We are loving the blog post from Jacqueline Fabricius with Jake & Jacqueline of her little ones using Pleni Naturals in the bath! We are thrilled our products were chosen for baby’s first bath with her big brother! The photos are just adorable. Check them out here.

We also love what Jacqueline has to say about the products:

“With Hudson, I didn’t use anything but coconut oil until he was well over a year old, but I’m totally comfortable using Pleni Naturals on Sofia at her age. Their products are amazing! They smell delicious, are such great quality (which I always worry about with natural products), and their packaging is adorable!”

This week I want to talk to you about our packaging. Yes, packaging! I want to explain why I chose to use bottles and tubes over jars. It makes a difference! So many products come in jars and I can understand why in one way; it’s easy and convenient to open a jar top, remove the product and apply it. Believe me, that would make my life a bit easier, too. :-)

With jars, you don’t have to deal with pumps and flips caps and orifice sizes, right? Super easy! But here’s the thing and maybe it’s an aesthetician thing, but many of us learned early in our career to only work with products that have packaging where you don’t actually touch the product. Do you know why that is? GERMS! Because every time you dip your finger into a jar to remove product you are introducing the microbes on your fingers to the said product. And these microbes can potentially contaminate your skin care product. Don’t even get me started on jars for diaper balm or ointment. Yuck!

Being a line dedicated to safe and natural ingredients, and understanding that natural preservatives are more delicate and not as robust to fight off microbes as easily as their synthetic counterparts, we decided a “no jar” policy is the safest way to protect the integrity and safety of our products. And that’s why we use only bottles and tubes for all of our products!

We have big news: All of the Pleni Naturals products have been MADE SAFE certified! And we will continue to create new products that also meet MADE SAFE strict standards to bring you the safest products possible!

Having the MADE SAFE seal means that our products are made with safe ingredients without known carcinogens, behavioral, reproductive, and neuro toxins, hormone disruptors, heavy metals, pesticides, insecticides, flame retardants, toxic solvents, or harmful VOCs! It goes above and beyond to further examine ingredients for concerns for whether they build up in our bodies, don’t break down in the environment, and for general and aquatic toxicity.

In short, it means that we are committed to our MADE SAFE seal and creating products without ingredients known to harm human health or the environment.

So why is this important? Unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of chemicals in use right now in products we use every day; very few of them have been studied and some have been linked to some serious health problems.

Combined with confusing marketing claims like “green” or “eco” (which don’t actually mean anything about how safe or healthy a product is!), this means that people have been stuck trying to figure out which products are actually safe and which ones aren’t – which is almost impossible!

The MADE SAFE seal solves this problem and makes it easy to find trusted, certified products that are made without known harmful chemicals.

With this seal, we’re joining a movement to change how products are made in this country: safer and healthier. By buying MADE SAFE, you can help us bring about this change. Together we can eliminate toxic chemicals altogether!

Look for this seal on our products and on our website, as well as on www.madesafe.org.

Cheers to shopping safer!

July 8, 2016 marks a day I have been looking forward to all year! With my two little ones in tow, I went back to my hometown of Chicago to visit family. I’ve been missing them so much and so have my kids - this trip was so long overdue!

For the first week in Chicago we stayed with my twin sister. Guess which one is me?

My sister and her husband had their house built for them and it was completed in November 2015. This was my first time seeing it! Isn’t the view from their family room amazing?

No, not the view of the kids playing on their Kindles, all of the windows and the nature! It was everywhere! We saw little bunnies and a fox family running around the yard everyday. I was in heaven. After coming from "city living" we had such a blissful time running around with so much space. And of course, to commence the beginning of our stay, my twin sister purchased a trampoline for us all to jump in! High fives to Grandpa and my sister's husband who assembled it. We had way too much fun in there. See?

My suggestion is if you have kids and the space for it you should go out and purchase a trampoline asap!

We were on-the-go nonstop the entire trip. It was the best kind of chaos! Especially cousin chaos. I have no idea what is going on in this photo but it sure looks like a perfect example of chaos to me :)

And after a long day out having fun, the kids relaxed and had their baths. Guess what products they used to get clean and moisturized? That’s right! Pleni Naturals! PS How awesome is my sister’s tub and how cute are these kids?!

I noticed when we arrived in Chicago my sweet little niece had some dermatitis on her skin. Good thing I brought the Pleni Naturals along! I am so happy to say that after two weeks of using strictly Pleni Naturals products, my niece’s skin cleared right up! Yeah! Love that little lady...look at her sparkling blue eyes!

The second week in Chicago we stayed with my parents. We slept in the house most nights but my mom thought it would be fun to pull out the camper so the kids could have a "camp out" in the driveway.

The kids LOVED IT. Major hit. The kids begged to sleep in the camper every night! I also suggest if you have the space to "camp out" at home you should do it at least once before summer ends!

Of course the trip wasn't without some challenges. The first night my daughter told me she was leaving and going home so she could sleep in her bed. My son slept with me for the first week of our trip and could finally sleep on his own the second week. Sometimes the cousins argued. Sometimes my kids didn't cooperate. However, the biggest challenge was the camp I signed my kids up for didn't work out for us. The reason why this was a challenge is because I was supposed to WORK while the kids were at camp! Yikes! Good thing my mom and dad came to the rescue! They took the kids out for a few hours here and there so I could get some work done. The rest of the time, I worked after the kids went to bed. This did put a bit of a damper on playing Rock Band with the adults after the kiddos went to bed but we did get a few sessions in. What band member do you like to play? I always want to be the singer!