I will admit to having the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know.  I bet I have a bigger sweet tooth than anyone YOU know, which explains all this extra weight I carry around.  I was making a true, honest effort to lose all thisi weight, too, and although it wasn’t just falling off I was feeling better and could really tell a difference in my health.  That was about the time I discovered something I’d seen before but I’d been able to muster up the willpower to avoid, knowing that if I gave in that I’d probably never look back.  But I’d had a bad week, very depressed, and there they set in their bright blue bag, beckoning to me.  It was as if they were saying, “Kristin, we were made for you!  We need YOU! You need US!” And I did.  I needed those Pretel  M&Ms about like I needed another hole in my head for more air to escape.  Never the less, I couldn’t resist temptation so I grabbed the one lone single size on the impulse shelf.  Yes, kids, that’s why they call that the “Impulse” section.

I thought to myself, “OK, maybe these will ust be your average, generic chocolate covered pretzels without anything special.”  You know the kind, right?  No real brand name, a sort of off-taste that’s stale and old-tasting.  Oh how I wanted these to taste bad!  No such luck.  I shouldn’t have expected anything but the best from M&Ms, considering I’ve never had anything less than the best when it comes to my M&Ms!

So anyway, they were nice enough to send me a few extra packs for my amazing readers.  There is only one way you can enter, and that’s by subscribing to my e-mail newsletter.

I’ll choose 10 winners from the number of subsribers at the end of the giveaway on August 16, and within a few weeks if you win you’ll get a sweet surprise in your mailbox.  I do want to wait until the hottest part of Summer is over and they aren’t melted, so you’ll get them at the end of September/early October.

I will e-mail you for your mailing info if you’re chosen as a winner.

One thing I want to mention is that these have only 6g fat per single serving.  The average candy bar has 10g-12g.   I don’t know about you but it makes me feel better to hea that when I eat candy!

Good luck!

I am hoping I have 5 minutes to get this posted before our internet cuts off again, but it just came back on after about 3 hours of being off for the most part.  It’ll come on, stay on for 5 minutes at the most, and then go off.  The longest it has stayed on is 10 minutes.  That was once.  So anyway, I found a few tearpads you should look out for in your local stores.  I found most of these in Piggly Wiggly but some were in Foodland.  Walmart doesn’t ever have any in our stores anyway.  I find that the smaller, locally owned grocery stores have the best coupons.

First, I found a coupon flier type thing on a stand in the store tonight, and I wish I remembered what it looked like.  The flier says “Greener Wallet, Happier You”.    This is my wonderful husband’s picture he took of it for you. 

It includes a $0.50/1 Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Poppingcorn coupon, a $2 coupon off of 1 12-pack or 2 2-liters Sprite or Sprite Zero and Snyders product 16 oz. or larger product, and a $0.75/2 David’s seeds 5.25 oz. or larger.  Total savings $3.25, not bad!  I apologize if the pic isn’t clear enough; we tried!

Other hot tear pad coupons to look out for:

Buy any 10  Kool Aid, get 2 free

$2 Mail-in Rebate wyb KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce and Kingsford Charcoal

$1/1 Kool Aid Fun Fizz packages

Save $2 wyb 1 Coca Cola 12-pack, 8-pack 8 oz.,  or 8-pk. 7.5 oz. and 1 Nabisco Cracker

Save $2 on any 2 Sunshine Cheez Its (GREAT w/ a BOGO sale…at Piggly Wiggly this week by the way!)

Save $1 wyb 1 Coke twinpack bottles or 2 2-liters  AND $4 deli, frozen, meat or produce

Free yogurt (up to $1) wyb 2 Keebler Sunshine Gripz products

Save $1 wyb any 2 powdered beverages: Kool Aid, Crystal Light, Tang, Country Lemonade  (not valid on Kool Aid unsweetened envelopes)

 I picked up enough of these to make envelopes for 2 sweet readers so I thought I’d do a little tiny giveaway.  It’s not much but it’ll be fun.

