PRODUCT REVIEW: Photoscents baby food jar candles

I found these Photoscents soy candles for sale at Bill's Diner in New Castle, Indiana, of all places. My dad took me and Mom and the girls there for lunch a few weeks ago and there were a number of these little candles in a display near the cash register. I took note of the price -- inexpensive -- and picked one up to smell it and was surprised by the deliciousness of the scent. I bought several to use as little Christmas presents and a couple for use in our house.

On their website, the folks over at Photoscents say that baby food jars make perfect little containers for their soy candles, giving those jars a chance to be re-purposed before recycling. I do agree, although I have to say that the baby food jars aren't really that pretty: I think they could make the overall effect a bit more aesthetically pleasing by doing a better label, but that's just me. HOWEVER, these aren't really statement jars that you place in the house because the graphic design of the label is just as nice as the scent of the actual candle; this is more of a tuck-it-away sort of thing. We found out that they were great for putting inside our jack-o-lanterns at Halloween. We also have a lot of decorative candle holders around here that held these little jars perfectly.

And the smell? Honestly, there were some scents better than others, but isn't that true of every brand of candle? We picked out some of the ones we thought we the best: patchouli, pumpkin pie spice, carrot cake and several others. They seem to burn a long time and one tiny little jar can easily scent an entire room. For instance, we have a big living room and the baby food jar sized candle -- which I bought at Bill's Diner for two dollars (cheaper than at the website because of not having to be packed and shipped, obviously) scented the room just as well as the enormous Village and Yankee Candle offerings I have sitting around.

So this product comes in with a glowing review, pardon the pun. There are bunches of scents to choose from on a six-candle minimum order. Other than these four ounce baby food jars, there are also two ounce candles in baby food jars (the size that baby food meat comes in), as well as eight- and sixteen-ounce jars. You can find them on Facebook with an easy click. Online candle parties and fund-raising are also available.

PRODUCT REVIEW: More on the Kongs (and Boodas!)

I went to Petsmart today to see if I could find the manufacturer of those two football-shaped treat toys and the closest guess I can hazard is that they're from a company called AspenPet and these two toys are from a line called Booda. I may have that completely wrong, but that's as close as I can get. These particular toys aren't being made anymore, but Booda has a bunch of other types of treat-dispensing toys available, so between the two companies, you should be able to find a variety of styles for your dog to enjoy. But let this be a lessonto whoever actually did manufacture those toys: put your company name on it. Kong did, and they're getting full credit.

In the bottom picture, I stuffed the Boodas with the three items you see there; the purple Booda seems to be the easiest to see. There's a whitish paste in the purple Booda and that is from the spray can of Kong Stuff'n in the liver variety. The football's holes are stuffed with the two different treats -- the small IAMS puppy biscuits and the Kong Stuff'n Snacks, flavored with peanut butter. I ONLY buy these things on sale, but if you check your favorite pet retailer's website, you'll find that there are quite often price reductions on these items.

I posted the other two pictures to give you an idea of how big the toys are relative to the actual dogs. Zuzu's purple football (formerly Wimzie's) is just the right size for a puppy. The rubber's density gives her a lot of chewing energy to work out, which is good. And then there's Hershey -- see how intent his sweet face looks as he tries to figure out how to get at the goodies? -- is much bigger, meant for medium-sized dogs. Zuzu weighs about eight pounds and Hershey weighs around forty-five. I love the way they hold them with their paws.

These toys seem to do the same thing for dogs that teething rings/pacifiers do for babies: they play to the dogs' instinct to chew, and better these toys than the strap of your Dooney handbag, you know? When that need for chewing is being met, the dogs seem to release tension much better and be less apt to bark frantically every time they see a car sitting at the stop light on our corner. Plus, you can tell that they're fascinated by these things: their concentration is totally focused on How to Get the Treats Out. I think someone could walk in the house, tie us up and steal the wedding silver and the dogs would be all, "Hey. While you're carrying that out, would you mind giving me another squirt of liver paste?"

PRODUCTS REVIEWED: Utterly dumbfounded by clean

Last July, the girls and I began working on a cleaning schedule that was loosely based on the plan by FlyLady Marla Cilley's proposed plan for keeping one's home free of CHAOS, which wittily stands for "Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome." The FlyLady website is in my list of favorite links over to the left and I found her book, Sink Reflections, to be an enormous help in getting things started. Every now and then I dip into it again for some fresh inspiration.

The amazing thing about the FlyLady concept of cleaning, whether you follow her instructions to the T or whether you cobble together your own plan using her basic ideas, is that it really works. What I take from FlyLady is that you don't need to spend a million hours cleaning your house on the weekends, which is when you want to relax and have fun. Well do I remember the days of my youth when my mother would bang the vacuum cleaner against the bottom of my bedroom door to wake me up, insisting that I hit the deck and strip the sheets off my bed and get a can of Pledge in my left hand and a clean cloth in my right and MOVE-MOVE-MOVE!!!!

Geez, it was just terrible. It wasn't how I wanted to spend a Saturday morning then, and it sure isn't how I want to spend a Saturday morning now.

Instead, the girls and I made our plan so that we each do about twenty minutes of housework on the five workdays, with about ten minutes on Saturday and some laundry on Sunday. We start with the upstairs at the beginning of the week, ending with the downstairs by Friday, because that's the area guests are most likely to see.

Home schooling, I've found, is a synonym for clutter and clutter makes me crazy. To that end, we pick junk up as we clean, putting it away where it goes instead of stacking it on the stairs or on the dining room table.

Meelyn and Aisling work on a revolving schedule and I do the same chores every week.

Carrying on in this manner, we have managed to stick to our schedule and keep the house looking very nice for six months now: dirty dishes rarely in the sink, laundry clean and folded -- SHOCK! -- actually put away in closets and dressers, bathroom sinks and toilets cleaned several times weekly, bathtub and shower shiny-clean, stove un-spattered and microwave gleaming inside and out. Dust is whisked off all surfaces and the sofa pillows are attractively plumped -- unless a dog's head is resting on them.

