Happy Raturday!

 

I hope you all had a nice Christmas.

"Candy Cane Elf passes out candy canes."

"Christmas experiments. What could go wrong?"

"Christmas elf hopes you have a wonderful New Year"

"We were just waiting for Christmas dinner" 

*All pictures this week are courtesy of www.martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life 284

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 24 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 24 years here in a weekly blog post.

It's been getting colder at night so the police and people from the homeless shelter have been around early in the morning trying to round up the homeless people and take them to the shelters. There were 2 people living on the left hand side here where the officer if walking. There's a electrical box near the sidewalk where they had made a bed and cover. The electrical boxes have some heat coming from them and that's why the homeless make their shelters around them this time of year. The police were over there asking them if they wanted to go to the shelter but they didn't go. They just packed up their stuff and walked away. The shelter van came by soon after and the police and van moved down the street.

The police and shelter van had moved down the street a little ways to where more homeless were by another electrical box. There were at least 6 people down by this one and several of the people got in the shelter van to go to the homeless shelter. 

A lot of the homeless that get in the van I see show back up around here within a week or two. They aren't allowed to do drugs at the shelter and most of the homeless that have been around here for years I see at drug dealer's apartment all the time. I think that's why most of them stay around here because they have access to drugs at drug dealer's apartment and they also feed them sometimes. 

----

I walked outside and saw two female crackheads on the ground hitting each other Wednesday night.

I felt like screaming, "Let's get ready to Rumble!"  lol  

But they got up and walked away.

At the same time that was happening there were street 3 fire engines, an ambulance and I saw a red truck I am assuming is the fire chief's truck. One of the fire trucks had the ladder on it. Haven't seen that in a while. I didn't spot any fires so I don't know what kind of call would call for 3 fire engines.

 ----

    

My daughter was sitting outside at 1am Thursday morning when she got a short video of police at drug dealer's apartment. No idea why they were there. 

The high this week was 59F/15C

The low this week was 32F/0 C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Merry Christmas

 

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received:

PCA Skin Moisturizer. 

Macy's perfume samples. 

The moisturizer and perfume samples were both great. I don't think I'll be running out of perfume any time soon. 

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Review: Walmart Beauty Box - December

 

The Walmart Beauty box is a subscription box that comes out 4 times a year. You sign up for it and it comes automatically every 3 months. They did increase the price of the box a little bit. So instead of $5 it's just a couple of dollars more. These boxes are free and you just pay for tax for shipping, mine came to $7.48.

What was in the box?

What was in the box?

Liquid I.V. liquid hydration powder mix. 

Sukin Signature Hydrating Mist Toner. 

Garnier Retinol Smoothing Serum Cream. 

Hempz Original Herbal Body Moisturizer. 

Lottie London Retractable brow pencil. 

NYX Lip Lingerie Gloss. 

Soap & Glory Hand Food. 

I didn't care for the drink mix. It didn't taste too good. 

I did like all the makeup products and the mist toner because it smells good. And I can always use another lip gloss and moisturizer. The lotion smells good too and I can always use that. So there was just one thing in this months box that I didn't care for and that was the drink mix. 

Not bad for the price I paid. 

Did you get this box?

Favorite Picture of the Week

So now that I have to take pictures with my phone since my camera is old and isn't compatible with laptops with windows 10. It's only compatible with windows 7, 8 and XP. So I took a few pictures and they are alright. They'll do for now but it looks like I'll have to get a camera as well. Falcor was just sniffing everything.

So this week I'm sharing pictures I took with my phone. We had some fixing of the cracks in the road this week so they put out signs on the street to let us know there was something going on.

Falcor spotted another dog.

But quickly lost interest. 

So I found that I can take pictures during the day as long as there's adequate sunlight. Pictures at night or inside my apartment are very dark and come out bad. So hopefully things only happen during the day.  lol 

I can also edit pictures on my laptop once I have them downloaded. So that's something.

Laptops, Bookmarks and Blogs

 

So last Monday my laptop decided to stop working. I tried everything and it won't even restart now, I just get a blue screen. My daughter had an old laptop that my grandson stepped on a few years ago and so it now has a black spot on the screen but at least it works for now. My daughter said she's going to buy me a new laptop when she gets her taxes back. What a sweet kid she is. 

