Thursday, March 31, 2011

Working on some cool things

I realize that I have not been blogging much recently but I am working on getting some cool and fun stuff for the next month or 2.

We will have a couple of reviews and some fun and fluffy giveaways happening so spread the word and stick around.

I shouldn't be "missing" for much longer :-)

Friday, March 25, 2011

Attack of the .....SPIDERS!!!

I'm sure you are all wondering what in the hay this has to with cloth...well it does trust me.

I have a terrible fear of spiders, not much freaks me out or scares me but spiders are a totally different story! They can be tiny too and I'll still FREAK OUT! Well I left my diapers out on the line last night cause they weren't quite dry yet, no big deal, right? Wrong!

I went out there and there was a spider chilling on my diapers! My official spider killer (aka my husband) wasn't home so I had no choice but to swat the thing off. So I flicked it and thankfully it didn't do any of that hanging by a web deal and come back at me cause I would have been running screaming like a banshee!

Now bugs seem to be a thing that just kind of happens when you line dry, I had a few "hitchhikers" hanging out on a couple of the diapers. No big deal to at all, but that spider...omg...can't take it, Ya'll!! Wait it gets "better".

So I've taken all my diapers down and brought them inside and go to stuff them. There's no bugs cause I got them all off except the one lone sneaky spider!!!!! O.M.G. I put I spider in the basket with my diapers and carried a spider in to my house!!! The dang thing was a jumper too!! So this is what happened...I picked the diaper up flipped it around and got ready to stuff it, I had my hand in the pocket and that little 8 legged freak came scurrying out and across the diaper! Holy Moley!!! My heart, I swear, it skipped a beat the started racing and I froze! Freaking out! What if that thing gets on my hand or gets on my face?!?! So I go to toss the diaper and smash the spider and it JUMPS!!!! The dang thing jumps and I can't find it!! Nothing freaks me out more than knowing the spider is there some where and I can't find it!! So I'm grabbing everything tossing it aside trying to find the spider but not get it on me and the thing comes running out from under the couch..thankfully I had on shoes so I could stomp on it, if not there's no way I would have touched it!

So this leaves me with a dilemma, do I suck it up and deal with spiders or stop line drying? How in the world can the one thing that terrifies me show up in my diaper, which I love love love! I really don't want to deal with spiders but dang it I want to line dry the diapers...what do I do now?

Friday, March 18, 2011

Why Cloth is better and Disposables aren't

First let me start off by saying that every thing you are about to read is my opinions on cloth vs. disposables and also facts taken from The Real Diaper Associations "why choose cloth diapers?" article. I do not in any way look down on people for their choice in using disposables, that is their right to choose. I do however dislike disposable diapers and am very outspoken about it. I will be quoting things from The Real Diaper Associations article, I will not be writing word for word what they have written. Please note that facts are ever changing as more and more people switch to cloth. If you would like to read the full article written please go to http://www.realdiaperassociation.org/diaperfacts.php

Now that we got that out of the way, lets talk about diapers :-)

I have for many years used disposable diapers. If you have read my "about me " you know that I have 4 children and each of them at one point in time have been in disposable diapers. I made the choice to switch to cloth after our 4th baby was born. At that time we would have 3....yes 3 babies in diapers!! Can you imagine how much money would be spend every 2 weeks alone in diapers!! Craziness! According to The Real Diaper Association ( TRDA) the average child in disposables will cost $66 a month....for one child?! We had 3 in diapers!! That would have equaled out to be $198 a month. That's enough money for a power or cable bill or a week almost 2 weeks worth of grocers! Why spend that much money EVER month when you don't have too!!

I know when you look at the price of cloth diapers that you have to pay up front your jaw drops and your sitting there going "No way am I paying that kind of money for diapers!" Well guess what you are! In fact your spending way more than that $300 for that starter kit from kellyscloset.com when you continue to buy disposable diapers over and over and over. In a total of 6 months you have already spent $594 dollars on those disposables you think are cheaper then cloth. On kellyscloset there is a kit of 12  one size diapers for $235. That 12 pack of diapers you can use from the time your baby is born until the time your baby is potty trained. You wont honestly have to buy diapers again unless you really want one too!

