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January ipsy Glam Bag

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Now that I’ve been able to peek at my February Glam Bag, it’s time to write this review. I’m going to start comparing the value of the Glam Bag with that of the items you can buy retail, so that we can all see if it is really worth it. All prices and costs are before taxes as sales tax varies location to location and the Glam Bag is only taxed in some states (TX is one of them).

The design of the January bag was inspired by workout clothes and shoes. Its outside is made of mesh and had a shoelace and aglet zipper pull. In it I got a REAL CHEMISTRY Fresh-Start Foaming Cleanser, bellapierre Cosmetics StayPut Brow Gel in Licorice, SO SUSAN Liquid Matte in Raisin Flesh, TRUST FUND BEAUTY Lip Scrub, and the Balm Cosmetics Mary-Lou Manizer.

REAL CHEMISTRY Fresh-Start Foaming Cleanser

I love exfoliators but they’re not great for every day use because they can be abrasive and dry out your skin. Cleansers are better for daily use but they aren’t as fun. They are easier to use outside of the shower however, which is really how you’re supposed to wash your face anyway. This is the way I use this cleanser- at the sink. It is a creamy formula, foamed up easily with water and some massaging, and came off easily with a damp washcloth. After removing it, my skin felt soft and smooth and was not super dry. It looked whiter than usual, but I think that it was due to a) the fact that I wasn’t wearing makeup, and b) my cheeks are usually pink and somehow, this must have neutralized that, at least at the time.

Received: 15 ml | On sale: 4.2 oz for $24 at Ulta | Approx. value: $2.86

bellapierre Cosmetics StayPut Brow Gel in Licorice

I have a pretty clear opinion on this. Eyebrows are important. Look at photos of 90’s fashion or celebrities without eyebrows and you will understand. With that in mind, mine are a tad wonky, but eyebrows are sisters, not twins. They still need to be full and fabulous however, so I do what I can to ensure that that is true. This entails using pencils, pomades, and gels to fill in my brows. This product looks a lot like the Benefit ka-BROW pomade, something I am familiar with from work and that many make-up instagrammers swear by. I was excited for it because the ka-BROW is $24 and this was part of a (roughly) $10 subscription box and I’m on a budget. It was not exactly like the ka-BROW.

The main difference that I could tell was the brush. Usually you’d do your eyebrows with an angled brush which is what comes in the ka-BROW. This came with something closer to a lip brush. I tried to use it but it didn’t pick up the pomade or distribute it as well as an angled brush would. When I used my angled brush in it, it worked like a charm so the pomade itself is great. It’s disappointing that I can’t just carry this to do my brows however, and have to also bring another brush along as well.

Received: 2.2 g | On sale: 2.2 g for $25 at bellapierre.com | Approx. value: $25

So Susan Liquid Matte Lipstick after a full day at work

SO SUSAN Liquid Matte in Raisin Flesh

I was so ready to be unimpressed by this liquid lipstick. I’ve been through liquid lip after liquid lip and loved the colors but absolutely hated the formulas because they didn’t go on well or didn’t stay very long. I was pleasantly surprised by this one because I loved the color (like usual), it went on easily, and it stayed on all day. Even at work where I do a lot of talking, and through drinking and eating, this liquid lipstick stayed on my lips. The main issue I have with it is that it started out super sticky. It wasn’t sticky like a sticky lip gloss, it was almost like there’s glue in it that literally makes your lips stick together. As it dried it got less sticky but it never fully went away. Still, with the longwear formula, I can put up with the stickiness.

 

On both of the straws I used while wearing it, there was minor transfer. It was so minor that I had to use my DSLR and macro lens to even start to see it in photos.

