October 1, 2009

Flickr photo by Abby Lanes

Just in case you’ve forgotten or haven’t already seen the masses of pink products popping up in retail stores, today kicks off National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM). This year marks the 25th year that October has been designated as NBCAM.

Wikipedia describes NBCAM as an annual international health campaign organized by major breast cancer charities every October to increase awareness of the disease and to raise funds for research into its’ cause, prevention and cure. The campaign also offers information and support to those affected by breast cancer.

As well as providing a platform for breast cancer charities to raise awareness of their work and of the disease, BCAM is also a prime opportunity to remind women to be breast-aware for earlier detection.

For those of you that were reading us last October, you know that Susan G. Komen for the Cure is one of my favorite charities. I’ve been participating in the Race for the Cure for several years now and it’s always such a great event. There’s something about the story of Susan G. Komen and her sister, Nancy Brinker that has always been close to my heart. What Nancy Brinker has accomplished with the Susan G. Komen Foundation never ceases to amaze me. I talked recently about Nancy Brinker receiving the Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civilian honor.

Our family has been very fortunate so far, not to have been effected personally by this disease, but with the staggering number of women diagnosed with breast cancer every day, it could happen to any one of us, whether genetic or not. I hate to admit it, but since BigSis and I are both in peri-menopause, there are a lot of factors that can contribute to increased odds of getting breast cancer.

I go to my gynecologist every January for my annual check up just so that it’s easy to remember when it’s time to go. And, I’ve always followed up and scheduled my mammogram right after that appointment. With so much happening in our lives these past two and a half years, I’ve gotten off track and missed my mammogram.

There’s just no excuse for that! I’ve been so mad at myself for letting ‘life’ get in the way of making a simple phone call to set up an appointment. I found my doctor’s order in my planner from January, so I picked up the phone this morning and scheduled my mammogram.

We’ll be talking more about NBCAM throughout this month, but I would like for today to be a reminder to anyone who’s procrastinated, like I have, to pick up the phone and schedule your mammogram.

Oh, and if you’re a football fan, don’t be surprised this Sunday when you see some of the NFL players sporting some hot pink gloves, sweatbands, towels, and even cleats! The idea for the cleats came from Carolina Panthers running back, DeAngelo Williams. Williams has a personal interest in breast cancer, as his mother was diagnosed in 2004. His mother is now in remission, but she lost all three of her sisters to breast cancer.

It really is true that each individual can make a difference in their own special way. For anyone with a blog or Twitter account, you can help spread awareness by going Pink for October. Check out my Twitter @lilsisca.

~LilSis

September 30, 2009

Hippo birdies art by monettenriquez on Flickr

Hippo birdies to us, hippo birdies to us, hippo birdies BigSisLilSis, hippo birdies to us!  Today is BigSisLilSis’ first birthday!  Woo hoo!!  We’re so excited that we made it our first blogiversary!  Plus, a big bonus is that we’re still speaking to each other.  It’s been a crazy, hectic, fun, challenging and sometimes stressful year of learning new technology, working together on design and ideas, and making compromises since both of us are stubborn independent control freaks!  😀

After all that, and with 394 posts published, we’re still totally committed to the mission we started with, which is to:

• Write for women like us.

• Strive to be encouraging, and as positive as we can be (with the inevitable occasional Sis rant!)

• Pass along info that we hope will be helpful.

• Share our humor, however odd and twisted it might be!

When we look back over the last year, it has literally flown by on wings, but we’re really happy about some of the enhancements we’ve added to BigSisLilSis:

• We’re finally twittering!  Yes!  Finally!

• To show our appreciation, we added Comment Luv to provide a link to our commenters’ last post.

• Every 2 or 3 weeks, we feature one of our favorite bloggers in our “We’re Crazy About” feature to let everyone else know how awesome they are!

• We’re sharing links to the books (and cookbooks) that we’re reading at the moment.

• You can see our most popular posts in our sidebar, based on the number of comments received.

• Related posts also show up for each post, so if you liked a particular post, you can see more like it.

So that’s where we’ve been.  Where the heck are we going?  We have a few ideas!  First, we’re going to Vegas, baby, for BlogWorld!  But once we get back and recuperate, we have a bunch of things that we’re noodling around:

• The BigSisLilSis Facebook page is in the works; yep, another belated overdue foray into current technology for us!

• Our “Shop” page will be a comprehensive list of our favorite things, all gathered in one place.

• We’re both working on ideas for some fun individual blogs.

• And, we’re super-duper excited about starting a new joint blog exclusively devoted to food!

