After watching the first real SYTYCD show (instead of all of the tryout shows) and being able to vote.  I have to say I think America got it right with the bottom three couples.  I believe the judges got it right when they chose Tony to leave.  I wasn’t a big fan of his “funny” hip hop ways at all.  I thought Paris was more talented than Karla and should have stayed on the show.

I don’t know if it’s me or not but there seem to be a ton of strong dancers this season and the judges all seem to be judging them swiftly and strongly right from the start.  I remember much more coddling going on last year.  It’s too soon for me to decide if I like this stricter approach or not.

One thing that has changed on the show is that while Mary Murphy’s appearance has become more youthful, her behavior has become more like that of Paula Abdul.  I found this disappointing as Mary always seemed like a classy lady.  Now she reminds me of a drunk Paula (is there any other kind?), slobbering all over herself and the other panel judges.  Doing her trademark (and increasingly annoying) Wooo Hooooooo! and that weird “eh heh heh heh heh” laugh of hers.  Ending every other sentence with “yes I do” or “yes you do”….I just want to say “MARY, stop it! I want you to shut up – yes I do!”

Overall the show is still entertaining, Nigel is charming as always, and the dancers? Well, they are great!

It’s amazing how a small amount of clutter can be set aside to be dealt with at a later time and before you know it your desk is covered, the kitchen table hasn’t been seen in months, and you’re not sure what happened to your bills for this month. You may have realized that clutter adds up quickly. Now you want to figure out what to do with it.

We all know recycling is important so if you can reuse something you already have to cut the clutter, you avoid adding more to the already too full landfills. By repurposing things you already have, you’re doing your part to care for the earth. Here are some things to consider:

If your family eats cereal for breakfast, don’t throw out the boxes. Wrap them in contact paper or wrapping paper, cut diagonally to remove one corner of the box, and then store magazines you’d like to keep in them. You can do something similar with detergent boxes as long as you won’t mind having them smell spring fresh.

Baskets are another clutter buster if you know how to use them. They can be painted and decorated to match your décor, then you can store current magazines and sales catalogs in them rather than leaving them spread out all over the house. Small baskets can hold a pen and paper to be kept near the telephone so messages can be taken easily. Use a basket to store your napkins, salt and pepper shakers, and other items that would otherwise stay on the dining room table during a meal when you’re not eating.

A calendar with large spaces is another great clutter buster. Instead of having to leaf through stacks of papers to find out when your child’s field trip is, you can add the date and time to the calendar as soon as you get the note and then toss the paper. If you do that with every appointment you and family members have, soon you’ll have a clean desk, won’t miss scheduled appointments, and have a much more organized family.

File cabinets are an obvious choice for helping to tame paper clutter. However, they don’t do a whole lot of good if you don’t have a filing system in place and actually use the files to store your important papers. Look at yard sales and going out of business sales to avoid having to shell out some serious money. Besides keeping files in them, you can also store crafts supplies, children’s arts supplies, and other items.

Use 3-ring binders to help you file papers if you can’t afford a file cabinet. You may have to use several of them to file everything you could fit in a file cabinet, but they’re easier to move and can be taken into a different area of the house if need be.

Clutter busters are all around you if you take the time to look for them. Reuse items in your home for something other than their original purpose. Take the time to de-clutter each day and before long your home will be clear of clutter.

And Billy Ray Cyrus jumps for joy….

I was appalled when I saw Twilight star Kristen Stewart’s new do.  It appears to be some kind of jacked up mullet.  Her clothes and makeup look great, but that is definitely a mullet on her head and I don’t care WHO you are – this will definitely go on one of those Hollywood “Don’t” lists.

Now, there are certain parts of the world where people are die hard mullet wearers and the “reverse mullet” is certainly in (cut really short in the back and up toward the ears and then long in the front with bangs, etc.) but I think it really is just “too soon” – maybe forever too soon, to resurrect the mullet.

The very fact that the mullet is often referred to as the haircut that is “professional in the front, party in the back” should be enough to warn sane people from attempting this style.  I mean, my goodness, do YOU want a party going on at the back of your head without the front being invited? Sounds pretty scary to me.  But sounding scary is one thing, getting the actual haircut and LOOKING scary – quite another.