If the money saving aspect isn't enough to make you switch lets talk about what's put into them nasty disposables diapers.  Let me tell you I had no idea the kinds of nasty chemicals that are put in disposables. The chemicals in disposables, I believe are the reason that my son kept getting rashes, we have not changed his diet since switching him to cloth yet his nasty rashes have gone away completely.
Now I know that this is not true for some people, babies can get rashes in cloth as well! TRDA even says that there is no significant difference in rashes when it comes to cloth vs. disposables, rashes can come from many things from the food they eat to a change in a breastfeeding mothers diet to a chemical rash(cloth diapers have no chemicals).
Ok back on track here, went off on a rash tan git there! Here is a list of the chemicals that are found in disposable diapers
- Dioxin, an extremely toxic by-product of the paper-bleaching process....this chemical has been listed as the most toxic of cancer linked chemicals
-Tributyl-tin (TBT) - a toxic pollutant known to cause hormonal problems in humans and animals
-sodium polyacrylate, a type of super absorbent polymer (SAP), which becomes a gel-like substance when wet. this is the chemical was found to have a  risk of toxic shock syndrome by increasing absorbency and improving the environment for the growth of toxin-producing bacteria.
Disposables have also been found to increase scrotal temperature in boys. Prolonged use will blunt or completely wipe out the cooling mechanism that is important for normal Spermatogenesis
~all of the above are facts listed on TDRA's article.

Lets take a look at the environmental side. Did you know that over 92% of disposable diapers in up in landfills? Well they do! Did you also know that on the back of most diaper packages it advices that all fecal matter be rinsed or removed from the disposable diapers BEFORE throwing them away? It does go check it out, I actually found a pack that advised that fecal matter be taken out of the disposable! Who actually does that any way ? I can tell you, no one. If there are actually people out there who do they are very few and very far between.
Now these poo filled diapers, and there's a lot of them, are estimated to  sit in our landfills for 200 - 500 years! Kinda gross if you think about it. Diapers that were on your bottom are most likely still sitting in a landfill even though you have been out of them for years! Heck your moms diapers are still sitting in there!
Back in 1988 it took nearly 300 million dollars to discard disposables ANNUALLY! Can you imagine what that must cost us now to do and how much money can be saved by a simple switch to cloth!
If you do use disposables did you know that 50% of your waste in disposable diapers.....seems like a lot to me! Those nasty disposable diapers are the 3rd largest single consumer items in our landfills! Not only do they sit in landfills for decades each year they use over 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstock and 20 pounds of chlorine. That's insane!!

Now I know everybody gets all "I don't have time to use cloth, I'm just so busy" ok I can understand how you can see it that way but I'm to busy to have to pack all 4 of my kids up in a car when I'm down to 2 diapers and run to the grocery store to buy diapers. I am dang sure to busy to go to change a babies diaper at 2 in the morning and go "Oh crap that's what I forgot to get today" and have to go to the store! Cloth diapers are so much easier than people think! You never never never run out of diapers when you use cloth! There's  no 2am store stops or crazy rush hour traffic runs to the store.
Yea you have to wash them, so what, you find time to wash your clothes right? It's so easy to care for cloth diapers, you rinse wash 2 times and rinse again. Now every one does there washes differently but that is pretty much how I wash mine. Rinse once, wash twice ( one cold, one warm wash) then 2 warm rinses and your done! Throw them in your dryer or hang them on a line! You don't even have to get the pocket diapers that you stuff, you can get a all in one! Those are already stuffed and ready to go! Blissful booty diapers are an amazing all in one!

