Private Selection Holiday Part 2

In my last post I mentioned all of the private selection items I got free in order to participate in this campaign for bzz agent. Well, I finally found the olives! I bought the garlic stuffed ones as they seemed the least scary. They are pretty good, but too much garlic just to eat. I chopped them and put them into spaghetti sauce and they weren't bad. Here is just a little funny story about the private selection greek yogurt. Steve went to the fridge and saw we had some yogurt, so he decided to have one as a midnight snack. When I woke up and went to the fridge to get something to drink, I saw the opened package of yogurt sitting on the top shelf. When he got up he asked me if the yogurt in the fridge was expired. I laughed so hard!! It was so gross to him that he thought it was expired yogurt. I explained to him that it was greek yogurt. He said, "from now on I will make sure I am eating the right yogurt".

Old Navy sample and share for Crowdtap

As a member of crowdtap, I got to take part in the Old Navy style council sample and share. I got 2 coupons for free sweaters, one for me and one to give to a friend. I gave my 2nd coupon to my sis-in-law, Erika! I was so excited to get in on this opportunity! I love Old Navy and was so excited to get something from them for free! Especially a sweater, which comes in really handy when you live in Ohio! When I went to Old Navy, I was a little disappointed in the variety of sweaters they had available. There really weren't many styles to choose from, but they did have a wide variety of colors and prints for the styles that they did have available. Since I am nursing, I wanted a sweater with a high enough neck that I didn't have to worry about wearing a high necked camisole underneath. I ended up buying a red button up cardigan. I was really pleased with the high neck and the fit of the sweater! I love it! My sister in law ended up buying the same style cardigan in an animal print. It looks super cute on her! I think the sweaters are great and I know I will be wearing mine a lot!

Private Selection Holiday campaign

This is one of my most recent campaigns for bzz agent. I received a free package of water crisps, a coupon for a free jar of pasta sauce, a bag of coffee, and coupons for free deli sliced cheese, free olives, and cents off some greek yogurt. I used the pasta sauce to make spaghetti and meatballs since that is Steve's favorite dinner! I usually make my own sauce, but decided to give this a "go". It was very good! It had a better flavor than most jarred sauces, but I like chunky sauce and this was pretty thin. All in all it was pretty good, but I don't know if I would buy it again simply because of the price. Usually if I do buy pasta sauce, I buy the cheapest stuff and doctor it up to fit my tastes. I don't think I would pay the almost $3 price for this stuff. Next I tried serving the water crisps just with salsa. I LOVE chips and salsa, so I thought I would give these a try in place of my usual tostitos. They were very good! They were light and really didn't have much of a flavor, but that was good because the flavor from the salsa is plenty! Since,I got this box included already in my bzzkit, I don't know what the price is for these. I prefer saltines though, and those are really cheap! The coffee was pretty terrible. It was a costa rican blend. It was good when I first took a drink, but then it left a terrible after taste. I had to wash my mouth out with mouthwash after taking a couple of drinks because it was so awful! I wouldn't serve it to anyone else because I didn't like it. So, I didn't feel like I could force it on anyone else. I decided for my free cheese to get the garlic herb cheese. When I noticed the price, I was shocked. It was almost $5 a package. There is no way I would spend that much money on cheese when I can buy regular slices for $ .99 a package. I tried the cheese for sandwiches. It tasted ok, but the herbs were a little over whelming. It was certainly not a mild cheese. It was difficult to get out of the package because of all the herbs in it. It was very, very crumbly which made it difficult to deal with. I also tried it on my hot dogs. It was ok, but nothing compared to my 2% milk american cheese. So, I think I will stick to my american cheese, thank you very much! :) I have yet to find the olives at my kroger. I am not a fan of olives, but would like to find them and give them to someone to try. Besides, they are free. So, hopefully I will find them soon. Finally, I tried the greek yogurt. I bought 2 different flavors. Cran-raspberry and Strawberry. I will say I am not a huge fan of greek yogurt. It makes my mouth dry and always makes me extremely thirsty. However, because of the added fruit on the side it added some moisture and made it very tasty. When the fruit ran out however, I found it difficult to finish the yogurt. I definitely think that it needs more fruit so you can have some with every bite of yogurt. These are kind of pricey for yogurt, and since Kroger rarely makes coupons for their own products I don't think I would be buying it again. I must say I really enjoyed this campaign. I got so many things for free and many things to try. I enjoy trying new foods and am looking forward to trying new Kroger private selection foods in the future.

