I started this website in September of 2006 in order to share some of the little things I’d been enjoying in my own life, from products to recipes to household tips. It’s been a great pleasure documenting this stuff — and hearing your own recommendations and ideas in return — but the time has come to turn attentions elsewhere. As enjoyable as SundryBuzz has always been to maintain, it turns out there are only so many hours in a week, and we must leave room for such things as bad television and reading Us Weekly. (What?)

I owe a huge thank-you to my friend and co-blogger Swistle, who has contributed a ton of great content to this site. You can find her at her personal blog, as well as Swistle: Baby Names.

All the SundryBuzz.com articles will remain online for now, and you can browse them via the category links over on the right sidebar.

Both Swistle and myself are continuing to post product reviews and how-to ideas over at Work It, Mom!, and I hope you come visit.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

– Linda

My new vacuum cleaner and I have what we like to call an “open relationship,” and I don’t mind if he sees other people. But you should know a little about him before you decide to date him, because he’s not like other vacuum cleaners and you wouldn’t want to go into it with excessive expectations.

For one thing, he’s only as strong as my DustBuster. Okay, sure, I have a very good DustBuster (Black & Decker 15.6V), but still: my new vacuum is a very good dustbuster on a long handle. I’m not saying a long handle isn’t a valuable attribute, I’m just saying you shouldn’t expect more than that.

This is the perfect vacuum cleaner for someone like me: I hate the heaviness and bulk and cords and “hauling it out of the closet” of vacuum cleaners so much, I generally only use the DustBuster. (You probably want to believe that I’m kidding, but I’m not.) This Dirt Devil is the same as my DustBuster, but I can skate around the house with it instead of crawling. I find it….well, I hesitate to even say this, especially in such a public forum, but I find it actually ENJOYABLE to vacuum with it. Not enjoyable as in I’d rather do it than mess around on Facebook, but enjoyable as in if I get it out to do a little vacuuming, I generally find I continue vacuuming just because I don’t mind it and even find it a little hypnotizing. I hum a little tune.

It’s surprisingly lightweight (about twice the weight of a dustbuster, I think), and it was easy to assemble. The charge lasts a nice long time: I’ve toodled around all the rooms (okay, granted, not very thoroughly, but that’s what a verb like “toodled” is good for) without the vacuum running out of power. (If it seems to run out of power, empty the little canister and smack it against the side of the trash can to get the dust out of the filter.) When you’re done with it, you set it in its little floor base and it charges itself back up. Plus, it has one of those “Energy Star” ratings.

But I’m very worried that you’ll get it because I’m so happy with it, and then be like, “This has NO SUCTION! I might as well use STICKY TAPE to pick up the dirt!” It is NOT VERY POWERFUL. It would be no good for wall-to-wall carpeting: it has a carpet setting with a rotating brushroll, so you can use it for the foot-wiping mat and for area rugs, but it’s not going to do the kind of job you want for a whole house of plush pile. I have mostly hard floors.

It’s not a REAL vacuum. It would be no good for someone who doesn’t mind vacuuming and does it regularly, unless they wanted a second vacuum for quick jobs. What it is is a much-improved DustBuster-type vacuum: very, very convenient, and very pleasant to use. I love it, and I have never loved a vacuum cleaner before. —Swistle

Link: date my boyfriend at Amazon.com
Ballpark price: $69.99

You know how many weeks are left until the winter gift-giving occasions? Like, EIGHT. That’s it.

I was doing some preliminary shopping online and I found this bargain: a Pfaltzgraff Winterberry personal teapot for $7.86 down from $30.00. It is totally cute, and it would make a great gift for a teacher, a friend, a grandmother, a mother, a mother-in-law, a co-worker, a mail carrier—just about anyone. It would be a cute Secret Santa thing, if your workplace makes you do Secret Santa. You could make it a bigger gift by including some tea, or a mug. (There’s a set of four Winterberry mugs for $11.98 down from $40.00, so if you had four people to give this give to, you could give them each a teapot and a mug for $11.00 per person.)

They also have a really pretty Winterberry rectangular plate with a decorative edge for $13.60 down from $50.00; that would be a really nice gift with some cookies or brownies or candy on it, and it would be a good gift WITH the little teapot. Tea and cookies!

Oooo, or! You could do the sugar and creamer with the teapot! They’re $11.38 down from $50.00.

I don’t know how long they’re going to be at these prices. In fact, um, I bought MINE before I told you about the deals, just in case the prices went up while I was telling. —Swistle

Link: Pfaltzgraff Winterberry on Amazon.com

I don’t know the last time I had so much FUN reading a book. Well, all right, actually I think I DO know, and it was when I was in elementary school and reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books. This is a version for grown-ups, complete with, um, romantic liaison decisions to make.

Oh, maybe you didn’t read those books when you were a child. This is how it works: you read a page of the book, and at the end of the page you have two choices to make. Do you want to go to college, or do you want to travel? If you want to go to college, you go to one page, and if you want to travel you go to a different page. After another page or two, you have another decision to make, and another page to turn to. You continue to make decisions until you come to the end of your path—almost always ending in your death. Then you can start again at the beginning, or you can go back several decisions and choose a different way to go this time.

I’ve been reading the book for several days now, going down path after path, and I’m nowhere near tired of it yet. —Swistle

Link: Pretty Little Mistakes at Amazon.com
Ballpark price: $10

I have been making muffins for at least two decades now, and I always add the wet ingredients to the dry ones, as instructed in the recipe. This means I end up with two wet-ingredient-covered bowls to wash.

It wasn’t until THIS VERY MORNING that it occurred to me to do it the other way around: add the DRY ingredients to the WET ones. This results in one powdery bowl that just needs a little swishy rinse, and only one sticky messy wet-ingredient bowl. MUCH BETTER. —Swistle