True Confession Thursday (on a Wednesday): I'm an impulse buyer!

The truth is I'm the type of person that will buy something I like on an impulse (TJ Maxx and Target being my greatest downfalls) or I'll dwell on something and talk myself out of it...and then go buy it the next day when I've regained me senses and talked myself back into buying it! I truly overanalyze everything.

Well, my most recent impulse buy has been the Scentsy flameless fragrant system. I recently had only first heard about these products from my aunt and cousin on Christmas Eve. It sounded interesting but really, aren't all candle warmers the same?

I now know different! While we were staying in Alamogordo, NM with some of Stephen's family, I noticed, for several days in fact, a fragrance that permeated throughout the entire house. I was so confused because the scent was so strong for the entire day. I literally thought someone was spraying cologne continuously because the fragrance was that strong.

Then at dinner one night I noticed it. Sitting on the kitchen counter, looking rather inconspicuous but intriguing. There it was...a full size warmer. I immediately thought I had made the connection. So I asked the woman of the house if it was in deed what I had decided it to be. Alas, I was correct (hell, I should be a detective). Anyway she said yep it was Scentsy and her oldest daughter had outfitted her with the warmer and a dozen or so blocks of the scent. She pulled the bag down full of the scent bricks and I was immediately smitten. The bright colors and the creative names of the fragrances had me immediately thinking, "I need a computer with internet to order this stuff." So there's my first impulsive behavior, I literally would have purchased this stuff that night had a computer been available to me.

Then, she whipped out (drum roll please....) the catalog. I perused that catalog several times, dreaming about what warmer I would buy and what scents I would purchase.

All this went down probably last Wednesday or Thursday. We left Alamogordo on Sunday morning and when we arrived at our hotel in Albuquerque on Sunday afternoon, guess what... We got the wireless from the hotel and I got online and got my own Scentsy collection before we had even finished unpacking!

Here are my buys:

The warmer: Scentsy has a fabulous collection of warmers, surely something for everyone. Initially, Stephen and I decided we wanted this beauty:

 But when I found this one, name Socorro, I decided it had to be fate and I was sold. You see Socorro is a small town somewhere between Albuquerque and Alamogordo where we stopped for lunch on our way down to Alamogordo. I had to get it as a reminder of this trip!

Essentially, the "warmer" is a base with a dish on top. Within the base houses a light bulb. You can see the glow from the bulb somewhat in the image above. Anyway there is a cord on the back of the warmer that attaches to an outlet and ultimately powers the lightbulb. You place the scentsy bars/bricks in the dish. The heat from the lightbulb melts the bars and the scent fills up the space. It's pure pleasure!

Now to possibly the hardest part... deciding on the scents.

Scentsy has several money-saving combination packs. Generally the warmers are $30 and each scent block is $5. Well I purchased a combination pack that gave you one warmer and 3 scent blocks, which added up to a $5 dollar savings. Sign me up!

So I had to pick out 3 scents. This truly is difficult as they have (I'm not exaggerating) dozens of scents. They try to make the decision easier by grouping the scents into categories:

• Newborn Nursery Collection
• Bakery Collection (includes all the yummy cakes and cookies and pies)
• Fall and Winter Collection (always a favorite of mine)
• Romance Collection
• Scentsy Cafe Collection
• Scentsy Man Collection (smells like your husband's favorite cologne)
• Spa Collection
• Tropical Collection

I couldn't decide on just three so I bought another combination pack (buy 3 blocks for $14 a savings of $1)
Here's what I ultimately decided on:

1.) Vanilla Oak: Simple and classic blend of smooth French vanilla and woody oak

 2. Flirtatious: Fruity and vibrant, a combination of green apple, grapefruit, and white amber.

 3. Echo: Sophisticated, metropolitan fragrance of manly spice notes, Mediterranean citrus and herbs, and bitter orange.

 4. White Sands: Night-blooming jasmine softened by coconut milk and rice, enveloped in the gentlest breeze. This purchase was another homage to our current trip as we visited the White Sands National Park! I couldn't pass it up: White Sands fragrance in a Socorro warmer....what a great method for commemorating our trip.

