Category: For Moms

If you’ve been wishing for a mother’s ring, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, Silverado Jewelry makes lovely rings starting at just $24 for one to four birthstones. You can get up to nine birthstones on your ring for just $37.

These rings would be a great budget-friendly treat, especially if you’re still thinking about having more children and want to wait to buy a fancy ring until you’re positive your family is complete.

The mother’s rings from Silverado Jewelry are made with Swarovski birthstone crystals and wrapped with sterling silver wire. They come in sizes 4 through 11, including 1/4 sizes.

The rings are packaged in a velvet gift bag, which would make them lovely gifts for Mother’s Day. I’m thinking about getting one for my mom, simply because her hands are swollen from arthritis and most of the ring styles I’ve seen don’t come in a size 10 or 11.

Silverado Jewelry is owned by Stephanie from Newton, IA. She’s been designing jewelry for six years and is the proud mother of three young boys. In addition to selling personalized mother’s rings, she also makes birthstone jewelry, awareness jewelry, sports jewelry, and Christian jewelry. I think the autism awareness bracelet with a puzzle piece charm is especially pretty.

Silverado Jewelry charges a flat rate $5 shipping fee for all orders. Most orders ship within three business days. Shipments are sent through the United States Postal Service and will include tracking at no extra charge.

What do you think of Silverado Jewelry designs?

Photo credit: Silverado Jewelry

I bought this little compact during the summer when my skin was closer to normal than dry, and I wanted a quick and easy-to-use, all-in-one product with a healthy dose of SPF. I wasn’t wowed. First, what I don’t like:

It’s $42 but if I were to use it every day, I’d only get about a month, maybe a month and a half out of it.

After the first use, it gets this white film over the top that probably has some simple, not gross explanation, but it still doesn’t look like anything I want to swipe my sponge over and apply to my face. I’m guessing it has to do with the sunscreen.

The finished look of it was inconsistent on my skin. Some days it made my skin look absolutely flawless. Other days, it picked up on all the little flakes I couldn’t even see until I applied the makeup. It didn’t matter if I had exfoliated my face or not. I couldn’t really make sense of it.

Now for what I did like:

• I never got a sunburn while wearing it.
• It was quick and easy to use, and sometimes it did look amazing.
• The compact stays shut, so it’s easy to travel with.
• My skin didn’t feel dried out with it; it felt like a fairly moisturizing product, but I still wouldn’t wear it while my skin’s firmly in the “dry” category.
• It does a lot of the things it claims: provides natural coverage (not so sure about “buildable”), cut down on redness, cut down on dullness, and (often) gave me fresh looking skin.
• It didn’t irritate my skin, even when I wore it every day for several days in a row. With some foundations, I have to rotate them or my skin gets angry.

I’m on the fence about whether it plumped and disguised fine lines. It really did depend on the day. Sometimes the flakiness the makeup picked up seemed to outline fine lines in my forehead and make them look worse.

I think there are enough pros to recommend this to someone with oily or combination skin, but I’m not sure about recommending it to someone with normal to dry skin. If you have a Sephora near you, I do recommend giving it a try there.

Photo credit: Sephora

If you are a CNA, nurse, or other healthcare provider, FIGS is a website worth checking out. This company offers affordable scrubs and the chance to make a difference with your purchase.

For every set you buy, a set is donated to a healthcare provider in a low income county like Kenya or Botswana. To date, FIGS has donated over 5,000 sets of scrubs to healthcare providers in 10 different countries through its Threads for Threads program.

In low income countries, healthcare providers are often poorly paid and struggle to afford the proper uniforms. Wearing clean scrubs is essential, however. Clean scrubs reduce the risk of a patient going home with a hospital-acquired infection rate by 66%. They also result in millions of dollars saved from unnecessary treatments, which lets the hospitals focus on treating people who really do need help.

The FIGS women’s scrubs come in XS through 3XL. Available colors are black, burgundy, ceil blue, cement, and midnight blue. They have scrub tops, v-neck t-shirts, regular scrub pants, and cargo scrub pants to choose from. All items are designed to be comfortable, lint resistant, soft to the touch, and tailored to be flattering to a woman’s figure.

Scrubs for men are available as well, if your husband is the one in need of work attire.

Visit FIGS to check out the company’s scrubs and to learn more about their charitable giving initiatives.

Photo credit: Wear FIGS

I love a good chubby pencil lip color because they’re easy to stick in your pocket or toss in your bag on the go, they offer precision, and they’re usually fairly pigmented.

The new one from Revlon isn’t exactly a disappointment. The colors are absolutely gorgeous, they’re vibrant, and they look just how you’d expect them to based on the colors of the tubes (a little darker and less metallic).

I picked up Flirtatious, which is the only one I have so far, but they all seem to perform the same way and it all boils down to your color preferences. This is a deep, rosy pink shade with enough shimmer to catch the light without looking like glitter.

