V.M. Rose's Blog, page 2

Crock Pot Time Savers

If you are busy with life like we are, we like to use the crockpot...a lot. Throw some stock, veggies, and meat in, turn that bad boy on and let it do its thing. Honestly, it is kind of hard to screw a meal up in the crockpot. I found the downside of crockpot cooking was that it was always a major PITA to clean. It's big, it's heavy, and you usually have to let it soak because something always gets crusty and nasty on the rim. It doesn't get clean in the dishwasher and still requires you to scrub it. Plus ours is huge and there is never room in the dishwasher for it anyway. It would often sit for days in the sink crying out to be washed, and my husband and I would do everything we could to avoid cleaning it, hoping and praying that the other one would clean the damn thing.

Enter these little beauties[image error]

The Boulder slow cooker liners (we call them crockpot condoms in my house) so dirty, yet it keeps the crock clean hehe, are amazing. You slip these babies over your crockpot and dump in your ingredients per usual and get cooking. Once you're done, you throw the liner away, no muss no fuss. They have completely changed our crockpot cooking! No more crockpot soaking or scrubbing for us! It totally saves me a ton of time in scrubbing, real estate space in my sink, and what would have inevitably been days of avoidance in cleaning it. Mind Blown!

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Facial care at almost 40

I’m not forty yet...but I will be soon. I recently went to the dermatologist for my five-year follow-up appointment. The last time I went they told me that everything looked good and that I didn’t need to come back for five years due to my age and skin type unless there was something that was of concern. So, here we are five years later (PSA if you haven’t had a full check-up, set up your appointment!) and I am back at the office getting checked over top to bottom. My skincare routine hasn’t changed much since I was a teenager and I have been pretty loyal to the products that I have used on my face. I have tried other products over the years, but I always come back to the same ones I have always used. I will get to my tried and true face cream in a minute.

Ugh The MaskneWhat I have noticed in the past year or two, is that the skin on my face just doesn’t seem to be healing the same way it once did. Aside from the extra maskne that we have all suffered from in wearing masks to school, work, and out and about, I noticed that when I do get a blemish and it finally goes away, it is leaving dark marks on my face and taking a much longer time to go away. Most of the time with the makeup I am wearing and mask you are not able to tell, but I still know that it is there. I mentioned my concerns to the dermatologist about the maskne, the lack of healing, and if she had any magic potions to help with any fine lines that might be starting I would be good with anything she had. She laughed and said that she actually did have something and wrote me a script for Tretinoin.

Magical Potions

Prescription-strength Tretinoin cream is a retinoid so it does a few amazing things for your skin, it increases cell turnover, it helps to stimulate collagen production and reduces the appearance of fine lines, and it can be mixed with moisturizer. This last point, that it can be mixed with a moisturizer is the most important point because Tretinoin causes a lot of flaking on your skin. You may be thinking this sounds like the most amazing anti-again cream and acne cream out there, let me book my dermatology appointment right now. Hold on, back the bus up, you need to be a candidate for it just like any other medication. You shouldn’t be using it while pregnant or nursing, if you have certain allergies or skin conditions.

You Need to MoisturizeThe other important thing you need to know about this medicated face cream is that you only need a little bit. Quick tip: You only use a pea-size drop for your whole face and not every night to start, because again…the skin flaking. I have been combatting the flaking with a face scrub pad in the shower and Oil of Olay face cream which I have been using since I was a teen, over it at night. My dermatologist said that my face looked great, that I had no sun damage, and my skin was beautiful (whoop whoop). Special shout out to my mom and grandma for drilling into my head to put lotion on my face with sunscreen in it. My mom used to say to me, ”your face is the first thing people see, do you want it to look like an old leather handbag by the time you are thirty?” Not that you pay much attention to the things that your parents try to tell you when you are a teen, but that piece of advice stuck with me, and so I started putting Oil of Olay (which I simply confiscated my mothers') on my face at about 15 years old and have every day since. It is a tried and true product for me, and the dermatologist gave me her blessing and said to keep using it. She said that it was in fact a good cream and I didn’t need to spend tons of money on face cream. Tretinoin is not a fast fix, it takes approximately 8-12 weeks for it to have noticeable results. So, if you think you are taking five years off your face by next week, think again, and if you are not already using a moisturizer, do your face a favor and find one that works for you and make it part of your daily routine.

