Asian Massage Review

Taken after my massage of the massage table

I have been having back pain off and on for about two years. Packing and moving boxes has really intensified the pain. That along with carrying an 18 month old and 3 year old around, can really wear out a back. I started seeing a chiropractor a few times a week and it's helped some but hasn't solved it. I talked with my friend who is a physical therapist and hope to see him but apparently, insurance companies require me to get a prescription from my doctor to see a PT. So, rather than take my kids and myself to a doctor's office filled with germs, I decided to try an Asian Massage first. I love natural remedies for things and have done acupuncture and have had success with homeopathy, so this seemed like the next logical step. Here is how it's different from a Swedish massage.

-the massage therapist gets on the massage table with you to really be able to work directly on top of you. I think the massage table is a little wider than traditional ones.

-she stretched my body. From my arms, to my legs.

-she used her hands to really pound on my body, including the bottom of my feet.

-she used a warm blanket to start with to warm up my body. When she was done, she used a warm, wet towel, to wash off the oil from my body. I thought that was nice. 

While I listened to the instrumental version of "Moon River," my pain was removed. I'm going to try it again in the future.

Freshly Review

Facebook advertisements occasionally actually entice me. Not all ads do. Thankfully, I own some Facebook stock so I'm okay clicking on the occasional ad if it interests me. That's how I found out about Freshly and actually Blue Apron and Green Chef as well, although that was through friends on FB.

What is Freshly? It's a meal delivery service that delivers cooked meals ready to be heated. They are not frozen and you keep them in your fridge until it's time to eat. 

Here's how Freshly comes packaged.

So convenient, right? It also says it only takes 2 minutes to heat up. I found that the meat and sometimes the veggies were not cooked enough at only 2 minutes. 3-4 minutes turned out better and we have an amazing microwave that is only 4 years old, so it is on the normal range of cooking. I compare Freshly somewhat to getting freshly prepared foods at places like Central Market or Whole Foods.  The first week I ordered 12 meals, 6 different ones, so we'd have six dinners ready for the week. Each comes with 1.5 serving. I only got pictures of 5 and I'll explain why below. Here's what I got.

Homestyle Meatloaf

 

Grilled Flat Iron Steak

 

Coconut Lime Salmon

Beef Provencal

 

Moroccan Chicken

I also ordered Chicken Rustica with Roasted Cauliflower. We just ended up not eating it and throwing it out. The reason being was, it would expire before we had time to eat it. Hopefully it was just because they try to use as few preservatives as possible. I just would have liked to have known that the food would not last a week before going bad.

I was hoping to get the meals delivered early enough last Friday to serve our first meal on Friday. However, they did not arrive until after 7pm, which is no fault of Freshly. Since we have little kids, we eat around 5-5:30. The meals were overall, okay tasting. Some better than others. We liked the steak probably the best. We didn't fully enjoy the others because my husband and I got sick, we think food poisoning. We're trying to decide where it came from and hope it wasn't from Freshly. We think it might have been the tea from a Mexican food restaurant since our kids eat everything we eat, except for a few meals from Freshly they just refused. Which honestly, that saves me no time if my kids won't eat it and they are actually really good eaters. Some have some interesting spices and some were a little unusual in taste.

Before we got sick and were unable to keep anything down for over a day, I had already ordered food for next week. Although my husband said he'd rather me just cook from now on. He does like food we make from Blue Apron and Green Chef. A few of the meals had a hospital-like taste to them. If you've ever eaten hospital food, you know what I'm talking about and I haven't eaten hospital food often. I'll come back and write another review after next week. I'm trying a few breakfast items as well. I LOVE this idea but the food has to taste good. I also am not saying Freshly made us sick, we really don't know, but when you try something new and end up sick, you always wonder if it was because of that. If you do want to try Freshly, let me know and I'll give you a coupon code to get some free meals. 