It really has made the most amazing difference, that little bit of daily work. And its amazing how much more high def our television actually is whenever there's not an inch-thick layer of dust covering the screen.

Our success became the most apparent this past weekend when Mee and Aisli had guests over. In the past, the imminent arrival of company would have precipitated a storm of desperate cleaning that would have ended with flaring tempers, tears and exhausted frustration as we tried to dust, vacuum, clean the toothpaste flecks off the mirrors, wipe some spilled soup out of the fridge and try to make the living room smell like something other than wet dog.

Instead, Meelyn went off to work and Aisling and I took a calm, leisurely forty minutes to do our daily chores and a few extra tasks like setting out new hand soap in the bathrooms, pile some freshly-washed bath towels in the upstairs bathroom, stow away the dog toys that Zuzu had scattered all over the place and start a pot of coffee. It was so restful and it made me feel like an actual hostess -- a chatelaine, perhaps -- who had everything running smoothly for her guests' comfort and her own peace of mind, instead of a wild-eyed four-in-hand driver whose horses are careening madly out of control and headed for the edge of a cliff.

And I can't tell you how lovely it was to open the front door and be warmly smiling and free of care instead of sweaty, disheveled and clenched of jaw. Must have been better for the guests, too. Heh.

To help us keep things looking spiffy, check out the picture above:

Front row: Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, Satin Smooth fabric softener, Spray-and-Wash Stain Stick, The Works toilet cleaner, Freshine glass cleaner and Tundra bleach.

Back row: Freshine disinfectant wipes, Cascade dishwasher detergent, Tide laundry detergent and Tandril laundry detergent.

Here are some individual comments on these cleaning supplies:

Mr. Clean Magic Erasers -- These things are just, well....magic. I've never seen anything like them. Whether I use them on the fridge, on the woodwork, on the stove, or on the bathtub, they have this amazing ability to clean stuff like nobody's business. I've tried the knock-off brands, but I find that the originals last the longest and work the best. I just wait 'til they go on sale.

Satin Smooth fabric softener -- This is an ALDI product and honestly: I've tried the expensive stuff and I do agree that the fresh scent does last longer with the name-brand products, but that is the ONLY difference I can discern and since this bottle of Satin Smooth comes in two pleasant scents and lasts for a loooong time, PLUS is so inexpensive, I cheerfully buy it instead of the spendy stuff.

Spray-and-Wash Stain Stick/OxiClean Max Force Laundry Stain Remover Spray -- I use both of these products interchangeably for stain removal and they both work really well. If I had to pick a fave, I'd probably plump for the OxiClean, but the Stain Stick is no shirker. These are both name brand products, of course, and you can find knock-offs that are cheaper, but these two friends are the ones who have stuck with me through chocolate and blueberries, spaghetti sauce and mustard.

The Works toilet cleaner -- I find this stuff to be amazing. Now mind you, it smells just terrible, just exactly like those sanitizing disks that go in the men's room urinals at interstate rest stops. Utterly dreadful. But if you can just kind of, I don't know, hold your breath a little, you just won't be able to find anything to make your toilet cleaner, especially if you have hard water like we do. Seriously, our water is so hard, we practically suffer from internal bruising when gulping down a cold drink on a hot day. The Works removes and and all hard water deposits and here's my big secret -- it not only does this on toilets, but will also do this on sink or shower fixtures.

Listen up, though -- I use it VERY CAREFULLY on my sink and tub fixtures. I don't go squirting this stuff with wild abandon all over my marble tile surround, mostly because I don't have one, but even if I did, I'd know better than to use a caustic substance like an alkaline toilet cleaner on porous stone. So be careful, you know. Test the area with the hard water deposits beforehand. And wear gloves, okay?

The best thing about this product? You can buy it at Dollar Tree for yep, you guessed it, one slim George.

Freshine glass cleaner -- Yes, you can buy the name brand product and we all know what it's called and it works great. But the thing is, so does the Freshine, which is another ALDI product. And it is so very, very inexpensive. Give it a try!

Tundra bleach -- Bleach is bleach is pretty much bleach. Chlorine bleach! Very simple! Smells kinda yucky! Makes stuff white again! Disinfects all kind of germy junk! Don't spill it on your favorite black pants! Tundra is an ALDI product and super-cheap, works just great.

Freshine disinfectant wipes -- Oh, the ten kazillion happy uses for these little cloths. They're about the size of a baby wipe and come in a similar canister-style container. We use them to wipe down the outside of the toilets several times a week. We also use them to wipe out the sinks. I wipe down the kitchen countertops with them. If someone has a cold, I use them on the computer keyboard, the phone, the doorknobs. You get thirty-five wipes in two different fresh scents for about $1.79, which seems a little bit cheaper than the name brand or store brand products you can get at the more expensive chains. Maybe not, but they're convenient to grab when I'm picking up the rest of the ALDI cleaning stuff.

Cascade dishwashing detergent -- Because of the aforementioned hard water, this is the only kind of detergent that works well in our dishwasher. If we use cheap stuff, whether liquid or powder, the plates and glasses have a nasty streaky residue left on them that is just really unappetizing. The Cascade is really expensive, although it is slightly more reasonable at Wal-Mart than at the chain grocery stores. But it cleans the dishes, utensils, glasses, pots and pans better than anything else, so I'm willing to pay the extra.

Tide laundry detergent -- Ditto everything I said above about the Cascade, except substitute "clothing" for "dishes, utensils, glasses, pots and pans." It is 'spensive, but it works so well, I can't complain.

Tandril laundry detergent -- I use this ALDI product to wash the bath towels, kitchen towels, sheets and dogs' bedding; the Tide costs too much to use for the second-tier laundry. This was actually Kayte's idea because she washes so many towels, what with Matt being part fish and all with the swim team. It has really cut down on our laundry expenses, and everything gets clean and smells fresh and although I don't think the Tandril has quite the quality of Tide, it is a reasonable facsimile.


