I Took A Second Look At These Dresses

What do I love about summer? Long days of sunshine, no socks or layers, and summer dresses! Sometimes you can find an attractive summer dress in the most unexpected places. The hot pink Time and Tru Dress from Walmart caught my eye. Who would have thought you could find a stylish double cotton dress at Walmart? This one is a best seller with many good customer reviews. It comes in green and black too. If you need another summer dress, you can't beat its price!

Old Navy is a retailer where I expect and find lovely summer dresses to wear. I repeatedly write about the store because of it. Moreover, this year the merchant is stepping up its active and casual-smart style a notch by offering a new collection of special dresses called Occasion by Old Navy.

The crisp, smooth, silk-like taffeta fabric holds its shape, and once again, you can't beat the price for adorable style! Who would have thought to look at Old Navy for prom, party, or fancy date night dresses? A taffeta fabric is ideal for formal and structured garments like wedding dresses and christening gowns. You can't help but take a 2nd look! This is Old Navy? Why, yes, it is.

While the price points of Old Navy dresses are budget-friendly, they last longer than fast-fashion dresses. With the classic lines in this collection, you can wear them for years to come!

What are your favorites?

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Old Navy Summer Dresses

Once again, the spotlight is on Old Navy's summer dresses. Year after year, the retailer comes through! Old Navy dresses are casual smart. The right shoes and accessories will dress them up or down, and they are suitable for women of all ages.

Fabrics, including cotton, linen, and rayon, keep you cool in summer and are machine washable and dryable. In recent years, Old Navy has expanded the color selections of its dresses. Now each dress style is offered in up to 7 colors or patterns. The most in-demand colors sell out fast!

Mass-produced dresses have never bothered me! Wearers buy different colors, accessorize the same dress differently and also just wear a dress differently. The same dress looks different on various body types.

To boot: Old Navy's promotions and customer rewards mean you can buy these dresses cheaper than you could ever sew them! A whole dress (which is as cozy as a t-shirt) costs less than a t-shirt elsewhere!

It's a no-brainer, Old Navy summer dresses are affordable, comfortable, machine-washable, and fashionable!✅✓✔and✅

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Rosec Jewelry For Customized Handmade Fine Jewelry

Rosec Jewelry is an independent online fine jewelry retailer with headquarters (at 64 West 48th Street, Suite 1406) in the diamond district of Manhattan and stores in London and Jaipur. Its manufacturing facilities are located in India. America, Canada, and the United Kingdom make up its customer base. Rosec sells its jewelry on its own website and platforms like Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Walmart. This gives Savvy Shoppers a comparison of prices among platforms and awesome opportunities to catch sales and discounts when buying a piece of jewelry!

There are several reasons to consider Rosec Jewelry. The company specializes in homemade fine jewelry including certified diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and semi-precious gemstones at not cheap but affordable prices. Their skilled artisans have been jewelers for 15+ years and they only work with hallmarked gold, 925 sterling silver, and certified and ethically sourced gemstones.

Most of Rosec's jewelry can be customized to fit a customer's budget. Therefore a ring, earrings, bracelet, or necklace can be made with either natural or lab-grown gemstones and comes in a choice of precious metals: 18k gold, 14k gold, or 925 sterling silver. You select how your gemstone was grown, and in a precious metal with the design and craftsmanship staying the same. It gives everyone the chance to buy fine jewelry instead of settling for costume jewelry!

Rosec likes to describe its jewelry as: Luxury Meets Affordability. I like the jeweler's focus on design, craftsmanship, genuine silver and gold precious metals, certified gemstones, and fabulous customer service. Potential buyers can book a virtual meeting if they need guidance. Nice! The website is well-designed and easy to navigate to help consumers understand the inventory. To boot, 20% promotions are offered on holidays!! 

What great gifts for family and special friends! Rosec has a wide selection of everyday jewelry that is especially fitting as a young girl's first piece of fine jewelry for her special birthday, confirmation, or graduation.

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Mainstays Is Walmart's Private Label

Mainstays is Walmart's brand of home goods offered at affordable prices. A wide range of furnishings includes bedding, bath, furniture, home décor, kitchen, dining, patio and garden, mattresses, and arts & crafts. The products are probably made by different vendors for Walmart.

In helping my senior Mom, I've had to buy several home goods that she has overlooked in her elder years. I found some of her kitchen tools to be either outdated, inconvenient to use, or simply in need of replacement. So, I've become familiar with Mainstays' line of kitchenware and am duly impressed! You get decent quality without breaking the bank. In making decisions for her, I am relearning a lesson in getting good value for the money! 

A Mainstays kitchen tool is a great deal! Buying the top-of-the-line isn't always the right decision. Good value for the money is based on an item's purpose and frequency of use, as well as our judgment of "do we need the top-of-the-line or an item that's good enough?" If a good enough article can be replaced 25-30 times before reaching the top-of-the-line's price, we will come out ahead even if we must replace it.

