review – A Measured Life

Indoor Decor: Add Carefree Greenery to Your Life

I was sent a free artificial plant product by Plantscapes, Inc. for this review. All opinions are 100% my own.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this before, but I’m really bad at keeping plants alive unless they’re edible. I’ve got three gorgeous tomato plants out on my terrace right now that are thriving, but I’ve also got a mostly dead cyclamen sitting on an end table that I’ve either under watered or over watered, I don’t even know! I guess my brain only cares about food. Ha! But I do love the look of plants in my home: they’re beautiful and help me relax. What’s a lazy girl like me to do?

So when Plantscape, Inc. offered to send me a sample of their product to review I leapt at the opportunity! Plants I’ll never have to remember to water? Heck yeah!

Founded in 1974, Plantscape Inc. is a leading national interior landscape firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We have over 40 years of experience in offering a diverse set of specialty services in landscape planning and design, landscape architecture, trees installation, plant service and maintenance programs and commercial décor. Our team of professionals have decades of experience in designing interior and outdoor landscapes using live plants and trees, especially tropical plants.

Plantscape, Inc. offers commercial interior landscaping services as well as their new artificial plant division, Commercial Silk Int’l. I was thrilled to find succulents on their retail website. I even kill succulents, can you imagine?

My package arrived in about a week’s time, and was exceptionally packed. The two succulents I received came in a large sturdy box and the bases were set firmly into a thick bed of styrofoam. They were even strapped in to make sure they wouldn’t tumble around in the box! Upon pulling one of the succulents out of the packaging I was immediately impressed by the weight. Each one of these babies weighs in at over 3 lbs, so I’m confident that I can leave these out on my terrace without the fear of them being blown over by wind.

The ‘plants’ themselves are set in a ‘pot’ that looks just like driftwood, and unless you get very close or get your hands on it (it’s cool to the touch like concrete) the illusion is complete. On Sunday I had my girlfriends over for brunch and one didn’t even know it wasn’t real until she had it in her hands!

Overall I am extremely satisfied with my new succulents! I have the utmost confidence that they’ll never turn brown and die because I neglected them or cared far, far too deeply for them. The best part is they even offer interior landscaping for businesses, aaaaand can make CUSTOM products! You can find out more here. So if you’re interested in landscaping services, interior landscaping, or grabbing your own artificial plants, definitely head over to Plantscape, Inc. and check them out!

Do you like plants around your house? Artificial or live? Is your thumb as brown as mine? Let me know in the comments!

Review: Sahale Snacks Tangerine Cashew with Vanilla & Mango Bar

So I was browsing iBotta this week, looking for rebates…

Hey, hang on. Do you use iBotta? If you don’t, you probably should. If you haven’t already signed up you can use my referral link and get a $10 welcome bonus!

Get $10 for trying the Ibotta app! Use my referral code to get started: https://ibotta.com/r/GREHISJ.

I started using it about 2 years ago now and so far I’ve saved $228.90 on groceries, plus I get to try some new stuff, like these Sahale Snacks Tangerine Cashew with Vanilla and Mango Bars.

No, I am not being paid to write this post. I saw that there was a rebate, and I decided to try them because TANGERINE CASHEW sounds amazing! The rebate was for $1 off at Walmart so I figured I’d try some, because HEY, A DOLLAR.

Well, there’s a downside. Even at Walmart these are $4.74 a box. Andrea is a sad panda. And not only is that expensive, it’s extra pricey because it’s for only FOUR BARS. Come on! Not only that… but they’re tiny at a mere 1.4 oz. each. 😦

So I ultimately paid $3.74 for a box of four bars, which means each bar is 94 cents. A bit steep for me.

But how do they TASTE?

Really, really good! You can see all the various textures of the cashews, dried mango, toasted sorghum and puffed amaranth. The texture was really nice, creamy on the bottom from the cashew butter base (I loved how it has two easily seen layers) and slightly crunchy without being sharp on the top.

The bar was slightly sweet, with cashew being the most dominant flavor. I could definitely taste the tangerine, but it wasn’t as strong as I expected. At first, I found this disappointing, but as I continued to eat I decided that the level was probably pretty good: any stronger and it would be cloying. There’s definitely a hint of vanilla there, too. I’d give these a 7/10: Really tasty, satisfying for their size (190 calories, btw), but not so mind blowing that I can’t live without them. If they were half the price, I’d probably purchase them regularly.

Nutrition wise they’re pretty comparable to KIND bars. This bar has 11g sugar which I honestly don’t think is too bad. No artificial flavors or colors and no preservatives give it bonus points, too, but I take off a bit for the addition of soy protein. I actually enjoyed this bar more than KIND bars BECAUSE of the creamy bottom layer. Makes for a nice mouthfeel.

I say give them a shot if they sound good to you! They have four flavors to choose from:

Which would you pick?

Healthy Food Review: Siggi’s Icelandic Style Skyr

This post is NOT sponsored by Siggi’s (but if they see this and decide to contact me, I’m game)!

I first heard about skyr on an episode of Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, and I immediately wanted to try it. On his show, skyr is described as being a form of fresh cheese, so I was initially confused when I saw it marketed as strained non-fat yogurt. According to an article from Cook’s Science, skyr is a form of cheese that’s marketed as yogurt in the US (Take a gander at the actual article, it goes into a much greater depth as to what differentiates yogurt and skyr).

Now I’ve loved Greek yogurt for years, and the more I eat it, the less I’m able to eat regular yogurt, which feels so soup to me texturally. Ick.

But Siggi’s? Siggi’s is exactly what I want in a protein rich dairy product. It has FOUR ingredients:

Pasteurized Skim Milk, Organic Agave Nectar, Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla, Live Active Cultures

100 calories, 14g protein, 9g sugar. That’s pretty darn low in sugar for yogurt! There are lower but this is a pretty good ratio for 100 calories. That’s for 5.3 oz.

Siggi’s also touts itself as the following:

All natural
Milk from grass-fed cows
No aspartame
No sucralose
No gelatin
No artificial colorings
No preservatives
No high fructose corn syrup
Certified gluten free
and they use milk produced without the use of recombinant bovine growth hormone

That’s quite the list!

I had mine with a little bit of fresh passion fruit on top, but I made sure to taste it plain so I could give you the salient flavor information.

Siggi’s is SUPER THICK, which I love, but it’s also very smooth and creamy, despite being fat free. It doesn’t have any of that chalkiness that some Greek yogurts have. The vanilla is marginally sweet, with a very nice tartness. The vanilla flavor is light, but you can tell it’s real Madagascar vanilla because you can see the specks. And with a super short list of ingredients, you know just what you’re ingesting.

There is one downside to Siggi’s: it’s not cheap, but it does occasionally go on sale for $1 each at my local Shoprite, so when it’s on sale I stock up. Regularly it’s $1.69 each, which is definitely more than I’d want to spend.

I really love the taste of Siggi’s Skyr. Have you tried it? Will you? Let me know in the comments!

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