Healthy Alternative: Soda

Here is my first Healthy Alternative post. I'm very excited to share this new journey with you. I am hoping you find my reviews useful when deciding what recipes and products work best for you.

My first Healthy Alternative is a product. It makes a good soda alternative. Sparkling Ice is a naturally flavored sparkling mountain spring water that has zero calories. It contains vitamins and antioxidants. Looking at the nutrition facts on the back of the bottle, I was surprised.

In comparison to my caffeine free Pepsi which has 150 calories per serving, 30mg of sodium, and 41g of Carbohydrates. Sparkling has none of any of those bad things. In fact it has vitamins D, B3, B6, B12, B5, and Biotin. The Pepsi contains things like high fructose corn syrup and Sparkling Ice has juices to sweeten the taste.

I had the Coconut Pineapple flavor which was pretty tasty. Would of been better if there was rum in it but still it was a great refreshing carbonated drink. There was green tea extract in there as well which gives it that antioxidants boost. The only problem I found with it was it had yellow #5 and yellow #6 in it. These are the same dyes that are why I have stopped eating the US version of Kraft Mac and Cheese. I failed to read the whole label before buying and drinking.

There are plenty more flavors to try which I plan on doing and I will continue to post my reviews on those and other healthy alternatives.

Thank you for reading. Comment below with any suggests on healthy alternative for me to try.

Wool dryer balls

With the decision to cloth diapers I had to come up with some money saving techniques since our apartments washers and dryers are expensive. As it is the dryer doesn't dry very well. I needed something that will not only reduce the moisture so we aren't drying the same load over and over again. But also, with the cloth diapers you can't use dryer sheets and fabric softer.

With this in mind, I  researched what other moms were using. I found the instructions to make wool dryer balls. Hubby was skeptical but after forgetting to put the dryer balls in the dryer with a recent load of laundry, he noticed how useful these dryer balls are.

It's over simple to make these dryer balls.
First buy some 100% wool yarn. Make sure this is not machine washable or
Superwash.

Next you start the ball by wrapping the yard around you finger a few times. Pull the yarn off your finger but hold it tightly.Then start wrapping in the other direction. Continue wrapping the yarn around and around as you turn the ball to create a tennis ball or softball size ball of yarn.

Once you have the ball of yarn the size you want take a crochet hook and insert it through the center of the ball. Hook the loose ends of the yard in the hook and pull it through the center of the ball to secure it.

Once you have made 4-6 balls of the yarn, put them into a panty hose tying a bit of cotton/acrylic yarn between each ball. Don't use the wool yarn as it will felt around the panty hose.

Next you take the caterpillar of balls of yarn and put it through a wash with towels. Wash in a hot wash cycle with a cold water rinse cycle. Dry your yarn caterpillar with your laundry using the hottest dryer setting. This should felt the wool together.

Take the balls out of the panty hose. If you can run your fingernail over the ball and the yarn does not separate then it's felted together. If not, then place the balls back into the panty hose and tie them off again as you did before and put them through the wash again. Can take up to 6 times depending on the yarn.

You can add essential oils to the balls but I didn't.

That's that, easy as pie.

Throw 4-6 of the wool dryer balls into each load in the dryer. It will refresh your towels without effecting the ascendancy of the towels like commercial products do. So don't just assume this is just for cloth diapers. This will help anyone.