July 27th, 2009

My Love for You is so Timeless…

My hus­band loves the clas­sic beau­ties– the hour glass fig­ures of the pinup girls, vin­tage cars, and eat­ing at din­ers with juke­boxes and soda jerks. He prefers sus­penders over belts, low-cut neat hair­styles, cig­ars and pipes, and mom and pop shops. Even his taste in jew­el­ery is clas­sic– pre­fer­ring pocket watches over wrists watches any day.

When we cel­e­brated our first wed­ding anniver­sary on August 30, 2004, I scoured the Inter­net look­ing for a pocket watch that embod­ied the clas­sic beauty of the old Hunter-case watches worn by the rail­road work­ers of 19th cen­tury. It was vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble to find one that had the look and feel of the old-style pocket watches,and the ones that I did find were extrav­a­gantly priced. Unfor­tu­nately, I could not find one that we could afford– you know, new­ly­wed and barely mak­ing ends meet.

This year, how­ever, as we come upon out 6-year anniver­sary, I have decided to bite the bul­let and buy a pocket watch for my hus­band. I found a great, inex­pen­sive col­lec­tion of the Jules Jer­gensent watches for under $300. I plan on get­ting my hus­band the watch on the left with a phrase, “my love for you is so time­less” engraved on the back.

I guess this is going to be the anniver­sary of clas­sic gifts, because when my hus­band asked me what I wanted, I sug­gested that he check out the Cit­i­zen Watches col­lec­tion which includes and  old-fashion-styled charm bracelet watch. I am nor­mally not a fan of watches for myself, but this bracelet/watch is absolutely breath­tak­ing. It’s going to be a great anniversary!

January 1st, 2009

Product Review: Good Deals & Smart Steals

Let’s face it, the econ­omy has us all suf­fo­cat­ing and stressed beyond relief. So, when I was asked to review the new book “Good House­keep­ing: Good Deals & Smart Steals: How to Save Money on Every­thing,” I jumped at the offer. And I am glad I did.

The tiny book  packs a huge punch with how to get the most out of your money sim­ply by know­ing where to shop. Take, for exam­ple, auc­tions. When we think of auc­tions we think of Ebay or Yahoo, but did you know that you can find auc­tions through the United States Postal Ser­vice or the United Stated Depart­ment of Treasury?

In addi­tion to auc­tions, some of the other tips include how to save money pur­chas­ing big appli­ances, orga­niz­ing a cloth­ing exchange with friends, keep­ing up with car main­tence, and even max­i­miz­ing coupons by shop­ping on “Dou­ble Coupon Days.”

If part of your New Year’s Rea­so­lu­tion is to save money, you will ben­e­fit from this amaz­ing tips offered in “Good House­keep­ing: Good Deals & Smart Steals: How to Save Money on Every­thing”. This book gets two thumbs up from my family.

September 24th, 2008

Product Review: Gloves in a Bottle

When I was asked to review Gloves in a Bot­tle, I was slightly intrigued. Usu­ally, when asked to review a prod­uct, I imme­di­ately head to Google to find out what exactly the prod­uct is all about. How­ever, life got in the way and I wasn’t able to check it out in advance. When the box arrived, I sat and read all of the lit­er­a­ture before try­ing using it– partly because I had no clue that it was a lotion and partly because i half-expected to be able to scrub my stove after using the stuff. Suf­fice it to say, had I gone to the web­site, I would have seen this message:

Gloves In A Bot­tle is not intended to pro­tect against any chem­i­cals or irri­tants other than dirt and grime. Always fol­low manufacturer’s safety direc­tions when han­dling any harm­ful sub­stance. Gloves In A Bot­tle is not a sub­sti­tute for required safety pro­tec­tion, includ­ing gloves.

Gloves in a Bot­tle is a shield­ing lotion that bonds to dead skin cells in order to form a pro­tec­tive layer over the skin. This shield pre­vents bad ele­ments– wind and irri­tants to name a few– from dam­ag­ing the skin. What’s more, this pro­tec­tive layer does not wash off so it pro­vides pro­tec­tion continuously.

Armed with a clue and my sam­ple lotions, I decided to focus on two of my prob­lem areas. Pre­vi­ously I talked about my embar­rass­ing prob­lem of really dry feet, so that was one area and the other was my face. For some rea­son my face has been extremely dry and there are areas that seem to be peeling.

Unfor­tu­nately, Gloves in a Bot­tle did not work for mel. After apply­ing this lotion to my face, it still felt rough and dry. I actu­ally had to apply it three times before I felt some relief. I tried it for a week and found myself reap­ply numer­ous times through­out the day as my face never felt mois­tur­ized. In fact, by the end of the week, my face felt and looked the same. While it did help a lit­tle on my feet, I did not see a great improve­ment. I wasn’t impressed with this lotion at all. This is not to say that it won’t work for some­one else. Lotion is a funny thing in that everyone’s body chem­istry reacts dif­fer­ently. It may be worth giv­ing it a try if you are look­ing for some­thing to help alle­vi­ate very dry skin.