Before I had kids I thought I knew everything about laundry. I always sorted out our white clothes and washed those separately. My more delicate items and work clothes would get special treatment, and almost everything else could get washed together without any issues.

Then I had a baby boy. A baby boy who looked fabulous in bright red clothing. I don’t know if it’s all red clothes, or just all the red clothes Haiden happened to wear in his first year, but it seemed that every.single.time I washed any red items from his wardrobe the dye would bleed onto other clothes in the same load. Never mind that I washed everything in cold water with a good detergent. It just didn’t make a difference!

In the blur of those first few months of being a new parent with a new baby, I learned that the red dye that transfers so easily onto other clothes is nearly impossible to get out of the clothes it bleeds onto!

Since then, I realized that the easiest way to keep this problem from driving me crazy was to avoid it. That means I’ve been the militant laundry mom who kept all red and pink clothes separate from everything else, then washed them in their own load. By themselves. I don’t have enough red garments in my house to fill a washing machine up, which means I felt bad for wasting energy every time I washed a partial load of only-red clothing.

Now, there’s this new product called Shout Color Catcher with Oxi which delivers on its promise to prevent dyes from bleeding onto other clothes and makes my laundry life just a little bit easier.

Using the Shout Color Catcher with Oxi packets is easy: you just toss a packet in with each load of laundry. As the clothes get washed, these packets somehow absorb loose dyes in the washer to prevent them from bleeding onto other items. The additional Oxi Booster powder contains active stain removers to  tackle tough stains.

Since I have my amazing front loading washing machine, I have to put the packet in a mesh bag before adding it to the drum of my machine. I’m really not sure why, but I’m a “follow directions” sort of person, and the Shout Color Catcher with Oxi works well using that method, so I’m going with it!

I have to say, this stuff isn’t cheap considering you still need to use it along with your regular laundry detergent. You can buy 20 packets of Shout Color Catcher with Oxi on Amazon for $7.63, which means each packet costs about $0.38. It doesn’t sound like much, but 20 loads of laundry are done pretty quickly in my home, so using it all the time would add up fast. I’ll only use it in those where I have red items mixed in with other, lighter colors.

Want to try Shout Color Catcher with Oxi for yourself? Get a printable Shout coupon to save $1 off one pack on Shout’s Facebook page in the Offers section.

Giveaway :: Two lucky readers will win a box of Shout Color Catcher with Oxi.

To enter: Please use the Rafflecopter form below to enter this giveaway:

In mid-December 2011, something changed for our family. Our house became THE house that other families wanted to visit. Not that our friends ever avoided our home, but we learned that a few kids were begging their parents to visit us.

I have a pretty strong feeling that the sudden interest in our home wasn’t really because they wanted to socialize with my family or me. It’s because they wanted to play with Haiden and Piper.  More importantly, they wanted to play with this:

Can you blame them? We received the Mattel Disney Princess Ultimate Dream Castle and two Disney Princess 2-in-1 dolls to review, and I definitely wasn’t the only one who was excited about it! 

About the Disney Princess Ultimate Dream Castle:

This enchanting castle features three stories of themed rooms, each tailored to an iconic Disney princess.

Girls can retell favorite fairytales from their own perspective with these fun & fabulous play areas:

• Tiana’s kitchen, perfect for pretend cooking
• Belle’s dining room, with “magically” moving character friends
• Jasmine’s elevator, which is really a “magic” carpet waiting to whisk her from floor to floor
• Ariel’s bathroom, complete with bubble sounds and a seashell tub; Snow White’s vanity, with a “magic mirror” showing her beloved prince in the reflection
• Sleeping Beauty’s bedroom, where fairy godmothers spin above the bed
• Cinderella’s staircase, where she can glide down before midnight (but she’s left her glass slipper behind)!

At the very top of the castle, there’s a spinning, musical dance floor perfect for wishing upon a star and dancing the night away. It’s the quintessential place for living happily ever after!

All those amazing features kept both Piper and Haiden busy for a long, long time. It wasn’t a competition, but Haiden lost interest first, opting to go back to his favorite cars and trains. Piper, however, stayed in front of the castle for over an hour. I’d catch her “tucking in” the princesses in Sleeping Beauty’s special bed and giving the princesses baths in the big seashell bathtub!

