Beauty Regimen For the Lazy Girl

I've seen some other bloggers do this and well, since I've taken my test and life has calmed down for a bit I figured I'd share some of my beauty regimen with you all. I don't have a crazy beauty regimen, in fact, thanks to my naturally curly/wavy hair I re-wet my hair in the morning and I'm good to go on that front. So we'll call this a beauty regimen for the lazy girl! Eh? Like them apples? Another side note my nephew calls all fruit apples. So funny....

We'll start first with the most basic thing and what I mostly wear: Mascara. Now they stopped making Maxfactor in the US. I loved their mascara, so I've tried out two since they stopped making it. I'll compare them for you. They're both Covergirl.

I started out with last exact, and since I had seen multiple people post about last blast I decided to try it. I've been wearing it for 3 days now and I'm undecided. The actual brush is huge, like huge. I think I like the brush on the last exact better, it's a little more easy to use. So far I'm not convinced, but sometimes it takes a while to get used to using a new mascara, so I'm not throwing in the towel yet.

MAC makes my favorite lip gloss. Seriously go to the mall, go to Nordstrom, go to the MAC counter and try out their cute little lipglosses. This looks like the kind that I really like. With a little chapstick under them they are smooth and last longer than most regular lip gloss.

And onto hair. Now I don't profess much about hair because I'm pretty lucky with my hair, it does what I want most of the time and it doesn't take much to do it, but in the summer months during the dry heat I have to put product in it, or I end up like this.

So what I use are two different things. Since I mix up my shampoos and conditioners a lot as to not create icky build up, I have realized that one works better with some kinds and so does the other. The main one I love is Sunsilk. I use Captivating Curls styling cream

They changed the look of this and when I went to the store this weekend I had such a hard time finding it because they used to be all green. Either way, it's fantastic for frizz.

I also use biosilk for certain conditioners. I've noticed sunsilk and pantene don't pair well so I use biosilk with that, even when I'm not doing any heating to my hair. That's what biosilk is made for, to protect your hair from heat, but I use it whenever I feel like it because it also makes your hair soft, manageable, and helps with frizz.

 

 I really like this stuff, it's awesome for when you're blow drying or straightening or even curling your hair. That reminds me, I feel like straightening my hair, I haven't done that since before I got married and I've been in the mood lately. It's really thick, almost like a syrup and you have to wipe off your hands after because it's still on there, but it works really well.

Does anyone else have the problem that after the shower your hair dries really well, but then you go to sleep and you wake up looking like a monster? It drives me nuts, but it beats getting up earlier to shower. So what I've started to do is shower at night and then in the morning I re-wet my hair under the shower head and then just let it air dry with one of the two above products in it and it's all peachy again. I do have the hardest time getting my hair to do much after waking up, but if I re-wet it, it will work great for me. Anyone have any suggestions on this? Even if I try putting my hair in a pony tail with bed head my hair is all over the place and don't want to do the simplest thing. Suggestions, Please?

Ok, my last two products are under the same section: face lotion. I put lotion on every night after I shower and it makes my face happy. This is what I have been using for a while.

It smells so good and I really like it, but it's running out so I thought I would try a new kind.

I love this new stuff. Hal says he doesn't like the smell, but he said that about the lavender one and now he loves it, so I'm sure he'll get used to this new one too. Aveeno makes really good lotion with some natural ingredients. This new positively nourishing stuff makes my face feel so great, probably better than the lavender one.

So that's the main bulk of my beauty regimen. I'll try and keep you updated as I continue to try out new products. Please, share with me your ideas and what you use that you love, so I can try them out too!

Two Years!!

traI know I wasn't the best at blogging in a timely manner already, but I'm afraid it might get even worse. Hal's computer died before school started and so we are now own to just my laptop. Although we beefed it up with a new gig of ram and windows 7, I still don't get it to use it very often thanks to homework. Thankfully I can often blog from work, but most of the pictures I took from our anniversary were on my camera, so I waited until I could use it, and thankfully I had some time Friday night :)

Have any of you heard of Park City before? I know that people who live in Utah have heard of it, but maybe some of you have heard of a little thing called the Sundance Film Festival started by Robert Redford? Well, if you've heard of tha,t you've heard of Park City, because that's where it's held. Park City is awesome. It's the swanky getaway spot of Utah. And luckily for us it was SO beautiful while we were up there for our anniversary. You can compare to see how pretty it was last year while we were up there here. Well really, you should be proud of me for blogging about it all at once, seeing as last year I didn't blog about the rest until our year and a half mark.