Do you have any favorite cleaning supplies that have stood the test of time and toughness? Please leave a comment if you do, or if you don't want to do that, email me at InsomniMom at live dot com.

PRODUCT REVIEW: The Scentbug™ (Bath & Body Works)

Since this is a product review and all, I wish I'd been able to take a better picture, with less glare on the Scentbug and the fragrance oils and all. Better yet, I wish I had the ability to upload a scratch-n-sniff feature. But I am neither a professional photographer (or even a photo-taker of mild competence); nor am I some kind of computer wizard. So this is my offering, with the glaring off the shiny surfaces.

However, my review is going to be glowing, so that kind of makes up for the crummy photography, right? Er, anyway....Meelyn and Aisling each got a Scentbug for Christmas from Bath & Body Works. I knew that these little cuties had something to do with home fragrance, but I'd never really paid much attention to them: I am a candle kind of person. The big Christmas sales at Bath & Body Works piqued my interest, however, and when I was in the store making an absolute KILLING buying gifts for the girls and Angie, I picked up one for our house.

We've had an artificial tree for the past few years and I thought it would be fun to get a Scentbug so that I could put festive fragrances in it that would give our house the aroma of a piny woods. I purchased two fragrance oils -- Spiced Cider and Balsam Fir -- and carefully dripped ten drops of each oil onto the little cotton pad that live inside the Bug: that white band around its middle is actually a drawer that opens to reveal the pad's hiding place.

Once the fragrance oils are on the cotton pad, the mini-drawer closes and you push that button there in the middle -- it lights up green to indicate that the unit is turned on. Pushing the button activates a tiny, whisper-quiet fan that gently wafts the scent through those holes in the top. Within minutes, our living room and dining room, a fairly extensive area of square footage, smelled lovely. Not overwhelmingly strong, just very fresh and subtle. I imagine if you wanted the scent to be subtler still, you could put, say, five drops of each oil on the little pad.

The Scentbug is a nice thing for three reasons:

1. Scentbugs are very inexpensive and they even comes with batteries. Their regular price is $12.50 and the fragrance oils are normally $7.50 each, but if you wait for a coupon or a sale or BOTH, you can get one for much, much cheaper, as I did. And the bottles of fragrance oil look as if they'll last a long time.

2. It makes your house smell lovely without the dangers associated with candles. True, the Scentbug, while cute and chubby and available in a wide range of colors, does not have the ambiance of candlelight. But for house with small children or curious cats, this isn't such a bad thing.

3. If you live in a house with two stinky dogs, as we do, the added assistance in masking the odor of wet dog at this time of year is crucial. Wimzie and Hershey like nothing better than to go out and blissfully roll in the snow (or worse yet, the damp, muddy grass) and then come in and overpower us all with their penetrating stench. I am thinking about duct-taping a Scentbug to each of them, which is not the recommended use for one of these clever devices, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Wright's Silver Cream

I haven't done a product review for quite a while, but last night I used something that completely took the torture out of a job I really hate: Polishing the silver.

My grandpa and step-gran gave my husband and me eight place settings plus serving pieces of silver flatware as a wedding gift. For years, the big wooden chest lived under our bed and we hauled it out over the holidays until we moved into this house. Once here, I decided that life needed more beauty, plus I'd ground up about six spoons from my set of Oneida stainless in the garbage disposal. And some salad forks.

So now we use the silver frequently and since it's out in the open instead of huddled up inside that chest, it has to be polished. Which is better than cleaning the toilets, you know? But less fun than watching Top Chef or playing in Webkinz World. And time-consuming, leaving less hours in the day to watch Top Chef or play-....well, you get my drift.

I had a bottle of somebody's silver polish that accidentally got thrown out when I paid Aisling $5 to tidy up that scary area under the kitchen sink, and you know why I can't remember the brand name? Because it didn't work very well, that's why. You had to kind of paint it onto the piece of silver you wished to de-tarnish, wait for it to dry and then rub and rub and rub and rub and rub and you'd think with ALL THAT RUBBING, there'd be a genie appearing to grant you your three most heartfelt wishes, wouldn't you? But no. A fairly clean dessert spoon and cramping fingers was the meager reward for all that effort.

So I didn't really miss that bottle of polish, you dig? But I needed more, so I picked up an eight ounce tub of Wright's Silver Polish at the grocery, sighed, and brought it home to get started on the silver.

The directions for use invited me to:

1. Dampen the enclosed sponge
2. Polish the silver piece with Wright's cream smeared on the sponge, adding water as needed
3. Rinse silver and dry with a clean, soft cloth

"That's all?" I said in scornful disbelief. "Where's the part about the carpal tunnel syndrome? And the bushel basket of clean, soft cloths to run through the washer because of having to repeat the instructions fifty times to get the tarnish off the butter knife? Where? Tell me where!"

Lip curled, I opened the little tub, dampened the sponge and spread the soft lavender goo on a fork. I still had ideas in my head about setting it aside to let it dry, but to my surprise, the thick layer of tarnish started coming off right then. I found that I liked using an old tea towel to apply the polish more than I liked the sponge, so the tea towel and I, with a minimum of effort between the two of us, polished that fork up like nobody's business. Easy-peasy!

You'd want to see my silver right now, you really would. It is gorgeous, I had only two cloths to run through the washer with the small load of kitchen towels I did today, and I am not wearing a sling. If you have silver flatware or serving pieces you're going to be using over the holidays, I highly recommend this polish.

Mineral bronzing powder betrays me

Because I grew up in a generation that recklessly tanned between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m., using nothing but tanning oils that you could also have probably used to make pancakes or popcorn or fried chicken, I now have patches of sun damage on my face that make me very unhappy. Girls of today, be ye not so stupid. Because someday, you will be forty-something and looking in a mirror and disconsolately saying to yourself, "I did this to myself on purpose? Plus I smelled like a Mai-Tai without the benefits of actually drinking one?"

