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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
Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!
I really did think about doing a St. Patrick's Day post today, but we have already said about as much as we have to say on this post. It really isn't too late to incorporate some of the ideas that Alicia shared. We will be eating corned beef and cabbage, as well as Key Lime Pie. I hope you enjoy this fun day!
A different event that I have been looking forward to is happening today! The opening of the live action version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson! I can hardly wait to see it!
Have you seen the trailer? I have been a Disney girl all of my life, and with the excitement of this movie coming out, I was inspired to make today's Friday Fave question be...
Which Disney Princess is Your Favorite?
Two things that you may have notice about our tip image:
So, let's begin with princess #1, Shyanne! Shyanne is 8 years old and tells me that her favorite Princess it Ariel, from the Little Mermaid! Shyanne has always loved to sing. I have the Disney Karaoke for the Wii. I can hear her sweet voice now singing, "Under the Sea!" My personal favorite is, "Kiss the Girl." Little Mermaid is a great movie. Who doesn't go around quoting it? It has such great phrases like, "Zut alors, I have missed one!" We have all heard the rumors that the VHS version of the movie sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay. I have checked, (because we have one) and yes some are LISTED for that, but there are others much cheaper. But, really, just get it on DVD and enjoy it all over again.
Princesses #2 are both Alicia and my 5 year old granddaughter, Jayda. These two both chose Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Jayda also loves to sing, plus I think the idea of the Beast speaks to her adventurous little heart. This movie came out when Alicia was a little girl. When she was 3 years old, for Christmas she received a cassette player with a sing-along microphone and the soundtrack to Beauty and the Beast. She went all around with that thing singing, "Be Our Guest, Be our Guest!..." over and over again. It is one of my favorite memories of her as a child. Now, Alicia says that she loves Belle because she is smart, loves to read, brave and she sticks up for herself. She also believes in giving people second chances, or in other words, she is forgiving. I think that one of my favorite songs for this movie is the one about Gaston because it is so funny.
I knew what Princess #3, Madalynn would be. She made me stand in line with her at Disneyland when she was 18 years old to get her picture taken with Aurora, Sleeping Beauty. I was going to put the picture up, but I looked and looked and can't find it! If I come across it, I will add it. Madalynn loves Aurora's voice and range. It is beautiful and lilting. Just think of "Once Upon a Dream" and you will realize it is true. Plus, Maddy says, " Aurora loves to sleep a lot, just like me!" My favorite part of the movie is at the end when the fairy godmothers are arguing about whether her dress should be pink or blue. As she twirls with her prince charming around the floor of the ballroom, they keep changing the color back and forth. It was always magical to me as a child. (I liked blue.)
Lindsey is Princess #4. She chose Mulan because she loves what a strong, brave and loyal woman she is portrayed to be. Lindsey says, "Mulan is wonderful, beautiful and deals with insecurity like most people but she finds out that it's okay to be different as long as you are always trying to do the right thing." She says that the scene when they are singing, "Be a Man" and she goes up to retrieve the arrow always makes her cry. Plus, there are also some other great songs in that movie! I have always love the song, "Reflection".
That makes me Princess #5, (but I am really the queen, sometimes Maleficent.) I had such a difficult time choosing! I mean, I grew up with Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. I loved them all! But in the end, I finally chose Rapunzel from the movie Tangled! You can rent the movie on Amazon, or buy the DVD here. I love that Rapunzel is klutzy like me, and romantic and that she just plunges into things wildly, (like me). Plus, the song, "At Last I See the Light" is amazing.
I know that the trend now is to make the live action versions of the classics, and I am super excited to see Beauty and the Beast, but I will always love the animated classics! Sometimes, it is just time to watch them with your children or grandchildren, And also, to sing the songs together! There really are good messages to be gleaned from them, but mostly, just some great entertainment!
Don't forget to stop by LastYesterday and download some awesome decor items. Look, here is one last example of her work, the Phoenix Temple Silhouette! You can't pass that one up!
Do you recognize the Nintendo System above? It is the original NES that came out back in the 80's I believe. My kids pinched and saved and I matched their savings at a certain point and we purchased this system many years ago. It came with Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt. We still have that system, packed away and in tact. But, since then we have had (or my son has had) N-64, GameCube and the Wii. Mario and Luigi have been a part of our lives for a long time! Since today is Mar 10, it is unofficially recognized as Mario Day, because when you push "Mar" and "10" together, it looks like it spells "Mario"! So, today's Friday Fave question is...
