This was a fantastic read.

Amy moves in with her aunt to escape her life back in the city. Henry lives in a never ending summer that only he’s aware of. His grandfather and mother that he lives with have no idea of what’s going on. Until they meet Amy. Amy isn’t suppose to be there. She shifts the balance in Henry’s life. In Henry’s family’s life. Both Henry and Amy have a choice to make, a choice that will change both of their lives forever.

I found Amy to be a very strong character. I found her to be easy to relate to and at the same time, she’s one of those characters where you’re screaming at the page “DO IT!” I found Henry to be swoon worthy. He was also easy to relate to, you can see the intention of his actions but you can also see how he could had been easily clouded by those intentions. I found myself liking her Aunt Mae too, you can tell she really cares about Amy. I really liked the shift between the two worlds. The description of Henry’s world was so clear you could see it like it was right in front of you.

The ending wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t what I expected at all and the things that it changed definitely wasn’t what I expected but in the end, when you think back on the story, it was what was suppose to happen. It was both a happy and tragic ending, which gives you mixed feelings but good mixed feelings. This is one of the few books that had me thinking about it long after I turned the last page. I highly recommend this book!

MKZbooks.com offers a new service called BRAIN which stands for (Books Recently Added Inventory Notice, cool huh?) and what it does is you make a book wishlist and when they get that particular book in stock, they’ll notify you that it’s up for sale on the website. You’re able to set preferences on the book you’re searching for such as the condition you prefer.

I made my order a few hours ago and I enjoyed how fast and easy it was to make my purchase, browse the selection and find books. I’m impressed with the wide selection as well as the new releases they had listed! So if you’re interested in saving some money and itching to buy new books, I would highly suggest searching through mckenziebooks.com, you’d be surprised what you’ll find there!

I’ve been sick all week and a bit on the search for something that will silence my cough through the night since I stay up all night coughing. I’m not exactly allowed to take NyQuil as I mentioned in my previous post why, so I picked these up at Target the other day in hopes they would work. Besides they have that AM/PM thing going on and I never tried that before. On the front, it seems to have every symptom I had covered. They had another one that looked exactly like this but was called something else… I never know what’s the big difference between these things…

So after I was running around Target singing at the top of my lungs “The Wizard & I” (and acting it out) and after my husband had to calm me down (who surprisingly wasn’t embarrassed and just followed me around laughing) I decided on these over the other ones.

I took the Day pills when I got home and after I had lunch. I can’t say if they really helped since I took a nap right after I took them. But according to my husband, I didn’t seem to have a hard time breathing and I wasn’t coughing in my sleep. So that’s a good sign! All I remember was how uncomfortable it was to sleep on the couch *shrug*.

I took the Night pills last night and I took it right before my shower in the even that it might make me drowsy. I didn’t check to see how many hours apart you were suppose to take these. By the time I had gone to bed, I think it had been four hours later and no, the PM did not make me drowsy (bummer). It wasn’t too helpful with my symptoms either, I didn’t have a runny nose but I was still coughing and my throat was still painfully sore. It did have a much more “cool burst” effect than the Day pill did. It was actual a nice effect and it made everything feel minty. Sleeping last night was horrible.

This morning I checked the box and it said to take every 2-4 hours which might explain why the Night pill didn’t work too well before I went to bed, in my opinion this is the downside to Tylenol. While other pain relievers last up to 6 hours, Tylenol is usually 2-4 hours. I did take the Day pill again this morning and if I’m not mistaken, it actually made me drowsy! Which was odd. It had a much more intense “cool burst” effect now that I had been awake through it. It seems as long as you’re getting that “cool” sensation, your symptoms will subside. It did a great job of handling my cough, my sore throat, my stuffy nose and my headache as well.

Overall, I’m pleased with this product. I’d give the Night pill another try, but other than that, I think I’ll stick to the Day pills when using this product .

Disclaimer: I wasn’t contacted, paid, or asked to do this review. I purchased this product with my own money.

My periods are heavy. I normally use Always pads, usually the ones with the wipe attached to them but I dont use their wings. From my own personal experience, the wings dont really help. Not only that, but they’re annoying to deal with. They always end up scratching my thighs .

I received a “sample box” of these with one of those jumbo double box buys with my usual pads. I didnt really care for them, I was certain these thinner pads would do me no use. So I ignored them. I made a stop at Target a few months ago with my sister in law to pick up some stuff, pads being one of the things I had to pick up.