So now when I go to the pool, I always wear SPF50 sunscreen, plus huge sunglasses, plus a big hat. I look like the World's Largest Celebrity, but that's okay. Everywhere else, I usually wear SPF3o all summer long. This creates a discrepancy between the color of my head and the color of my rest of me. I even my facial skin tone out with a slightly darker foundation than I use, say, in January, but I also have experimented with bronzing powders in the past and have achieved limited success.

I bought a new bronzing powder a few weeks ago, having used up my previous one, which lasted for something like four summers. I bought it at that really fancy cosmetics boutique, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Oh yeah. It was Wal-Mart. Anyway, I can't remember the brand name of it because it is upstairs in my makeup bag and I am downstairs and it is five o'clock in the morning and if I went upstairs to do my proper research for a product review, I would wake my husband, who does not wear bronzer and would understandably be annoyed at being awakened so that I could find mine, so whatevs.

Anyway. I've been using this bronzing powder, applying it carefully with a big, fluffy brush, but I haven't really been all that happy with it. When I look in the mirror, I can't decide if I have a suntanned glow or if I just look dirty.

This is a probem with bronzing powders, I find: there is a very, very narrow margin between that healthful sun-kissed look and significant glances from strangers indicating that you look like you've been dumpster diving.

Here's an article I found on E-How that gives some tips for using mineral bronzers.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Knifty Knitters

A few years back, one of the moms in our homeschool group opened up a little summertime class at her home to teach girls in grades 4-6 how to use a Knifty Knitter. Aisling and a number of her little friends bought a skein of yarn and a set of the Knitters and they were off to the races, churning out some very nice items with great ease.

A Knifty Knitter, you ask? What is such a thing, and what can you make with it? How do you use it? Is it expensive? Can you make a scarf, some mittens, a knee length wrap sweater dress à la Diane von Furstenberg?

Wait, wait, whoooaaaaa....Don't ask so many questions so fast. You know I don't sleep much, and therefore am in a constant state of grumpy befuddlement. Okay, here you go.

1. Yes, a Knifty Knitter. There are a whole line of Knifty Knitter products, in fact.

2. Knifty Knitters are looms upon which one can produce knitted items.

3. Oh, gracious...you can make scarves and hats and afghans and dishcloths and all sorts of cute things. Probably not a sweater dress, unless you were very, very clever and patient.

If you'd like to see these knitting looms of different shapes and sizes, click here and here and here.

The Knifty Knitters are manufactured by ProvoCraft and they're very inexpensive. And if you are a non-crafty kind of person (which would be like me) or a semi-crafty person (like Meelyn and Aisling), you can really get a lot of pleasure out of making cute stuff with these things. Aisling bought some chunky yarn in sherbet colors and knitted up a sweet little toboggan hat for Kiersi, which she presented to her yesterday; Kiersi, not quite three, looked like a darling little pixie in it and Aisling was very pleased.

If you'd like to see some things created by Knifty Knitters that weren't created by us (well, I say "us," but truth be told, I've yet to produce a simple scarf...), you can click here for a pet sweater worn by an embarrassed Maltese, here for some sweet little Halloween treats (black cat, ghostie and wee Jack-'o-lantern), here for a precious Easter bunny posing with a daffodil, here for some really nice hats....

There's so much more, it's impossible to list links for them all, but when I did my Google search, I found amazing things like sweaters for adults and children, baby bootees (so cute!), Christmas stockings and ornaments and all sorts of things. And none of them looked like the kind of thing produced for Gifte Shoppes, the kind of places where you can buy toilet roll covers that look like a knitted hoop skirt with half of a generic, cheap plastic "Barbie" sticking out of the top and ribbon candy in unappealing flavors and pine bread boxes with bloated strawberries done in tole painting on the lids, nothing like that.

If, in these uncertain economic times, you'd like to (quickly) make a few little gifts for people, the Knifty Knitters are a great way to start. Aisling and Meelyn can make nice hats in one evening, a scarf in an afternoon. There are so many beautiful, cozy yarns out there just demanding to be done up in a simple gift that will please, surely, any girl or woman on your Christmas list.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Poo-Pourri

I just want you to hush up right now, because I can hear your incredulous laughter ALL THE WAY FROM WHERE YOU ARE. All I can say is, if you haven't tried it, don't knock it.

Because I have tried Poo-Pourri. And without going into too much indelicate detail, IT WORKS.

But maybe you haven't heard of Poo-Pourri? Then please let me tell you what it is.

Poo-Pourri (patent pending) is a bathroom air freshener, but it is an air freshener with a difference. It doesn't come in an aerosol can that you keep on the back of the toilet and then spray around the powder room after you've done your business, which we all can still smell, even though you've tried to discreetly mask the odor with the scent of apple pie or French vanilla or a tropical garden or whatever. And I don't want to be too bold right here, because it will bring my mother down on my head like a duck on a June bug, but all that spraying only makes it seem that you just did a poo in your grandma's kitchen, a Breyer's ice cream manufacturing plant or some botanical gardens in Thailand or similar. The aerosol sprays that come after the fact don't really work.

Do they? Let's be honest. We can do that because this is the internet and we can't see each other blushing. YOU CAN STILL SMELL THE POO.

That is the beauty of Poo-Pourri. Poo-Pourri is a liquid that comes in little spray bottles. It consists of natural, plant-derived essential oils in a citrusy blend of bergamot, lemongrass, grapefruit and more, according to their website. Their tag line is "Spritz the bowl before you go and no one else will ever know" and that's exactly what you do: Give the little bottle a shake, spray 4-6 sprays on the water in the bowl, and discover that the essential oils form a barrier on the surface that traps the, er-....odor of whatever you did when you....sat down.

Obviously, this product is a wonderful find for anyone who has to use, heaven help us all, a public restroom, but possibly even more useful for those who have to use a company ladies' room at work. (Poo-Pourri also makes a manly blend of essential oils called "Royal Flush" for the gents who don't want to slay anyone who enters the restroom after them.) Or when you're visiting friends and nature calls? Poo-Pourri has you covered. Literally. Tuck that little 2 ounce bottle in your handbag and you'll leave your hostess's bathroom with confidence. The next person who wanders in (or the next person walking down the hall, as the case may be) will think that you merely stopped by to powder your pert little nose and give yourself a refreshing spray of body mist.