The most important thing we can say about the last year is that we’re abundantly grateful for the support our readers have shown us!  There would be no point in us writing if you weren’t reading! So THANK YOU all so very much!  We appreciate you, and hope that you’ll stick around for another year!  God willing, we definitely will!

~BigSis

September 29, 2009

The San Diego tourism, along with just about every other industry, has been affected by our poor economy. I was so disappointed to read that San Diego is going to lose it’s only year-round cruise ship by April, 2010.  Carnival Cruise Lines has decided to relocate its’ 2,052 passenger ship, Elation from its’ home port in San Diego to Mobile, Alabama.

California’s battered economy, along with the sharp drop-off in travel to Mexico because of the swine flu scare and an increase in drug-related violence in Baja, California, has driven business down for the cruise line.

Not everyone realizes how much of an impact this can be for the city. A study conducted by the Port Authority in 2005 found that each cruise ship contributes $2 million dollars to the economy.  Multiply that by the 78 stops that Elation makes in San Diego during a year, and that’s nearly $160 million in lost revenue.

Earlier this year, the Port District was trying to persuade the Walt Disney Co. to bring its’ planned West Coast cruise operations to San Diego, but the Disney Cruise line ultimately chose the Los Angeles area.

One bit of good news for San Diego was the debut last week of Royal Caribbeans’ Radiance of the Seas, an eight-year old, 2,500 passenger ship that will be making about 30 round trip cruises to Mexico from San Diego. In the beginning, the cruise line will be offering four and five night trips to the Mexican Riviera through November 16. After that, the ship will offer nine to twelve nights through May to destinations such as Acapulco, Ixtapa, Ensenada, Puerto Vallarta, and Mazatlan.

The arrival of Radiance also marks the launch of the cruise line’s military appreciation campaign. In recognition of the contributions made by members of the U.S. military, Royal Caribbean is donating $10,000 to Wounded Warriors Families Support, an organization that provides support to the families of those who have been wounded, injured or killed during combat operations.

Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship Radiance of the Sea (photo credit: John Gibbins/Union Tribune)

I actually saw the Royal Caribbean Radiance last Friday when I drove past the harbor on my way to the airport. It’s a gorgeous ship! Thanks for coming to San Diego Royal Caribbean!

~LilSis

September 28, 2009

I had a thousand things to do last night.  You know how it is on Sunday night.  There are things left to do and the weekend is running out.  I know that people think single people have oodles of spare time on their hands, but it doesn’t work out that way for me.  Besides a stressful full-time day job, the bills have to be paid, the animals need care, the house needs cleaning, the laundry needs tending to, the car needs maintaining, meals needs preparing, and errands need to be done.  Oh, yeah, and then there is BigSisLilSis, exercising, and maybe a tiny bit of a social life, if I’m lucky.  But, that’s just life, right?  We’re all busy.

So with all of that going on, what did I do last night?  I baked cookies, of course!  😀  What the heck!  As I was stirring up a big mess in my kitchen, I started thinking.  Why do people bake?  Why am I baking?  Now I’m wondering…why do you bake?

• To alleviate stress? Some people, like LilSis, would say that baking is a stress-inducer, rather than a stress-reducer.

• To fill a need to fill tummies? Do you bake because your family needs food, and whipping something up is the easiest way to feed them?

• To save money? Depending on the ingredients, it definitely can be more economical to bake a batch of cookies or a loaf of bread from scratch than it is to buy something at the grocery store.

• To carry on a family tradition? Lots of families have vintage recipes that have been passed down for generations, so baking them and teaching them to children and grandchildren keeps the tradition alive.

• To have fun? Baking can be fun, when things work out right, and mastering a challenging recipe is really rewarding.  Spending time in the kitchen to me is just plain fun!

• To show your love for people? Lots of people, me included, love to bake something that pleases people.  For me, baking isn’t just a task, it’s something I put my heart into.  I want it to be perfect, and for people to know I did it for them because I care about them.

So, now that you know I bake for fun and love, please tell me.  Why do you bake?

~BigSis

September 27, 2009

The title just about sums it up!  I RARELY make impulse purchases and I don’t even go shopping until I need something for a trip or a special occasion or I finally run out of all my skin care products and have to make a trip to Macy’s. By then, my list is so long that I hate spending what I need to spend just for essentials, eye cream, moisturizer, night cream, deodorant, etc. I always put off that shopping trip until I absolutely HAVE to go!

