SingleWorkingMama

This won’t take long.

While the Topsy Turvy is a great concept, my $10 + tomato plant has yielded me *exactly* thirteen cherry tomatoes, with no sign of others to come.

Nine left! Hurry while they last!

While it’s true, it was easy and convenient to pick those first four, I’ll definitely be getting more bang for the buck from the 24 tomato plants that popped up on their own this spring, since I was too lazy to pull the plants in fall. While it made for quite a mess this spring, I’m convinced it’s why I have such a jungle now!

Much of what you are looking at is a Tomato jungle.

So, I guess I’ll take some preventative Aleve and prepare for what’s bound to be “back breaking work” of picking this bumper crop! Better yet, I’ll put the munchkins to work and feed their Disney fund with a nickel per tomato.

Calling all tomato recipes!

I give the Topsy Turvy a hearty shrug. If you ask me, it wasn’t worth the $10.

I spotted a new cleaning product at the grocery store the other day – Simply Safe All Purpose Cleaner.

All Purpose Cleaner

It claims to be “Industrial Strength-Family Friendly,” and boasts that it smells great, is non-hazardous, industrial strength and eco-friendly.

The price was about $2.49, almost a dollar less than larger name products. I bought it.

It is “rain” scented, and I love it. My kitchen and bathrooms smelled good after using it, and I liked what I read on the label.

Not until I decided to review this on my site did I notice it is manufactured in Thiensville, Wisconsin… The “donut hole” of my own hometown of Mequon!

Check it out if you want more info! They have many more products, which I intend to try.

http://www.simplysafecleaners.com

Welcome to the first of a series of lip product reviews.

I was at Walgreens the other day, and I noticed the entire kiosk of Jane cosmetics was blaze orange with clearance tags. Being the makeup junkie that I am, I was drawn to the display and gravitated to a pretty, crystal clear tube of Max Lip2 Lip Plumper. Upon closer inspection, I noticed a hint of pink, which upped my interest.

Look at that pout!

You see, I was born with a rare condition (okay, it might not really be a “condition.”): There is no visible natural pigment in my lips. When I tan, they are lighter than my face. When I’m pale, they blend right in. Hence my love affair with tinted glosses. Oh, thank GOD I’m a woman! (It would be harder to pull off a believable lip tint as a man, no?)

As a result of this natural pallor, and based on my knowledge of makeup application, this “Barely Pink” gloss would nicely complement a more dramatic eye, which I am very fond of creating.

I was skeptical of the promise to plump, and didn’t really care. My goal is not to be the next Angelina Jolie, by any means. I saw it as an added bonus, or element of fun.

So, imagine my surprise when I applied it at work today, only to be met with a slow-building burning sensation, complimented by a creepy cinnamon/hot-pepper flavor and scent. It occurred to me that any plumping action that should occur would be the result of some kind of seasoning or chemical burn. I quickly extinguished the fire with some trusted CoverGirl Wetslicks AmazeMint Lipgloss
, and hoped I wouldn’t turn into the OctoMom at the office.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, and because I wanted to bring you a legitimate review, I applied some when I hopped in the car for my 25 minute commute home. I was met with the same agony, but stuck it out for the ride home.

They stung until I was able to inspect them in my bathroom mirror. While there was no visible increase to the plump factor, there WAS an irritated red ring around my mouth that was anything but sexy.

I’m going to give this product 2 SingleWorkingMama THUMBS DOWN!

One more thing… Don’t leave this stuff in reach of your children! Imagine what could happen!

What can I get for you, Miss Jolie?

They say it holds twenty times its weight in liquid. If you aren’t familiar with the Shamwow! but are reading my little old blog, I’m in shock.

Just when I started to think Billy Mays (the OxiClean fella) might show up for Christmas dinner, Vince Offer took over my Insomnia Channels (Lifetime and Fox News.)

Even people who know me well might not realize that I have a significant amount of hair. My mop consists of a tremendous amount of fine hair, and it has deceived even well-seasoned hair stylists when it comes to dry time. One stylist I used to see actually added an extra half-hour to my haircut time because of it – no joke.

My mind started to churn when I saw the Shamwow! commercial. I could use this product to expedite my morning madness.

According to Vince, cheap imitations are not the way to go, so when my mom mentioned she had picked up a box of authentic Shamwow! I was really excited.

Tonight, I washed my hair and pulled the large version of the Shamwow! out of the box. My first observation was that it smelled weird – like dried lentils, or buckwheat, or something. It also was not quite large enough to create a turban-like wrapping, which was what I’d hoped for. I worked around this with a clothespin and hair clip, however.

This is no cheap imitation... It is the real deal!

I have to say, I think it really did expedite my dry time. The Shamwow! was definitely saturated when I finally took it off due to the overwhelming stench of buckwheat. (We’ll just go with buckwheat.)

The chances I’ll make this part of my daily beauty routine are slim, at best. I am definitely looking forward to the next catastrophic spill of apple juice or milk, however. For fun, I poured some water in the sink and used the Shamwow! to sop it up. It really did absorb all of the water!

One more tidbit, however. Vince told me that I “spend twenty dollahs a month on paper towels anyway,” and that is just gross exaggeration. Yes, I buy generic, but I also buy about a year’s supply for $16 at Sam’s Club.

Last Christmas, I bought the kids a Fisher-Price Kid-Tough Waterproof Digital Camera.

It is the perfect camera for fledgling photographers in the 3-7 year-old range.

It has a flash, a simple interface, and comes with all the tools you need to transfer their photographic masterpieces to your computer. The image quality isn’t that great, but the camera is (so far) indestructible. Considering the beating it gets from my son, that is a critical quality. *Note – since I bought ours, they have also waterproofed the camera! Awesome.*

Every now and then, they go off and set up still-life pictures, as well as inventive trick photography.

Trick photography case in point: One night, as I cooked dinner, they were playing in the yard with the camera. They came running in, gasping for breath and shouting that they saw a real giraffe in the back yard. I looked at them and asked, “A real giraffe?”

“Yes! Mom! We can prove it!”

With that, they showed me their astonishing proof.

Funny... I never saw any news reports about an escaped giraffe!

This picture led me to think instantly of the famous photo of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. I feigned shock, the three of us tried to figure out what a hungry lost giraffe might like for dinner, and then all had a good laugh.

A carefully arranged still-life.

I think this camera is well worth the investment. We have a lot of fun uploading their pictures to Walgreens, then printing them and putting them in albums. An amateur photographer myself, it excites me greatly to see them developing their own techniques.