Review: L'Oreal Preference Infinia VoxBox

*I received this product free of charge so I could try it out and create this review - all opinions are my own*

My VoxBox arrived on Tuesday this week.  How fitting that I'm off Wednesdays so I could explore this box and figure out what exactly I'm supposed to do!

My First VoxBox!

When I opened it, there were 2 boxes of haircolour in it.  Fitting, as it was a L'Oreal Preference VoxBox.  This haircolour has a new feature - a colour booster you use at 2 weeks and 8 weeks post colouring, to keep it looking like first day colour for a lot longer.  As today will be day 1, you'll have to wait for me to try that part and create my review part 2!

VoxBox Unboxed!

In the qualifying survey they asked me about colouring my hair.  I said I do, since I did in October for my "halloween" costume.  There's a post about that here.  The colour was supposed to be 28 washes, but it's still growing out now so might as well colour away the roots.  And with 2 boxes of colour shipped to me I should be able keep this colour for a while!

Hubby and I - Rocky Horror Oct 2015 

Now that my hair is short, colouring it is "quick" and easy.  The whole experience today took me a bit less than an hour.  And I only used about 1/2 (maybe less) of the colour creme - I could have shared it with a friend!

Doing your hair yourself always has the potential to be a humongous mess.  I always do the towel on the shoulders stuff, and today I tried putting conditioner along my hairline to protect my skin.  I don't know if it made a difference, and it did cause me a little stress thinking that I got some on my hair and the dye may be splotchy.  Luckily it all turned out fine.

Now that my hair is re-coloured I may have to update my cut.  The short cut is getting "long" and I feel like its looking a bit chunky, or clumpy, I don't know how to describe it.  I'm planning to let it get a bit longer for the warmer weather.  I know that sounds counter-intuitive but I like to be able to do ponytails when the weather gets hot - and for ballet class too!

Colour Before (Natural Light)

Colour After

So stay tuned for my next haircolour post in 2 weeks time - when I try out the colour booster!  I'm not sure if it's for trying to hide roots, or just to pump up the overall colour and shine that tends to dull wash after wash.  Guess we'll find out!

This red is more "red" and less purple than my previous colour.  I apologize for the quality of this before and after photos - my cell doesn't take a fabulous photo.  I think they're good enough for a comparison, though.  The after colour looks darker in artificial light.  I'm happy with the result!

How Many Mittens Have Your Kids Lost This Winter?

It's March!  Winter should be shuffling off sometime this month.  I can't wait.

The thing I'm most looking forward to leaving behind (for maybe 6 months) is all the extra "outdoor clothes."  And all the "where's my _____??" that we do every morning.  Today we actually discovered Emma must have left her snowpants at her after-school care.  Lucky both girls have 2 pair!  (I will take some of the blame, as I do try to collect everything at the door, but some days the kids are so antsy to get outside that I just can't gather everything - time to learn to take your own stuff, kids!)

Today I want to gripe about mittens.  Do your kids lose mittens like crazy?  I can't say my kids "lose" them, more misplace and/or forget them.  We have to have about 3 pair of mittens or gloves (and I mean the cold/snow playing/nylon winter mitts) per kid, otherwise we'd be doomed to freezing hands.  And it was a struggle to buy a new pair each in early January (we're deep into winter so, of course, no stores have mittens) when we got holes in the ones from last year.  The new ones have holes now too, but that's another story.

I know my kids have cubbies and backpacks and their own spaces to keep things at daycare and at school.  So where do the mittens go?  Rose told me one day she left hers outside at recess.  Pretty sure it was cold out that day - why did you even take them off, kid?  (The answer to that was they were wet - ok, I'll give you that, but weren't your hands cold??)

Emma is a great helper for Rose to find things she's lost at school.  I'm not sure how many times Emma has gone through the school lost and found and retrieved items that belonged to Rose.  I tried at the beginning of the year to put our name stickers in every piece of clothing, but somehow that doesn't help them get found.  And then we had to buy 2 rounds of mittens over the winter and wear them right away, so I don't think they got labelled.

And then there's the storing of winter clothes inside my house - I have no room for hanging winter pants (2 pair each) and coats and then also store hats, mitts, scarves etc.  We have a tiny entryway - just big enough for the door to open - and then there's a set of stairs.  At the top of the stairs is almost immediately a set of stairs to go downstairs.

