So, did you know that having a kid can result in lots of laundry?

And worse, did you realize that almost all of that laundry will have stains?

And the worst news yet, did you realize I’m not talking about the kid’s clothes, but instead, I’m talking about yours?

Yeah, between spit up, breastmilk, and various…other…bodily fluids, my clothes have been stained for the last year. I rarely make it through a week without having AT LEAST 4-5 stains that originate somehow with the kid.

But, luckily my mom introduced me to this stuff right before Jackson got here.

OxiClean Laundry Stain Remover Spray

My mom lives on a working horse ranch. There are lots of stains on lots of laundry, so when she said this stuff worked, I gave her the benefit of the doubt.  And sure enough, this has yet to fail me in the baby stain department. I’ve even used it for non-baby stains (hello, oily vinagrette I totally dropped all over my cleavage), and had success.

And I’m not one of those “spray it on the second it appears” people. I tend to be more along the lines of a “shoot, this shirt has been in the hamper for a week, and I totally forgot about that stain” type.  Even when I’ve missed the stain the first time round, sending the shirt (it’s usually a shirt) through the wash and the dryer, I’ve been able to go back and remove stains that would normally be “set”. It may take a time or two, but this stuff has saved every article of clothing I own.

Moms, and moms to be (and those who, like me, invariably drop food all over your clothes), if you don’t already have a stain treatment, and you want some of your clothes to be stain free–you should check this stuff out. I got mine at Walgreen’s, but I think you can find it at major retailers like Target and Walmart, or at some grocery stores. Trust me, it’s cheaper than replacing all your clothes.

If you are a pumping mom, and you have to deal with cleaning those f*#$ing pump parts, then you need these.

Dr. Brown’s Natural Flow Cleaning Brush

Before I found these, the connector piece of my pump (a Medela double electric) was impossible to clean. I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E.

Then I found these, and all was right with the world.

They’re annoying, but make life so much easier (and cleaner).

One of the things we’re working on in this whole “make our lives better” thing is getting our finances in order.

As we’re starting to look at where the balance between money and happiness ends up, we’re trying to get our financial lives sorted out. Money may not buy happiness, but having debt doesn’t help, so we’re working on a trifecta of slashing our debt (which we’ve been working on for a few years), getting a handle on where we spend our money, and figuring out where we can cut/budget better.

A key tool that we’ve been using for those last two has been Mint.com. I know, I know, we’re probably the last people on the planet to get on board with Mint, but what can I say? I’m not always an early adopter.

On the off chance you haven’t heard of Mint, it’s an online money management tool that connects with your different financial accounts (bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, etc.) to put everything in one place. From there, you can categorize your spending, set budgets, make plans for different financial goals, and more.

We originally started looking into Mint when we were doing our taxes and realized we needed an easier way to look through old expenses to determine what were business expenses for N.C. We’ve tried things like Quickbooks, and Quicken, and well, maybe I’m financially stupid, but I could never figure them out. Mint, though, has been really easy to figure out. You can do things like set a specific store to automatically go into a business category (the art store will never be a non-business expense, for example).

My big hangup with Mint in the beginning was..well, connecting all my financial information online into one location. Which, when I stop and think about it is silly in one way because that stuff is all online ANYWAY. But my fears were 1)what is a 3rd party going to do with this? 2)what if it’s a scam and 3)what if it gets hacked?

Well, so far, 1 & 2 have been proven to be fine. I’m not getting more spam, or more offers since joining Mint. It’s been endorsed by what feels like a million and three places (Money, NYT, PCMag to name a few) and it has all the secure web stuff (VeriSign, Truste, McAffee). Now, #3 is still a concern, but honestly? That’s a concern with any of my online financial institutions, so I’ve moved on.

Here are my favorite parts of Mint:

1. The ability to look at ALL my finances in one place (credit cards, checking, savings, etc)
2. The ability to categorize all expenses easily, and then the easy visuals to show where  you’re spending your money. Most things are already categorized, and I’d say for us that probably about 85% of them are categorized correctly. The ones that aren’t tend to be when we’ve bought something in a big shopping center that has multiple merchants that use the same location–but it takes almost no time to correct the categories.
3. The notifications. You can set up email notifications for things like low balance, big purchases (you set the $ threshold), bank fees, etc. It wasn’t until we started getting the Mint notifications that I even knew that my bank was charging me some of the monthly fees they are.
4. The goals feature is pretty cool, and a useful tool especially if you’re not sure where to start with things like getting out of debt, or buying a house, or going on a vacation.

All in all, even though I’m a late adopter, I’m a big fan of this new tool. I’m hopeful it will make tax time easier, but even if not, it’s given us such a clearer picture of where and how we spend our money that I can’t see doing without it.

