Crest 3D White Professional Effects Whitestrips

I received an entire kit of Crest 3D Whitestrips FREE from Influenster (thanks Influenster), unexpectedly might I add. Giving it a try and I have to say it's kind of a weird experience. 

Basically, you peel the strip from its liner, put it on your teeth, lower strip first (don't ask me why this is important), then upper strip, wear for the time frame given and remove. 

Now.... the time you wear it for depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Five minutes is basically if you're using it daily or your teeth just need a quick sparkle. You wear them for thirty minutes if you're trying to get some professional looking whitening. For two hours of wear, you get professional, baby fresh white teeth. That's not what it says, but that's what I interpret it to mean.... 

Anyway, haven't tried them long enough to know whether they work great, but I do have two minor complaints. I know most people don't see those back teeth, but if my teeth are going to be pearly white, I want them ALL to be pearly white. The strips do not reach all the way to the back so you end up with four-eight teeth (upper and lower) that get no whitening. The other thing is, they leave somewhat of a residue on your teeth. It doesn't last long but it's still annoying to have a cleaning product leave a residue on your teeth. I mean, it's your mouth. You feel it.... Other than that, I would say it's a decent product if you have the time to put them on, leave them and then take them off. I personally need some intense whitening and leaving them on for more than 5 minutes a day is just not going to happen...

To see more check out Crest as well as Influenster!

And remember....in the words of Crest, "If You're Not Whitening, You're Yellowing."

Disclaimer: I received this sample from Influenster. I'm not affiliated with Crest nor do I work for Influenster. I'm also not getting paid for this.

Not exactly like riding a bicycle....

Whoever thought that the phrase "like riding a bicycle" applied to..... everything, was completely insane. If you haven't done something in a while, it's really not that easy to get back into it. Take cooking for example. If you haven't gone extravagant in a while, it's not happening so easily the first time. Then again, I could just be a horrible cook and I don't actually know it.

Due to lots of stress, lack of propane to cook with and overall laziness on my part, I haven't made a "real" meal in a while, if that's how you'd like to phrase it. We have a meat, generally a vegetable and a starch every night. Whether they came in the form of a frozen dinner or a Hamburger Helper dinner, or was actually home cooked, well, we won't go there. The natives eat every night, that's enough for me. Since I finally got a gas bottle filled, I decided to get off my ass and cook a "real" meal like I used to. I also decided I wanted to try more new recipes so that I could add some new stuff to our usual menu. This go round would include Texas Roadhouse Rolls which, yep, are the home version of Texas Roadhouse's yeast rolls. If you've ever eaten there, OMG, they are scrumptious! I have a feeling they either have GREAT pastry chefs all over the world that work in these places, or a mass box of frozen rolls that they just pop in the oven and call it a day. I vote for the latter.

Anyway, my meal was to consist of garlic fried chicken bites, homemade mashed potatoes and gravy (let's face it, instant just don't taste the same), whole kernel corn and these fabulous Texas Roadhouse Rolls. Well, because I'm an idiot and failed to thoroughly go over the instructions first, I was in the kitchen for almost 4 hours slaving away to get the rolls right and the chicken done and the potatoes done. Notice how I left out the corn. Yea, after all this, I decided that corn really wasn't essential so I didn't even bother to open the can!

The chicken was ok. It was about what I usually expect. You cube chicken, dip it in egg then into a flour and garlic powder and fry it up! This doesn't take long which would sound amazing but because the chicken cooks quick, you constantly have to be near the pan. You can't exactly do too much with it cooking unless you have a deep fryer. We have a gas stove, obviously, so the temp isn't really regulated. I always make homemade mashed potatoes. I positively HATE instant! Let me just say, once you've got something down and to a "science," don't fuck with it! Just don't! I always cube the potatoes. Well I was trying to take the easy way out so I hooked up one of my new fancy KitchenAid attachments and went to work slicing the potatoes. Big mistake. Sure, they cooked, they were done, but I'm guessing because of the way they were cut, they held water. The potatoes were mushy and watered down. Blegh. My gravy was fantastic though. It too was homemade. The reason I was in the kitchen so long, ready to burn shit down was those damn rolls.

Let's start from the beginning....

