Dress success

My oldest daughter had been searching for the perfect dress to wear to a wedding in a few weeks. She looked at women's clothing catalogs, online stores and found a few dresses she liked, but the ones she did like were pretty expensive. Since I'm visiting her in AZ right now, we headed off to the mall today to see what we could find. I spotted a dress that was a bit different of a style for her, but I thought it would look amazing on her.

It did.

It was on sale.

Dress success.

It's almost UGG time again...

At first I resisted UGG's but after I borrowed a pair of one of my daughter's I have to admit I was a taken in by the comfort and the look. The girls also own some knock off of UGG's but I've found they don't last more than one winter, if that. My red suede boots have lasted two winters, they'll make it into a third though it's time to start thinking about replacing them. Hence my finding the pair pictured when looking through merrell shoes online. Granted, they aren't red, but they look pretty neat and hopefully the price will drop a bit more in the near future....

How to roll with the best of them....

There is a difference between a rolling briefcase and a rolling suitcase or for that matter a rolling backpack. Prior to getting my netbook, I considered a rolling briefcase since the weight of my older laptop made traversing the public transportation system a challenge and when traveling it added to the weight I was trying to carry on my shoulders. If you have recently been in an airport you've seen how popular all of these items on wheels are, it does make it much easier and faster to get to one end of an airport to another.

Women wearing men's ties...

Tuesday I had the chance go to to lunch with a co-worker, we were lucky enough to be able to try out a new restaurant in town that was not officially open for business. Yes, we were taste testers. The food and the atmosphere was really nice and we had a fun discussion on what the wait staff had to wear, black shirts and mens ties. She thought that women looked silly when they had to wear ties, I remember a fashion stage when it was popular for women to wear ties so for me, it wasn't that much of an issue. Though I could see where it'd be easy for a tie to get in the way of serving food. Waiter...there's a tie in my soup...

:-)

E-commerce...did you know?

While there is usually a lot of chatter when it comes to Cyber Monday and online shopping, did you know that the Census Department actually estimates E-commerce?

The numbers are of course not recent, since we are dealing with the government and statistics, they are from 2007, but when you look at the report link to pdf you can see the main areas. I was surprised that motor vehicles and parts dealers ranked so highly as to total sales online.

I feel like we have a health and beauty section...

Take three people between the age of 20 and 15 and one small bathroom and you can imagine the overflow of their various lotions, shampoos, conditioners, make up (for the two females) feminine products, acne solutions, cotton balls, face washing clothes, etc., etc. It wasn't bad when it was contained within the bathroom though at times things were packed so tightly one product being placed wrongly created a domino affect...

It wasn't bad when some of it migrated to the vanity or to the extra desk, though it had to be kept out of reach from my granddaughters. However earlier tonight it had spread to my dining room table...That's where I drew the line and the motto of the blog actually fit. "The revolution begins at home" and it did begin here, the war against beauty products and make up in my dining room...So far? I'm winning.

:-)

A hair product for every day...

Earlier today I set upon a mission I try to avoid as long as possible. Cleaning out the bathtub; which always has to involve removing all of the empty bottles of hair products that are left there to rot. Evidently the distance required to carry an empty bottle of hair supplements from the tub to the garbage can is an insurmountable task for those who reside in my house. They are also apparently unable to tell someone when a product is running low. This can create the male members of the house being forced to use flowery feminine hair products and the female members of the house to be forced to smell like, oceans or spices or "fresh scent" whatever "fresh scent" is supposed to be.

Those of you who have followed my tale of trials and tribulations related to the inability of members of this house to put a roll of toilet paper on the roll, will not be shocked by the empty hair product, body soap, razor blades beyond use and empty bubble bath saga. Though the amount of hair and body washing products that two males and two females can go through in the course of a week, makes me wonder how much they use that they don't really need. Which is why I always try to buy products that come with a pump, that doesn't always work though.

Yesterday is a perfect example, one daughter decided to take a bath, after the tub got done filling up, as she got ready to go in, she saw a spider fall into the bath water. Rather than scoop out the skinning dippying arachnoid, she felt it necessary to drain the complete tub, wash it out then fill it up again with bubble bath...

The itsy bitsy spider went down the water spout...

:-)

I'm not a fan of shopping...

Perhaps part of the reason I'm not a huge fan of Christmas has to do with the commercialization aspect and the fact that I'm not really a fan of shopping, especially when it entails having to fight the crowds, whether it's Black Friday or White Monday. Whenever possible I buy things online, that way I don't have to try to find the right size or color, if it's in stock? Voila, it's ordered and on it's way.