Jackson has been teething, pretty much non-stop, for about 2 months. He’s got 8 teeth, and is cutting at least one more at the moment. It’s pretty much never ending.

One day I was looking for a way to help alleviate his pain–he wouldn’t use the teething rings we had, he’s never cared for chewing on a cold washcloth, and he was just gnawing on EVERYTHING. Then I spied this guy:

Munchkin Fresh Food Feeder
(but there are a lot of brands who make mesh feeders)

I had a couple of these laying around, that we used maybe once for their intended purpose of food. But you know what fits great in them? Ice cubes from my freezer. You know what my kid loves chewing on? These things full of ice cubes. He can shove them in weird areas of his mouth, suck on them, and jam them into the tooth that’s coming up.

They make a god-awful mess–water drips everywhere, and Jackson likes to trail it all over the house–BUT when he’s on his like 63rd consecutive day of teething and this can offer a little relief for us both? Godsend.

When I first started breastfeeding, I was lucky to not have to deal with sore nipples very much. Granted, that’s because I had to use a nipple shield, but still. So I rarely had to break out any kind of lanolin–I just didn’t need it. I did have a tube of the purple kind though, that I used once or twice. Everyone had raved about it, and so that’s what I got. And I was…underwhelmed. That stuff was so sticky and hard to put on, it usually just ended up hurting me more to use it than to not. So, I left it alone and went about my business.

And then I went back to work.

And I started pumping.

And that hurt like holy hell. I just…even thinking about it makes me wince. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep it up because DAMN pumping hurt more than nursing ever did for me.

But then, I read somewhere that you should use lanolin when pumping (don’t ask me why I didn’t think of this before, I don’t know.  Blame it on new mommy brain). So I started trying to use that purple tubed stuff again, and this time, more than being underwhelmed, I was frustrated. Because it STILL hurt to put on, was too sticky, and made things way more difficult than they needed to be.

(wow, I just cannot write a short post, even for a review. Sorry guys).

Anyway, finally, I found a sample of this stuff at home (one of those little foil packets that has been stuck to a postcard or something in a gift bag). And lo, the heavens opened up and smiled on my poor ravaged boobs.

Medela Tender Care Lanolin

Now, the Medela Lanolin is different, because it’s not just pure lanolin. It’s got a couple of other ingredients that makes it go on SO much easier than the other stuff. Rather than being super thick and sticky, it’s more like it glides on. It doesn’t take manhandling to get it usable. It doesn’t take the force of a thousand elephants to get it out of the tube. I can use just a little bit because it goes on so smooth. I’ve also used it occasionally when nursing (hello teeth, nice to meet you!), and again, it was much easier to use than the other brand I had that was so highly recommended.

This stuff is what kept me pumping and now, 7 months later, I’m still using it at least twice a day. On a few occasions I’ve forgotten it at home, and it’s a reminder of how much it helps. I’ll be glad when I’m able to put it away when I stop pumping, but until then, it will be my daily companion.

I’ve talked before at RambleRamble about how feeding my kid is very non-intuitive to me. I find the process of figuring out what to feed him to be frustrating and rarely something that I just…get.

But occasionally, I do have my moments of genius. Two of them, in fact.

Jackson is at a stage where he rarely wants us to feed him. He’ll tolerate spoon feeding at home, in the high chair, but only if we hurry. Out and about though? Not hardly. So when we were planning for our vacation, I had to try and figure out in advance how we were going to feed him for 7 days.  I knew we could give him some stuff when we went out, but since I didn’t know where we’d always end up for mealtimes, I didn’t want to take the chance that the kid would spend the entire trip surviving on bread crusts and a rogue green bean here and there.

Enter these guys.

Ella’s Kitchen Organic Baby Food

Plum Organics Baby

These pouches were our saving grace during our vacation. Both Plum Organics Baby (stage 2) and Ella’s Kitchen (Stage 1) have baby food pouches made with organic veggies and fruits–and nothing else (some organic lemon juice for preservation maybe).  Each brand has a handful of flavor combos, all of which Jackson has loved. But the organics aside, these pouches have another, even more awesome bonus.

My kid can feed himself with them.

Ok, so it may look crazy, but you give Jackson these pouches and he sucks on the nozzle (like a straw). He loves them, since he gets to feel like he’s doing it himself. I love them because 1) they’re fruits and veggies, 2)he doesn’t make an enormous mess of himself, and 3)they’re super easy to cart around.

Yes, they’re a little on the expensive side, so we don’t use these for everyday feedings. But for a vacation? Or a long day-trip? These guys are brilliant. I may not always be totally “on it” about how to feed my kid, but these pouches gave me an easy way to feel on top of my game. For once.