So I've been working on getting some of my bookmarks back like all of the blogs I visit. So I went through all of the comments for the past month and bookmarked all the blogs that left a comment in the past month. I think I have everyone bookmarked again but if I haven't commented on your blog in the past week let me know in the comments so I can visit and bookmark you. 

Happy Raturday!

 

"Just shopping for that Christmas ham and some yogies"

*All pictures this week courtesy of www.martymusehouse.com*

Apartment Life #283

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 24 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 24 years here in a weekly blog post.

This tweaker lives in my neighborhood somewhere and sometimes she just starts yelling for no apparent reason like this night. She was out of video shot so I didn't try to make it less fuzzy. This is just an audio of what she was doing.

---

I heard the police helicopter flying overhead and looked out my bedroom window and spotted a police car around the corner. The police stopped that guy in the hoodie and talked to him for a few minutes and then let him go. Then the police got out of the car and walked into the apartments they were near and talked to a few people over there. 

Then they got back in their car and left.

----

On Thursday morning at 1:30am I was woke up from two gunshots and they sounded close by. I got up after laying in bed for a minute to make sure that I wasn't gonna get a stray bullet through the wall or my bedroom window and checked on my daughter. Then I looked outside but didn't see anyone around and no one was screaming so I figured that some idiot shot off a couple into the sky. The police didn't show up so I guess no one called. I didn't see any bullet holes the next morning so I assume I was right about someone shooting into the air.

----

The high this week was 60F/15C

The low this week was 32F/0 C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Favorite Song of the Week

So here's another one of my favorite songs. 

Tarot- Pyre of Gods

The lead singer, Marko Hietala was also the bassist and singer from Nightwish for 20 years but retired not long ago. I was sad to see he and Tarja Turunen both leave Nightwish since I really enjoyed the band more when they were a part of it. But this song really shows off Marko's vocals. 

Have you listened to Tarot or Nightwish?

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received : 

A sample of Dolce & Gabana men's cologne. 

A sample of Strivectin night moisturizing cream. 

And I won a book from a Goodreads giveaway.

The men's cologne smells good. 

The moisturizer is good, it works well.

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Review: Daily Goodie Box- December

 

The Daily Goodie Box has been around since about July of 2016. I signed up for an account right after I heard about them. They are 100% free, you don't even have to pay for shipping. And for a free box it's a nice sampler box of products.

What was in the box?

Rise Brewing Co - Oat Milk Vanilla Latte -This tasted so good. I would definitely try this again.

Green Goo - Pain Relief - I've been using this and while I don't think it really helps with the pain much, my knee maybe feels better from all the rubbing I've been doing rubbing it in.

COBA - Coffee Chocolate Bar- Whew! This is strong. It's bitter and so strong. I couldn't eat but a small bite but my daughter ate the rest of the bar before work and she said she didn't feel any jolt of energy from it. 

Toast! - Before You Drink Gummies- I've had these before and I didn't like them. They have an off putting smell to them and my daughter said she didn't feel any benefits from taking them before having a few drinks. 

Little Secrets Chocolate - Peppermint Pieces In Dark Chocolate- This was definitely the best thing in the box this month. These are so good and I would definitely buy these again.

Bushwick Kitchen - Meyer Lemon Honey Sticks- So I didn't get the lemon flavored honey sticks. I got the habanero spicy honey sticks and let me tell you, they are hot! Very spicy. I don't know what I'll do with these.

Nailak - Cuticle & Nail Oil- I don't do much with my nails because they are so brittle. But I've used this for a few days and have been pushing my cuticles back with a metal cuticle tool I have and they do looks better. 

Kirks Soap - 3in1 Head to Toe Nourishing Cleanser- For a cleanser it's not bad. it works well and doesn't have a bad smell so I liked it alright.

All they ask you to do is try the products and leave reviews for the products you got in order to be eligible for more Free Goodie Boxes. As you guys already know, I'm a fan of all these types of boxes. I love all the different subscription boxes and it's really nice to be able to try new to me products for free. This is a great box to try for.

Oh and one more thing, if you visit their FB Page, they give away Goodie Boxes to people who interact with their posts. So if you've tried before and weren't able to get a Goodie Box, there's even more ways to get one now.

Daily Goodie Box. It's more than just Free Samples!

