January Monthly Favorite

Happy Wednesday everyone! If you don’t follow me on Instagram then you may not know why I have been absent for so long. Basically, this last semester of school hit me hard, like, REALLY hard and I wasn’t expecting it at all. I have ended up being way busier than I anticipated and while I love this blog, my grades 100% come before this blog. There was a bit of time there where I had loads of large assignments due all in the same week and as you all know I work too. Then just as I got out of that really busy part I ended up getting the flu and it was HORRIFIC. I’ll spare you all the details, but I was home for about a week so my parents could take care of me and I’ve missed quite a bit of work from my classes. So basically, life has been really hard here recently and I’m just going to try to ease myself back into this. I’m going to try my best to upload twice a week like I like to do, but I’m not going to put pressure on myself or feel bad if I don’t because school is at the forefront right now. So, without further ado here is my (very late) monthly favorite from January.

Last month was a great month of me getting to try all of the new things I got from Christmas, but surprisingly enough, my favorite is not a beauty or clothing item. My favorite from last month were a pair of earrings from my boyfriend. Now, I’m not just biased because he gave them to me. I actually have a really hard time finding earrings that don’t irritate and cause my earlobes to become infected (I can’t even wear real gold earrings). However, these earrings are perfect. They’re beautiful, don’t irritate my ears, and the quality of them is amazing too.

He got them from a chain boutique called Francesca’s and he got a matching necklace with them as well. While I don’t wear the necklace unless I’m going out with him, the earrings have become a part of my every-day-accessories (which could potentially be a post in the future 😉 ).

How You Know You Have a Lifelong Bestie

Happy Wednesday everyone! I’m sorry I missed a blog post last Saturday, but if I’m being real with you all (which was one of my goals for this year), I am having a really rough time keeping up with this blog and school and work all at the same time. I really just need you all to bear with me and stick around until I can get my shiz figured out.

However, with all of the stuff I’ve been going though within the past couple of weeks, I’m reminded that I have some super supportive and loving people around me. So, I wanted this Wednesday’s topic to be about best friends, and more specifically, lifelong best friends.

As we all know, friends will come and go throughout our lives. Sometimes it’s for the better and sometimes it’s not. But hopefully, in the end, we have at least one, if not a couple of lifelong besties. With that said, I want to share with you all some of the ways I was able to recognize I had a lifelong best friend.

• You don’t have to hang out with each other all the time, but you’re both still always there for each other
• You are comfortable with each other enough that you can tell it like it is – there’s no beating around the bush
• You both support each other as much as possible
• You know that they’ll still love you and forgive you, even if you royally mess up
• The pump you up like no other and some of your biggest confident boosts come from them
• You can tell them anything, like literally anything and they won’t think you’re weird or gross or dumb – they just get you

If you have a friend that exhibits some or all of these qualities, DO NOT LET THEM GO. These types of friends don’t come along very often and they are some of the best people ever, so cherish them. I’m so grateful to have a few friends like this and I am definitely not going to let them leave my life haha

My Updated Workout Routine

Hello everyone! I’m not sure what the weather has been like where all of you guys are, but it’s still continuing to be in the mid-fifties here and I. am. LOVING. it. It’s putting me in such a good mood and keeping me motivated which is exactly what I need.

Speaking of motivation, over the summer I ended up getting into a really good routine of going to the gym and working out and unfortunately I dropped the ball last semester. But I’m here to say now that I’m feeling super motivated and have been going to the gym on a constant routine since school started back up. Given that information, I figured it’d be a good idea to tell you all my updated workout routine throughout the week!

Monday

• Yoga class- I loveeee yoga. It’s a great way to stretch out all of your muscles and feel super relaxed afterwards. I also think it’s a great thing to do on Monday because it kind of slowly eases you back into working out for the week

Tuesday

• Leg day: here’s my routine currently
  • 3 sets of 10 squats using a 25lb weight on each side
  • 3 sets of 10 calf raises weighted with a 125lb weight
  • 10 lunges (5 on each leg) with a 12.5lb weight in each hand
  • 3 sets of 10 donkey kicks
  • 3 sets of 10 hydrants

Wednesday

• Cardio Barre class- as a former dancer, I love this class because it combines cardio with all of my favorite ballet barre stretches and exercises

Thursday

• Core/Abs Day: the 300 challenge
  • crunches
  • side crunches
  • v-ups
  • russians twists
  • leg lifts
  • toe touches
  • reverse crunches, etc.

