Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works

Graters.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

I'd seen the Ped Egg on TV and thought it looked like a handy device. It's a small kind of grater that is used to get rid of callouses on feet. I go barefoot when I'm inside, and probably spend more time out of shoes than in. My feet get pretty rough.

Some of you readers may want to exit the scene right now.

I never bought the Ped Egg off of the TV, though, because I've grown to despise the over-exuberant actors such commercials employ (particularly the ad for selling old gold jewelry for cash). I had seen the device once in Target back in May, near the checkout counter, but never purchased it. I just wasn't sure. It looked a little medieval.

In talking with a friend, however, the Ped Egg rose to the midst of the conversation with no segue.

"I love my Ped Egg," she said, swearing by its effectiveness. I was immediately convinced. We then made several jokes about saving the dead skin in a ziploc and leaving instructions for the kids, during the reading of her last will, on adding water to reconstitute her.

"Where did you get the Ped Egg?" I asked.

She told me Target; I had looked for it since that moment in May, but not seen it at the counter, nor in the aisle with fingernail clippers or pumice stones.

"It's over in the kitchen wares department," she said.

I found that hard to believe. Merely having the word "egg" in it should not qualify it as a kitchen ware. But tonight, as I went to buy Tilex for the shower and a box of baking soda for my fridge, I decided to check for myself.

Lo and behold, the Ped Egg was, indeed, in the kitchen wares deparment at Target.

That's kind of gross, I thought, picking up a Ped Egg from the rack and adding it to my basket. Directly across the aisle from the Ped Egg were the cheese graters.

Someone should be fired for this.

Labels: friends, my life, product placement

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Lovin' this purse.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

I recently purchased a purse with the goal of having a bag that wasn't huge but could hold the small hard disk camcorder and other items I'd be wanting to tote around with me while traveling.

I'm a purse freak.

I have many, and though I like most of them, I'd never quite hit upon that "perfect" purse. Some have a strap or a clasp that I don't like, or maybe not enough (or too many) pockets. Or, they aren't sturdy enough or easy to care for... things that I know my guy readers are extremely interested in knowing.

But lo and behold, ladies, I have found the perfect purse. It is Sherpani, and it is the Milli SS 08 model. Perfect size, clasp (strong magnet, all hidden beneath the tough fabric), great color and style, perfect adjustable strap...

Love it.

They had a lot of other great bags, too, that looked well-made, easy to care for, and definitely for women without being all frou-frou and annoying and full of dorky bows and ribbons.

Note: This post was pre-written and published as scheduled. Read more about this here.

Labels: fashion, product placement, women

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The joy of the garden.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

My "German sister" Sabine sent me a package, and tucked inside, along with other surprises, were three Ferrero Rocher candies. They weren't the regular ones, however, but were called "Garden", and were coconut, pistachio, and hazelnut flavors with white chocolate and a lovely decorative element on top.

Oh. My.

All. Gone.

Really. Really. Good.

Labels: chocolate, food, friends, product placement

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Not a road, but an avenue.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 4 comments link this post

I get a magazine called Women's Health. My nephew was selling magazines. I thought such a magazine would apply, since I am a woman, and I would like to take care of my health.

This magazine is nothing more than a kind of Maxim for women with a few articles about vitamins and health tips thrown in for good measure. It is even worse than Glamour or Cosmopolitan -- it sells itself as a magazine about health when it really is about selling women some kind of lie.

Beauty tips? Filled with lists of products that are overpriced from every company imaginable, leaving me to wonder at the kind of payola going on in the background for these companies to get their $45 makeup brush featured in a magazine that purports to be about keeping women healthy and fit.

Every other issue seems to be filled with toy-related articles (toys not found in children's toy stores, let's say), whether rating or joking or suggesting them. The latest issue featured some lame article on when guys reveal secrets and what to do if your guy reveals he has herpes. The answer? Something really great like "make sure the relationship is series before sleeping with him."

Every photo of every woman is of a woman tight, taut, muscled, lean, toned, and airbrushed to beauty perfection. I commented on a friend's blog about how I enjoyed Richard Simmons' exercise tapes because he used real people of all sizes and abilities; instead of discouraging, the entire experience was encouraging. He wasn't selling perfection.

