Archive for June, 2010

Are you ready to hook up your projects? I can’t wait to see them!

Here are a few that I really liked from last weeks link up.

Twelve Crafts ’till Christmas made an adorable play mail set from fabric. The stamps velcro on and off! So fun!

Mom. Undecided used leftover canvases and glued scrapbook paper to them to create the cutest wall art. I’m so copying this!

Brassy Apple made some ca-ute aprons for her kids barbies. They.are.barbies. How could I not post about them? I love barbies!

Clean Mama made over a spice shelf thingy and turned it into storage for her craft stuff. I love this! Isn’t the glitter pretty?!

Have fun linking up your projects!

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Post about anything you’ve done this week.

* Put a link to my site somewhere on your blog so others can come party with us! For those that link to me, THANK YOU!

* Link directly to your post, not your blog.

* If you post spam junk I will be forced to delete it. Don’t waste my time!

Ready. Set. Post!

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Yesterday (Monday) morning we awoke to this:

and this:

Beverly Hills Police Department. And it wasn’t just one or two cops. Their entire night crew was at our complex.

There were at least 7, maybe more cop cars swarming our complex.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh is right! What on earth is going on?!

Let me preface by explaining that our “apartment complex” isn’t the kind you’d usually think of.

We have a parking garage underground, and then 4 floors of apartments accessible from the inside by an elevator.

It kinda feels like I live in a hotel (trust me, it’s only fun and cool for about half a second, and then it gets old real.fast.).

We only have about 40 units total here and the complex and parking garage are completely gated.

We must be safe, right?

Wrong.

This is my car. Yes, MY car.

And here’s the other side of my car.

Both my drivers side and passenger side windows were smashed out by some thugs at some point during the night.

They wanted my GPS.

Let me repeat that. Some a-hole smashed in BOTH my windows to steal my GPS.

First off, you’d have to be a total moron to smash windows and steal stuff in the first place. But, to break two windows? This idiot must be beyond moron. I kinda feel bad for the guy because he’s obviously SO STUPID that he’d break two windows.

Cry.

I’m still cleaning glass out of my car.

As it turns out, my car wasn’t the only victim yesterday morning.

(This is a different car in the garage)

Several cars had their windows bashed in. Lots of GPSs were stolen as well as cell phones, iPods, Golf Clubs, bags of clothes (?), and who knows what else.

I’m just the only one lucky enough to have BOTH my windows smashed out. Everyone else only got to deal with one window, but I guess I’m extra special like that.

(This is yet another car in the garage)

As it turns out, 18 (yes, I just said EIGHTEEN!) cars were vandalized and burglarized Sunday night/Monday morning.

(Hence the entire Beverly Hills Police Department showing up at our complex.)

(Another vandalized car)

Apparently Beverly Hills doesn’t usually have crimes of this magnitude. I guess us crime victims are just lucky like that.

I’m sure I’ll never see my GPS again, but there were several security cameras that got the entire thing on their feeds, so at least the cops now have something to go off of.

Even the Crime Lab came out to play!

Our car was held hostage as part of the “crime scene” until after the Crime Lab could finish getting prints off all the cars.

It was pretty cool watching this lady pick up prints. I’ve never seen anyone collect fingerprints at a real crime scene before.

So whatta ya gonna do? (Channeling my inner Tony Soprano here)

We managed to get our car down the road about a mile where there’s an Auto Glass instillation place. They luckily had the glass for our minivan in stock and were able to get us new windows the same day.

It just totally sucks though because that GPS was probably only worth like fifty bucks because it’s over 3 years old, yet TWO new windows cost us $601. Six hundred bucks worth of damage for a lousy old GPS.

Folks, listen up. I’m living proof that people actually do steal GPS units from cars. Please learn from my mistake! Lock up and hide your stuff!

If I would have put the unit away, my car would have been skipped over. Instead, it cost me a day of hassle, a stolen unit, AND six hundred dollars.

It would have been so much easier if I had just taken a few seconds to put it in the glove box.

And now I’m nervous about going into the garage! Especially at night! What if those thugs had a weapon? What if someone had gone to their car in the middle of the night? Someone could have been killed! The thought of that just totally freaks me out!

I’ve made it 6 months here, and just 4 days before I’m suppose to move away, my car gets broken into and my stuff gets stolen.

{sigh}

I’ve traveled across the US. I’ve lived in Jersey, all over Texas, and in California. I’ve driven into NYC and parked my car at Central Park. I’ve stayed in hundreds of hotels. And out of all the places I’ve been, I’ve never had my car broken into…. until I moved to Beverly Hills. Kinda ironic, dontcha think?

Whatta ya gonna do?

What’s that saying plastered all over parking lots across the Nation?

LOCK your car. TAKE your valuables. HIDE your stuff.

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I hate to clean.

But I hate having a messy house even more.

Especially if it’s s-t-i-c-k-y.

The easiest way for me to clean QUICKLY is with Lysol Wipes.
(I only wish they were paying me for this advertising plug! But nope, I’m plugging for free ’cause I love ‘em!)

One thing that drives me batty though is that the wipes always seem a little too dry. So here’s the easiest way to solve that delima – and I *always* do this, no matter what.

Store them upside down!

(Just make sure the lid is securely closed)

It seems so obvious now, doesn’t it? It took me years to figure this out. Dur!

When you always keep them upside down, the Lysol solution drains to the top of the container so when you flip them over to use them, the top ones that you pull out are nice and moist!

I store all my wipes containers upside down. If you ever come to my house and look through my cabinets, you will find that all my products in jars are stored upside down.

Call me crazy, but it works. And if you try it, you will never go back!

It also works great to store diaper wipes packages or any other package with wipes in it. When my kids were babies you would never find a package of diaper wipes sitting upside-up. And if anyone ever comes to my house and flips my stuff around, I immediately flip it upside down again.

This trick isn’t just for wipes though. I keep lots of things upside down. Work WITH gravity, not against it!

Peanut butter. We eat only all-natural peanut butter in our house. And anyone who eats all-natural peanut butter knows that unless it’s refrigerated (which isn’t necessary until after you open it) the peanut oil pools on the top of the jar.

But if you store your unopened peanut butter upside down, that oil pools at the bottom of the jar making it MUCH EASIER to stir when you open it!

And last but not least, canned goods!

Yes, I buy that crap for my kids. And yes, I store it upside down!

When you open a can of ravioli or spaghetti-ohs, all the noodles stick to the bottom of the can and then you have to get a scraper to get them all out – so annoying!

But if you store those cans upside down, when you flip them right-side up to open them, all those noodles are now at the top and the sauce is at the bottom! Brilliant, right?!

So when you dump the can into a bowl, it comes out nice and smooth like dog food or cranberry sauce. No more scraping!

Next time you’re using wipes, or peanut butter, or canned goods, or diaper wipes, let gravity do all the hard work for you. Flip those suckers upside down!

It’s such an easy solution, and takes no additional time out of your day, but it really makes life so much easier.

It’s the little things in life that make me happy!