P.S. Just as a reminder for everyone, all the reviews on this site are things I’ve bought, I use and that I love. These companies don’t know about me, and none of these products were sent to me for review, I just think you all should know about them. If that ever changes, you’ll be the first to know!

I’m not really a lip gloss kind of girl. I’ve always found it to be too sticky, and too shiny and I feel like it makes me look ridiculous (maybe I’m just old and untrendy?). I tend to be more about ChapStick anyway, but even when I’m doing my makeup, lip gloss isn’t my thing.

Then, a few years ago, I got this stuff in my stocking for Christmas:

C.O. Bigelow Mentha Lip Shine

This stuff is awesome. It’s sheer, with a hint of mint, and just the faintest shine. I don’t think it has that same goopy sticky feel that a lot of lip glosses have (the flyaway hair stuck to your mouth effect), and is perfect for over a matte lip color or on its own. The one I have is peppermint, but they also have spearmint, cinnamint, and non-mint versions.

As a nice little bonus, maybe because of the mint oil, when I use it alone I end up with a hint of color–I like to think it may be the “tingly” part of the peppermint oil stimulating my lips just a bit, but frankly it’s probably just the glossiness enhancing my natural lip color. The packaging claims the mint is for “fresh breath”, but I’m not sure that’s really accurate-I doubt other people would think I have minty fresh breath because of this stuff. It does smell nice and minty to me though.

Since I first got this stuff a few years ago (exact time unknown), I’ve replaced it 3 or 4 times. Luckily, it’s available a few different places–I generally get mine at Bath and Body Works, but in a quick search I saw that you can find it directly from Amazon or from  C.O.Bigelow online or in person if you live in NYC, Chicago, Boston, Columbus, OH, or Paramus, NJ.

This is one of those little products that is simple and unobtrusive, but helps me feel a little more feminine and put together–even when I’m not!

Today’s Essentials are some tips that can help you when you’re booking a trip. These are some of my favorite ways to save money or get the best bang for my buck.

1. Priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price

This is my go-to way to book hotel rooms. Which is funny because you’d think that being the control freak I am that this process would drive me nuts. But give me the opportunity to stay in a $300 hotel for half that price and I lose a little bit of my obsessive control tendencies.

For anyone who doesn’t know how this works, Priceline allows you to bid on the elements of a trip–hotel, airfare, and rental car. For hotel, you choose your city, your dates, the areas within the city that you would be ok with and the star rating for the hotel you want to bid on. Then you put in your bid. What you don’t get to do is choose the actual hotel. You take a bit of a gamble that you’ll end up with something you’re ok with–you have to give your credit card information up front, and if your bid is accepted by a hotel, the room is prepaid and THEN you find out the hotel.

We’ve used this probably 6 or 7 times over the last few years (we’ve only done airfare and rental car once–the airfare is just a little too much of a leap of faith for me, but if you’re open to not knowing your exact itinerary until after purchase, you can save a significant amount of money). With only one exception, we’ve always ended up in AWESOME hotels–gorgeous, lush, fantastic hotels that are way out of our price range normally. The one exception was a down and dirty trip we needed to make on the super super cheap. That trip we did the 3 star option and ended up with a budget hotel, but at like, $20 a night. Worth it. We’ve used it for trips to Chicago, San Diego (when we lived in New York), San Diego (when we wanted a quick “get-away” trip in town), Santa Cruz, and now San Francisco.

My biggest tip if you use this option–in the “regular” part of Priceline, look at the hotels in the area you’re requesting at the star level you will request before you purchase and see what hotels pop up. This will let you two things–1) if you’d be ok with what might come up and 2) a price point to base your bidding off of. So, if you know you’re going to request the Financial District of San Francisco at 4 stars, and you see that the hotels are ranging from $250-$450 a night, you can set your bid based off that. I generally look at the lowest priced hotel, see if I’d be ok with that one, and then bid 1/2 the price of that hotel. Most times it’s worked for me, though sometimes it will kick back until I get to closer to 40% off.

2. Tripkick.com

This is a new thing I found this past week. Tripkick lets you look into what the actual rooms at a hotel may be like. So you can look on there and see that the rooms ending in 17-47 on floors 1-4 at your hotel are really noisy, but they are more roomy, and have been renovated, but the rooms ending in 03-23 on floors 5-9 are quiet and have great bathrooms. There’s some other general information about the hotel, but the real key is the info about rooms and floors. It’s not a huge database (and mostly seems to be slightly more upscale hotels at this point), but the information is a handy little cheat sheet if you find yourself staying at a nice hotel and really want the inside info on what you might be getting, or want to know what rooms/floors to request.