Finally, an updated version to my old faithful eyebrow shaper.  I’ve used many shapers over the years (plastic protected razor blades, basically) as I prefer this to waxing (painful, often expensive) most of the time and definitely prefer it to plucking – I don’t even like that word.

I recently bought a three-pack of Personna’s Eyebrow Shapers for myself and kept two while passing the 3rd onto a friend to try.  She knew I’d been raving about these things for years and wanted to try one.  She was suitably impressed.

The eyebrow shaper is basically an angled (the old version was not angled) plastic handle with a wire wrapped razor blade on the end of it that allows you to have so much good control of the shaper that you just cannot go wrong with using it.

It has a clear plastic cap to place over the razor when you are done using it, you can get several uses (one lasts me about a month if I use it just on my eyebrows).  The key is to moisturize your skin beforehand or use shaving cream, if necessary, then you shave against the direction of the hair growth.

I have personally found that the best time to shape my eyebrows with this particular shaper is right after my shower.  I get out, wrap my head in a turby twist lean in close to the  mirror and gently pull my eyebrow taut.  I then shape away and have actually had coworkers comment on how manicured my eyebrows look – where do I have them waxed, etc….then I share my eyebrow shaper secret.  For such a cheap price, you can afford to shape them every day if you want.

I have written before on the topic of shopping online and getting better deals on almost everything non-perishable you can find. I try to buy things online if I can due to lack of time to shop and price. I have now started buying dry goods and toiletries online also, things like deodorant and spices.

I got tired of paying $4 or more for deodorant and spices are hugely overpriced in the grocery store so I started pricing online. I found one of my brands of deodorant for around $2.50 a stick if you buy 3 or more, which I will use happily. The biggest price savings I found was on spices, a popular spice my wife uses to make her chicken shwarma salads cost $14 for a medium jar at the store and $3 for roughly the same amount online from a spice store online with free shipping if you buy enough.  All of the products I looked up I found cheaper online and this works for anything you can think of.

I did look up all groceries online and did find that you can purchase everything from online stores but I think I am going to stick to buying my milk and eggs from the store, I just don’t think I trust shipping refrigerated stuff yet.  I don’t need to risk e-coli lunchmeats to save a dollar or two.

This July my daughter will be taking swim lessons again, she took them last year as well. When she went last year she started off very timid and wouldn’t participate much. Her teacher was wonderful and by the end she was jumping into the water with no help.

We are going to take a few months off from Tae Kwon Do and do swimming instead. We think it really helped our daughter with her cerebral palsy and plus she really loved the water once she got over her fear.  I think swimming is kinda like riding a bike and everyone should learn how, hopefully early enough in life to enjoy it. We like to take trip to the local beaches and her grandma and grandpa take her on vacation quite a bit usually to somewhere with water.

It is nice to go out and not have your kids scared to go in the water; we already have our quadruplets in water here at home as often as we can so they will be comfortable when we start their lessons. I just hope this year my oldest actually learns to swim and doesn’t just depend on her arm floaties.

Let’s face it; many people have more than they need. When we fail to get rid of items while adding more, we end up with clutter. That’s when we may want to consider donating unused items that are cluttering our home rather than adding them to the already full landfills. You can donate the mess and have a more comfortable home after the mess is gone.

The old saying goes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Keep this in mind when you finally decide to get rid of some of the clutter in your home. If you have items that you no longer want, love, or need, you may find giving them away is a perfect option.

No matter which state you’re from, most likely they have a FreeCycle group that you can find online. Many counties in each state will have their own FreeCycle group and you can check it out at FreeCycle.org to see if there’s one near you. There may also be FreeCycle groups in other areas of the world. The great thing about these groups is that people offer items they have and someone else can ask for them. No money changes hands because everything is given away without cost.

Check with your local Salvation Army, Good Will, battered women’s shelter, or United Way Agency for a list of places that would accept good, gently used items for donation. Call each one and ask them if they are accepting donations and their procedure for doing so. If you give them a little bit of advance notice, they may be willing to pick up items rather than you having to deliver them.