We had the most fantastic weekend in Park City. It was exactly what I needed. We relaxed, ate ridiculously overpriced food, and rejuvenated ourselves.

When we first got up there we went up to see the new Montage Hotel that my husband did some work on for work and then we drove up towards Gaurdsman Pass. It was so pretty up there, you could see so far all over.

So funny story, look at Hal's sunglasses and you can see a reflection of his arm taking the picture. This next picture though is the best. It was so windy and the sun was in our eyes and so I was trying to take a picture and thought, oh this is awesome, use the camera to block out the sun, best idea I ever had....

I know, right? Best idea I ever had. And now here are some scenery shots to make you jealous of fall in Utah. SO Pretty. The first is the view from our room, and then the others are various shots from around Park City

It's the perfect time of year to be up there, because it's not crowded with ski bums, travelers and  Sundance people. The mountain air feels so good! So good tidings to all of you from the mountain abode, and here's to year 3!

Actualizacion

Here are the flowers I put on my mom's grave. On her birthday every year I go there especially for her birthday and I always pick our flowers that have yellow in them. Yellow flowers always  remind me of my mom. I always take one of the flowers out and put it on my great grandma's grave which luckily is close to my mother's.

Now onto today. I took my CLEP test today. Right now I'm actually really surprised by how not upset I am. I scored a 46, I needed a 50 for the Peace Corps. 4 blasted points. Last night I was telling Hal about how I don't want to fail because I've never failed anything that has to do with school before. I've never even come close. Even though I didn't get the 50 it made me feel better realizing at 50 is a C and I was only 4 points off of that, so that's like what, a C-? Not too shabby for 3-4 months of self studying, eh? Well, I'm not sure what I'm going to do now, guess we'll wait to see what the Peace Corps say.

One huge blessing that I did receive from this is realizing how many people I have rooting for me. While it sucks to tell a lot of people that I didn't achieve my goal, but it's such a good feeling to realize all of the people that are behind you, supporting you in whatever you may choose to do. So thanks to all of those to sent me kind messages and kept up with me the last few days, it really meant a lot to me.

Opening Up

Alright guys, I decided to take a bit of a turn on this blog. I've decided to open up about a few things going on in my life that I have mentioned, but have been too afraid to talk about since I mentioned them in case they don't work out, in case I fail, in case we don't get picked. But you know, sometimes you just have to get them out, so I'm going to talk about two things that are pretty important in my life right now, but I've been too afraid to further mention to most people, because let's face it, it sucks telling people who are rooting for you that it didn't work out, that you got rejected. Rejection sucks so bad, but everyone has to face it in their lives. Hopefully this will bring us bloggers closer?

The First? Is the Peace Corps. Hal and I applied back in April for the Peace Corps. I've mentioned it on here a few times, but after we didn't get chosen in the June nomination I stopped talking about it to most people. Actually, I haven't wanted to know what day our recruiter is making his decision because I don't want to dread that day, after last time. And I don't want to tell people a specific day so they wouldn't ask me all the time if I had heard anything yet. So...I have been working my butt off since the last round of nominations in the hopes that we'll be nominated for the round that opens up....sometime this month...

For a little over a month now I've been volunteering as an ESL tutor. I have been so surprised by how much I enjoy volunteer teaching for an hour and a half each week. I really enjoy talking with my students and helping them to learn something that's SO hard. I didn't reach the amount of hours that I needed, but hopefully that doesn't effect us too much, because I think I have until we would leave to get the hours? Maybe that's a misconception, but I hope not.

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The other thing I have been working hard at is the main thing that will increase our chances of being nominated. I have talked about it before, you can read it here if you missed it. I have to take the dreaded CLEP Spanish exam. Yikes. I have been studying for months. Months. Maybe not as diligently as I should, but this last month I've been working pretty darn hard. I passed my two Peterson practice tests that I took and I was feeling pretty good, but then I took my first REA test on Friday, and I failed. I? me? I don't think I've ever failed a test before. I took another one last night and I failed. BUT, my score went up by 5 points. I think I was 10 more points away from passing. SO I'm hoping that I can pass. I've done some research and it seems like the Peterson practice tests are closer to the listening portions on the CLEP and the REA is closer to the actual reading section on the test. I've also read that the REA tests are usually harder than the actual CLEP. I'm really hoping so, because I'm not the best at standardized tests.

