Influenster Review and Good Life VoxBox Unboxing

And I finally got my first VoxBox by Influenster! :)
At the first I was a little disappointed because it was so petite! Influenster usually sends full size products, but this time I've got couple of full size items and couple of sample size items.

But first thing first - about the Influenster! I'm just gonna copy paste description that is on their web page, so here we go:
"Influenster is a free -to-join community of invited trendsetters who live to give opinions of products and experiences. Influenster creates links between brands and members to reward participation and influence future products.
An exclusive online community where tastemakers and trendsetters (such as yourself) come to share the latest and greatest news, places, products, and reviews with each other. 2. The hotspot you just bookmarked on your web browser that turns your social influence into sweet rewards.

Basically, Influenster is a place for culture junkies to come together and share their unique opinions of products and experiences. Active members of Influenster get exclusive access to deals, promotions, and swag from brands that thrive off the input (the good, the bad, and the ugly -- they just want to know what's up)."

So that's what they say about themselves.

But what do you have to do to start getting products from Influenster? First of all you have to be invited to their community. Right now I have five invitations to send out, so if you would like to be one of invitees feel free to let me know!
After you get accepted in community you have to unlock different badges, go through different surveys so Influenster team can get general idea what are you interested in and which products would be good for you.
After a while you will get an email with pre-qualification survey, and if you pass the survey in week or so your box will be on it's way!
I applied for Influenster maybe a month and a half ago, and I got my first box today! They have different themes for their boxes, so there's Something Blue VoxBox which is designed for brides, then there's Paradise VoxBox etc.. I've got Good Life VoxBox which is designed for people with active lifestyle.

It is important to mention that you don't have to be a blogger to do this, if you are active on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram you are a perfect candidate for Influenster! To follow them on Twitter just click here and you can just search Influenster on Facebook.

Here's a picture of my Good Life VoxBox

Influenster VoxBox Good Life

This time I've got Vitamin Shoppe Garcinia Cambodgia Extract - and I'm really excited to try that to be honest! Other thing that I've got is Zone Perfect Yogurt bar, Nonni's THINaddictives, Urgent RX fast powder - painkiller, and New Skin Liquid Bandage which is pretty awesome.. :)

Here is the video too of me unboxing Influenster VoxBox! Don't laugh at me this is my first video! :D

    

Disclosure:I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes

Concannon Wines in the Middle of Walla Walla, WA thx to BzzAgent!

Concannon Cabernet Sauvignong and beautiful orchid!

And I finally got my package from BzzAgent which consisted of mail-in rebate coupons for Concannon wines and cute magnetic picture frame. I already wrote about BzzAgent here. I really like this program because every once in a while I have a chance to try different products that I didn't even know that they exist.

Coupons, one for you and rest for your friends. Cute frame on right.

To be honest with you I was a little bit nervous to go to the store and buy Californian wine in the middle of Walla Walla Valley which is famous for it's wineries and great, but truly great wines.

But I decided to do it and went to one of the two stores who hold Concannon wines in Walla Walla and I was a bit disappointed because the only Concannon wine they had was 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon which is their cheaper wine, and I really don't remember when was the last time I had $10 wine. But, I didn't have a choice. So I decided to pick up other Cab Sauv within the same price range to make a blind tasting and to be able to compare it with the other similar wine.

And I have to admit that it wasn't as bad as I expected. Concannon Cab Sauv is really light red wine, it would be great for nice fruity sangria, because it has that nice fruity taste. We also tried it with some cheese and Food Should Taste Good chips that I also got from BzzAgent as a part of different campaign and we really liked it with it too. I decided to use the rest of the wine for my bolognese sauce and it worked out wonderfully!
If you are interested in buying this wine I would also suggest you to try it with some fish or seafood. Seafood and lemon risotto would taste great with this wine, as well as different chicken and vegetable dishes.

If you would like me to make any of the dishes I mentioned before and to do blog post about that please let me know and I love different challenges! :D

I ended up making moussaka with that bolognese sauce and it was really really good! Recipe some other time because I forgot to take the pictures during the cooking :D

To conclude, I would really like to try some other Concannon wine, especially their Petite Sirah because I'm a big fan of that variety! And even though I live in the middle of Pacific Northwest wine region I appreciate having something different every once in a while so I was really happy when I've got those coupons for Concannon wines from BzzAgent. I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised!

Here are the links for BzzAgent and for Concannon you have to be 21 to visit Concannon web page

Anna Karenina and Annie Sloan and Shabby Chic Chair

 “If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
―Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I was sooooo bored today!

I mean I love Walla Walla but Saturday evening in Walla Walla is not something particularly exciting.
So, I was sitting on my couch, watching Anna Karenina but today I simply didn't have enough patience for all of that drama. Don't get me wrong, I love the story and I respect it as one of the biggest masterpieces.

