Ever since I first discovered VistaPrint, I have become a loyal customer. I’m on my THIRD box of 250 free business cards, plus I ordered really cute personalized magnets to hand out at events as well. VistaPrint can put your text and logo on everything from postcards to t-shirts, and they are a great source of cheap address labels, too. At Christmas, you can get these really cute ones with little cartoon faces on them.

When you become a VistaPrint customer, you can sign up for email notices of special offers. At least once a week I get an offer for free basic or custom items like business cards, notepads, magnets, and bumper stickers. I rarely pay anything but the shipping and that isn’t expensive either!

You might not need a traditional business card, but what about a “Mom” card? I picked a cute design from VistaPrint, a blue background with a big yellow sunflower, and in the text, I put my name, “Ryan, Nathan, and Kaitlyn’s Mom”, my email address, and my cell phone number, and VOILA, I now have a “Mom” business card! I hand them out to the Mothers of all of my kids’ friends so they have an easy way to find my phone number when they need it. And it was FREE, I just paid about $6.00 for shipping for 250 of them! I really encourage you to visit VistaPrint and check out all the great products they have for you to personalize.

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I am just thrilled to be reviewing and giving away these cleaners from Terracycle, a company known for creating an all-natural fertilizer made from worm poop. But don’t worry, there’s no worm poop in these terrific cleaning sprays, just concentrated essences of plants, shrubs, fruits, herbs and grasses with natural minerals and water. Even better, TerraCycle then packages the ready-to-use cleaners in reused soda bottles with end-run spray tops, making one of the most affordable and environmentally friendly cleaning products on the market.

I received three cleaning products to try for myself, and I am happy to say that all of them work really well. I used TerraCycle Natural All Purpose Cleaner all around my house as I cleaned this weekend. It took care of spilled shampoo that had dried on the floor of the bathtub, coffee stains on the kitchen counter, and mystery gook that was on the walls in the hallway. I talked to James from Terracycle on the phone about the giveaway, and I asked him to please find out for me exactly what oils are used in the cleaner, because the smell…well, it smells like the people who live in East Lansing near M.S.U., the ones who buy their shampoo and laundry soap at the Food Co-Op. I suspect patchouli.

TerraCycle Natural Bathroom Cleaner made my shower, sink, and toilet sparkle and I like knowing that I’m not leaving harmful chemical residues behind. And ammonia-free TerraCycle Natural Window Cleaner got all the toothpaste globs off the mirror and took care of the dog’s nose print streaks on the picture window in the family room. In addition to these, Terracycle also makes a Drain Maintainer and Cleaner that is biologically friendly and packaged in 100% recycled containers. If these cleaners are strong enough to tackle my messy house, they are sure to work in yours! I’m naming Terracycle cleaners a MOMREVIEWS FABULOUS FIND and sending them a badge they can use, too!

About TerraCycle, Inc.
Tom Szaky, a 25-year old entrepreneur and Princeton University dropout, founded TerraCycle (www.terracycle.net) his freshman year. The company debuted its revolutionary worm poop plant food packages in reused soda bottles at Wal*Mart and The Home Depot in 2005. TerraCycle products are the first consumer products to earn the right to carry the Zerofootprint™ seal. The seal signifies that the materials and manufacturing process used to produce its products have virtually no negative environmental repercussions. In July 2006, Inc. Magazine named TerraCycle, “The Coolest Little Start-Up in America.”

**GIVEAWAY: Three winners will get three products-the Bathroom Cleaner, the All Purpose Cleaner, and the Window Cleaner. Products will be shipped directly from Terracycle, and can be shipped anywhere within the continental United States and Canada. All you need to do to enter is leave a comment on this post with your first name and a VALID email address. Honestly people, stop wasting my time entering with fake email addresses. You just ruin it for everyone else.

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This giveaway will end Monday, July 14th at 9:00 AM EST. One entry per person. Good luck!

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I’m sorry to say that since the last time I wrote about needing to replace our carpet back in April, we have made absolutely no progress on the replacing of our playroom carpet. My husband is driving me nuts! Every time I say honey, it’s time to do something about the disgusting carpet in the playroom, he makes an excuse about how he just doesn’t know what we should do. I know what we should do! We should call for HELP from Empire Carpet!

Empire Today has that jingle I’ve bet you’ve heard, “800-588-2300 Empire!!”, and they don’t just sell carpet. Empire sells hardwood, laminate and ceramic flooring, window treatments, and bath and shower liners too. Don’t remember the jingle? Around the Chicago area, it sounds like this- “Five eight eight, two three-hundred, Em-pire!” The “Eight Hundred” is added for other areas. It was covered in concert by bands like PEARL JAM, and is even shown at the beginning of the movie Wayne’s World. Like this:

The “Empire Man” was first introduced in 1977 and has become so popular, he is shown in commercials, has been made into a line of collectible bobblehead dolls, is featured each year in the annual McDonald’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and inspired the Chicago Cubs to declare an official “Empire Day” at Wrigley Field in 2007! Watch this:

