Go Tell Aunt Rosie

Don't you love it when you title a blog post and then realize YOU HAVE THE WRONG WORDS???

Welcome to my Wednesday.

Allow me to back up, if I may.

I feel it is an appropriate time to mention, especially after yesterday's post on my occasional housewife failures, that I am actually not the best housekeeper in our marriage. I am a good housekeeper. I keep the clutter picked up, I do the laundry, I empty the dishwasher, and I'm pretty sure the health department wouldn't kick up too much of a fuss if they visited. But if we're in the business of truth-telling here, I must confess that Ryan is a MUCH better housekeeper than I am. He is better at cleaning {probably because he is not so ever-loving FREAKED OUT by unidentified dirt}, and he is motivated to tackle these projects far more often than I am.

It's an area of life I've had to come to grips with since being married. My choices are to feel like a failure because I'm not as good at this as he is, or accept that I'm not as good at this as he is and let it be okay, because if he's not worried about it, I probably shouldn't be either.

Most of the time, I choose the second option.

So keeping that in mind, may we pause for just a moment to talk about our vacuum? When we got married, we owned many things in duplicate. This happens when you have two thirty-somethings who marry and combine their fully functioning households. Our general rule was to compare the things we owned in duplicate and keep the nicer option. And in the event that we hated both options, we put that item on our registry.

This worked very nicely, except in the case of the vacuum. I owned what I felt was a fairly nice vacuum. It was probably less than ten years old, it was sturdy, easy to manage, and I had mastered the delicate art of changing the bag when it got full. It wasn't a masterpiece of a vacuum. It wouldn't star in a commercial for being the coolest kid on the block, but it worked well.

Ryan actually owned two. And I'm pretty sure both were original prototypes of vacuum cleaners. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is one of those times. So I am going to skip all description and just show you.

You guys?

I HATED THEM BOTH. The blue one wasn't so bad if you had a specific project: a closet or a car to clean. But it wasn't practical {or lightweight} to cart around the house, so that left the maroon vacuum. That thing is as loud and unwieldy as you might imagine, and Ryan loved it. The vacuum hill was one he was willing to die on in the combination of households, so my ultra-modern, kinda-cool vacuum went to a new home, and old blue and old maroon moved in...in all their loud, croaky, 1970's leftover glory.

I probably don't need to really explain why I didn't vacuum with intense frequency, do I? For me, using these vacuums required a mental preparation, and I didn't get there nearly as often as I should have.

Sooooooooooooo...a couple of months ago, Ryan decided to pre-spend his Christmas money and get one of those little robotic vacuums that works all by itself.

I did not care at all because, well, OBVIOUSLY this was going to make my housewifery life much easier. And it was his Christmas money. If he wanted to buy a vacuum, more power to him. But I sort of wondered in the back corner of my mind just how pathetic it made us that we had to have a robot vacuum our house. Had I found a new all-time low as a housewife failure?

He named her, because we name all our stuff, and this is how she came to be known as Rosie. {Apparently that was the name of the housekeeper on the Jetsons. I never watched the Jetsons, so I don't have any idea.}

I mentioned Rosie in passing a couple of weeks ago on the blog and had some questions about her, so I thought I'd answer them for you.

Rosie is about the size of a large dinner plate, and she's probably about 2-3 inches tall. She's programmable, so every day at the assigned time {7:30 a.m. for us}, she sets out from her charger and begins looping about the house in random patterns, sucking up cat hair, litter, dust, Bekah-hair, and whatever other odd assortments of dirt have come in during the past 24 hours. She pokes around in every single room, regardless of the surface {she does work on carpet, tile, and hardwood}, and she finds hidden dirt and eats it.

Because she's little, she can get under pieces of furniture that a handheld vacuum would not be able to maneuver. {Bookcases, couch, etc.} If she runs into something, she just rotates and goes another direction. Her one vice is eating cords, and if she gets too choked up on one, she just stops working and dies. {I can't blame her there.} When I find her and untangle her, I just turn her back on, and she continues on her merry way.