Have you signed up? Have you received one of these boxes?

I'm a fan of subscription boxes and love trying new products for free so this was a huge hit with me. New products+free box = Fabulous!

Disclosure: I was given and free box in exchange for a review but all opinions are my own.

*As you may have noticed I used pictures from their websites instead of my own pictures this month. That's because my computer stopped working and I had already taken the pictures and uploaded them to the laptop. So I didn't have the pictures anymore and we had already eaten to used these products so I couldn't take new pictures.*

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

This past Thursday is got cold and dark outside and looked like it was going to rain. We did get some rain but only a little. It sprinkled for a few hours and I was able to get these pictures of the dark clouds as they passed overhead. 

The clouds were dark all day which was really nice. I love days like this. 

Happy Raturday!

 

*All pictures today are courtesy of www.martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #282

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 24 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 24 years here in a weekly blog post. 

On Sunday night the police helicopter was flying over my apartment building again and the police were once again at the end of my street. It only lasted about an hour and I didn't see the police arrest anyone.

----

Monday morning at 1 am I was woken up by these two screaming at each other right across the street from my bedroom window. They are in that building's laundry room. If you've been reading my blog for a while you might remember Mikey and Jessica from other posts. I made it 6 videos because they stopped arguing and so I stopped recording plus longer videos take hours to upload to Youtube for some reason. Turn the volume up.

As you can tell Jessica gives as good as she gets. She calls him names and he leaves and then comes back for more. Remember that this was happening at 1:30 am. These two don't live here, they are homeless and stay with some of the drug dealers in the area until they get kicked out and stay in the laundry room. They are both on drugs and stay up all night. Turn the volume up.

This video just shows both of them in the laundry room screaming at each other. If you have the volume turned up you can hear them.

She was trying to leave the laundry room and he was standing in front of her preventing her from leaving. They yelled at each other and then she started beating him about his head. Near the end of the video he leaves, she calls him a " Fat F*ck" and then tells him, He's gonna die. But after he walks away...she realizes she's locked in the laundry room and can't get out. There's a metal security door on there and he usually uses a screw driver to get out but he left and took it with him. It got and she spent about 30 minutes kicking the metal door, screaming for help, and trying to get the door open to no avail. 

In this blurry video I watched her trying to get the metal security door open. She even had a couple of people helping her. She kicked the door, someone handed her something and she used it to try and pry the door open. But it wouldn't open.

  

Here is the last part of my 6 part series of videos. She was kicking the door, banging on the door and had people helping her trying to get it open. Someone must have gotten tired of the noise at 2:30am and called the police because the police showed up. They had someone with a key come and open the door and they put her in handcuffs and led her around to the other side of the building so I didn't see what happened after that. But I did see her again the next day so either she got out fast or was never arrested.

I'm sorry about all the videos but the ordeal went on for almost 2 hours and I didn't want a 2 hour video. lol 

----

Last Sunday night...

Three tweakers walk away from drug dealer's apartment. The woman is crying, the two guys are arguing with her as they walk by my apartment door. They stop at the end of my walkway, being loud and then walk back down to drug dealer's apartment. 

As they walk by my door, I'm standing at my door because they are making a lot of noise. The girl is still crying and then the Mexican guy walks by next. He looks at me as he's walking by all crazy eyes and says, "F*ck you." to me. Then the white guys walks by and says, "I'm so sorry about that." 

They have now walked by my neighbors door twice who put the chairs and tables in front of her door a couple of weeks ago to make it harder for the tweakers to walk by. 

They stand down by drug dealer's apartment arguing and being loud so my neighbor comes out and starts yelling at them to leave or she's calling the cops. And then my brother calls me so I answer the phone while I stand at the door listening to the argument going on. She yells at them again to leave and then says to the white guy, "You don't catch your mail here, so you need to leave. 

He says, "I damn sure do." Her reply is, "The hell you do." 

And then drug dealer comes out to lend his voice to the argument. I step outside while on the phone with my brother and yell down to my neighbor if she is ok. Drug dealer can see I have my phone with me but he has no idea I'm on the phone with my brother and not calling the cops. He goes back inside and the tweakers leave.

---

The high this week was 70F/21C

The low this week was 32F/0 C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Favorite Song of the Week

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music so I'm hoping you like this band. I'm going to show you two different song because both are great. 