Received: 5 ml | On sale: 5 ml for $14 on sosusan.com | Approx. value: $14

TRUST FUND BEAUTY Lip Scrub

Just like a like exfoliating facial cleansers, I love basically any kind of scrub. Lip scrubs can be particularly fun because they usually taste good. When I saw that this was in my bag, I was super excited. My lips get super dried out and peely because I don’t drink enough water. Water and proper hydration are the best moisturizers. With this scrub, I was able to exfoliate my lips and make them super soft and get rid of a lot of the peely dead skin on them. After I used this, I applied my IT Cosmetics lip treatment and had pillowy and kissable lips the rest of the night and into the morning. The only think I’m not a fan of with this is how small the tube is. With one use it felt like I was already running out, something I thought was just because it was a sample size but when I found out this was the full size, it seemed like a bit of a rip.

Received: 8 ml | On sale: 8 ml for $8 on trustfundbeauty.com | Approx. value: $8


the Balm Cosmetics Mary-Lou Manizer

I’m not a huge fan of highlighters. When other people use them I always admire their work but I never feel like my highlight comes out as well as their’s so I tend to just not try. Whenever I get a new one, I have to try it though. One of the problems I have with highlighters is that I’m a lot lighter-skinned than I think I am so I have to use really light highlighters to get any results. This one looked like enough for me to get that blinding cheekbones look but it wasn’t. The color was still super pretty and I think I might be able to use it as an eyeshadow, but it just did not do what I needed it to.

Received: 1 g | On sale: 8.5 g for $24 on thebalm.com | Approx. value: $2.82

 

Approx. overall Glam Bag value: $52.68 | Current Glam Bag price: $10 | Approx. savings: $42.68, 81%

December ipsy Glam Bag

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December is a busy month for most people. That said, here’s my ipsy review.

The bag itself is super cute. It’s simpler than some of their other designs but it’s a nice silver color with the stripe of glitter at the top and the zipper and pull are a turquoise color that I love. In the bag I received Purlisse Beauty Coconut + Rice Nourishing Sheet Mask and Green Tea + Ginger Treatment Sheet Mask, Smashbox Cosmetics Be Legendary Lipstick in Legendary, City Color Cosmetics Shimmer Shadow in It’s a Girl, NYX Professional Makeup Faux Blacks Liner in Midnight, and Chella Eyebrow Defining Gel. Overall, I’m fairly pleased with this bag. Onto the specifics!

Purlisse Beauty Coconut + Rice Nourishing Sheet Mask and Green Tea + Ginger Treatment Sheet Mask

I’m not including photos of me using/wearing these sheet masks because they look the same as the rest-white and wet. From what I can tell, they pretty much perform like the rest as well. My skin felt nice and refreshed after using them but only for about a day. They smelled nice and were very relaxing and cooling while I wore them. Sheet masks, to me, seem to be a good thing to do when you need to take a load off but aren’t quite as beneficial to your skin as we make them out to be. Good skin comes with good hydration and good everyday care. But they’re still fun and when I get them from ipsy or when they’re on sale, I’m still going to use them.

Smashbox Cosmetics Be Legendary Lipstick in Legendary

Without flash

Smashbox is a brand that I tend to like but also question heavily. I like what I’ve used from them such as their Photo Finish Primers and X-Rated Mascara but I never want to try their other products. That said I wasn’t mad at this lipstick. It’s a nice, normal red, and it’s not a matte but could easily be made one with some setting powder (I’ve been swaying away from mattes lately because I’ve been trying to take better care of my lips). It applied easily and stayed on the rest of the night while I was moving around my apartment cleaning. I’ve yet to wear it out or to work, but it was a solid 4-ish hours that I wore it inside.

City Color Cosmetics Shimmer Shadow in It’s a Girl

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With flash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since I’ve started doing more eyeshadow, I’ve been more excited to get them in my ipsy Glam Bags. Getting bright colors like this one is especially exciting because I can use them as a pop of color in my otherwise dark and monochrome work outfits. When I swatched this one on my arm, I was very excited because it was super pink and it had a good amount of shimmer to it. When I finally used it the first time on my eyes however, I was rather disappointed. It gave a nice pink for my crease into upper lid area to layer on top of, but the shimmer seemed to disappear and it did not seem nearly as pigmented as when it was on my arm. It still works as a pretty nice base to the Anastasia Beverly Hills Modern Romance palette that I recently bought, as well as the tarte Magic Star palette that I got for my birthday. A customer at work even asked what it was and I had to tell her that it was, unfortunately, not something that we sell in our store.