Her goal every day is to make it back home to her charger with her belly full of dirt. Most days she does, but now and then, I find her conked out in the bedroom, too tired to make it home. {Can't blame her there either sometimes.}

Because we're weird this way, one of the highlights of our day is examining the dirt pouch and seeing what she found every day. Ryan usually empties it when he comes home for lunch, and Rosie sleeps in her charger all day so she can be ready for the next day.

Call us crazy, call us spoiled, but we really love our Rosie. I admit it is SO NICE to have floors that are not littered with cat hair every single day. It's nice to not carry cat hair on my socks everywhere I go. It's nice to know that people can come over whenever, and our floors at least look clean. And it's nice to have an electronic babysitter for Braeya every morning. {Braeya HATES Rosie, but she stalks her anyway.}

We kept the other two vacuums so we can actually hand-vacuum the house as needed {after a party, for example, or if there's a specific spill}, but I do NOT miss using loud, cranky maroon. Not one bit.

We call Rosie a good investment.

And back to my opening statement...

When I heard that her name was Rosie, it made me think of the scene in Little House on the Prairie when Laura, Mary and Carrie sang the song about going to tell Aunt Rosie that the old gray goose is dead. I sing it every time Ryan talks about Rosie. And when I went to get the clip so YOU could watch it too, I learned it's not Aunt Rosie at all. It's Aunt Rhodie!

Oops.

Well, from now on, in Shafferland, it's Aunt Rosie and the old dead gray goose.

{PS - Our Rosie is an iLife, if you want to read more specifics about it at your leisure.}

Simply Bliss {ooh! and a giveaway!!}

It's been a little over a year since I started my capsule wardrobe life, and in that time, I've learned quite a lot about what works and what doesn't. I'm still building it, piece by piece, and I just got something new!

So because I like to think we're the kind of friends who go shopping together and give opinions after trips to the fitting room, check this out!

As you know, I have {for many years now} shopped at Cato nearly exclusively, but in an odd twist of fate, Kokomo does not actually have Cato. {What!?!?} My backup store was Old Navy and Kokomo's store closed right around the time we moved.

Sigh.

So I've started shopping online a little more, even though this makes me nervous, because I'm a girl who kind of needs to try on clothes to make sure they fit my oddly proportioned self.

Here's a shop I just learned about: Simply Bliss Boutique. It was started by two friends {who are, by the way, adorable} who met in a class at church and ended up going into business together! Their desire is to provide clothing options to women and girls who want to be cute and trendy without losing all modesty in the process.

And it just so happened that one of the pieces in their boutique is the exact thing I was looking for to add to my capsule. Happy coincidence!!!

Here's the thing.

It's no secret that my thermostat is broken. Like my personal thermostat. It's hard to layer up when doing so produces an overheating of gargantuan proportions. So "throwing on a sweater" just doesn't work for me. I had two vests in my capsule that were sleeveless and lightweight, and I liked them, but I needed one more: a neutral one that could go with anything.

AND THEY HAD ONE!!

I was so excited.

One thing I've learned in this capsule building process is that when you're not buying clothes all the time, it's important to go with quality when you do buy something. And this thing is quality. It's heavy duty {in a quality sort of way} without being heavy {in a temperature sort of way}.

Besides the heat factor, I struggle with vests and sweaters because they tend to just hang, and I need a little definition in my clothes. I don't need the extra invisible pounds of hanging clothing. So guess what? This vest has a drawstring! I love it! I can pull it in and give a little bit of shape, which makes me feel so much better about myself. 

Wanna know my favorite part?

UNENDING POCKETS.

Oh my word, people. I cannot tell you how happy I am when I have pockets. Seriously. Why were clothes even designed without them? This vest has multiple pockets - six, to be exact -  so my phone will be safe and at the ready for my endless picture taking. {Because that's really what it's all about.}

It also has a hood, which is just cute, and even though I probably won't use it unless I get caught in a rainstorm, I like the extra little bit of personality it provides to the vest. But if you hate hoods, it zips right off completely, and you don't have to wear it at all.

