My husband got a huge patriotic hat for Independence Day. Think “Cat in the Hat” size. Yeah, it actually spooked me, too, when I first saw it. He wore it for the first time around Livvy today, and this is her reaction.

Good thing we don’t have fireworks!

She’s so cute when she’s spooked.

BUT.

This one is hilarious! Whoever made this video did an exceptional job! Not only is the video entertaining, the creator really captured the personalities of the various animals (especially the cats, LOL). It’s a little lengthy, but waiting until the end is worth it. I think this is the best animal Christmas video. So to all my animal-loving pals, this one’s for you!

We’ve only got two more weeks left! By mid-December, I am ready to relax and enjoy the holidays. We don’t celebrate Christmas like most people do (gobs of decorating and presents). When the kids were small, I decorated and we gave gifts. But we all wanted the holiday to be more low-key. I personally love the traditional Christmas– you know, Victorian carolers in fur muffs gathered around Victorian pedestal mailboxes, Meet Me in St. Louis-style, you know? I have always loved the Victorian era– the architecture, the art, the sense of family, Jingle Bells, old-fashioned Christmas cards bursting from the Victorian wall mailbox! I have a Vistorian boot scrape on my front porch (quite rusty, now, but it was beautiful when I got it). I love Victorian mailboxes situated on enormous painted ladies (Victorian homes) with their colorful, ornate swirls. I always dreamed of owning a Victorian house. It was not to be, but I am pretty happy with my pre-Victorian Greek Revival.

So are you ready for Christmas? Will yours be an old-fashioned one with a big family gathering and caroling?

God bless you guys!

Also, I have paper products during the holiday season when I am more inclined to have lots of company over, making lots of little messes. So I purchase paper towels, paper napkins, etc. These days I am in “paper products” mode. I’ve been checking out the many brands (btw, MUST stores have so many brands?!) and their prices. I have been wondering for a while which paper towel is more economical and effective– a “fancy” name brand, or the generic, store brand? Here’s what I found out!

*AAAAAAND in this corner! It’s the Bounty one-sheet working wonder! In the other corner, it’s the cheapo Decorator Towels Walmart brand!*

*ding ding*

(please ignore my horrid orange laminate countertops. I DID NOT install them. And yes, we do need a new kitchen! )

OK, on with the show. Here are the prices of the paper towels at my local grocery store:

Bounty: 138 sheets per roll (63.2 square feet) $2.19/roll
price per sheet: 1.590 cents

Store Brand: 90 sheets per roll (75.6 square feet) $1.79/roll
price per sheet: 1.990 cents

First off, you can see that Bounty is less expensive when you are going per sheet. Yet the Store Brand has fewer sheets and more square feet per roll. How can this be? Well, the Bounty roll has smaller sheets. As a matter of fact, the Bounty sheets are half the size of the Store Brand sheets. And even though there is more square footage with the Store Brand roll, the Bounty roll is bulkier and thicker. The Store Brand sheets are thinner and resemble the paper napkins you get at McDonald’s– kind of rough and stiff; the Bounty sheets are much thicker and have a cloth-like feel to them. You’ll also notice that the Store Brand sheets have pretty butterflies. Not to be influenced by pretty pink and blue butterflies, I purged that from my mind and concentrated solely on the important matter at hand: which was a better deal?

Judging thus the consistency and thickness of the sheets, I predict that the Bounty roll will absorb more liquid into a denser area, whereas the Store Brand will cause the liquid to expand out into the sheet more. Now for the experiment!

I decided to set globs of soy sauce on my counter to test each sheet. I’ll have you know that I wasted .047711 cents of soy sauce right there. Consider it my sacrifice for science.

And why do scientists use the same ol’ boring circles of liquid mess? I decided to make my liquid messes in the shape of Mickey Mouse for added human interest to our rather sterile and impartial scientific experiment. (Here’s hoping Disney doesn’t sue me for copyright infringement).

Ah, so here you see the sheets at work. They performed much as I hypothesized they would. Bounty picks up the liquid in a denser area; the Store Brand splays out the liquid. That line you see in the Store Brand sheet is the “glue” line that holds the sheet to the roll. It is always on the first 3 or 4 sheets of a new roll. Bounty doesn’t have that line, btw. I lifted up the sheets to see which sheet was more absorbent.

Below you will see how the Store Brand sheet performed. It didn’t absorb as much of the liquid. When I lifted the sheet, the liquid dripped off the sheet and back onto the counter.

The Bounty sheet absorbed much more of the liquid. You can also see that more of the sheet is saturated with soy sauce.

To be honest, I was surprised that the Bounty sheet picked up so much and the Store Brand picked up so little. I ended my experiment by sopping up every bit of the liquid that I could and comparing the sheets.

Hmmm. So my conclusion is that Bounty paper towels are actually a better deal. The roll itself is more expensive than the Store Brand, but there are more Bounty sheets per roll. Despite that there is less square footage than the Store Brand, the Bounty sheet performed better than the Store Brand. So, my final conclusions in table form:

Bounty:
More expensive per roll, at $2.19/roll
Less expensive per sheet, at 1.590 cents
More sheets per roll, at 138 sheets
Fewer square footage per sheet and per roll, at 63.2 square feet per roll
Performs better than Store Brand

Store Brand:
Less expensive per roll, at $1.79/roll
More expensive per sheet, at 1.990 cents
Fewer sheets per roll, at 90 sheets
More square footage per sheet and per roll, at 75.6 square feet
Not as good a deal as the Bounty roll

Thus concludes my great experiment. I hope you have found this information profitable in some way. You probably won’t get rich saving all that money on Bounty paper towels, but you may be able to buy an extra jar of soy sauce after a few months.