Laurin and Kelly Talk

Why Didn't I Think of That? The Tassi Hair Band

Kelly, one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was the Tassi Hair Band . Thanks, Shannon! I have been reading about this product quite a bit lately and thought my fledgling frugal self didn't absolutely have to have a fancy schmancy hair holder-backer thingy. After trying it? What can I say? When I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

Since embracing my curly hair, I have been all about day 2 or even day 3 hair (dry shampoo is amazing), so I need to keep my hair dry in the shower. I also wash my face every night due to other frick fracking annoyances. I use one of those thin, stretchy hair bands to get my hair off my face, and then I pull my long hair back in a small band.

The Tassi makes all of this so much quicker and easier, plus my hair stays completely dry in the shower now. Just put it on like a regular hair band with the wider part behind your head, and tuck all your hair in. I have a LOT of hair and it's plenty big for me.

It won't mess up your hairstyle, flatten your hair, or put a kink in it. You can even sleep in it. It is a must have. It comes in 12 colors and only $14.99. Update: Buy the Tassi Hair Band here for only $12.99!

Tassi? You complete me.

Photo Credit: Tassi

Juicy!

Kelly, a very nice man sent me a cooler box full of Sunkist Naturals a while back. And, sir? I'm sorry it took me so long to write this, but maybe you'll forgive me because I really loved these juice smoothies and have some nice things to say.

Remember my 2-week sick fest? I blogged about chugging down some Green Monster juice in an attempt to get rid of what was ailing me.

Anyway, the point of this is that I think the nice man found our blog because of that post and thought I would like the Sunkist smoothies. I did, and the kids definitely did! Our favorites were the Glorious Greens, Strawberry Dream, and the Sunshine Carrot. Each bottle contains 2 servings which translates into about 70 calories per serving at the most. Some flavors have even less.

Here are the essential stats on the juice. It is all-natural, no sugar added, and comes in eight tasty flavors. In their words:

Our Sunkist Naturals® line is quite possibly the closest thing to making fresh smoothies and juices in your own kitchen, only without having to dust off the blender. We begin with the best produce and end up with the best beverages, and in between we take every necessary step to achieve supreme freshness and nutrition.

We blend our whole fruit together first, then gently flash pasteurize to ensure safety. Finally, our beverages are cold filled in sterile bottles to lock in every precious layer of delicious flavor.

We have fine-tuned our process so that we minimize the loss of vitamins, minerals and nutrients. Furthermore, we do not add any unnatural additives to preserve or stabilize our beverages, so you can trust that you're only getting what nature intended.

Happy Birthday Kelly!

Hi Kelly. I wish I could personally deliver a Happy Birthday cupcake to you today for your birthday, but this will have to do. Now I'm craving a cupcake, but will have to make do with apple pie.

I hope your day was happy and special, my friend.

How To Dry Brine a Turkey - My Experience

This is the post I put up after Thanksgiving after my first dry brining experience with my turkey. Judging by the sheer number of people who arrived here after googling some variation of dry brining a turkey, the method is sweeping the world!

Other than brining, the key to it all is the method of roasting the turkey. Please read my post on the super "fancy" rotation method. This simple trick has consistently produced rave-worthy turkeys for me, year after year. May your turkey be moist and delicious and your holidays delightful!

If you are interested in how to dry brine a turkey, please read my pre-Thanksgiving post on what the experts say to do. The following is an account of how it all turned out for me.

Kelly, the dry turkey brine experiment this year was a total success, and I will be repeating it at Christmas. Every Thanksgiving I wet-brine (some say this is redundant) my turkey, and it has always turned out very moist and flavorful.

Prior to Thanksgiving this year, I kept reading about the much easier dry-brine method and decided I just had to try it. This is a symptom of my basic personality which is "If something is working for me, do it differently to make things hard on myself."

Even though some of the dry-brine experts recommend 4 days with the salt on the bird, I started my 14-pound turkey at 10:00 pm on Tuesday night. All I did was place the clean bird breast side down in a Ziploc Large Big Bag, sprinkled 3 tablespoons of kosher salt all over the cleaned and dried turkey, squeezed out the air, and sealed the bag. That's it. I did not rub the salt into the bird at any point in the process. Slacker alert!