It has a lining that gives it durability without making it too heavy. It both zips and snaps, or you can just wear it open. Works with dressing up or dressing down, which is a requirement of anything I put in the capsule. And because it's neutral {stone, if you want to be specific}, it can go with anything.

I am thrilled. It's perfect for me and feels so comfy. You're going to see a lot of this on the old blog in forthcoming pictures!!

The nice ladies at Simply Bliss sent this vest my way in exchange for an honest review, and I'm excited that I honestly LOVE IT!!

So here are some things you might need to know.

* Go check out Simply Bliss Boutique. You can subscribe to their emails and get 20% off your first order. {SWEET!}

* Free shipping on orders over $50. {DOUBLE SWEET!}

* If you like the vest I got, it's called the utility vest in stone, but they have other vests too, if you prefer a different style.

* They told me {and were right} that if you're unsure of which way to go between two sizes, to go with the bigger one. Since I lost weight, I wear mostly medium, but I tend to be bigger through my back and shoulders, so I went with a large on this, and it fits perfectly. A medium definitely would have been too small.

* They do have a return policy, outlined here, in case you want to know the particulars before shopping for clothes online.

ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND Simply Bliss is providing a $25.00 gift card to one of you so YOU can shop, too!

So if you want to win, leave a comment and tell me your favorite thing you're looking forward to wearing this fall. {I love the return of fall clothes.} I'll put your names in a hat and Ryan {aka my photographer extraordinaire} will draw on Saturday night and I'll announce it before the Shuffle on Sunday! {You can comment anonymously, but type in your name in the comment!}

Thanks for shopping with me. Hope you had fun...and if you win the gift card, hope you have some fun of your own!

Thanks, Simply Bliss, for all this fun. I'm looking forward to shopping again soon!

The Saturday Six

One.

Last week, my friend Kari came to see our {still messy} new house. She was part of our takes-a-village team of people who helped make this move possible. We appreciated her finding boxes for us from the kitchen of her workplace so our packing could move along at the necessary breakneck speed! Wanted to get her a little token of thanks {truly not enough to say thanks} and thought it turned out pretty cute! {That's a banana split cake, by the way. I did not make it. It turns out there's a killer bakery in town. Someone help me now.}


Two.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a couple of posts {here and here} on the Dignity Project, which is a ministry that provides reusable pads to women who otherwise have no way of living a normal life during their periods. This week, the missionary that receives and distributes theses posted this update, and I wanted to share it with you, because some of what she said, just blew my mind:

"With every "yes" that I say to Jesus, He takes me further and further into the outer edges of society. I first brought The Dignity Project to boarding school children, then orphans, then impoverished village women, then prisoners and now the mentally ill. It's been a progressive movement to the outside.
Today I spent my day in the largest psychiatric hospital in Uganda. Over 650 people find refuge there. Men and women who are survivors of genocide, war, human trafficking, abuse, trauma and neglect fill the wards. "These people are shunned from society. They feel utterly forgotten," my friend shared.
Soon after I arrived I found the staff making sanitary pads for the patients out of cotton and gauze. I was so happy to see first hand what the women normally use. It really is quite a creative use of medical supplies! As you can imagine, the patients and staff were absolutely thrilled to receive new reusable sanitary pads that don't leak and last years with proper care.
After one woman received the first pair of underpants she has had in SEVEN years she started dancing. I was so moved by her joy I started dancing with her! It was a taste of Heaven dancing in her celebration! I am telling you, it was as if she won the lottery. The ladies could not believe the care and detail that was put into these Dignity Kits made by you all! I am so proud of you!
Next week I have the honor of going back to the hospital to train a group of 12 women how to make our Dignity Kits. Several of the women are soon to be resettled back into their communities and want to make them for a sustainable income.
There have been times when I have been ashamed to tell people what my job is here. I usually say something like, "I am a reusable sanitary pad missionary of sorts". Today I have never been more proud of my title."