We use this little landing as our shoe and coat area.  It's not enough space for 2 kids in full winter gear to stand together and get boots on.  I've tried to organise with pigeon hole shelves and baskets, different types of shoe racks, and hooks behind doors and down the basement staircase.  We're as good as we're going to get there.  But all the mittens have a basket in my shelf unit that no one seems to know is there.  Hats and scarves go in another.  Grown-up winter gear has it's own slot also.  I know the system, I don't think anyone else here does.

This winter I've tried to get the girls to put their mittens on the heat vent.  You know the little cone shaped thingy that goes over the vent that you put your mittens on to dry out?  That's my landing space for any mittens worn outside. It's been working ok - until the morning that someone didn't do that (after I nagged 5 times the night before) and mittens are wet.  Cue the tears.  This is one of the many reasons we have extra (sometimes with tears in them) mittens around the house.

Anyway, the forecast for next week has plus 5 and 7 degree weather in it.  Let's hope we can downgrade to our fun knit mittens once the snow starts to fade away.  We have a ton of awesome knit "not for super cold weather" mittens that don't get much wear over the winter.  Guess they're our transition time mittens - although they don't work well in the wet weather of spring either.  Hmm...

Please share with me your family's winter solutions:  How do you keep mittens from getting lost or forgotten?  How you store all your abundance of extra winter outdoor wear?  How often do your kids forget snowpants or something at school?  I'd love to commiserate and share winter woes!

~Jess

Book Review: Splintered by Kelly Miller

*I was sent this book free of charge so I could read it and create this review*

I thoroughly enjoyed Splintered by Kelly Miller. This thriller is told from five characters viewpoints.  Fast paced storytelling combined with short chapters made it easy to read, even in short bursts of time.  Ideal for a working mom like me!

A teenage girl makes up a story about an attempted abduction in hopes to win back her father's affections.  Her mother is emotionally absent and as a result the young girl doesn't have anywhere to turn when the story gets out that she lied for attention.

A young man was raised by an abusive father who abducted young girls to "play with" at his whim.  He now feels his ability to restrain those feelings in himself crumbling.  Enter the young teenager on the news who lied about an abduction attempt.

The teenage girl does disappear not even a week later, but police label her a runaway, due to her home situation and lies about a previous abduction.  Can she survive until someone finds her?  Will the young man become his father?

I found it took the book a little while to create the suspense required for a thriller.  The backstory was very well fleshed out, but by halfway through the book I started wondering where the "real" conflict is - what kind of climax was likely to happen and when.

The book did not disappoint.  Once the pace picked up and the stories of all the characters began to come together I had a hard time putting the book down!  And after finishing the story I wanted to find other titles by this author.  I really enjoyed this story and all the characters involved.

Snow Day or My Day As A Stay Home Parent

This winter was slow getting started, but February seems to be making up for it.  We've had two snow days in two weeks.  One of those days I was lucky enough to get to be home with the girls all day.

Let's be frank here - I love going to work and being away from the kids.  I'm almost never home alone with them for 8+ hours (unless you count overnight, which doesn't actually count.)  Now that they're older, and play together pretty well, it's not quite the stress-zone it used to be when they were completely dependant on constant adult supervision and interaction.

I'm happy to say my "mom anxiety" has actually settled down a bit.  I feel as though the girls are learning how to be independent, and slightly more responsible (post about that here), and sometimes they even can get their own food - as long as it's cereal or granola bars.

I took some pictures during our "snow day" so I could share with you all the joys of being home with the kids all day long.  I chose to empty the dishwasher in the morning and when I returned to the living room they had emptied the toy box completely, and every stuffy they own (except for the 100 they each have in their rooms) was on the floor.

People wonder why I don't sit down and watch a movie with the girls.  This was a perfect example.  They put on a movie (after cleaning up 10,000 stuffies) and sat and watched it until it was about 3/4 of the way through.  Then they turned it off and went upstairs to play.  Like what?  Who watches 3/4 of a movie?  I mean it's not like they hadn't seen it before (it was Toy Story 2), but man.  Luckily I was trying to sit and read so it didn't really impact my life much.  And they did return to it maybe an hour later and watch the end.  I'm still amazed how quickly kids can be distracted, or get bored, by what they're doing.  Odd ducks, kids.