NYX Professional Makeup Faux Blacks Liner in Midnight

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The tip broke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With flash

The NYX Faux Blacks and Faux Whites Liners have intrigued me since I first saw them at Ulta. As someone who loves all things black, especially her eye makeup, I have never understood why people use brown eyeliner or mascara. When I was younger, I dabbled with colored liners, picking out a bright turquoise one, but when I wanted black, I wanted black. Recently however, because I wear black on black on the daily, I have been branching out with my make-up and looking for it to make my color statement recently. This eyeliner doesn’t do that, but I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would. It’s a nice navy blue color and goes on pretty well with some pretty good staying power. Without really looking at it when it’s on, you’d never tell that it wasn’t black besides the fact that it’s not quite as intense. For comparison of color, I swatched it on my arm next to the Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Perversion, UD’s blackest shade. The reason it seems kind of messy is because in the middle of the swatch, the tip broke off. Regardless of the fact that you can easily sharpen this pencil, the product breaking is not great because it may be dry which would make it more difficult to use and it might tug and get stuck while you are applying it. I intend to sharpen this and keep using it, but that took it down a tick in my book.

Chella Eyebrow Defining Gel

I really don’t have much to say about this one. I like eyebrow gels because they do tend to help tame my brows a bit but when I really need the help because I slept on them all night and they’re incredibly unruly, no gels really do anything at all. This one has been pretty great however because I have been using it before and after filling in my brows and it a) may be helping my product go on a little better/stay a little longer and b) doesn’t seem to be taking product away when I use it after filling in, something that other brow gels and spoolies tend to do. Now if only it could grow hair back where I over-plucked it…

One Year with My Human

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One of the more serious photos Shayla got of us.

Monday, January 8, 2018 was Luke and my first anniversary. It was a roughly 3-day celebration.

Our potato pancakes!

On Sunday, we spent roughly the whole day together after I got home from work at noon. We went to a couple grocery stores then made potato pancakes for dinner because we are #PotatoPancake. The recipe that we followed (mostly) can be found here. We cut it down greatly because we only had two medium-sized potatoes and are only two people. We also added paprika because Luke loves paprika. We also shallow fried them because 2 cups seemed like they would be deep-fried and that just didn’t seem right. They were delicious but could have used a bit more salt than we used.

On Monday we (I) woke up early and hung out in the morning. We exchanged gifts. He had gotten me more because he was short on cash for my birthday and Christmas so he made up for it for our anniversary. I opened an amazon box to find a pasta roller for us to make pasta together, Egghead by Bo Burnham, and Eggsistential Thoughts by Gudetama, The Lazy Egg. I gave him a “date jar” filled with popsicle sticks that had different date ideas written on them. Afterwards, I went online to look up the sushi restaurant we were going to and find out what time they opened. We weren’t just planning to do regular sushi; we were going to do all-you-can-eat sushi. In doing my research about when the restaurant opened, I found that for $23 during lunch hours, you only got one hour of all-you-can-eat-sushi. This hardly seemed like enough of a deal since the sushi was made to order so you had to wait for it to come out to you. We almost gave up on the AYCE deal but found instead that another restaurant, Sushi Bang Bang, does AYCE sushi for $26 at lunch. They opened at 11am and we arrived around noon, after I did my hair and make-up.

Not only could you get sashimi, nigiri, and maki rolls from the sushi bar, we were able to get a number of appetizers from the kitchen as well as tempura and other Japanese entrees. From deliciously fresh salmon sashimi to hot takoyaki and pork katsu, Luke and I ate $100 or more of sushi for about half the price. We went home happy but incredibly stuffed and felt the need to just lay around for a while before either of us had to go to work.

The same faces we make at each other, all day, every day.