Three.

 Source

One of the things Ryan and I are hoping to do in our new life/town/home is entertain more. And this blog post about a weekly supper club just made my heart sing! 

Four.

Source

I'm a huge advocate of Katie Farrell and her Dashing Dish website. Ryan and I eat many of her recipes, and I really appreciate her approach to clean eating and body image. {Be sure to check out her story if you're not familiar with her, so you can understand why she's so passionate about this!} Anyway, she just released a free guide to clean eating, which explains a bit about what it is and offers ideas for both homemade and store-purchased foods that fit this category. If the whole concept just sounds trendy and confusing to you, check out her free download!

Five.

Source

This week, I not only had the chance to read a book to share with you, but I watched a movie to tell you about, too! 


Ryan and I don't often GO to the movies, because we're too cheap to pay ticket prices, but we do love to watch movies at home, whether we rent them or watch them when they air on TV. A couple of weeks ago, FishFlix {a company specializing in Christian DVDs} asked if I'd like to review a movie for them. They sent me one titled Virtuous, and Ryan and I watched it together this week while working on our house projects. 

The movie tells the story of Simone Burner, a young woman who is assaulted one night after walking home from work. She shoots her attacker in self-defense, and finds herself arrested, facing trial, and opposed by a corrupt prosecutor determined to use her unsavory past against her. 

The movie is a little over two hours long and has a large cast of characters whose stories are wildly different, but intertwined together. {In that respect it reminded me of movies like New Year's Eve or Valentine's Day with so many connected story lines.} It took me a good portion of the movie to figure out how they were all connected, and a flashback toward the beginning further confused me, because I wasn't sure how many more flashbacks to expect or how that one fit with the present day activity. At times, it felt like there were so many story lines that the action was all over the place and hard to follow. Ryan commented on that several times while we watched.

I appreciated that Virtuous was not as predictable as some movies in this genre can be, but the acting wasn't as top notch as you would find in mainstream movies. Again, that wasn't a big distraction to me, because I somewhat expected it, but it did bug Ryan. While it wasn't as much of a focal point as I expected from the synopsis on the cover, the movie focused on the {important!} message that all women have worth, regardless of their past, their age, or their occupation. Even though the plot centered around a murder and featured women turning their lives around from all sorts of past behavior, they did not show any of the violence or other behavior on-screen, and the language was clean, keeping the movie family-friendly.

While this movie may not have been my favorite, because of the confusing story line and the quality of acting, I did see some previews at the beginning for other movies that caught my interest, and I was glad to be introduced to a company I'd not previously been familiar with that is a resource for entertainment with a gospel message behind it. {And for those of you with kids, they do have many kids' movies to choose from!} 

My thanks to Fish Flix for providing Virtuous for me in exchange for a review!


Six.

Source

I've told you before that I like to switch up the kinds of books I read to get a well-rounded reading experience. This week was no different. I read One Dress. One Year. by Bethany Winz with Susanna Foth Aughtmon. 


Bethany was sixteen years old when she decided to do something tangible and entirely out of her comfort zone in order to help raise awareness about modern day slavery. She'd learned in junior high that slavery wasn't something that happened only way back in the olden days, but it was {sadly} alive and well at this very moment. Sickened by the idea of humans treating other humans in such a degrading way, she wanted to do something.


So she made a black dress and wore it every single day for one year. Talk about the ultimate capsule wardrobe! During that year, Bethany blogged about her adventure, shared {sad but true} facts about modern day slavery, and challenged readers to give money to reputable organizations working to end trafficking. 

The book is a quick read {just 146 pages} and part of each chapter shares excerpts from her original blog posts, including some of the slavery facts she shared and how she wore the dress that day. {Using accessories, she actually wore it differently every day.} The rest of the book shares her thoughts, her ups and downs, her fears and triumphs during that year of explaining her experiment and raising awareness.