So lets look really quick at why I believe cloth rules and sposies drool........... 
A. cloth actually costs way less!
B. cloth is natural and NOT stuffed full off nasty cancer linked chemicals that can cause hormonal problems and very possibly leave you will no grandkids!
C.  cloth diapers can be used over and over and over until they pretty much fall apart and need to be retired, they don't sit in a landfill for 200 - 500 years seeping poo and urine into the ground.
D. My most favorite reason why .....they are just way too darn CUTE and they can teach our kids things that disposables never could and never will .......but reason D. is a topic for another time :-)

Make sure you spread some fluffy love today!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Husbands and Fluff

When I first brought up that I was actually considering switch to cloth my husband said " that's fine if you want to but I'm not dealing with that, it's gross" I'm sure I am not the only one who's heard that! It seems to be what happens to almost every one who switches. First we have to convince our significant others that switching to cloth is going to be better all around. Then after that we start convincing them that the very adorable minkee diaper with polka dots is an absolute must!

I've noticed that with every one I've talked into...cause they all switch at some point lol...using cloth I hear the same thing "I can't buy those my husband would never let me". The dreaded "husband card" gets played every time with out a doubt! Every time though, the Fluff prevails and husband card is discarded.

But how do we get the hubbies to love fluff just as much as all us fluff addict mommies? For me it fell into place slowly after the switch! At first he was grossed out by poopy diapers, but poo's always grossed him out! However, he started noticing changes in the rashes our 2 year old use to get. Our 2 year old has extremely sensitive skin and he would get horrible rashes in disposables. They would get so bad he would bleed! As soon as we put him in cloth his rashes went away completely! I believe that's what won my husband completely over to cloth.

Now my husband is cloth crazy, maybe not as much as I am but he's still a fluffy lover! He spreads the love all the time now. He's talked to co-works who have just had babies and even to his single childless friends about cloth! We saw a pampers commercial one night that said something a long the lines of needing a good diaper and out of his mouths comes "what you need is a cloth diaper" I've never been so proud, lol.

My suggestion to anyone who's still trying to convert the hubby is to find a diaper system that is easy for him. Something that he's going to fall in love with. My husbands recent new fluffy love is the Blissful Booty AIO and even agreed that we need more of them :) Also make sure that he knows all the facts, I'm constantly finding new info and sharing it with my husband. A great place to find diaper facts is the real diaper association. They have loads on info that's important to know.

The one thing that I can't promise will happen is him taking care of the poo on a diaper. Even with my husband loving cloth he won't spray poo off. So if anyone figures out how to make that happen PLEASE let me know :)

Friday, March 11, 2011

Blissful Booty Cloth Diapers! Review and Giveaway! ~NOW CLOSED~

Recently I won a new diaper, a Blissful Booty AIO! I have fallen IN LOVE with this diaper!! The above picture is a celery colored BB! It's such a cute diaper! Not only is it cute but it's AMAZING! I've never owned a AIO ( all in one) until now! I've always been a little scared to try one but I totally swearby this diaper!

The Blissful Booty AIO has many amazing things going for it! The one that I love the most is the fact that my duaghter can sleep for 13 hours in this diaper with one extra insert and not leak at all! My pocket diapers have to be at least triple stuffed to go that long and my wee on is a heavy wetter!

    The BB has elastic not just in the back but also in the front to help prevent front leaks. This helps out greatly if you have a stomach sleeper like I do!
Not only do you have outer leg elastic with a BB but there is also a inner leg eslastic to futher help prevent leakage.
This hook and loop closure is my favortie! You know with other diapers they havethe velcro sticking out and it can rub on the babies skin and leave irritated marks. Not with BB's! They are in the fabric not sticking out! The tabs also crossover every easly giving the baby plenty of room to grow and still making the diaper a snug fit! It's laundry tabs are awesome! I've washed this diaper several times and never once has it gotten caught up in a diaper snake! The velcro stays firmly on the tabs.

The BB is one of the softest diapers I have felt besides a minkee! It's made made of no-pill microfleece and is super soft!

