I’d like to take a moment and just gush about how cute the clothes are at Fashion Bug. I’ve bought stuff there in the past, and found it to be fairly shoddy in quality, and less flattering on me than it is on their mannequins. But they’ve changed things up a little! They’ve introduced a whole line of Gitano stuff that is REALLY cute, and it still stays cute after you wash it and wear it a few times. Yes, Gitano of the weird designer jeans in the 80s! I’m actually wearing this top in the eleventy seven pictures of me from the Sony Mommy Blogger Event. I love it, and I get compliments on it every time I wear it. And they have shoes that are super cute, comfortable, and pretty cheap, too. AND, if you get on their mail list, they will send you coupons like every other week. I’ve gotten coupons twice this month for buy something, get another something for a dollar. And in today’s mail, I got a coupon for $10 off a $10 purchase. So. Just putting this out there for the big girls who read my site: check out Fashion Bug! It’s not lame like it used to be!

Oh, Starbucks. I had such high hopes for the line of “Skinny Lattes” you introduced a few months ago. For years now, I’ve been ordering a tall, nonfat, sugarfree vanilla latte, with no whip (3 points on Weight Watchers!) and I was actually looking forward to just ordering a “Skinny Vanilla Latte” instead.

So, what happened? When you guys decided to start marketing your coffee to fat people on a diet health conscious consumers, you just … jacked up the recipe? I was all excited to taste my Brand New Skinny Vanilla Latte a couple of months ago, and it tasted…kind of blah! Overly sweet, really artificial – just lame. But, I decided to try one again, and the girls and I headed over to Starbucks this morning for a little snack. I got another Skinny Vanilla Latte, and…it tasted like crap! It’s so overly sweet! It tastes like the milk that remains in the bowl after you eat a bowl of Frosted Flakes – slightly warmed. The coffee I make at home and add fat free vanilla creamer to tastes WAY better! And it doesn’t cost me three dollars!

Booooo, Starbucks.

P.S. The mocha skinny latte isn’t too bad. Still not worth the hype, though!

I’ve been meaning for an entire week now to sit down and write about The Sony Mommy Blogger Event. I know how I am, though, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to write about it without going on for days, so I had to sort of brace myself for it. Okay, here goes! What a whirlwind trip it was! I flew out to gorgeous, sunny LaJolla, California last Wednesday along with lots of other Mommy Bloggers®. When Paul took me to the airport, it was SNOWING, so I was pretty pleased to be heading out of Colorado into the land of sunshine. Anne Marie from My Readable Feast was on my flight with me, and she and I shared a limo to the hotel as well. I have to admit that I was a giant baby when I discovered that our limo driver was holding a sign with her name on it, but not my name. Ha! AND! We both had a suitcase and a carry-on. The driver grabbed her suitcase and her carry-on, and I schlepped my own stuff to the limo. The hell? Whatever, though.

When we got to La Valencia, the bellhop took my bags up to my room after I checked in, and…holy cats. This room! It was just amazing. And honestly? It wasn’t all that amazing, compared to some of the other rooms. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my room was sort of closet-like in comparison to the multi-room suites with spalike bathrooms that some of the other ladies had. But I didn’t even care – it could have been a room at the Super 8, and it would have been just dandy, because I was GLORIOUSLY ALONE, in a gorgeous place, with no small children hanging off of me!

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This stuff is just insane. I mean, it would have to be, right? Have you seen the commercial? With that same guy who shouts at us in the OxyClean commercial? (Aside: I’ve always thought Paul’s coworker Jason looked like Billy Mays, the OxyClean guy. Don’t believe me? Look for the “Net Jet Review” post on this very blog. There’s a picture of him.)

Anyway. They show it on the commercial – spray and wipe to cut through soap scum! Spray and wipe to cut through limescale! It even takes rust off of your patio. I figured it would have to do something for the red stains on the grout in our shower. I think we have rust in our water or something, because everywhere we have water, we have red stains. It looks super on the white vinyl fence that surrounds every square inch of our neighborhood. It’s as if the municipal sprinkler system has Kool-Aid in it. We have 12″ square stone tiles in our shower, and they’re just…hard to clean! They’re so…porous. And it says right on the bottle not to use it on stone, but I decided to hell with it. I don’t care if it eats away my shower walls as long as it gets rid of those ugly red streaks!

Now here’s the part I don’t understand. How do people use Easy-Off Bam without falling over dead? I sprayed the shit out of my shower, and then turned on the exhaust fan and threw open the window, and I still had to bury my face in a towel while scrubbing the shower walls to avoid passing out. I seriously think you could use this stuff as a weapon, if it weren’t too big to carry on your keychain. But damned if that stuff didn’t clean up my shower like it was brand new! It really DID cut through the soap scum on the glass door like nobody’s business. It really DID wipe the rusty red stuff right off of the way-too-porous tile and grout.

So, all’s well that ends well, I guess. Watch, I’ll be in my cozy bed tonight at 3 a.m., dreaming about Detective Scanlon from Medium giving me a foot massage, and I’ll be jolted awake by the sounds of 12″ stone tiles detaching from the wall and crashing to the floor. I’ll update this post if that should happen. In the mean time: go buy some of this stuff! It’s as ridiculous as it seems on TV! IT’S REALLY WORTH SHOUTING ABOUT! BAM! BAM! BAM!!!