Though not marketed as a young adult book, I would say that the writing style {which holds true to the teen voice that Bethany was when she completed this experiment} would make a teen audience the logical draw to read this book. Having said that, I recognized my teen self in Bethany and was able to relate to her as I read, even though I'm not that age {kind of by a long shot} anymore. And I did learn things about modern day slavery that I did not know.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was that her experiment was not the wild success she hoped for when she set out. {Hang on! Stick with me.} Her goal at the start of her year was to raise $100,000 for her cause, and when all was said and done, she raised less than $10,000 in a year. She wrote regularly about her frustration that all her efforts {through social media, blogging, making connections, speaking to groups, etc.} didn't make the wild impact she hoped it would. She wanted people to care and jump on board and they didn't with the intensity that she desired.

And yet...her work still mattered. I think that truth spoke the most loudly to me as I read. We are conditioned to believe we have to do something crazy huge to matter, but being obedient to the call of the Lord is what matters. Bethany did that. She kept her commitment to wear the same dress every day for a year and came out on the other side a different girl in her own heart. And while she didn't raise what she wanted to raise, she DID make an impact for organizations working against trafficking, and she did raise awareness. I'm glad she was able to share her story in book form especially because her campaign didn't achieve what she hoped it would. It seems that the only people who get book deals are those who have some massive story, and it was refreshing to hear from an ordinary person who tried something new and different.

Check out Bethany's website if you'd like to see more of the actual dress and the ways she wore it, and if you have a teen in your life who feels passionate toward social causes, this story might provide the needed encouragement to take a stand and trust God with the outcome, big or small.

* Baker Books provided a copy of this book to me in exchange for a review. * 

In Which I Pretend I Live at the Spa

I'm not a review blog kind of girl. I like to read a handful of blogs where the bloggers review products, but sometimes {in truth} they bug me because:

* I'm jealous of their cool free stuff {just keeping it real}.
* I feel like they're pushing stuff just to push stuff, and in reality, they probably really wouldn't try whatever they're reviewing.
* They try something one time and pretend to be an expert.
* They're not really passionate about it and it shows.
* They end up becoming full-time reviewers and forget all about the things that their blog used to stand for, and I always miss those things.

 That's why I started the Saturday Six posts. I like to tell you snippets about cool things I find, but they're always truly just cool things I find, and not things I'm asked to tell you about.

Well....a few weeks ago, my mom let me borrow her e-cloth window washing kit. Ryan and I had a cleaning day at the Greentown house, and my job was to wash windows. I was highly skeptical. Highly. In fact, I pretty much only tried it because it was my mom, and I hate telling her no.

Blew. My. Mind. One washcloth. One drying cloth. One bucket of water. A whole house full of clean windows - with no streaks.

Shut. Up.

I was so excited about it that I told you about it on the Saturday Six. And for the first time ever...I got an email! Someone from e-cloth saw my mention of them and asked if I'd be interested in trying one of their other products!

It was an exciting day for this producer girl. I'm quite accustomed to spending a work day tracking down people like e-cloth to invite them for an interview, but I'm not used to being on the other side of the invitation!

I labored far too long over their product page, trying to figure out which thing I wanted to try. {They said I could pick anything.} Ryan really wanted me to get the car wash kit, because he is nothing if not meticulous about his car, but I {sadly} am anything but meticulous about my car, so I wanted to try something that I could try firsthand. I guess when Ryan starts a blog, he can check out the car wash kit! :)

So I went 100% girly and tried the e-spa body collection. How fancy did I feel, knowing that would be showing up in the mail?

I actually received the products the day Ryan and I left for Holiday World at the end of August, and I wanted to spend a good long time using them before I told you about them, because, you know, see bullet points 2, 3, and 4 at the start of this post.

Let me tell you what you get in this three-piece set, which has recently been discounted almost $10.00, making the new price $34.99. 

* One eye-cleansing pad, which you can also buy separately for $9.99. It is very smooth to the touch, and has two separate ends that you can use {helpful, since you have two separate eyes}.

