This is a sponsored post. Thanksgiving will be here in just one short day, and then in one short month… Christmas! Wow, it’s coming up fast!

And somewhere in the midst of all the festivities, another not-so-joyous season will creep in unwelcome and unannounced: I am speaking of flu season, of course. And even if you don’t get the flu, chances are you’re going to catch one of the many colds flying around this time of year, so now’s a good time to stock up on your remedies.

But forget those antihistamines, NSAID’s, and any other cold meds that line the drugstore shelves - you won’t need them. Trust me, there are a multitude of effective and safe natural remedies that quickly relieve cold symptoms while helping your body to heal faster without side effects.

Safe Natural Remedies from the Drugstore

As you know, I like to use essential oils whenever possible in treating various illnesses in my family. I also employ time-honored home remedies and the occasional homeopathic medicine when I find it useful. I also always like to keep a few ready remedies on hand for those winter illnesses that are sure to come: cough syrup and chest rub, for example. Sure, I could make them myself - I have before - but in this busy time of year, I like to have something on hand I can trust.

A frank little side note here: to be perfectly honest, I don’t always find the homemade remedies to be as effective as some store-bought ones. Just sayin.

An effective - but natural and safe - remedy I make sure to always have on hand this time of year is cough syrup. Tiger Cub in particular seems susceptible to coughs whenever he has a cold, sometimes with coughing fits that keep him up at night and make him miserable. I’ve found that while raw honey itself is only partially effective, a honey-based mixture like Maty’s All Natural Cough Syrup knocks the cough out almost instantly.

Check out the ingredients in this cough syrup:

• buckwheat honey
• zinc
• grapefruit seed extract
• celtic sea salt
• lemon peel
• lemon balm
• apple cider vinegar
• cinnamon
• cayenne pepper

This stuff packs a punch! (And yeah, I have most of those ingredients in my kitchen, but do I have time to whip up my own cough syrup? Uh, no. Not hardly!) As a matter of fact, Tiger Cub has a cold right now, and last night his cough was keeping him awake: as soon as I gave him a spoonful of Maty’s Cough Syrup, his cough stopped and he slept soundly! In fact, I didn’t hear him cough again until earlier this evening, and once again, when I gave him a spoonful of Maty’s Cough Syrup it stopped the cough in its tracks!

Here’s some more information about Maty’s from the founder:

In 1996, my daughter Maty was born with severe heart defects. And to make matters worse, she was also born without a spleen. By age five, Maty underwent three complex heart surgeries.

For those first few years of her life, it was a challenging time for our family. We were constantly in and out of doctors offices. Although her heart was mended, she was left with difficult medical issues and a weakened immune system. Her condition made her vulnerable.

Desperate to help my little girl, I devoted my time to finding natural remedies that would help her get and stay healthy. And it soon became my passion. I started reading everything and anything to do with natural ways of healing. I took classes in natural healing and even got certified as a holistic health practitioner.

And along the way I discovered natural remedies that really worked and started using them on my family. Whatʼs even better is that I was now equipped with modern knowledge of healing and incorporated that into these old time remedies to make them even better. I bottled some of these remedies up and gave them to family and friends to help them get healthier. And they became popular.

Your Chance to Win

If you want to give Maty’s a try, enter our giveaway! The winner gets to choose one full-size version of any of Maty’s popular products:

• All Natural Cough Syrup

• All Natural Kids’ Cough Syrup

• All Natural Baby Chest Rub

• All Natural Vapor Rub

• Breathe Better Nasal Ointment

This giveaway is only open to US residents and will end Sunday, December 1 at midnight.
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This post is sponsored by South Hill Designs Independent Consultant Katie Parsons.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner - it might be a month away yet, but that’s just enough time to find the perfect gift for the perfect mom! And I have the perfect gift idea for you: a personalized, custom necklace from South Hill Designs.

South Hill Designs helps you create necklaces that tell your story. You start with a silver or gold locket and then fill it with carefully chosen items that reflect the people and things you love best. There are flat hammered metal coins with words like “Faith”, “Family” or “Blessed” that form the backdrop for your life-story-in-jewelry. Fill the remaining space in the locket with charms that identify your heritage (small flags), your hobbies and passions (a red high heel, anyone?), birthstones of the people you love, or symbols of your faith. Top it all off with a “droplet” that dangles from the chain and you have a lovely, personalized necklace that’s unique to you alone.

Are you seeing why this would be such a perfect gift for Mother’s Day?! My own necklace is a silver locket with a tin that says “family”, filled with an emerald birthstone for me and my DH (we were both born in May), and two little boy charms with the appropriate birthstones, plus an ichthys to represent our faith. I love it and wear it all. the. time!! It’s like keeping my family with me throughout the day no matter where I am or what I’m doing.

If you agree with me that this would be the perfect Mother’s Day gift, you should check out Katie’s Facebook Party for April. Follow the instructions for ordering and you can get shipping for only $4! Katie’s got some great ideas for filling your lockets to impress and honor the moms on your list.