Poo-Pourri comes in absolutely adorable little bottles in a couple of handy sizes, one to carry in your purse and the other to place near the potty in your house. Each bottle is decorated with a little bit of bling to make it hip and fun, which totally works for me because the clever packaging is what initially caught my eye. You can order it online or find it at a number of retail locations, nation-wide and internationally.

Image used with permission. Copyright (c) 2008 by Poo-Pourri. All rights reserved.

PRODUCT REVIEW: University Medical Acne Free Skin Care Treatment

Having two teenagers who react to one tiny pimple in a manner that suggests that their faces have erupted into one big, running sore, we know a lot about skin care products in this house.

We used to have a popular skin care regimen that advertises heavily on the 'net, in magazines and on television mailed to us at our house, but it just got too expensive. It worked, but it cost a lot.

The girls tried just about every benzoyl peroxide product on the market, all with limited success. The best I could summon from the results was a very half-hearted meh. Some didn't really work at all and some were okay, but none of them were worth the money.

Until we found University Medical Pharmaceutical's Acne Free Skin Care Treatment, that is. It is a three-step regimen for the face that comes cushioned in a cute little orange-and-white box (although not so cute that your son would refuse to use it), packaging that is somewhat reminiscent of that other skin care system I mentioned above, except for the color scheme.

The girls rate it an A+ for ease of use -- although you do have to use it if you want to see results, I cautioned them -- and I rate it an A+ for the price, which is about ten dollars less than that other system. I also appreciate the availability of this product, which we purchased at the CVS right down the street.

We all give it an A+ for results. Aisling was having some troubles with her forehead, which is exposed to more skin oils due to the fact that she has thick bangs. Meelyn occasionally suffers from problems with her chin because she sleeps with her cheek cradled in one hand. University Medical's treatment program has given them both clear, healthy-looking skin. Aisling's forehead is the most remarkable thing; it is as smooth and clear as the day she was born, even with her fringe covering it up.

Any little breakouts the girls have are minor and quickly dealt with. I really recommend giving this product a try. Apparently, it is available at many pharmacies other than just CVS. I believe we paid $20 for the set.

Un-washy dishwasher

I have a dishwasher that I wrote about here sometime last year -- a nice Whirlpool portable kind with a roomy interior and a quiet and restrained way of operating that has solidly eclipsed a former under-counter model I had once. That thing sounded like five jet planes taking off during a thunderstorm on a runway next to a railroad track with a double-engine train moving briskly along. It was seriously loud and we grew weary of neighbors down the street calling us up in the evenings after dinner, demanding that we hand wash our dishes and stop disturbing the peace.

Unfortunately, we also have hard water. Indiana is famous for its beautiful, mellow limestone that has contributed to the elegant exteriors of such edifices as the Empire State Building and Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina. But that same water that creates the stone is the same water that is so hard, we practically have to chisel the water spots off our glasses. Our house does have all new plumbing, which means that we could easily have a water softener installed. It's just the minor matter of the $300 a plumber would require to do the job.

Well, obviously, my dishwasher is suffering. The girls and I have noticed that the dishes are getting noticeably less clean, which is exasperating. Plus, the hard water absolutely ruins the glasses. They get etched and streaked from mineral deposits and I refuse to use nasty-looking glasses to serve iced tea to guests, or more to the point, drink from them myself. Meelyn and Aisling are the dish-doers after dinner and they already have to the silver flatware, which can't go in the dishwasher, and I went out last week and bought some new glasses which I'm making them wash in the sink and loud has been the grumbling.

So this morning, I decided to search around on the internet for an answer to the problem of streaky, etched glasses, dried food flecks on plates and a general state of yuckiness inside my dishwasher, which is not very old and a fairly pricey mid-range model.

This is what I came up with, for my edification and yours:

1) Hard water is hard on dishwashers. Turns out that those mineral deposits that streak and etch the glasses are also clogging up the hoses and nozzles and water-squirty things, causing them to work less efficiently. Thus the dried food flecks.

2) One simple answer to this problem is to run the dishwasher, empty, on the regular cycle, with two cups of distilled white vinegar added to the water once the dishwasher has filled. If the dishwasher has been neglected -- I felt momentarily guilty, as if I'd been mean to a kitten. How could I be so thoughtless, so heedless, as to neglect my dishwasher, which does so much work for us, so quietly, so uncomplainingly? -- it might take a few cycles of running the white vinegar through before things get better.

3) All dishwasher detergents and rinsing agents aren't the same. Cascade is strongly recommended because it has superior dissolvability when compared to other detergents. I have never used Cascade, mostly because I am a big cheapo and I always cynically figured that Whirlpool had some kind of cozy arrangement worked out with the manufacturers of Cascade when I got that free mini-box with my new dishwasher. But I think this really might be true. I've used several other brands (all cheaper than Cascade) and several different types (powder, liquid and tablets) and I have found out a few things on my blundering own.

For instance, liquid detergents are always gone when I open the dishwasher later; some powders are completely gone and some are still clumped up in the little dispenser tray; and the tablets? Well, those things are completely useless. They don't dissolve at all and we wind up with a dishwasher full of dishes that are not just unattractively speckled with dried-on food flecks, but are downright dirty. Byuck.

The other recommendation for dishwashers is Jet-Dry, the rinsing agent, but the kind internet users advised to use on the help site I found was the old-fashioned Jet-Dry that comes in the things that look like wee little baskets. Using those kind makes more sense, help site posters agreed, because you can physically see with your own two eyes when the rinsing agent is gone. With the liquid Jet-Dry, you pour it into the little dispenser and you forget to use it again. Maybe there is a fancy dishwasher out there that has a little sensor light that comes on when the rinsing agent dispenser is empty, but mine doesn't do that.

