“Rinse. Recycle. Reimagine.” Unilever Program and Sweepstakes

“Rinse. Recycle. Reimagine.” Unilever Program and Sweepstakes

I am big on recycling products that can be reused. In fact, I keep a separate bag next to the garbage can in my kitchen that’s specifically for recyclables so that it can be put out in the bin every Tuesday when the recycling man comes. And because I love recycling so much, I wanted to share with you Rinse. Recycle. Reimagine,” a new Unilever program in partnership with Keep America Beautiful and the Ad Council, which is designed to educate people about recycling in the bathroom. Most people just toss their shampoo, body wash and lotion bottles from the bathroom into the trash because it’s just easier, which contributes to the already 29 million tons of plastic sent to landfills each year.

recycle-bathroom-products

Unilever – the maker of products including Dove®, Suave®, St. Ives®, Caress® and more – is stepping in to inspire Americans to clean up their act in the bathroom.
  • Beware the product hoarders: 1 in 5 Americans (20%) have more than 10 bathroom products in plastic bottles in their bathroom at a given time.
  • What gets Americans moving: Americans are more likely to go the distance to get a drink when thirsty, charge their phone, or answer a phone call than walk an empty plastic bottle from the bathroom to the recycle bin.
  • Battle of the sexes: More men (80%) reported recycling their empty bathroom bottles than women (74%).
  • Fueling the bathroom recycling gap is a combination of confusion, misinformation and a bit of skepticism.While the majority of Americans know where they should be putting their empty bottles, 42% claim that theydon’t recycle because they aren’t sure an item is eligible for recycling. Additionally, more than a quarter(27%) of Americans are not convinced their recycled items can actually become something new. To find outwhat qualifies items for recycling in your area and to find out what your plastic bottles could become, go to
    iwanttoberecycled.org/bathroom.

reimaginethat

Unilever needs help from you, America, to make this change a reality, and is asking people nationwide to step up and join the bathroom recycling movement. Go to brightfuture.unilever.us to learn more, or share a photo of your bathroom recyclables on Twitter or Instagram using #ReimagineThat and #Sweeps for a chance to win reimagined recycled prizes. Daily and grand prizes range from Unilever beauty kits to goods made from recycled plastics like an umbrella or a backpack. By taking simple steps at home – like recycling –Americans can also help the environment and address climate change.

Unilever #ReimagineThat Sweepstakes

To help promote the “Rinse. Recycle. Reimagine,” campaign, Unilever is hosting  the  Unilever #ReimagineThat Sweepstakes, with a grand prize of a $500 gift card. To enter, upload a photo on Twitter or Instagram that shows how you recycle in the bathroom with the hashtags #ReimagineThat and #sweeps and tagging @UnileverUSA. For each photo uploaded, you will receive  one (1) entry into that day’s Daily Sweepstakes Drawing and the Grand Prize Sweepstakes Drawing . The sweepstakes begins April 29, 2015 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time (“ET”) and ends June 9, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Daily prizes (42 in total) include Unilever products and goods made from recycled plastics like an umbrella or a backpack.

Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, 18 years of age or older as of date of entry. For more, check out the sweepstakes rules.

Visit BrightFuture.Unilever.us to learn how you can help bridge the gap in bathroom recycling.

Birth Story: My Little One Has Arrived

Birth Story: My Little One Has Arrived

The night before I went into labor, I wrote my previous post about how she wasn’t here yet and scheduled it to post the day she decided to come. Guess she was ready to make her appearance after all.

My Birth Story

At about 5:30 am I woke up to menstrual cramps that kept happening every 5 minutes. I knew this was probably going to be the day because this is the first time I’ve experienced the stopping and the starting of the cramps. I got up cause I couldn’t sleep through them, went and showered since people say that it helps, but it didn’t really.

I then started getting last minute things ready in my hospital bag and got on the computer to talk to my sister to ask her what I should do. At about 7:00, the contractions started to become more painful but weren’t exactly coming and going at the same intervals. If this wasn’t labor, I don’t know what is…

At about 9 am, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I woke my husband up and told him that we need to get ready to go and arrived at the hospital about 9:45 and checked into a birthing room at about 10 because the exam rooms were all filled. That was fine though since they checked me and I was at 5-6 cm, so I would have been staying anyways.

The nurse who was on that shift told me I should probably walk around some to speed things up, so we ended up doing that for about an hour; having to stop every couple of minutes through each contraction.

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Baby Girl Doesn’t Want to Come Out & See the World Yet

Still, no baby and I am 40 weeks 3 days now, so I guess she’s going to be fashionably late.

A couple days ago, I woke up at 5:30 with abdominal cramps or what I like to call diarrhea cramps so I went twice, yes TMI I know. And both times it was excruciating to get out of bed. Lifting your legs, moving your pelvis in any direction was extremely painful to me. Once I got out of bed, my back started hurting and I could barely move my legs forward to walk to get to the bathroom. At this point I am wondering what is going on and if this is the start of labor. I literally felt like I was 100 years old with how much I was hobbling everywhere. At 3 pm that day, I decided to I call the OB advice nurse and they told me to go to the hospital and get checked out just to be safe.

I arrived, got examined and the nurse said I was at 5cm and in labor according to the contraction machine. Thing is, all I feel is mild cramping in my lower abdomen above my pubic bone. I am not sure if those are labor pains as this is my first, but it certainly seems like it. I have not really experienced any of these Braxton hicks tightening and painful contractions that start up and go down that people talk about, so hopefully I am one of the lucky ones? At least, I hope so.

