One of my new favorite things!

***The subject of this post is a menstruation product. If that totally grosses you out, stop reading now.***

I hope you are not all freaked out now. Let me explain. I started thinking about menstrual products last summer, when I attended a great relief society meeting on food storage. One thing that was emphasized was that we should not just store food, but should think about the other things we might need in an emergency, i.e. diapers, toilet paper, hygiene products, and menstrual products. The mention of menstrual products concerned me because I knew that if there ever was an emergency, with my luck it would happen during my period. Garrett and I live in an itty bitty apartment, and we don't have a lot of room for our regular food, let alone food storage, but I have at least been working on us having a 72 hour kit and a little food storage. Problem is, boxes of pads or tampons take up a lot of space! And what if I couldn't store enough and ran out?! If there ever were an emergency, the last thing I would want to be worrying about was having enough tampons!

My first thought to solve this problem was to sew some reusable pads. But I was kind of turned off this idea when I started thinking about how much work it would take and envisioned trying to wash them out during an emergency. Gross! Thank goodness I came across the menstrual cup! Most people don't know about cups (I didn't), even though they've been around since the beginning of the 1900s. I think the reason that they are not well known is because disposable pads and tampons have been such big business, while a reusable option does not generate the same kind of huge repeat business. Here is a picture of the brand I chose, the MeLuna:

A menstrual cup is a cup, usually made out of silicone, that you fold and insert basically like a tampon. It holds more than a tampon. You can't feel it when it's in. Most people only have to empty it every 12 hours (awesome!). When you empty it, you rinse it out in the sink, wipe it out with a piece of toilet paper, or (think in a dire emergency situation when you don't want to waste your drinking water) can even pee on it (I know it sounds gross, but we're talking major emergency and pee is sterile) to clean it before you re-insert it. And best of all, you can use the same cup for 10 years! Here's a picture of what one looks like folded:
So instead of packing boxes of tampons, I only have to pack one little cup. That's it! And even though I bought the cup as a back-up, once I started using it, I loved it. I will never use tampons again! Most cups cost between $20 and $40. Although the initial cost seems a little steep, once I added up the amount I could spend on tampons over 10 years, it is definitely worth it. There are several brands. Before choosing one, I suggest checking out this comparison website and this forum. Here is a website that sells many brands (don't be scared b/c it's a UK company, they ship here and there's a button to change all the currency to dollars), and if you decide you like the MeLuna, you can get a slightly better price from the MeLuna website (it's a German website, so click on the little British flag to see the website in English). The MeLuna is one of the cheapest, has great colors, three sizes, and four different types of stem so you can really choose the exact one that you think would work best for you.
I hope I haven't grossed you all out, but this is an item that I really love. It works better than a tampon, is better for the environment, is better for my checkbook, and helps me be more prepared in an emergency. I hope you all check it out!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Garrett and I had a great Valentine's Day this year. Also a very laid back one. Because Valentine's was on a Sunday this year, we kind of spread our Valentine's celebration out over Friday and Saturday. Garrett had to work Friday night, but when he got home from work, he brought me some beautiful flowers and yummy heart-shaped chocolate covered marshmallows. Isn't he sweet? That morning I had a doctor's appointment where I ended up have a mole incised, so I wasn't having the best day (think lots of pain, bleeding and stitches that looked like mutant whiskers on my face). When he got home, I started crying because he totally made my day.

On Saturday, we got up early and celebrated my brother-in-law's birthday at Garrett's parent's house. It was so much fun seeing our cute nieces and nephews! We took a great Valentine's Day nap that afternoon, then Garrett revealed my Valentine's gifts. He bought me this lovely purse (my favorite color!):
And also this great spoon bracelet from etsy:
My hubby has such good taste! For Garrett's Valentine's present, I chose three seasons of Garrett's favorite tv show, Get Smart. He loves it! We've been watching episodes ever since.
For dinner, we went to one of our favorite casual dinner restaurants, Red Lobster. Their biscuits are so yummy! And Garrett really loves the crab linguini. I love eating pretty much all underwater creatures. Yum! We had such a fun Valentine's day. I'm so glad I've got such a great guy to spend it with.

Yay! Another Ruby Lou Giveaway!

If you were also a little heartbroken, like me, about not winning this adorable dolly pattern, take heart! There is another giveaway! I am so glad because, not having any little girls of my own yet, I haven't quite been able to justify buying this pattern. But I love it!

And for all you non-sewers, there's also a giveaway for an already made Ruby Lou dolly. So you can still get a cute doll minus all the potential sewing drama of making one. Enter here.

Happy New Year!

