It's no secret that I love Instagram.  I post pictures often (@atrailife) and I follow TONS of friends, bloggers and celebs.  I love all of the different effects you can add to your pictures and I love that the pictures are always square.  It takes my average cell phone pictures and makes it look I have a clue what I'm doing with a camera (I don't). 

So of course, those are the pictures I want copies of.  Serial and I always talk about hanging our pictures together with maps of our favorite places to create some sort of wall art, but we never seem to have actual, physical copies of our pictures.  Until now!

I've been poking around on the internet trying to find an easy way to turn our Instagram pictures into physical photos that we can hang up and stumbled upon Instantgram.  I sent them an email to see if they would be willing to let me try out one of their products and they responded immediately with the friendliest customer service. 

We got to play around on the website and check out their options.  You can order 9 magnets (2"x2"), 24 squares (4"x4") or 48 mini-squares (2.5"x2.5").  We knew we wanted something for our blank walls so we decided on the squares.

The ordering process is really user-friendly and took us about 8 minutes to complete, but most of that was because we couldn't decide which photos we wanted to include in our order.  The website walks you through the process really clearly, but in general you give them your Instagram handle (the name after the @ symbol), you choose your product and then select your pictures.  They accept paypal (my favorite way to shop online) and shipping took about 10 days for us. 

Here are a few screen prints of the ordering process, so you can get an idea of what it's like.  They are in order, from left to right/top to bottom.

I was kinda giddy the day that our Instantgram squares arrived.  They are printed on this great, thick photo paper, and they have a slightly matte finish so they keep that low-maintenance, artsy feeling that you get on Instagram.  I really couldn't be happier with them.

I've been staring at a blank wall for too long now and I just want to hang these bad boys up.  We'll probably get to it this weekend, but until then, I'll just keep admiring our new pictures :-)

First things first, let's look at what comes with the Mega Kitchen System. 

• (1) 72 oz pitcher
• (1) 8 cup food processor
  
• (2) 16 oz cups with lids
• (1) 1500 watt base (works with all of the above)

Overall:
I'm a big fan of Ninja Kitchen products and I'm borderline obsessed with my Ninja Master Prep, but this Mega Kitchen System needs a little bit of improvement before I can obsess over it too.  If the motor was a bit quieter and the blades in the food processor were more efficient at grinding hard ingredients into a fine powder, I'd be sold. 

I do love the single serve cups and I've made a lot of delicious meals with all of the containers so I do think this is a good product; I just don't know if the price tag is justified.  I suspect many see this as an affordable alternative to the more expensive systems like Vitamix, but you could get a lower end or refurbished Vitamix for not much more.  I'm still a loyal Ninja Kitchen girl, but I think I'd be happy with some of the cheaper options.

I first got this system as a gift from Serial's parents back in 2009 and I've been in love with it ever since.  My original motor died after about 3 years and I replaced it with another because I missed it so much.  But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with the basics of what's included with this product.

• (1) 48 oz pitcher
• (1) 16 oz bowl
• (1) 400 watt power head
• (2) storage lids
• (2) splash guards (for use with the power head)
  

Raw Revolution Bars aren't new to us and we've mentioned them in several other posts, but I don't know that we've done them justice.  We have a lot of love for these bars and today we wanted to really share the love with you guys!

You guys know that we are healthy eaters.  We like to eat live, whole foods and we keep to a vegan diet as often as possible.  We're not fans of processed foods and we almost always make our own at-home versions of things just to avoid preservatives and control the ingredients that we put into our bodies. 

But let's face it, sometimes you need something on-the-go.  Most granola bars have a bunch of extra fluff ingredients that don't really do much nutritionally and just provide empty calories.  But Raw Rev bars are different.  You can count the number of ingredients on your fingers and you actually know what each one is. 

Check out the stuff in my favorite flavor, Spirulina & Cashew:  Organic Dates, Organic Cashews, Organic Sunflower Seed Kernels, Organic Agave Nectar, Organic Almonds, Organic Spirulina Powder, Organic Sprouted Flax Seed.

LOVE. IT.

And there are tons more flavors that are just as tasty.  We've tried Chocolate & Cashew, Chocolate & Coconut, Raspberry & Chocolate and Cashew & Agave (Serial's favorite).   They're all delicious and filling.

And there are even more flavors that we plan to sample soon.  Especially the Almond Butter Cup and the Cherry Chocolate Chunk - those belong in my belly.   You can see their full product line here.