The Dreaded Edit

Now that you have spent weeks, months, or maybe even years working on your book, it’s time to send it off for editing. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect and was a little nervous, especially because I didn’t have anyone read it as I worked on it. It took over a year to pour everything I had into my book. Now I had to wait for someone to redline it, make it bleed, and tell me if all my hard work was worth it or if I should just burn it.

It took a while of going back and forth with my editor, I am sure plenty of eye rolls from her because I would randomly make edits without telling her, and a lot of late-night hours. I thought that the editing process was going to be easy, but in fact, I think it turned out to be more daunting than the actual writing. The writing, I could just word vomit on the page and go back and change and add to a chapter, but in the editing, I had to really make sure there were connections, depth to the characters, make sure characters were mentioned enough and that they had a background story, or building a scene with sights or sounds if I didn’t do it previously. When I got my proof copy in the mail (that’s me with my proof copy in the photo), I was so excited and I thought okay this is it, I can go live with it now. Then as I read through and checked the cover, I realized shit, a period mark got deleted off the cover, a word was missing in chapter 6, as well as a few other minor things. I wound up taking the whole next day to read the proof from cover to cover. I took the time to mark up what I had previously missed, what my editor missed (which was only a couple of things to her credit), or what was missed on the computer. Sometimes you just need to read a hard copy to see the mistakes rather than reading the draft on the computer, because after a while it all just starts to blend together. The couple of small edits I did find, most people probably would not have picked up on, but I did, so I had to resubmit my draft and wait for it to be refreshed before I could share my news. It wasn’t the end of the world having to wait another day, I was just spitting nails by that point wanting to share my news with everyone. When you hit the dreaded edit give yourself some grace, you just finished writing a book! There are not that many people out there that can say that and it is one hell of an accomplishment. Give yourself a pat on the back and go enjoy a glass of wine as you get one step closer to publishing!

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Bed time routines

I think Samuel L. Jackson said it best, "go the f*ck to sleep."

If I die tonight, I am probably going to parenting hell for telling my youngest son the most ridiculous lie tonight. He, of course, was enthralled by what I was telling him and was asking more questions than I was prepared to actually answer once I started down the rabbit hole. It all started innocently enough when I got his pajamas on and my ring caught on his leg or knee of who the f*ck knows where, and so a massive tantrum ensued. After I got him to finally calm down I gave him a kiss, hug, and nosey (we rub noses in our house too), and then my husband went in to start the gambit of things that he does with my son to get him to go to sleep. Husband putting a kid to sleep you say, YES! My son is so daddy attached it is not even funny. I remember when he was still an infant and I was nursing and rocking him and just so tired and he just wanted mommy, and my husband told me one day he isn't going to want you, fine be me, I was touched out after having three kids.

Anyway, fast-forward to the past year and a half where he has been completely daddy obsessed, I could not love it more, because he wants daddy to read to him at night, for daddy to play silly freeze games with him when leaving the room, for daddy to answer the million and one questions as he is trying to sneak out of the room, and I...don't have to do any of it. Don't get me wrong, some nights I do miss the reading, but for the most part the years of being pregnant, nursing, and pumping around the clock, I am enjoying the break.

Tonight, I found myself trapped in a white lie that is sending me straight to parenting hell if I die in my sleep. After I got my son to calm down and daddy was beginning his portion of the bedtime routine, my son decided he needed to poop. This set off the biggest meltdown in history, you would think that the child broke his leg, rather have the tiny little scrape that was actually there. He was dramatically limping, begging for a boo-boo pack, and my husband looks at me like a deer in headlights, my first course of action (when it was already past his bedtime) was to shut this down and shut it down quickly. No f*cking way and I giving this kid a boo-boo pack past bedtime, it will just make the tantrum carry on longer. So we both manage to coerce him back to his room, where he is still crying. Then I think quickly on my feet again and I tell him, your pajamas are magic pajamas and if you go to sleep now, it will magically heal your leg. However, I was not prepared for the onslaught of questions that would soon follow. I spent the next ten minutes of my life answering my almost five-year-olds questions and convincing him that these were in fact magical pajamas that he was wearing. But guess what? It worked! I was finally able to convince him and he was no longer concerned about his leg (because obviously it wasn't hurt and it was just a ploy not to go to sleep) and I won the bedtime battle. What is the best bedtime white lie you have told to get your kids to go to bed?