So far the only decoration in the house is I bought a blue pointsetta...

:-)

Would Dansko mean dance?

Still in word association mode, if you saw something for Dansko shoes would you think of dancing? I did, and I was wrong, they actually have a rather nice line of a variety of shoes, not related to dancing either. I'm a fan of clogs, they have some nice ones for both men and women. I do have to say though, as a huge fan of red boots, they had some nice boots, but no red...They do however have a really nice patent leather clog in claret...

You need to have cheese with your wine...

I'm the only "real" wine drinker in the family, it something I learned to enjoy thanks to my father as far as tasting the different varieties and cooking with wine. Which means while I have a nice collection of wine glasses, they are regulated outside of my kitchen since it is so small. However, when I started to do some online browsing, I did not realize that some of the wine glass racks for sale were so inexpensive.

I found several wine glass racks that would work in my small kitchen that were well within my price range. I also noticed that GlassStemwareRacks.com not only offers to meet prices but is currently offering free shipping on most of the stemware racks that I saw on their website. They also had some really neat wine furniture that when we finally get done with the renovations at our house, would be really nice to have since our space is going to triple...

The joys of cars and electronics...

Our car has become a daytimer, which means it can only be driven during the day since something happened and the rear tail lights no longer work. It's not the bulbs, those have been replaced/tested and the brake lights as well as the turn signals work. It's not the fuses, those have been checked.

It's really strange problem that so far the only thing that has been suggested could be the solution is having the wiring looked at. Which is of course not cheap. So while some may be thinking about auto accessories, I've been calling around to see how much mechanics charge by the hour to find one that will do it without costing more than Miguel paid for the car...

Until then? The car is a daytimer, which will be even more interesting with the time change this weekend...

:-)

Technology I have to learn...

Yes, I'm a blogger and I have seven blogs, but when it comes to cell phones? I'm still a purist and a novice at heart, just recently breaking down and learning how to text message to the amusement of my family. Why? Because even though I've heard that iPhone's rock and that you can use an iphone dock, I don't want to take the internet with me with as much time as I spend on it when I am home. I think the MobileFun website is a great one to visit, it does show you what is available and it's organized in a way that I wish some of the sites are in the US would follow.

I have learned as an example about how important the right blackberry case can be, it can be the difference between seeing a phone get damaged by water and surviving to ring another day; though I've resisted having a blackberry, three of mine now have them. Two of them have the same blackberry model, which is another nice thing about the MobileFun site, they have pictures which make it easier to identify which exact phone you have. Another thing I should learn more about, is the bluetooth headset, supposedly my bunch tells me my phone is "bluetooth capable" and that would end my frantically looking for my phone when it rings...Though I'm not really sure I'd like wearing the ear thing, that was one of the things I don't miss about working in a call center is the whole headset thing. In a way I'd like my next phone to have a keyboard but I have a feeling with as small as they are? It wouldn't help my texting speed...I felt proud of myself when I learned how to get rid of the T9 and to use the abc, though the girls keep telling me if I'd just learn the T9 I'd be faster.

:-)

Another good reason to work from home...

One advantage of the days I work from home is that no one can see when I've stayed up too late, gotten up too early and have to deal with dark circle under the eye syndrome...Today is one of those days. I went to sleep about 3:45, got up way too early for what time I went to bed and just finished editing and uploading video from a political event I went to last night.

Now, it's time to finish making dinner since some of my daughters are coming over...

:-)

Another funny thing about Mafia Wars

You'd think that most of those who play Mafia wars are men, right? Yet I've been surprised by the large number of women who play. The game design, including even the collections that you have to seek out are male inspired, to the point where I see an ad for Davidoff cigars and think about the game since that's a common prize and a collection.

There even appears to be a mafia family or two that's made up completely of women, I experienced this first hand last night when I killed one, and then was attacked by a hoard of female mafia members, a few of which took issue with me "icing" them and put out a few mafia hits on me. Which I always find funny since the whole point of the game is to make money and build points. But? If they want to waste their money on paying someone to kill my online character? Someone will definitely take advantage of it. My longest survival time on a hit list has been 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

:-)

Ever wonder about wrinkles?

