March 2015 – Not Content to Crawl

Spring Organizing

Posted onMarch 30, 2015September 21, 2020

Got the spring ~~cleaning~~ organizing bug this weekend and purchased a ClosetMaid 9 cube organizer at Target which we put in the loft. It was a little pricey at $60 but nicer looking than the $40 version Walmart sells. So far I’ve got a bunch of purses and other stuff in there which really cleaned up the area around my desk.

We also bought some storage totes and tackled organizing E’s closet. Joe has a bunch of his old Star Wars toys in there, plus we were using his closet to store old video game systems and electronics, etc. We made it more organized so I could move some stuff out of the rat room closet which was getting to be a mess. Plus I organized our master closet better by throwing all my Cure vinyl and other memorabilia in the remaining storage tote so I could stack items on top of it (whereas it was in a heavy black milk crate before).

The next thing I’d like to tackle is all the damn paperwork we have. I have three plastic file totes as well as a locking fireproof safe with paperwork in it. That just seems like way too much stuff even though we clean it out annually. I started going through it this morning but got fatigued. I was able to discard a decent pile of stuff before I lost my energy, though!

Trying to organize everything is a double-edged sword for me because on one hand it helps me feel less anxious when I feel like things are in order. On the other hand, I start to feel anxious when I realize we have too much stuff! But that is why we started a box for stuff we want to donate or sell to Half Price Books. We’re getting rid of most of the books we own, which admittedly, isn’t a lot to begin with. But who needs a book on cat behavior when we can’t have one? Or one on the proper care of a Betta fish when we can look that up online? Might as well free up some space even if that space isn’t huge.

I pulled a TON of burned CDs out of a cabinet that were just thrown in there and my grand plan is to go through them so I can throw most of them away. They weren’t all labeled, though, so I don’t want to chuck them until I’m sure there’s nothing on them I want to keep. The task seems daunting, however, so that will have to wait for another day.

Makeup

Posted onMarch 30, 20151 Comment

This weekend I went a little nuts buying makeup. To spend $25 in two days on personal care products is definitely more than usual for me. I blame it on my recent obsession with certain women’s YouTube pages where they talk about their beauty hauls. So here’s what I got:

The elf and Wet & Wild cosmetics and Clean & Clear face wash were purchased at Target on Saturday. While I like the consistency and look of the matte lipstick, I’m pretty bummed about the color since it is more purple than the packaging implied.

Do they even look the same? No, they do not!

I noticed that the blush doesn’t match the color on the packaging either, although I could at least tell beforehand and was ok with that. I didn’t realize the difference with the lipstick until after I had opened it. The concealer is a bit disappointing because it makes my skin shiny under my eyes. I don’t see how that helps conceal anything, but whatever.

This is why I don’t typically spend a lot of money on makeup – half the time I don’t like what I end up buying, or I find something I like and it’s discontinued. Or, in the case of the foundation I bought years ago and was looking to replace (before you think ew, she’s been using the same bottle of foundation for years, I just stopped wearing foundation and recently decided I wanted to start wearing it again), they change it so I can’t figure out what my shade is anymore. I have what Covergirl refers to as their “Clean Liquid Makeup” except mine says it’s 115 – Natural Ivory. No such number exists now even though they still produce the Clean line. So am I now considered Classic Ivory or Creamy Natural? How many of these stupid bottles will I need to buy to figure it out? Ugh! And this, my friends, is why I don’t wear much makeup – it’s frustrating and expensive.

Getting back to my “haul”…

I haven’t tried the eyeshadow trio (made by Wet & Wild) yet, but I love how it is packaged as one complete look. The bottom color goes on your eyelid, the middle color on the crease, and the top color on your brow bone. I’m not great with that whole thing since I very rarely wear eyeshadow, so I figured I’d start small (and cheap) to see if I even like the look.

I love the Clean & Clear Night Relaxing deep cleaning face wash which I tried for the first time about a month ago. It smells so good, so I bought a second bottle this weekend.

I found the Clean and Clear Blackhead Erasing Cleaning Mask at Ulta on clearance. They stopped carrying it at Target which bummed me out because my tube was nearly empty. I love Ulta’s clearance section – I found the cute purple eyeshadow there for only $2 whereas it regularly sells for $6. The nail polish was on clearance for $5 instead of $9 as well. It matches another bottle of the same brand I already have so I can wear it on top of one nail for an accent, or on all.

Speaking of beauty hauls, I don’t know if I ever mentioned that I subscribe to Walmart’s Beauty Box. It’s $5 per box which is sent out once a quarter. I didn’t really care for the latest box. A lot of other people were unhappy with it as well, and I learned that anyone over 35 got the less desirable products. So I changed my age to 21 (LOL) on my profile so I can get less eye cream and crap that I don’t want. I’ll stay subscribed for at least one more box to see what the summer version will bring. I hear Target’s beauty box is much better but you can only get it when they announce it’s available and it quickly sells out.

