Category: Product Reviews

Back when I was writing for Blissfully Domestic, I first discovered Palmer’s products.  I think I’d always known about Palmer’s Cocoa Butter, but I’d never really tried it.  Back then I fell in love with Palmer’s Skin Therapy Oil; it is by far the best all-over body moisturizer I’ve ever used!

When the lovely ladies who do PR for Palmer’s heard I was pregnant, they sent me over a huge, wonderful basket of goodies – skin care especially for pregnant moms and babies!  I used these products all through my pregnancy to help keep the stretch marks at bay.  Here are a couple of my favorite products from the pregnancy skin care line.

Palmer’s Massage Lotion for Stretch Marks – I only have a few stretch marks from my previous pregnancies, but right at the beginning of this pregnancy I got some NEW unwelcome ones – before I was even showing!  So I immediately put this lotion to work!  I am happy to say my “new” stretch marks now are much less noticeable and I didn’t get any MORE!

I also loved Palmer’s Tummy Butter.  It’s more of a thick cream than a lotion, and it was great for when my skin started to really stretch and get itchy and dry. The Tummy Butter gave my skin some much-needed extra TLC.  It definitely pampered my tummy and kept my skin in good shape.

Finally, for baby, there’s Palmer’s Bottom Butter.  Talk about a THICK, concentrated formula!  Honestly, I used it on both myself and Sophie before Jonah was even born.  I used it on my very dry hands at night to help restore moisture, and I used it on the eczema Sophie sometimes gets on the insides of her arms.  It worked great for both purproses! It contains pure cocoa butter and Vitamins A, D, and pro Vitamin B5 – ingredients that help prevent and treat diaper rash and keep baby’s buns in good shape  – but are also ok to use on big kids and mom, too.

So there you have it!  Some amazing Palmer’s products to try.  Thanks, Palmer’s for helping to keep my skin in good shape during my pregnancy!

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Palmer’s Skin Care provided me with a variety of products to review.  All opinions on the products are mine alone.

It’s that time again – the time of the year when 93% of Americans (I am totally making that up) make the New Year’s resolution to lose weight. Again. If you’re in that category (and I have been 93% of my life!), I highly recommend checking out Weight Watchers.

As you may know, I am a huge fan of Weight Watchers. As a lifetime member, the program worked for me and I recommend it to everyone. So, I was thrilled when I was asked recently to become a “Weight Watchers Insider,” which means I will be helping to get the word out about the new Weight Watchers PointsPlus program.

The PointsPlus program was just launched in November, and it is the first time in many years that Weight Watchers modified their points system. Needless to say, it has taken the WW community by storm – some people were initially worried about having to learn new points values, and others were in the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mentality, but from what I can tell, the majority of people are really happy with the changes, especially once they find out the reasoning behind it.

Weight Watchers has long focused on portion control, and the PointsPlus program is no different, but it also encourages making solid nutritional choices and encourages choosing whole grain carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables.

The biggest change? ALL fresh fruits and most vegetables are zero points. ZERO.

I personally think that change is huge for a number of reasons. First of all, it just makes sense. No one ever got fat eating apples! There have been times when I’ve seriously debated eating a piece of fruit because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to spend the points, which when you think about it is pretty silly. Also, I think it helps mentally to know that if you’re hungry, you have all sorts of options to choose from that won’t count against you. The reason WW decided to make this change, though, is that they’ve discovered that the way the body responds to these foods is different than the way it responds to empty calories. It takes more energy to digest a high-fiber food than it does to digest simple sugar. Not to mention that those kinds of foods keep us full much longer!

With the change in points values of the foods come changes in daily point allowances as well. Though fruits and vegetables have decreased in point values, other food has increased. To balance that out, the daily point allowance has increased as well. My allowance, for example, went from 20 to 29 points per day, and even if that roughly equals out to the same amount of food, it makes a difference psychologically. To me, at least, managing 29 points a day SEEMS so much better than limiting myself to 20.

Over the next few months, I’ll keep you posted on the latest Weight Watchers news, as well as how it’s going for me personally. One thing I’m particularly interested in sharing with you is their new iPad app. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I think it’s going to be a great addition to the Weight Watchers tools.

Until then, if you’d like to learn more about Weight Watchers and their PointsPlus program, check them out on Facebook or on Twitter (search #weightwatchers and #pointsplus) and make sure to join in the conversation!

Disclosure: I was provided with an ipad and accessories with which to facilitate this review. All opinions are my own, and are in no way influenced by anyone else. Weight Watchers earned my undying love and devotion long before the iPad, I promise.

When I was about 34 weeks pregnant, I got an email press release about the TrueWomb swaddler.  At first I was like, “eh, I already have a really great swaddler I like..” but THEN I watched the TrueWomb video and I was sold!  Check it out below:

Cool, right? I couldn’t NOT review that after watching the video. So TrueWomb sent me a swaddler to review, and I LOVE it.  My husband loves it, too, even my mom (who like me, is um…mechanically challenged) finds it very easy to use.  AND it keeps Jonah very snug.  He CANNOT get out of it, and he loves being in it.  Here’s what I like about the TrueWomb:

• It has pockets for baby’s arms and legs to keep them secure
• It has giant, really strong velcro closures which do NOT come loose
• It’s really easy to use, even in the middle of the night after you are cross-eyed from sleep-deprivation

I will be reviewing a couple of other swaddlers, and I will let you know how they compare!

The one “drawback” I can see to the TrueWomb is that it comes in different sizes – this is actually good AND bad.  It’s good because you can swaddle your baby longer, it’s bad because you have to purchase an additional swaddler as your baby outgrows them.  BUT, I can say that so far, the TrueWomb is well worth the cost.  They also offer a daytime “weaning” swaddle to help get your baby weaned off of swaddling as he or she gets older. I am really interested in this as well as we had to cold-turkey un-swaddle Sophie when she outgrew her swaddler at about 5 months and it was pretty much the saddest day of my life!

So: my review: this is a GREAT product – well done, TrueWomb!

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TrueWomb sent me a swaddle to review.  They did not edit this post in any way and all opinions are mine alone.