I had a friend once who was really into Sharpei's, she had two of them, so whenever I hear anyone talk about wrinkles in any shape or form from the best wrinkle creams to complaining about wrinkles in their clothing, I automatically visualize her one puppy...who was one of the most wrinkled ones I'd ever seen, similar to the image of the puppies shared here. I realize since I am approaching 50 I should be more concerned about wrinkles, but I don't think I'll ever have to worry about being that wrinkled to the point where I don't smile when I hear them mentioned...

:-)

Black cats and Halloween...

Black cats often are associated with Halloween, on more than just Halloween Party Invitations. Beyond the decorative aspect of invitations Halloween and black cats, black cats get a bad rap, having owned several, my luck never changed one way or the other (smile). There are a huge amount of Party Halloween Invitations to select from, unique and exclusive designs are out there on sites like Holiday-Invitations.com, where they give you the chance to view your Halloween Party Invitations before you buy, they have a patented instant preview feature so you know before you order your Halloween invitation or any other invitation is how you want it.

Maternity clothes have come a long way...

It used to be back in the day when I was pregnant with my children that you could pretty easily spot a maternity outfit and most of them were not very attractive, it was just one of those things that you had to face when you had a baby. Now, maternity clothes have changed, there are some items that I look at that I'm tempted to want to wear even though my baby-having days are long since past. What's also nice is some of the prices out there, looking at Kiki's Fashions they have a whole section of items that are $10.00 or less and they also give you a way to save 20%, just use the word "blogfriends" in the coupon code section when checking out.

They also offer a nice line of plus sizes, which I know used to be a problem and still is a problem if you are trying to find maternity items locally and you are trying to be cost conscious. Of course the other thing to point out about way back when, was the internet and internet shopping wasn't available either...

If you are thinking about planters...

I used to love to garden, it would be fair to say I still do but I don't make enough time for it. I do have a window box planter but it's one that could use some TLC and some more plants. Right now it's more weeds than plants, though at least I can argue that some of the weeds are kind of pretty. Many weeds don't look like weeds, or at least that's the story I'm sticking with at this point. :-)

There are an amazing number of different styles of outdoor planters out there of almost every price range. Which makes it fun to dream online about which type I'd like to have for the new house since the porch there is huge and is the perfect type to have garden planters and who knows, maybe a fountain...That would be even easier to maintain.

Things you notice when you buy a house...

Well, it's completely official, we got the deed for our house so we are now officially homeowners. With the exception of making payments on some past due taxes, at this point we own the house free and clear which will probably not stay that way for long since the house does need some semi-major renovations before we can actually move into it. We are going to do as much of the work that we can do as possible to keep down the costs, but as we were there cleaning today, I started noticing all of the things we are going to need, like door hardware almost all of the doors and the hardware are gone. We have two closet doors and two bathroom doors, all of the bedrooms are missing doors, we need a new front door and we need a new back door. We did discover upon the recommendation of some friends our local Habitat for Humanity store, which has a huge number of doors, some of which are brand new, some have come from homes that were salvaged. Which means it's a matter of measurements and then searching...

Sandals versus flip flops and sticker shock...

For years I resisted wearing flip flops, where you realize it's really hard to find inexpensive sandals that don't utilize the whole thong thing between your big toe and your second toe. This may not sound like something worth "ranting" about, but with my increasing mileage in walking, sandals most times are not comfortable and flip flops are to me less comfortable than walking barefoot and when it's really hot tennis shoes are just not appealing. While my preferred method when the weather is warm is barefeet, that's not a smart thing to do when trying to trek a few miles, even if the soles of your feet have become like leather. (Who knows someday I might want to be a firewalker - lol.) My favorite pair of sandals I've had for years, Dr. Martens, appear to have reached the end of their lifespan and it doesn't seem as if that particular style that I love is still available.

I finally tried one of the many pairs of flip flops in this house, magically finding a pair that matched, since most of the girls in this household seem to have no problem not wearing the same color on both feet, yes, you may think there is a pair just like that at home, but like socks, flip flops disappear around here. They also don't last long, which is not a big deal since most of them are pretty cheap but I'm used to having my shoes/sandals last for quite a few years, I just don't find the flip flops comfortable at all. So, my hunt for a pair of walking sandals has started, I've seen some that look appealing made by Ecco shoes but spending over $100.00 for a pair of sandals is a bit out of my range, though I now also see that the Dr. Martens are pretty pricey compared to how they used to be. I know, I've just given away how long it's been since I shopped for shoes if I think that over $100.00 is expensive, it makes me wish I would have done what I did with my boots, I really loved them so I bought two pairs while they were on sale, then? I'd still have an extra pair of my favorites...