My little peanut is in a a size medium diaper (14-23 lbs) and she still has plenty of room to grow into them. She is built a little on the tiny side but she weighs about 18lbs and is almost one.
As you can see it fits snug but not too tight on the back, I have the hook and loop crossed over in the front. The leg's fit her snug but not to tight with plenty of room left her to grow! Look how cute that little peanut is with her BB diaper on and look how much room she has left to grow into it!!
The BB is also not a huge bulky fluffy diaper either, not that huge fluff is wrong or any thing I have several big fluffy diaper! The BB however is pretty trim but yet it's very leak restant!

Another great thing about the BB is it's awesome for people who might a little scared of cloth! There is no stuffing involved and it seriously goes on just as easy as a pamper or a huggie! Just pull the hook and loop as tight as you need and your done! This is the kind of diaper I need for my mom when she has the kids! No hard to figure out snaps, no inserts to pull out and no stuffing required. Grab the diaper and put it on, that's all you have too do, maybe hold a child still as well if you have a squirmy butt like I do!

You can purchase Blissful Booty AIO's and many other of her products here or you can keep going to enter for your chance to win one!

Giveaway!!!

I have been given the opputinuty by Cathy, the creator of blissful booty, to give away one of the fabulous MUST have diapers! The giveaway will be up for a weeks time, so next friday the 18th, one lucky person will win a Blissful Booty AIO (xs, sm, m, l or xl) in either celery or buttercream.

It's going to be super easy to enter! All I want you is comment below. That's it, you dont have to follow me unless you want to. So comment below and tell me why you would love to win this Blissful Booty for your little one and leave your email address with it!

According to Random.org the winner is.......
NUMBER 18!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS number 18!! I will send you an email and get you hooked up with Cathy, the creator and sponsor of this giveway!

Thank you to all you wonderful Ladies who took part in this giveway and a very HUGE THANK YOU to all of you who choose to follow my blog!  Stick around cause there will be more to come :)

If there are any questions feel free to email me at jess(dot)gumble(at)gmail(dot)com

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Giveaway on Adventures of mommies!!

Check them out Cloth lovers!! They are doing a giveaway of a zookies diaper cover! http://adventuresofmommys.blogspot.com/2011/03/giveaway-review-zookies-cover.html

Check out zookies websit and look at what they have! The have some very cute stuff!!
http://www.zookiescrafts.com/

Right now there are low enteries so get on it Ya'll!! There are several different ways to enter as well!! GOOOOOO

Monday, March 7, 2011

Line drying diapers ROCKS!

I've been CD'ing for almost a year now and I've always put my diapers in the dryer, until this weekend. My mom uses dryer sheets and I know that those can cause the diapers to repell and I was worried that it might ruin them. Didn't want that so I had my hubby "ghetto" rig a clothes line up for me!

It was raining on Sunday so....TADA....clothesline in the garage! Even without the beautiful outside background they still  look so pretty dont they! LOL!

Every time I walked in to the garage I got the smell of freshly laundered diapers! It was glorious! Plus there was no velcro snake! You know what I am talking about. You pull your diapers out the dryer and 5 of them are all stuck together and some are harder to pull of than others cause they have a different hook and loop closure. It can be disastrous to the diapers and the velcro!

 My indoor clothesline full of fluff gave me the ultimate feeling of crunchiness which got me thinking, why not have a clothesline at my house! I see a project for the hubby coming on!

Just think, if we put a clothesline I can save more money, at least on days when it's not raining, and get a little greener in doing so! It'll help keep stains down too, since sun bleachs them out! My PUL wont melt off my diapers either! Thankfully I've not had that happen, but I've read of it happening and would like to avoid that as much as possible! Plus no nasty velcro snake ruining diapers before their time!

I don't know what it is about being a "Prairie" wife but it really does make you feel pretty dang good!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

DIAPER STASH!!!!!!

