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Last Saturday was April Fool's Day, and Alicia cracked us all up with her post giving 3 housecleaning tips. If you didn't get a chance to read it, you really should. My kids are all comedians at heart. But, seriously folks, this is the time of year when all of our thoughts turn to Spring Cleaning and so that is the theme of today's Friday Fave question:
What is your favorite housecleaning tool?
Alicia worked her way through her undergrad years in college as a custodian on campus! That is also where she met her husband. She picked up some good cleaning tips in that job. Today she is sharing two favorites!
First, microfiber cloths are something she loves to use for cleaning. She got me to start using them, and they are great! In the photos above,she is using only water to get those windows looking gorgeous. She says:
Microfiber cloths are great for dusting, they pick up the dust very well. The texture of the microfiber saves on elbow grease when cleaning other areas of your house and helps you have streakfree windows. They are soft enough for TV screens and computer monitors as well. Here are a couple of resources for microfiber cloths:
Alicia's second choice is her vacuum cleaner. She points out that a good vacuum is really useful. She vacuums everything, cabinets, the fridge (dry crumbs), and when she sweeps, she uses the vacuum to clean up the pile she makes. She loves her vacuum, although it was fairly inexpensive. She has had it 5 years and it's easy to clean and to keep it working well. It is the Bissell Rewind Smart Clean. It currently has 4 stars on Amazon. I am in the market for a new vacuum, so I will have to check this one out. Alicia gives it high marks.
I have tried out a new product for cleaning TOILETS that I am really liking! I live in an older house with older toilets. (They are on our list to replace.) Cleaning them is never fun. They stain easily. Then, one day I noticed on ibotta that there was a $2.50 rebate for the Clorox Toilet Wand. I decided to give it a try! I really like how it disinfected and cleaned so easily and my toilets looked whiter than they had in a long time! Also, you just push the button and the head gets thrown in the trash (not in the toilet!) and you don't have to touch anything gross!
Have you tried the ibotta app yet? It is an app that gives you rebates on groceries and other things that you normally buy. For example, here are a few of this week's offers: Sargento Cheese Shreds are on there, as well as Freschetta Frozen Pizza, Ruffles Chips, and Nesquik Powder. I have already gotten well over $200 in rebates so far. I always get mine in Amazon Cards so that I can use them to shop there. I bought a bookcase with some of my rebates! If you click on this link, you can join and get a $10 rebate to get you started! (I will get $5, so thank you!) So, I was able to get a $2.50 rebate off of the already fairly low price of the Clorox Toilet Wand!
Lindsey, who also worked as a campus custodian for part of her undergrad years, claimed Mr Clean Magic Erasers as her favorite cleaning tool. She says, and I concur, that they seriously do work like magic! When she worked at the giant basketball/event center called The Marriot Center at BYU, they used them there and they did a great job! In her recent move, as she cleaned to show the house they were selling, Magic Erasers were life savers, keeping walls and doors clean and shiny. I have used them after my grandchildren, cleaning up pencil and crayon marks off of walls, hand prints off of everything and I have used them on my stove top as well. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are amazing! If you haven't tried them yet and you are a mother, these will save your sanity!
You can get a case of 24 from DollarTree.com, and that is fine with Lindsey because she says she wants a year's supply of them. You can get free shipping from them if you have them sent to your local store. You can also get a smaller number for a really good price from Amazon.
Maddy has chosen a book that she read that is going to help her be more organized. It is called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. Madalynn says it is fascinating how she simplifies things and doesn't have you clean just one room at a time, but organizes the entire house at once. We have big plans to implement her methods in our home. I am excited to have a much more organize house! You can grab her book here.
Well, now that I have spent so much time getting this post written, I guess I had better start my own cleaning! Let me know if you have any tools that make your life so much easier! Thanks for stopping by Friday Faves this week!
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Technology is a wonderful thing! My daughters and I are able to blog together, even though we live, in one case, far apart. Maddy still lives at home, but Lindsey is married and lives in her own home in a nearby city, and Alicia is married and lives in the Bay Area of California. We have been wanting and needing a photo of the four of us on our blog for quite some time. When Lindsey was married, back in August, we should have gotten a picture of us together then, but, somehow we didn't, nor did we get one at Christmas! So, I had the idea, lets just do some selfie pictures and make a photo collage. We make collages every week for the blog. How hard could it be? We did it! Here are the fruits of our labors!