So. I went out and spent $2.39 on a gallon of distilled white vinegar and I just started the dishwasher on its third cycle today, using three cups of vinegar to strengthen the solution since my dishwasher had a lot of mineral deposits on its interior. It's working, too! I am really pleased that the answer to this problem was so easy, and although the silver flatware still won't be able to go in, and I'm still concerned about the glasses, I do plan to buy some Cascade and some Jet-Dry and hopefully, we won't have to hand-wash the plates and the serving dishes and the iced tea pitcher by hand, right after they've been "washed" in a dishwasher suffering from calcium deposits.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Armor All Protectant Wipes

My family, a big sassy bunch of rudesters if there ever were any, tease me mercilessly about my infatuation with Armor All Protectant Wipes. I carry a canister of them in Applesauce Anne, in the little cargo net that sits between the two front seats, so that I can whip them out frequently and use them to nourish her dash and all vinyl or plastic areas of her interior. I don't know why they find this so endlessly amusing. Applesauce Anne is an old minivan, having had her tenth birthday last September, plus she's been a busy old girl, logging 156,000 miles on her odometer. I figure that maintaining her interior is an important thing to do and I don't want her dashboard to get all faded and dessicated-looking, which is what happened to another vehicle we got from my grandpa.

Because the girls and I make judicious use of a local DIY carwash, Anne usually sparkles on the outside, but on the inside, she really shines. We shampoo the carpet and floor mats, clean the dog prints off the windows and sweep all the debris that collects on the floors -- little stones from the driveway, straw wrappes and even a used Band-Aid, which was very gross. The grossest thing is that I don't know whose Band-Aid it was; none of us have had a Band-Aid on our persons, which means that somebody else's used Band-Aid must have stuck to the bottom of my shoe in a parking lot somewhere and then come unstuck. *horf!*

But I digress. These Armor All Protectant Wipes are really excellent for cleaning, shining and adding moisture to your dashboard and surrounding areas. They're so easy to use - just yank one out of the canister and get to it. They aren't expensive either, and come in a 25-wipe canister for around $4.38, a 50-wipe canister for $6.80 and a soft pouch of wipes for an unknown price at most discount department stores and even the grocery in the automotive section. But they do have them if you want them that way. I've been using them for several years and I think Anne's shiny, unfaded dash is a sold testimonial to the efficacy of the Armor All product.

By the way, I store the canister lying on its side so that the wipes don't dry out.

You can use these on plastic and vinyl stuff in your house, too. A very versatile product. I rate them an A+ for ease of use, price and general, all-'round spiffy idea.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Dinovite, a dietary supplement for dogs

The day the vet told me that both of my dogs were allergic to flea bites, I felt that I had been singled out for a great hearty joke played by Mother Nature. How could dogs be allergic to fleas? Don't dogs and fleas go together like peanut butter and jelly? Like Martin and Lewis?

Or maybe more like Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock.

But anyway. The vet assured me that the most common canine allergy is to flea bites. The flea bites cause a reaction that is manifested by constant scratching, biting, chewing, digging, rolling and general malaise. Wimzie, whose skin is more sensitive than Hershey's, generally gnaws all the hair off her hind legs and her girl parts and just looks defeated and miserable: Her button-bright eyes get dull, she drags along on her walks -- usually the joy of her day -- with no energy and her personality becomes notably more unpleasant. I can't really blame her for being short-tempered. It would be awful to itch and itch and itch all the time.

Before this July, the only thing we could do to stop the scratching, digging and biting was dose the dogs with prednisilone, the canine version of the steroid prednisone. I absolutely hated giving her those pills. The side effects in dogs are generally the same as they are in humans and I know people who have been knocked cock-a-hoop by taking prednisone for various ailments (most notably my friend Martha and my grandpa, both of whom used predisone for their fibromyalgia.)

The steroids worked, but at what price?

And speaking of price, they weren't cheap. Wimzie's medication was costing almost as much per month as a medication that I take. Only I have health insurance and she doesn't.

Other than the pills, the only therapy the vet could offer was a cortisone spray meant for "hot spots," which are random places with a super-itch where a dog can bite in one spot until she bleeds. This spray was about as effective as spritzing her with the morning dew. It did nothing to alleviate the itch. All while costing a pretty penny; $12 for a tiny spray bottle. Between the two dogs, we could have easily used four of those bottles a month.

Since moving to this house where we have no yard, our dogs don't suffer as much from flea trouble as they used to when they had an enormous suburban yard to run around in. Back then, we bought Frontline or whatever that stuff is called. It does stop the fleas from breeding and infesting the house, but it doesn't stop them from biting. And biting is the problem.

But still we have the biting. Scratching. Digging.

I listen to talk radio a lot and in the past few months, I've been hearing a commercial for a product called "Dinovite".The claim is that this product will stop all the above symptoms by improving the dog's diet with minerals, digestive enzymes, vitamins, etc. The spokesperson relates that dog food is cooked in the factories at very high temperatures and that all the good stuff is zapped out of it. This is all stuff I can understand, but I don't really "get" how all that is supposed to stop dogs from being allergic to flea bites, so whatever.

I started doing some online research, going to the Dinovite website and also doing searches of product information and consumer reviews. I felt that I was reading a lot of positive things and frankly, it unwinds me so much to see my pets so miserable that I was willing to try a little snake oil if I had to.

So I bought the smallest size available, which was about a three week supply for both of our dogs. The website made the h-u-g-e disclaimer that I'd have to wait for three months to see the full benefits of Dinovite, which I cynically felt was long enough for the manufacturer to soak me and a bunch of other rubes for $90 each and then peacefully retire to the country to grow cantaloupes.

However.

Our container of Dinovite arrived while the girls were still vacationing at the lake. I was anxious to see what this stuff was all about and I opened it, finding a dark greyish-brown powder, slightly grainy in appearance, that actually smelled very pleasant.* Like brewer's yeast. I was surprised, because frankly, I thought it was going to smell like road kill.