Speaking from experience, we've replaced 2 12-cup  programmable Black & Decker coffeemakers with a 12-cup programmable Mainstrays coffeemaker which was offered for a rollback price of $12. The former is a great brand and we can say the same for Mainstrays, which was 1/3 of the price. Our latest coffeemaker does everything a customer needs it to do! You couldn't pay me to be in the same room if my mom sips anything less than a hot cup of good coffee in the mornings!😳

Some of Mainstays' prices seem too good to be true. We haven't tried its full line of products, and yet we haven't bought anything from the brand that has disappointed us! I'd recommend Mainstays as comparable to name brands of like commodities. When we need good enough housewares, we'll always consider Mainstrays.

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Together Let's Critique MacDuggal's Trapeze Dress

MacDuggal's Trapeze dress is a feminine, playful style you can have fun wearing to summer and garden parties. It's comfortable, flowy, dressy, and easy to zigzag around in while mingling with everyone at the gathering.

The frock's pleats and ruffles at the bottom are ultra-flattering. Loose and lovely draping complements most body types. 

Personally, I like a dress a tad longer than this MacDuggal one, the skirt to hang 1 - 2 inches above the knee. An extreme mini-dress is also more casual and less versatile.

Right before the pandemic, I saw a famous award-winning actress (who stands 5' 9 1/2" tall) inside William-Somona at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. She wore a designer mini-mini dress that was the wrong proportion for her very long legs despite her well-toned attractive body. Unless your petite frame has short legs, a mini-mini dress makes you look out of balance, like you are all legs. A human daddy-long-legs isn't as chic as one would think! 

IMHO ruffles at the bottom of this trapeze dress are enough of a good thing. The halter with pleats and bottle ruffles (pictured above in pink and blue) is much cuter than the green dress with no pleats and additional ruffles on sleeves. Perhaps because more ruffles are too much of a good thing?

Then again, what else would you wear in a breeze? What do you think? Are the ruffles on the cape too much of a good thing? Is it the short length that throws everything else (including having a cape) off?

Overall, the trapeze style is an adorable dress for the summer. 

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Brightroom For Storage Solutions At Low Prices

In writing my blog on versatile Storage Drawer Carts I stumbled upon Brightroom, a vendor of Target stores. It turns out you can not order directly online from the seller. I'm impressed with the vendor's wide range of storage solutions (more sweeping than what many Targets carry) and its low prices. Similar items are much cheaper than at Home Depot and The Container Store, which is fabulous! Savvy Shoppers never overspend on storage containers!

The price of Brightroom's 3-tier carts is about the same as Walmart's Sterlite 3-tier carts, which is cheap.

I'm posting a small sample of Brightroom's storage solutions. The merchant aims to bring organization to any room and offers attractive modern functionality in a comprehensive range of forms, whether you need to store big or small things.

With such affordability, we could organize everything we own without emptying our wallets! After browsing, you'll love Brightroom's many low-cost offerings too!

Unfortunately, the Brightroom Skinny 4-Drawer Tower (14 1/4" x 8 3/8" x 31 3/4") will be discontinued, it's perfect for a kitchen utility cupboard. There are only a scant few left for pickup at Target stores. At $22, I bought one to organize plastic trash bags in one drawer, cotton tote bags in another, and extra household supplies in the remaining drawers. No longer will everything fall out of our utility cabinet wherever we need to retrieve something. In fact, no longer will we have to search for anything! Less money and work by far than building shelves or finding tension rod-type racks.

{This blog isn't sponsored.}

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Sterilite Drawer Carts Make Organizing A Breeze

In a small New York City apartment, organization is the key to maximizing space and keeping it free from clutter and chaos. Everything I own has a place, its own home so I can find and use it. I don't have spare bedrooms or a garage for storage and yet I need the same amount of things to cook, clean, and entertain friends as the lucky people who live in large apartments or houses.

Still, we shouldn't overspend on organizers! It's much better to purge than to buy pricey organizers. That said, every necessity should have a designated place. I love ♥Sterilite Drawer Carts♥(and plastic clear shoe boxes for small items). Not only are they inexpensive but they're relatively strong, a somewhat flexible plastic, durable, and well-designed for the task of keeping things compartmentalized and grouped together.

Sterilite Drawer Carts come in a few sizes to fit larger or smaller spaces. The medium cart that measures 14 1/2" (D) x 12 5/8" (W)  x 24" (H) fits best in my small apartment. I bought 2 of this size and they sit perfectly side by side on the floor of one of my closets to give me 6 good-sized easy-to-open and close plastic drawers that I can see-through to know what I stow inside. I like to put small hair tools such as a curling iron, hair straightener, and crimper inside one drawer, and personal care or household items such as extra tissue boxes and lightbulbs or even gifts I aim to give to friends in separate drawers. If these objects didn't have a drawer of their own (i.e., a home) they'd be piled up inside my closet and I'd have to remove everything to find what I need. What a waste of time!