I love this live version of this song. They are a fun band. Have you ever listened to them before?

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received : 

Several perfume samples from Bloomingdale's. 

They all smell so good. 

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Book Review: Forever After by Ashley R. King

 

Book Description

On the Vampire Reality Show, Forever After, an immortal bachelor isn’t the only plot twist.

Autumn Reid is in a rut. At nearly thirty, she hasn’t ventured outside the small town of Covey Crossing. When she spots an ad for a new dating show, Forever After, she jumps at the chance for adventure. But this show has a paranormal surprise—a vampire bachelor.

With the winner receiving cash or immortality, it’s an enticing prize. But Autumn doesn’t expect to get that far, she just needs a change from her dull life. Falling for the hot vampire duke isn’t part of the plan.

Impoverished duke Oliver Gray desperately needs money to save his estate. When he’s offered the bachelor spot on Forever After, he has no choice but to accept. But there’s a catch—he must wear Victorian clothes and pretend he’d been hibernating for the last one hundred years.

Fine. He can don a top hat and fake clueless. But a feisty human with a smart mouth? That’s more than he bargained for, especially when something deep inside insists she’s his fated mate.

But Oliver and Autumn’s dreams of love and romance may be cut short when a killer takes out the contestants one-by-one. As the show’s finale nears, will they get their forever happily-ever-after?

My Review

Autumn feels like her life is going nowhere so she chooses to go on a vampire dating show to change things up a bit, never intending to win. But then she meets Oliver, the vampire and her mind slowly changes about him and about winning. 

Oliver doesn't want to do the dating show but he needs the money to keep from losing his home so he agrees to go along with the producers on how they want him to act and the show to progress. But the show is thrown for a loop when people start being murdered. 

So when vampires came out of the shadows and humans know they and some other paranormals exist, Oliver lost a lot of money because his stocks went down so now he needs to make money to keep his family home. A vampire dating show sounds like a great idea because there are some humans that want immortality or money and those are the choices for the winner of the show. 

The attraction between Autumn and Oliver wasn't instantaneous and I really liked that. It took some time for them to get to know each other and find that they liked one another. But I did think it was weird for the show to keep going forward when people kept turning up dead. 

The setting though was way too cute. There were bat messengers, hearse transport cars and bed coffins but it wasn't creepy at all. Finding out who the killer was and why was fun because I never saw it coming. This was such a fun vampire romance. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

Disclosure: I was given an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Amazon

Christmas Decorations and my Christmas Elf

 

This is my tree. 4 years ago I accidentally lost all of my ornaments, they mistakenly got thrown away the year before. I had posted what happened on FB and some of my blogger and FB friends sent me new ornaments. Then I bought a few each year as well and my daughter put some of hers on after she put her tree up.  

My daughter also has a tree and ornaments so she set her tree up too. 

This is on the shelf in the corner. I made the stuffed snowmen heads hanging on either side and the tiny Christmas trees on the shelves. 

Here's a better picture of one of them. 

Those tiny Christmas tree's are made out of pine cones, small terracotta pots, glue, beads and paint.

This red berry wreath is hanging over the door.

My daughter made this wreath for the door.

The snowmen with light up noses are on my refrigerator with my rat magnets.

My daughter and I made these sea shell angels back when she was a kid. Probably 15 years ago.

These are puppies in Christmas baskets next to the candy bowls.

Santa and a Christmas angel looking over a little Christmas town.

Here's a better look at what's on the table.

The shelves between the living room and kitchen have Christmas stuff all over them.

Snowman candy basket.

My daughter gave one of the spice racks a Christmas upgrade with some candy cane garland.

The living room wall has a bunch of stockings hung on it. 

My daughter also decorated the living room window. But several strands of lights weren't working so she ended up using a different color lights on one end. lol 

These little Christmas tree's are what's down on the bottom of the window. 

And this is what it looks like lit up. It's colorful. lol 

My daughter bought Falcor a little Elf shirt and hat. He doesn't mind the shirt but won't leave the hat on for more than 5 seconds.

But I was able to snap a couple of pictures when I bribed him with a treat.

He got tired of taking pictures and yawned. But this blooper picture was just too funny not to include.

Have you decorated for Christmas yet?