We danced in the New Year last night at Little America's New Year's Eve party. It was so much fun, and I was so glad that Garrett and I were finally able to go this year. Garrett's family goes every year, but we haven't made it for the past couple years. This year Garrett got off of work at 7:00, much earlier than his usual 11:30. Little America always has such great food at the party, and we ate so much! My favorite was the seafood, but they also had crazy things like crawdad jumbalaya and alligator sausage. I loved seeing everyone all dressed up and hanging out with Garrett's family. Garrett and I were the only ones who made it to midnight out of the family, but we were just having so much fun dancing. I'm so lucky to have such a fun husband!

Just thinking about the past decade, I am amazed at how far I've come in the past 10 years. In the past decade, I've had my first date, my first boyfriend, gotten my driver's license, graduated high school, gotten married, graduated with my B.A., started law school, spent a semester in Costa Rica and another in Arizona, and now I'll be graduating law school next May. I can't wait to see what the next decade brings us. If it's half as good as the last one, I'll be happy!

Best Comic Ever!

This set of comics is hilarious and very true! As many of you know, my undergraduate degree is in English. My biggest pet peeves all involve the misuse of this language I love so much. I'm definitely buying the poster. You can buy one here.











One of the other mistakes that I wish this comic included is when people incorrectly write the plural of their family name. Using my maiden name as an example, "The Wilson Family" becomes "The Wilsons" NOT "The Wilson's." That just doesn't make any sense. The only time an apostrophe "s" is appropriate after a name is for ownership by a single person, i.e. "Sarah Wilson's car." Note that if the item is owned by a group of people (like a family), it would be "The Wilsons' car." And using my married name, "The Box Family" becomes "The Boxes," just like the cardboard kind. I always get a good chuckle around Christmas because so many people make this mistake on their cards.

Cute Giveaway!

For all my crafty buddies, there is a great giveaway on Sew Much Ado's blog. She's giving away her adorable Ruby Lou Doll Pattern, and I totally want one. Head over there to enter!

Our Awesome Christmas

December is always a hectic time for us. It's that special time of year when finals, gift-giving and family events all converge into one big red and green colored mess. This year I had final exams and papers due all the way up to the 23rd of December, so I was a little MIA during some of the festivities this year. Fortunately, Garrett was able to make it to a fun dinner with his family on his mother's side. He had a great time hanging out with all his aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews. Here are just a few of them:



Garrett and I got some great gifts this Christmas. Earlier this year, I gave Garrett his birthday/Christmas present: an awesome classical guitar.


Garrett also got this great coat from Kohl's (Thanks, Dad!). I have never seen Garrett get so excited about a piece of clothing before, though I have also never felt a coat that was so soft before either.


Some of Garrett's other favorite gifts included Season 4 of Batman: The Animated Series from my mom, a cool book from Heather, Scattergories from my dad and Christmas money from his parents and grandparents. He used some of his Christmas money to buy Season 3 of Batman, so I guess we'll be watching a lot of Batman for a while. But I think my Christmas present was hands-down the very best. As my Christmas/birthday present, I got a Bosch mixer! I love it. I've never had my own mixer before. My mom has a similar one that she got for Christmas the day my sister, Heather, was born (which totally explains why they waited to open presents before driving to the hospital). I'd used that awesome mixer my entire life, so when I got married and had only a hand mixer, I had no idea how to use it. I flipped flour everywhere, had a terrible time controlling the speed, and basically gave up on baking fun things. I was just too used to the fancy schmancy one. So now I have this one:


And check out some of the yummy stuff I made! Garrett says the streusel blueberry buckle I made is now his new favorite dessert.


Some of my other favorite Christmas gifts included a beautiful vintage Pyrex bowl from Lanna, some awesome 70s cookbooks from Heather, new boots and cookie sheets from Dad, and Garrett and I are both really excited for the Lion King tickets Mom bought for all of us.

My favorite part of Christmas has always been the gift-giving. I try to buy presents really early, so I don't have to do much shopping after finals. I basically only had one day, Christmas eve, to get everything ready. Garrett and I spent a lot of the day wrapping like crazy, but I also had to put together Mom and Lanna's presents. I had already bought the fabric, but I ended up sewing them both on Christmas eve. Thank goodness all my last minute work turned out so great. When my mom opened her present, Lanna said "You look like Betty Crocker!" It was so cute.


Lanna loved hers so much, she wore it all day. Even playing the Wii. You can see some of her gifts in the background. But the present Lanna loved the very most was a boy Polly Pocket with brushable hair. Lanna told Mom on Christmas eve that she really wanted Santa to bring her a boy Polly Pocket with real hair. Mom told her that sometimes Santa has to shop at stores, and he might not be able to find a boy Polly Pocket. Lanna said that Santa has about 10,000 elves who make the toys, and they could make her a boy Polly Pocket. Sure enough, Santa and his elves pulled through.

After Christmas eve, Christmas morning and Heather's birthday, we were all pooped. Even the animals. Thank goodness I have two more weeks to relax before school starts.