The drawer carts are also perfect for seniors who have trouble walking for keeping their essentials such as tissues, napkins, or moisturizers next to their chairs. Mothers of infants have inexpensive storage to neatly keep diapers and baby wipes. They provide plenty of storage at a low cost.

Four wheels make moving the cart effortless to vacuum. 

The plastic cart is also suitable in a bathroom, office, or craft room. The carts come in different colors and opaque textures but I like to see-through the drawers identifying their contents before opening them.

A Sterilite Drawer Cart hack for customers who need to use vertical instead of horizontal space: You can remove the top panel of one cart to affix a 2nd cart (snapping them together) and thus make one secure tall 6-drawer cart! Oh, genius. Perhaps I love these storage drawer carts, inanimate objects that they are, a little too much.♥ You'd think I was writing about fine jewelry! :)

Walmart offers the lowest prices on Sterilite Drawer Carts, but do check Amazon and hardware stores!

Update; In my research, I've discovered another company to buy storage containers at low prices ($10 for the medium drawer cart!!) -- so I've written a part 2 to this blog. Check back on Monday for it to post.

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Garnier's Hair Honey Repairing Serum

I received a small complimentary product sample of Garnier's Hair Honey Repairing Serum, a leave-in hair remedy. I've been applying it after I step out of the shower before blow-drying my hair.

The Hair Honey Repairing Serum is blended with sustainably sourced acacia honey. It is non-greasy and non-sticky.

Reportedly it reduces up to 94% of split ends, gives us 6 times smoother hair, 4 times less breakage, and 20 times more moisture.

Garnier further claims it fights up to 1 year of surface damage plus provides heat protection up to 450 degrees. It's blended without parabens, phthalates, mineral oil, drying alcohols, dyes, and DMDM hydantoin. All of Garnier's products are marketed as cruelty-free and come in recycled bottles. 

I can say the Honey Repairing Serum leaves my hair clean with a mild pleasant scent and my hair looks conditioned and healthy after use. Since I also use a hair conditioner [this one right now], I put only about a dime-sized amount through my hair concentrating on the ends. The treatment product passes my hand test. When a hair conditioner or treatment feels clean on my hands, it always leaves my hair soft and clean too. 

Reasonably priced and available at drugstores, Walmart, Target, and Amazon, Garnier's Hair Honey Repairing Serum is a hair serum I like and recommend.

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The Best Kabuki Brushes

In life, we spend on some things and save on others. When quality and performance matter, we spend even if we have to save up to buy an item. At other times when good enough works, we can save.

Discontinued 😞

Good makeup brushes make a huge difference in applying makeup evenly so usually, we spend on quality brushes, moving up from the good enough ones we settled for when we were younger.

I did so one makeup brush at a time, but before I could buy my last planned brush, in the It Velvet Luxe Collection For Ulta, the line was discontinued! So my coveted Kabuki brush (at $54 without a deal) got away! I looked a long time for it on eBay to no avail and so I had to move on. 

Today I'm featuring 3 Kabuki brushes that are top-notch in the qualities I love in makeup brushes: They're (1) plush/dense, (2) soft, and (3) do not shed for a smooth application of liquid or powdered makeup. I use a Kabuki brush to apply face powder as a final step to blend and set the makeup on my face. (Some people use it for liquid foundation, which I skip.)

I've uploaded the 3 brushes in today's blog in the order of most to least expense. They are: 

1) Danessa Myricks Beauty Yummy Face 2.0 Teardrop Kabuki (See the top image.👆) 

2) Isle of Paradise Foundation Brush (See the purple case.👆)

3) Petal-Shaped Kabuki Brush - This option is sold all over the internet. I bought one from Walmart. It also sells on Chinese retailer websites like Temu and Shein. Surprisingly, it is a great quality brush at a low cost! The brush has tons of 5-star reviews from happy customers!

Although I found a good Kabuki brush for less, I still regret losing out on the pricey Kabuki brush that got away! All I can do now is show and write about it.😢

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Buy Pinalen Instead of Pine-Sol

During COVID I re-discovered Pine-Sol, a household cleaner that kills 99% of germs on surface areas and is also used to clean grease and heavy stains. It was invented in 1929 by Harry A. Cole of Mississippi using pine oil as an ingredient. In 2016 Cloxox, its manufacturer, removed pine oil from the formula sold in stores to save money.

Since today's in-store Pine-Sol doesn't contain pine oil I switched to Pinalen, an equivalent cleaner that still contains pine oil.

Pinalen is comprised of water, pine essential oil, sodium laurate, sodium oleate, dodecanoic acid, sodium salt, isopropyl alcohol, and benzenesulfonic acid.

