Greetings!

Welcome friends and strangers to my blog.  My name is Dee and I created this blog to share all of the useful things I experience with you.  Simple. I am a 9-5er who enjoys arts, crafts, shopping, clothes, shoes, purses, Do-It-Yourself projects and lives by the motto – try anything once (well, almost anything).  The purpose of this blog is to share the things I try with you.

You never know what you’ll find here, but I promise it’s all going to be pretty damn (darn, dang, choose your adjective) useful.

A new Quest Begins – Healthy Lifestyle Happy Hour Staples

My fellow readers and useful enthusiasts, every once in a blue moon, you find a cause, a potential quest that if successful, could really be a personal game changer. Today, I think I’ve stumbled on to mine. Okay, if I’m honest and not totally shitting you, I stumble on to a new quest weekly. It’s not that I’m a flake exactly, I just get obsessive about random things I just need to know or experience depending on what I’m currently experiencing.

I have recently been trying to be healthier. Wedded bliss has opened my world up to new experiences and apparently my mouth to anything I’ll shove in it. Much like the honeymoon, my reckless abandonment of healthy eating had to come to an end at some point and as the summer months move in and I don’t want to buy new shorts, it’s now or never.

Now, to achieve this goal, there is much I will need to abstain from, many habits I will need to change, but there is one non-negotiable, I am not going completely dry. Life is too short to happy hour, so I must find a drink or repertoire of drinks that are more diet friendly than my normal choices.  I started this journey this evening.  I tried a club soda with vodka and lime (watery vodka) and a very dirty martini (olives = yummy, martini felt like it needed salt). The bottom line is straight vodka isn’t going to do it. Lucky me and lucky you, there are tons of other alternatives and for the benefit of my dear reader, I shall try every concoction I can come up with until I find a few staples for all us gals and pals that are unwilling to sacrifice happy hour.  Wish me luck friend, wish me luck.

Light Sleepers Unite

I am a super light sleeper/insomniac/crazy woman that can’t slow her mind down.  All of these title fit. I have another friend who is like me and for the sake of not putting her business in the streets, I’ll call her Annalise and since I made that stupid complicated, but all names will now be based on Shonda Rhimes characters, we’ll shorten it to Anna.  Sidebar done.  Anna and I will see each other online at 3am and catch up while the world is at slumber.  I’m also sensitive to any additional noise in the room, when my husband gets a cold and coughs through the night or god forbids starts breathing too heavily, I be like Cookie with that pillow contemplating (if you haven’t seen Empire – get your life right and watch). If you are like Anna and I, perhaps we can start a club and chat online at night, wait I guess that’s called every creeper chat room there is, are there still chat rooms? Else, I’d like to share something that has helped me, White Noise machines. It seems counterintuitive to add noise to the mix in order to drown out the existing noise and therefore put you to sleep, however, it works – providing you have a good sound machine. It almost sets a baseline that doesn’t deviate and once you are used to that baseline and provided that baseline covers up all the other noises, you are sleeping like a baby. Before you invest in one, you can try a few for free through the App store. If you like the notion, but the repeating or skipping or using your phone isn’t for you, check out a few products I tried (Thank you Amazon).

If you want to skip the the winner, Please go to Page 4.

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Products I love: Awesome No Show Socks

My Amazon Review: God Bless You Sock for not slipping, bunching, or cutting off my circulation – You saved me from sweaty toes.

No show socks that will actually stay on your feet! Yay!

God bless these socks. I hate thick socks. Hate them, hate them, hate them. I hate those no show sock, stocking, crap things that fall over the heel and end up bunched in your shoe. I hate showing too much sock in a shoe that doesn’t need it. I hate having sweaty sneaker feet for fashion because you can’t find the right socks.

These socks save you from this terrible fate. They are thin. They have the silicone patch so they stay in place AND they don’t bite creases into the back of your heels with ridiculous elastic. Plus, they can be washed and the silicone stays put! I wash them in a lingerie bag on delicate, but I do dry them as normal and wear them almost every day. They are perfect with my Vans, My chucks, Everything. Now – these aren’t workout socks. You are not getting any padding or cushion from the sock, but they are perfect with fashion sneakers.

Angelina 12 Pair-Pack Non-Slip Silicone Patch Cotton No-Show Socks #911 Gray

Things every BRIDE should know…. Recycle Your Wedding

I actually DO need sequin table cloths! They are beautiful and you can buy at Etsy
image source: My Modern Home Etsy

Today, I’m starting a new feature on Pretty Da** Useful – Things Every ______ should know.  Since I’m getting married soon, many of these first postings will deal with wedding sh*t.  Sorry, Not Sorry.  Although there are literally whole sites dedicated to brides to be and our special kind of insanity, there are some pearls that just too hidden.

The first pearl is a fantastic website called Recycle Your Wedding.  What is it?  Well for once, it’s what it sounds like.  It gives brides who just got hitched the opportunity to sell the 200 sequin table liners they just had to have and now just have to another bride in a sequin table runner frenzy.  There’s the 50 Table Numbers she painstakingly hand decoupaged, the Photo Booth sign she made with your own chalkboard, those candy bar jars she picked one-by-one so they wouldn’t be too matchy and now they are available for you next savvy bride at a discount.  I sound like I’m being sarcastic, but literally, I spent 5 hours on the site my first day.  It’s a treasure trove if you are patient.  There are categories for local pick-up and some people willing to ship.

Take a peek, but be careful, much like pinterest, you are going to lose about 5 hours of your life and not realize it.

http://ruffledblog.com/community/recycle-your-wedding.html