The instructions said to sprinkle it directly on the dogs' dry food, four tablespoons a day for Hershey and one-and-one-half tablespoons a day for Wimzie. I gave it to them like that and both of them backed away from their food bowls with accusatory looks, as if I'd just given their kibble a dusting with Barkeeper's Friend.

I'd read something on the website about using beef broth to moisten the Dinovite and the dog food and tried that; Hershey ate it happily, but Wimzie (the dog that I was most interested in seeing ingest this wonder product) stalked off in a huff and went behind the couch, refusing to come out even for cheese.

Cheese! Cheese might work, I thought. So I sprinkled some shredded cheese on her bowl of kibble, Dinovite and beef broth and set it on the floor. She came running as if she just knew, the little brat, and gobbled down the whole bowlful, looking up at me soulfully afterwards. I rolled my eyes at her and left her trying to lick the glaze off her ceramic dish.

The dogs have been eating the stated amount of Dinovite since the first week of August, and although there is still some scratching and biting, it has dramatically decreased. DRAMATICALLY. For the past two years, Wimzie's hind legs and bottom have been denuded of hair by this time in August, yet her her little rear is still furry. Hershey has completely stopped rolling on the floors, trying in vain to scratch his poor back. There is still some scratching and biting, but after not-quite-three weeks, there has been an amazing improvement.

The Dinovite seems to be working. It is working and it is NOT costing as much as the prednisilone that I hated to give them. I am cautiously ecstatic. Wimzie's eyes are still bright and she has energy and an appetite and she obviously isn't suffering from her "summer complaint" as much as she has in the past. And as an added bonus, her breath isn't bad anymore. And considering that her pre-Dinovite breath could fell an ox at thirty paces, that is kind of a big deal.

I think I may be onto a good thing.



*Dinovite details (courtesy of Pittrpatter.com ; scroll down)

Dinovite Canine is a nutritional supplement designed to promote
your dogs good health. Dinovite Canine is a coarse powder, the consistency of
ground pepper or coffee, made from all natural ingredients including: omega 3
fatty acids, trace minerals, antioxidants, digestive enzymes, spirulina,
diatomaceous earth, montmorillonite clay, zinc and beneficial bacterial
cultures.

Ingredients: Ground flax, kelp meal
(Ascophyllum nodosum), yeast culture, ground grain sorghum, diatomaceous earth,
zinc methionine, montmorillonite clay, yucca schidigera, alfalfa meal,
spirulina, vitamin C (ascorbic acid), Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation
product dehydrated, Lactobacillus casei fermentation product dehydrated, Bifido
bacterium bifidium fermentation product dehydrated, Streptococcus faecium
fermentation product dehydrated, Aspergillus oryzae fermentation product
dehydrated, zinc sulfate, vitamin E, folic acid, vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12.

Recommended dosage is 1 to 2 tablespoons of Dinovite per cup of dog food
fed to your dog.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Del Monte Harvest Spice Peaches

I bought three cans of these peaches at the grocery on some kind of coupon deal, and having just opened the first can and eaten four peach slices from it, I know why the coupon factored so largely in this purchase.

Del Monte should be issuing vouchers to pay people to eat these peaches instead of printing coupons. Because I can sum up the smell, the taste and the mouth-feel of these things in one word: Eeeeeyuck.

I usually like canned peaches almost as well as I like fresh peaches. Ohhhh, hush up. I'm just keeping it real here. Anyway, I was in the mood for something sweet and the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter looked singularly univiting, seeing as all it has in it is one banana (speckled with brown) and an apple (just doesn't look good.) I opened the cabinet, hoping that a bag of Hershey's Kisses would have suddenly materialized, but no. But I did see the peaches.

A few moments later, I had five Harvest Spice peach slices in a little bowl. The smell -- strong overtones of ginger with a little nutmeg -- didn't do a whole lot for me, but I was wondering how anyone could ruin a canned peach. And then I found out.

They were mooshy. A slippery, slimy kind of mooshy, nothing like the usual firmish texture of a nice canned peach. Think "raw oyster." This Del Monte brand must have been canned using the heat from a nuclear reactor - there's nothing there to bite. And the ginger taste overpowered the peach flavor instead of enhancing it. I swallowed the one, gaggily, and poured the rest into the garbage disposal.

They were so gross. Don't buy them.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Dish Soap

I used to think that I was allergic to doing dishes. But then it turned out that I was merely allergic to just about every type of dish soap on the market - contact with them makes my hands itch like crazy and then develop a red, scaly texture that would be so interesting on a reptile, but not nearly as fascinating on me.

There was a brand that made my hands itch less than some of the other brands I'd tried, so I pretty much stuck to that, wondering if it was the harsh detergent that my skin was reacting to, or the chemical fragrances. But even that wasn't entirely satisfactory. I mean, there are a lot of dirty dishes in my life, and although we do have a dishwasher, you have to use something to wash out the sink and the microwave and clean off the stove, the counters and other surfaces.

Then the day came when I was browsing on the cleaning products aisle at the grocery store and my eye fell upon an attractive display of "green" products. I noticed that there was one bottle of amber-colored liquid labeled Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Dish Soap. I picked it up to read the label and found that the majority of the ingredients were derived from plant sources, including the use of actual essential oils to scent the product. It does contain a preservative, which all good cleaning and cosmetic products should, but other than that, everything on the label seemed much less likely to make me itch than the stuff I had been using. The label "soap" is a give-away: having owned and operated my own cosmetic soap-making business several years back, I know that there are vast differences between soap and detergent. Since this product is listed as actual soap, it does contain lye and if I had a dollar for every person who has said to me, "Lye! Lye in soap? Isn't that dangerous?" I would have sold out long ago and you'd be seeing little franchises of my company in shopping malls and airports, like, all over the place. While I kicked back on a deck chair on a beach in St. Barth's, cackling and counting all my lovely money.


Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Dish Soap
in Lavender and Lemon Verbena
scents posing for the camera to
show off their cool retro-print
labels.


I bought the Lemon Verbena scented dish soap (there were also lavender and geranium scents available.) It cost $4.99 for a very attractive 16-fluid ounce bottle, so nice looking that it won't be a big deal if you leave it sitting on the edge of the sink. This is pretty pricey for dish soap, but if your dish detergent is eating the skin on your hands and making you scratch like you have a bad case of poison ivy, it may well be worth the money. It is to me.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Physician's Formula Mineral Wear® Talc-Free Mineral Loose Powder

Mineral make-up has been the latest shout in the world of cosmetics for the past few years. This seems kind of strange, considering that mineral make-up has been around for thousands of years, employed with greater or lesser success by women wishing to enhance their physical beauty. The "lesser success" was measured by those who used lead mixed into a paste with water in order to whiten their complexions during the European Renaissance. This lead paste was also used by the geishas of Japan. The men and women of ancient Egypt used kohl, a lead-based substance, as an eyeliner to make their eyes beautiful. II Kings 9:30 refers to wicked Jezebel painting her eyes with kohl, not that it did her any good.


Lead-based kohl eyeliner on the ancient Egyptians
caused irritability, respiratory failure, memory
loss, hypertension and...*gulp*...death.

Thinking about this, I can only wince. The list of symptoms of lead poisoning is about as long as my arm and includes such things as "irritability," which I am thinking is not a good thing in a queen such as Elizabeth I of England who occasionally relieved her shattered nerves by cutting off a few heads.

Nowadays, we worry about old houses or baby cribs with paint containing lead that might chip or flake around children, but imagine rubbing lead paste directly onto your skin, day after day after day.

But anyway, Physician's Formula Mineral Wear® Talc-Free Mineral Loose Powder contains absolutely no lead, none at all. The primary mineral employed by the technicians at Physician's Formula is mica, which will not leach into your skin and cause you to cut off the head of Robert Devereux, the 2nd Earl of Essex. Other minerals included in this powder are bismuth oxychloride, zinc oxide, titanium dioxide and silica, which is another name for quartz.

My quarrel with this make up, which is supposed to give my face a polished and air-brushed appearance, is that perhaps they didn't mill that quartz quite finely enough. The result is...okay. But the texture of the powder is extremely gritty and unpleasant feeling on my face. Remember, I was spoiled in the days of my youth by that remarkable translucent powdered elixir from Elizabeth Arden, a face powder so finely milled, it was softer and lighter than a gosling's feather.

Of course, the translucent face powder from Elizabeth Arden is made from talc and the Physician's Formula face powder is made from minerals, so maybe I'm being unfair. Also, it might be a touch unreasonable to buy makeup from the usual suspects (Meijer, Target, Walgreen's, CVS) and expect it to perform like a high-end preparation available at cosmetics counters in posh department stores, but I can't help it.

Does it have to feel like it's made of gravel? Hate!

The powder I bought also comes with a cute little brush for application and I knew before I even used it that it was going to be horrible. I love the quality make-up brushes I've bought over the years and there's something really icky about cheap brushes that shed long, synthetic boar's hairs all over the face. They need to get rid of the cheap brush, so matter how adorable it looks under the little domed lid. I'm just saying.

On the other hand, my husband and I bought Meelyn some Physician's Formula Mineral Wear® loose powder, blusher and bronzer for her birthday and she says she really likes it. So what do I know?

Physician's Formula Mineral Wear® Makeup is good for sensitive (mine) or breakout-prone (Meelyn's) skin. The translucent powder I bought is available for around $11, give or take some change, at all your local discount department stores and pharmacies.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Flexitol Heel Balm

Okay, so this really isn't an elegant cosmetic product, like that really delicious, smooth-as-silk translucent loose powder by Elizabeth Arden (which, due to finances beyond my control, I have only been able to use for a brief, shining period in my life, before I was married and had to start worrying about things like electric bills and whose toes were pressing against the ends of her sneakers), but it is a really useful one.



On the one hand, I really like wearing sandals. On the other hand, I feel a little bit delicate about exposing the innocent citizenry to my feet, which have been living all winter inside thick socks and mucky slippers, innocent of pumice stone or polished toenails. That's where the Flexitol Heel Balm comes it. It can take the most callused, cracked and dry-skinned feet and restore them to sandal-worthiness in just a matter of days. No matter how bad your feet are -- and my feet have been b-a-d -- Flexitol Heel Balm will help.

So far, this blog is only being read by about four people who are reading just to humor me, but seriously, I wish this could be a public service announcement. There are some people out there -- women, even! -- going around exposing their ugly-looking dogs, in dire need of Flexitol Heel Balm and not even knowing it. It's really sad, folks. I can't blame the men, because they were cursed by nature with jacked-up feet, but women (and I believe this strongly) have a duty to tend to their feet if they're going to go around wearing sandals. No one wants to see great big yellow toenails that look like pieces of swiss cheese stuck to the ends of your toes, and nobody wants to see a lady's heels with fissures that look as deep as the one Gandalf fell into in The Fellowship of the Ring. Get some Flexitol on those things and stop torturing the rest of us! And polish! Sheesh!

For anyone who hasn't used this before, let me just frankly tell you that it looks like snot - the kind of snot you have when you have a really bad sinus infection. And it doesn't smell very good either. I think the Flexitol people know they have a wicked good product and thus know that they don't have to dress it up to suit our finer sensibilities, nurtured so graciously at the Elizabeth Arden counter. Rough feet or smooth feet. Take 'em or leave 'em.

I'll take them, with a little coral-pink nail polish as well. I have some really cute new sandals and want to do them justice.

Flexitol Heel Balm costs somewhere around $7.99-$11.99, depending on where you buy it and on what size the tube is. You can purchase it at the usual suspects: Meijer, Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreen's & CVS. It can be found where foot products are sold. Please don't ask for it at the Elizabeth Arden counter. The salesgirls will only mock you with their perfectly groomed eyebrows.