Hobo Mama Reviews: Giveaway: Sodastream Fountain Jet @ Rockin Mama …
It’s that time again. Hey, I’m going to keep entering for one of these suckers until I win!
Yes, Rockin Mama is giving away a Sodastream Fountain Jet home soda maker!
My husband and I do our part to recycle as much as we can, but reusable is really the best eco-friendly option. According to the site, ”the average American consumes nearly 600 bottles and cans of sparkling water and soda every year.” Much of these end up in our landfills (since we’re not a society that does a lot of recycling). Can you imagine not having any plastic bottles or aluminum cans? And, when you figure out that you could make a liter of sparkling water for 20 cents or a 12 ounce can of soda for 25 cents, it makes eco AND financial sense to use Sodastream.
Enter fast at Rockin Mama by Dec. 19.
Life's A Streak Run: Instilling self-sufficiency one baby step at …
Tim is the kid who will ask me to put ice in his drink, hand him a fork, fetch the butter out of the fridge. When it’s homework time, he’ll ask me to get his backpack for him. When he needs a shower, he wants me to put out a towel. He’ll never do anything for himself that he thinks there’s a chance I’ll do. One day he actually handed Holly a used Kleenex to throw out for him rather than crossing the room to the wastebasket. Normally the doting younger sister, she responded by exploding, “Gee, Tim!” with uncharacteristic exasperation.
So when the seltzer maker arrived, it presented a perfect opportunity to change Tim’s habits a little. Tim loves seltzer; it is just about all he drinks. He learned to use my parents’ seltzer maker and then they gave us our own, so from the moment it arrived we declared that seltzer making was Tim’s job. By deliberate choice, I haven’t even learned to use the seltzer maker. Sometimes when Tim drinks the last of the seltzer he goes days on end without bothering to make more, and sometimes he doesn’t hydrate as much as he should during those days. But I refuse to cave on it. The seltzer maker is his domain; when he wants seltzer badly enough, he makes more. It’s a small victory.
One day when Tim was in preschool, I stopped off at a yard sale. The merchandise comprised mostly sports equipment; I had been hoping to find some baby toys for Holly. Although I was the only customer, the woman running the yard sale called her son over, who was about ten. “Ian, go see if we have any baby toys in the garage,” she said. In retrospect, it seems trivial enough, but that made an impression on me. She wasn’t giving him a regular chore to do like making a bed or taking out the trash; she was just delegating a simple task to him that she could have just as easily done herself, but demonstrating to him that there was no reason he couldn’t be called into service. Similarly, I remember a teacher at Tim’s daycare when he was a baby who used to often ask preschoolers to fetch specific toys for the babies, and I could see it was not because the babies actually needed those specific toys but just to show the bigger kids the ways they could help out.
Tim is 11 now, and like most boys his age, there are certain chores he’s expected to do around the house. He does those chores, but ensuring that he makes his bed and puts away his clean laundry is of less concern to me than just seeing him be resourceful enough to take care of himself. The seltzer maker is a small start. Sometimes now I ask him to help Holly with something when I could just as easily do it myself, just for the sake of promoting the behavior I want to see.
Over the summer Rick taught him to operate the riding mower himself, and again, it was progress. Most kids love using riding mowers, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice on his part, but it means he’s now responsible for mowing the side lawn. Again, a start.
Partly it’s a matter of training myself to expect more. It’s really no trouble to hand Tim a fork rather than telling him to get it himself. But then I remind myself that this is part of a continuum. He needs to develop self-reliance, even if it’s not instinctive to him, even if he’d much rather be served. So I frequently remind myself, “Let him do it for himself. Ask him to help you with this. Show him that he can take care of it on his own.” Even if he has to force these behaviors and will forever be someone who would rather be served than help himself, I’ll know I tried to do the right thing.
Have You Heard of SodaStream?
Today I wanted to take a moment to talk about a great product we just began carrying in our store called SodaStream. Many of us in the store bought these as soon as they came into the store (and we all love them) while we have also been getting rave reviews from our customers. SodaStream in short, is a soda maker you can use in your home. These little devices are incredibly capable and can perform so many tasks that I wanted to do a quick little write up about them.
With SodaStream, making carbonated water and soft drinks is simple. These great soda makers can turn tap water into sparkling water in under 30 seconds, with no clean-up. But that is just the tip of the iceberg with these devices, they offer a large variety of flavoring syrups so you and your family can make all of your favorite drinks. Additionally, SodaStream products are designed with reusable plastic bottles so it greatly reduces the amount of waste that comes with regular soft drinks and sparkling water. Since we aspire to create beautiful living spaces here at The Picket Fence we love the fact that they come in a variety of colors and silhouettes, so you’ll be able to find a soda maker to match any decor.
These are also a great way to save a some money, the SodaStream website says that if you were to use SodaStream to make the same volume of liquid that you would find in a regular soda can, it will cost you 25 cents. And just because you are making your drinks at home doesn’t mean you missing the flavors you can find at the store. SodaStream has a variety of flavors you can choose from to make your drinks. They offer over 30 to choose from, including favorites such as Cola, Lemon-Lime, Orange and Root Beer, mixers, like Ginger Ale and Tonic in both regular and diet or you can try their fruit creations, including Orange Mango, Diet Pink Grapefruit or Cranberry-Raspberry. You can even experiment with mixing flavors to see what you can come up with (I quickly learned that I am not the next soda genius and now stick mostly to the regular flavors 
)
The benefits of these great little machines don’t stop there, another great factor (one of the most important for me) is the health factor. In an average cola soda:
- Pepsi has 100 calories, 27g carbs, 27g sugar, 25mg sodium, and 25mg caffeine.
- Coca-Cola has 100 calories, 27g carbs, 27g sugar, 35mg sodium, 23mg caffeine.
- SodaStream cola has 34 calories, 9g carbs, 9g sugar, 2mg sodium, 15mg caffeine.
You can clearly see that if you drink any quantity of soda you are going to benefit greatly from the reduction in calories, carbs, sugars and sodium that comes with making your own soda.
I could go on all day about these wonderful little devices, but I’ll just leave you with a little tidbit about their eco-friendly aspects. SodaStream soda makers are an “Active Green” product, meaning that consumers are actively reducing their CO2 footprint every time they make soda or sparkling water at home instead of buying it from the store. The more the system is used on a daily basis, the more CO2footprint the user actively saves. (This differs from “Passive Green” products, which use green-friendly production processes, but their products are not inherently helping the consumers save on their daily footprint.) SodaStream also saves on bottles and cans and helps reduce trash or the energy it takes to recycle.
The Picket Fence is very impressed with this product. We have used it ourselves and we love the great soda and sparkling water that these little machines make! We are working on getting these products on our website as I write and if you get a chance to use one of these soda makers we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
