"It's gettin' hot in here, so take off..." ahem. Excuse me. I've spent the afternoon with my husband getting steamy on the dining room table.

It’s not what it sounds like. I got a new toy: a SteamMachine.

It’s for housework.

I love the holidays and all of the company that comes with them. I even like to cook. (and eat!) What I do not love, at all, is cleaning. Blech.

But, unfortunately, I do like to have a clean house. My children and their toys have other ideas.

That’s why I was super excited when HomeRight offered to let me try their SteamMachine .

The first thing I decided to try was our dining room table.

I clean this table every stinkin’ day, usually more than once, and the thing is still always a mess. Always.

It is a hand-me-down from my dad and step-mom, so it was not new when it joined our family 5 years ago and it takes daily abuse from three kiddos, so it doesn’t really owe us much.

Our table is tired, and it shows.

It’s kind of a Monet. “From far away it’s okay, but up close it’s a big old mess.” Name that movie. 

Poor guy (the table) had water marks, play dough, and remnants from old craft projects all over the place.

Check out those before photos. Super embarrassing. 

I made a video so you can see the SteamMachine in action.

 In the words of my husband, “Dude. That thing actually did a good job!”

Ta-da! The after photo:

 And in the spirit of holiday giving, HomeRight has offered to give a SteamMachine to one lucky Binkies and Briefcases reader. 

Just enter using the Rafflecopter below.

This post and giveaway are sponsored by HomeRight. This post contains affiliate links. This giveaway is for US residents age 18 and older. HomeRight is responsible for prize shipment. The winner will be notified by email and have 48 hours to respond. In the event the winner does not respond, another winner will be chosen.
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Yesterday I was gone all day. My grandfather and I drove to Maryland to support my mom as she gave the final defense of her dissertation at Loyola University.

SHE PASSED!

In January Dr. Teresa Wilkins, or, as I call her, mom, will be graduating with her phD.

I made a very special sign for the occasion. Defense! Defense!

Apparently family isn’t usually allowed into a defense, but the staff had some confusion about that and they let us into the room, so Poppop and I got to see her presentation.

It was much more casual than I imagined. For some reason I was picturing the panel of professors to be wearing their robes, hats, and gowns and my mom to be standing behind a podium sweating and answering rapid fire questions meant to trip her up.

That’s not how it happened at all.

It was very casual. A lot of people were wearing jeans. The student body was invited and I guess there were about 20 people in the room, which was a regular college classroom. My mom gave a PowerPoint presentation summarizing her findings and conclusion. The professors on the panel (I’m not sure that’s the right thing to call it) were very supportive. They did ask a few questions and encouraged her to add some notes to her final chapter for clarification.

Her dissertation was on measuring levels of spirituality in students at Messiah college through the course of their time in school. She proved (with math and stuff) that an Evangelical Christian school education can actually raise levels of spirituality and religiousness in young adults, although statistics usually say otherwise in this age group. This has practical implications in the field of counseling because it has already been proven that high levels of spirituality and religiousness can act as a shield against negative influences (eating disorders, bad relationships, etc.). -At least that’s what I took away from the presentation. 

Her presentation lasted 30 minutes, then there was about 30 minutes of questioning.

We all left the room for about 15 minutes while the panel/committee/ group of deciding professors/whatever they’re called deliberated whether or not she passed.

Then they came out and said, “Congratulations!” SHE PASSED! She just has to add a few notes to her final chapter.

 Then we all went to Applebee’s.

The good doctor should be graduating with her phD. in January.

Now that we are starting to settle in -and loving it!- hopefully I will be able to get back on track with this whole blogging thing. I miss you guys.

Truth be told, we got a new-to-us  (refurbished from eBay) computer a few weeks ago when our old laptop died and I am slow to adjust to the switch over to a Mac. I still have the kind of cell phone where you have to buy minutes from the drug store, so I guess you could say I take longer than most to adapt to technology. Ironic, for a blogger, I guess. Although it’s lovely, I still have no idea how to do anything on this MacBook Pro my husband surprised me with for my birthday. It’s bad, my slowness on this thing, I tell you. I can’t even figure out how to open my son’s online report card right now, let alone figure out how to upload all our camera and photo editing software. I’ll learn, I promise. But please bear with me in the meantime. 

Anyway, we LOVE our new house. We are tucked back just off a main road, but in the semi-country and our lot backs up to some farmland. This was the view from our bedroom window yesterday morning when we woke up. (Picture copied directly  from my husband’s Facebook page.)