Stay with me here…this is all leading up to my latest trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I had no choice but to make a quick trip there on Friday to replenish SirHoney’s supply of Green Mountain Dark Magic Coffee pods for the Keurig Coffee maker. (Every once in a while I can find the coffee at Target, but I had a $5.00 coupon for BB&B, so I stopped there.) I usually buy four or five boxes at a time and I don’t drink coffee so I never know when he’s running low until I see the empty box sitting on the counter. (There’s a big surprise!)

Okay, I know you’re probably thinking “What in the Sam Hell does coffee have to do with Strap Perfect?”  I’m getting there, I promise! After I dropped SirHoney at the airport on Friday morning, I had a limited amount of time so I had my list of five or six stops perfectly planned for on my way back home.

Bottom line is…I’m in a hurry, I have a list, I never impulse buy, and yet, this ends up in my shopping cart!!!

Strap Perfect

Ya gotta give Bed, Bath, and Beyond some credit for marketing! The darn display for the Strap Perfect was RIGHT in front of me when I walked in the door! Seriously, I literally had to move my cart around it to get into the store. But, why did I buy one, for cryin’ out loud???

I’ve had some bra strap issues all summer and haven’t taken the time nor want to spend the money on a special racerback bra for those tank tops that seem to always be cut in too much. So, I thought, why not give this a try? It has to work, right? That’s what they say in the infomercial.  I was actually kind of excited to get home and try it on.

I was going to show you some before and after photos of the amazing results I was going to see once I put on this miracle product. I even had someone take some ‘before’  photos of me with my bra straps showing while wearing one of ‘those’ tank tops. I also took these photos so you could see that it comes in three different colors.

Concealer Clips

It looked easy enough…put each bra strap through the concealer clip then slide up or down into the right position depending on what kind of top you have on. I got the clip on okay, but I can’t even describe how uncomfortable this was! I couldn’t even keep it on long enough to take any after photos!

I probably should say that I’m not small busted, 34DD to be exact, so maybe that played some factor in the reason why this didn’t work for me. And, yes, they are “all natural” so I can’t run around in cute little spaghetti strap tops because I have to wear a ding dang bra with wide straps for support.

Maybe this works better for small busted women, I don’t know. And maybe if you’re lucky enough to be able to wear cute bras with thinner, stretchy straps, maybe it wouldn’t be so binding.

Have you ever worn a halter swimsuit top that was a little too tight and you end up with a sore neck after wearing it all day? That’s how this darn thing felt after having it on for one minute! I’m not exaggerating!

For me, Strap Perfect gets a double thumbs down! And, it’s in the trunk of my car to go back to the store the next time I need to replenish the coffee supply!

~LilSis

September 25, 2009

I’ve never been an early adopter.  I don’t buy the newest car, TV, camera, phone or computer operating system until long after all of the bugs have been worked out.  I didn’t even get my first iPod til last year!

So, I’m also not cool.  Intentionally.  If everyone is buying or doing some fabulous new trendy thing, then I really don’t want to do it at all.  I guess I don’t want to feel like a trend-captive lemming, just going along with what everyone else has decided I should do or buy.

That’s how it was with belly button piercing.  I wanted to do it really badly years ago, and was about to do it when the piercer/tattoo artist told me I couldn’t get in the water for 2 weeks afterward, but I was in ding dang Hawaii so I knew that wasn’t going to fly.  Once I got back home though, it seemed like everybody and their dog were getting their belly buttons pierced, and I lost my interest in it for good.

I have to admit that I’ve had that same stubborn don’t-wanna-do-it attitude about Twitter.  Everyone else’s been tweeting like crazy, and I just haven’t had the desire to do it.  I didn’t see the point.  Who cares what I’m doing right now?  Most of the time, I don’t even care about what I’m doing!  Honestly, it’s just not very interesting to think about what I’m having for lunch, or how long I’ve been in line at the cleaners, or how my mammogram went (btw, it hurt like a son of a gun, thanks for asking).  I also couldn’t imagine how I could find any time in my day to put this stuff out there.

I’ve caved though, in fact, I’ve joined in with fervor!  I’m a happy little lemming!  And so is LilSis.  We’re tweeting and it’s so much fun!!  Who knew!  What happened?  Well, we started exploring a little and followed a couple of people.  Then we hesitantly tweeted once, and then twitted a couple of times, and then twittered like crazy, and by then we were hooked! 😀

We’ve made a promise to each other though.  We want to only tweet about things we would like to read.  That might be an article we think is valuable, a great inspiring quote, a delicious recipe, some important news, or maybe something just full of ridiculous fun!  We want our Twitter time to bring a little something more to BigSisLilSis, and we would love for you to come join in and follow us!

