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Smart Stuff Sunscreen Review

I received a free product for purposes of my review. All opinions are my own.

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We love our end of Summer family vacation at the beach and this sunscreen arrived just in time for me to test it out on our many days of sun and sand. A good sunscreen is an important beach essential. So, I was pretty excited to try out SMART STUFF sunscreen.

SMART STUFF™ products are all natural and effective for children and adults alike. They are also environmentally friendly.  A portion of the profits from SMART STUFF goes towards supporting Luv Michael, a non-profit dedicated to educating, training and employing individuals with Autism.

In fact, doctors Lisa A. Liberatore, MD and Dimitri N. Kessaris, MD have an autistic child who was the inspiration behind them creating the SMART STUFF brand.

As physicians, they understand a product’s effects on a molecular level. As parents, they simply won’t compromise when it comes to health and safety of their family and friends. SMART STUFF was born from necessity, and based on one simple concept: well-designed products should work great day in and day out without compromising your health. Sounds great to me!

I got to try out SMART STUFF 30 SPF Mineral Sunscreen.

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This sunscreen is water resistant – for 40 minutes, but if you’re not in the water you can wait about 2 hours before you need to reapply (depending on your skin). Water resistant is an essential to any sunscreen on the beach, since we spend a large portion of our time surfing the waves.

I like that this SMART STUFF sunscreen has no synthetic chemical sun filters, it’s non-whitening, free of parabens, PABA, Petroleum, Phthalates, and Gluten. And it’s also eco-friendly and bio-degradable. And it’s made in the USA.

I think it smells like basically nothing, but both of my girls complained about the smell. I think they’re just used to the usual sunscreen smell and this one is different since it’s mineral based. Honestly, once I rub it in, I don’t notice it at all (unlike traditional sunscreen).

It takes a little extra time to rub in – if you don’t take the extra time you’ll look white for a little while, so just rub it in a bit longer. And, it’s impossible to rub in if you’re wet, or close enough to impossible that it’s just not worth it. You’ll want to towel dry before reapplying if you’ve been swimming. The first time I tried to reapply, I had some very white-faced children because it just didn’t rub in on their wet faces. I learned my lesson and dried them off the next time and it rubbed in just fine. It’s not sticky and doesn’t seem to make my skin as oily (especially my face) as my usual sunscreen.

For an SPF 30 it seems to last a long time and I’m very pleased with the sun protection it provided me and my children. We spent many hours in the sun, reapplying as needed, and it worked better than I expected. Actually, I think it worked just as well or better than my usual sunscreen.

If you have sensitive skin, or just don’t like the chemicals in traditional sunscreen, you should give SMART STUFF sunscreen a try.

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Summertime!

So, it’s summertime, and I deliberately did not sign my kids up for any summertime activities. Well, I take that back, I deliberately TRIED not to sign my kids up for any summertime activities before summer began. We’re not doing any dance camps, no dance lessons, no parent’s day out programs, etc. So, I think I’m doing pretty good so far.

I did plan out our reading logs for the summer. (we’ve already turn our first one in). My 5yr old finally took off on some independent reading – think “learn to read” books stages 1 and 2 – at the end of the school year and I don’t want to re-teach that the beginning of next year, so she’s participating in every reading activity in sight. It’s a good thing, she’s motivated by prizes, so filling up her sheet and turning it in for something appeals to her. I picked up her library reading sheet yesterday (which was the first day I could get it) and about a dozen books for her to read as well. She was all set to fill up her entire reading log – she has to read 30 hours – in one day. I explained to her that we can’t turn our sheets in for a month, and that we have plenty of time to read the books we have and check out some more to read. So, she only read 2 books to me this morning, and I’m sure she’ll try to read as many as possible at bedtime (it’s her new “stay out of bed” trick). There’s a few more reading logs we can’t sign up for until June (pizza hut does one) so we’ll be busy all summer with our reading! And the best part, she’s actually asking to read!

I just discovered yesterday that the Disney Store has activities every day of the week starting in June. I guess we’ll be going to their summer kick-off the beginning of June and be visiting the store many times this summer. They have story time every Tuesday, and I’m not sure what else planned for the summer, I think a craft time one day, and I’m sure plenty of other activities to keep two little girls happy.

We have season tickets to our local water park – which opened this past weekend, horray! My kids love the park and we plan to have some really nice tans by the end of summer!

And to top it off, I’m doing something I always said I would never do, my 5 yr old is entering a beauty pagent this year. I was just notified yesterday that she’s a “state finalist” so I should soon be receiving my envelope with all my schedule info and such.

Yes, I’m doing a terrific job of doing nothing this summer!  Not really, but at least it’s all fun stuff! And my summer is just starting 🙂 Surely I can fit in a vacation or two, a couple of Birthday parties, and maybe a shopping trip!