Try Some Inexpensive Luxury in Your Bath

I have discovered that a little budget hair conditioner (such as Suave or VO5) in bath water conditions and moisturizes your skin. I also use shampoo as body wash and/or bubble bath. It costs less and I think it works as well, if not better. Give it a try and see!

Disguise Valuables Away From Home

With warm weather approaching, protect your stuff at the beach or anywhere!

Great idea for the car, gym, or dog park as well!

Farfetched Skin Care: Don't forget your neck!

Did you know that your neck ages four times faster than your face? Your upper chest under your collar bone ages even faster!!

Wish I had known that when I was 20! Do everything you do for you face for your neck and upper chest, as well.

Don't forget the back of your neck. Otherwise, you'll be a little old lady with beautiful skin, as long as no one ever sees you from behind. LOL

Farfetched Skin Care: Salicylic Acid

I love products with salicylic acid. This product clears blemishes and reduces the look of wrinkles by exfoliation. Exfoliation is so important as you grow older.

If a product doesn't have salicylic acid in it, such as a soap, lotion, or makeup, I add some from an unconventional (surprise!) source: Compound W wort remover!!!

This product has 7% salicylic acid. Add between 1/8 and 1/2 teaspoon. Be careful and judge by product size and your skin's response. If it gets irritated or dry, decrease the amount. Always start small.

Here's to more beautiful skin! Use the blog for more posts coming up on "Farfetched Skin Care."

Use a fan as a drye!

If you have a large fan, you can drape wet towels and rags over it, as well as pieces of clothing to dry them. I have dried a whole load of microfiber rags or a small wash load of laundry or delicates in a few hours or overnight on our big kitchen floor fan. Very heavy things don't dry well on a fan.

This saves time, energy and utility costs. (Heating elements use the most electricity.)

Don't worry about a fan in colder weather.  Just angle it towards the floor. Remember, fans don't blow cold air. They only circulate air. A fan will always more than pay for itself by doing this in a room. The reason a fan feels cool in the summer is that it cools the skin by evaporation.

Farfetched Makeup Solutions: Lipstick

You just don't want your lipstick to be harsh-looking, especially as you get older.

Tip: Pat a little foundation on your lips *before* you apply lipstick. It makes the color much truer. Then use a makeup sponge to pat a small amount *over* the lipstick. It really softens the look. Then do the last half of step 2 below.

Other ideas:

1. Put lip balm under the lipstick for a softer shade, and a little shine.


2. Be sure to blot after you apply (then pat a bit of lipstick right on the inner center of your lower lip and rub your lips together. The darker spot will draw people;s eyes to the center of your face. And it just looks good. :)


3. The older you get, the more you should avoid lip glosses and frosts.

Farafetched Makeup Solutions: Powder

Hello! After having been gone for a while I am glad to get back posting. :) But sometimes I don't feel like I have the time to do a nice post with a picture. So, I am going to start putting a few quick-and-dirty posts in. If I get an idea, I'll come on and jot it down before I forget it. Let me know if you like this idea. At least there will be more frequent posts!

I am also going to start a couple of themes or threads like this one, "Farfetched Makeup Solutions." Another upcoming thread will be "Farfetched Skin Care." :D

Although I don't often wear foundation, sometimes I like to put on a little pressed powder. But it can be hard not to make it look cakey. Today, I used a blush brush to put it on instead of the powder puff that comes inside. It gives a much lighter look and it a lot faster!

BTW, loose powder looks even better. Gotta get some when I run out.

I'm back! A post on bad coffee made better

That hacker did get the better of me after all, and I had to drop out of cyberspace for a while, but thanks to my genius computer friend, I've been in the clear since Christmas. So, to reassure you, (I say this with sincere hopefulness) I don't anticipate any problems on this blog or anywhere in the near future.

Anyway, I ran out of my whole bean coffee tonight. BTW, my standard fare Kroger French Roast, Medium in the purple bag (the cheapest one, like $3.50 or something) is really, really good. It's my favorite off brand coffee and the price is right!!!

Now, I should add that my husband says I'm a coffee *snob*. A snob! Can you imagine? I prefer to think that I have just developed a taste for really good coffee. However, I do use a French press, love to make my own Americano from my own espresso, and can distinguish between Starbucks - and ground grocery store coffee. The latter, I generally refer to as "swill," of course, not out loud if I'm drinking it at somebody's house.

Sigh. He's right.

So, back to the coffee mini-famine. I mean, I *love* my coffee. So to stretch my last few beans, I put in some -- gasp! -- decaf. (I can get desperate for this brown liquid). Of course, the wholebean-stretched-out-by-stale-decaf combo was terrible. So I added about 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon and (this is the secret) the tiniest pinch of ground cloves! Careful here: less is definitely more with cloves.

The cloves have a strong enough taste that it totally blocked out the terrible-cheap-decaf taste! So, I just sipped down the last few drops and enjoyed the whole thing!