This magazine does nothing to make me feel healthy. It makes me feel pretty awful about myself, mainly. It makes me feel fat and tally up the zits on my skin. It stirs me into a panic about what I am and am not eating, and what kind of exercise I'd better try. It tells me to focus on myself and myself only. It tells me it's healthy to forever continue to improve myself to a point of obsession -- there'd be no more magazine if the need for continuous improving stopped! -- subtly suggesting I'm not OK as I am, helping me feel guilty about things out of my control by coming up with new lists and exercises and faddish over-priced exercise gear that I need to pursue for that month in order to be that mythical active, "healthy" woman.

As I flipped through the latest issue, the ad you see at the top of this post caught my eye. What a horrible message!

The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but the road to selfishness and endless pursuit of meaningless and impossible and empty physical perfection isn't a road at all. It's an avenue. Fifth Avenue.

As long as someone can get me to focus entirely upon myself, I will be entirely unhappy and always a consumer ever needing to buy something to fix all these problems I see. Happiness doesn't sell beauty products the way unhappiness does. Focusing on others doesn't sell much product, either. The push to get us to think only of ourselves has a strong consumerist, market-driven benefit behind it. If there's room to improve, there's someone to sell it to me.

Women's Health cares little about women or about their health. It does care, however, about Fifth Avenue, and any avenue available to get me to buy something out of dissatisfaction with who I am.

Labels: health, media, product placement, women

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Liz Lovely is indeed, lovely.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

I blogged about Liz Lovely cookies before.

Mmmm.

A blogger can never have too many cookie posts on your blog.

::Note to self: add that to a list of "blogging tips" to add to the "blogging tips" glut that are found on the web on blogs.::

Those cookies were tasty. I remember an email exchange (after I blogged the cookies and left feedback on their web site) with someone at that company got a little weird -- I had them pegged as the wrong kind of vegans, or something like that (still have the emails) -- I still would pick up a pack or two of the cookies when I was able.

::You know, that was a strange email experience. I just looked at them now. Why do I still have emails from 10/13/2005?::

Why, oh why, can't I stay on track?!

OK. So in my inbox arrives a fabulously pink-themed email from Liz Lovely's marketing department, announcing some tasty new treats for the middle of February.

::I'd refer to the email as Valentine-themed, but I've already begun blogging preparations for that horrible holiday, so I'm going to identify with the color instead of the holiday.::

I do love pink. I do.

I'm a sucker for unusual packaging, and looking at the Liz Lovely web site and seeing the pink bakery box -- what could be better than a pink bakery box? -- I'm thinking sugary thoughts. And mint!

Too bad about the South Beach Diet that I'm on.

And that it's all for celebration of the Un-named Holiday.

Ah well. They're a good company that makes darn fine food that isn't filled with weird ingredients and they don't have a back room where they whip disobedient employees, so go check them out. Throw them some business.

::I should get paid to write these random product reviews. I do it so well.::

Labels: food, product placement

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Viral beach activity.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

A friend emailed me last night informing me that she and her husband were going to start the South Beach Diet today. She wondered if I had any tips. She knew, of course, that I was following the diet. My activities had spread, like a virus, to my friends!

Best virus ever.

50,000 words later, I apologized for my excess and told her, in summation, that the first two weeks were really tough. "Stick with it and get through them and you're set," I essentially said.

The first two weeks for me, sugar addict, were brutal. Grogginess, mind fogginess, lethargy, insane cravings, lunacy, moods -- sugar is a hard addiction to break. By the end of the second week, though, I was doing much better.

We started the South Beach Diet at this house right after Thanksgiving, for various health reasons. It is always better if everyone in the house participates. I didn't weigh myself; I'd lost a bunch of weight a few years ago, put a little of it back on, and didn't want to depress myself with the number on the scale. As much as I love numbers for quantification and comparison purposes, I just didn't want to know.

I wish I'd at least weighed myself back in November. The South Beach Diet works. Seriously. I have lost some decent weight. I've got a long way to go, yes, but I can't believe how much my food tastes and cravings have changed, and how I've learned to want and appreciate healthy, tasteful food.

Me, junk food queen.

I heartily recommend South Beach if you want to lose weight, or if you just want to start eating better. I'm serious. It's good for your heart, diabetes, cholesterol, and blood pressure. And the food is darn good. So good, in fact, that I learned I can even cook where before I was all about opening a box and turning on the oven.

