America Made Products

  Lately I have been spending a great deal of time getting curriculum together for the upcoming school year, I have been doing a summer bridge program with my dd to keep her Math, Reading, and Vocabulary skills up so when she starts her 7th grade curriculum we can jump right in without much review. 
  I have also been busy researching for anything I can find on the world of journaling, art journaling, and craft making. I love crafting, I have always dabbled in some form of crafting all my life. Though I have never really mastered anyone paticular craft, I have always enjoyed creating. One thing I have never really dabbled in is Art. I can't draw a straight line, but when I discovered Art Journaling I was mesmerized by it's beauty, the colors, the freedom of putting feelings on paper through Art. It's just a beautiful thing. 
  I have also been making handmade journals, I repurpose old books, making journals from scratch recycling ceral boxes, or any food box for that matter, I use composition notebooks, cardstock, basically anything paper. I have been giving them as a "just because" gift to my daughter's, to their friends, a few of the girls at my daughters dance school who just graduated high school, and now I am stock piling for the holidays. 
  With all that, I have not been paying attention to the outside world. So when my husband returned home from being out of town all week working and told me how our US Olympic teams will be wearing outfits made in China it not only peeved me, it got me doing research of a different nature, products made soley in the USA. Wow was I surprised at all I found in just an hour or two of searching the web. I was surprised to find how few brand name products I actually recognized. I was also shocked to find how few food products are actually made in the US. I also found some great products they are still USA made, I made a Pinterest board with all the great products I did find, I am going to include some links of sites that have all USA made products. 
  I saw a video posted from a segment on The Today Show that I google+'d. It was about one mom's quest to find products made soley in the USA. She gave some surprising statistics, like in 1960 only 1 in 10 products came from outside the USA, today 6 in 10 come from outside the USA. That if every american spent an extra $5.00 on a USA made product vs. buying a similar cheaper product made outside the US, it would produce some 200,000+ jobs for the American worker. 
  I plan on making some product switch-a-roo's in my own house to support the American worker, some procucts we already have and use, like Redwing Boots, my hubby buys a pair every year for work. Carhartt, another product hubby wears for work, they also make some really great men's and boy's clothing for everyday wear. Kitchen Aid, they are a bit pricey, but will last a lifetime. I got one from my hubby as a Christmas gift about 10 yrs ago, it broke after about 11 months, the company replaced it for free. I am swtching my toothbrush and dental floss to POH products,, they can be ordered online floss is $3.00 and brushes $1.00, check out their website @
http://www.buypoh.com/toothbrushes.html. Here are some more links to check out;
America Made Products, a directory with more than 500 you can trust, American Made in the USA, American Made Clothing, Furniture, Toys, Jewelry, Quality Products from the USA
http://www.americansworking.com/
http://www.unionlabel.com/
http://www.madeinusaproductsstore.com/
http://www.madeinusa.org/
Also please stop by and check out my STILL MADE IN AMERICA Pinterest board;
http://pinterest.com/kimmiesroom/still-made-in-america/
I would also love to hear from all of you on what you think about this topic. Please send me products not on my board, or your favorite products that are American made. 
I will be doing more installments on this topic,I will not only discuss just products made in America, I will also be doing a 30 day challenge for August, to make one change a day in  to switch over to American made products. I will also be posting a contest; details to follow later, on showing your patriotic side and supporting the American worker. I would like for everyone to share this on your blogs, tell your friends. Let's make a change together to bring America back to it's roots. I am really looking forward to doing this, and would really love to hear from you all. Until the next installment, I hope you and yours are well.


God Bless,
Kimmie