My #TruFanStand compliments of Truvia

What is better in summer time then lemonade? The two just go together like Santa and winter. Once you have one glass you tend to have more and there is usually a bunch of sugar in lemonade. That all changed for me when I received my Truvia Lemonade Stand kit. I had never used Truvia before and I was ingterested to find out what it would taste like once I got it into the lemonade. For those of you that don't know, Truvia is an all natural sweetener, it is calorie free as well. It looks and feels like real sugar and you can use it like real sugar!

I got my kit through Crowdtap and Truvia and I was so super excited to get in because I know a lot of people that have diabetes or are prediabetic and they are in need for alternatives to real sugar. In my kit I received the following:

one package of Truvia Spoonable
One package of Truvia Baking Blend
4 pairs of sunglasses (2 adult and 2 kids sizes)
10 plastic Truvia cups
A $10 gift card

This package went well beyond my expectations and I am so grateful that I was able to participate in this awesome event! First thing first is to read the insert that comes in every package from Crowdtap. This tell you exactly what you need to do to complete all the challenges laid out for this particular sample kit.

M first challenge was to make a sign for my lemonade stand. I thought this sign would be so simple and that I could really knock out a good looking sign in now time. As I got started though I wanted to do more and more things on it and I wanted it to be better then I thought it could be. The sign ended up taking me almost 4 hours to complete and I am really happy with how it turned out! What do you think of my sign??

The second challenge was to create a still life. Sort of like when painters/artists draw pictures of bowls of fruit and things like that. You were suppose to let your inner artist come out on this one. I have an inner artist I love to draw and such but I am bad when it comes to positioning things to make them look the most attractive. Here is my take on the whole still life theme lol It includes everything I used except the pitcher because we are poor and our picture is an old Hawaiian Punch container. :)

The third challenge was to show us savoring the sweet taste of the lemonade. Since it came with the glasses I decided to use them in the picture and show Truvia even more love then I already was. Also My eye closest to the camera is almost swelled shut at the moment and I didn't feel like that would be too attractive to the people wanting to get some lemonade from me.

This challenge was all about the lemonade but as a side challenge you had to have your friends tweet for a cup if they wanted one. This was a part cool thing to do I think. My friends thought it was insane that I wouldn't hand them over anything unless they tweeted but I had fun nonetheless. The ones that did end up tweeting had some awesome things to say about the lemonade to me, so the tweets were worth it. It also raised awareness that I was doing the tweet for lemonade.

The last challenge was to bake something and substitute real sugar for the Truvia baking blend. You can make anything you want and I chose to make Cranberry Oatmeal cookies. They baked, looked like, and came out just like if i had used real sugar. What do you think of my cookies??

I really enjoyed using the Truvia in the lemonade and the cookies. You end up using way less of the Truvia then you would use if you were using real sugar so a bag or container will last you a lot longer then a nag of real sugar would. The best part is that if I hadn't told everyone that it was Truvia and not real sugar that I used, they would of all thought that I was using real sugar. You really can not taste or see a difference in anyway shape or form. I like that it is better for me then real sugar is and that it has fewer calories. I also liked the unique shape and forms of the container and the bag. Sugar bags are so plain and hard to close and they often spill all over when you are moving them around or getting them off the shelf to use them but I didn't have this problem with the Truvia because they close up tight.

I recommend everyone try Truvia at least once. You may think that it is going to be gross or weird or totally different then sugar. I was pleasently surprised by how awesome it is and I think that you will be too if you give it a chance!

I got all of these products for free from Crowdtap and Truvia. Just so I would really my thoughts and feelings and give an honest review. I wasn't paid to give a good review and I would always be honest no matter what.

Australian tea tree oil

There are always things in this world that you could go your whole life without hearing about them. With so many different oil in this world who knows them all and who can keep them straight I mean really unless they are peppermint oil or something well known then they just get lost in a sea of oils. I had never heard of tea tree oil before I got the chance to try it out for free. Turns out that I was missing out on a product that has so many benefits!

Have you ever needed to clean something but have run out of cleaning products or just don't have the money to buy more? Well if you have tea tree oil at home your problems are solved! Mix a little of the oil with water and you have yourself an all natural all purpose cleaner. Simply get yourself a spray bottle and put in 1-2 tsp of tea tree oil and fill the rest with water and voila a cheap ready to use cleaner!

Do you have acne or a skin infection, maybe a sunburn? Tea tree oil can and will help with all of these! Simply get yourself some and put on the areas that need tending to. This product is not to be ingested so NEVER swallow, eat, drink etc. Also do not put it on open sores and if it starts to burn do not continue use.