From a distance, it just looks glossy. You really have to look for the microshimmer pieces. The product doesn’t bleed on me, and it’s as easy as expected to get a crisp line since it’s just an oversized pencil. They’re lightweight and not even really noticeable on your lips once you’ve applied it. I love that. It might as well be a regular lip balm, but with intense color.

There are only three things that annoy me about the Color Burst Lacquer Balm:

1. It smells like mint. I’m not a huge fan of mint. I get why it makes sense to make something that goes near your mouth smell like mint, but unscented would have been fine.
2. The price is $8.99. It’s not a lot, but I still prefer to pay less when I’m at a drugstore. It seems like their prices are creeping up to some of the department store brands. For example, a MAC lipstick’s $15, and when I turn in six empty tubes, I get another lipstick for free. That makes them about $13 each in the end.
3. It doesn’t last all that long, and it’ll smudge off quite a bit of you bump it or kiss someone. If I don’t eat, drink, or lick my lips much, I might get one to two hours of wear from these. I know they aren’t designed to be stains, but I don’t think another hour or two would be too much to ask. Also, I have barely brushed my hand against the corner of my lip and ended up with a streak of color on my skin. My husband was going in for a kiss one day and I warned him about the color, so he barely touched my lips and still came away looking like I’d applied the balm directly to his lips.

I like the way these feel, but I’m not sure I’d buy more bold shades. I might pick up the lightest pinkish-nude shade because it looks pretty and won’t be such a big deal if it smudges.

Photo credit: Ulta

I tend to ignore a lot of Maybelline’s lip products for some reason, but I kept seeing this one and I was intrigued by the range of purple shades. Of the 20 shades available, five of them are purplish and vary quite a bit in wearability.

Being the makeup fiend I am, I went for probably the most conventionally unwearable purple shade in the bunch, Vision in Violet. I’ve heard good things about other shades, so I’m guessing that what I say here extends across the whole line of products, but I can only review Vision in Violet.

Unless you have a coupon or there’s a sale, you’re going to end up paying about $8.99 for each one of these, which I feel is a little expensive for such a small tube of gloss.

That said, I think if you are forced to pay full price for it, you won’t be that disappointed because the product behaves like a high end lip color. It’s opaque, creamy, moisturizing, and doesn’t bleed (at least not on me). It just feels good on your lips.

I got about three or four hours of wear out of it before I needed to reapply. It really clings to your lips, and I think this formula made my lips look plumper, even though it isn’t designed to be a plumping product. It’s thick, but doesn’t feel gooey. It feels more like a thick balm, or like if you put a light layer of Vaseline on your lips.

The packaging is pretty and no-frills. Because the interior of the tube is slanted at the bottom, when you first pick it up, it looks like a regular lipstick, as if you can see the tip of the lipstick through the tube. When you open it, though, there’s an unusual applicator that makes it easy to spread the product and follow the shape of your lip. It’s a plush, spade-shaped angora brush.

If I were to see these on sale, I would probably pick up a few more colors. The purple shade I have is very obviously violet, with blue undertones, but there are purples that veer more toward pink, as well as nudes, reds, pinks, and even an orange.

Photo credit: Ulta

I highly recommend the Epson LabelWorks Printable Ribbon Kit for any crafty mom. This unique gadget lets you make customized ribbons for gifts, party favors, home decor, handmade cards, or scrapbook pages.

If you’re using the standard font and not adding any symbols, the printer is very easy to use. If you’ve ever used any sort of label maker before, you should be able to pick up the basic idea with no problem. My nine-year-old borrowed it to make me a Mother’s Day surprise and he was able to print off a ribbon for his gift with no problems.

Printing ribbons with unique fonts and symbols takes a little more practice. The ribbon printer has 14 fonts, 5 different type sizes, and over 300 different symbols, so there are a lot of different options to sort through. The first few I tried didn’t turn out quite right, but I did eventually get the hang of it.

There are so many creative possibilities with ribbon crafting that I’m sure this is a gadget I’ll be using for many years to come. I’m hoping to find time to get caught up on my scrapbooking at some point, so I can make personalized borders for my pages.

Here is a ribbon bookmark I made when I was testing out the features of the printer:

Here’s an origami crane ornament with a printed ribbon hanger:

The ribbon printer comes with the black on beige ribbon shown in the photos above as well as gold on navy ribbon. A variety of other ribbon cartridges are available to purchase separately, although it makes me sad that there is no silver print option just yet.

As someone with a massive craft supply collection, I love that the ribbon printer comes with a sturdy plastic storage case that’s big enough to hold the printer, the instruction manual, and a few ribbon cartridges.

Visit the Epson website for additional product information or to purchase your own LabelWorks Printable Ribbon Kit.

Disclaimer: Product samples were provided by the manufacturer for the purpose of preparing this review.

