A life-saver! Somehow some bubble-gum got into our dryer machine. I expect it was in one my trouser pockets but I'm blaming it on my daughter (haha).. unfortunately the inside drum of the dryer was completely smeared with a green plasticy substance (gum after been through a full drying cycle) and was not coming off easily using regular round the house cleaning products. I googled for a solution and saw a posting suggesting a product called 'Goo Gone' and the name instantly made sense to me. I rushed out to Harris Teeter (local grocery store) and luckily found that they carried Magic Goo Gone GG89ST.
It smells of orange, and I found it funny because now-a-days everything has an orange scent as opposed to the traditional citrus/lemon kind. I guess orange is the new scent of choice. Anyways, applying it to the drum and within 5 minutes of wiping it off the 'goo' sure enough did come off. It's also been amazing to get adhesive label stickers off of products and Ive heard it has a million other uses. Buy this and keep it around, a product like this is something you never anticipate using but constantly end up relying on.

Magic Eraser. I thought everyone used these but I've run into a couple people lately that haven't. So. I'm going to sing my praises of this product so everyone (well, at least everyone that reads this) knows about it. Magic Eraser is nothing short of magic in my household. Crayons are the enemy and Magic Eraser is my knight in shining armor. My walls, dressers, headboard, cabinets, floors, doors, doorjams, toys, etc. get written on by my children on a pretty consistent basis. Yes, I know an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure but how can I refuse my two year old crayons for goodness sakes? Anyway, the Magic Eraser looks like a sponge but has some sort of magical chemical or something that magically erases the crayon off of most surfaces. The only places I have found that it does not do well on is wood that has not been painted or stained, textured plastic (it works but you have to scrub hard) and of course places like my fabric covered foot stool. Um, yeah. But what I discovered is it can clean many more things including pencil marks, grime around door handles from use, dirt stuck in scratches in my linoleum and I think my sister even uses one version of it for her tub. The bad thing is it dissolves quickly. I keep at least a box of 4 at a time around the house and even last night it took almost 2 of them to completely remove all the red crayon down my hallway. But whatever the price or no matter how many I have to use, saving my hallways from 10 coats of paint and furniture that looks like Harold and the Purple Crayon had created them, it's worth it. Find a four pack for about $3 at any local drugstore or grocery store.

Our vacuum cleaner finally gave up this weekend after 8 years and on my parents recommendation, went out to buy the Dyson which was on sale at Target. And from what I hear, that doesn't happen often. So we got the basic model DC07. Things I like about it. The first thing I noticed that I really liked was the cord length. Way longer than our older model and I only had to plug it in one place in the center of our house and it could reach everywhere. Not saying TOO much for our little ranch but it made me happy. I also liked the fact that I could actually see all the crud I was vacuumming up. Felt like I was actually working. The vacuum was so light it felt like it could hardly be doing anything. So obviously a good thing is it seems to vacuum well. My rug in my living room looked extremely clean after I was done. And emptying the canister could not have been easier. No more nasty bags to change. But I do have a few complaints. The vacuum is pretty tall. We store the vacuum in our hall closet and while it of course fits, it's just not going to be as easy to manuever in the closet when it's in there like the other one. I think that sounds weird, but you'd just have to see our closet. I also didn't like that when you vacuumed, it left 4 smaller "stripes" within the larger "stripe" so instead of pretty vacuum lines, you have like a ton of vacuum lines in your carpet after you are done. Maybe there is some setting I can change on it so it doesn't do that, I don't know. And my last complaint is it is really difficult to configure the thing to use the attachments. My parents were at my house last night and they said it is different than their older Dyson and much harder to do than theirs. Which I thought was odd since my is newer. And it is definitely not as easy as my old one. The up side to it is the wand and hose for the attachment is long and I don't have to drag the vacuum along to use it. So all in all, I think we made the right decision and I'll definitely be recommending it.