Cheers! And thanks for coming back!!!

When Sugar Plum Fairies Won't Do the Job

For restless sleepers on Christmas Eve, husbands included

Find Lost Stuff With Suction!

Color-Code Keys

Instant iPod Docking Case

Take This, Hacker Chick

Well, this isn't really a fix, but it is farfetched. Except it really happened. Well most of it anyway, there is a bit of exaggeration in the video that I couldn't resist ...

When our computer and personal information were severely compromised by a Trojan Horse virus downloaded from CNET, all we could do was laugh. Well, laugh, and change our bank account, alert our credit card company, re-image our computer 376 times, contact the authorities, and finally, after exhausting all other alternatives, move to the Bahamas with our new lap-abacus. Hope you enjoy this spoof I did after the worst was over!



Hey! This video may take my new blog to 1,000 visits. How fun is that? A small victory for cyberspace!

"Cooler Corn"

I thought Thanksgiving would be a great time to re-post this fantastic idea!

This method for perfectly cooking loads of corn on the cob is simple genius!

Take a large cooler, wipe it clean, and fill it with shucked ears of corn. Cover the corn with boiling water and close the top.

Then nothing.

Thirty minutes later you can sit down to dinner and enjoy perfectly cooked corn on the cob, en masse! I'm told that the corn will remain at the perfect level of doneness for a couple of hours.

Thanks to my sister-in-law Stephanie W. for submitting.

Dishwasher Pacs? We've Been Duped!

Ooooo, pretty!

I was loading one of these pacs into my dishwasher a couple of months ago and got a revelation. Instantly, I flashed back to the installation of my new dishwasher. The nice man told me to use these special pacs and kindly gave me some free samples, "The new dishwashers run much better with these than the liquid, Ma'am."

Indeed, my liquid did not perform as well as the lovely and mysterious little pacs in the new machine, so I bought some. Ahhh, the marvels of modern technology. First, HD television and the iPhone and now these nifty pacs, I mused.

Homemade recipe,courtesy lightlycrunchy blog

Anyway, back to the aforementioned revelation: I was loading the beautiful little packet into my dishwasher, and ... it broke open. Do you know what spilled out? Dishwasher powder!!! Dishwasher powder???? Those little weasels!! So, there is no secret formula inside these little gizmos? No super-powered cleaning formulas? The pack casing performs no miracle?  The pretty green and blue swirls? Well, I haven't figured that out yet. Probably colored goo. (I do know the generic swirl-less packs work great.)

Ahhh, the marvels of modern marketing schemes. Will the wonders of the new millennium never cease?

Cheapo generic powder

Takeaway:
When you run out of these expensive little pacs,
go buy some cheap dishwasher powder.
Dollar Tree, here I come!

Gardening Tip to Protect Hands & Nails

Re-potted orchid & clean nails with
indoor greenhouse in the background

I love plants, always have. I have a little indoor greenhouse that I absolutely love, a couple of orchids,  succulents, ferns and herbs in my windowsill. In fact, it is fall here in the south-central US and time to plant pansies and prepare our outside gardens for winter. (Born and raised in Denver, but living in the South since 1996, I love it here. What a delight to have pansies blooming in my yard in December!)

Anyway, I was re-potting an overgrown orchid (above) and some spearmint I bought from the grocery store this afternoon and remembered a tip I got from a book on houseplants years ago. Before you begin working with the soil, slather your hands with lotion. Especially, gook lotion under your fingernails.

Then you can wash your hands easily without any residue left under your nails. Also hands don't dry out and nails are not likely to break or split.

Old Fashioned Quick Fix for Makeup

If you are running late in the morning, or are away from home without makeup, or you're just a no-frills kind of girl, you might like this old fashioned tip. Put on lipstick, blot it with a tissue and apply to cheeks. It gives a subtle color that perks up your face and blends with your lip color.

Freeze Your Bread

Refrigerated bread gets stale overnight. Freezing a loaf of bread keeps it fresh and preserves taste and texture. Don't worry about thawing: by the time I make a sandwich, my bread has thawed -- and I pop it from freezer to toaster with no problem.

Tip: Before freezing, gently grab both ends of the loaf and wiggle it like an inchworm walking. This will keep the slices from freezing together so they are easy to remove from the bag one at a time.

Perfect cuticles

My secret? Lip balm! Any product will work but my favorite is Carmex. The signature lip balm of the Marines (and they ought to know) was developed by a pharmacist in the 1930s. This family recipe has endured because it works. It is nourishing and healing to skin. Also, the "magic ingredient," salycilic acid, exfoliates.

Keep lip balm at your bedside and put some on before you go to sleep. During the day, when you use it on your lips, include your cuticles and there won't be a hangnail anywhere. :) Works great for elbows and callouses, too!

Sink-O-Matic

Rack makes your sink a level, germ-free working surface. Very nifty.