The Photographer's Wife Parenting, Disney, Travel, Reviews & Other Randomness

When it’s time for a holiday get together, Brett usually makes one of two things…mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes. And they are so so delicious. Like, so delicious that I secretly hope that no one eats them and we have a bunch left to take home. Except that never happens

For Christmas Eve, it was mashed potatoes on the to-do list. The bags of potatoes and mounds of butter were ready to be mashed into delicious goodness. But this time, Brett had a secret weapon to make his job easier…the Masha!

The patented ROTOR-CONE technology in the Masha uses a low speed rotor to force ingredients through an outer mesh.

This produces a perfect consistent mix in seconds. The Masha works brilliantly on the following: All types of potatoes, guacamole and refried beans, pastry, cake mixes, baby food and a lot more!

• Patented ROTOR-CONE technology uses a low-speed rotor to force ingredients through an outer mesh, producing a perfect, consistent mash without lumps, in seconds. 380 watts of total power for the heaviest mixing tasks.

• Metal drive gears and a powerful double reduction gearbox provide the muscle to drive the ROTOR at exactly the right speed for the perfect result.2 speed mixing bowl motor to insure efficient mixing of a variety of ingredients.

• A spring loaded mechanism locks the shaft when the power unit is detached, allowing the Rotor Blade to be removed with a simple turn and click.

• The Masha is compact, great to hold and easy to use with a forward-biased, non-slip handgrip and balanced weight distribution.

Normally, mashed potatoes involve mashing using a hand tool and lots of arm power. The Masha cut the prep time considerably and required hardly any effort whatsoever. Like a power tool for the chef.

Brett had his boiled potato pieces in a bowl, ready to be mashed.

You plug the Masha in and just stick the bottom into the potatoes. You’ll immediately start seeing it get to work, turning the pieces into perfectly mashed goodness.

The Masha has a comfortable hand grip and works so well that it never got clogged and didn’t spray any pieces outside of the bowl.

Just move the Masha around to get all the potato pieces and no time, you’ll have a bowl of perfectly mashed potatoes.

To clean, just pop the bottom off and clean in the sink or dishwasher.

The sleek design means it doesn’t take up much room at all in your kitchen. As mentioned earlier, the Masha would work great with cake/brownie batters (as opposed to hand mixers that make a big mess). As a parent that made most of our baby food, this would have been fun to try new recipes and methods of cooking for various baby food. I wonder if this would be good to mix drinks…hmmmm???

 

Buy:

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I received this product in exchange for my review. All opinions are my own. Especially the one about Brett making the best potatoes…mmm.

It may be 2014, but I am squeezing in another Christmas post. This year was much like the past few years…we had Christmas Eve at Brett’s mom’s house, then Christmas morning at our house with just us, then extended family came over a little later on Christmas day to exchange our drawn-names gift. Let’s get started!

We switched it up a little this year and decided to do a pajama themed Christmas Eve! Hey, that worked for me because I got to be comfortable. When we were in Disney World earlier in December, we spotted these super cute t-shirts that looked like tacky Christmas sweaters and could pass as pajama shirts…Brett and I quickly grabbed one, but unfortunately they didn’t have any small enough for Trent…so he got a super cute Mickey onesie pajama with Mickey slippers instead.

Always a Disney Family…and almost a family photo.

I may get in trouble for posting these, but I am willing to risk it…our crazy family.

We ate a delicious dinner of turkey, ham, Brett’s yummy mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Can I have that dinner at least once a week? Some of us slower eaters were rushed to finish our dinners by the little ones anxiously staring at the gifts under the tree.

It took Trent a few gifts in order to understand he was supposed to rip the wrapping paper off and not put it back nice and neat. That’s my little Junior OCD boy. I won’t bore you with every single photo, but here are some from that night.

Lily got a kitten and you can probably tell how loud her scream was by looking at me…and the cat’s ears. Sorry, cat, hope you weren’t planning on using your cat-level sense of hearing during your lifetime.

Trent says we are too messy for his liking.

The kids made cookies for Santa.

Brett stayed up until 4am putting Trent’s main gift together, but it was so worth it to see Trent wake up on Christmas morning and start playing with it immediately. It was like a train set, but with Cars characters and set in Radiator Springs. When Brett saw it in Costco a few months ago, we knew immediately it would be his big gift on Christmas.

We set up the GoPro behind it and captured the first few minutes…

…before he turned into King Kong.

Then we opened stockings while breakfast was in the oven.

I don’t know what to do about this boy’s hair…good thing he’s scheduled for his first haircut in the Magic Kingdom later this month!

For breakfast, Brett made breakfast burritos….extra cheesy.

Then we opened the rest of our gifts. Here’s a video of our Christmas morning.

Trent got some great educational boards from Melissa & Doug, along with some coloring books and magnets. By now, he was a gift opening pro.

I love his little feet sticking out from under the boards in this next photo.

Trent already stole my pillow.

After more playing and a nap, the family came over for more gifts and desserts and coffee.