You can read about Empire Today’s history by reading the Empire Today Wikipedia page. The company is based in Northlake, Illinois, and “operates in over 50 major metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada, making it the leading provider of home improvements and home furnishings in North America”. After looking through their site, I would love to schedule a free visit by Empire Carpet to redo my playroom, maybe a nice Berber that’s durable and can stand up to my children

Now, here are some of the services that make Empire stand out from it’s competitors. With approved credit, you pay NO INTEREST and make NO PAYMENTS for one year, you can purchase Empire products even if you rent rather than own your apartment or home, they will bring samples of the flooring you are interested in to your home at no obligation, most products can be installed the next day, AND, they give out a free gift that varies with their current promotions with your purchase! Which is why the poor Empire Man is sitting here in this commercial:

If I didn’t want to replace the carpet in the playroom, I could always get Hardwood Flooring from Empire Today instead. They carry both traditional and specialty hardwoods in either natural or stained finishes. With a nice Area Rug on top, thick enough to be comfortable for playing and sleepovers, that might just be a better solution for us anyway.

That number again (sing with me!) is 800-588-2300 Empire, call them today for a free in-home estimate and check out their website for all of their flooring and other products. This is the YouTube page for more videos, including cute ones featuring kids singing the jingle

Now if I could just get my husband to agree to let me call them and replace that gross carpet in the playroom!

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It’s not so much that I don’t LIKE cleaning my house, although it certainly doesn’t rank as high as, say, watching a rerun of “Law and Order: SVU” or eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream. I actually do get a degree of satisfaction from looking around and seeing a clean house, but it just takes SO MUCH ENERGY to get up off the couch where I do my blogging and, you know, CLEAN.

*sigh* First I have to pick everything up off the floor, and find a place to put it, which usually means balancing a stack of things on top of another stack of things because I am a hopeless piler-hello, my name is Elizabeth, and I can’t stop piling stuff up in higher and higher piles all over my house. Then, I have to drag my extremely heavy vacuum cleaner out from the coat closet, plug it in to a socket in the living room, vacuum, then unplug it, drag it to the playroom, plug it in again, vacuum that room, and repeat that two more times to do the two bedrooms with carpet. It’s just such a huge PAIN. What I really need is a CORDLESS vacuum!

Guess who is now making a cordless Accucharge Stick Vac and a Hand Vac that not only charges faster, but uses SEVENTY PERCENT less electricity AND has received Energy Star Approval? Watch this video to find out!

Of course, if I were to put a Dirt Devil Hand Vac in my kitchen to clean up crumbs around the table, it would mean my poor dog would lose his job as the official spilled food cleaner-upper. Because it’s so much easier to just call the dog than to expend energy leaning over to wipe up spilled food with a napkin! But, I think the dog would get over it, and I would sure LOVE a cordless Stick Vac that I could easily move from room to room. I bet my daughter would love to use the Hand Vac, too. Because the BEST way to use LESS energy while cleaning?

Get SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT.

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Giveaway Closed. Congratulations to the four winners!

Kathleen W. from Katydid and Kid
Linda Lansford (no blog)
Leigh Nichols (no blog)
Kristinia Clos from Loving Heart Mommy

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I’m going to come right out and say it-I am the world’s WORST gift wrapper. I cannot cut the paper straight, I cannot figure out how much paper to cut, I always have huge overlaps or the edges barely touch and I’m cutting little strips trying to fill in the gaps, I am HOPELESS. Most of my gifts look like they were wrapped by rabid badgers, I AM SO NOT KIDDING.

So when I got an email asking if I would like to try new self-adhesive wrap from Hallmark, I was all SIGN ME UP. Next thing I knew, a truck was pulling up outside my house to deliver a ginormous box with this:

NINE rolls of self-adhesive wrapping GENIUS. See the one on the far left, with the black and white photos of cute baby faces and monkeys and fathers with their sons? I used that one to wrap my husband’s Father’s Day gifts. The inside of the wrapping paper has LINES printed on it to guide the scissors, so even I could cut straight, and it is slightly sticky but not too much. You fold one side over the gift and press down lightly so it sticks, then fold the other side over. You won’t need any tape for that part, but for the flaps on the ends, Hallmark thoughtfully provides a sheet of small sticky strips that you peel off to secure the flaps. I used one on each end and the gifts looked perfectly wrapped. If I can make gifts look that good, Hallmark deserves a freaking MEDAL!

GIVEAWAY-Four winners will each receive two rolls of the Adhesive Gift Wrap, the design will be chosen by the sponsor. If you post the banner or button from the top of the post on your blog or website, you automatically get one entry in every giveaway. Let me know in your comment if you do. Otherwise, for one entry, leave a comment on this post with your REAL NAME or blog alias and a VALID email address. In the event that I send the winner an email and it comes back as a bad address, I will choose another winner, so type carefully. Comments left with keywords instead of names will be deleted. Open to U.S. only, one entry per person. Enter by Thursday July 3rd at 9:00 AM EST. Winners will be contacted by email. Good luck!

**not required but always appreciated-subscribing to my feed in a reader or by email, links in sidebar. Adding this blog to your Technorati Favorites, link in sidebar. Adding the post to StumbleUpon, Digg, Kirtsy, other social bookmarking sites, or mentioning it on your own blog is GOOD KARMA and makes me SUPER HAPPY

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