Photo credits: Epson, Dana Hinders

The Pocksie Temporary Sticky Pockets seem like the perfect solution when you don’t want to carry a big bag (or an extra one) and don’t have enough pockets on your outfit.

When I had to carry around a diaper bag, I hated carrying my purse, too. I didn’t want to toss my wallet and everything else into the diaper bag, either. Something like this would have made it easy to keep my debit card, ID, and a key handy.

They won’t hold much since they’re only 4.1” by 3.35”, but sometimes you don’t need a lot when you’re on the go. The only real problem seems to be that they are only good for one use (you can’t leave them attached and wash the clothing they’re attached to), so if you like to use them very often it could get expensive. Six of them cost $9.95.

They’re also all beige, so they may not look so great when worn on the outside. Inside a jacket or on a pair of pants, hidden under a long shirt, are probably the best bet in most cases. You can also use them to add a convenient pocket inside of a bag or boot.

You can use these to go for a run or stick one inside a reusable grocery bag. They’re also good when you know you’ll be juggling a lot of other items (or a kid) but at least need your ID, debit card, and key. I think it’d be nice to see these in different designs that look cute on the outside of clothing, too.

Photo credit: Fashion First Aid

If you’re looking for unique casual clothes for summer and want to do your part to support independent artists, Redbubble is the perfect destination for your next online shopping spree.

This creative marketplace has over 10 million designs covering a wide range of styles. Designs can be purchased on t-shirts for men, women, and children, as well as stickers, cases for your favorite tech devices, and greeting cards.

Redbubble’s new addition for summer is the scoop neck shirt style for ladies and a unisex tank top style. Recently, I had a chance to review the scoop neck shirt featured in the photo above.

The cut of the shirt is flirty and feminine. The sleeves really show off your upper arms, so if you’ve been doing extra push ups lately, this is definitely the shirt for you. The length of the shirt itself is on the longer side, which is a plus if you would prefer to keep your tummy covered at all times.

I feel like the shirts run true to size. I requested a large, which fit as expected. The shirts are described as form fitting, but I didn’t feel like the sample I received was excessively tight. If you’re busty, however, trying to find an appropriate bra for this shirt is a bit of a challenge.

The neckline is wide in the front and the shirt dips down a bit in the back with a higher boat neck on the rear side. The only bra I had that would work was my custom strapless Genie Bra.

Visit the Redbubble website to see all of their t-shirt options or to check out the Books Are Better Than People design that I received.

Most designs will let you choose from several different shirt styles, if you decide you’d rather have a traditional unisex tee or a girly fit tee instead. You can also choose the background color of your shirt, which is a fun feature if you have a signature color that makes up most of your wardrobe.

Disclaimer: Product samples were provided by the manufacturer for the purpose of preparing this review.

Photo credit: Redbubble

I really like the idea of getting a discounted outfit per week, and I’m a sucker for workout clothes. I especially love it when there’s no surprise involved and I get to have a say in what I get. A serious say, not just something someone else picks out for me based on my stated preferences in their database (though that can be fun, too).

I gave Fabletics a try because they let you get your first outfit for $25. You get to pick it out. After that, it’s $49.95 plus free shipping every month. And again, you get to go and choose your outfit (some cost a little more than that, especially if they come with a third piece, like a jacket or scarf).

You go in, choose what you want, and place your order. If you don’t want to buy anything that month, you can skip that month online (no need to call) as long as you let them know before the 10^th of the month. If you don’t order anything or tell them you want to skip, your card will be charged and you’ll be able to spend it when you’re ready.

The quality of the workout clothes rivals anything I’ve purchased from Kohl’s, TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, Victoria’s Secret, or Old Navy. I received my outfit within 10 days. I really have no complaints. I loved the clothes, I love that you have choices, and I love that they make it easy to skip.

I’ll get nit-picky and say these negative things, just so you get a balanced view:

• I wish their clothing was a little more exciting. These are basics. They have pretty colors in some styles, but overall, there’s nothing that will make you stand out.
• They could use more long leggings in the place of some of the capris, especially paired with long-sleeved tops.
• You do need to read the reviews to see how the pieces have fit other customers. I went by the size chart and probably would have gone up a size had I read the reviews first (and if that size had been available, which it wasn’t, so I couldn’t exchange it). You’re able to add a whole outfit to your cart at one time, but to see any reviews, you have to click on the individual pieces and look for them there. That’s why I didn’t know there were even reviews on the site at first.
• It took me a few days to get a response when I emailed them. I expected a quicker response, but when they did get back to me they were polite and friendly.
• At first glance, it looks like you can cancel your account online, but you do have to call them. That’s an inconvenience.

From my experience, I recommend this company. I haven’t been disappointed. These are good quality, inexpensive clothes that quickly make it to your door. They seem to switch up the styles every month, too, so that keeps things fresh.

Photo credit: Fabletics