Update to Green Mountain Coffee Campaign

My last blog was about my latest campaign for bzzagent where I got to try some fair trade coffee for free. Well, yesterday I went to Target and bought a box of the pumpkin spice fair trade coffee. My husband wanted the new COD Black Ops II and I had a coupon for $10 off a purchase, so basically I got my coffee free. Well, I am glad it was free because it was not nearly as good as I thought it was going to be. I was so excited to try it, but was a little disappointed. There wasn't much pumpkin flavor, but the nutmeg was overbearing. Thankfully it was a light roast, so it wasn't a really strong coffee anyway, but I think the pumpkin should have been stronger and the nutmeg a little less so. It smelled a lot better than it tasted! I might give it another try with a different creamer to see if I can lighten up the taste of nutmeg, but I don't think I will buy this flavor again. I probably will go back to the caramel vanilla that I like so well! So,now I am trying to figure out if I can return the product (since I bought a whole box) even though I tried one. I contacted the company and next I will call Target to see if they will take it back. We will see!

Green Mountain Coffee(r) fair trade certified

My recent bzz campaign for bzz agent was for Green Mountain Coffee. I received 2 sample packs which included 4 flavors of the Fair Trade Certified coffees and also received several coupons for $1 off. Fair Trade Coffees not only taste great for me, but they are great for the farmers as well. It helps them get a fair price for their beans, improves working conditions,and assists in protecting the environment. The coffee I received was Wild Mountain Blueberry,Vermont Country Blend, Sumatran Reserve Extra Bold, and Colombian. My favorite was the Wild Mountain Blueberry. It smelled awesome, and while I don't think it tasted much like blueberry, it was still very good! I did not like the extra bold, but I am not fond of really strong coffee anyway. I usually like flavored coffees, like French Vanilla or Caramel Vanilla. I typically do like green mountain coffees and I am hoping to be able to try pumpkin spice fair trade coffee, because it sounds really good! K-cup packs are kind of expensive, so most of the coffees I get are free sample packs. I would not pay full price for any of these flavors because they just weren't my favorite. I am looking forward to trying some of the other fair trade certified coffee flavors.

Glade Expressions(R) Collection

So, this bzz campaign was for Glade expressions. They have new products that look like home decor and are supposed to blend in with your regular decor. I received coupons for a free oil diffuser and a free mist as well as many coupons to pass out to friends and family. It took going to a few stores to find the fragrances I wanted to try. Because of my allergies I had decided I wanted to try the Pineapple Mangosteen and the Fuji Apple and Cardamom spice. CVS only had the cotton scent, so i ended up going to Meijer. They had all of the scents in stock, so I got the pineapple mist and the apple oil diffuser. They really did go well with the decor and look pretty, but I was more interested to see what they would do to my allergies. I will start with the Pineapple Mangosteen mist. I put the mist in the bathroom because the generally the place where it is needed most! :) It does look good in the bathroom, but I find the holder kind of pointless. If I was going to be the one paying for it, I would buy just a spray and not pay the extra for the refillable one. It does look prettier I suppose, but in my opinion isn't worth it. The scent is nice. It smells very sweet! I like it as opposed to the oil diffuser because it isn't a constant stream of fragrance into the air, it only smells when you spray it.

The oil diffuser is the one I got in the fuji apple and cardamom spice scent. It did look nice with my fall decor and smelled good, but it was sooooo strong. I had it in the living room for less than 5 minutes and my eyes were burning and my chest was heavy. I ended up putting it outside. I think I will take it to church and put it in the mens bathroom! :) I think no matter what the scent, I wouldn't be able to handle the oil diffuser because of the fact that it is a constant smell and not just occasional. So, in conlusion, I would not be purchasing the oil diffuser and probably not the mist either unless it was on sale. I prefer my scentsy because I can use more food scents to which I am not allergic.

UNREAL candy. Candy UNjunked

So, this bzz campaign was for Unreal candy. I had seen some of this candy in the store, but had never tried it. The kit included a coupon for a free bag and several buy 1 get 1 free coupons. The first candy bar I tried was the caramel/peanut/chocolate bar. It was pretty good! I was surprised at how many peanuts were in it. I kind of expected them to skimp on those. The chocolate tasted a little "off". Kind of like cheap chocolate from the dollar store. I liked it though, and for the right price I would buy it again. They are 1.19 at the local CVS, and that seems a little ridiculous for a candy bar. I saw it on sale though at Kroger for .88 and that isn't too bad. The next kind I tried was nougat/caramel/chocolate. This was pretty good as well, but not enough nougat. The big selling point they are trying to get across is that they have NO artificials, NO Hydrogenateds, NO corn syrups, NO preservatives, and NO GMOs. All of that stuff doesn't really matter to me. Maybe it should, but it doesn't! The one thing I like about these candy is the fiber and protein content. They have 4 -5 grams of fiber in them, and I like to eat a high fiber diet. So, in conclusion, I would probably buy these if they were on sale, but not at their regular price. I don't think they are worth 1.19 each. Try them and tell me what you think! :-)