Crest 3D Professional Effects Whitestrips - Day 20 - Multi-Part Review

I really can't believe that just 20 short days ago I was starting out with teeth like this:

After 10 days they were noticeably whiter and looked a bit more like this:

Now, after 20 days of use I can share with you that my teeth look like this:

 
I really wish I'd had better lighting or a better way to take the pictures because I really don't think they do justice to how white my teeth are now. To be completely honest, even with using whitening toothpaste daily I don't think my teeth have been this white in 10 or more years.

When I started on Day 1 I expected them to get minimally whiter over the next 20 days. Since the whitening toothpastes I've tried over the years haven't given me the whitest of teeth, I figured maybe my teeth were somehow protected against whiteners. They had whitened a little, but very little, over the years with the use of whitening toothpastes and whitened just slightly more when I used a whitening mouthwash for a short period before I got married in 2011.

Twenty days of using these Crest strips has really whitened my teeth significantly. It's amazing. As much as we try to not base thoughts and opinions on how someone looks, their outward appearances sometimes have an affect on the way they are perceived. Since my teeth have been whiter I have felt more confident about smiling for sure! It's a lot easier to flash a big smile when you know your teeth don't look like they've been steeping in some tea or a coffee mug that was forgotten on the counter.

Overall I am really impressed with the way these work. The box promised that I would start seeing results after 3 days with full results after 20 and it was right. I actually saw results immediately on Day 1 and the results continued to get better and whiter every day after that.

During the course of treatment I did experience some tooth sensitivity. I knew that this was supposed to be temporary and it was. Sometimes the sensitivity lasted just a couple of hours and for one longer bout it lasted about 2 days. My teeth were most sensitive to the cold, so I just tried to drink more warm beverages and be careful about too much mouth breathing. I'm not sure if I had built up a tolerance to whatever was making them sensitive or something, but by Days 17-20 or so I was experiencing only minor sensitivity which lasted minutes at a time instead of hours.

I would gladly recommend these to anyone who is trying to get white teeth and has about a month in which to do it. For just 20 minutes a day for 20 days, the payoff is great. The price, at $35 - $50 depending on where you purchase it, isn't that bad either when you think about what you would spend in cash and time (and time is just as valuable as cash to me!) to go to the dentist to have it done. The directions say you can use up to 2 kits per year, so for $70 - $100 and just 1200 minutes a year you could have a dramatically whiter smile.

When you read it like that, 1200 minutes a year may seem like a lot, but I promise it's not as bad as it sounds. It's really not as bad as driving to the dentist to have whitening treatments done in office. If you have a 30 minute commute to work, you could even apply them before you pulled out of your driveway and peel them off when you arrived at work. Now when you read it that way, does wearing the strips for 30 minutes a day REALLY sound like that much of a time commitment?

So what have you thought of these if you've tried them? If you're looking for a whitening product, will you be trying these? If so I'd love to hear how they work out for you!

Disclaimer: I received this product complimentary for testing purposes from Influenster.  

Weight Loss Update

Ticker accurate as of 11/12/12

It's been a couple of months since my last update and I thought it would be a good idea to do another update since we're going into the holidays. I'm also looking to make this more of a monthly update as well so that I can see what progress (or lack thereof) I've made and share it with you.

In my last update at the end of August, I was down nearly 20 pounds. Today I can say that I'm down around 25 pounds. In the big picture, I'm only down about 5 pounds in about 2 months. However, I've gained and lost and gained and lost. That means that in reality I've lost more than 5 pounds in those 2 months, the scale just doesn't quite reflect that.

I also had a goal of losing about 20 pounds by mid-October. Obviously that didn't happen. As I said, I kept gaining and then losing and gaining and losing. For every 2 steps I went forward I went 1 back. While that's frustrating, in the end I'm still 1 step ahead so I'm ok with that. A loss this week of 2 pounds might mean I'll gain 1 back next week. Again, I'm ok with that because overall I'm still down 1 pound.