I will throw in a few extras with it.   So, to make this fair, here’s all I am asking you to do.  Get 1 person to enter this giveaway, and the only entry method is via e-mail.  I figure if you are online you have an e-mail account.  Not everyone uses social media but this is easy.  Just e-mail me if you have any questions about it. 

y e-mail.  Put my e-mail, makingcentsoutoflife (at) gmail (dot) com in the CC (carbon copy) field.  You’ll be entered even if that person doesn’t enter the contest, but I hope they do.  I’m not doing the $5 Amazon gift card for this one, since this contest is sponsored by me and not very big.    I’m going to keep the contest open until April 21 at nidnight CST and I will check all of the e-mails then to make sure everyone who entered sent an e-mail.  A link to the blog OR the contest page must be included in your e-mail but it doesn’t have to be a big, elaborate e-mail.  Make it as quick as you want to, and as easy.  I’m just grateful for every person who enters my contests!

Ok, this took 2 hours to get ot publish.  I wrote it, and by the time I was finished the internet was off.  I still have a Father’s Day giveaway for you but I have a week’s worth of posts I couldn’t get up so I sort of gave up after awhile.  Ugh. Someday maybe.  Good luck!

Be CentsAble: How to Cut Your Household Budget in Half

Edit:  I am sorry for the typos! This was supposed to go up yesterday and I lost track of the date so I forgot, and wrote it at about 4 AM!   My cat laid across me and that’s not conducive to writing a blog post

A few days ago, my husband and I were in the car talking about different things. We didn’t have anything big to discuss. Since  we are together 24/7 our lives are intertwined  for the most part but we each have our different things going on with our internet projects.  We were talking that day about my blog, and the multitudinous personal finance books that have exploded onto the market during the last couple of years.  I just started reading blogs a couple of years ago and couponing, but before that I’d heard of (and feared the wrath of) Dave Ramsey and Jean Chatzky and that was pretty much all.  One of the topics we were talking about was how much sense it made to buy a book to learn how to save money; considering that was exactly what I did a few years ago, in some ways I was all for it but others I wasn’t quite sure since I know now about all of the free info out there.  Then, I remembered about a book review I was doing this week.  Yep, a book by the very same people who run the website Be Centsable.  The book is called  Be CentsAble: How to Cut Your Household Budget in Half and it is written by Chrissy Pate and Kristin McKee. 

First of all, let me tell you that I think finding one quality personal finance book is a key tool to have in your savings tool kit that I mentioned a while ago (I PROMISE I am going to finish that).  Find a book that you can easily read, that covers everything from the basics and gets as advanced as you need it to be.  Chances are you’ll want to take a break at one point or another when it comes to couponing; when you start back, you may want to brush up on your skillz or you may want to try another method of organization but you have no idea where to start.  A truly good book will give you a place to start and tips to help you get set up.

The Review

Be CentsAble: How to Cut Your Household Budget in Half starts out by giving you the background stories of the authors, Chrissy and Kristin.  I chuckle when I type that because some of my cousins called me Krissy til I stopped answering to it, although if they hadn’t had a dog named Krissy it wouldn’t have bothered me .  Sorry, I digress.  Both started out as young women who had families and needed to change their spending behaviors in order to make the most of their families’ resources; this way, they could spend the most time possible with their children without having to worry about making ends meet.

What I like about the book is that while it takes you through their journey to financial stability and success, it teaches the reader who may not know where to find coupons, or the reader who may be unaware that you can combine a Walgreens store coupon with a manufacturer’s coupon in one of the advanced chapters.  The book goes into how to set up one’s own coupon organization system, although I feel like the addition of pictures in that one particular section would have been helpful to new couponers to help them truly fix up a usable organization system.  When I first put one together, I had pictures plus found an online video that did a world of good for me.  Normally I’m not one who has to rely on visual stimuli but in that one case it helps tremendously.

A feature I like about the book a lot is the “Centsable tips” scattered throughout.  They are just little bits of knowledge that don’t really merit their own entire section but are little extra bits that you really should know to make your transactions go more smoothly or your planning easier.  Even more advanced couponers (like ME, haha…well, I am but anyway) can benefit from a lot of those because everybody’s experiences are different.  For example, a lot of the time I forget that the order you hand in your coupons at Walgreens totally affects your total.  It’s never quite the same, and the book covers that.

Chrissy and Kristin have done an amazing job with this book; it’s definitely a great book for a person who is beginning to use coupons and get serious about budgeting, and more importantly cutting your budget.  For those of you who are facing economic hardship, and the need to start saving is crucial and necessary, the book is basic and great to get started with.  It’ll carry you through almost every step you need to take to learn the different stores and how to get the most out of them.  You’ll be able to retrain your thought process, which to me is important because if you always think it’s OK to pay $4 for a box of cereal but better to get it on sale, you’ll never really make the most of your budget.  My train of thought now is that it is NEVER OK to pay $4 for a box of cereal.  If I can’t get that box of cereal for $1.50 or less, it just does not go to my home.  Finding and sticking to your ideal prices, covered in the book, is one of the most important steps to saving money on your grocery budget in my opinion. 