On Tuesday, the last day of our 3-day celebration, we met with Shayla Webb at Bull Creek Park to get photos taken for our anniversary. I met Shayla at Ulta but she left since her photography business started taking off in December. Now she’s been taking photos for families, couples, and weddings and doing it very well. We were all ready for it to be a bit awkward because she wasn’t sure how to pose us and we weren’t sure how to pose, but in her telling us what to do and us being our goofy selves, we got some amazing photos out of it. We laughed basically the whole time and Shayla captured every moment and the essence of our relationship very well. It was such a fun experience too because whenever I’d gotten professional photos taken before, they were in a staged studio and this was out at a public park around nature and with a beautiful creek and waterfall. There was also a film crew in the area filming, what Luke thinks, was a commercial. They brought in potted trees.

After we left the photoshoot with Shayla, Luke and I were deciding what to eat when we got home but realized we wanted to go to Costco and get samples and $1.50 hot dogs. We got samples, a hot dog, drink, and chicken bake and also got a few groceries. Doing domestic things with Luke like grocery shopping are some of my favorite things to do with him.

Our first year as a couple absolutely flew by. We went from friends to in a relationship and moved to Austin together in 2017. I’m so excited to see what 2018 is going to bring us.

 

If you’d like to see more of Shayla’s work, check her out at swebbphoto.com!

Make-Up Wipes Don’t Remove the Ugly

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I love make-up. It’s fun and it makes me feel good. What I don’t love is taking it off at the end of the day. Regardless of how little I’m wearing, it always feels like too much when that time of night comes around and an immaculately white wipe or cotton ball turns brown. As someone who doesn’t really wash their face every night either, save for make-up removal, sometimes I still feel dirty when I go to bed. I also hate the amount of waste I make using make-up wipes every night and how much I felt I had to scrub using them. I used micellar water for a while but while it worked better and felt less abrasive, I was still using too many cotton balls for my liking. I wasn’t raised in a home that used disposable dinnerware regularly and that always recycled, so throwing away wipes and cotton balls day after day feels wrong.

Some time last year, my mom gave me make-up removal towels that worked well but still felt rather abrasive and had to be washed with a special soap that was rather expensive so I stopped using them and went back to my wipes and micellar water. I still felt bad, but had to worry about my finances. If I end up in the hole because I was worrying too much about the environment, I’d be even worse for the environment because I would be living directly in it.

When I started working at Ulta, I got to see many new products. One that I was always on the lookout for was new make-up remover. Something cheap but works well and maybe wouldn’t create a lot of waste. I found other micellar waters that worked well. I also found the Urban Decay make-up removers that are amazing but expensive. Both of these products would still create a bit of waste however. In the Ulta Beauty line, I knew of make-up removing towels, similar to something I’d seen some YouTubers use in the past. They are little grey towels that are super soft and supposedly remove all make-up, including waterproof mascara, and only need water to be activated. On Associate Appreciation Weekend, when we received an extra 10% discount, and the Ulta Beauty Collection was Buy 2 Get 2 Free, I decided I’d buy a set and try them out.

In order to test them, I went to work with a full face of make-up on and then used one of these wipes to take off the make-up on one half of my face and used a traditional make-up remover wipe to remove the make-up on the other half of my face. I was surprised by how much I liked these and how well they worked.

I used the towel first and it felt that I mostly removed the make-up I had on that day. I was satisfied. Then I used the wipe on the other side and both sides of my face felt about the same. They both removed my eyeliner and mascara, some of the most difficult make-up to remove, and neither felt super roughed up though the wipe side did feel a bit more raw, especially around the eye.

After removing everything that I felt I could with the towel and the wipe, I took a cotton ball with micellar water to both cheeks to see how much make-up was leftover. This showed results as expected.

Leftover make-up after using a wipe.

Leftover make-up after using the towel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was more make-up left after using a towel than a wipe. I figured this was because the wipe has make-up remover in it while the towel is just using water and its fibers to remove all of the gunk on my face. Regardless, I think that the towels are a good replacement for wipes because they are less abrasive and less wasteful. If you use them however, you should definitely wash your face afterwards, though you should be doing that anyways.