She suggested that I try them and how amazing they worked. I couldnt believe her. I told her about my heavy flows and how there’s no way those pads would work for me! She told me both her and my mother in law use them and they both really like them. So I agreed to try them, and if they didnt work, it was her fault lol.

So I tried them. And they worked fantastic! My period has never been so pleasant! The pad is indeed thin. Like, pantyliner thin. The material on the pad isnt scratchy or irritating like other pads, its nice and smooth. It doesnt make you feel like you’re waddling like a duck when you walk around, the wings dont scratch me at all though they are really sticky and are kind of hard to pull off when I’m changing my pad. They’re extremely absorbent! I’m impressed with how well this went with my heavy flows!

Of course, I thought maybe I was just having a lucky run with them. So I tried them again the next month… and the next month… and now I dont know how I ever lived without them!

Thin, absorbent and comfortable! This is just what us ladies need during our hellish week! I highly recommend you try them, if you havent yet. You wont regret that you did !

When it was at its worse in 2006, I was constantly washing my hands. By constant, I mean maybe once every half hour. It didnt help much that I worked as a cashier. I obviously couldnt wash my hands every single time I did a cash transaction so I carried hand sanitizer in my pocket with me. Probably the worst idea ever. The constant hand washing and alcohol from the hand sanitizer successfully stripped my hands of all moisture. My hands were so dry and chapped that my finger tips were completely messed up. I couldnt touch silk or satin without my finger tips getting irritated, I couldnt even feel the fabric, at all from my messed up my finger tips were. I also started getting red itchy bumps (which I still get) and I’d scratch my hands until they bled, it drove me nuts.

I was at the hospital one day and me and my boyfriend (who’s now my husband) were in the pharmacy to pick up some medicine (I dont remember what I was there for, I’m going to get cough medicine since that year I got Strep Throat for the first time). We were standing in line and they had a tester bottle out for Glove in a Bottle. He read it and suggested I try it, but I refused. He went ahead and tried it himself and really liked it.

So the next time we went to the pharmacy (which wasnt until summer-ish 2007) he got me a small sample bottle thinking it would help dry hands.

I went from being a cashier to working in cash control for a theme park. If you dont know what cash control is, basically we handle all the cash and tickets that come into the park. So basically, its like a room full of cash. For someone who has OCD, it wasnt exactly hell but it was close to it. Everything in that room was dirty (but it did help me realize that I am capable of ignoring my OCD, I even threw out the trash a lot there, incredible)!

The site says:

When the natural oil is stripped from the outer layer of skin the moisture (water) quickly leaves the outer layer of skin leaving the skin dry, irritated, and itchy. Worse, the deeper layers of skin are left exposed to harsh damaging substances including detergents, solvents, cleaners, paint and thinners, gardening chemicals, dirt and grease, latex gloves and powder, etc.

This results in more dry, irritated, and itchy skin that becomes chapped, cracked and damaged.

Hand and skin lotions only replace natural oils with artificial ones. These offer temporary relief that does little to heal the skin. Regular use of lotions can actually cause the skin to produce less natural oils.

Gloves In A Bottle is a shielding lotion – it bonds with the outer layer of your skin and helps lock in your natural oils and moisture – the reason why dermatologists recommend Gloves as an effective dry skin treatment.

I would use this every single time I washed my hands after using the bathroom at work. It says its waterproof but I’d put it on again just in case.

The lotion is fairly thin and it absorbs quickly into your skin. It smells like glue on your hands, but after it absorbs, your hands do feel smoother and softer. After using this everyday for about two weeks, I was starting to see and feel major results. So I used it for a good amount of time, maybe six months or more. And it helped a lot! For one, my finger tips werent messed up anymore, I could finally touch silk and satin without them getting irritated and I could feel the fabric! That was the biggest thing about this to me, something so small as not being able to feel fabric is depressing, I’m so glad my husband found this for me!

If you’re like me and you feel you’ve stripped your hands of all its moisture or if your hands get really dry and chapped, I do highly highly recommend this lotion. Of all the lotions I’ve tried to heal my hands, this is my favorite one!

For more reviews on beauty products please visit my beauty blog here.

This book goes more into Hunter and Sky. It revels more about Cal and Selene as well. Morgan has a hard time through out the book as far as figuring out who she is, what she is and who she believes. You cant help but scream at the book because she does make some stupid choices when the answer is right there, in front of her. She’s obviously too caught up in Cal that she doesnt chose to see them.

She finally confronts Bree and it doesnt turn out for the better, sadly. There isnt much going on with the coven, they have one circle the entire book and that’s about it. I found it funny how this book was timed around Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving just passed. I think I started reading these books around the right time lol.

