This morning I noticed while in the shower that my bottle of shampoo is just about empty. There is probably just enough for one more use, then I am out. That means a special trip to the grocery store or Wal-Mart, because I don’t usually go there until Saturdays, but I can’t wait until this coming Saturday to wash my hair.

I’ve been using Pantene shampoo for about two years. It is available just about everywhere and is mid priced. I usually watch for it to go on sale and then stock up on two or three bottles, but I have not seen it on sale for a long time now. I think when I go to the store, I will take a look at other brands of shampoos and see if there is something comparably priced that I can try.

My sister always says that you should switch off to different shampoos every once in a while because it healthier for your hair. When you switch, the new shampoo strips off any buildup from the old shampoo and gives your hair a rest from those chemicals. I have been seeing a lot of ads for Garnier shampoo in the magazines – you know, the kind in a green bottle? If Garnier is the same price as Pantene, I think I will buy that brand and give it a try.

One of my favorite Christmas presents that I received last Christmas was a nice set of wine glasses, along with a few bottles of my favorite wine. The problem is that I don’t have a stemware rack to display these wonderful looking glasses. The bottles of wine have long ago been emptied but of course I still have the glasses. I was told about a good web site that has a great selection of wine glass racks.  This website of glassstemwareracks.com guarantees the lowest prices possible for glass racks, they constantly check the Internet to make sure that they do have the lowest prices, if you find any that are lower they urge you to contact one of their customer service representatives, which I think is pretty cool.

So over the weekend I spent some time looking to see what they had to offer.  My goodness they have some very nice looking racks for sale and their prices are very low, I’m glad to see. I’m really interested in their hanging glass rack that I’ve placed a photo of below; it’s made of hammered steel and gives me a place to store the wine bottles and a few other items as well. Right now it is on sale for just a little over $200 and I’m glad to see that they accept PayPal.

Hammered Steel Hanging Wine & Stemware Racks

The plan is to spend the night at my parents place on Christmas Eve as so many friends and relatives aren’t available to come to the actual family Christmas dinner as I don’t want to miss seeing any one of them, if at all possible. People have picked up and moved all over the country, it would take a miracle to get everyone together all at the same place at the same time. So we do what we can, when we can and at least some are making an effort by at least stopping by on Christmas Eve.

Glazed Burnished Cherry Door Sample

All of the people who all went in together and purchased the rta kitchen cabinets (Ready To Assemble) for our mom are all going to be there on Christmas day and we are all so excited and can’t wait to see her face when she opens up the envelope that contains the gift certificate that I made up on my laptop to present to her that morning. Mom has been so unhappy with her kitchen for so long and we figured this would be a good place as any to start on the remodeling job that she is so deserving of. Lord knows she has spent and will continue to spend a ton of time in there for each and every one of us for all of the family dinners and festivities that demands a good cook, like her.

I love that you can call and give a legitimate complaint to a company about a problem with a product, by using their toll-free 800 numbers that are usually somewhere on the product. You need to provide them with the bar code info and the expiration date and any other pertinent information that they need off of the product’s packaging, along with the store that you purchased it at. I have had a few problems lately with a few food items and have called and they have been very nice, the best customer service to date I have to say.  Each time I have been sent a nice letter of apology and a few coupons for future purchases, which is always a nice touch. I’m a nice consumer but tough on customer service, I deserve the best of service for the prices that I have to pay for things.

The only ones that I have had problems with were products from Food Lion that are the Food Lion products. The two times that I called they wanted all of the required information only to be told that if I wasn’t happy with the product to take it back to the store for a refund, even though I didn’t have the receipt any more! Right, good luck getting a refund without a receipt these days, especially from a grocery store.

These past couple of months I have been making a huge effort to eat healthier as much as I am able to. I am now drinking more water and I have cut back on the amount of sugar that I put in my iced tea and Kool Aid that I am constantly sipping on morning, noon and night. You see last time I was at my doctor’s office, she ran the usual battery of blood tests that are done at least once a year and she is concerned with my cholesterol and triglycerides numbers. They have set me up to meet with their Dietician on the 29th and I’m very concerned with what type of foods I will be needing to start eating and worse yet, what type of foods I will not be able to continue eating.

I have never, ever had to watch anything that I eat. I have always been tall and slender and have had to try to gain a few pounds my entire life, to be told that I can’t eat it will be a totally new world for me, sigh……

So at the grocery store last week I spent more time that usual looking at various foods that I know for a fact are going to be good for me to eat, besides the obvious of eating more fruits and vegetables. I’m not really a huge snacker but I do enjoy chocolate and other sweets on occasion and then my favorites are the salty snacks like chips and pretzels and the like that the grocery stores have allowed an attire aisle dedicated to this types of snacking products.

I spotted the new Kellogg’s Special K Cracker Chips that I’ve seen commercials for lately, so I bought the Sour Cream and Onion ones along with a box of the Cheddar Cheese flavored ones. They are “baked snacks” which of course are much better than the traditional fried chips that we all grew up on and have had a love affair with all these years. These chips are pretty bland tasting, but all in all not too bad, knowing that they are better for me helps them taste a wee bit better, but Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion are still my all time favorite, naturally delicious as they are known for saying about their chips.

Special K Sour Cream Onion Cracker Chips