Along with its disinfecting and cleaning powers, I appreciate the pine scent. I put a few drops inside my toilet bowl several times a week to keep it clean, as well as, fresh smelling.

Although I clean my toilet with hydrogen peroxide, Pinalen is said to be safe for all parts of the toilet. It won't damage the internal mechanisms nor remove the paint from a toilet seat. The reason I use hydrogen peroxide is to skip the follow-up step of rinsing with clean water. I use a few drops of diluted Pinalen to soak only inside the toilet bowl then brush and flush. (Btw: mostly I mop my floors with white vinegar and water, but every so often, I mop with Pinalen diluted in water or even bleach and water for heavy-duty cleanings. Afterwards, I'll rinse with water. When mopping with vinegar you can just let the floor dry without rinsing.)

So now I have to contradict Clorox. Although the makers of Pine-Sol say it won't hurt your toilet tank, I wouldn't add it to the tank regularly (only if you need to clean a dirty or moldy tank initially) because the disinfectant and its equivalent cleaners are acidic. The rubber pieces in the tank's cistern will erode, causing the flushing mechanism to malfunction. It won't hurt used infrequently, but that's why I only put a few drips in just the toilet bowl.

In addition to bathrooms, Pinalen cleans laundry, kitchen counters and appliances, floors, walls, garages, and backyard fixtures. 

It's less expensive than Pine-Sol. I buy the one-gallon (128 fl oz or 3.785L) concentrated size, then dilute it with water (a 50/50 ratio) in a spray bottle to clean. Less product is required in a bucket of water to mop a floor. Mix 1/8 cup of solvent with 1 gallon of water. Available at Walmart, Walgreens, and Amazon. Pine oil smells amazing though perhaps it's not to everyone's liking.

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Huge Savings With Equate Dupe Moisterizers

As autumn approaches in the Western hemisphere we'll soon exchange the humidity for dry skin. It's time to stock up on moisturizers. Walmart will save you a ton of money with their in-house brand for less under the name of Equate. The label has dupes for many dermatologist-recommended moisturizers. Here's what to buy:

For your face: 

1) Equate All Day Moisturizer - A dupe for Olay with UVA and UVB 15 protection and Vitamin E. Apply it after your Vitamin C and under your makeup. Cost: $4.97

2) Equate Retinol Night Cream - Compare to Olay Retinol Night Cream. Use before bed. New packaging for the same cream and price as the top image. Cost: $17.44

3) Equate Oil-Free Facial Moisturizer For Sensitive Skin - A dupe for Neutrogena Oil-Free Moisturizer for Sensitive Skin. Use on nights you wish to either skip retinol or simply apply additional moisture to your face. $6.67

For your hands ...

4) Equate Ultra Moisturizing Extra Dry Skin Lotion - A dupe for Jerkens ultra healing body lotion with vitamins C, E, and B5 in a generous 32-ounce size pump to keep in your kitchen to mostly moisturize your dry hands during the dryer months. Cost: $6.48

For your face, hands, and body especially in winter ...

The next tubs of moisturizers are listed in the order of their thickness and all are super moisturizing.

5) Equate Moisturizing Cream - Compare to CeraVe Moisturizing Cream. $8.97

6) Equate Gentle Skin Cream - A dupe for Cetaphil Moisturizing Cream. Cost: $7.48 {A review of #5 vs #6 is here.}

7) Equate Therapeutic Dry Skin Cream - Compare to Eucein Moisturizing Cream. $9.92

8) Advanced Healing Ointment Skin Protectant - The knockoff for Aquaphor Healing Ointment. Cost: $10.52, or just buy a tub of Vaseline for half the price.

Frankly, #8 is 41% petroleum jelly so next time I'll just buy a tub of Vaseline for $5.48 or better yet Equate Petroleum Jelly for $2.36 instead of #8 which is 2 or 4.5 times the price. In winter you can always rub petroleum jelly over your moisturizing creams if you need extra thickness.

Walmart has additional dupes of leading name brands, but these 10 are the moisturizers I like and use in the fall and winter months. They are identical to their name-brand counterparts! If you have other favorite moisturizers, check to see if Walmart makes a dupe for it.

9) Equate Beauty Eczema Relief Skin Protection Cream -  With colloidal oatmeal and cheap at 6.84 for 8 ounces.

10) Equate Fragrance Free Daily Moisturizing Lotion - A dupe for Aveeno Naturals Daily Moisturizing Lotion - I smell a mild scent that disappears quickly after application. You get a generous 33-fluid-ounce pump bottle for $7.48. 

Equate makes moisturizers so affordable we can slather them on from face to toe daily without breaking the bank.💵

*Although I've now written 2 back-to-back blogs mentioning Walmart, neither blog is sponsored. I love Walmart!

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