I've only ever made any kind of dough homemade, ONE time and that was pie crust. It took it a while to firm up and was highly difficult to work with since it was 100 degrees in my house and the crust kept melting but I made it work! Anyway, this recipes calls for you to mix the yeast, sugar and water til all dry ingredients are dissolved. Check. Then you add in eggs, SCALDED and cooled to lukewarm milk, and..... more sugar I believe. I'm not looking at the recipe people. Oh, and butter, also cooled to lukewarm. Once again, because I didn't read the instructions properly the day before, I had to melt butter and scald the milk. Both containers were set gently in ice baths to cool faster. Maybe that was the problem. Either way, all items are now added to the wonderful KitchenAid where I (I mean, the mixer) used the trusty dough hook to knead the crap out of that dough for about 4 minutes. Well then you chunk it in a greased bowl and you lightly grease the top. I understand the greased bowl but why is there a grease layer on top (more like oil, but you know what I mean!)? First off, that dough was STICKY! Seriously sticky! Notice in the picture how there's quite a lot left in the bowl. Is this supposed to happen?

Then it's supposed to rise, on it's own, with no help from anything but the air temp! Yea, it was slightly cold in my house. This is what it looked like after being in the bowl on it's own for about an hour. No rising. This is what it looked like when I put it in the bowl!

Sorry folks, no picture after it rose. It took forever, but I googled an idea for making it rise faster and was told to heat a bowl of warm water in the microwave to boiling, then quickly remove and stick bowled dough in and heat would help without causing issues. This did work! After rising, you're supposed to roll it out on a flat floured surface with a rolling pin. My counter nor my rolling pin care too much for flour. It just kept wiping off! Well I finally got it rolled out, cut into rectangles and GUESS WHAT? You have to let them rise AGAIN! What's with all the damn rising! Pressed for time I popped them in the oven once they were ALMOST double their size. Perhaps a little more rising would have resulted in fluffier rolls but I was told they were good so either I have an entire family of liars of they were actually decent. They were tasty, just a little dry. Practice makes perfect right. These will  be tried again, I'm just hoping I can split the recipe in half. It's supposed to make 24 rolls. Um, there's only 4 of us.... Don't need that much!

The Vow - Movie

So I was scrolling through posts and came across the one where I made a list of movies I wanted to see. I realize that I've only seen ONE movie off that entire list! That's truly sad. Anyway! The one I saw was The Vow. I give it credit. It was a great love story. It originally made me think of 50 First Dates when I saw the story line. Girl gets in an accident, can't remember anything, falls in love, lives happily ever after. This definitely isn't the same story though. Throughout this movie you see a lot of love between the two main characters that you can't help but wish you had. I know I'd kill for a man to love me enough to do everything he could to make me love him again. I can barely get a man to show me affection after he has me, much less do everything over again to make me feel that way again. It really is a great movie.
On another note, I will be seeing more of the movies on my list now. Given that most of them are now on DVD, I can just rent them! so ha!
I do have three more to add that look funny. I saw previews for them when we went to the movies to see two movies this past week!

Those movies are:
Hotel Transylvania
FrankenWeenie
The Perks of Being a Wallflower (the one I wanna see most)

A Stolen Life: A Memoir - Book

So I recently read A Stolen Life: A Memoir, by Jaycee Dugard. For those of you that might not know who that is, she was the young girl, kidnapped from near her home when she was 11 years old and was "found" eighteen years later. I'm by no means an expert writer, but I have to say that if you didn't know this was written by someone with no more than a fourth grade education, you'd choose to describe it as tacky, unprofessional and written poorly. The book made me want to put it down and keep reading all at the same time. I felt like I was reading a child's journal but then I would get wrapped up in what she was writing and I couldn't put it down. This poor girl went through so much more than the news and internet portrayed. I would recommend this book, however, I would also warn them to take into consideration who is writing it. This girl was kept prisoner for eighteen years by a pedophile and his wife who thought her husband did no wrong. It makes you want to scream, get sick and ask what's wrong with people in the world. How did people not know what was going on? How did the law, the parole officers, and people they ran across not know who she was or that something was wrong? Read it!

The Hunger Games Trilogy - Books (obviously)

So I kept hearing hype about the The Hunger Games movie. Well I made the mistake of watching Twilight before I read the book. I chose not to make that mistake again because those movies did NOT do the books justice. I bought The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins via Kindle (which is a LOT cheaper than purchasing the individual books) and I sat down and began reading. Because I don’t have as much time to sit down and read like I used to AND this was three books, it did take me a while but I finally finished a week or so ago. There was also a point in there, during the third book, that I put it down for a few weeks because it got really boring and predictable.