 

Post-Grad Life Update #4: #MotivationWednesday

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It’s been almost a month since I posted anything here. The reason- I’ve been unmotivated and quietly depressed.

Back in the beginning of October, I was feeling a mix of emotions. I knew I was leaving a job at BigCommerce, the company I was temping at, but I had an interview at Austin Community College for the Specialist of Student Life, and I had two phone interviews with Rooster Teeth for the Events Assistant position- my dream job. I very quickly learned that I didn’t get the job at Rooster Teeth and now, 6 weeks after my interview for ACC, I still have not heard back, whether good or bad, about the job there.

For about a week after hearing back from Rooster Teeth, I was crying a lot. I missed out on my dream job again with no knowledge of when I’d get another chance at it and no other job prospects. I’d still be working at Ulta, but as a part-time retail job, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. At some point in October, I decided I was going to stop feeling sorry for myself and get back at it but the next day, I was sad and unmotivated again. It was hard. I was confused as to why Rooster Teeth, BigCommerce, ACC, and anyone else not responding to me didn’t want me. I felt more than qualified for all of these jobs. This feeling stayed with me the rest of the month and is still hanging above my head as I write this.

I’d told myself that I would be productive with my free-time at home but all I’ve been doing is eating, watching YouTube and Netflix, and sleeping. I didn’t write a new blogpost in a month, I haven’t updated my portfolio website, and the apartment is a mess. To those unfamiliar with depression, this is what it looks like.

Through all of this I have kept my mantra, positive outcomes only, at the front of my mind. I have tried to remind myself that though it’s not working out now, it will. This has been hard to believe when I’ve been everything but productive, but today I feel better. Something in me flipped today and I feel encouraged to clean the place up and keep working on me, so the first step towards that was to write this post.

I’m also going to eat some of the half-priced Halloween candy Luke and I bought at the H-E-B this morning. We got a pile.

September ipsy Glam Bag

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It has occurred to me in all this time that I’ve been writing “Glam Bag” as “GlamBag” and I am embarrassed… onto the products! (I don’t have a ton of photos of every product this month because I’ve been busy (read: lazy) and opened it all and got too excited to take photos before using everything. So you get the photos from the ipsy website. Some of them have my photos though!) Also, I’m trying out a slightly different format for these that make it a little longer but you get to see everything individually and separated, so let me know if this is better or worse and we’ll go from there!

 

The September Glam Bag

ipsy September Glam Bag

Hello September Glam Bag. It’s pretty. It is black and studded witha  gold zipper and is right up my alley. The theme they were pushing with it is professional. I know black and professional are synonymous for some reason, but the studs give it the extra edge that I need for it to be something I would use as a young “professional” out in today’s world. That said, I don’t use a lot of the Glam Bags I get for anything other than make-up and most of them don’t leave my house. I have two in my purse right now- the Gudetama bag and the clear one with ice cream cones on it, because I can bring that one to Ulta. I have a number set aside to use as clutches should I find myself going out on the town and in need of a small bag for my phone and ID, but we all know I stay in most nights. Still, this one will be added to the pile of “usable” Glam Bags.

 

SKINFOOD Black Sugar Mask Wash Off

SKINFOOD Black Sugar Mask Wash Off

I love exfoliants! Exfoliants are 100% my favorite product to receive from ipsy because I love trying new ones and learning about what works with my skin, especially when it is one like this one that I have seen before but never tried because I’m cheap. This stuff is great. To start, it smells like a can of Coke with a lemon wedge in it- my favorite way to drink Coke. The downside to this is that it makes me want one, but as I’m usually using it at night and we don’t have Coke in the apartment anyways, that’s pretty irrelevant. It is also suuuper thick. This is a good thing though, because it’s thick because it’s just full of stuff that is going to clean your face. As you could guess from the title, the exfoliating particles are sugar, something that I love because they dissolve as you scrub and won’t be washed down the drain to be consumed by marine life. It also uses shea butter and macadamia oil so after scrubbing all the grossness out of your face, it won’t be left dry. That’s one of my biggest problems with exfoliants but this one has not had that issue at all.