3. Farecast.com

Farecast (which looks like it has been absorbed into Bing) is a handy little thing if you’re looking to book a flight for the future. You can input your travel criteria (from where to where, when, etc) and Farecast will do it’s magic and let you know whether fares are going to going to go up (buy now), go down (wait) or stay the same (you’ve got some time to decide). Apparently they’re accurate about 75% of the time, which is enough to be handy if you know you’re going to take a trip in the future and don’t know whether to buck up and pay now or wait until a little closer to the trip.

As always, more lists can be found over at Anna’s at abdpbt!

Once upon a time, I worked on a book called How Not to Look Fat (which looks like it’s gone out of print). It was a cute little book, with quick little tips for dressing your body to look it’s slimmest and trimmest. Not an earth-shattering concept, to be sure, but I loved how easy the author made it seem.

One of the tips was to always, always buy lace topped underwear. The lace can’t dig into you, so no horrid muffin top, and it’s one of those things that can be sexy while being comfortable.

How I wish I had remembered this sooner. Because as I may have mentioned once or twice, finding underwear that is comfortable and flattering post c-section has been a horror for me. Everything I came across was either too tight around the scar, looked horrible, or was so big that I couldn’t wear with my regular (non-hip-hugger) jeans. I got to where I hated my underwear even more than my bra. And that’s saying something!

Finally, one day I ended up in Victoria’s Secret with a gift card and a mission to find some underwear that didn’t make me cringe every time I put them on. I had big requirements: they had to be cotton, comfortable, not too low cut, not too high cut, no thick elastic around my scar and if they were cute, so much the better. I didn’t hold out much hope…until I saw these:

The Victoria’s Secret Lace-waist Hiphuggers

These are my new favorite underwear. I’m slowly in the process of replacing all my old cotton Hanes with these guys. Cotton/lycra/spandex blend means they’re comfy. Full coverage in the rear, which, yup that’s a win. Pretty colors (most of them, you know some of VS’s stuff can veer toward the tacky at times). Somewhat low-cut, so they can’t be seen peeking out the waistband of my jeans, but not so low that I feel obscene.

But honestly, the real winner here is the lace top. The lace top that doesn’t agitate my c-section scar. The lace top that rids me of any muffin top. The lace top that lays flat and flatters even my lumpy post-pregnancy body. The lace top that makes me feel a little sexy (and made my husband send a wolf-whistle my way!), even though I’m really just wearing cotton underwear.

It’s rare that I will tout anything from Victoria’s Secret, but these are now a daily staple. Because your underwear should be cute, comfortable, and easy to wear–and I finally found a pair that hit all three marks.

What is this place?

Well, I’ve wanted a place to share essential stuff with the world for a while, but my main blog just doesn’t feel like the right place. I always feel really awkward when I post about products or services there, because it just doesn’t really resonate with the rest of the voice over there.

So I thought I’d create a space JUST for that stuff. And here you are!

However, it wouldn’t be me if I didn’t ramble on a bit more before we get to the good stuff, so here’s a little bit more:

1. Anything listed here, for the time being, is stuff I use for real in my everyday life. It’s stuff I love, or that makes my life easier, or that is just quirky and fun. I’m not going to go through online shops and just post stuff I like or that I think is pretty–there are a ton of other blogs that do that better than I ever could. This is all based on real usage.
2. For the time being, this is all stuff I currently own, have bought with my own money, started using of my own free will, or downloaded because I thought it was neato.
3. That being said, I’m not opposed to product pitches. BUT, if PR people start sending me stuff to review (HA!), I will only post things once I’ve used them, if I find them awesome and feel you NEED to know about them. I have no plans for this to become a PR driven site. It’s called The Essentials, not The Stuff That Other People Are Sending Me So I’m Obliged To Post About Them.
4. There will be mom stuff, kid stuff, house stuff, financial stuff, clothes stuff, and more. It’s basically whatever I feel like whenever I come across a product, service, or tip that I think you guys might like to know about.

Also, you can subscribe to the RSS feed (that big orange button up there on the right)–the feed is separate from RambleRamble’s so you’ll only see The Essentials if you want to. You can also follow me on Twitter if you’re not already @rambleginger.

Sound good?

I’ve got a couple of fun ideas building, but let’s wait until I’ve got things in a rhythm before we break those out. But keep your eyes open for a few new announcements in the coming weeks as I get this bad boy off the ground.

Ready? Here we go.

P.S. If you see anything wonky, please let me know. I do all the coding myself and this one gave me quite a headache for some reason, so if I missed anything I REALLY want to know!

UPDATE: Comments appear to be fixed now, but please let me know if anyone is still having problems!