We’re coming up on our first Blogiversary in a few days (woo hoo), and are excited to start our second year as Tweeters!  We’ll be at BlogWorld in Vegas in 3 weeks, and plan to tweet up a storm!  Oh, and we both also just got our first smart phone last week!  Aren’t you proud of us?

What’s next for these two wild and crazy women?  Flat panel televisions?  BluRay players?  Stay tuned to our Twitter accounts (BigSisTX and LilSisCA) and find out!

~BigSis

September 24, 2009

HOT OFF THE PRESS!! I just got the email yesterday about this offer and didn’t want to waste any time passing it on to those of you that don’t receive the emails from Relastin.

From now until October 2nd, you can buy one Relastin product and get the second for equal or lesser value for FREE! Or stock up on your favorite Relastin product by taking advantage of the two for one offer! I’ll be stocking up on the Eye Silk, for sure.  The Eye Silk normally sells for $69.00 each, so I can’t pass up buying it when I get two for the price of one.

Relastin Anti-Aging Eye Silk

I know, I know, we both talk a lot about Relastin Eye Silk! But, what can I say? We love it! BigSis first mentioned it here in November of last year when we were having a Sister Showdown on Eye Creams. Then, I talked about my results here in January and again in July.

I guess we got the attention of Relastin because our reviews on the Relastin Eye Silk are actually on the In the Press section on the Relastin site.

Just in case you missed it, the Relastin Eye Silk was just awarded the Allure Magazine Editors’ Choice Best of Beauty Award for the third year in a row! It’s the third year for the product to be on the market and the third consecutive Allure Award. If any product wins an award for being a great anti-aging product, I’m buyin’ it!! 🙂

Just so you know, we don’t get paid to promote this product, nor do we receive any free products from Relastin for doing these reviews!  (hint, hint, if anyone from Relastin is reading…)

~LilSis

September 23, 2009

Multigrain Sandwich Bread Up Close and Personal

I’m not a Wonder Bread kind of a girl. I like my bread grainy and seedy and nutty, but not too dense or clunky.  Sometimes those heavy breads can make fabulous toast; Ezekiel Bread is a perfect example. But in sandwiches they’re just a little too much, you know?

I usually buy Sprouts’ delicious whole grain bread, but I thought it would be fun to make my own.  Months ago, I saw a recipe for a multigrain bread that used Bob’s Red Mill 7 Grain Cereal, and I bought the cereal in anticipation of making the bread.  I never got around to making it though…til now! Ta da!

Multigrain Sandwich Bread

This is the best bread!  I absolutely love the way it came out.  It’s light enough for sammies, but it’s still a substantial whole grain bread.  It’s not too sweet or too bitter as some multigrain breads can be.  This is Goldilock’s multigrain bread…it’s just right.

Was it easy to make?  Ummm, yeah, I guess, but it took all day to make 2 loaves (without a bread making machine).  I actually enjoyed the process, but it was a process so be prepared to tend to it off and on all day.

You can find the recipe on Bob’s Red Mill site.  I followed it exactly except for adding 1/2 cup chopped almonds, and using salted roasted sunflower seeds instead of raw ones.  I’ll definitely make this again.  Do any of you have a favorite multigrain bread recipe I should try?  Think about it while I go make some toast and find some butter.

~BigSis

September 22, 2009

Pureology Hydrate System

I’ve been out of my all-time favorite shampoo, Pureology Hydrate Shampoo for several months now. I’ve maintained using the Hydrate Conditioner, but my hairdresser is always out of the shampoo when I’m there for my hair appointment so she keeps suggesting that I try other brands. To appease her, I’ve tried a Eufora Moisture Cleanse Shampoo that I did not like at all and an Enjoy Luxury Shampoo that was just okay.

I had to run in Ulta last week to pick up my Donna Karan Cashmere Mist Deodorant and I also wanted to look for the Neutrogena Deep Moisture Hand Cream that BigSis just mentioned last week. My Ulta didn’t have the hand cream so I was a little bummed, but to cheer myself up, I decided to break down and buy my favorite Pureology Hydrate shampoo. 🙂

I didn’t realize how much I missed this shampoo until I finally used it again! My hair is SO HAPPY!  It makes a drastic difference in the way my hair feels. Even though my hair is short; it’s naturally curly, it’s thick, it’s color treated, and I’m in the sun a lot, so I have to use a great shampoo. My hair is so much more manageable when I use this shampoo. It’s not fly-away from being too dry or limp from using something too heavy.