Do yo have a child in school? If you do you know how lice can run through the school like it is nothing and then your child ends up with those nasty bugs that are almost impossible to get rid of. All you have to do is add a few drops of Tea Tree Oil to the shampoo you are using on your child and it should take care of the problem in a natural way instead of using something on them with a bunch of chemicals. Just use the mixture and comb the hair with one of the nit combs like you would if you were using a head lice kit. I have heard it is much more effective and works so much faster then store bought items to get rid of lice. I haven't yet had to try this out but I am happy to know that I can use this for lice when the need arrives.

Does your pet have fleas? Just sprinkle some of this around their bed and/or crate and the suckers should go running so that your pet can get a good nights sleep! Also the summer time is a crazy time for ticks and some people just don't know how to get rid of them. With Tea Tree Oil it is simple! Just put some drops on your skin around the tick and it should unlatch from you. No pulling and no worrying about whether you got it all out! The ticks have been bad this year so I hope you all remember this little trick if you have Tea Tree Oil!

There are so many more uses for Tea Tree Oil I could really go on all day. But I do have to say one downfall of Tea Tree Oil. It STINKS!! I made up a solution to clean out the shower and the wall in our bedroom and wow. It was pretty bad just applying it, I had to leave the room many times during the process. I am not sure if maybe I put too much in or if that is just the general smell but yeah it is not pleasant at all. We could barely sit in our house and I had trouble sleeping that night. The next day almost 24 hours later I could still smell it and our spray air freshener did nothing to help neither did perfume or candles.

Sometimes though you have to do a give and take in life. Weigh out the pros and cons and see if it is worth it. I believe that with everything I can use this for that it is worth dealing with the smell and I recently found out that I can purchase peppermint oil and mix with it and that will dilute it and hopefully calm down the smell. If that is true I will for sure keep using this! You get a huge bottle check it out here on Amazon. Very good deal for the price and you could probably use this for a year or more without having to get more! If only Amazon had a smell-o-vision so you could smell before you purchased! But as I said the benefits outweigh the smell so I think everyone should try this product out. If you do let me know in the comments below what you think of it and what oil you mix with it to make it smell better! I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Alone at Midnight

When you think of horror you usually think of blood and gore, but what about the horrors that can happen to you in our daily lives? Alone at Midnight dives right into a different kind of horror then I am use to be that shouldn't be the case. Some of the stories read more like nightmares then I am use to. Some show what can happen when your conscious takes hold of you and takes you into another realm of your own mind. You think you are lost but really it is just a cover up for something horrible that you have done and you have just gone crazy. It seems very plausible to me that something like this could very well happen and I have always wondered what goes through the minds of people that have made themselves crazy after doing something or witnessing a traumatic experience. They can try and hide it from every one except the one person that they can't hide from...themselves. These stories remind me of a mix of Tales from the Crypt and Goosebumps. Both of which I grew up and I loved how they were horror without being the normal horror.

I absolutely enjoy how well this book is written and have read it a few times just in the last few days. Partly looking for something to hate about it, and I just can't find anything that I don't like. I could see everyone of these stories being made into a movie but they are perfect for short stories. They don't get straight to the point and they aren't long and dragged out with more information then a reader really needs. While Stephen King and the like may be good writers, they write for length and don't worry about how much the reader wants or needs to know.

These stories leave you thinking, wondering what happens next in all the stories. They really make you think and understand why each was written. If they are personal experience or just brilliantly plucked from this mans' mind and put onto paper beautifully. Some seem personal while others seem more far fetched. But never lacking in a way of a twist ending or just a twist right from the beginning. In one of the stories you never see how the ending plays by just reading the first few pages. But it also one that someone has repressed a memory and reverted himself in his mind back to a different time. Sometimes I wish I could just repress memories and forget about them but how would life be if you walked around in denial all the time? You could never live in the present as you would always be stuck in the past, a past that no longer exists.

My favorite story has to be Beneath the Sand without giving any spoilers because I want everyone to check out this whole book, I have to say that it is pretty awesome. Enough details are withheld to keep you asking questions and even when it starts to get into the crazy parts you never really get if they are all in the mans' mind or if they are a side effect of the alcohol and pills or if it is really happening to him. I often wondered if he had been the one to do everything that had happened until that surprise ending and then I was even more confused. I wonder if it had been him or if the cop really did that to himself.

Oh shoot I said no spoilers...well I didn't reveal anything major and like I said you will never be able to guess what happens anyway! I really want everyone to go and check this out on Amazon it comes out August 20th but you can get the Kindle version right now for 99 cents! Which is crazy because I would pay more for something of this quality. Go check it out and you can even read part of the first short story before you buy so you can see what you think of it! If you do read this book leave me a comment below and tell me what you think of it and if you love it as much as I do!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.