Kristin and Chrissy were gracious enough to provide me with a copy of the book in exchange for reading it and sharing my opinion of it with you all.  My honest opinion is that it’s a great book for those of you who are beginning to save money on your household budget.  It’s easy to understand whereas sometimes when I talk “coupon” with others it’s like I’m speaking another language; it’s great that they could get it out in such a way that anybody can read it and “get” it.    For advanced couponers, it’s useful in the way that you can pick it up and refresh your memory if you’ve taken a break from couponing a bit, or if you’ve been a couponer from way back when then you might need to learn some new policies and procedures that you might not know exist, like stacking coupons. 

The book is on sale at Amazon right now for just $10.08, so you could get this almost free with just 2 $5 Amazon gift cards that you win from using Swagbucks.  You can also get it at Barnes and Noble   but then you can go through a cash back site and get cash back, if you want to go ahead and pick up a copy!  Or, the truly frugal thing would be the local library!w

It would be an excellent investment, and a perfect addition to your savings tool kit.  Everyone needs one when they’re starting out.  Literally a small “tool box” that holds every one of your supplies that you use for home management.  I’ll do a post on that later

I’m thrilled that they’re so generous because Chrissy and Kristin are also allowing me to give away a copy of their book to YOU!  You can win a copy of Be CentsAble: How to Cut Your Household Budget in Half really easily!

I’m going to make it super easy to win your own copy of this book.  You have until April 15th at noon!  This time the entries are simpler than usual!

The required entry:  Leave a comment telling me the best deal you ever got using a coupon; it doesn’t have to be the cheapest, just your favorite thing!  I’m flexible.  This one must be completed before all the others.

1.  Tweet the contest using @kristinbrianne, @BeCentsable and come back here to leave a comment with your time stamp of the text you left.

2.  Blog about hte contest on your own lbog and come back here to leave a comment.

3.  Post it on your Facebook wal and come back here and leave a link.

4.  Email someone about the giveaway, and CC me (makingcentsoutoflife @ gmail dot com) for another entry.

So that’s 5 great entries for this awesome book.  It would make a great gift if you already have a copy.  If you don’t you should grab yourself a copy if you don’t win one!   You can stop over at the Be Centsable blog and tell those wonderful ladies thanks for the giveaways at any time!

As per all my giveaways the winner will be asked if he or she was referred and by whom.  If your name is mentioned you will get a $5 Amazon gift card.  So ifyou know anybody who likes to save money then refer them to our blog!  I need a bunch more readers so I can offer stuff like this a lot!!  I love giving stuff away

The contest will end April 15 at noon to enter the contest even if the comments are still on.  I have forgotten to take them off before and not put any notice with them, but this serves as that notice.  If you can still comment after the contest period ends, something may have come up but I still will have the cut off time.

Do you remember Rainbow Brite?  I do!  When I was a little girl she was one of the many, many cartoons I tortured my parents by watching every day.  I loved her so much, and she was so adorable.  I had so many Rainbow Brite dolls and toys.  I was fortunate enough to get to review one of the 25th anniversary dolls awhile back, before I got sick and my pain got so bad.  I was supposed to write this up well befoer now and I apologize, but the good thing is that one of you can still win a doll!

I didn’t get Rainbow Brite, but I did get a friend Tickled (Pink).  I will have my husband take a picture when he’s able to do so.  The differences between the dolls is astonishing.  Twenty-five years ago, which makes me feel incredibly old by the way, the dolls were softer and much more innocent looking.  Now, the dolls are skinnier, have shorter dresses and different hair.  They’re still cute, and definitely modern, but there’s something that makes me a little nostalgic and I miss the older 80’s versions of things.  A lot of “retro” toys are making a big comeback, which I’m happy to see even though being told I’m retro is heartbreaking.  I just wish that some things would come back as they were.  If you’ve noticed, certain toys haven’t changed.  Take Care Bears or Cabbage Patch Kids.  Some things just need no changes;  the changes made to Rainbow Brite and her friends are only sad in the respect that they were made to look older, not like children, and I think children already have to grow up so fast that their dolls should look like children. 