At noon on Wednesday, I flipped the bird breast side up - didn't even open the bag, just smushed it around. Fun! Then, at 7:00 on Thanksgiving morning I removed the turkey from the bag, rinsed it, placed it in a pan, and patted it dry with paper towels. My turkey went back in the fridge on a pan uncovered to dry out until 1:30 PM, when I removed it to rest on the counter.  Note: change up these times to allow 6 - 8 hours of drying-out time in the fridge if you eat earlier in the day.

By 2:30 pm, the turkey was trussed, rubbed with canola oil, and on the v-rack in the roasting pan. In the picture above, you'll notice I start the turkey breast side down. See my previous post for what I put in and on the turkey.

Also, I realize my trussing technique might be for the birds, but here's how to really truss a turkey properly if you are a purist. Two hours and twenty minutes later, when the digital thermometer registered 165 degrees in the breast, the turkey was done.

Our turkey this year was the best, ever. The skin was perfectly browned and crisp and the meat was moist and flavored perfectly throughout. I can't recommend this dry-brining technique highly enough, and I may not wet-brine again. Alton, please forgive me!

Related Posts: How to Dry-Brine a Turkey - From the Experts, Perfect Thanksgiving Turkey in Less Time

My Letter to Santa

Kelly, I'm back from my cruise somewhat refreshed, although I'm working like a nut to get everything ready for Christmas because my husband caught cruisovirus and is fairly worthless.

I got your funny e-mail and couldn't resist re-posting the "Dear Santa" letter. I couldn't find an author to credit, so if anyone knows the origin, let me know and I'll post it. It's kind of long, but oh so true.

Dear Santa,

I've been a pretty good mom this year. I've fed, cleaned and cuddled my children on demand, visited the doctor's office more than the doctor, sold sixty-two cases of candy bars to raise money to plant a shade tree on the school playground. Sold enough popcorn and cookies to send a small town to scout camp this summer. I was hoping you could spread my list out over several Christmases, (I've had to write this letter with my son's red crayon, on the back of a receipt in the laundry room between cycles,) who knows when I'll find anymore free time in the next 18 years to write again.

Here are my Christmas wishes: I'd like a pair of legs that don't ache (in any color, except purple, which I already have) and arms that don't hurt or flap in the breeze; but are strong enough to pull my screaming child out of the candy/toy aisle in the grocery store. I'd also like a waist, since I lost mine somewhere in the seventh month of my last pregnancy. If you're hauling big ticket items this year I'd like fingerprint-resistant windows and a radio that only plays adult music; a television that won't broadcast any programs containing talking animals; and a refrigerator with a secret compartment behind the crisper where I can hide a few candy bars. On the practical side, I could use a talking doll that says, "Yes, Mommy" to boost my parental confidence, along with kids who don't fight and three pairs of jeans that will zip all the way up without the use of power tools. A nice hiding place to talk on the phone would be a real "plus"! I could also use a recording of Tibetan monks chanting "Don't eat in the living room" and "Take your hands off your brother/sister," because my voice seems to be just out of my children's hearing range and can only be heard by the dog or the neighbors.

If it's too late to find any of these products, I'd settle for enough time to shower, brush my teeth and comb my hair in the same morning, or the luxury of eating food warmer than room temperature without it being served in a Styrofoam container. Here's a novel idea...I get to go to the restroom uninterrupted...and alone! If you don't mind, I could also use a few Christmas miracles to brighten the holiday season. Would it be too much trouble to declare ketchup a vegetable? It will clear my conscience immensely. It would be helpful if you could coerce my children to help around the house without demanding payment as if they were the bosses of an organized crime family. Well, Santa, the buzzer on the dryer is ringing and I think my son saw my feet under the laundry room door. (I suspect he wants his crayon back.) Have a safe trip, remember to leave your wet boots by the door, then come in and dry off so you don't catch cold. Help yourself to the cookies on the table but please don't eat too many (you'll make yourself sick!) or leave crumbs on the carpet.

