Favorite Fridays: the case of finding a dupe

Hey everyone! 

It's been a minute since I have posted!! A few weeks ago I posted about a fabulous but pricey mascara duo. 

I got good feedback but many people didn't  want to spend a fortune on mascara and I agree. So I made a video because  I think I found a dupe! Check on my video! As a disclaimer I made this video bright and early BEFORE my students came. Just wanted to throw it out there so there was no judgement, LOL

http://youtu.be/SKbrKh6abrM

No heat bouncy curls...the experiment

Hello to my faithful three readers!!

 So I didn't get a chance to do "favorite Fridays" this past week which is kind of a bummer because I did have something planned. Well I'll double up this upcoming Friday. 

  Well I have been wanting to do this experiment for a long while now. As many of you know I have androgenetic alopecia. Which bottom line means my hair is thinning. I was diagnosed with this 2 years ago. I will say my hair has improved some. I've tried to not worry about it because honestly there are worst things in life. However I try to do things to take care of my hair. Unfortunately I have one of those types of hair that you cannot just wash and dry. It looks disgusting, frizzy and crazy looking. Unfortunately for my hair to even look somewhat good requires a lot of product and tools and mostly heat, which isn't good. I end up wearing my hair a lot which is a total bummer. About a week and a half ago I posted on Facebook if people knew of a good way to achieve beach wavy hair without using a lot of product or heat. 

A friend posted a tutorial for headband hair which is supposed to achieve bouncy curls with zero heat. I decided it wouldn't hurt to try it. 

So start with cleanish, dry hair, like so:

Next wet it down just a touch. Not a lot or it won't stick. Next put mousse or hair spray:

Next, grab a stretchy head band. Love this one:

 

And put it on like so. I have seen lots of girls wear headbands like this lately! Wish I was brave to copy the trend!

Next, grab a 1-2 piece section, wrap it around the headband and gently pull it through:

Will look like this:

Keep going all around your head and it will look like this:

End product and now go to bed! 

 

Next morning...

Now gently pull out the headband...and this monstrosity came from it.

Yikes....

Um yeah...so I put some major frizz tamer in my hair, mixed with a few drops of water. After playing around, this is now my hair 

Much better! Some thoughts:

-they are totally right with it saying it will be curly. Holy crap I had ringlets!

-your hair, if its like mine, will be big time frizzy. Make sure to have some sort of frizz spray on hand. 

-I will say for shorter hair like mine, your hair may look nuts. However just play around with it and it will look fine!

I'm stoked this tutorial ACTUALLY worked! I'm sold!!!

Till next time dolls!!!

Favorite Fridays: the most lethal mascara combo in the world

To my faithful three readers,

Well hi there! Happy Friday everyone! So I'm noticing my favorite Fridays are becoming all about my favorite beauty products. Well I'm okay with that. I love sharing things that I feel are good products! 

Here is another one of my newest faves, This fab little duo right here: 

I have blogged before about the falsies volume express by Maybelline. This mascara is also really great by itself though combined with this benefit mascara is even more crazier. 

First let's break down price. The falsies mascara runs about $5.99 which is not that bad at all. The benefit mascara "they're  real" runs about $21. Obviously you can tell I just have the sample size. 

So yes the benefit mascara is pretty expensive. However if you are like me and  love to have like you're wearing fake eyelashes, then this is definitely the best combination in the entire world, hands down. I start off by with clean lashes and I curl them. I start off with one good coat of the benefit mascara. I don't give much time for it to even dry and I immediately apply the falsies eyelash mascara. I usually go over with one more good coat of the benefit mascara then I move on to the other eye. I love the final product. It seriously looks like I straight up have on fake eyelashes. Now yesterday I did this combination and I felt like my eyelashes looked amazeballs. Of course it didn't take a picture. I did this combination today but I felt like it wasn't as good because I rushed. However this is what it looks like, after wearing this mascara for almost 8 hours now:

  

I do apologize for my scary, tired looking eyes LOL! Well there you have it, another two products that I'm absolutely in love with! Happy Friday sweeties,  enjoy your weekend!!!

Favorite Fridays: painting with The Hipp

To my faithful three readers:

Wow it has been weeks since I've done a favorite Friday's post! I am determined to get back to blogging more regularly.

So today I went to good ol' Costco to buy croissants and Glade plug-ins LOL! On my way to the register I was minding my own business when I ran into this beautiful gorgeous thing:

Now I am a huge sucker for packaging! Companies especially like the makeup company Benefit love me because I buy into all that cutesy crap. 

I didn't know who Jenna Hipp was. Reading into the little bio that's on the box she's apparently a nail stylist for the celebs. Of course I'm into what's going down with celebs so naturally I was interested. Apparently she's very well-known and her nail polishes are quite costly.

For 14.99 you get 12 super adorable cute nail polishes. They are on the small side but if you are an Essie fan like me it's not that big of a deal. Besides each nail polish comes out to $1.24 a piece which is super good. I would rather spend that on designer nail polish then wet and wild LOL. 

