Palmolive® Soft Touch Review

A few weeks ago I received my first Influenster items to try out and review.  I was excited, free products and coupons-  Sure would love to try them and give my honest opinion.

I received 2 bottles of the new Palmolive Soft Touch Dish Soap.  The pink is infused with Vitamin E and the tan is Cocoa butter.  The first thing I noticed was that they both smell wonderful. Most of the current products in our house are all unscented.

 A little over a year ago I started looking for healthier options for a lot of the products in our home and started selling Norwex.  It was at that same time I switched over to mostly all Norwex products so I haven't bought any dish soap from the stores in a long time.  Since I received them though I did give them a try.  I used the pink which is the Vitamin E and have washed a full batches of dishes with them.   They cleaned as well as any other dish soap, and filled my kitchen with a wonderful scent.  I was also really surprised these did leave my hands feeling very soft.  They actually felt smoother after I washed dishes which was crazy to me.  If you buy dish soap at the store and usually use Palmolive, Dawn or any other brand  I suggest you give Palmolive Soft Touch a try.

I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes.

It's Friday and this is Random

This week has been a weird one.
 I have slacked off from the blog big time.    Usually every night after boys go to bed, I work online but this week just pretty much went straight to bed each night.  Monday I had a great day with my boys and decided  I should probably quit blogging ( I have a lot of random thoughts each day)  but then by Wednesday I circled back to realizing how much I really do enjoy it and I shouldn't quit.  However, I still went to bed the last few nights and neglected writing.

Do you ladies ever get in a blogging funk?  One where you feel it's pointless, you are wasting time?  Then you quit writing and reading for a few days and feel like a lost puppy and miss your blog world?
Yeah, that's me, this week!

Anyways onto some randomness about my week!

Here is a picture from my awesome Monday with my boys.  We just had a great day, I love when that happens!  Little screaming, fighting, and lots of smiles, laughter and sweet moments!

Tuesday I planted the first flowers of the year, may be the last who knows.  Noah helped me pick them out. He wanted yellow, I didn't.  I wanted pink, he didn't,  so we got white instead.  Once I planted them he let me know "mom the flowers are beautiful!"

If you aren't friends with me on facebook, then you didn't see that I ran this on Wednesday.
I met my mom at 5:45.  I got plenty of sleep the night before.  Weather was great!  I had my Genesis Pure Energy.  The week before our 9 miler went really well.  I was ready.  Until we were a few miles in and I was already tired ( did I mention my mom took me on a new route for me and it was HILLY, yeah on my longest run to date, not a good idea! )  I remember hearing her phone tell us we hit 5 miles.  I was like that has to be wrong, I'm already done.  If I would of been alone I probably would have given up around 8 but I ran through it and finished and in good time too!  It was just one of those off running days, where it was HARD! Adding 3 more seemed impossible so hoping my 11 miler this next Wednesday goes better!  It will be my last long one before race day.  Did I mention that, this run also caused me to loose 3 pounds?  Yeah it was awesome until the next day when it had come back, haha!

Yesterday I was still thinking about my junky run and finally remembered to stop by our bike store that sell the sports fuel goodies and bought me some stuff for next weeks run, and Marathon Day.

I bought Gu Gel and some Shot blocks.  I have been using my moms the last two runs so I owe her some.  

I haven't tried the Gu yet but will try it next week so that way race day isn't my first try.  

I felt like buying this stuff made me a "real " runner.  It was weird, because I have always wanted to be one and I feel like I actually am now.  

I feel like I should start this paragraph...

You know you are a complete dork when??

You don't have music on your iphone, ( I actually still use my mp3 player)

You still buy CD's

Better yet, you buy a NOW CD

When I first started running I bought Now 44 to have some new music to run too because the music I had on there was all from like 2006-2007 it was sad.  

It also made me feel old because the last Now CD I bought I had on my mp3 player and it was Now 19. 

Today on my 5 miler, I jammed out to this baby, it was fun! 

My new Honest products finally arrived!  I had thought I ordered them weeks ago, went to check and realized I forgot to checkout my cart, whoops minor detail.  Anyways got them really ordered.  They arrived today and I can't wait to use them.  You bet I will have a review on them up once I do.  This cleaning freak gets excited about weird things like this!

I made these delicious cookies today!  Saw them on Pinterest and have been wanting to try them.  I got them a little more on the done side than I normally do but they are still good.  I will be making these again for sure and baking them for a little less time.  You can find the recipe here.

Will be busy tonight and tomorrow getting ready for my hubby and his twin brother's 30th birthday party cookout at our casa  on Saturday night!  We really are getting old! Then Sunday onto Mother's Day festivities!  It will be a busy but fun weekend!  

Have a good one! 

