I won!

One might think it's quite a coincidence that today I won a RearZ diaper cover from a contest on the company's Facebook page, since my last blog post was a review of RearZ diapers! You might think that...or you might think something fishy was up. It's actually not really a coincidence and not fishy at all.  As I said in my review, RearZ is a rather small Canadian company. Their products and website seem to be undergoing constant renovation right now, and they were likely in need of some customer reviews for some of their newer products. The contest required that participants leave a review for a product they tried, with the opportunity to win a matching product if their review was picked at random. Since I had tried their diaper covers, I left sort of a mini version of the review I had already written. Apparently there weren't a whole lot of participants for that particular product, so my odds were really good! Anyway, I won and I'm psyched! I love the diaper cover we have already, and not having to reuse the same one over and over will be lovely. :-) Especially since this one won't be plain white!

In other news, we swung by the house we're buying today to take some measurements, and my husband found a tag on the (recently rebuilt) deck that said it had been treated with a chemical pesticide which may potentially leave traces on skin when touched. Great. Which means we'll have to completely seal the deck before we use it (probably with something from AFM Safecoat, a company dedicated to formulating more environmentally-friendly paints, stains and sealants). First, though, we have to sand the deck...which means we'll have chemical-treated wood dust flying around. Sigh. Oh, the things you don't think to ask when buying a house. Still, I'd rather Chris and I slap on masks and sand and finish the deck before we move in, exposing ourselves (and, temporarily at least, our lawn) to the chemicals, then have Jem and his future siblings playing out on a chemical-treated deck day after day for the rest of their young lives. We'll just have to try and make sure we take precautions and clean up well.  It's too bad we didn't find this house (which we love) before they rebuilt the deck six months ago. We would have made sure it was built with cedar or some other natural pest/moisture resistant wood. Argh. Being thwarted in your greening efforts by circumstances outside your control always stinks. Well, we'll just do the best we can to make sure from now on the house will be as toxin-free as possible! If anyone has any tips for dealing with this situation (other than "just buy a different house"...since this is pretty much a done deal) we'd certainly appreciate it!

Have a great weekend everyone!