It’s pretty amazing. I love it. However, being in the new house also comes with gigantic mortgage payments and property taxes and settlement costs all that not-so-fun stuff that means we are going to need to stretch our budget for a little while.

I’ve been really loving following along with Rebecca and her Finances on Friday series, sharing how she pinched pennies throughout the week.  (Side note: I am in serious hard core love with Rebecca’s blog. She was the very first blogger I started to follow years and years ago and I still check her blog every day to see if she has posted anything new.) I know some other bloggers do a similar post on Fridays too, so I thought I’d play along for a while.   

Here are a few things I’ve been doing to save and/or make money: 

-I made almost every meal at home. (We cheated when I got sick and Eddie picked up dinner. I also went out to lunch with Meredith, but it was legetimately for work, so I get to save my receipt and count it as a business expense.) 

-I have not gotten meat on the past 3 grocery shopping trips. We had meat (chicken, fish, ground beef, sausage) in the freezer, so I’ve been using that instead. 

-I did not buy much produce at the store. I went to our local orchard, which is closer to us than the grocery store anyway, and bought apple seconds and milk. I was going to make apple sauce, but the seconds were in such good shape that we’ve just been using them for eating. Meredith also brought us some Asian pears as a housewarming gift, which was very thoughtful. We have vegetables in the freezer. So, the only thing I bought at the grocery store was bananas, and a bunch of bananas only cost around $1. 

-Sadly, I stopped having our milk delivered. The orchard is now only little over a mile away and they sell local eggs, milk that does not contain growth hormones, and pastured beef. It’s cheaper than the other dairy we were using and there is no delivery fee, so it is no longer worth it for us to use a milk man. 🙁

-I applied for two paid writing opportunities, one through the blog and one in-print locally.     

-I’ve started taking the girls to the library more regularly while Nick is at school. Abby loves checking out books for herself (Would you believe I have never allowed that before because when Nick was younger he was too rough with them and they got destroyed) and the library has a bunch of puzzles that the girls like to do.  Don’t worry about Nick, he gets to check out books from the school library. 

-I bought bread flour. I have a vision that I am going to start making our bread. I have a rarely used bread machine and I also have a new wheat grinder from my mom. I haven’t crossed the wheat grinding bridge yet. I need to learn how to actually make halfway decent bread before I start grinding wheat too. Baby steps. I can’t jump into the deep end of Hippieville headfirst.

-Abby has been going to a free (yes FREE!) ballet class. It’s an awesome mission that was started by some young women in our area. They are only allowed to dance to Christian music and wear modest costumes for their performances. That’s more than okay by me.

-Nicholas will also start going to a karate class at our church that has a similar mission this coming week.

-When we DID get take-out, the kids all shared one meal. (The taco kit from Chipotle plus whatever I don’t eat from my burrito bowl is more than enough food for all of them. They’re still small. Don’t worry, they aren’t starving.)  

-I didn’t buy anything for the house. Not one thing. Not even though our guest bath and master bedroom currently have no curtains which makes certain situations ahem a little awkward.  We hung up curtains we already had in the kids’ bedrooms even though they don’t match the new decor at all. But my AMAZING blog friends sent us a housewarming card with a very generous Home Depot gift card inside of it, so the curtain situation will be cleared up very soon.   

-Instead of buying cereal and instant oatmeal at the store last week, I bought rolled oats from the dry goods section. I got a huge bag for less than $1. My plan was to make granola or, you know, regular old oatmeal for breakfasts. They wound up going into oatmeal cookies instead. Ooops. (I’m not sorry.)

-We have been using our steam mop to clean our floors. We’ve had it for years, but rarely used it. I’m loving it now. It cleans and sanitizes our floors and only uses water, so I don’t have the cost or the worry of using chemicals around the kids. 

-I only showered twice this week. Mostly because I was sick in bed, but it still counts as water conservation, right? 

-I did not buy sandwich bags, even though I am out of them. I sent lunches to school/work in reusable containers or wrapped in saran wrap. 

-I actually packed Eddie’s lunch once. I don’t usually do this because he’s a big boy and he can do it himself and I have three other children to take care of, but he leaves super early in the morning and often gets home late, so he doesn’t usually do it out of fear of waking the kids banging around in the kitchen. Or just because he forgets. And that leads to a lot of unhealthy and expensive lunches at the drive thru. So maybe (MAYBE) I’ll start packing it more. I said maybe. 

-Since I was sick, Eddie stayed home on Wednesday and worked a little bit from home, which saved us gas money. 

-When we couldn’t use our regular detergent in our new high efficiency washing machine, we used the other stuff we had on hand (OxyClean and Woolite) instead of buying more right away. I don’t make my own laundry detergent because, well, I don’t feel like it. 