The set comes with over 50 play pieces including furniture, flatware, fixtures and many more adorable objects. Many of those pieces measure less than an inch square, so they’re way too small for Piper (the guidelines do state that the toy is intended for kids ages 3 and up). So all those tiny pieces have been stashed away until she’s a little bigger. On the plus side, she’s certainly not missing them!

As a mom, my favorite thing about the Disney Ultimate Dream Castle is seeing how much Piper likes to play “pretend” with all the dolls, rooms and bigger play pieces. She must be practicing to be a future interior decorator, because I constantly observe her meticulously moving the furniture from one room to another, arranging it just so, then fixing it if anything shifts or tips over.

Another nice thing about the castle is that it definitely appeals to a wide range of ages. Piper is 2 and a half, and she thinks it’s great. My niece, Tia, is 6 and she probably would have moved in with me when we showed her the castle for the first time. Even two other family friends who are 12 and 13 years old thoroughly enjoyed playing castle games with Haiden and Piper.

There’s a definite Wow Factor with this toy. It stands over 3 feet tall. You can see from the above picture that it’s several inches taller than Piper when she’s standing up! With all the bright colors and fun accessories, everyone who has come in our front door has been excited to see everything the castle can do!

I can’t imagine any little girl who wouldn’t be thrilled to play with the Disney Princess Ultimate Dream Castle. If Haiden, my boy who lives and breathes for cars and trains, can spend time every day exploring the castle, then I think any child would be happily entertained with this castle!

You can purchase the Disney Princess Ultimate Dream Castle for $144.99. It’s available at Amazon, Target.com or Mattel.com

Enter to Win a Disney Princess Doll!

2 winners will each receive the Disney Princess doll of their choice. Winners can choose from Snow White, Cinderella, Tiana, Jasmine, Ariel or Belle. 

There are some great ways to earn extra entries into this giveaway! All mandatory and extra entries must be submitted within the Rafflecopter Giveaway box below. 

If you’re reading this article in an email newsletter, feed reader or a mobile device, you may not see the above Rafflecopter box. Please visit babygoodbuys.com and enter the giveaway there. 

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Comments are open on this post, but all entries must be done in the giveaway box above.

As always, if you have any trouble entering this giveaway, or if you have any questions, please contact me! 

I wrote this review while participating as a Mattel Disney Insider. All items to review were received at no charge. All opinions stated remain my own.

The end of November through the beginning of January is my busiest time of year. Between this website, Christmas shopping, holiday parties, events, two little kids, travel, inclement weather and general craziness, I can’t stay on top of it all. Unfortunately, the first thing to go on my list of priorities is housework. And, as always, the place where it bothers me the most is in the kitchen.

I have to say, I’m thankful each and every day that I have a dishwasher. Overall, I have minimal complaints about this important appliance, and I’m happy to share that my own dishwasher even has some eco-friendly features when means it uses less power to produce the same clean dishes as other models.

One aspect of the eco-friendliness is that the drying portion of the cycle is reduced and relies on air, not hot air, to dry the dishes. Under normal circumstances, this is fine. Dishes come out almost dry, and, if they stay in the dishwasher for a few hours or overnight after the cycle is complete, they end up fully dry before I get around to emptying it.

In the past few weeks amid the craziness, my dishwasher was put to the test, and there were many days where I would run more than one cycle. At those times, it would be pretty frustrating to want to empty the dishes and find that they were still wet. Fortunately, FINISH JET-DRY TURBO DRY came to my rescue at just the right time.

FINISH JET-DRY TURBO DRY is the secret to getting dishes sparkling clean and ultra-dry in my dishwasher. With no change to the cycles that I normally use, replacing my normal rinse agent with FINISH JET-DRY TURBO DRY meant that my loads of clean dishes were ready to put away as soon as the wash cycle was complete. As a bonus, the splotchy white residue that I’m used to seeing on some of my glassware and knives went away, too!

To learn more about FINISH products head over to http://finishdishwashing.com.

Enter to win:

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I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Finish and received a Finish Jet-Dry product sample to facilitate my review, a sample to giveaway, and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.