All you cloth loving mommies know you have one and one of your favorite things to do is........ SHOW IT OFF!!  I know I love love love to show mine off! I will get almost all of my, ummm my daughters, diapers washed, dried and stuff then I'll stack them all pretty and take pictures! Lets not forget the modeling pictures that I must have of my daughter in all over her new diapers! Yup I'm crazy about cloth, don't deny it, you've caught fluffy fever too ;-D

So what's in your stash?? I have Bumgenius, Happy Heinys, Ebber Deeber, Rumpsacks, kissa fitteds, Pouponds, Thirsties Duo Wrap , and a   blissful booty AIO !
There is about 32 diapers total to my stash so far. I have the need for more. Maybe "need" isn't actual the right word to use since the ones I do have work great and serve the purpose I need them too and I don't have to wash them every day.  As I have stated before cloth diapers are ADDICTIVE!! 

The above are my recent Ebber Deeber buys! I love these diapers! They are so cute! The inside are pink minky, which as you know is super soft!

My newest purchase of beautiful Rumpsacks! These are medium in size and baby O is still snapped in on the smallest setting. She's 11 months old too! They fit great and are super cute! They are saved the day from mass blow outs as well!
This beautiful present, I won on a giveaway. This as you can see is a blissfulbooty AIO! Which I am so in love with!! The inside is uber soft and it has elastic at the front and gusses in the legs for extra leak protection and the coolest thing....it drys just as fast as my pockets!  
I could definitely keep going but these here are some of my most favorite out of my stash. So please do share, what's your favorite diaper(s) out of your stash?

An absolute MUST.....

So I've never traveled away from our house for more than a day, leave in the morning come home that night, with our cloth so I've never had the need to use liners. At home I have one of those detachable shower heads so I dump what I can in the toilet and rinse what can't be dumped off with the shower head. 

Well I don't have liners and my moms house lacks a detachable shower head! As you can very well imagine last nights poo clean-up detail was a wee bit of a challenge for me. As you all know poos don't always come out solid and yesterday happened to be an un-solid day. So no dump and done going on for me. I tried to scrap, which really didn't do much but smooch it down. So I thought maybe I could use the shower head. Yea that was a big fat NO! It was a mess! I ended up having to clean out the shower when I was done! It was horrible!  Detachable shower heads are easy you just rinse the tub too, well not with a standard shower head! I'm pretty sure you get the picture.

I was thinking while I was cleaning up the mess that when traveling it's pretty much a necessity to have liners for your diapers! My problem is I have no liners! However what I do have is...extra inserts! So I decided to make the rest of my stay here a little less challenging and stuck an extra liner in Olivias Ebber Deeber minky diaper today.

Now for some reason, most likely the comfy factor that minky brings, these are O's favorite diapers to poop in! Sure enough right at nap time I changed her and ...... surprise.... she'd poop!

It was so insanely easy to clean up!! I just took the insert out of the diaper, which had all the poo on it, and shock the poo off the insert and into the toilet! The diaper needed no rinsing what so ever!

So if you're in a pinch and you have forgotten your liners or maybe you don't have any yet, like myself, and your looking to make your diaper cleaning a little easier and less messy when your away from home with out your diaper sprayers, take some extra inserts!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Traveling with cloth!

This weekend we are house sitting for my mom and have brought our cloth with us. I'm very against using disposables now and refuse to switch just for a weekend. Thankfully for me, I have a very wonderful mother who doesn't mind that I use her washer and is in no way freaked out about me washing the diapers in her washer. I think it might help that she actual had to take over cloth diaper duty for a week for me once. So she knows the in and outs of how cleaning a cloth diaper works.

Anywho, We have traveled with our cloth today using a suite case. We dont have a dry/wet bag so a suite case is the best that we could do and it works great, actually!
 That is how we started out packing them. They all went into the actual suite case and as you can see left no room for any clothes!
 So out with another suite case? Nope, not on my very smart and inovative 3 year olds watch! He is a very smart little cookie and suggested that daddy put the diapers in the mesh part of the suite case!