I decided to try Birchbox since it’s a monthly subscription with better products and you earn half the of the box’s price back by reviewing the products you’re sent. Plus they customize it based on your preferences. I’m excited that I’ll be getting my first box in less than two weeks!

Damn You Old Navy!

Posted onMarch 23, 2015April 2, 2015

Saturday was a pretty lazy day, although we did leave the house for a short time to visit Old Navy because I read they had their tank tops on sale for only $2. I am a self-confessed tank top addict* and I used to love Old Navy tanks. Unfortunately the style on sale sucks, so I got a bit irritated because it seems like every so often I get “tricked” into visiting that store and I never come out with anything. E got a couple of t-shirts, though, so at least one of us left happy.

We went to the Five Below next door where I found the perfect t-shirt for Brother # 1 for his birthday. Haha!

Next we went to Half Price Books to browse and we found a super old version of Aggravation for only $1.20. The board is in excellent shape and the marbles are made out of glass.

Our last stop was the library to pick up a copy of Cloverfield since E had never seen it.

Sunday Joe and I went to Old Time Pottery to look for planters for the patio. Now that I’m 99% sure our neighbors aren’t dog-owning smokers, I’m pretty excited to spend some time outside and garden. I couldn’t find any long planter boxes, but we did find a really big square planter that we plan to transplant our large bush into since the one it came in is fugly.

I also found some cute silk flowers. I like the daffodils but I really love the pink blossoms! After Easter I will be displaying them in the living room.

We ran into friends of ours at the Menards and caught up in the parking lot before heading inside to look for fencing to protect my daffodils** from the landscapers. I’m worried they will pull them out of the ground before they bloom. We also looked for planters but there weren’t any on sale so we’ll hold off for now.

Our last stop was the produce market where we discovered their homemade chicken soup is awesome! I made rice later in the day to add to the soup so we could spread it out between two meals.

This morning I woke up to a very vocal woodpecker. When I peeked out the window I was shocked to see everything covered in snow with more coming down every minute. Ugh! I was hoping we were done with this bullshit. It’s spring for goodness sakes!

* Incidentally, I organized my tank top drawer this morning. Obsessed much? And those aren’t even the good tank tops I wear in the summer. I mainly wear the ones pictured here underneath shirts or to bed.

** I should note that I have real daffodils planted outside. I realized later when re-reading this post that it sounded like I was talking about the fake daffodils I had just purchased!

4K TVs & Puppies

Posted onMarch 23, 2015April 25, 2015

Friday we headed to the mall to return a shirt I had gotten at Kohl’s recently since it had a hole in it.

We also stopped in FYE which we rarely do, but it’s fun to browse all the little pop culture figurines they sell there. It paid off too because I found some fun things on clearance that I bought for Brother # 1’s birthday next month.

This crazy looking thing is from Dumb Ways To Die.

This is from the movie, Ted, and be warned, the things he says in NSFW!

After that we went to Payless where I bought a pair of purple gym shoes (or sneakers, if you’re not a Midwesterner). They were only $18.75 after my coupon. They are very light and breathable which will be great once it warms up and we start going for our daily evening walks again.

We stopped at Hobby Lobby where I ended up getting a cute bouquet of multicolored silk flowers for $4 since they were all on sale for 50% off. I’ve been getting more into silk flowers lately because they are great inexpensive way to change up the decor.

Lastly, we stopped at Costco to pick up some staples. Fridays are the best day to visit Costco because it’s not busy but they still have the free samples. Score! We also came really close to walking out with a Samsung 4k TV.

We’ve been patiently looking at TVs for awhile now but can’t seem to pull the trigger. I love our plasma but now that Joe has been unable to fix the broken TV that was originally in our bedroom, we thought it would make sense to replace the one downstairs, move that into the bedroom, and then move the TV that’s currently in the bedroom back into the loft for gaming. I was ready to drop $1000 on the TV but after reading the Amazon reviews I’m not so sure that’s a great idea. I’m less concerned about it “only” being 60hz since nothing is broadcast in anything higher anyway, but people were complaining about how the light bleeds on the edges of the screen and even posted pictures. The thing I will say about our old outdated plasma is that the blacks are very black and I really have no complaints with the picture quality even though it’s not even 720p. But man, those 4k TVs look awesome, and owning a Samsung smart TV would be great. We could move the Chromecast upstairs, plus connect the Wii, PS3, Ouya, and Xbox 360 downstairs without having to switch HDMI ports all the time. Oh well… I’m sure we’ll find something eventually.

After dropping off our loot at home we headed south toward our old neighborhood to grab lunch at a Thai place I wanted to try. Then we killed some time by visiting the local animal shelter and looking at dogs. OMG the place smelled so bad! I’ve been to other shelters before, and this one smell-wise is the absolute worst. I do not recommend visiting it right after eating; it strongly smelled like shit and vomit and I almost puked.