Taste is obviously important, but let's get back to those ingredients.  If you're maintaining a vegan or gluten-free lifestyle, you're going to love these bars.  Raw Revolution Bars are Vegan and free of Gluten, Wheat, Corn, Soy, Trans-fat, Cholesterol and Refined Sugar.  (side note - it makes my insides happy when something is vegan AND soy-free).

The Raw Revolution Bars come in a few different sizes, which is great for those counting calories.  The larger bars range from 210-240 per bar (varies by flavor) and the smaller Raw Rev bars are just 100 calories each.  When we were on our hike, we carried the 100 calorie bars in our hip belts and snacked on them while we were walking.  It was perfect. 

These days, we keep a stash in the car and in my purse.  Yes, I'm that chick who always has a snack in her purse.  But with good reason.  Everyone know what "hanger" is?  It's when you get so hungry that your anger takes over and you become a crabby hot mess.  Yep.  It's real people.  Let's just say that after a few hiking trips that ended in beastly hanger during the car ride home, we wised up. 

So let's review... they taste delicious, they're healthy and they come in two convenient sizes?  I'm sold.  But just to put a little icing on that cake, they have amazing customer service.  When we were planning our hike last year, we wrote to them asking for a few bars to take on the trail with us.  They responded immediately and provided us with enough bars for the whole hike and enough to share with friends.  We stashed a bunch in Damascus so that when we hiked into town, we were able to hand them out to tons of hikers.  It was wonderful. 

This year we emailed them again to see if they'd be willing to host a few product giveaways and once again, they were so helpful and positive.  So stay tuned, we will be hosting multiple giveaways of Raw Revolution Bars and we can't wait for you all to love them too.  In the meantime, you can check out their products on their site.  They're also on facebook and twitter, if you want to stop by and say hello! 

We have a bit of news to share with you guys... we are starting to bring in sponsors!  So, like a good little blogger, I wanted to first take a minute to talk about why we chose to partner with sponsors and what it means for our blog. 

The main reason we decided to partner with sponsors is to share products and ideas, that we believe in, with our readers.  If there is a product, business or blog that fits with our lifestyle and blog topics we'd love to pass it along to you all.  We are picky about who we work with and would never host a sponsor that we wouldn't use in our own life.  If we are reviewing it, giving it away or promoting it you can rest assure the we support the product and what they stand for.

One aspect that is not a factor?  Money.  This is a small blog and and as a lot of you other bloggers know, this is not an industry designed for big income.  Unless you're Young House Love.  But they are mad popular and work (ridiculously) hard for that money.  (Please tell me you have this song stuck in your head now.  Yep, you're welcome.)

Starting today, you will see logos on our homepage and we encourage you to click on them and visit our sponsors sites.  And remember, we purposefully chose not to use automatic ad generators and we are the ones who place each and every sponsor on our site (mostly Serial and I, but occasionally Rooney gets in on the coding) so you can trust that anything you find through us is worth the visit. 

The awesome part?  This also means that there are product reviews, discounts and giveaways in the future.  We can't wait to ship off goodies to our amazing readers.  Stay tuned and be sure to follow us so you don't miss anything.  We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and RSS so pick your favorite and connect with us!

I'm not exaggerating when I say this product changed my everyday life.  I've always been a moisturizing kind of girl, but I never really felt good about covering my skin with lotion.  I mean, the skin absorbs everything you put on it and one look at the ingredients of my lotion made me squirm. 

I was using the most natural, fragrance-free lotion I could find, but still didn't know what 95% of the components were.  Enter sweet almond oil.  The ingredient label reads "Expeller-pressed and Hexane-free. 100% Pure."  Heck, it's food grade.  Basically that means that they steam and press almonds until they turn into oil.  That's it.

The brand I like is NOW Foods, but there are others out there that work just as well.  It goes on slightly wet like an oil and then absorbs into the skin and quickly dries.  It's that simple!

For anyone who isn't familiar with this site, my advice is to bookmark it right now.  The Skin Deep Cosmetic Database is a really useful site that rates the level of toxicity in your everyday beauty products, using a 0-10 scale.  Go ahead, type in one of your go-to products... I'll wait. 

Scary, right?!  Makes you think twice about touching that mascara wand to your eye or slathering that fragrant lotion all over your body. 

Now before you go crazy throwing everything in your cabinets out, keep in mind that it's near impossible to have all zero-rated products in your life.  My advice is to weed out the highly toxic items and work on replacing them with 0-2 rated items, paying attention to which ingredients are making them toxic.  In the database, you can click on the product then scroll down to see the rating of each ingredient.  Pretty great. 

So now you know!   Go share the love and tell a friend.