To celebrate, the Holland household invited some of our favorite friends over for a little candy taste test. UNREAL candy recently sent us a big box of their candy to see how we felt about candy UNJUNKED. UNREAL came about after its 13-year-old founder asked a simple question ... How do you reinvent candy? 

This has been a question on my own mind after I made the connection between my oldest son's nightmares and major candy producing holidays. The Other Sarah is the one who finally helped me see that the chemicals and dyes were probably the culprit. After asking the question on Facebook and finding out several of my friends' childrens had nightmares after consuming fake dyes and sweeteners, I was convinced.

So, in came UNREAL, candy free from artificials, hydrogenateds, corn syrup, chemicals, GMOs, and promising no sugar overload. I was hooked BUT the question was would our tiny taste testers be as happy without the bright colors and corn syrupy sweetness.

We gave each child sample of UNREAL products including their version of M&Ms, Peanut M&Ms, Milky Way, Snickers, and Reese's. The candy bars were the first to go, followed by the peanut butter cup and the candy-coated chocolates.

We tried desperately to get feedback on which candy they liked best, if they noticed any difference between UNREAL and "regular" candy, but they were too busy chewing and then crying when we refused more samples.

I'm going to go ahead and call that a success. The adults present also scarfed up the samples with the peanut butter cups winning crowd favorite. No one cared about the colors. No one complained about the less sugary taste. Everyone left happy. 

UNREAL Giveaway

UNREAL is giving away one bag of each of their products to one Salt & Nectar reader so you can conduct your own candy month taste test!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

No purchase is necessary. Odds of winning are based on number of entries received. This giveaway is only open to U.S. residents 18 years or older. The giveaway will run from now until Wednesday, June 27th, 12:00 AM CST. One (1) winner will be chosen at random. 

Salt & Nectar was not paid to host this giveaway.

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

For most of us, swimming and water activities are one of the great pleasures of summer. We have to cool off from the heat, right? But I was recently reminded that splishing and splashing aren’t always fun and games. Despite working as a lifeguard for 5 years, starting when I was 15 years old, and being trained as a water safety instruction, I really have general memories of all the tell tale signs of what to look for when a child—or any person—is in distress. And I couldn’t have appreciated this reminder more about what to look for from Mario Vittone of Slate.com.

In “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning,” Vittone reports that, “Drowning is not the violent, splashing call for help that most people expect…. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for is rarely seen in real life.”

Rather, drowning swimmers generally are unable to scream for help because their body has prioritized breathing over speaking, especially as their mouths rise and fall above the water’s surface and it’s their only chance to gasp for air. A person in trouble also tends to move vertically up and down in the water, like they’re bobbing, trying to push up to the surface for air before submerging. Make sure to read this article for all the signs of the Instinctive Drowning Response.

Because drowning is one of the leading causes of death among children and toddlers and most commonly happens in swimming pools, I felt it was something I needed to re-educate myself on. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, parents should practice “touch supervision” when their littles are in the water. It even recommends enrolling children ages 1 to 4 in swim lessons. This is something I plan to do with the Little Dude this summer to increase his comfort level with pools and the beach and make him more aware of water safety (as much as possible at his age). Not to mention, it’s one of the “layers of protection” recommended for having safe fun in the sun.

Although we don’t have a built-in swimming pool that requires a surrounding fence, inflatable pools still pose a risk because kids easily topple head first into water after leaning on their soft sides—and can drown in as little as two inches of water. Also, I do remember from my days wearing the red swimsuit, that floaties or water wings are discouraged because they give kids a false sense of security and ability. If you need to use a flotation device, make sure it’s an appropriate life jacket. And, of course, I am going to take a CPR refresher course.

What summer and swim safety tips do you follow to ensure the season is filled with nothing but fun?

~ The Other Sarah

If you're not one of the 9 million people who have seen this Ted Talk, now is the time.

A new twist on I Spy.

Father's Day DIY.

French parents believe that hearing the word "no" rescues children from the "tyranny of their own desires."

Yes, please.

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

Last year Easy Canvas Prints asked if I would be interested in a free photo to canvas for myself and for our readers. Of course, my answer was HECK YEAH!

I immediately called up my the always-talented Emilee Gray Photography and got a new family portrait taken for our the canvas. However, I knew I had the idea for a while that I wanted to embellish the canvas somehow. One day as I was wasting precious hours of my life looking through projects on Pinterest I realized I was pinning one yarn art project after the other. 