The majority of the dogs there were either pitbulls or pitbull mixes. It was so depressing walking past rows and rows of kennels and seeing all the dogs get excited. They all had those pathetic puppy-dog eyes that tear at your heart strings. Eventually we came upon one kennel that housed a very large fluffy dog with the cutest face. He was very calm and friendly, licking my hand. I guessed he had to be a puppy from the way his fur looked, and sure enough he was only 10 months old. He was a beautiful Akita and St. Bernard mix. If we had a house with a yard we might have actually adopted him. I couldn’t stop going back to his kennel to pet him. Poor guy. The good news is I’m sure he’ll be adopted. I can’t imagine no one will want him. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for all the dogs there. :(

We killed more time by visiting the pet store and the local library before it was finally time to pick up E for the weekend. Joe and E wanted Dunkin Donuts iced coffee, so we hit the drive-thru before picking up a pizza we had ordered a half hour earlier. I never get anything when they go to DD, but I did try Joe’s drink and now I’m in love with the vanilla swirl iced coffee. Holy crap is it good! They recently added a bunch of ice cream flavors to their iced coffee offerings. I’m wondering how it would taste if I got it decaffeinated with almond milk to protect my sensitive stomach. I plan to try it one of these days.

Once we got home and ate dinner we let E stream YouTube videos to the Chromecast and then watched a movie.

Chicago Wolves

Posted onMarch 21, 2015

Last weekend I noticed there was a Groupon for tickets to see the Chicago Wolves play later the same week. I asked Joe to see if he could take Friday off so we could attend the Thursday evening game without worrying about lack of sleep. His boss approved so I purchased the Groupon.

The drive to Allstate Arena was a bitch due to traffic, so I’m glad Joe suggested leaving earlier than I would have, and grabbing dinner at one of the restaurants near the stadium. We ended up eating at the Culver’s down the street where many other Wolves fans, decked out in their team’s apparel, had the same idea.

We arrived about a half hour ahead of time which was perfect. Parking was $13 instead of $20 probably because it was a weeknight game. They were also lax about the whole parking situation, not requiring where you had to park like they do at concerts. We parked right along the edge so we could easily exit the lot without waiting in a long line (not that there would have been one anyway since the lot wasn’t very full).

After a nonexistent security check (really? I could have sneaked a bottle of water in if I had known… or a gun), we headed upstairs toward the nosebleed seats, which I honestly didn’t mind because I enjoy the line of sight sitting up higher to watch most sports, particularly hockey since it’s tough enough to follow the puck.

As we started to make our way around the stadium to our section, we decided why even bother. There weren’t that many people in the stadium overall, so we just chose an empty section we liked and settled there.

The opening to the game was very “explosive”, as seen here.

Wow, I could feel the heat even in the very last row!

Sitting on the end of the aisle in our new section was much better than sitting in our assigned seats which were smack dab in the middle of the 30+ seat row, especially because I had to get up to use the restroom several times. We had the entire row to ourselves too, which meant not having to get up to let people pass.

You know how there’s always some people who cannot sit still in their seat for more than ten minutes? There were a few of those there, although luckily they sat elsewhere. One couple had to have eaten the equivalent of two meals during the two and a half hour event. How do people even justify that? “Yea, I know we just ate dinner, but this $10 burger that was likely microwaved a half hour ago is too delicious to pass up”. Another bonus to sitting away from everyone else – we could say whatever we wanted without the fear of being overheard. Needless to say, I started making fun of the couple who couldn’t stop packing it in. I turned to Joe and said, “here’s what I think he’s saying to her right now” –

First let me get a $12.50 beer and $8 pretzel, and then we can discuss where to go to dinner afterwards.

We burst into giggles because we’re mature like that, haha. The irony is that while we didn’t eat or drink anything at the game because the food is disgusting and outrageously overpriced, we did stop at a taco joint we used to frequent back when we first got together afterwards. Pot calling the kettle black much?

Random Observations:

» The Wolves aren’t nearly as interesting to watch as the Blackhawks. Plus they lost the game without even scoring once.

» There are loose birds in the stadium, one of which was in the bathroom. I felt bad for him because I’m guessing if they don’t do anything to get him out of the building he will eventually die. You can’t expect him to live on nasty stale pretzel pieces.

» The arena is severely outdated and rather small.

» The seats in particular are tiny. We felt crammed and we are not overweight or particularly tall. It brought back memories of when we went to see Dane Cook and the girl next to me violated my personal space.

» The sound system blows. Nothing was loud enough, but even the music volume was way better than the announcer. I have excellent hearing but I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying because it was quiet and muffled.

We probably won’t be visiting this arena again anytime soon unless The Cure decides to tour during the winter and forces me to come back.