Lunch was fine - random stuff, you know.  Carrot sticks, cheese and crackers, bagels and cream cheese, eat what you feel like and then go play.

Afternoon play included craft time.  Which, for my kids, is just another excuse to make a huge mess.  And this was the time I decided to take a few minutes outside to check the build up of snow/ice/water that was falling from the sky.  I got soaked, they created chaos.  But then they cleaned up - without a fight.  I did hope Rose would practice her cutting skills - so she came upstairs while I was showering (after getting soaked outside) to tell me she made one cut in one piece of paper!  That's great Rose, but that won't improve your scissor skills.  Emma is the great crafter in our household.  Rose would rather just look at everything, make a huge mess, and then go find something else to do.  In this case it was have a freezie.

While I was in the shower (for 10 minutes, at the most) Rose came upstairs to talk to me.  "Look at what I have Mommy!" she says.  How does she know I'm right in the middle of washing my hair, with shampoo about to run into my eyes?  And she's not the most patient.  "LOOK MOM!"  So I peek out around the shower curtain.  Now I have to point out that I wear glasses.  I can barely see clearly past the end of my nose.  So I look out, see that a small figure is standing there holding something.  I say "Cool!  What'cha got there?" and she tells me "Emma got me a thing from the freezer!"  Huh?  "Oh, have you got a freezie?" I ask.  "No, there was none, so Emma said 'You can have a frozen yogurt tube, or you can have nothing.'"  That sounds like Emma.  So she was eating a frozen yogurt tube.  I have never had success getting her to try one.  She gobbled it down like it was candy (but not before managing to dribble some onto the couch - where they are not supposed to sit with food...)  Sisters, eh?

After crafts they asked for a 3D movie.  My first thought was that I didn't know what I needed to do to play a 3D movie.  We have the tv and the blu-ray player for it, but I was worried I'd need to actually do something.  Well worry not, the dohickeys all work together and it automatically works in 3D.  Yay!  The hardest part was finding where the 3D glasses were...

Of course the movie they picked for afternoon viewing was Toy Story 3.  This is my 'guaranteed to cry like crazy at the end' movie.  So didn't they wait until almost the end to ask me to sit with them and watch.  And since I spent a decent part of the day reading my book (in the same room as them but not really engaged) I had to do it.  And so I watched, and the tears came, and it was sweet like it always is.  Then I had to make dinner.

Despite the crazy weather Emma's dance class was still on.  Hubby got home at a good time, we ate dinner and off they went to dance class.  I was actually quite impressed with our day.  Almost all messes were cleaned up without much fuss, and no major meltdowns occurred.  I got some reading done, and a book review created.  Makes me feel like I could do this full-time parenting thing, once in a while.  The only thing the day was missing was a nap - for me!

First Product Review Coming - VoxBox

Fun news!  I've been approved to try out a VoxBox!  This box is a L'Oreal hair thing - something about hair colour.  Not sure yet what it really is, but I'm totally excited!

It looks like I'll be colouring my hair - not really a big deal.  My "28 washes" colour from October is still hanging around, although growing out quite nicely.  I'm curious how this will work - are they just sending me hair colour?  Do I get a choice of shades?  Guess I'll see what arrives in this VoxBox.

VoxBox is just a name this influencer company, Influenster, gives to its giveaway boxes.  They send you qualifying surveys to see if you fit with their products.  The one I did about hair colour was probably a month ago, so I had almost forgotten about it!

This is my first non-book review type thing.  I guess once I get the box and "check in" with it I get further instructions.  There's also a Twitter party to participate in (let's hope they pick some time when I'm actually home!) and a survey to do when I'm "finished."

Sounds interesting.  I don't know how long until the VoxBox gets here, but I'm sure it'll be soon.  They have a "days to complete" on my profile page so let's hope it's on its way!

Watch for my review of this L'Oreal product - with pictures!  I hope it works out okay for me.  And I hope this means I also get to try out other new products, between books I'm reading, of course!

Okay, enough rambling about this - now I wait and see.  Stay tuned to see what really shows up with the VoxBox, and what I really need to do.  Til next time!