It's hard to be on the edge of finding out if months of studying and hard work are about to be put to use, or go down the drain. The anticipation is killing me. After I failed the first test Hal suggested that I push back my test date, I decided not too. I'm all in at this point, I just want to get it over with. So, I'm going to just let everyone know my date so you can share in my failure or triumph. I'm taking the test this Friday. As in 3 days from now. EEEKK! I chose that day because the next day is our anniversary weekend, and I wanted to be able to relax and have fun without a test looming over my head.

So please pray for me. Send me good thoughts all day Friday. Send me good grammar thoughts.

And please, if you've ever taken the CLEP test, give me any advice you have. I've heard to bring your own headphones because the quality is so bad on the listening portion, and to also take notes during the longer listening section. Any other advice?

P.S. today would have been my mother's 59th birthday. I've decided to make it a tradition to post a picture of the flowers I put on her grave. happy birthday mom!

Something Corporate

 *Sorry, if things look weird, but blogger's spacing is being weird again
Do you remember when I posted about this? Well, I'm finally getting around to posting the pictures from the concert. That's harder to do when the pictures are on your phone and your husband has commandeered your laptop for the semester. So, just to show you how dedicated I am to all of you guys, I emailed every single picture to myself and then had to download them. I know, serious work instead of just hooking my phone up to my computer. Anyway. I went to see Something Corporate.
It was SO much fun. I really can't think if Hal and I had ever been to a concert together. I used to go to them all of the time, but you know, the last two years of school kind of kills your life, so I got out of the habit. Something Corporate didn't have any opening acts, which I had never seen before, but it was kind of cool because the show didn't start until like 9 so we could just chill for a while before we headed down there. And there wasn't a huge line out side for people waiting to get in because the doors were already open. So we waited, and it was hot. Like real hot and stuffy because there wasn't much air coming in. Somehow we ended up by a huge fan, which was awesome. And we were in good position to push our way forward. So we entertained ourselves while we waited.

Oh yeah, in case you were wondering about this sweet 'stache Hal is rocking. His school that he's going to doesn't allow facial hair, except a mustache so he grew it out just for his ID card picture and then shaved it off. 

Once the lights came on we made our way forward, we weren't super close, but we could see well enough just waiting for them to come out. Once they came out we pushed our way forward and ended up 2 or 3 people back from the stage, but we were off to the side. Our friendlies stayed back a bit because they were taller and could see and didn't want to be as close as we wanted to be. Here are some pictures from the show. It was SO good. I loved it and had so much fun. You gotta go to an intense concert every now and again and just let go, loose your voice, and your hearing and have fun.

Sorry some of them are super blurry or out of focus. They're taken with my phone as we were being shoved forward and back so it's hard to have a steady hand. So, let me tell you a little something about Hal. I didn't even know this about him and I'm his wife. He's awesome to go to concerts with. He's good at protecting me from being shoved too bad, and he's really good at pushing me forward so we kept moving up, and best of all, apparently he's good a jumping. They played Punk Rock Princess and everyone in there was jumping pretty much the whole song. So what did Hal do? He literally jumped us halfway across the stage so we were front and center. All of the sudden we went from barely being able to see and having some fresh air while we were to the side of the stage to being right in the middle, 2 or 3 people back from the front and only breathing in hot sweaty air. Yeah, it's pretty gross, but it's so much fun because that's where all of the crazy fans are, and the mosh pits don't really effect you too much because you're in constant motion anyway.

Want to know why else Hal is awesome to go to a concert with? After they left the stage and everyone was chanting "One More Song" Hal started chanting "Konstantine" and he literally got almost everyone chanting it. They came back out, and guess what they played! If you're a Something Corporate or Jacks Mannequin fan you know about Konstantine and how they hardly ever play it because it's super long. I was stoked they played it. Here is a video of him playing the song at the concert. I didn't take the video. I was actually hoping the girl right next to me would have posted hers. On her video you can probably hear Hal telling her to put it on youtube. I couldn't find it, but this one is cool because he talks a bit about it and when he talks about the crazy group of people on the video that's totally where I was at the concert, I was in the crazy group at the front :)


Here are some more pictures, I got some better ones once we moved over.