Would you like to win a Rainbow Brite doll? One lucky winner can win one, although I can’t guarantee which doll you will win.  It could be Rainbow Brite herself or a friend!!

You can win quite easily!  Just help me spread the word about our blog, and the contest.  Here are your entry methods:

• First, leave a comment.  What’s your favorite 80’s toy, TV show or fad?  Share your favorite 80’s fun thing.  This must be done.
• Tweet the contest.  Only one tweet will count although multiple tweets are appreciated.  Leave a link to your timestamp.  Include @kristinbrianne in your tweet.
• Blog about the contest.  Leave a comment with a link to your blog post.
• Leave a Facebook message on your wall about the contest.  Leave a link to your direct Facebook wall here.
• E-mail this contest to your friends and CC me on the e-mail.  Please use makingcentsoutoflife at gmail so that they don’t go to my personal e-mail address.  A lot of you have that one too, and it gets more swamped than this one so it’s harder to find them. 

The contest will end on April 16 at 12 AM.  Hopefully I will remember comments by then but no entries after this time will be counted, just in case I forget

Will you please help me spread the word about this contest?  As with my past few contests, if the winner gives me your name as the person who referred them to my contest no matter how the entry I will give you a $5 Amazon gift card code.   I really want to expand my blog reach before my June March of Dimes event, and I need your help to do it.  I think winning a gift card is a great motivation for telling a friend or 2 about a contest.  Even if they don’t need the doll for their own children it makes a great Toys for Tots donation!

Good Luck all!

Kids love to win things;  kids also love to give things, and I’ve found that earlier and earlier kids are learning the importance of giving ot others who are less fortunate.  With a new promotion from Betty Crocker, they can get the chance to do just that!  Specially marked packages of Betty Crocker fruit snacks, including fruit rollups, Gushers, Fruit by the Foot, and others, kids can get the chance to win a laptop for themselves AND another to give to a child in Africa! 

Each day through May 30, one laptop will be awarded.  For every laptop won, through One Laptop Per Child a laptop will be donated to a child in Africa.  All you have to do is enter the code found on the specially marked packages on this website.

My Blog Spark and Betty Crocker were kind enough to allow me to particpate in this; they sent me 2 boxes of Betty Crocker fruit snacks and made a $25 donation in my behalf to  One Laptop Per Child.  They have offered to do this for one of my readers as well!

I have also been asked to share with you the following footage reflecting some of the work that has been done in Africa. 

Would you like to win and have this donation in your behalf?  You’ll also be getting the 2 boxes of snacks.

If you want to win your own donation and 2 boxes of snacks, please just leave a comment with a way that I can contact you  You must be a subscriber to this blog, either new or current but this will be verified.  Just leave your comment and tell me which way you subscribe to the blog! And thank you!

The winner will be chosen April 12 at midnight and I will need for the winner to contact me within 48 hours or another winner will be choesen.  Good LuckK!

Oh an dthe same bonus applies…get osmeone to tell me that you referred them, and if they win I will send you a $5 Amazon gift card.    Email me if you have any questions or problems at makingcentsoutoflife@gmail.com.  I want my giveaways to be fun, not difficult so let me know if you have a problem or anything please!  I really strive to have fun!

Recently I was given the opportunity to review a bottle of Skin MD Natural  Shielding  lotion.   This isn’t your average lotion that you use when you experience a few days of dry skin; this is a shielding lotion, which is very different.  Your basic lotion just aims to make up for the moisture that ouro skin loses during the day.  Shielding lotion not only does that, but shielding lotion actually helps stop the loss of moisture!  A lot of dermatologists have helped in the research and development of this lotion, and even more have tried it and shared their opinions on it.

I have been using the lotion for about 3 weeks now, and I have to admit I don’t remember to put it on every day.  I don’t remember ANYTHING every day, we all know what my memory is like nowdays.  Anyway, most of the time I do remember it since I have put so many notes around the house.   it seems like I can remember blog-related tasks; it is just getting past the sickness and pain issues that are the problem. 

I have rough, dry skin in some areas that just drives me crazy. I always thought my elbows were a lost cause.  For years, they’ve been cracked, rough and horribly dry.  I’ve tried lotions and just finally gave up.  That was my ultimate test for Skin MD.   My arms and legs in general tend to get very dry, so anything to help that was great.  of course, I used a bit of the lotion ( a little goes a long way!) everywhere.    It really did help to keep my skin moisturized and soft, and I didn’t have that “greasy” feeling that I get with so many lotions.