I've been toying around with the idea of changing my weigh in to Friday because it seems as though something strange happens on Saturdays and Sundays and magically I can gain 3 pounds in those 2 short days. I tend to weigh myself on Monday and that's what I use as my weight loss/gain for the week. I also weigh myself toward the end of the week to see if I'm making progress in the right direction. Sometimes I can be down 2 or 3 pounds on Friday and magically by Monday I've gained a pound or more.

I don't know what it is but something about the weekend makes me gain weight. I don't even have to have fast food or anything bad at all and I still gain weight. It's actually quite funny because one weekend I ate the better of 3/4 of a pumpkin roll all by myself and still managed to lose 3 pounds come Monday. The following week, however, I gained half of that back. I'm really interested in knowing how long it takes for calories in to turn into pounds gained/lost.

I know that something like 3,500 calories = 1 pound of fat, but how long after you've consumed that extra 3,500 calories do you gain 1 pound? For this purpose I'm not considering that if you eat a pound of something you'll probably gain a pound simply because you've put a pound of food into your body. I'm talking about just the extra calories. If I eat an extra 3,500 calories this weekend, when will it show on the scale? Monday? Next Wednesday? This is all assuming that on all other days my calories are on target, etc and the extra calories were only consumed on Saturday/Sunday.

Does anyone know? Anyone? Bueller?

Holiday Desserts - Foodie Friday

Quite possibly the best part about the holidays is the dessert table. It seems like people really pull out all the stops when it comes to desserts at holiday time.

Our usual Thanksgiving desserts usually include a cherry cheesecake sort of thing, pumpkin pie (and sometimes an apple and/or cherry). Christmas is usually more about the candy and cookies and less about pies/cakes. This post has several amazing looking ideas, some of which I want to try this year. Hopefully you can find something else to add to your holiday spread this year too.

Source: bettycrocker.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Crunchy Peanut Butter Chex Mix

Source: countryliving.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Pumpkin Mousse

Source: domesticdilettante.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Apple Pie Baked into Apples

Source: gourmetmomonthego.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Rice Krispie Apples - Would be great with orange and made into pumpkins instead

ThankVember Week 2

Every day this month I'm sharing something I'm thankful for on Facebook/Twitter. If you'd like to know what these things are daily, you can become a fan on Facebook here. Otherwise, you can read the weekly posts I'll put up telling what I was thankful for the week before. Last week's post can be found here. The rest will be up today, November 22 and December 3.

Day 8: I'm thankful I have an outlet for some of my frustrations. Crafting - just making SOMETHING - makes things so much better sometimes.

Day 9: Today I'm thankful for pizza delivery. Our planned dinner was still frozen solid at 3:30 so Plan B it was!

Day 10: I am thankful for my husband waking up early. He's rarely up before 11 when he doesn't have to work.

Day 11: I'm thankful for my ability to coupon and save money. I love saving money.

Day 12: I am thankful for medicine. It helped ease my migraine so I could sleep.

Day 13: I'm thankful I know how to cook and do it well.

Day 14: I'm thankful for hot showers. So far they have helped my - now going on 3 day long - headache the most.

Friends are Angels - Canvas Craft Project

My friend Kelley's birthday is this month and I knew I wanted to make her something special. She's such an amazing friend that I wanted it to be something she could keep to display and when she looked at it she would think of me and remember how amazing she is.

I've seen several canvas ideas floating our on Pinterest for the quite some time. I thought I'd come up with my own twist on several of the ideas I had seen. Many temporarily glued letters to the canvas and then painted over them. When the letters were peeled off, they revealed letters in the base color.

I was kind of going for a similar look with the "Friends" and "Angels part of the saying, except I cut the words out using my Cricut and then ran them through my Xyron upside down. I sprinkled pink glitter over it and then ran it through the correct way so I could adhere it to the canvas.

I added a bit of pink lace and pinned it with an earring I got at a garage sale over the summer. The earring serves two purposes in that it adds a great detail to the canvas and since I left the post on the back, I was able to stick it through the canvas to make sure the center of the lace stays in place.

All of the text in white has been hand painted. I was going to cut it all out with my Cricut but I couldn't get the sizes right and didn't want to waste paper trying to get it right.