Kiwi Crate Review - Spheres and Their Peers

I have wanted to try Kiwi Crate for the past few years but honestly didn't want to spend the money on a monthly subscription and enjoy searching Pinterest and finding our own creative projects. Recently I caved and decided to try it. Our first box arrived about two weeks ago and had two activities to go along with the theme, Spheres and Their Peers. We made 3D bubbles and a Tangram game. A few things I really loved about the box was, (1) everything was truly included; and (2) Blue Rock could do everything pretty much by himself with some supervision from me. He's six and has done a lot of crafts and experiments so he's familiar with making things. 

Here's what we got in the box.

This is a picture of everything in the box!

The first activity we did was make the 3D bubbles. There was a book about spheres and their peers we read. Then he took the pipe cleaners and straws and made some 3D bubble wands. He mixed the solution in a big bowl and we took it outside to blow bubbles. Princess helped as well and loved dipping the wands in the bubble mixture. It didn't work as well as we had hoped. We also found out the smaller wands worked better than the bigger ones. It took about 20 minutes to put together and they played with it about 5 minutes before getting frustrated that the mixture wasn't great. Although he did have fun putting it together. We also left the bubble solution outside for a week and Blue Rock would pick it up and try and blow bubbles every time he went outside. So it wasn't that he wasn't interested in it, it was just frustrating to get it to work how we had hoped.

What was included in the 3D bubble shapes

Making some bubble wands

Mixing the solution

Blowing bubbles!

We also made sculptures with marshmallows and toothpicks. I have wanted to do this activity for a while as well but never got around to it. When I saw the theme of our Kiwi Crate I decided it would be fun to do around snack time. This was not included in the Kiwi Crate box but was simple to do, buy some marshmallows and toothpicks and have your kids create things.

Marshmallow sculptures

The other project in the Kiwi Crate was making your own Tangram game. He's been doing tangram puzzles since he was two so I thought he'd like this project. It included some paper to cut out two 3D shapes and wooden shapes to color and dye to make a game. 

Caden liked cutting the shapes out and making the cube and pyramid as well as coloring and dying the wooden shapes but he didn't really care to play the game much. I'll probably keep it a little longer and see if he gains any interest in it before tossing it.

Tangram Game

Cutting out the 3D shapes

Making designs with the white crayon before dying them

Dying the first few shapes blue

Colored Tangram shapes

Overall the kit was cute and we'll probably get a few more. It makes doing a craft with your child(ren) very easy. Caden also loved getting a box in the mail just for him!

Green Chef Delievery Review

I finally decided to try and home delivery meal service. The first one I am trying is Green Chef. The food is 100% organic, delivered right to your door, and mostly already prepped for you. All you have to do is follow the simple recipes and dinner is ready! Overall, we really enjoyed this past week's box of dinners. I love that it's all fresh and the simplicity of it all. Even though it still takes about 30-40 minutes to prepare. It would take longer if everything wasn't already ready and prepared for you. They truly are gourmet meals. We are doing the two servings and add extra sides or meat for the kids. The main con of this is the price. We got a promotional price of $9 for three organic dinners this week. After this week it will cost $82 per week for three meals. It's not the most economical but about the same or a little cheaper than going out to eat. Also it's all organic so I know we're not getting all of the GMOs and pesticides in the food.

I think we'll try this for a month or so and see if we continue to like it. I love not having to think about three dinners each week.

Here's what we made this past weekend.

Thursday: Summer Vegetables Soup with Lemon-Basil Pistou

Friday: Chicken Sausage and Mushroom Skewers, Roasted Carrots and Potatoes (rather than peppers), and Baked Beans

Saturday: Spice-Crusted Steak and Tabbouleh

Here's what the box looked and how it was packaged. It comes with freezer packs so you don't have to be home when it's delivered. 

Thursday: Summer Vegetables Soup with Lemon-Basil Pistou

Friday: Chicken Sausage and Mushroom Skewers, Roasted Carrots and Potatoes (rather than peppers), and Baked Beans

Caden loved helping make the skewers!

Here's how it came

I added organic carrots and potatoes (forgot to take a picture of the potatoes and added extra sausage)

Saturday: Spice-Crusted Steak and Tabbouleh 

This was our favorite!