I’m normally not a lotion fan, so I was hesitant to take this review because I didn’t want to feel obligated to say nice things about a product I didn’t care for.  When i realized how much difference there was betweent his shielding lotion and a regular everyday lotion, I was ecstatic.   My arms, legs, and elbows were so much softer and smoother, and not at all greasy.  The greasy feeling of most lotions is why I tend to steer clear of them.

I have to say that I really did like Skin MD.  If you want to know more about the ingredients and how it works, you can check out their website and learn how it works.  You can get a FREE sample here!

Would you like to win a bottle of this great lotion?  You can get your own to try, and see how great it is!  Mine is almost gone; I think Michael’s been stealing it.  You know what? I don’t mind because his hands are much smoother.  Ladies, if your man needs smoother hands it would be a great gift!

So anyway, if you want to win it’s very easy!

Leave a comment on this post telling me what is your can’t-live-without beauty item.  Is it just your mascara, or lip gloss, or do you have to go full out and have it all?  But really, if you have to choose just one item to take with you on a trip what would it be?  What one thing in your beauty regimine?  I’m excited to see those responses. 

I’ll end this giveaway on April 9 at midnight.  The same rules apply for the othe giveaways; if someone tells me that you referred them, you’ll get a $5 Amazon gift card but only if you entered the giveaway.  Simply e-mail me at makingcentsoutoflife (at) gmail (dot) com if you have any questions.  That makes sense to me but I’ve been told it’s confusing so if it is just let me know.  I don’t want to be difficult, just fun!

Thank you to Skin MD for giving me a bottle of this lotion to try, and to give to one of you!

Have you heard about the Bisquick Pancake Nation?  You can go to the site through May 31 to find out how to apply for a $250 grant for your non-profit qualifying organization to hold your pancake breakfast fundraiser in your community! 

The Bisquick Pancake Nation site can help you with SO much more like:

• The Pancake Finder- Find a Pancake Fundraiser in your area
• Pancake Mix- Find out some great things to do at a future pancake fundraiser
• Calculator- Figure out just how much cash it’ll take for your exxpected guests
• Placemats- Download and print fun placemats for guests

The guys at My Blog spark were kind enough to send me a really cool Bisquick pack to get me started, and they want to send one to a reader!

I have a picture of the kit but I have to get it off of my husband’s computer.  I’ll have that for you soon I hope.

My Blog Spark and Bisquick are extremely generous, and they want to send a reader one of the same prize packs that they sent me!

You’ll get:

• Big box of Bisquick                                                                    
• Nice mixing bowl
• a Pancake Spatula
• Seasoned cast iron pan

The pack is extremely nice; we had pancakes awhile back and it was really good!

I would love to get the money together to do a fund raiser pancake breakfast or dinner for an  upcoming event I have planned, so I can’t wait to apply!

If you want to win one one of these great prize packs, all you have to do is enter here and it’s so easy!

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment, making sure that I have a way to contact you, and tell me what is your favorite breakfast food!

Now, here’s a little, um, bonus to the giveaway.  If you refer someone to my blog and they enter the giveaway, and win, if they tell me you referred them I will give you a $5 Amazon gift card.  Basically when I contact the winner to any of my giveaways, I will ask the person if they were referred by anyone.  If they provide me with a name and e-mail address, the person they tell me will get a $5 Amazon gift card as long as they entered as well.  I hope that doesn’t sound confusing.  It makes sense to me but if it does not to you then just shoot me an e-mail and I’ll try to explain better I can’t articulate my thoughts very well sometimes!

Simply leave a comment to enter…how easy is that?  I hope you all have great luck!  I will end this contest on April 9 at midnight.  The winner has 48 hours or another winner will be chosen by Random.org. 

I am in the process of making a Winner’s Page of some sort to give you your 15 minutes of fame   so bare with me!  I’ve got a LOT of catching up to do!

I have a confession: I did not eat yogurt until I was 29.  Well, frozen yogurt doesn’t count does it?  It’s more like ice cream.  The taste of yogurt was just too tangy for me, and all I’d had in the past was vanilla and strawberry.  I can’t remember having tasted it in my older teenage years, bit I knew I dind’t like it.  I’m an extremely picky eater, but the sad thing is I say I don’t like things I haven’t tried.  I judge the food simply by the way it looks.  My husband and his family have broadened my palate quite a bit, however, and I was introduced to Yoplait about a year ago.