Get past the first two weeks, and you're set. Do it.

Labels: food, product placement

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Christmas shopping.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 6 comments link this post

I know there's this "buy nothing / make your own stuff for Christmas" push out there. Since that would rather make life difficult for me and other artists who make our own stuff in hopes of selling it to you in order to stay alive, I would also add a third option to that list: buy from an artist this Christmas.

Sure, it might be more expensive than WalMart. And no, I'm not busy making homemade LCD flat screen TVs. But I do have some stuff...

So. Where to do this?

Well, all over. There are artists all over the internet. For example...

My friend Sarah is a fabulous artist. I really mean that. Her work blows me away with various forms of envy and jealousy. You can visit her web site or go to her Etsy shop and get some really great stuff. For you dog or greyhound lovers, you've found the perfect gifts.

Etsy, in general, is a good place to buy from. You should make it your first stop when deciding to go shopping online. Everything is made by artisans and hobbyists and you're helping support people in the most direct and true way possible: paying them for things they've made with their own hands.

To me, that's a more reasonable answer to the "buy nothing" concept since, if everyone bought nothing, it would sort of mean disaster on great levels. The idea is to kill wanton and excessive consumerism, but since things made by artists tend to be more expensive than the cheap "made in China" products, most people don't go and buy 20 of the same item. One will do. And buyers tend to treasure that one item more than something mass-produced and common, which is easily seen as disposable and replaceable. I buy from artists. I have purchased off of Etsy or in my local craft store. I still have those items.

And of course, uh, you can shop here at Lone Prairie. I don't have too much pride to mention that.

UPDATE: Find out about making your own stuff for Christmas.

(If you know of a great artist, leave a link in the comments section. Spread the love.)

Labels: art, christmas, product placement, promotion

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Don't waste your time on Vinyl.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

No, I'm not talking about records vs. CDs.

Bath and Body Works is a store that makes me sneeze just thinking about it. It's a stinky store. I go there, of course, because I love perfume. I love perfume in single doses, a limitation that, unfortunately, Bath and Body Works does not follow. I always regret going there because it never fails to give me a headache before leaving.

Stinky store. Some scents ought not be mingled.

A few months ago I purchased a bottle of Deborah Lippmann's Overpriced Nail Polish "Vinyl", Exclusive at Bath and Body Works. (That's not exactly the name it goes by in the store, mind you.) I chose the pale color aptly named "This Must Be Love" which, as such things often are, it wasn't.

"I love this non-color," I said to myself in the store, and I bought it.

As with all cosmetic purchases, I mistakenly think I'll use it and become fabulous and lovely once I'm wearing it.

"This Must Be Love" is really "This Must Be Hate." Because it is.

"You'll love this polish!" the clerk said. "It's so tough -- never chips on me!" She then sprayed my bag with some horrid floral scent and left me gasping for oxygen and brain cells.

Who wears this nail polish and never has it chip? I'll tell you: people who do very little with their hands. "This Must Be Love" certainly didn't hold up today at work as I scrubbed, sanded, cut and fought with the laser machine and some toxic plastic material that stunk up the whole store and made Dennis tell me that I was "stinking up the whole store."

"You're stinking up the whole store."

"Thanks. It's every girl's dream to hear that," I said.

Stinking up the whole store, like Bath and Body Works, except they have yet to offer a line of "fresh cut PVC" spray.

I wish I could be more eloquent in describing this hideous nail polish that cost $8 for .2 fl. oz.(!!!) but I really can't. It just sucked. And I still can't figure out what color it is.

Labels: fashion, my life, product placement

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Product Placement: Glad Corn is much better than it looks.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Every year at Easter, my sister brings up the fruit and snacks my nephew's 4-H club sells. I always get two bags of Glad Corn.

It looks like horse feed.

It tastes splendiferous.

I heartily recommend Glad Corn. It comes from Minnesota and, now that I've taken time to look at their web site, I have made note of where I can get it instead of waiting for two bags each year.

Apparently, I can get it in nearby Langdon! And of course, Grand Forks, my second home.

This stuff is fantabulous.

Crunchy, corny, and with an ingredients list that doesn't say anything scary unpronounceable (corn, soy oil, salt). You have to love a snack food that was created in an explosive accident in the kitchen of a farmhouse while attempting to tweak an ethanol recipe. (All true. Go read the web site.)