What is your favorite Mario Game?
1. I will go first! My favorite Mario game is MarioKart for the Wii! When I first started playing this one, I was terrible at it. I always died on Rainbow Road and on almost every other road as well. But, I got better and better at it until I was able to beat people on the World Wide connection! I have to admit, I was a little addicted to this game for awhile. (It was embarrassing to my children.) I loved being Princess Peach. Whenever she would shoot someone with a shell or pass them on the road, she would look back and say in her high little voice, "Ha Ha!". It made me laugh every time. I stipulate for the Wii because I am not so great at it with the control pad. I like using the Wii steering wheel. I am a little disappointed that Nintendo doesn't support the World Wide connection anymore on the Wii. But, it is still fun to play against my kids, who can all still beat me.
2. Now we are going old school because Madalynn surprised me and chose this original Super Mario Game for the original NES! We were always way behind when it came to updating to the new game systems. We usually ended up getting them when they were about ready to come out with the next big thing. So, even though Madalynn is one of the younger siblings, she remembers playing this and how much fun it was back then. Getting Mario to land at the top of the pole at the end of a level was so exciting! The old system and the games are still available on Amazon!
3. Lindsey chose a game that we all loved. I almost picked this one as well, Dr. Mario! My kids are so good at this game, it is unreal. I could never beat them, but I kept trying! (I think I have mentioned in this post how competitive we tend to be about game playing.) When Lindsey was in college, some friends were having a tournament and "let" her play, warning her that they were all really good and she might not be able to keep up. Wrong thing to suggest to Lindsey. She wiped them all out. This game is really challenging, but there are tricks to it and you have to be quick. We would have big tournaments when everyone was home. I don't know if we ever chose a grand champion, but LIndsey and her older brother, Aaron were really competitive against each other and are contenders for the title!
4. Alicia chose in the same vein as Madalynn by picking Super Mario Bros, only for the Wii U. The graphics are so much better, of course, and the Wii U is so much fun! I feel like it hasn't taken off like it should have because having that little private screen really adds a new element to the games. Son Tyler and his wife Jessica have one and we have all enjoyed getting everyone together and playing on the Wii U. Plus, making your Mii on the Wii U is totally cool as well because you actually take a photo of yourself and the Wii uses that image to create your Mii from that. It is hilarious!
5. This week's guest Fave picker is Adrian Maruri, my son-in-law, and Alicia's husband. (He is the one that shared the delicious Ecuadorian Recipes here and here.) We had to invite Adrian because we don't know a better connoisseur of video games than he is. He especially loves the old school games and for his pick chose Super Nintendo's Mario Paint. Have you ever heard of Mario Paint? Many people haven't and Adrian says that more people need to be made aware of it. He played this game in his youth and let me tell you, I have seen him in action on it and it is pretty amazing. Not only can you design works of art on this game, but you can write music as well. I have seen Adrian design a tee-shirt design on it, plus he has written music that actually sounded good! Of course, he is an artist and a sound engineer. When I tried to make a line of music on it, it sounded like, well, like I had written it. Budding artists and musicians out there will really enjoy this game. Thanks Adrian for sharing your expertise with us!
What is your favorite Mario game? There are many more to choose from! Maybe you can celebrate Mario Day with a little family fun playing Mario together tonight! Dr. Mario or MarioKart tournaments are a blast! If it is still cold in your part of the world, Hot Cocoa Bombs turned on their sides look a lot like the bullets on Mario games. Just add an eyeball! They can add to the theme of your impromptu party! Sometimes these are the fun moments that everyone remembers later as some of the best family times. We always experience lots of laughter and excitement. Mario games are a fun and lighthearted ways to enjoy each other's company.
On another topic, many people ask me about how I went about starting a blog and how bloggers earn money. I am still working on the earning money part, but the two resources listed below have helped me tremendously to get as far as we have on our blog. Weebly makes it easy to start a blog, I recommend the Starter package to begin because then you can blog as often as you want. I have been really happy with their customer service. Share-a-sale is a way to team up with affiliate marketers whose products you like. They give all kinds of tips and ideas to new bloggers as well. So, if you have a desire to get your thoughts out there, these are two great resources.
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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
May 2024
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