Let’s start with the actual first book, The Hunger Games. This book was pretty amazing. It was thought provoking, a fresh idea spun off from many of those future ideas that the world will either end or be run by some crazy person wanting to off everyone. You see it enough that you’d think this is the same, but once you start reading, you realize it’s not quite the same time. It is kind of… terrifying to see that the ruler likes to send children in to battle and watch them slaughter each other, but let’s face it; in the world we live in, this happens and the author decided to be brave and take a chance. She made it work and it’s a pretty damn good book if I do say so myself. I also bet you didn’t know the story is based loosely off the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.

Catching Fire was…. Ok. It could have been better. It’s not like we didn’t see a lot of it coming. We knew the ruler was going to pull something crazy out of his ass to get back at Katniss for “defying” him in front of the entire “colony.” I call it a colony because the way they describe the districts, I feel it must be in the shape of a bee hive with each level being a district. Remember the Hive in Resident Evil? Yea, it kind of reminds me of that. I suppose we didn’t see an actual Hunger Games of all the previous winners coming, but Snow had to do something extraordinary to get the peoples’ attention. I’m not so sure we were supposed to see them being taken out and to District 13. I know I didn’t see that coming but I guess with all the talk of District 13, we should have known… I mean, there’s always a secret underground city right?

Mockingjay got boring to say the least. We knew they’re plan was to overthrow Snow. We knew the city would be booby trapped. We knew Coin wanted to be leader. Blah blah blah. I figured they’d end up back in a society like we have now. It kind of ended that way except everyone back to their districts. I still say it was built like a beehive even though it’s supposed to be the form "US". I was slightly happy to read the Epilogue and see that Katniss and Peeta stayed together and had kids knowing they wouldn’t be thrown into battle against one another.

I honestly believe that Suzanne Collins planned out all three books before she began writing. Or she had this story in her head that managed to come out so long it had to be broken up. I haven’t Googled her or anything to see what she says about the books, but if you think about all the stuff written in book 1, that occurs or happens in book 3, it’s like she was writing to lead us up to what happened in book 3. Then again, maybe after the first book, she just decided to continue it in book 3, I don't know!

A Hopeful Heart - Book

My Aunt let me borrow a book titled A Hopeful Heart by Kim Vogel Sawyer. It was pretty good as far as romance novels go. I guess you'd classify it as a romance novel. In this novel, several young women travel from the city to Kansas to a school for ranchers, in which they're supposed to learn how to become ranchers as well as the wife of a rancher and will then be married off to men in the area. It's not as barbaric as it sounds, I promise. It teaches women as well as men the value of each other and the way of life the Bible teaches us to live. It was an amazing book to say the least! When I first read the description, I was like "this sounds like some 1920's bull." However, after getting started and realizing that the woman who owned the school wanted the women to learn to be independent. Each woman had a reason for being there, whether it was because they were trying to escape an arranged marriage or because she was no longer rich and so a rich man wouldn't accept her without a dowry. You know how it was back in the day. It's still like that in a lot of places. A rich man/woman won't marry someone of the opposite sex unless they're rich as well. Anyway, the women do learn a lot and while most romance novels end on a happy note, so does this one. I won't tell you what happens though. You'll have to read it for yourself!

Courageous - Book

So a while back, I decided I was going to do a media blog. Bust since I don't really review enough movies, books or music to actually HAVE a blog, I decided to just add the original posts into my personal blog. Believe me, I see enough movies and read TONS of books. I just don't get into writing about them as much as I should. I mean, I'm always recommending great movies and books to friends, I just don't do it on paper (or on the computer).

Anyway! My "original" first book recommendation HAS to be Courageous by Randy Alcorn, Alex Kendrick, and Stephen Kendrick. This was a movie before it was a book by the way. This is an amazing and enlightening book! I haven't watched the movie yet but I will stand by the book. It's mostly aimed at fathers, and roles they should take in their children's lives. Four men's lives are changed through the course of this book and in the end they all come out better men. They learn to be better fathers, husbands, friends and police officers through the Lord. Now, in reality, this doesn't always happen, but for those that REALLY want to be better role models, they could take away something from this book. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. PS. If you ever read or watched Fireproof, the same guys get credit for that project and if you LOVED Fireproof, you’ll love Courageous.