Here is my favorite one. I have no idea how it turned out so good. Must have been the one that Hal took for me.

So cool, right? I think it was taken during Konstatine because the guy in front of me was videoing it and I couldn't get a picture without his hand or camera in the way. Overall the concert was a blast and I haven't been that sweaty in a long time. I ran into a friend outside of the show and she warned me before giving my a hug that she was sweaty. I told her not to worry because I was too. I immediately dank a ton of water and went home and hopped into the shower. Their tour is probably already over and I doubt they'll make more music together, but in case they ever come to your town, go see them, you won't regret the $30 a ticket.

Return from Oregon

*Sorry if some of you already saw this in Google Reader. I accidentally got a little happy with the publish button. Apparently my first attempt at a scheduled post didn't go so well.

And finally here they are! The pictures I have been promising for like a month. Now that school has started I have a few minutes to sit down and upload them. After we left our little secret hideaway on the beach we drove up the ocean with my sister's family. It ended up being really fun...most of the time anyway.

We started out with the intention to find crab. Hal wanted crab so badly after going to Mo's in Lincoln City, and they didn't have any. So our intent was to drive up the beach and try to find some fresh Oregon crab. The first time we stopped we did the coolest thing of almost the whole trip. We drove on the beach. It was so much fun to drive right on the beach, except when my sister got us stuck and we, I mean they had to push ourselves out. I got some reall cool pictures while driving on the beach.

We had some amazing views driving up the coast. When we drove from LA to San Fran to Medford last year we wanted to drive up the pacific coast highway, but it didn't end up happening, so it was really cool to be able to drive from Lincoln City to Seaside all along the coast. It was awesome, when we would come around a bend and have a view like this

When we were driving up we were looking up restaurants in different cities on my phone. At one point I called some places and asked where their crab was from and none of them had local crab, most of it was from Canada. Well, I thought that was weird, and then I realized that I was calling a city in Michigan with the same name as a town in Oregon. DUH! haha, no wonder. We found lots of places in Cannon Beach that had local crab and ended up stopping at a place called Ecola and Hal finally got his Oregon crab. Ecola had some salt water taffy from a place in Sea Side so we decided to go find it. But first we stopped and took pictures.

I was a little bit disappointed, they had a lot of candy and it was a cool store, but they had hardly any Taffy. Boo. So we found something else to do. Something awesome.

They were the best bumper cars I've ever been on, they turned so easily, it was so much fun. After that we polished it of with an elephant ear. Have you ever had them before? Fair type food? It's so good. I like the classic cinnamon and sugar ones. The Utah State Fair is coming up and I'm excited to get some again. In Sea Side we let go of our message in a bottle that we created when we drove on the beach. We tried to throw it in then, but it just kept washing up right away, so we dropped it in a small river that led to the ocean. Hopefully someone cool somewhere finds it. After Seaside it was getting late so we started heading back towards Portland.

We decided to stop at Multnomah Falls. I don't remember the last time I saw it up close. It was so cool to go up close to it and see it and even feel the spray. To get there you have to drive on this tiny road that was built duing the depression by The CCC. I thought it was so cool after learning about the CCC to see some of the work that they did.

That sign is a Union Pacific sign that said how many miles it is to the next town. It looked so antique. Hal shimmied accross the bottom of the railroad bridge to the sign. You can't really tell in this picture, but he was swinging back and forth.

It was right after this that we stopped for dinner and my sister realized that she forgot to give my nephew drammamine. And that would be when he threw up all over the place in the car. That was awful. I totally got barf on my legs, I was so glad I was wearing pants. Poor Hal was wearing shorts. Hal was seriously amazing, I was so grossed out and turned away as my sister was trying to catch it in the lid of her taco salad which just made it riocheted out and all over the place. Hal grabbed the paper towels and tried to help catch it and clean up. That's amazing. I was just trying not to smell it, and he was helping. Way to go Hal. Way to show me up when it comes to my own nephew. Remember those pillows that I talked about at the end of this post? Yeah, part of the reason we decided to keep them is they got barf on the plastic coverings.

We finished off the ride home the next day with a friend, driving 10 hours in a car without AC. woo! At least it hard core rained through part of the ride home. And I got an awesome tan line on my right shoulder from getting a little burned from sitting in the sun the entire drive home. Ah vacations.