~Jess

Book Review: Mind Over Murder - A Jake Roberts Novel

*I was sent this book free of charge so I could read it and create this review*

Reading Cary Allan Stone's next instalment in the Jake Roberts series was more enjoyable than the first one.  The story flowed coherently, the characters were well rounded (bonus - I knew most of them from the previous book), and the third person switches were much easier to follow.

I really enjoyed this detective story.  Another book where you know what happened and who's committing the murders right from the beginning.  It was very enjoyable to follow Roberts along in his quest to figure out "whodunit."

I'm not sure if it's due to the author having more writing experience, but I had a much easier and enjoyable time reading this book.  There were still some comma placement issues, and a few areas where I had to read a sentence over again, but much better writing and grammar use in this story.

There are 2 more books that follow Jake Roberts - I have both to read yet and I'm looking forward to them!  Mr. Stone has created a great character (and he's killed off a few great characters too!) and I hope his next "situations" are as riveting as I found this one.

My Disrupted 'Me Day'

Wednesdays are my day for me.  I'm (usually) home, husband and kid free, for most of the day.  I use this time to do laundry, sometimes tackle an organizing project or area of the house, do some other random cleaning (or baking!), and on a good day also throw in some exercise time.  Oh, and I have at least one show I watch recorded from earlier in the week that I catch up on on a Wednesday.

This has been my schedule for a while now.  When I'm home alone I feel like I can be so much more productive.  And now I schedule in blog stuff on Wednesdays as well.  I aim to create one post and do 2 hours of reading of books I've been asked to review.  Oh, and I try to sift through Twitter and FB feeds of other people (and blogs) I enjoy, as well as visiting my influencer-style websites I've joined.  My days are pretty full up now, I guess, after I see it all written out!

Anyway, this past Wednesday started out just fine.  I shovelled out the end of the driveway (with hubbys help) and then I came in and had ice cream for breakfast - with bananas so it wasn't a total fail! - while I watched my show.  After that I spent a few minutes online, browsing through Twitter and other blog-related pages, and half-assed watching another show on tv.  And then hubby came home.

It's not especially abnormal for him to come home occasionally during the day.  Sometimes he needs lunch, or he forgot something, or he just had a half hour to spare between jobs.  But this week he was HOME.  As in not going anywhere.  And it wasn't even lunch time!  I hadn't done anything (besides the hefty load of shovelling) but put some laundry in and watch some tv.  I thought I might go for a walk with the camera and see what snow-related beauty I could find. (Did I mention we'd had almost 50cms of snow the day before?)

So that disrupted my whole day.  I didn't know what to do.  Do I make him lunch, or go ahead and have that entire freezer pizza I'd planned to eat myself?  Should I pretend to look more busy than I was?  I don't think he knows how much stuff I do checking up on all my blog related sites and pages and influencer stuff.  It just looks like I'm wasting time on the net (which I'm sometimes doing too.)

And then he wants to talk to me.  I'm trying to be wife-y and sit near him while I'm reading my book and he's "working" on his computer - which I'll say looks to me like what I'm sure I look like to him when I'm trying to catch up on other people's blogs and stuff - but then he wants to talk.  Not saying I don't like talking to him, but I'm reading here!  And for reviews even, so can I just sit and read?

Then we get the call that Rose is not feeling well at school.  So we collect her and bring her home, but at least she then goes to bed and sleeps for an hour or more.  But now I feel my day is shot.  It's 2pm, I've only got one load of laundry through, we might as well meet Emma at the bus so we don't have to schlep over to daycare later to collect her, and I'm thinking about what time I should start dinner so it's ready to eat before we have to take miss Emma to dance class.

My saving grace was actually being the chauffeur parent, and taking Emma to her Wednesday night dance classes (for 2 hours!)  I managed to sit quietly with some other Moms also doing work and finish reading my book and create my review.  I even got a chapter into my next book!  My dance teacher and some of the ladies from the Monday night adult ballet class thought I should join them for the Wednesday adult ballet (which is a level above what I do on Mondays) but I'm not ready.  I do love to watch them though!

Moral of the story?  Don't put too much stock into alone time - it doesn't always work out like you hoped it would!  At least not when you're a parent.  I survived my day, and did feel accomplished at the end of it.  And it gave me fodder for a blog post - so win win!

Leave me a comment about your botched "me time" plans (or lack of plans), or just say hi so I know you read this to the end!  Thanks loyal readers.

~Jess