 5. Cranberry Mango: A mélange of tropical mango, cozy cranberry and spicy pineapple

Sadly, I can't remember the 6th scent! I've been perusing their site and everything looks delicious and I just can't remember which I would have chosen.

Anyway, all of the scent names and descriptions come straight from their website here.

I ordered my system on Sunday and my mom called to tell me yesterday (Tuesday) that it had arrived! Talk about fast turn-around. I'm super excited to get home and give it a try!

How 'Lush'-ious

I just wanna say: T minus ONE WEEK until Christmas!!! Can you believe it?!

This post is dedicated to a new-to-me line of bath and body products my soon to be mother-in-law helped me to discover! Has anyone ever heard of "Lush?" Lush is a brand that prides itself on creating fresh, handmade cosmetics using fair trade ingredients.

My mother-in-law received a bath bomb and a body wash as a gift from one of her student's mom. She showed them to me and I was immediately intrigued and discovered that there are in fact several stores in the area.

 The store's large collection of scrumptious bath bombs!

 The company itself is based out of England with it's North American headquarters in Canada and several stores in the good ole U.S. of A! I've noticed that in my area they are often found in Macy's department stores. You can use their store locator on the website here.

How excited was I when I found out that Stephen's brother conveniently sent us a gift card to where else but Macy's!!!! So of course, when I had the first opportunity, I headed over to my local Macy's to check this out. I have to say I was very impressed with the set up of the little shop, they had great displays showcasing their product and their mission to be environmentally friendly (considering hardly any of their products are packaged). Everything smells amazing and natural and it just makes you want to go home and draw a nice hot bath.

 Their collection of bubbly bath bars!

I probably spent 30 minutes looking around and talking with the consultants who were very helpful and passionate about the products they were selling. They also promote sample sizes of their products so you can trial what you are buying.

There is a minor catch, and I'm not sure if you could even call it that, but this stuff is slightly expensive. But I think the added cost of knowing that your products are fresh, handmade, the ingredients are fair-traded and a large percentage are actually vegan is worth it!

My first purchases consisted of:

1. The "Twilight" bath bomb (described as a "creamy crepuscular fizzer.")  $4.95
2. The "You've Been Mangoed" mango flavored bath melt $5.95
3. The "Ultimate Shine"' solid shampoo bar $9.95

I know what you're thinking $10 for a shampoo bar? I thought the same thing but the catalog and the consultants claim that one solid bar was the equivalent of 3 bottles of shampoo. So really, it's not a bad deal at all.

I haven't used the bath bomb or the bath melt yet just because I haven't enjoyed a nice soak yet, BUT I did use the shampoo bar this morning....WOW, I've never experienced such a rich lather and it made my hair super shiny and soft. You're supposed to keep it in a cool dry place in order to maximize it's life span, so I went to my local HomeGoods store and bought a mini-bakeware dish and placed it just outside my shower so it's within easy reach but not getting soaked 24/7.

I'm really enjoying these products and they're making me want a nice large, jacuzzi tub.....ahhhh just thinking about it relaxes every muscle in my body.

Anyway, if you haven't you should check these products out, they have everything for beauty and bath (way to much to even try to mention here).

P.S. they would make GREAT Christmas gifts (you're welcome! lol)

Gotta love product parties!

Lately, I've been really getting into the whole "wifey" persona, attending and hosting pampered chef parties, jewelry parties and now most recently, a Thirty-One party.

My friend Michelle, from PT school, hosted a Thirty-One party this afternoon for her best friend who is a consultant with the company. I was familiar with the company as I had seen their catalog in the break room at the hospital I was interning at earlier this summer.

 Michelle (on the left) hosted the party and our friend Sarah (in the middle) and me (on the right) attended and had a great time picking out fun, personalized gifts for ourselves!

For those of you who don't know, Thirty-One is an organization that caters to females. The sell super cute purses, totes, lunch boxes, luggage, accessories, wallets, etc... They're product line is so varied I think everyone could find something for them and what's even better is that you can customize your pieces with embroidery!