You are probably wondering how I ended up with such beautiful daughters. Since this is Friday Faves, let me just say that they are 3 of my favorite women and I love them so much. They are intelligent and beautiful inside and out. I am a proud mom! Yes, that picture of Maddy is a selfie. She is the queen of selfies. Since we all had to get our make-up on for our selfie shoot, that inspired our Friday Fave question for today: What is your favorite brand of mascara?
Let's start with LIndsey today!
Finally, there is my choice. Sorry, no more pictures of me! I very rarely go out without mascara on. If I can't put on anything else when I am in a hurry, I put on moisturizer and mascara, then I feel like I can face the world. Alicia turned me on to this choice and I really love it. My go to mascara is Maybelline Full and Soft Mascara. Now that I am getting older, I don't want to try to look like I am trying too hard or be over done. I just want to make sure I look nice and not washed out or tired. This mascara frames my eyes beautifully, isn't too stiff and heavy and makes me feel like my eyes look pretty!
If you try out any of today's Friday Faves, be sure to let us know which mascara is your favorite in the comments! Also, feel free to comment about how beautiful my girls are! :) You can shop this post by clicking the links in the post, or by clicking the pictures below. Have a great weekend!
Find past Friday Faves here. SHOP THIS POST BELOW Hey Alicia here! This year I’ll be posting a party idea for you guys each month with modifications to make it for kids or for a date! This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Thanks for your support! Have you seen or even been to one of those Paint Nites? I see a lot of my friends going to do them and it looks fun, but I know the price isn’t in our budget right now. And to be honest, a lot of the paintings I see are pretty but not my aesthetic. I want to join in on the fun, but I don’t want to spend my money on something I think is just not going to fit into my décor. That’s how I came up with this party idea. There are literally thousands of painting tutorials on YouTube. And there are even episodes of Bob Ross on Netflix. So why couldn’t I just have Paint Night at home? While these events usually involve acrylics (as far as I’ve seen), I prefer watercolors. So this party will be a Watercolor Paint Night Party. Basic party idea: Enjoy food and beverages while learning to paint a scene in the comfort of your own home. Supplies:
Setup: Find the video you’d like to use first. I like this video by Wonder Forest. It’s a pretty lake scene and doesn’t use too much paint. If this one isn’t for you, browse until you see one that strikes your fancy! Try searching Watercolor Painting Tutorial on YouTube. A great thing about YouTube is you can speed up or slow down the video. It does distort the sound a little but might be worth it. You can also rewind, fast-forward, and pause as needed. For most videos I viewed, you want to tape your paper down to prevent warping when the paper gets wet. Cut a sheet of the watercolor paper in half and tape it down to a piece of cardboard. I think cut-up cereal boxes will work best because they are smooth. Paper plates or extra cardboard can be used as a paint palette. As you can see from this video, it doesn't take much of these paints to make your picture. But I would wait until everyone is settled and ready to start before you put the paints out. And of course every person will need a cup of water and a paper towel or tissue. You'll also want to have a table and chairs in front of the screen so everyone can have easy viewing access to the video.
A quick note about the brushes. These will be the most expensive thing needed for the party in terms of how many you will need. Of course this depends on how many people are invited. I have some suggestions to help on this.
To make it a more kid friendly party:
So what do you think? Does this budget friendly Watercolor Paint Night work for you? Let us know if you try it out and how it goes for you!
PS I'm struggling with my pictures right now so I will get them up soon! Thanks for your patience.
So, St Patrick’s Day is coming up, but you don’t want to be drowned in green. That’s how I feel anyways. (My brother and sister-in-law would probably love it though because they love green). It’s not that I hate green there’s just so many other things to love about St Patrick’s Day. It’s one of my favorite holidays and I’ve come up with some fun ways to celebrate the day that not only involve green but all the colors of the rainbow as well!
Additional Ideas:
For a date- Cozy up with your sweetheart watching “Darby O’Gill and the Little People”, you can stream it on Amazon! You can eat chips and dip and mint Oreos. A nice stay-in date. For Kids- There’s not much I would change except maybe changing out the music. Flogging Molly is a bit of an adult band. Hope you guys can use some of these ideas to make your St Patrick’s Day fun! Let us know if you do. Or if you have any fun ideas to include in the celebration. |
Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
July 2024
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