So they decided to admit me and put me in my room. The delivery doctor came an hour later, which happened to not be my original OB (go figure) and decided to check me again. He said I was more of a 4 and didn’t feel like I was in active labor because of how calm I was. Told me to go walk for a little bit and they would check me again and if I haven’t progressed, they would send me home. I walked for maybe 45 min cause I was waiting for my husband to get back from picking stuff up at home. Once I did that, the new nurse checked me who BTW was the most gentle with my lady bits. (my god some of those doctors are rough) and said I was still at a 4 and 85% effaced. I asked about the contraction machine and how far apart they were and she said 4-5 minutes.

I was like, so how am I to know when I am supposed to come back if these are mild and they’re coming that often and I’m at a 4? She’s like oh you’ll know. Yes I know labor is painful, but not everyone experiences that same amount of pain according to these labor stories I have read.

As I said before, I want an epidural if I can’t handle the pain of full-blown labor.  I honestly feel like I won’t make it there in time if I’m not even feeling too achy at 4cm dilated. Obviously I’ll feel them more and they’ll be a lot worse once my waters have broken but still, I don’t like pain and my anxiety of labor makes my little one’s heart rate jump through the roof. She was at 170-180 from her usual 140s half the time I was there at the hospital. I feel like it would calm me down and make me less stressed which in turn will not stress her out too much either.

Then yesterday I woke up feeling kind of moist, so I went to the bathroom and noticed I may have just had my bloody show. Either that or it’s from the 3 vaginal checks the previous day, 2 of which were rough. I don’t have a clue honestly since either or can cause similar things. I didn’t really have any contractions or pains to go along with it so I’m assuming it was just the latter cause both of my sisters said once they had theirs, they went into labor that day. /shrug

Here’s hoping today may be the day, so I can get this little girl into the world and out of my belly. This whole labor thing is giving me way too much anxiety with not knowing what’s going on with my body!

Nesting is a Real Symptom

Out of all of the pregnancy symptoms, nesting has been the one that’s most true, for me anyways.

Today the computer room disgusted me so I had to clean it up and organize it a bit. It’s still not to my liking but it’s better than it was before. I’ve been browsing Pinterest (very very dangerous by the way) and have been daydreaming of all the DIY home decor. Obviously these peoples homes are way nicer than ours but if we put forth the effort to spruce up ours, it could look just as nice, but damn, who has time for all of that?

My husband has a book shelf in our office with so many books on it that it’s overflowing and becoming an eye sore. I hate it, but there’s nothing I can do about it other than buy or create another book shelf. The hard part would be getting the same color wood as the original which is an ugly oak color and doesn’t even match his desk which is cherry BTW. I hate mismatching furniture. Yes, this has somehow become a hate post… No really, I just think it’s tacky when it doesn’t match and I am sure you all would agree.

Follow Jenny’s board For the Home on Pinterest.

On my For the Home Pinterest board, I spotted this no sew table cloth canopy that I want to do over the bed to make the room look a little more nice to go with our super nice master bathroom, which I thought would look great draping down behind our sleigh bed.

no sew diy bed canopy

See how awesomely adorable this is?

Then above our night stands, I’d like to create 2 of these sunburst mirrors. Apparently you can go to Home Depot or Lowes and grab some of their paint sticks for free and do it, but instead of taking all of their sticks since I’d probably need about 75, I’d just order them off of Amazon.

diy-sunburst-wall-mirror-1

photo copyright: shelterness.com

Even if I only do these 2 things, I think it would add that touch I am looking for in our master bedroom, but perhaps I shall wait until we get a King bed so I can make sure the wall hangings will be accurate, because my husband hates unnecessary holes in the walls.

For my home office, I am dreaming of this… but that’s all it will be, a dream, because I am not that talented and I doubt I’d find a desk that looks like this that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

home office

photo copyright: pinklittlenotebook.com

Look at how glamorous that would be. It’s so inviting and would make me actually want to come into the room instead of leave it. I’d get so much more blogging work done if I had an office like this.

Maybe one day, maybe…

but then my half would look nice and my husbands half would look horrid. Perhaps I can have him put a curtain up to separate half the room and to disguise what’s behind it. 😉

What DIY home decor have you found that you’d love to do?

Simple Blended Strawberry Raspberry Lemonade

Since it was a nice day out, I wanted something refreshing and since I couldn’t have a margarita, I decided to blend up some strawberry raspberry lemonade in my Ninja Blender and call it a mocktail for the day.

blended strawbery raspberry lemonade

All I used was Simply Lemonade with Raspberries that I got on sale at Safeway and some frozen organic strawberries that I got from Costco. This big 5lb bag of strawberries lasted me a long while.

Directions for Blended Strawberry Raspberry Lemonade:

2 cups of ice in the blender
3 cups of Simply Lemonade with Raspberries
1 cup of frozen strawberries
1-2 tsp of sugar if you don’t like it too tart
You can even add some actual raspberries as well, but I didn’t have any on hand.

 

This gave me 2-3 glass fulls in my 16oz mason jar that I purchased from Ross. Cute little 4 piece set for only $8 that I couldn’t pass up.

blended strawberry raspberry lemonade