Stuff We Adore

[Editor's note: A dear reader scouted the Champion Running Skort for us and has this fab review. Thanks, Cassie!]

By Cassie Moir

If you are like me and trying to cram your workout into an already busy day, these running skirts are for you.  They are extremely flattering to my almost 40-year-old figure, so I have to believe that they would look great on anyone.  Now you can look cute when you have to stop by the grocery store on the way home from the gym.

Available at Target so you know they are reasonable priced, I even got one on clearance for $10.00.

Since when did candy become good for you? Since the day Vitafusion Multi Vites Gummy Vitamins came on the market. Every day I pop a two-gummy combo of berry, lemon and orange adult vitamins, and I’ve not only gotten a happy jolt of sugar, but also the vitamins I used to choke down in a chalky daily supplement.

Some warn about the high sugar content in these vitamins, but I simply munch before brushing.

Unbelievably more complete than an apple a day.

Clips, hooks, baskets, racks – we adore stuff that helps us organize and contain our busy lives. After piling several tote bags used for work, gym, travel, etc., on the floor, I installed Self-Adhesive Super Clips.

These handy, inexpensive clips (retails for less than $2) in my closet and voila – the bags are off the floor and actually look pretty hanging on the wall. So far, the adhesive is strong and is holding.

The Magnum isn’t especially pretty, but it’s one of the best workhorses in the kitchen. Its specialty? Pepper. Loads and loads of glorious pepper. Just the smallest twist makes freshly ground pepper rain down on whatever you’re cooking.

One of the best features is the loading mechanism. It’s so easy. Twist a collar to the side to expose a nice wide opening for dumping in peppercorns. Almost the whole pepper mill is a chamber, which means you can fill it to the top and keep grinding meal after meal.

At $31 retail, the Magnum from Unicorn is one of the best and most affordable upgrades you can give your kitchen.

I can’t claim to be a tree-hugger when it comes to cleaning supplies.  In fact, I never met a bottle of chlorine bleach I didn’t love.  However, with an investment like granite countertops, I realize that not every cleaning material is appropriate.

Enter method The Daily Granite.  After I’ve wiped down my counters with a damp cloth, I spray Daily Granite and wipe with a dry cloth.  It shines up the counters and gives my whole kitchen the freshest, cleanest smell.  I even use it on my marble occasional table and it shines it up as well.

Method products are environment friendly and come in recycled plastic bottles.  What’s not to love?

Certain regions of the country (you know who you are) are renowned for their prowess with potluck dinners.  You stay up late the night before the shindig preparing your world-famous dish everyone has been begging for.  You serve it up in your beautiful dish and put a piece of flimsy plastic wrap over it.  We all know that wrap won’t keep the dish covered from the house to the car, much less make it to the potluck.

Spring the extra money for the GLAD Press’n Seal and it really works!  It adheres tightly to the serving dish preventing spills and stays put until you take it off.

What’s the big whoop with that yellow bagless vacuum that’s powered by a tiny cyclone? I think the real triumph of suction engineering is Roomba. I mean, it’s a robot, for crying out loud.

I used to be among the poor suckers who used an upright vac to clean their floors - until I got smart. Then I bought my first in a long string of robotic loves, iRobot’s Roomba. Using it is as easy as pressing the Clean button. It rolls around randomly, but eventually everywhere, sweeping up as it goes. I go off into another room to do something less strenuous (or stand there and watch it, mouth agape, as it picks up bits of onion skin and random crumbs). Here’s a video of it in action.

I should mention that our household had to undergo a fair amount of Roomba-proofing before we let the little guy go. This included taping up fringed edges to the rugs, moving cords and putting some kind of barrier across the doorway of rooms were we didn’t want the vacuum to go.

It’s not terribly expensive, either, especially when you think about how much one of those aforementioned yellow vacuums is. You can find a reconditioned one on Amazon for around $150.

Go, Roomba, go!

When a sincere, sweet, soccer mom purchases a display at the town fair for her Pampered Chef business, it’s only polite to stop and look through her brochure (OK, so some Stuff We Adore staffers are suckers for catalog shopping). In the newest offerings was a bright green tomato knife, the Color Coated Tomato Knife.

For someone who lacks finesse in the kitchen, this knife has been a dream come true on even ripe tomatoes.  Its serrated blade seems to be just sharp enough to really do the job and the knife is small enough for even cherry tomatoes.  No more substituting the bread knife.  It’s also a snappy green that’s easy to find in the knife drawer.

We admit, we’re closet QVC watchers. We like to convince ourselves we only land on the station while brushing our teeth and channel surfing. But when we saw the Ped Egg demonstration, we brushed, rinsed and sat down on the corner of the bed to watch people with scratchy feet slough away layers of dead skin.

This egg-shaped microplane looked like it really worked. The QVC hawker claimed the 135 stainless steel micro files shaved off dry and dead skin and deposited the shavings in an egg-shaped storage compartment. When those well-groomed women on QVC poured out little snowy piles of foot skin on a black cloth, it seemed undeniable.

And work it did. A few swipes of the ergonomic egg took sock-snagging skin right off and left soft and smooth feet behind. One Stuff We Adore staffer is training for a running race, and her feet tend to develop calluses that the PedEgg shaved right off. We’ve tried pumice stones, emery files and Aquaphor on our feet, but never with these kind of results.

Goodbye pricey pedicures, hello Ped Egg!