the always-talented Emilee Gray Photography and got a new family portrait taken for our the canvas. However, I knew I had the idea for a while that I wanted to embellish the canvas somehow. One day as I was wasting precious hours of my life looking through projects on Pinterest I realized I was pinning one yarn art project after the other. 

LIGHT BULB! I would embellish the canvas with a yarn art initial!

Follow along below for how I did it and how you can do it too.

Supplies: canvas, spray adhesive, cork tiles, linoleum tacks, yarn, and stencil

First, I printed the initial to my desired size - making sure it fit on my cork tile.

Next up, I used spray adhesive to mount the cork tile on the back of the canvas. After lining up the printed initial and taping it down, I began hammering the tacks around the outside of the initial.

* Tip: I actually didn't need to hammer and by the end was just pushing them through with my finger.

After I had completed my letter, I tore the paper out from around the tacks. I held them down with tweezers as I pulled. In retrospect, I think it might have been easier to just pull all the tacks out with the paper and then put them back in place. Aw well..

Then, I took my yarn and wrapped around the outline of the letter first before going back and wrapping the middle section. 

VOILA! Embellished canvas!

Easy Canvas Prints Giveaway

Easy Canvas Prints (also the awesome team behind your banner needs!) is giving one Salt & Nectar reader a 8x10 canvas!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

No purchase is necessary. Odds of winning are based on number of entries received. This giveaway is only open to U.S. residents 18 years or older *excluding Hawaii and Alaska due to shipping costs. The giveaway will run from now until Wednesday, June 19th, 12:00 AM CST. One (1) winner will be chosen at random. 

Salt & Nectar was not paid to host this giveaway.

~ Sarah Stewart Holland