Friday – Sunday: rest days

I’m really loving the routine I have going right now and that I’m able to mix it up with between weight-lifting and different types of workout classes. If you all have any questions about my routine or the classes I am in feel free to comment down below!

My Eyeshadow Palette Collection

I’m so happy it’s the weekend, friends! I don’t know about you all, but it has been a tiring couple of weeks. I am very happy to have the weekend off from working and to get to relax/catch up on writing for this blog!

I also had a little go through recently of my eyeshadow palettes because I received a few for christmas and it made me realize that I actually have a pretty solid collection now! I know I love knowing what eyeshadow palettes people use and what they love about them, so I figured I’d do the same for you all!

Urban Decay

• Naked Basics
• Naked 3

Too Faced

• Natural Eyes

Lorac

• Los Angeles (limited edition)

bh Cosmetics

• Carli Bybel Deluxe Edition

NYX

• Birthday palette (limited edition)

Morphe

• Bronzed Mocha
• Copper Spice

Rimmel

• Magnif’eyes Blush Edition

While I do prefer to use some of these over others, they’re all still great palettes and for the most part, I tried to make it so that they didn’t overlap too much shade-wise. Also, some of them I have alone used like once because I just got them, but so far I love every single one of these palettes and I would recommend them to anyone, Especially the Morphe, Too Faced, and Urban Decay Palettes! Comment down below what palettes are your favorite, I would love to know and am always looking to expand my collection!

Why Knowing You & Your Partner’s Love Language is Important

Happy Wednesday, friends! I don’t know about you all, considering many of you live all around the world, but I woke up to a light blanket of snow this morning and it made me very happy (and not just because one of my classes was cancelled). Over the past few days though, I’ve taken many personality-type quizzes via my classes and talking to other professionals and one of them is the Love Language Quiz.

I’m not sure if you all know what a Love Language is and what the different types are, but there is a book that all of this is based on (and is a very good read). If you want to learn about it without having to read the book you can click here and even take the quiz to figure out what your love language(s) is!

The point of this though, is that in relationships, it can be really important to know what you and your partner’s love language is. So here’s the gist:

• a love language kind of describes the way you express and interpret affection and love to/from people
• there are 5 different kinds of love languages:
  • words of affirmation
  • acts of service
  • receiving gifts
  • quality time
  • physical touch

The reason I believe it’s important for you and your partner to know what yours are is because sometimes it helps explain why your partner loves the way they do. For example, my top love language is quality time with a score of 10, and physical touch and words of affirmation follow behind closely with a score of 8. This means that I value those things highly in my relationship. It also explains how I give love to my partner. I tend to want to spend lots of time with him and give him verbal support often. Also, in past relationships, I’ve noticed that when those things were absent in my relationship, I tended to feel unwanted and unhappy. It works vice versa for my boyfriend’s results too.

If you know each other’s love languages then you can have a better understanding for why you both do some of the things you do within your relationship and you can adjust to provide some of the things your partner may need according to their love language. I highly encourage that you find out what yours is if you haven’t already because it makes so much sense once you see your results.

 

 

5 Ways I Keep My Hair Healthy

Hello friends and happy Saturday! I have to say, this week has been an adjustment. I don’t know why, but my winter break felt much longer than it actually was so it’s taken me a bit to get back into the routine of things. That said, even though it was just the first week of classes, I’ve already had two quizzes and two projects laid onto me, so just try to bear with me as I get everything sorted.

Now, if you all remember I uploaded a post during the summer about my newly balayaged hair and I said that I would eventually follow up with how I keep my hair happy and healthy. Well, today is that day! Here are five ways that I keep my hair healthy:

1. Use Color Protection Shampoo– while in the salon I was told that the best shampoo to go with is shampoo without sulfate in it. As someone who doesn’t have $50 to spend just on shampoo and conditioner alone, I went on the hunt to find a drug store brand that would still work to keep my hair soft and colored. I went with Pantene Radiant Color Volume shampoo and conditioner. Although it still has sulfate in it, I notice a huge difference if I use other shampoos (and not a good difference) and my color has lasted.
2. Air Dry Instead of Blow Dry– I know that if you’re in a rush to get somewhere, blow drying may be your only choice, but if you can, I highly recommend allowing time for your hair to air dry before you style it because that’s just one less heat tool you’re using on your hair and we all know heat is really damaging.
3. Wear Protective Hair Styles– protective hairstyles help fight damage against the ends of your hair and your hair in general because you don’t need heat to do them. What I do usually is french braid my hair maybe once or twice a week and then take them out at night so I have pretty natural waves in the morning. This then gives me two to four days with no heat on my hair.
4. Don’t Wash Your Hair Every Day– I know it may be tempting to, especially if you have naturally oily hair like I do, but it can be really damaging for your hair. If you have naturally oily hair then you just have to train your hair to get used to it. I go every other day, which is about as much as I can stretch it, but I know many people who wash their hair maybe twice a week. There are many ways to combat the oil in your hair without washing it, including dry shampoo and baby powder.
5. Don’t Wear Your Hair Up Too Often– it’s totally okay to throw you hair up for the gym or work, but try not to let that be your main hair style because hair ties can cause breakage and it pulls at the roots of your hair. If the problem is that you really want your hair out of your face then try doing just a half up, half down look or use a protective hairstyle.

I do all five of these things and trust me when I say that I always get compliments on how soft and healthy my hair is. These are easy and inexpensive (if not free) ways to keep your hair healthy and if that’s not what we all want then I don’t know what is. Comment below if you have any other tips and tricks for your hair! I’d love to hear them!

Beauty Products I’m Looking Forward to Trying this Year

Hello friends! I hope you’re all having a great start to your year so far and a non-stressful first week of spring semester, if you’re in college like I am. I’ve realized that I need to really sit down at some point this week and brainstorm ideas for blog posts for this year so that I’m real organized and prepared instead of writing a blog post the morning of (like I’m doing right now, oops). However, sometimes when I don’t have the time, I just get lucky and an idea for a post pops into my head, which is exactly what happened last night right before I went to bed, so here I am!

So, today I wanna talk about all of the beauty products I want to try out this year. Some of these items will be things I received for Christmas, because as you all saw I received a lot of beauty products, and some will be things that I just have heard about and would really love to try out. I’m going to sort the products out into two lists: makeup and skin care to keep things more organized.

Makeup:

• Morphe Copper Spice eyeshadow palette
• Morphe Bronzed Mocha eyeshadow palette
• Benefit Cosmetics Pearl face primer
• CliniqueFit Post-Workout Neutralizing face powder (as someone who loves working out and not looking like I just worked out, this could be a great product for me)

Skin Care:

• L’Occitane Eye Balm (I was told this is great for dark lines under your eyes, lemme know if you’ve used it!)
• SOO AE Charcoal Clay bubble mask
• by nature Avocado Oil and Rice Protein recharging face mask
• Charlotte Tilbury Healthy Glow tinted moisturizer

While I have pretty nice skin now as an adult, I do have some sort of “skin goals” for myself this year. I’d love to diminish my dark lines under my eyes, minimize the pores on my face a little more, and have a healthier glow to my skin. It’s not that I’m unhappy with my skin, at all, I would just love to look as healthy as possible!

Let me know if any of you have used any of these products and how you feel about them. Hopefully none of the skin-care ones break me and my sensitive skin out. haha

New Years Resolutions: Do I Have Any, My Opinions on Them, and How I Make Them Attainable

Happy Saturday friends! It’s the end of the first week of January 2018 and lemme tell you, I’ve actually felt kind of crud-y. I think it’s a mix of having to go back to school (which I’m actually happy about) and it being my last semester of undergrad (the part I’m not so happy about), having a huge daunting paper due a week after I get back, and just generally feeling so overwhelmed that I don’t want to do anything. This kind of inspired me to write this post.

It’s going to be all about New Years Resolutions. I’ll share with you all what ones I’ve made for myself, how I feel about them, and how I plan on achieving them. So, first off, here are the few resolutions I have for myself this year and how I’ll achieve them:

• continue working on being healthy– I know this sounds really cliche because everyone and their mother wants to “be more healthy” for the new year, but this past summer I had already started on this journey of eating semi-right (I am a picky eater so this was a challenge) and working out consistently. However, once the school year started and I was in classes, interning, and working, I completely fell off the wagon. This semester will be different because I’m not interning anymore which will give me SO much free time, you have no idea. So, here’s how I’m going to accomplish this:
  • cook more of my own meals and be mindful of those meals (this should be easy since I got a cookbook for christmas! Thanks mom and dad)
  • have a consistent workout schedule and DO NOT DEVIATE
  • get involved in gym classes to make it more fun – ultimate bar burn, here I come!
• Improve this blog– this one is vague because it entails a lot of things and most of them are the ways I’ll do this so here they are:
  • self-host/purchase my own domain
    • I’ve decided this will be done once I nail a full-time job after I graduate because I’ll feel more secure (type-A personality revealing itself big time right there)
  • be more real on here and talk about topics that aren’t just beauty, style, and home decor
• Let go of my fear of the unknown– if you’ve been around here for a while you’ll know that I deal with anxiety and luckily my anxiety has been at an all time low. I’m super proud of myself for managing it so well; however, I can feel it coming back and it’s not anxiety that I usually deal with. I’m starting to seriously fear what’s going to happen in my life after I graduate and I understand that that’s normal, but the way I handle it and my brain turns it into this irrational fear is not normal. That being said, I want to work on not being so anxious about not knowing what my future holds and this is how I’ll work on it:
  • bullet-ing in my journal when I’m feeling anxious so that I can just dump those thoughts out
  • communicating with others who can be there to support me when I’m not so sure about everything
  • continue doing what I need to do to better my chances of stable independence after college (a.k.a. applying to more jobs)

There, I’ve put them out there for all of the internet to see and now I am committed to achieving them! Now here’s my opinion on them. You always get some people who love making resolutions and then you get some who think they’re dumb and that people should be “working to be better year round” which has some value to it, but isn’t as easy as it sounds. I personally like making resolutions because there’s just something great about the feeling of a new year being a fresh start and it can be really motivating. That being said, I try to only set a few resolutions and ones that are achievable, not too difficult, but not easy either (if they were easy would they really be resolutions?). I try to be very realistic and then at the end of the year, if I fell short, I don’t beat myself up about it because I am human. I am not perfect. And life happens.

So here’s to the new year, achieving new things, and just being happy!

December Monthly Favorite

Happy January everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and Day and were able to ring it in the best way possible. Given that it’s a new month, it’s time to share with you all one thing I was loving all December. I have to say it was kind of hard to think of something that wasn’t from Christmas because I already love so many of the beauty products that I was given, but those don’t really count because I got them just six days before the this month started.

However, after a little bit more thinking, I was able to think of exactly one new item that I have loved this December and it is a fragrance. I don’t think there will be any surprise here when I mention  it’s from Victoria’s Secret beauty collection. Here are the details on the fragrance:

It’s the Temptation Fragrance Mist and it’s notes consist of:

• Fresh Apple
• Saguaro Flower
  • to create a fruity floral aroma

I love this fragrance mist for multiple reasons, 1) it’s super long lasting, as are all of the fragrance mists (maybe even more so than their perfumes?), 2) even though the notes seem spring-y, the overall smell reminds me more of a winter scent which is why I’ve been loving it and 3) my boyfriend loves this scent as well which is a plus because usually him and I have very different tastes when it comes to fragrances both for men and women.

Another added bonus is that they’re just $6 right now due to the semi-annual sale going on! It’s a steal because these mists are huge and last so long.

5 Things I’m Grateful For

Happy New Years Eve Eve everyone! It’s getting down to the wire and I know that the holidays are such a stressful time for a lot of people, but ultimately it should be a happy and loving time of the year and today’s a great day for me to share with you all my 5 things I’m grateful for.

1. Getting to spend my entire winter break with my family- I feel like I say this every time I have a break from school, but when you work in the area you go to school, it’s sometimes very hard to get time off to spend with your family
2. Finishing my last fall semester before I graduate with strong grades
3. Getting time to relax- this past semester has been a whirlwind. I’m a full-time student, but on top of that I was interning in a dementia home and working part-time so it’s nice to have this break to really relax and reenergize for my last spring semester
4. Sleeping in my own bed- college beds are not comfortable and they’re teeny, so it’s so nice to be in my full size bed and be able to spread out and sleep peacefully
5. Reality TV- this seems really dumb, but it’s my guilty pleasure and I don’t watch tv during the school years so it’s nice to come home and watch mind numbing reality tv (my faves are Keeping up with the Kardashians and WAGS of LA)

I hope you all had an amazing holiday and have a great new year, remember that there’s more to it than just getting and giving gifts. Cherish being with your loved ones and enjoy the time with them.

xoxo