Here's a photo of my hand in it, so you can get an idea of the size:

* One face cleansing mitt, which you can also buy separately for $14.99. It is also very smooth to the touch and is the size of an oven mitt that fits over your whole hand.

* One exfoliating body mitt, which you can also buy separately for $19.99. Because it exfoliates, it's got a rougher texture, but it's not nearly as rough as a pumice stone.

Per the e-cloth website, the eye-cleansing pad should work with just water, saving you the need to buy eye makeup removers. The other two do require the use of the soap of your choice. They're designed to be gentle on your skin, yet do their job. You wash them in hot water with a little detergent, and you don't use bleach or fabric softener on them, nor do you dry them in the dryer or iron them.

After one month of use, here are my thoughts and observations:

Eye Cleansing Pad

* I had just purchased a new bottle of Mary Kay eye makeup remover before I received these, and I love the way it cleans - especially since I wear waterproof mascara. {Frequent criers have to do that.} Therefore, I used the eye-cleansing pad with my Mary Kay remover rather than using just water. Obviously this means I cannot speak to whether or not its claim to remove makeup with water alone actually works, but it did partner well with my remover.

* Obviously my makeup stained the pad, but I was able to use it repeatedly {daily} for about a month before the buildup of makeup made it ineffective. I realize that may be an in-print disgusting admission, but I wanted to see how long I could use it before the makeup was too much to allow it to clean.

* The product is guaranteed for 300 washes, so this is obviously a long life span and even though it costs $9.99 when purchased alone, the amount of money saved in purchasing cotton pads/cotton balls, not to mention the saved waste of throwing away disposable pads every day is, in my opinion, worth it.

* When I washed it, there was a bit of a permanent stain left from the mascara and eyeshadow, but I was impressed with how much did come off.

Face Cleansing Mitt

* Prior to using this mitt, I used a regular washcloth in the shower every day to wash my face. I replaced that with this mitt.

* I use a store-brand pump facial cleanser in the shower, so I just used that with this mitt, and it lathered nicely and cleaned my face well, without being harsh on my skin, because the material is so smooth.

* I got about three weeks out of this one before the buildup of soap started making the mitt really stiff. {Again - just trying it to see how long it could go.} It, too, is guaranteed for 300 washes, but since I don't use disposable face cleansing wipes, this one might not save as much money over the long haul.

Exfoliating Body Mitt

* Since I did my testing right at the end of the summer, my feet were really dry from flip-flop season. I've used a pumice stone in the past, but those are obviously very hard and rigid. I liked the flexibility of this mitt. I could wear it on my hand and form it around my foot to clean it well.

* I felt like this was tough enough to take on dry feet, but gentle enough to exfoliate my arms, for example, without being too rough on them, so I liked that about it. No need to have one thing in the shower for my feet and a second thing for exfoliating my arms or hands.

* I used my regular Bath and Body Works shower gel with this to create a lather, and it worked well and rinsed well.

* I washed this one with the other two...but it hadn't even shown signs of having buildup on it at that point, so that was impressive.

Overall Thoughts

* I liked all three products well enough to continue using them on a regular basis. So that makes me happy!

* My two favorites were the eye cleansing pad and the exfoliating body mitt, because I felt like they offered me something that what I already owned couldn't offer. The face cleansing mitt is nice, and I will continue using it, but I don't notice any different outcome on my skin than I had using a regular washcloth. {If I had used disposable face cleansers before, I probably would feel differently}. But I love saving my cotton pads for my nail polish removal and using the permanent eye cleansing pad instead. And I love the flexibility of the exfoliating mitt vs. a pumice stone.

* I remain really happy with e-cloth and am sure I will end up trying their other products as well - and getting Ryan his car washing kit at some point!

So there you have it! My month of pretending to live in an e-cloth spa and my thoughts on the products they sent me!

{And the part of review blogs I hate THE most. The disclaimer. But I know I have to do it...so here it is. The folks at e-cloth allowed me to choose a product from their website and sent it to me free in exchange for a blog review.  You just read my honest opinions!}