While you’re going through your mess, try to separate like-sized items and keep them together. If you’re able to donate clothing, the charity will appreciate your efforts so they don’t have to. It would also be helpful if you could label your boxes or bags as you’re going so they know what to expect when going through each one.

If you have too many books in your home, you may want to check with your local library to see if they would accept them. If they won’t, you may want to check with Friends of the Library (www.folusa.org), daycares, churches, or synagogues in your area that would be glad to take them off your hands. A group called “Books through Bars”, which provides books to prisoners, would also appreciate any books you may like to give them.

There are many worthwhile charities that would be glad to help you donate the excess you have at your house. The good thing about most charities, and you’ll want to ask to verify, is that donations should be tax deductible if you itemize your taxes. Not only will you lessen the load you have at your home, but you can feel good that your trash really can be someone else’s treasure.

For our oldest daughter’s sixth birthday party (Hannah Montana theme – good Lord), we decided to “spike” our quadruplets hair into mohawks.  Not wanting to actually shave down the side of their heads, we opted for using super duper sticky spiking glue that is also water-resistant.  That way, they could be big sister’s “rock band” and hopefully have their mohawks stand up to cake, ice cream, pinatas, etc.

After searching a bit up and down the haircare products aisle at our local store, I came across the “got 2b” line by Schwarzkopf.  It is supposedly wind-tunnel tested and this is the “level 4 screaming hold” version of got 2b glued.  At any rate, I felt like I was dealing with some really serious stuff.

I tested it on myself first, the day before the party.  I got out of the shower and ran a dab through the back of my hair and used my blow dryer to blow dry it straight up.  It was super stiff and I had to wet it back down so my hair wouldn’t look too crazy when I left the house.

The day of the party, we put the got 2b glued gel onto the kids hair when their hair was dry.  It seemed to work just fine, wasn’t too stinky, didn’t take too long and lasted the whole party.  We finished the spiking off with colored hairspray – blue for the boys – pink for the girls.  Yeah, we’re predictable.

In hindsight, I should have followed the directions as far as using it on wet hair and not dry hair.  Our second youngest daughter has thicker curlier hair than the other kids and the front part of her mohawk started tipping down near the end of the party due to the extremely humid conditions outside.  I will always wonder if we had used it on wet hair and followed up with real hairspray if maybe that would have made a difference.  It nicely washed out with baby shampoo after the party and nobody lost an eye during the rinsing process, so we felt pretty safe using it on them – especially since it is not something we do all of the time.

We were so pleased with the got 2b glued spiking gel that we plan to purchase it again this October when all the kids will wear their rockstar outfits again and go trick or treating.  Definitely a dependable spiker!

Seller & Creator: Dan Feildman

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This week I’ve had the opportunity to review THREE different Victoria’s Secret body lotions.  One was GREAT, one was GOOD, one was a SKIP.

The GREAT: Drenched in PINK lotion.  The one I tried was the “Soft & Pure” Ocean Breeze and Jasmine scent.  It came in a huge (16.9 oz size) hot pink tub with a big pump on the top so a generous amount will come out to slather all over yourself.  I found this was best to use (for me) after tanning, taking a shower, then as the container says “slather on after you’re done cleaning up.”  It has a nice soft scent and goes on so so smooth – it also smells very “clean” and I felt like I had just stepped out of the shower hours after doing so – a bonus during hot Summer months.

The GOOD:  Beauty Rush hand cream.  This particular scent was Winterberry.  This one had softening shea butter in it, yet wasn’t greasy, which I appreciated.  It was reminiscent of Mary Kay’s Satin Hands for me, but that’s not a bad thing.  The smell is INTENSE.  So if you are not one for strong lotion scents, then this is one to skip, but otherwise an enjoyable product that is handy to slip into your purse (I have the 2.5 oz size) and apply liberally while you sit next to the stinky person in staff meetings.  Yeah, the lotion is strong enough – even for that.

The SKIP: Berry Kiss hydrating body lotion.  This one was too intense, even for me.  I “might” consider trying it as a hand creme due to the pungent smell, but there is no way on earth I would use it as an all over “body lotion” as is suggested.  Not unless you want to be mistaken as a fruit plate walking down the street…definitely one to SKIP.