LIGHT BULB! I would embellish the canvas with a yarn art initial!

Follow along below for how I did it and how you can do it too.

Supplies: canvas, spray adhesive, cork tiles, linoleum tacks, yarn, and stencil

First, I printed the initial to my desired size - making sure it fit on my cork tile.

Next up, I used spray adhesive to mount the cork tile on the back of the canvas. After lining up the printed initial and taping it down, I began hammering the tacks around the outside of the initial.

* Tip: I actually didn't need to hammer and by the end was just pushing them through with my finger.

After I had completed my letter, I tore the paper out from around the tacks. I held them down with tweezers as I pulled. In retrospect, I think it might have been easier to just pull all the tacks out with the paper and then put them back in place. Aw well..

Then, I took my yarn and wrapped around the outline of the letter first before going back and wrapping the middle section. 

VOILA! Embellished canvas!

Easy Canvas Prints Giveaway

Easy Canvas Prints (also the awesome team behind your banner needs!) is giving one Salt & Nectar reader a 8x10 canvas!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

No purchase is necessary. Odds of winning are based on number of entries received. This giveaway is only open to U.S. residents 18 years or older *excluding Hawaii and Alaska due to shipping costs. The giveaway will run from now until Wednesday, June 19th, 12:00 AM CST. One (1) winner will be chosen at random. 

Salt & Nectar was not paid to host this giveaway.

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

Image by Elizabeth Antonia of the littlest.

Elizabeth Antonia of the littlest created a beautiful ongoing series looking at parenthood/childhood month by month starting at birth.

An ode to siblings (and a good case for making babies).

Chic but pretty cheap sunglasses. 

I could wear this everyday (and the fashion police wouldn’t cite me for public display of pajamas). 

Work v. Family: When will corporate America see the light?

Slumber party, anyone?

I like thinking of goal getting as an art.

~ The Other Sarah

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

Last week The Other Sarah pledged to make the most of summer with some guiding principles to help her make the most of the season. Now it's my turn to take summer by the horns and wrench every last bit of fun from the next couple of months.

I've loved the idea of a summer list since I first saw it on Meg Duerkson's blog whatever... several years ago. I waited until Griffin was old enough to really appreciate the anticipation - not to mention old enough to develop his mother's love of a good list. 

So, as school was wrapping up we sat down with a couple of our good family friends and made a summer list. Every year I have grand visions of accomplishing all the essential summer tasks like making our own ice cream and playing putt putt but often the begnning of season goals get lost among the everyday tasks and obligations. Not to mention, there are some bigger things I've been wanting to do forever that keep getting put off for another day.

Well, not this year! 

I designed a fun poster with all our summer list essentials and placed it in the frame in our kitchen that usually holds our family purpose statement.  That way we can just use dry erase markers to check off the items as we go along. 

I am happy to say we're already putting a serious dent in our list. Nicholas and I took a sunset canoe trip. We've already had s'mores multiple times and have enjoyed an outdoor movie, a nice hike, and a trip on the pontoon!

What about you? What's on your summer list?

If you like my summer list, you can click here for the PDF to print out and hang on your own wall!

~ Sarah Stewart Holland

He's not using big boy profanity (although there are moments I definitely see parallels between three year olds and frat boys...a post for another day). Rather, he's seemed to adopt a new vocabulary from playground friends and movies he has never seen - like Iron Man, Superman, and anything with "violence" (a new word of his) and bad guys.

I know he is trying to make sense of the world by making bold statements and measuring our reactions. I also know this provides me with the opportunity for a teaching moment (when is parenting not one?!). Except I am not sure how to address his newfound interest in playing bad guys and telling people that he is going to "shoot them up."

I grew up in a house where you don't point pretend guns at people or shoot your enemy as part of imaginative play. So, I think I am automatically starting out from that place -- a little uncomfortable with cops and robbers type games and not quite mentally equipped to understand the enduring allure of these activities to little boys.

So, I tell him we don't point guns at people in our house and that we keep our hands and words that hurt to ourselves. Over and over again. I am no match for his classmates whose parents allow them to watch adult action films and reenact them at recess.

My question is: How do I appropriately communicate our family's approach while not encouraging further interest in this type of play? He doesn't watch these movies or cartoons; doesn't own action figures; and doesn't even know what a gun literally is. Do I ignore it and let this phase pass? Am I overreacting?

Dear Friends, what say you?

~ The Other Sarah