Alberta Gift Show – Booth 5227, Hall A – Made in Canada

The Alberta Gift Show is starting tomorrow Sunday, February 21st and runs until Wednesday, February 24th at Edmonton Northlands.

Made In Canada

I had an opportunity to walk through a bit of it today during set up.  Wow!  What a difference the new building makes.  The flow is better, the organization of booths is nicer, the venue is easier to move through and there are about 150 more booths than the August show.

We are located in Hall A, booth 5227, Made In Canada, just under the big 5200 sign hanging from the ceiling.  The booth is easy to find.

Check out this video about the gift show.  We’re featured twice!  Click here.

We’ve got some specials for you, so drop by.

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Fundraising

Fundraising is an important part of almost every organization. Whether for school, for sports, for the church or even to help out a family, we’ve all been involved at some point.

Some of the things we’ve done when selling Fresh-N products to make the fundraising more FUN have been to play games.

Toss the Diva – like a bean bag toss game, if you Toss the Diva and it lands inside the box you’ve drawn on the floor, you win a prize.

Smelliest Shoe/Sports Equipment Contest – bring in your smelliest shoe or piece of sports equipment and the winner gets a prize.

Grossest fridge story – everyone has a story about something going bad in a fridge. Tell the story and Win!

For other fundraising suggestions and options be sure to check out the Better Fundraising Ideas website.

If you’d like to find out more about fundraising options with Fresh-N Home Products, fill out the form on our Fundraising page.

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Fastpitch – Sports Health Hazard

The international fastpitch tournament, Canada Cup, held at Softball City in Surrey BC last week was especially exciting for us. Our daughter Nicole joined players from Australia, Venezuela, Holland, the US and all over Canada.

At the plate

Teams from all over the world all competing for the Canada Cup. There are 5 divisions to the Canada Cup and our daughter, at only age 15, played in the Showcase division. Nicole is the catcher.

Watching your kids excel at sports is more than exhilarating.   Learning to be part of a team and applying the discipline can also bring great opportunities.  At 15 years old, Nicole is being scouted for colleges and has the potential to play at the national or even international level.

There are some potential health hazards that go along with any sport you should be aware of. They are easy to prevent if you know what to look out for. We discovered the horror hiding in smelly sports equipment the hard way several years back.  Catching equipment needs to be dried and aired out like hockey equipment.  This may sound blatantly obvious, but although we all know you sweat tons while playing hockey, we didn’t really think about the sweat in the equipment from playing ball.  Let me assure you that catching equipment for softball can smell WORSE that hockey equipment.  Teenage boys aren’t the only ones that smell.

Nicole is a catcher.  It’s pretty much the same equipment that you use for hockey.  Chest protectors, shin guards and cleats, all of which can develop an awful odor when used often.

One evening after warming up some pitchers prior to provincials, Nicole had a minor rash on her legs.  The next morning, it was sore and oozing and very gross.  We discovered that she had a fungal burn.  Shin guards are worn over long cotton socks and the fungus attacked the skin through them!  It took weeks for her legs to heal. Nicole is permanently scarred from the burn and it was easily preventable.

This was an expensive lesson from a financial perspective too. We had to replace the shin guards, because when the fungus gets that bad, there is nothing that will completely remove it.  Leaving her softball equipment in her bag had been a very dumb thing to do.  Much like hockey equipment, or any sports equipment for that matter, the bag needs to be opened; the equipment removed, aired out and dried out.

We also now use SportzGemz as they assist and speed up the drying time.  Now there isn’t even a smell to the catching equipment because when the equipment is dried out properly it doesn’t have a chance to form.  Airing equipment is a great start. Protect your son or daughter. Lay a SportzGemz pouch on each shin guard.  The equipment dries even faster and the fungus and bacteria never have a chance to grow.

Having the SportzGemz in Nicole’s bag also has a secondary advantage.  The pouches are powerful enough to remove all the other smells that linger in the car, from wet clothes or umbrellas or shoes or whatever other stuff travels with us to the ball field.

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Fraser Valley Pulse’s article

Kristi Ferguson of the Fraser Valley Pulse was kind enough to contact me last week.  She has seen the Diva Diamondz in various stores around the Fraser Valley and loves them.  She didn’t realize that our office are approximately 3 blocks apart.  There are definitely lots of very talented people that live and work in  the Walnut Grove are of Langley, BC.

Kristi has a wonderful way with words and chats a bit about our history, where we’ve come from and where we’re headed.  I especially love her description of the products as “odor eater/moisture wickers”.

Check out our article and all the other great things Kristi promotes at Fraser Valley Pulse.

Thank you Kristi!

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Zeolite

The mineral in our product is zeolite. There are approximately 150 varieties of zeolite, some natural and some man-made. Zeolites have different properties and depending on the chemical composition, they are used in many different ways. Some zeolites absorb moisture, some absorb odor and some do both.

One of the zeolite family.

One of the zeolite family.

According to the Mineral Gallery, Zeolites have many useful purposes. They can perform ion exchange, filtering, odor removal, chemical sieve and gas absorption tasks. The most well known use for zeolites is in water softeners. Calcium in water can cause it to be “hard” and capable of forming scum and other problems. Zeolites charged with the much less damaging sodium ions can allow the hard water to pass through its structure and exchange the calcium for the sodium ions. This process is reversable. In a similar way zeolites can absorb ions and molecules and thus act as a filter for odor control, toxin removal and as a chemical sieve. Zeolites can have the water in their structures driven off by heat with the basic structure left intact. Then other solutions can be pushed through the structure. The zeolites can then act as a delivery system for the new fluid. This process has applications in medicine, livestock feeds and other types of research. Zeolites added to livestock feed have been shown to absorb toxins that are damaging and even fatal to the growth of the animals, while the basic structure of the zeolite is biologically neutral. Aquarium hobbyists are seeing more zeolite products in pet stores as zeolites make excellent removers of ammonia and other toxins. Most municipal water supplies are processed through zeolites before public consumption. These uses of zeolites are extremely important for industry, although synthetic zeolites are now doing the bulk of the work.

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