Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day!  I hope you are all surrounded by family, friends, and good food today!  I'll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes for the love of good hard work. ;)   

                 ~Betsy 


"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
Thomas Jefferson

"It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things."
Theodore Roosevelt

"No labor, however humble, is dishonoring."
The Talmud

How to Beat the Blooming on your Hunters...

Hi All! As promised here is my quick tutorial on how to beat the blooming when it comes to your Hunter boots. I got my black Hunter Original Wellies from Nordstrom in spring of 2010. When I pulled them out of the box to wear in fall of 2010 they were WHITE!  I tried several remedies from the internet to remove the white powdery looking stuff (olive oil, hot water, scrubbing, shampoo, etc..). They worked for 5 minutes, and then the blooming always came back, and worse! That is until I tried this little remedy... :)
*Make sure you are in a well ventilated room when doing this little project.* I prefer my guest bathroom. You will need a bathtub for rinsing, and in there I can just open the window, turn the fan on, and no one really goes in there. :)

First:  I borrowed my friend Genevieve's navy blue Hunter Original Wellies to do the job.

Before. 

You will need a microfiber cloth, an old bath towel, Mötsenböcker's LIFT OFF remover (you can find this at your local hardware store), and Armor All wipes.

Start with a half dollar sized amount of remover on rag...

Wipe fast because this stuff dries quickly!

I like to put my whole arm in the boot, so I can really put some "elbow grease" into it, and press firmly while I'm wiping the sides of the boot.

After the first coat the boot should look something like this...

Rinse them under the bathtub in warm water, and dry them with the old bath towel.

Repeat the first steps again, and after drying the boot a second time it should look about like this.

Next, wipe the boot down with one Armor All wipe.

Can we tell a difference? One down, and one to go! 

 After! 

(I put them next to my black boots, so you didn't think I did a switch on you!)

The glossiness will wear down after a few times wearing them, or you dull them by wiping them down with an old bath towel a few times.  Good luck! :)

~Betsy

Friends and Cinnamon Rolls...

 

Every now and then you come across something that you eat that you can actually claim is the best of it's kind you've ever eaten. I have made the BEST cinnamon rolls I have ever eaten... Well, made them with a lot of help from my dear friends who actually know how to bake. ;)  My friends Damaris, Genevieve, and I have been getting together every now and then to make The Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls (aka.The Best Cinnamon Rolls on the Planet.) Now I needed the girls again to help me bake some for a sweet friend who could use them right now. 

The Pioneer Woman rocks, and if you have never read her blog it's awesome! A word of advice though... NEVER read this blog hungry! She is hilarious, has the best recipes, and one of them happen to be her cinnamon rolls. She is known for these things, and you'll definitely know why! They take awhile to make (especially when you make a quadruple batch like we did), so I would recommend having friends help you out. Plus, it's just more fun! The ingredients for the maple frosting has coffee in it! Yep! It's strait from heaven... Well, I guess if your religious beliefs allow you to have coffee; Mine does, so I'll take a bucket full of frosting. YUM! We only bake one pan, and wrap rest of the cinnamon roll dough to freeze for mornings to come. It takes about 3-4 hours to make all of these, so we started early. It's totally worth the effort when you can just grab a pan out of the freezer on a Saturday morning, or give them out to the neighbors. Now call some good friends and get to rolling some dough!  Happy Baking! ~Betsy  :)

Damaris and Genevieve 

L O N G cinnamon roll dough! 

(Please excuse the mess. There is method to the madness :)

Panning them up! 

Filling up the counter top!

Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls

Yummy!

Big Boots, Little Boots...

 It may sound like a Dr. Suess book, but it's actually the caption for this picture of me and The Misses. It's one of my new favorite pictures, because her little feet next to mine make me smile. 

                           ~Betsy :)

PS. I have a sure fire way to get the "blooming" off of your Hunter boots FOREVER! Check back soon for my tutorial. I just need to borrow a friends boots to clean for pics. I cleaned my boots in fall of 2010 and they have never needed it again! :) 

Champagne Tanning on a Beer Budget...

Hi All! It's been a crazy week around here so I disappeared off the blog-o-sphere for awhile, but I'm back to check in! A week or so ago, Friend gave me a few packs of Comodynes Urban Cosmetics Self Tanning Towelettes to try. The cost is about $47 for a 30 pack of towelettes, so I was excited to try this "champagne" tanning on my "beer" budget!  Now those of you who know me, know that I am addicted a huge fan of self tanner! I have tried some good ones that have worked great for me (Jergens Natural Glow, Loreal Sublime Bronze), and I have tried some not so great ones that have turned me a little orange (Neutrogena). I do think that the color you get from self tanner has very much to do with your body chemistry, therefore getting good results for some people and not others. Streaking and blotching though is just always BAD! *cough cough Coppertone*

Anyway, I used the two Comodynes Urban Cosmetics Intensive and Uniform Color towelettes over 2 days, and they are AWESOME! First off, they don't at ALL smell like self tanner. Now I've tried others that have claimed this, and you can always smell the self tanner a little bit. Not with these little things though! They swipe on super easy, and one large towelette was enough for me, but I am petite. If you are taller it may take two. When the towelette was very wet out of the package; I did one long swipe down each arm and leg then blended in as the towelette dried. They didn't leave me sticky at all, and my legs were moisturized enough for right out of the shower.  The results: Love Love Love them! ~Betsy

*Note: To be fair, I have also seen the sun this summer. :)

Model Family...

Ha Ha Ha!! That's the joke of the year! We did do a little photo shoot yesterday though.  We were asked to sit in as "family" for an ad for a new Audiosource surround sound speaker bar. We did a shoot with our good friends Matt and Gen, and one of our families will be chosen, but we don't know who yet. You won't even get to see our faces, but "family movie night" will be up on display in a Fred Meyer coming to you! LOL!

The best part of the whole thing is that the photographer was nice enough to walk down to the park with us, and take a few family pics for us to keep. It was fun! We chose to do one nice family pose, and a few silly pics. Which will surely make my mother happy...or NOT! Which may have included one of us walking on a crosswalk like the Beatles Abby Road album, and another one as a silly shadowed profile.We'll just have to see how those work out, but I'm hoping we got a few good pictures. We haven't had professional photos taken since Katie has been here. Fingers crossed! 

Today, I have to take two rowdy kids back-to-school shopping. I think I would rather have a root canal, but it has to be done. I have put it off long enough. Here's to Godspeed and swift shopping!

          ~Betsy

Loving the Luster...

Do you ever whiten your teeth? If so, What do you use? I always have used Crest White Strips when whitening my teeth. They work great, but make my teeth so sensitive that I have to take Advil to squash to pain. Sometimes it would make my teeth sensitive for 2 days or more, which stinks when you drink as much ice water and coffee as I do! When I was asked to try Luster Premium White 1 hour LED whitening treatment, I was excited. It boasts NO sensitivity after treatment, so I have to admit that I was skeptical. I have even tried whitening for sensitive teeth, they still made my teeth hurt, and my opinion is that they don't seem to whiten as well. Oh well, here goes nothing!

After completing the 1 hour treatment I'm impressed! My teeth whitened 5 shades (based on their shade guide), and the best part is NO sensitivity afterwards! Score! You have the try this stuff! :)

After

Please excuse the "natural" look. I did it first thing in the morning after my run. The instructions said to wait 24 hours before drinking coffee, so I had no choice but to do it first thing. Priorities people! :) 

             ~Betsy