I had no idea that yogurt came in so many flavors, so I continued to try them.  There were still many I don’t care for because they are just too tangy or have too much of an after taste for me, but Yoplait was the only brand of yogurt I was able to eat. 

I received an opportunity from My BlogSpark to review YoPlait Light fat free yogurt for free, and to be able to give one away to a reader.  I jumped all over that opportunity because I love YoPlait, and I knew they’d releasaed a couple of new flavors I was excited to try.  I was given a coupon for a free cup of Yoplait Light or Yoplait Thick & Creamy yogurt, a super cute lunch tote, a travel utensil set and a Yoplait journal.  The reader who wins will get the same prize. This offer isn’t good in Tennessee, California, Idaho, New Jersey, North Dakota, Louisianna and Minnesota. 

There are 32 flavors of this yogurt so there’s something for everyone, and I’m tellin’ ya if I’m going to get yogurt it has to be Yoplait! 

Would you like to win this prize pack?  It’s simple!

Just leave a comment with your contact information telling me what flavor of yogurt you’d invent if you were given the chance. 

You have until April 9, 2010 at midnight.  Please make sure that you check your e-mail because winners must get back to me within 48 hours or I will have to choose another winner. 

I want to thank Yoplait and My Blog Spark for this opportunity and for their kindness and understanding because this was a late giveaway!  Good Luck!

This contest will end April 9 at midnight unless I find out otherwise!  Good luck!   

A few weeks ago I was provided with a selection of Mirra products from my friends at Global Influence to review, and as a bonus for doing the review I get to pass along a gift package similar to the one I received (which was awesome by the way) to one of my lucky, precious readers!!  Go ahead and get excited, ladies, because when you use these products you will be pampered from head to toe!

Women today want more from their beauty products than women wanted years ago.  We want a product that gives us results for our money, but doesn’t cost a fortune, is good for the environment, looks nice, smells good, and the list goes on and on about what women want in their beauty products.  I love to try new beauty products, and have a mini-store of shower gels and lotions and potions in my bathroom and spare bedroom now.  I haven’t used the same brand of shampoo in a year because I”m always finding something new to try when my bottle is empty! Of course, as a couponer it has to be a freebie or nearly-freebie…that pretty much means I don’t get to try a lot of the organic, high end products sold in beauty stores, department stores or even the higher priced stuff at Walgreens.  I just don’t have the extra money to spend on a product that may or may not work, when there’s a chance that it won’t.  That’s why I was thrilled to get to try Mirra.

I love all-natural products, not only because I feel like I’m doing something to help the environment but because I feel like they work better and make me look better.  It takes a LOT to make me look better so if I find something that works, you’d better believe I’ll scrimp and save until I can afford to buy it again.   Turning 30 isn’t something that bothers a lot of women.  I didn’t take it well.  My hair is already greying, we’ve talked about the weight which isn’t coming off (depression…weight…Ben…Jerry…do you see a pattern here?), and I have the skin of a 14 year old who’s a week away from her period.  Otherwise known as adult acne, I just abhor looking in the mirror so I just do not do it.  Believe it or not, some days when I used the Mirra products (I promise I am NOT paid to say this) I actually caught myself looking at my hair because it made it look pretty darn good. 

When you think about the ingredients in Mirra products, that you can actually pronounce the names of them (some of them include bamboo, olive oil, bamboo, cranberry, and honey), how can they not be good for a person?  all of these products are found in nature…but I wasn’t convinced how good they’d be for my body or hair on the outside!  They work great!

Mirra’s product line includes shampoo, conditioner, hair stylers, body wash, body mists, facial and skin care products including lotions, and thankfully age defying products!  Since I’m 30 going on 75 I need these!  There’s only so much a girl can take, and it seems like only yesterday I looked in the mirror to put on some lipgloss before dragging myself to sit in front of a college professor at age 21.  At the time, I looked 21, or so I thought.  Now, my younger cousin Carsyn, who’s 11, asked me if i was 40.  Ouch.  My band-aid for that owie was a giant and I do mean giant ice cream cone with B&J Peanut Butter Cup ice cream!