So I went home  and decided I immediately needed to paint my nails. I started off with this first color which is a super cute bright greenish color called "Look hot feel cool" (so cute!). Couldn't find my base coat so I started off with that color and decided to do my ring finger in  gold glitter from the nail line "the new black". Oh and can I say how much I think The nail file is so cute?!

So far my review is that the nail polish is pretty streaky at first...one good thing about this line is that it dries really really fast. However it dries a little bit streaky but after three coats and a topcoat it turned out really nice

One thing about this line is that apparently there's no harsh chemicals or anything like that in it, which is good. Personally I am happy so far with this purchase. For 14.99 for a good line of nail polishes you cannot beat that at all. I highly suggest you head to your local Costco and pick one up now because knowing Costco they'll be out of it quick. 

Hope you enjoyed this dolls!! Happy nail painting!!

Still here...

To my faithful 3 readers...

Yes I am here, LOL!!

The queen of dry spells is back! As many of you follow what's been going on through FB, you may all know that this summerhas been one of the best and worst season in a long while.

The high: we bought a house this summer

The low: we put our beautiful dog child to sleep

The latter was the most gut wrenching, most painful thing I had felt in a long time. Many people who aren't dog owners have no idea why we would be so upset. It was beyond traumatic. It is still hard for me to talk about, to be honest. 

The good thing is that through the storms (we had more besides our pup), God provides some pretty fantastic rainbows. I am thankful for each day for all the amazing blessings God has put in our lives. 

I plan on updating more on our huge high and low, but until then....

Please be praying for our pup, he isn't doing well right now...

Happy 4th guys....

I hope everyone enjoys their tiime with family and friends. I am writing this because we could really, really use big time prayer for our boxer dog Zeus. I know for some people it seems absolutely silly to fuss over an animal but if anyone knows us, Zeus is truly like a child to us. He is our world.

About a few weeks ago, Zeus was having hard time peeing. It was very strange. We took him to the vet, did tests and everything. Nothing unsual. The doctor thought maybe he was need to be neutered. About a day or so later, he starts peeing normally and life resumes as normal.

After we get back from Disneyland on Father's Day, we noticed about 2 days later he is having a hard time again. This time his vet insists on a neuter (because it was due to his large prostate, which puts pressure on him being able to pee). We agree and set it up right away.

His surgery was over a week ago. BY now, he should have been able to pee just fine. However,things got worse and he was having a tough time peeing . He would keep us up at all hours of the night trying to go to the bathroom. We were daily taking him in to get his bladder drained. we got an x-ray done, but nothing really seemed ut of the ordinary. Based off of reasearch, what we did was correct, and to fix his problem, it would simply take time for his prostate to go down. In the last three days it got even worse. No energy, can't pee, was throwing up and on Tuesday, refused to eat.

Yesterday we rushed him to the pet hospital, which those vets are very amazing and did a fabulous job when Zeus needed his knee replacement. Turns out from the blood work his liver and kidney levels were sky high and he was in renal failure. That means that his kidneys aren't flushing out what is currently inside him. This is dangerous because in a short time, he would be dead because of toxins in his body. They are currently keeping him for 4 days, hooked on an IV and flushing everything out. They don't think it is an enlarged prostate anymore, and they are running a million tests to see what the issue is.

By the grace of God, we had just enough in our savings to pay for this very costly pet bill. We are praying that the bill doesn't continue to go higher and what they are doing will be enough to figure out what the problem is. We are very, very scared and beyond overwhelmed and stressed. We are very sleep deprived (literally every night since the surgery we average 1-3 hours worth of sleep) and emotionally drained. We have these specific requests:

-That Zeus will be able to pull through, and whatever they are doing will be enough to heal him
-To give doctors wisdom in knowing what to do
-if need be, may God provide resources or ways for us to be able to figure out a way to pay for his bills, should they increase.
-that as doggy parents we will have wisdom to know what to do.

I know to some, this may seem silly. However, this dog means the world to us. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Workout schmorkout

Back a few months ago, I had a "come to Jesus" moment in regards to trying to lose weight. If you don't remember that post, here it is: If I'm really being honest

Well, we are super well into summer. In my mind, I would have by now been in the best shape of my life, rocking a tiny bikini. Well, that didn't happen.

If anything, my body ain't lookin' too cute. Especially in the last 2 weeks, I haven't been to the gym. The week before that, I walked at least 5-6 miles daily in Disneyland, but ate like 1 million calories too.

YIKES.

I'm having another "come to Jesus" moment....I need to reboot, and ASAP.

On pinterest, my friend Jessica posted a "shape up plan" by the beautiful Lauren Conrad.

Now, for me, I need to be real about this. I see my some of my peeps eating 1,000 calories a day (if this is you, STOP IT. Its not healthy, technically, that's dangerous. Guaranteed any doctor will tell you this!) or drinking only smoothies all day err day for their meals, etc. etc. The thing we have to realize, are you willing to do this for the rest of your life to maintain? For me, hail nah! I can't live like that, I am pretty sure most don't want to either.

I need a plan that is real, sensible and easy to follow. I have read through Lauren's plan and I pretty much think its fabulous. If you need a jump start that doesn't require giving up your firstborn, here ya go.

Lauren's Get Fit Quick Plan

Your welcome.