I'm not sure if I want to say that I am lucky because I was educated in Croatia, so Anna Karenina was one of the books which was on our mandatory literature list. Being 16 or 17 and trying to understand what Leo Tolstoy wanted to say was quite challenging. But I guess I'm glad that I can say that I read the book and that I'm thinking about re-reading it now when I'm a bit older.

Anyway, great book, very good movie but today I just wasn't in the mood for old aristocratic Russia, lack equality when it comes to women and men, unfortunate love, and so on and so on.

But couple of pieces of furniture that I saw in the movie reminded me of the chair that I re-did couple of days ago. It doesn't look like it just came from Russia but it's is Shabby Chic chair, and since France was mecca of fashion and style at that time, there you go, train of thought..

Here's finished chair. Scroll down for instructions!

And here it is! I'm so sorry because my pictures are such a low quality but I still don't have professional camera, so I have to do everything with my poor iPhone.

To paint this chair I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint that I've got from my friend Sam couple months ago. Thank you Sam! :D She also gave me a chair and re-upholstered it.

These are the colors that I used:

Greek Blue, Old White, Dark Wax

If you don't know how to create this look you can order Annie Sloan's "Creating the French Look" book. I have it but I don't really use it because I always find my inspiration somewhere else. You can also visit Annie Sloan Pinterest site.
What I like about these paints is that you don't have to sand or use primer with them. You can just apply it directly on wood, plastic, stone, and so on.

Old, ugly, brown chair

So on the picture above there is a chair before I repainted it in Greek Blue, and then I realized that I don't like that chair in that color... It was too... Too blah...

Chair in Greek Blue

And then I decided to repaint it in Old White, but to leave parts which are "inside" the chair in blue. Unfortunately I don't have picture from that stage, since all of a sudden I decided to add some blue accents and to paint back side of front legs in Clark+Kensington Decadent Blue.
After the paint dried I used soft sand paper to distress some parts.

I still didn't like it after that so I grabbed Dark Soft Wax because I wanted chair to look like it was used before, and we all know how fast white gets dirty.Even though they suggest using Clear Soft Wax prior the Dark Wax I liked it this way better.

Here are the results:

Picture is a bit too bright to see details.

You can be messy!

 

And finally! That was the look that I was searching for.

What do you think? :) Big difference!

When trying to do something like this, just keep in mind the quote from the beginning of this post, and trust me, your life will be easier! :)

BzzAgent - What is it all about and BzzAgent FREE STUFF reviews

I'm still trying to make a decision in which way this blog should go..
There's so many different things I would love to write about, but I have a feeling that my blog will be "all over the place", but not all over the place in the good way..

Anyway...

I promised you that I'll write a little bit about BzzAgent and Influenster. Since I've got my first BzzAgent box yesterday I'm going to write about them first.

This is what they say about them selves: "Connecting people and their favorite brands since 2001, BzzAgent is the leading social marketing company. What's that mean to you? We put products in the hands of hundreds of thousands of real consumers and help them share their opinions about them with friends and family via reviews, Facebook posts, photos and videos, blog posts and more."
So I decided to join them couple of weeks ago to see what is it all about and if I'm gonna like their program at all. And soon after I joined them I got my first campaign, it was for Kellogg's new hot K Nourish cereals.

Kellogg's BzzAgent Box

 It seems like a lot of people like their new flavors and how convenient they are since they are packed in individual bowls that you can take with yourself. All you have to do to make them ready to eat is pour hot water over it and couple of minutes after they are ready!
But I wasn't that delighted with these cereals, they are way too sweet, and after you mix in the water and nuts and dried fruits they look like mushy oatmeal. I love oatmeal, but I eat traditional old-fashioned rolled oats, cooked in little bit of coconut milk, with some cinnamon and dried fruits.
Maybe I'm just used to that nice chewiness of traditional oats.
On the other side, for all of those who might happen to like these K nourish Hot Cereals, they contain 5g of fiber which is approx 19% of daily recommended intake and 8g of protein. I don't want to talk about sugar here. I want you to discover that by yourself.

Huh... It seems that I've got distracted for a second from my main topic for today's post... BzzAgent! If you have time to write reviews, do Facebook posts and Tweet, and if you like getting FREE stuff join BzzAgent!

BzzAgent review notes

This far I actually got two BzzAgent boxes, one with Kellogg's products and the other one with mail-in-rebate for Concannon wines because they are celebrating 50 years of America's first Petite Sirah.
To be honest I'm a little bit more excited about wine tasting than cereal tasting :D
$8 dollars coupon is pretty good deal, I still haven't tried their wines because I'm almost afraid that I'm gonna be crucified for buying Californian wine in Washington wine country. :D

Anyway, after you go through your boxes, after you try products (they usually send you flavors or varieties that are not yet on the market), you have to go back to their page, fill out couple of surveys, write couple reviews, and voila! That's it!

I believe that's it for this post... Short and sweet.

What should we do next time? Food? Crafts? Or gardening? What do you think? C'mon help me here! :)