Amateur Hour with Meg

This year for Halloween, I decided my son with his big ol' round, bald head should be Charlie Brown. From there, this took off into a whole family costume theme of the Peanuts gang. Even my parents got in on it! I decided to be Lucy Van Pelt, Charlie Brown's nemesis. I'm definitely not as mean or blunt as Lucy, but I sure admire her confidence! Five easy steps to creating a Lucy costume for pretty darn cheap: Buy supplies: Two blue t-shirts. One will be the body of the dress, and one will become the skirt part. Black permanent fabric marker. Or just regular ol' Sharpie will do. If you want the black marker to wash off, however, you can just use a washable marker. Matching blue socks, if you're going all out. Cheap black wig. I found mine at Goodwill and prayed it was clean. Cut top off of second shirt. You'll be left with a tube of a shirt, and this will become the skirt part of the dress. You can adjust the length of it by cutting it sh...

My first Bright Cellars wine box arrived today! I'm very excited to see what they have to offer. We'll see how it compares to my previous wine club experience, Winc . Confession: I tore all the bottles open right away in my excitement, before I took pics for the blog. What an amateur! Guys. I almost missed it! The box has to be signed for by an adult, cuz, well, it's full of booze. Of COURSE the UPS man would come during the two minutes I was gone picking up my daughter from preschool. As I pulled into my driveway, I saw him delivering a package a couple houses up the street. So I did what any normal human would do: left my kids in the car and ran like a mad woman to catch him.  When I returned with my precious box and checked on my kiddos in the car, I discovered (huh?!) sand. EVERYWHERE. My little girl had dumped a very large amount of sand out of her boot and was chucking it. All over. On the seats. On the floor. And straight into her brother's eyes. N...

When I originally spent hours researching online wine clubs, Bright Cellars was up there in the rankings. I chose Winc because it was cheaper, but Bright Cellars had good ratings at a still-affordable price. So when I paused my Winc membership, I decided to try out the next service on my list. I took their quiz a few weeks ago but didn't complete the purchase, and OMG they have not stopped emailing me since. I know it's a robot (despite Maria INSISTING she is "actually a real person"), but man, leave me alone! You're not winning points here. Especially when you keep warning me that the deal is about to expire (spoiler alert: it doesn't actually expire) and then send the same "deal" from multiple robot "wine concierge" folk. Okay but really, I'm glad that my deal didn't expire, because I'm majorly indecisive and needed all that time to figure out that  a) I'm not going to stop drinking wine anytime soon and b) I need s...

I've been a Winc member since Mother's Day. But I recently decided to put my subscription on hold. [BTW, is that not the best Mother's Day present ever? Wine delivered to your doorstep?! Props to my hubby for making that happen.] I initially signed up for Winc with the intent of exploring new wines while homing in on which wine styles I really love. After hours of research, Winc seemed like the best option for my money. I took their short palate quiz and my wine showed up within a few days. Overall, I've been pretty happy with Winc.  Sooo why did I pause it? I'm kind of a cheapskate, and after five months, I ran out of "cheap" wines to choose that fit my criteria (dry + full-bodied). I'm okay splurging on a $20 bottle of wine, but at this point in my life, $13 is more my style. I almost ALWAYS had to remove one wine from my cart that they had "picked" for me―and sometimes I removed ALL of them. When will you people learn that I ...