Here are some of the things I ordered today. I'm super excited about getting them and putting them to work!

 I got this exact pattern and our last name initial embroidered on. This is the large thermal tote. I'm thinking picnics, BYOB parties/cookouts, taking it on the boat, to the zoo, etc... It can hold 2 wine bottles :)

I also got this Cinch Sack. I think it will be perfect for transporting gym clothes back and forth from the house, school and the gym.

If I had an unlimited income I probably would've bought the whole catalog. They have several various sized totes that could be useful for so many things. Several of them are very structured and would be great for keeping things organized in your trunk or the back of your SUV.

The only thing I am/wasn't sure about was the quality of the pieces. It seems somewhat questionable, but there were several people at the party that had various Thirty-One pieces and absolutely raved about them, I'll keep you posted, but as of right now I recommend them!

I'm in Love...

....with the Command Center at my local Target store!

I tell ya, those Command hooks and picture hanging tools are amazing. They come in great handy living in an apartment because honestly, the less holes you can put in the walls the better as far as I'm concerend.

We've bought and used the hooks for several things around the apartment. I'm not a huge fan of how they look so they've come in handy in closets and behind doors. We've used them to hang our reusable grocery bags and other bags/purses that I wanted to get off the floor.

We've also used the picture hanging tools. Basically two pieces of velcro stuck together and stuck to the wall and the picture/whatever you are hanging. We've used them to hang a corkboard on the door (again you don't really want to put holes in the door to hang something) and to also hang other pictures on the walls.

Also, earlier this year we hung a set of hooks on the wall by screwing them into the wall. Of course we didn't hit studs and I use those hooks to hold heavy bookbags, purses, umbrellas and rain jackets so needless to say it starting to pull out of the wall. Command to the rescue!!!! All I need to do is go to the store and get them.

They're great little tools. The picture hanging set comes with 3 sets and each set can hold 3 lbs. That means that if you used 3 sets of them to hold something up it can hold up to 9 lbs. So those little pieces are strongs!

They've even got an entire website detailing their products and they've got coupons. You should check it out. We love them!

Going Coastal Cont...

So I couldn't resist!!!!!

I went shopping today and want to share some of my finds from shops around PCB!!

I love how they look in the shopping basket, just hope they look good in his apartment.

On a completely different note, I also went shopping for regular things, clothes, accesssories, books, you know, the usual stuff. Well as soon as I walked into Bath and Body Works a woman that worked there came up to me and said, "Babe, you need some of this as red as you are (it's true, I'm lobster red, you'd think after 23 summers I'd have the whole sunscreen thing down)"

Anyway she handed me their body souflee in their new scent, Deep Aqua. It was very cool and refreshing and felt great on my skin, so I bought it and I'm happy with it.

Get Thee to a Farmer's Market

Since Mr. Chicken Butt has subscribed to NetFlix, we find ourselves constantly watching movies from genres we otherwise probably never would've picked up at Blockbuster and those that you probably wouldn't be able to find at a RedBox. Our latest find: Food Inc.

I've never come across information that's made me want to change what I eat and where I get the food I eat. This film is a must-see documentary depicting how the meat industry mostly (but also food in general) is run in America and how its affecting us, the food we eat, the farmer's that grow it and the planet we are living on. Honestly guys, it's not one of those docs that's far left wing propoganda (I can't stand those either)-heck, they even promote Wal-Mart (crazy, I know but you'll have to watch to figure out how that fits in).

After Stephen and I watched the film we took a long walk in the middle of the night and discussed everything we had seen and how we wanted to change where we got our food. We're excited about farmer's markets, buying beef in large quantities from local cattle farmers, possibly planting our own garden, and baking a lot of the things we can't grow, rather than wasting money and using unneccessary packaging. I think this film is great to watch because it's not an end all be all, doom and gloom kinda flick, instead it tells you what's wrong with the system and how you can operate within it and still make good choices that potentially could make a difference, even if just a local one.