I got the giant box of beauty products about 2 weeks later and I was in heaven!  I got to test out shampoo and conditioner, body wash, body lotion, hair gel, wrinkle reduction cream for my eyes, and facial day cream.  Every time I took a FULL SIZE bottle or tube out of that box I got so excited!!  I had to open and smell each one, and put a little of each one on my fingers before I wen ton to another one.  They all felt so silky and smooth, another hint that they’re top notch products. Generally, if you have a top notch product it’ll feel silky when it’’s supposed to. 

My final thoughts about the Mirra products were good.  The hair products smelled amazing, which is of course the first thing I check when i try ANY new shampoo or conditioner.  I’m not using anything in my hair that smells bad because I have to smell myself and if it smells bad I can’t take it.  That’s one reason I keep straight hair!  I was worried it would leave me with oily, greasy hair the next morning, because so many products do.  I was amazed to still have a well-balanced, clean head of hair the next morning that didn’t appear to be too dried out or greasy.  As disgusting as that sounds, and feels, I have to be careful with the shampoos that I use so that they don’t put too much extra moisture in my hair as to make it too oily.  For that reason I often do not use conditioner, but I found myself able to use both products from mirra and was able to be proud of how it looked with Mirra.

The facial products also worked great on my skin.  The wrinkle eye reduction cream feels good; I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure how much it works, but I also have to be honest and say that I don’t put it on every single day.  I just have had so much going on that I can’t remember to use it every day.  However I love it, it smells and feels good, and is light weight enough that I don’t feel like I’m smearing oil on my face.  The day lotion is the same; I feel like if I could remember to use all of the products every single day, or make the time maybe, that I would see this huge difference.

Now, I will be honest and say that I did not, and could not, use the  hair gel.  Again there’s my issue with greasy, stringy looking hair.  My hair is straight as a board and will always be that way.  When I was younger, I was able to use hair gel with permanents and with my curly hair; as I aged, I couldn’t use gel or mousse or other hair products because I end up looking like…it’s just nasty.  I may end up doing a giveaway with that product later on, if I don’t have a family member who wants to use it.  It could just be that I don’t use the stuff right, but alas, I stear clear of hair gel.

All in all, I’m just going to say that I enjoyed this review immensely!  I don’t often get to review fun things like this that’s just for me so it was something to look forward to each day.

These products are sold exclusively at the Kroger family of stores.  If you hurry, you can go to the Kroger website where Mirra is offering a coupon fofr $5 off of 2 Mirra products!

To end this quite extensive, wordy review I will reward (OK, Mirra and Global Influence will do it!) one of you patient readers with a package chock full o’ these wonderful products that I got to review!!

Want to win?  I will choose one winner from all entrants in two weeks (this may change if Mirra tells me I have to), at midnight on April 2.  I will edit the post and make a note up top if the date must change.

Here are the ways you can enter:

1. Mandatory entry: Visit Kroger’s website and name the item you want to try, and leave contact information for me in your comment here.
2. Subscribe to this blog by e-mail or RSS feed.  I will check this when I choose a winner.
3. Add me to your blog roll.  My link must be there when the giveaway closes and until the winners are announced on this site.  Come here and leave a link to your blog.
4. Follow me  on Twitter and tweet about this contest.  You must put a link to the giveaway with your tweet.  Come back here and leave  your Twitter timestamp in the comments.  Only one tweet will count but i appreciate any and all Tweets!
5. Email at least 5 friends, and put my e-mail in the CC field, about the contest.  Use e-mail address kristinbriannethompson (at) gmail (dot)com.  I realize some of you do not use social media, so this is an easy way to enter.  It doesn’t have to be an elaborate e-mail, and if you have any questions just shoot me an e-mail first. 
6. Become a fan OR friend of me on Facebook and come back here and leave me your username on Facebook so I can find you.  YOu must write about the giveaway on your wall. 

Please make sure that you leave a separate comment for each entry that you do!! I love to give things away and I never want to make my giveaways difficult for you so please, please please let me know if you have ANY problems leaving a comment or entering my contests/giveaways.  I’ll figure out a way to fix it somehow! 

I apologize but this contest is open to US reidents only.

Again, I want to thank Mirra and Global Influence for the chance to review this amazing line of products.  The products were given to me in exchange for my honest review; I was not financially compensated.  The opinions given are my own, as were the, um, not so very eloquent, opinions.