Hair hack worth the buy!

It doesn't matter if your kids are young, if you are expecting your first child, or your kids have flown the coop, we could all save a little time in our morning routine. On a whim, I asked my girlfriends about the Revlon one-step hair hot air brush that kept popping up on my news feed. Lo and behold, one of my girlfriends had it and said she loved it. So I took the plunge and ordered it, I wound up getting it on sale and paid $23 for it, a total steal! This thing is amazing and the reviews online are absolutely right. I have been using it for about 3 months now and I swear it has cut my blow dry time down by half. The picture that I shared is classroom chic, after wearing a mask all day, and over 8 hours since I did my hair, you can see the roots still shockingly have

volume left and it is not plastered to my head. Now you may say well that's great I have wavy or curly hair, yeah, so do I. Most days I put a little product in and I wear my hair curly (that picture is almost no product, I was almost out) when I use my air brush, not only does it cut down on my blow dry time, but I have not been using the straightening iron either. Mind blown right, look how straight my hair is in that picture! This has definitely exceeded my expectations for the price and I would 100% buy it again!

I Did It!

It has been a long road, but I actually did it! Over the past year, I have been working on writing a book. After going through the proof and last-minute edits, it is finally done! #ChallengeMeBreaking #VictoriaMaurer #writingmom #bignews #Iwroteabook #books #writtingmomma #Iactuallydidit #icantbelieveididit #findmeonamazon #kindle #kindlebooks #romance #romancenovel #smut #smutbook #smutty #love

Big News!

Some big news coming very soon, I am so excited! It has nothing to do with babies or moving!

Juggling writing with a family

When I first started writing, I thought that I was going to be able to dedicate a couple of hours each day to writing and finish my book in a matter of weeks. Then reality slapped me in the face, hard. Even though we were at the beginning of the pandemic and home, I still struggled setting aside time that I could sit down and write. Life got in the way of dreams and sometimes it was really frustrating. I learned to juggle my writing when and where I could. You don't need to be on a computer to write. I quickly realized that I could be outside on my deck watching my kids play and write on my phone at the same time. The pool water is too cold for mommy to get in at the beginning of the season, watch your kids freeze their asses off while you write a few lines down on your phone. It doesn't have to be complicated. The biggest hurdle to writing was changing my expectations on how much I was going to get done in a day, week, or month. By allowing myself to freely write on my phone anywhere, anytime, it opened the door to a world of possibilities. There were days where I got thousands of words written, but there were weeks when I got none written. Manage your expectations and what the needs of your family are, and you will be much better off.

7 books in 7 days: who has that kind of time?

Ain't nobody got time for that. If you are a working mom like me, I do not have the time to read 7 books in 7 days. What I do have time for is audiobooks. I can't remember the last time I sat down to read an actual book cover to cover. Between working full time, three kids, writing, and editing, it's rare that I have the time to read. Just because I do not have a lot of time to sit with a book doesn't mean that I am not a major consumer of books. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I LOVE THEM! When I am stuck in traffic, folding laundry, or one of my kids randomly wakes me up in the middle of the night, I plugin. Audiobooks make it easy for me to get some quality mommy book time in. It transports me to a different world and it helps improve my mood. I challenge you to read or listen to 1 book over the next 7 days. For busy AF working parents, that is more realistic! Listen to an old favorite, listen to something new, try reading a classic, step outside of your comfort zone and let me know what you read or listen to!

How to burst the writer’s block bubble

When I have writer's block the first thing I do is put the laptop or my phone down and get out of my head. Staring at the screen is not going to make the words magically appear and you are just going to make yourself crazy. I try to go work out if my kids will let me and I can juggle it into the schedule, maybe grab a snack or a glass of wine if the time is right, go outside get some fresh air, do something other than look at the screen. In truth, with such a busy schedule, I often have to keep all of my ideas stored up and jot them down when I have time, then after the kids are all in bed, that is when I have the time to formulate it into real writing. If you are stuck, put the screen down and get outside and clear your head. You may find inspiration in the most random places, inspiration is all around you!