According to the ipsy website, you’re supposed to apply the product, let it sit on your face for 10-15 minutes, and then wash it off. I don’t follow these directions. I use it like any other facial scrub and apply it in the shower, the only place I wash my face, and then wash it off when I feel like I’m done being so abrasive to my face. I’m sure if you do it the way they say your skin will be even softer because you’ll give it more time to sink in, but I’ve honestly been super happy with the moisture and softness of my skin after using this the way I do, plus I still have a good coconut milk moisturizer to use if I need it.

 

Smashbox Cosmetics PHOTO FINISH RADIANCE PRIMER

Smashbox Cosmetics PHOTO FINISH RADIANCE PRIMER

I was very excited to try this primer. I love my L’oreal Magic Perfecting Base primer because it makes my skin so soft but I’d heard so much about the Smashbox primers. I also tested the original Smashbox PHOTO FINISH FOUNDATION PRIMER on my hand one night at Ulta, and it felt like it had a finish similar to the L’oreal, so I was pumped that I was receiving one in my Glam Bag.

This one is not like the original. It squeezes out of the tube more like a cream than a gel and the application doesn’t leave the same finish on your skin, even after letting it dry. The ipsy website says that you can apply it to you T-zone if it starts to get shiny during the day and it will mattify it, but with the shimmer that is in this (hence the “radiance”) and the feel of the formula, I think I would rather use blotting sheets and a powder. I also think I’m going to stick to the primer I use now, L’oreal hasn’t let me down yet.

 

Teeez Cosmetics Eve’s Ready to Wear Lipstick in Romantic Red

Awkward photo of my lips in the Teeez lipstick in my bathroom lighting.

You get a real photo of this one! I have less to say about this. It’s just another red lipstick in my opinion. The color isn’t really a true red, as you can see in the photo. The lighting in my bathoom still doesn’t show you its true color either, but it is rather pink.

It stays on alright. After it dries it doesn’t really transfer but it also looks more like a stain at that point. When I wore it to work the first day I got it, I received a couple compliments on it. Luke thought I’d over drawn my lips but it actually just made them look super full.

Teeez Cosmetics Eve’s Ready to Wear Lipstick in Romantic Red

My favorite thing about it is definitely the container. It’s that fun all the way around, unlike other lipsticks that are too sophisticated to be fun and instead are just black… and boring…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ColourPop Cosmetics Brow Boss in Dark Brown

Awkward photo of my brows with the Brow Boss pencil.

Brow products are another thing that I love getting in my Glam Bags because, as Luke learned quickly, I don’t like to leave the house without my brows done. Ever. Instead of give you a picture of the product, it’s a white tubed, brown eyebrow pencil with a spoolie on the other end, I just went with what it looks like on instead. I used it rather lightly because the tip is super thin and usually, that means you’re supposed to use it to make small strokes that look more like hairs to make your brows look more natural. On a day that I’m only wearing eyebrows, I could definitely rock this look. My brows still look pretty natural but are fuller and that’s what we’re all after- fuller brows. The color matched perfectly to what I usually do too. On days that I have a full face of make-up on however, like when I am working at Ulta, this just won’t cut it.

 

P.R.M.I.T. Beauty GELlusion in Virgo

P.R.M.I.T. Beauty GELlusion in Virgo

Back to the ipsy photos. I could have taken a photo of my nails after I painted them using this, like I usually do, but I didn’t. No idea why. I am a big fan of this nail polish though. It’s a really nice dark blue, deeper than it looks in this photo or even in real life, but takes two coats to get to said richness. It also dries pretty quickly and keeps a really nice smooth and shiny finish without a top coat. I would still, however, suggest using a top coat because I didn’t, thinking it would stay since it’s supposed to be “gel effects”, and it started chipping off the next day. Of all of the nail polishes that ipsy has sent me so far, I think this is probably my favorite.

 

 

Next month’s Glam Bag will be for October and while I’m not super impressed by the bag design, I’m excited to see what new fun products I get! Until next time!