Trent got a slide…which he didn’t want to do at first (mostly because everyone was watching) but has since gone up and down a thousand times. We just keep it in the living room and he goes on it all day long.

It was another great Christmas, one that has filled our garage to the max with boxes and our hearts with happiness. We started packing it all up this past weekend, but there’s a bunch more to go - especially the outside lights! Brett can do that while I sit back and wait for the warmer weather to make it’s way toward us!

 

I received this product in my Violet VoxBox from Influenster.

I am a big believer that you get what you pay for when it comes to nail polish. I don’t really put colors on my fingernails, mostly because my fingernails look terrible (New Year’s Resolution for the 20th year?), but I do like putting colors on my toenails. However, I am kind of lazy about it…I like having a good quality polish that I can paint on and forget about it for a few weeks and not have to worry about chipping or peeling. I’ll find a color I like and if it works well, I will continue to use the entire bottle until I can no longer scrape any nail polish out of it (does it bother anyone else how those brushes NEVER reach the bottom?!).

Since I had JUST painted my toenails, I figured I’d be brave and paint give myself a little manicure with my new PURPLE nail polish!

About Sally Hansen Triple Shine Nail Polish

Water to workout, day in and day out, nothing will dull these nails. The gloss is protected with the Ultimate Shield Complex, exclusive to Sally Hansen, designed to help polish withstand the wear and tear of everyday living for non-stop shine. Outshine ‘em all with our 29 shades!

 

When I first put this nail polish on, I immediately noticed that the color stays true to what you see in the bottle…the purple is just as dark and doesn’t come out looking watery.

The brush itself is actually different than any I’ve seen before…it’s wide and flat, helping to provide better coverage with each swipe on your nail. I think this helped me, seeing as my nails are small and short, the less strokes I have to make, the less chance of error.

However, I don’t like how small the bottle opening is…it’s only slightly larger than the brush handle. I foresee many messes being made by me quickly trying to brush back in the bottle and accidentally scraping the sides.

I put on 2 coats, just to make sure they would show up really well in the photos, but I probably could have gone with just one. And the “Triple Shine” in the name is the truth…I didn’t even need a top coat, the polish was shiny enough that I didn’t need it!

Going back to what I said in the beginning of this post about getting what you pay for…drugstore brands of nail polish sometimes get a bad reputation for not being good quality, but this nail polish is trying to give that reputation a run for its money. You can quality nail polish in bold, shiny colors without breaking the bank with Sally Hansen Triple Shine.

As a working mom, I often struggle to come up with ideas of fun learning activities for Trent. Well, honestly, I’ve thought of many ideas, but I often fail when it comes to gathering everything that’s necessary to complete the activity. It’s nice when the activity involves items we already have at home, but it’s impossible to keep the house stocked like a mini Hobby Lobby. This is where TogetherBox helps solve that problem.

TogetherBox was created to make family together time easy. When you sign up, everything you need to have hours of family fun will land on your doorstep every month. You’ll spend less time researching, stressing and gathering supplies and more time spending quality time with your family.

Each box will come with 3-4 carefully crafted activities, experiments and games around a surprise theme. All activities are designed to appeal to a large age group so your whole family can enjoy their time together.

I love how the boxes have a theme. I think it’s very important to help teach children seasons and holidays, so TogetherBox will help create excitement over whatever relevant theme each box centers on. The theme of the box I received was Snow!

There were several craft activities inside and every single item needed for each activity was in there…nothing to add, no store to travel to to pick up something. It was all there and ready for fun…perfect for my lazy, convenience-loving self!

I decided our first activity would be to make a sock snowman.

All the items needed for each craft/activity are already in a separate bag…even the socks lol. The only thing I did have to use of my own was a pair of scissors.

Mommy did all the scissor and glue steps, but we did mostly everything else together…including dressing the snowman.

He looks like he wants to ask “Mom, what the heck is this?” in this next photo.

Admiring our work.

Of course, the other option is to let your child get creative in their own way with the items in the box. Trent loved the cups and straws and kept transferring the straws from one cup to another.

TogetherBox is sent monthly and several plans are available starting at $24 a month. To find out more, go to their website or connect with them on Facebook.

 

How about an amazing offer and giveaway?! The nice folks at TogetherBox are offering you lovely readers 50% off your first box with the code photographerswife!

Even better…the first TWO people to sign up using the code photographerswife will get their first box completely FREE!

So go sign up now to see if you’ve won - and then go have some fun while learning when your TogetherBox arrives at your doorstep!

 

I was thrilled to be accepted into the most recent campaign from Influenster - the Violet VoxBox!

Influenster is an amazing site that lets people try new products in exchange for sharing their opinion through social media. Sometimes they’ll send one product to try, sometimes they’ll send an entire box! I have been involved in several campaigns since joining several months ago and have come to love many of the products I’ve tried and even made some of them permanent fixtures in my life!

I received the Violet VoxBox a few weeks ago and have been having fun trying out the products that were included. I’m going to post individual reviews on some of the items over the next couple of days and will link to them in this post, but for now, I wanted to share the goodies I received!

Stay tuned for the reviews!