The ending will leave you angry, anxious, nervous and eager to read the next book! Of all the books in the series so far, this has got to be my favorite one.

You dont know what’s happening with Cal or Selene or Hunter… you dont know who’s lying and who’s telling the truth and you dont know what Morgan will do next. Or who she’ll believe or who she’ll listen to!

I have to admit, Selene freaked me out in this book. She was way too pushy and sketchy. Cal was acting a bit sketchy in this one as well, half way through the book you couldnt help but just turn Team Hunter from how odd they were acting.

Maybe I wont review the books, maybe I’ll just write down how I feel about them. It seems much easier and I dont have to spoil anything lol.

*if you’re interested in more book reviews, check out me & my sister in laws book review blog here.

Sweep: Book of Shadows
By: Cate Tiernan

Book of Shadows is the first book in the Sweep series. I came across this book a few months ago at Barns & Nobles but I was on my way out so I didnt really get to scroll through and I had forgotten about it until I was going through the pictures on my phone. I looked it up on Amazon and read a few reviews, all of which were good. So I picked it up (along with The Siren by Kiera Cass and The Wonderful Welcome to Oz).

The book is about a girl named Morgan, her best friend Bree and the new guy, Cal. Cal invites everyone to a party which turns out to be some Wicca type of party out in the middle of nowhere. A few people leave and a few people stay, including Morgan and Bree.

The beginning of the book gave me a Twilight-Edward-and-Bella feel to it, just the way she described Cal, but that quickly faded once it got more into the Wicca aspects of it. Morgan, for some reason has this intense need and feeling to keep reading and learning more about Wicca, something she cant really describe since her family is raised either Catholic or Christian (sorry I dont remember!). Where are Bree, is just doing it to impress Cal.

I could easily relate to Morgan while reading this book, raised a Catholic and recently telling my mom I was Pagan… well my mom reacted the same way Morgan’s mom did when she found her Wicca books. Also that strange need to just learn more about it, was something we had in common. The best friend deal hit a spot as well that week.

I would strongly suggest this book, it can be very addicting and it includes history and facts about a religion that I think is commonly misunderstood.

I’m usually hesitant to try new browsers, I just hate downloading and installing things, especially things I’ve never heard of. But its Google how harmful could it be?

The download time was quick and so was the installation time. The browser so far has been running nice and smooth. My only problem with it is its appearance. As you can see, its not really… pretty. And there’s nothing above the tabs as with Firefox there’s the google toolbar, and there’s the file, edit, etc at the top that I’m so use to. Overall, I’m please with this new browser. I’ll be back in a few weeks to update with a better review once I get more use to it.

Anyone else heard of/use this browser?

Nail polish has always been one of those childhood things for me, when I was younger my mom would always paint my nails. And the one thing I hate the most about nail polish is that it takes forever to dry! I also hated how every time I took a bubble bath my nail polish would chip (I have a really weird childhood OCD to go with that lol). So I kinda just never painted my nails growing up. Lately, I’ve been really into nail polish. I think I have a addiction for colors, seriously.

You guys know how much I love ELF, and of course they offer a wide selection of nail polish colors for just $1. Its kinda hard not to go nuts over that. I had my eye on this color for awhile but it was sold out so when it was finally in stock, I decided to pick one up (or two… or three, I dont remember lol).

I usually use China Glaze to paint my toe nails and China Glaze takes awhile to dry, so I use the OPI quick dry spray. I did one coat of the ELF nail polish and noticed up pigmented it was but decided to do another coat just to see if it would improve the color so I waited a few seconds and I was about to mist on the OPI quick dry spray when I noticed… the ELF nail polish had already completely dried. I was completely shocked! So I went ahead and put on another coat and it didnt change the color, it kept it pretty much the same and within the first coat it was already true to the bottle. I was just curious haha. The second coat also dried quickly. I’ve had it on my toes for 3 days now and it’s still shiny and hasnt chipped yet!

Blush in the bottle is a little darker than the picture they provide on the site. It looks like a peachy brown pearl color. But on your nails its a peachy pinky gold color that has a nice pearl to it. I wanna say its MAC’s pigment in Melon but in nail polish form (I totally just swatched the pigment on my toe to make sure haha), then again it could be the lighting in my room.

I’m extremely impressed with this product! Now only if they offered even more colors…

SWATCHES! WiTH MY TOES!
Just a warning in case you dont like toes!

These were taken at night without flash, the second picture is a better swatch than the first.