Go get some Glad Corn. You can order it in bulk. And really, why wouldn't you want to?

It's tasty.

Labels: food, product placement

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Product Placement: Topline Bison Jerky is good!

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

::I was going to have this really cool melodramatic Marty Stuart music in the background, but you know how great Windows Movie Maker is. It crashed at all EIGHTEEN ATTEMPTS AT ADDING MUSIC. Anyway, the below commercial is supposed to be funny in that I made it in about ten minutes, not counting the three weeks of working with SHODDY SOFTWARE. I'm pretty sure the video won't be around long...so enjoy it while it's here.::

Topline Bison Jerky is good. It really is pretty darn good stuff. And I generally don't like dried meat products. But this is good.

Mike and Colleen's brand new web site is up and running: www.toplinebison.net

You know Mike, infamous Mike?

Go buy some of his jerky. It's the real deal, just like it says on his web site. Do it now. Tell your friends. I'm serious.

Labels: food, friends, north dakota, product placement, video

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Product Placement: Lose weight eating organic foods.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 2 comments link this post

Before you go off on me because of the title, hear me out. Just sit down you conservative ankle-biters.

::Did I really just write that?::

I'm not vegetarian, and certainly not vegan. I like to eat meat and drink milk and have scrambled eggs on occasion. However, I've no qualms with people eating vegan (notice I did not say eating a vegan - Woody Harrelson is still safe).

At a recent trip to the health and natural foods store in Grand Forks, I discovered a new cookie that I hadn't seen there before.

::What is it about health food stores? There's always some kind of light jazz or Indian chanting music playing in the background. What, Chopin would defile the chemical-free aura? Would the sounds of Beethoven soil the 7th Generation toilet paper? And the store is always staffed with either a severly aged braless bun-wearing hippy throwback woman, a gay man, or a thin young woman with the look of perpetual "whaat?" about her face.

"Do you carry food-grade hydrogen peroxide?" I asked her.
"Whaaat?"
"Never mind."

I always feel guilty if I'm caught wearing, I don't know, mascara or a brightly dyed shirt or something equally artificial because I feel like I need to dress like the gay guy in all dull green and brown hemp clothing.

But you can't beat the food and products in the store.::

Being the chocolate maniac that I am, I do not check out to see if there are any new tofu products, new stevia options, or soy milk. Nor do I check out the new supplements. I head straight to the bakery section and see what's new in the cookie department.

You gotta have priorities. I figure I'm already in the health food store.

A nicely wrapped set of two "Cowboy Cookies" caught my eye during my most recent excursion. Made by Liz Lovely (don't even start in on the name), these delicious cookies screamed to be tried out. You don't know how unnerving it is to have cookies screaming at you.

::And I wouldn't visit the Liz Lovely website if you're prone to getting angry at naturalist vegan folk who wear John Lennon glasses who have a detailed social mission for a cookie web site. Trust me on this. Just don't go there. Don't click around and look at photos.::

Totally vegan, the cookies use fair trade ingredients. And Vermont well water.

::Vermont. No surprise there.::

They looked completely tasty, and were tied with an attractive raffia string.

My theory on how vegan and organic foods can help you lose weight is very simple. They cost more. These two cookies cost me $3.25 and so I did not go home and snarf them down thoughtlessly.

These were $3.25 cookies.

I broke off a bit and ate it. Maybe a few hours later, I tried another bit. This progressed over two days until the two cookies were finally gone. I'm telling you, these were some darn fine cookies. If I were prone to swearing, I'd say damn. Crunchy, nutty, yummy.

Had I bought a package of cheap E.L. Fudge cookies from a regular grocery store, I would've hogged them down in no time flat, barely tasting them as crumbs flew out of my mouth.

Thusly, vegan and organic foods help you lose weight because you can't afford a lot of it and so you eat less.

Genius.

Now go get some Lovely cookies.

Labels: chocolate, food, product placement

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BLOGROLL

Graters.

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Lovin' this purse.

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The joy of the garden.

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Not a road, but an avenue.

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Liz Lovely is indeed, lovely.

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Viral beach activity.

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Christmas shopping.

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Don't waste your time on Vinyl.

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Product Placement: Glad Corn is much better than it looks.

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Product Placement: Topline Bison Jerky is good!

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Product Placement: Lose weight eating organic foods.

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