The bottle is $27.00 at Ulta but it is so worth it. You use such a small amount each time you shampoo that this bottle of shampoo will literally last for months. I would rather spend a little more on something that I know works well for me instead of trying something less expensive that ends up in the garbage!

This is what Pureology says about their Hydrate System:

Hydrate is designed for colour-treated hair in need of deep hydration, nourishment, and colour protection. Enhanced with advanced hydrating technology and pure natural ingredients, this system restores dehydrated hair while the ZeroSulfate® shampoo and our AntiFadeComplex® maximizes colour retention.

Natural Ingredients:

Multi-Weight Proteins of Soy, Oat, and Wheat
Strengthen and repair hair from within.

Organic Botanicals:

Rose, Peppermint, and Green Tea
Deliver natural conditioning.

If you aren’t completely happy with what you’re using now, you might want to try Pureology. I’ve used lots of different Pureology products and I’ve never been disappointed. They have so many products for so many different needs.

Here’s a list of all the Pureology systems:

Hydrate system – Designed for color-treated hair in need of deep hydration, nourishment, and color protection.

Pure Volume system – Designed for color-treated hair in need of soft volume, moisture, and color protection.

Super Smooth system – Professional color care for unmanageable color-treated hair in need of intense smoothing and discipline as a result of multiple chemical processes.

Essential Repair system – Designed for color-treated hair in need of intense repair, strength, and color protection.

Nano Works system –  Extraordinary luxury system for color-treated hair in need of dramatically improved condition, renewed shine, youthfulness, and color protection.

And this long list of systems just includes their Shampoos and Conditioners. Pureology also has some great styling products; lotions, serums, texturizers, sprays; you name it, they’ve got it! But, we’ll have to talk about those a different day!

~LilSis

September 21, 2009

One of the things I love about blogging is the community.  We share a common interest, and it seems to me that most bloggers are very supportive of each other and encourage each others’ success.  And if you’re lucky, at some point you might get to meet your online friends in person.

The other thing I really like is that bloggers know food!  If I see a recipe posted by Anna, Peabody, Grace, Cathy, Susan, Michelle, Susan, Lisa, or  Heather (among many, many other incredible cooks and bakers), I am confident that I can make that recipe and it’ll turn out great.  If I have any questions or problems, or successes I want to share, then I know who to go to.  I can’t do that with the cookbooks on my shelves.

The only problem with online recipes though is how to organize them.  I used to highlight the recipe and paste it into Microsoft Word, then print it out and save it to my hard drive.  But then I had all of these hard copies to sort and file, and who ever goes back through all of those?  There’s too much paper in our lives to deal with already.  And invariably I save a recipe to my laptop at home, and then later need to access the recipe at work so I can pick up the ingredients on my way home.

What if you could save an online cookbook of all your favorite recipes, sorted the way you want it?  Well, you can do just that and it’s super duper easy!  Are you using Delicious bookmarks?  If you are, then you can tweak it to organize your online recipes, and if you’re not, then think about getting on board!

Delicious is awesome because you just sign up for a free account, and then you use it to bookmark your favorite pages.  It doesn’t matter which computer you’re on.  Your bookmarks are on Delicious, not on one particular computer.  The other cool thing is that you can choose to share your bookmarks and your personalized cookbook with other people that you specify.

So, let’s set up your online cookbook!

• First, access your account at http://delicious.com or set up a new account.

• In the right sidebar, click on Tag Options and choose Manage Tag Bundles.

• A new window opens. Click on Create to make a new tag bundle.

• In #1, enter the Tag Bundle Name, something like “Emma’s Cookbook”.  In #2, enter the tags that you want to use to sort your cookbook.  Separate your tags with spaces.  You could use broad categories like appetizers, vegetables, meat, and dessert, or you could use more specific tags like cookies, chocolate, soup, potatoes, quiche, candy, fruit, etc.  You get the idea.  It’s totally up to you and how you want to organize your recipes.

• Click on the green Save button, and you’re done!  Voila!

Now, when you go back to your Delicious home page, you’ll see your tag bundle listed on the right sidebar under Tag Bundles.  To place a recipe into your cookbook, just add your tags to it before you save the bookmark.  Delicious will sort it into your cookbook bundle, and you just have to click on the tags in your cookbook to show all of the recipes with that tag.

If you decide later that you want to add more tags to your cookbook, just choose Tag Options and Manage Tag Bundles again. Then click on Edit next to your Tag Bundle’s name.  Add, change or delete your tags as you wish, then Save.

That’s it!  You have your own online cookbook, wherever you are!  I hope that you give this a try and enjoy it as much as I do!

~BigSis