Spice Organization

I'm an organizing addict.  I love all projects that have to do with it.  I'm one of those weirdos that get giddy with excitement after I finish.  ( I say after because during, my heart is usually racing and I'm on the verge of a panic attack because the mess during a project completely stresses me out)  There are many things that annoy me in my house, mess wise and areas that are just constantly in need of reorganizing and my spice cabinet was one of them.  I have tried multiple times to fix the issue to where it wouldn't bug me and get messed up every week but just never worked.  Months ago I bought a carousel and a tiered shelf thing for my cabinet and thought that would help.  The tier shelf has worked out pretty good and I really do like it, however the carousel not so much.  It was a plastic piece of junk, doesn't spin well and hardly fit in the cabinet.

Then one day I was amazoning (if that isn't a word it should be, because let's face amazon has everything) for a solution for my spices and came across a spice rack for your drawer.  Genius!  Why hadn't I thought of that before!

I had a drawer that just held our foil, cling wrap and some baggies and knew I could put those somewhere else in order to house this awesome new organizer I found so I bought it and since we have Amazon Prime it was here in 2 days!

Here is my messy baking, spice, seasoning, random assortment of everything cabinet.  I may just have way more than the average person I don't know but to mess this is a REAL problem, haha!

Then here is my semi-solution.  I say semi, because I moved most of my seasoning and spices out but also kept the tiered organizer in the cabinet for all the larger bottles of stuff.  I just love the drawer organizer because you can easily see everything and get right to it, no reaching around other bottles and knocking them off the shelf, no more spinning that worthless carousel.  This drawer makes me happy everytime I need to open it!  Since I did this I also made a lot more room in the cabinet to spread everything else out and make nice and neat rows.  Have I mentioned how I love rows in cabinets, because I do.  Yeah I'm one of those weird people.  

Also just in case you are weird like me  and want one of these awesome drawers, you can go here to buy one.

Linking up SemiHomemadeMom for Show and Share Wednesday

Spring Cleaning

I'm a cleaner.  I'm one of those weird people who actually enjoy it, I just don't usually have the time/ chance to do it to the extent that I would like to.  Ironically enough this week though I have not been in the mood but that's besides the point.  Not only do I like cleaning but I also sell Norwex which their main product is  microfiber cloths that you use water only and they have multiple other products as well that  helps saves time while cleaning, saves money and is much better for my family and I as far as health goes.  I am all about reducing the amount of chemicals in my home and Norwex has greatly helped me do that over the last year.

  I have a cleaning schedule that I use every week.  I have worked through different methods and finally have one that works well for us!

In the beginning of motherhood I was stressed and overwhelmed that I didn't ever just have a day to clean the house.  Before kids I always took my day off, or a night and cleaned the whole house and it was done until the next week (except for those things that sometimes couldn't wait a week and the tile floor and vacuuming that I did multiple times a week because I was a little OCD)  Then I developed a plan.  I had set household chores that I was to do each day. It seemed like a good idea, that way I had little bits to do each day and could do it when kids allowed.  Well I found myself getting grumpy if my chores/ chore wasn't getting done when I wanted it to and when the schedule said it should.

I decided to restructure and made a cleaning checklist for myself with boxes to check off and spaces for dates that broke the chores down into:  Daily, Weekly, Bi-Weekly, and Quarterly.  I put it in a frame so that way it made it dry erase.  I don't even bother checking off the daily items but use the weekly one each week.  I love marking items off. I usually also write a letter for the day of the week that I did it just so I know when I did it because my memory is terrible.  Then I do the same for the other categories, mark them off once I do them and the ones that are less frequent I just date it so I know when the last I did it was.  (I'm not very good at keeping on the quarterly items because those are the things I just don't like to do like cleaning baseboards, doors, cabinets you know the really  time consuming ones)

This way has been much better for me.  I don't feel tied down to certain things on certain days.  Some weeks I have everything marked off by Wednesday and others like this week I haven't even started.  But each week is different and that's life.

I couldn't get my schedule to import onto the blog but put it on Google Docs so in case you were interested here is our general family cleaning checklist HERE

Then onto what I'm actually supposed to be  talking about Spring Cleaning.
I don't generally do "Spring cleaning".  I"m more a do things when they really need done and when we get to them type of person.  I stress easily, I have to keep my expectations low otherwise all I do is focus on what I think needs done instead of what is really important in the moment.

I would like to try attempt to do a little more "spring cleaning" in the next few months.  I do fine with the ordinary chores but need to catch up on some of those tasks you just don't generally think of or notice until they get gross.  Pinterest has a bunch of checklists and here are two I really liked to help be a guide.  There are some things I didn't think about but things that should get done.

Doesn't looking at these lists overwhelm you a little?  Sure does me.   After I really started reading each one you realize a lot of them aren't time consuming so you could knock multiple ones out in a fair amount of time.
Happy Spring Cleaning Everyone!