Mother’s Day isn’t the only perfect time for South Hill Designs, though. You can give personalized necklaces for birthdays, Christmas, and just-because! Or you can get one for yourself… or two, or three.

I love my crock pot, but I can get very frustrated when flipping through crock pot recipes: it seems they all call for canned this and packaged that, which makes me very sad. For oven or stove-top recipes, I can typically figure out some good substitutions for the processed stuff, but the crock pot? It’s kind of a different animal.

Which is why I’m so happy Stacy of Stacy Makes Cents took the guesswork out of the whole thing for me. She’s written an amazing eCookbook (appropriately called Crock On!) with all kinds of great recipes adapted just for the crock pot. The best part is that none of the recipes include creamed-this or powdered-that. Oh, maybe a can of vegetables here and there, but nothing processed or fake in this cookbook!

And she doesn’t cut corners either. I got a crock pot cookbook once that was 95% soup recipes, which was kind of a disappointment. I like soup and all, but we only eat it once a week or so, so that wasn’t super helpful. Stacy’s cookbook, however, goes way beyond soup and brings you recipes for sandwiches, sides, and even desserts! (Can you say Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Lava Cake?)

The very very very best part? (Kind of like the cherry on top?) The price. You know I like things to be nice and cheap. Well, this book is. It’s only $5. You can totally afford $5! Especially considering what you will get with those five little bucks.

But wait, my friend. It gets even better! Stacy has generously set up a special 15% discount code for my readers, so that each and every one of you can purchase Crock On! for only $4.25!! Just use the code: “authentic15”. (Please leave out the quotation marks. I know you know that, but just in case…) This code will expire January 31, 2012. (Oh, and no worries about wasting your money on the book just in case you win the giveaway. Stacy will refund your purchase if you win! It’s a win-win.)

And just when you thought the deal couldn’t be any sweeter, Stacy has given me permission to give away not one, but TWO, copies of Crock On! Suh-weet! Enter via the Rafflecopter below.
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What do you make in your slow cooker?

It’s that time of year again. I can’t tell you how many people I know whose children are down with one virus or another, and the endless cycle just keeps going. No matter what precautions you take, doubtless someone in your family is going to get sick at some point this winter, so it’s a good idea to be prepared with a well-stocked medicine cabinet.

But when I say “medicine”, what I really mean are tried-and-true safe remedies that are both effective and harmless, that treat the illness itself and not merely the symptoms. I find that my growing arsenal of herbal and otherwise natural remedies more often than not work just as well (and even better!) than the conventional medicines you can buy over the counter. Consequently, I have bought fewer and fewer of said OTC meds over the course of the past few years.

However, I am not one to forage for herbs in my back yard (since I have no back yard), and I’m also not all that keen on mixing up my own tinctures and oils when my little ones get sick. No, thank you. I like to keep things simple, so I prefer to have a ready-made remedy… well, ready. And already made.

Thankfully, there are more and more such options available for lazy people like me (and some of you I’m sure - certainly I can’t be the only one not that interested in making my own elderberry syrup). One such option is Maty’s line of products.

Maty’s all-natural remedies were developed by the parents of a little girl named Maty who was born with serious heart defects. They were determined to treat their daughter’s various ailments with all natural products and remedies, and over the course of time, developed the 5 products they currently carry: children’s chest rub, adult’s chest rub, children’s cough syrup, adult cough syrup, and nasal ointment.

I had the opportunity to try out their baby chest rub on Tiger Cub, who developed a cold shortly after I received the product (of course!). One night, he woke up coughing, and I immediately thought to apply the baby vapor rub to his chest and his feet to give him some relief and help him get back to sleep. Frankly, I was mildly skeptical because I had only limited success using Vick’s vapor rub in the same way in the past. I was pleasantly surprised to find that after coughing once or twice more, he settled down and went right back to sleep. He did not cough again the rest of the night. The next night, I rubbed the vapor rub into his chest and feet again before sending him to bed, and it lasted most of the night. When he woke up coughing, I re-applied it, and once again, he slept peacefully for the remainder of the night.

What I love most is the ingredient list:

• sunflower oil
• coconut oil
• candellila wax
• castor oil
• shea butter
• vitamin E
• chamomile essential oil
• dill weed essential oil
• lavender essential oil
• eucalyptus essential oil
• patchouli essential oil
• coriander essential oil.

There’s nothing in there I wouldn’t put myself if I were into making natural remedies for coughs. I’m so glad this product exists because it means I don’t have to go collect all those ingredients and figure out how to turn them into a vapor rub - it’s already done for me!

To sum up, Maty’s Baby Chest Rub is

• Effective
• Natural
• Safe
• Easy to use.

Let’s see. Authentic. Simple.

Yep. I officially love it.

You have the opportunity to win one of Maty’s products for yourself! Simply enter the contest via the Rafflecopter below for your choice of one Maty’s product. The contest is only valid in the United States, and ends next Tuesday, January 15, at midnight.

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I received product to review but all opinions are 100% my own.