Disclosure: I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for T3. I received a product sample to facilitate my review and as a thank you for participating.

Going to Chicago for BlogHer, I had a freshly dyed head of hair, with a lovely purple ombre on the lower half. It was vibrant purple when I left Columbus and I was so very happy with the color.

With each trip under the hotel’s shower, though, I started to notice streaks of lavender-blonde showing. How was it disappearing so quickly? I didn’t wash it for a few days after dying it to give the color the best shot at settling in. I was using a shampoo designed for color-treated hair, I was washing it in water as cold as I could stand – what was wrong? My best guess was the hotel water, since I could smell the chlorine in it.

Back at home after the conference, my hair looked like a big mess by mid-week – streaky and brittle on the ends. The color was even worse, my split ends were growing, and my hair was so frizzy.

The bottom 4-5″ used to be bright purple, promise. It was SO pretty. Now it’s just sad.

That was an expensive short-term ombre, that wasn’t supposed to be short-term.  I didn’t even touch my hair dryer or straightener since I had my hair dyed, so I can’t blame heat styling for the color disappearing.

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Did you know Green Giant makes chips now? Neither did I, until I was recently asked if I’d like to try their new veggie snack chips with my family. After I got home from Chicago, there was a box waiting for me with two bags of chips inside: Garden Ranch Roasted Veggie Tortilla Chips and Barbecue Multigrain Sweet Potato Chips.

Now, I’ll admit to being a little skeptical at first. Potatoes are vegetables, and that’s what nearly every chip is made from, right? So the first thing I did was take a look at the ingredients:

Easy-to-read ingredients

Whoa, there are a lot of good ingredients in these chips. And I can pronounce all of the ingredients, too. There’s no way I’d count this as a replacement for a serving of vegetables in our diet, but I’m happy to get a little extra wherever I can. Beyond the veggies, there are some great grains in there, too: buckwheat, millet, quinoa.
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Disclosure: I participated in a campaign on behalf of Mom Central Consulting for Cascade. I received a product sample to facilitate my review and a promotional item as a thank you for participating. All opinions stated here are my own and, as always, your mileage may vary.

We moved into our house in 2004, and we were thrilled that our new house came with a shiny new dishwasher. Of course, the dishwasher was little more than the most basic of models (the builders weren’t going to put a fancy dishwasher in a kitchen without a significant price increase), but it has saved us from needing to hand wash everything for over eight years.

When we load the dishwasher, we have to make sure everything is rinsed well first or we’ll be given back hot dishes and silverware with sterilized food particles stuck to them. Like I said, it’s a very basic model dishwasher. Lately, though, we’ve noticed that it hasn’t even been cleaning the dishes as well as before. Even small food particles were left on silverware, and the glasses were coming out looking cloudy. Let’s face it – eating with dishes and silverware that aren’t looking their best is unappetizing, right?

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