All 28 of the clean diapers fit! Now I would love to have a dry bag to put all my clean diapers in to travel with but if you dont have one you make due with what you have, right? So we did! I am also pleased to say that even after being set up right in the back of the van and  driving down roads, turning sharp corners and what not, every single diaper stayed right where it was! Good job suite case on keeping things is place!!

For those of you wondering what I'm doing with all the dirty diapers since I dont have a wet bag..... I have brought my pail and pail liner with me!

Yes I am that strongly dedicated to my cloth diapers!!

So here is my question for you guys, what is your favorite wet/dry bag? Which one would you most recommend for travel to any one? Not even just for travel but for the house as well? I would love to get some and try them out!

Friday, March 4, 2011

How this crazy cloth addiction began!

Every body always wonders what makes a person switch to cloth. Where you cloth diapered a child? What would make you wanna clean dirty diapers? Well for us at first it was the money saving aspect. We had 3 in diapers in a one income based family! Talk about needing to save money! I had heard friends talking about cloth diaper " oh they are great, you save a bunch of money" "no nasty rashes and blow outs don't happen!"

Honestly at first I thought they were all nuts and I told them so! My first reaction to cloth was "That is just gross!" What I pictured cloth diapers as was the old prefold with the pins no leak proof anything, having to hand wash poop off of everything...gross! However cloth has come so far in the past several years! I clearly wasn't very educated about it. I realize this now then I really didn't care.

So I started seeing pictures of all these adorable cute fluffy diapers! Which got me thinking, maybe this isn't that bad, maybe I should at least just try it out and see if I like it. After it would save us tons of money, since we were having to buy diapers every 2 weeks for 3 kids! I started asking questions and getting answers, I have an amazing set of friends who cloth diaper and were more than willing to fill me in on things like washing them and how easy they actually are to use.

After talking to the hubby and debating with my self a bit I decided to jump into the deep and see if I could swim. What I found was I could swim and I dang sure like swimming! Cloth was so easy to me!!! The laundry wasn't bad, which was a major plus! I have 6 people I have to wash clothes for so I was kinda freaking out about adding diaper but it was honestly not bad! Plus my son, who had horrible rashes in disposables stopped getting rashes! I honestly never worried about the diapers leaving my washer gross cause lets face it kids get dirty and boys get really dirty and if my washer is still clean after their messy clothes it's gonna stay clean with diapers too! He would get them so bad in disposables his poor little butt cheeks would bleed. As soon as he got into cloth NO MORE RASHES!! Just like that! I was amazed! Even better than no rashes, yep there's better, all 3 of my kids in diapers could wear the same one! Just adjust the rise setting and BOOM the 12lbs baby can fit into the diaper the 25lbs toddler was wearing 2 days before!!

The one thing I was not banking on was....how ADDICTIVE they are!!!
Unless you use cloth, right now you're thinking I'm totally wacked! Addictive?! How the heck can a diaper you put on a babies butt, that gets peed and pooped in be addictive?! Let me tell you how ;) First you start with you're small stash of diapers, I had 12 to begin. Then you want to get more so you don't have to wash so much, so you start searching. When you start you find that there is a HUGE world of cloth out there and OMG some the dang cutest diapers you will ever see! And ladies and gentlemen that's when it happens. The moment the words "omg that's so cute, I want that" you have been snagged and drug into the addiction of cloth diapers! Now you want every cute diaper you see and you will do just about anything to get it! You don't stop looking either, you will look everyday at first at every site you can find that ha cloth! When you find a new site you get all excited and will comb over and drool about all the cute fluff! When your fluffy mail comes it's like christmas! You can't wait to rip into the package, some times you don't make it down your driveway or you book it running inside so you can open it!

Like I said when I started out I started with 12 and now close to 40! Yes, I want more and I plan on getting more :) And this is how I became the crazy cloth lover I am today..