Wow, that list is a lot longer than I expected it to be. Do you have any relatively painless ways to save money? My wallet and I could use a few more ideas. 

Yesterday was the National Night Out, sponsored by the book in which I am fortunate enough to have a chapter, I Just Want to Pee Alone.

I agreed to co-host an event in Lancaster, but only because Meredith made me. Even though hanging out at a bar on a Wednesday evening is not really my scene, I was glad to get the chance to see my bloggy BFF again.  We decided to hold our meet-up at the Applebee’s in Lancaster. 

Why Applebee’s? Because there are only so many options in Amish Country and we’ve seen Talladega Nights and we wanted our own opportunity  to get kicked out of an Applebee’s. 

 That picture only took like 5 tries on Meredith’s phone. You know you’re getting old when it starts being hard to take a selfie at arm’s length.

Although it was Ladies’ Night, we brought some special guys with us. Did you think I was kidding when I said I saved them from the dumpster?

I had a special game planned for George. (I had heart-shaped Post-It notes and a blindfold and everything.) And we had lots of prizes to give away.

 But…

Heather (left) and Gail (far right) were the only brave souls who decided to come. They had seen our event in the paper. Since it was just the four of us, we had more of a relaxed evening, just eating and talking (and the occasional photo op with Seinfeld stars). Meredith and I both ate giant burgers right in front of poor Heather, who is a vegan.

Heather is a mom of four and Gail is a mom of six! It was a lot of fun connecting with these ladies and there was a busload (literally, they were on a bus trip) of senior citizens who were highly amused by us posing with George.

You also know you are getting old when the senior bus trip finds you easy to relate to, but the teenage waitress does not understand why she is taking your picture with this half-naked middle-aged bald man. 

Even if our chapter was small (but mighty!), it was very cool to know that there were other women meeting at the same time all around the country because of our book.

In order for this post to make any sense, first I need to make sure you have all seen the new web-based show, “The Mommy Show,” in which Ilana from Mommy Shorts brings celebrities into her everyday life as a mom. (Unlike me, Ilana is cool enough to actually know real celebrities and invite them over to her house for craft time. And they show up.)  Each webisode is only about 5 minutes, so they are easy to watch and SO FUNNY. My favorite part so far was when Ilana timed how long it took Taye Diggs to get the childproof lock off her toilet.

Yeah, that’s Taye Diggs on her couch.

So when Ilana posed the question, “Which celebrity would you want to hang out with in your everyday life?” I knew my answer right away.

Easy. Kristen Bell.

She’s so down to earth and hilarious, but also really pretty with a great fashion sense. And she’s not afraid to share her emotional connection to the sloth.  She seems like a girlfriend’s girlfriend.

 Anyway, yesterday something awesome happened and I wish that my BFF (in my head) Kristen was here to share it with me.

I had my first dumpster diving experience!

It was a little awkward, which is why I wish Kristen had been there. I’m sure she would have seen the sheer awesomeness of the situation when I saw these sitting outside of the dumpster next to our apartment building.

As it was, I was just minding my own business taking my dog out to poop and then I saw them. I ran back into the house to get the iPad and take this picture and put it on facebook. Then I ran back outside two minutes later and took the portraits. 

By the third time I had left my four-year-old in charge of my one-year-old (the one-year-old was napping, and I was just outside our front door,  for the record) for a few minutes so that I could run out  and focus on pictures of a more than half-naked George Cotasnza and his friend Kramer, I was starting to feel a little silly.

But I knew if Kristen was here, she would have told me to go for it.

She would have been the perfect dumpster diving wing(wo)man.

I can just see her yelling across the parking lot at the lady in her fuzzy slippers who kept looking at me askew, “WHAT? Like you don’t think these pictures are amazing? Back off. We got here first!”

And then she would loud-whisper encouraging thing to me as she stood in my doorway, half watching me and half keeping an ear out for my kids.

Then after Eddie got home from work, we would dress up in classy Audrey Hepburn inspired threads and hit the town, carrying a very large portrait of George Costanza and we would take pictures of ourselves all over town with him, like our very own perverted version of Flat Stanley.

 And Kristen would bring the George picture with her the next time she was interviewed by Ellen and she would tell the story of dumpster diving with her favorite BFF.

But since, in reality, I have never met Kristen Bell, now all I have are very large and slightly water damaged pictures of George and Kramer and the memory of what could have been.

::loud whispers:: Call me Kristen.

Which celebrity is your BFF in your own head? Or do you know any celebrities in real life?