Yours Always,

MOM...!

P.S. One more thing...you can cancel all my requests if you can just keep my children young enough to continue believing in you.

*Santa has asked that this gets passed on to all the
mommies you know*

Photo Credit:  Grzegorz Lobinski

Is It Going to Rain?

Kelly, one of my fantasy jobs is sitting here at my computer and designing fun Internet tools, sites and games. I realize I would actually need the ability to write code in order to do this, but a girl can dream, right? Heck, right now I can't even order a NetFlix movie because I've forgotten that super tricky combo of the right e-mail address and password to access my account.

I have a little bit more to learn before I can create fun stuff like this site, GoingToRain.com. Just enter the URL of the site in your browser's address bar and it tells you immediately if it is going to rain where you are located and what the high temp will be for the day. It detects where you live as you are directed to the site.

That's it. Yes, No, Maybe. Simple. But, way beyond me.

4 Days and Counting on TopMomma.com

Hi everyone. We have been on the front page of Top Momma for 4 days now, so I thought I would jinx everything and post about this.

Top Momma is a way to find new blogs, and for blogs to get a little traffic. The blogs are identified only by their pictures and you click to check out a blog if the picture looks interesting.

If you would like to help us out, click this referral link and then click on our owl picture. Thanks. We appreciate it!

 

The Best Things in Life are Free!

A Free Online Tool to Teach Kids to Read

Kelly, both of my kids are very computer-savvy, but Jake really loves it. It amazes me that he will act like he can't find a pair of shoes that are literally 12 inches away, but he can navigate a computer program like a ninja. I think he even coded a website the other day!

I heard about a great site to help kids learn to read from Jake's teacher, and when I checked it out I was amazed. It's the Starfall Reading website and it is an unbelievable resource for helping kids learn to read. Computer learning is essential for Jake because he tends to get easily frustrated and a nicely designed website helps hold his attention.

The site has a simple and easy to use interface that is very quick to load - cutting down on the frustration my kids feel on some of the flash sites. Every word on the site is clickable and will read aloud. The words pop up on a writing tablet style page so it is constantly reinforcing what they learn in school.

I can't say enough good things about this site and how much my kids love it. Click on the Parents link to find out everything Starfall has to offer, and the Downloads link has a huge program of printable exercises for kids to practice their handwriting. They also have a store where they sell their Zac the Rat books, phonics sets, and products.

I love that my kids are learning so much on the computer, but it's really cutting into the mama's blogging time.

This post was linked up at Blissfully Domestic, where you can read tons of great posts on how others are blissfully domestic this week. 

              

Perfect Pajama Pants

Laurin - My favorite thing to do after a long day is take off my bra, put my hair in a ponytail and put on some comfy pajama pants.  Steve calls them my "lingerie" and says it with a tone of sarcasm.  What does he think I should be wearing...a skimpy, lace teddy with a garter belt and high heals? Don't answer that.  (Come on, it's not practical when you're bathing children).  Pajama pants truly make me happy and ready to take on the rest of the day in pure comfort.   

Anyway, I think I have it perfected now--I love elastic waists (who doesn't?) and a size up from normal gives me extra room to let it all hang out!  Flannel for the winter and extra soft 100% cotton for the rest of the year.  I'm still wearing the red tartan ones I got at Old Navy eleven years ago!   p.s.  also a great gift idea.

Flannel Pajama Pant, $34.50  Victoria's Secret

 

 

Gilligan & O'Malley Modal Sleep Pants, $14.99  Target

 

 

Ralph Lauren Leopard Pajama Pants, $58.  Neiman Marcus

White Shirt Wednesday - Secret Santa

  

Hi Kelly, I'm trying to be good and only buy Christmas presents for others right now, but just look at this $48 Per Diem Tee from Anthropologie. It's by Splendid, one of my very favorite tee brands. Should I just wrap it and put it under the tree with my name on it? Yes? Ummkay.

Related Posts: White Shirt Wednesday