Luke’s 23rd Birthday

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Life has been weird again and I don’t know how ready I am to talk about it all, so I’m going to talk about last weekend instead.

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Friday, September 22, 2017 was Luke’s 23rd birthday. Thankfully, Ulta did not have me working that night so when I got home from my temp job, I was able to make dinner and a cake for him. You’re probably looking at this cake and wondering what in the heck happened to it. 1) The candles melted more than anticipated because he took longer than expected to blow them out, 2) it’s not a normal cake!

Luke isn’t a huge fan of cake. He likes brownies, cookies, pie, ice cream, and basically any other dessert over cake. Funfetti however, is a cake that he likes and will eat happily. Because of this, the Monday before his birthday, I went to H-E-B after I got out of the office (the only other day Ulta didn’t have me), and stood in the baking aisle much longer than I thought I would, trying to pick out what to buy. The idea I had going in was to buy Funfetti cake mix, a tub of frosting- which I would choose quickly when I got there, and then go back home to relax the rest of the night. Instead, I stood there grabbing different boxes, debating how he would feel about them, and then putting them back.

Green is his favorite color so I thought green cake would be fun. It used only egg whites. I put it back.

He likes brownies better so maybe brownies. You don’t typically frost brownies so that fun gets missed out on. I put it back.

He really likes cookies and they’re easier to eat than cake. He would be upset with me if I made cookies without him. I put it back.

I stood there for a good 15 minutes talking to myself about what birthday treat he would like the best, just to pick out the regular Funfetti cake and white marshmallow fluff Funfetti frosting. The rest of the week I thought about how I would bake the cake. We have a few different Pyrex baking wares thanks to both of our mothers, but none of them are the fun round cake shapes. I could have made a rectangular cake in the 9×13 pan, but that didn’t seem good enough and I could have just made brownies if I was going to use that.

I had the rest of the week to figure it out but eventually ended up settling for the 9×13 and a whole lot of frosting. That is, however, until I saw a video on Facebook.

This video was from Tasty? Tastemade? Delish? One of the food accounts. They put cake batter into a waffle iron. I’d seen this before but never had the inspiration to do it before this. Luke LOVES waffles. So that is what is pictured above, a Funfetti waffle cake with white marshmallow fluff Funfetti frosting and almost totally melted candles. It came out really well and then we had leftover cake waffles for a few days because there was much more batter than just for four waffles.

He was surprised by the idea and was thankful, yet again, that I was the spontaneous (read: actually meticulous planner) and cute one because he just hasn’t learned how to be that yet.

For dinner, before we ate the waffle cake, we had boneless beef ribs that I tried to cook like steak- sear then bake- and came out almost perfectly but that I thought I’d messed up royally, rice, and broccoli.

The next night we went to Red Lobster and I got them to bring Luke a birthday sundae and sing to him. Then after that we walked around a mall before going to the 10pm IMAX screening of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, getting interrupted and evacuated from the theater about 15 minutes before the movie was supposed to start for the fire alarm, and eventually getting home around 1 am. The movie wasn’t super, but it was about as much fun as the first one with a few scenes that I could have very much done without.

The next morning I worked and we hung out around the house. It was a good weekend. I was content.

I’ve Been Busy

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My last post was over a week ago. I’d been meaning to post in this time, but life has been rather busy.  Because of that, this is going to be a rather long post, but it’s going to be pretty all-encompassing. And I’ll break it down into the different categories and keep them short-ish. To start:

Beauty

I got my August GlamBag around the middle of the month. This one had three different bags that you could have received and I got the one I wanted. In the bag I received two CLIV Max Hyalruonic Masks, theBalm Cosmetics theBalm Voyage Vol. 2 Eyeshadow in Willkommen, MAKE UP FOR EVER EXCESSIVE LASH Aressting Volume Mascara, Hikari Cosmetics Shimmer Bronzer in Flush, and Hey Honey Come Clean: Propolis & Minerals Face Scrub.

So far I have used one of the masks and don’t have a lot to say about it. I like these masks, they are refreshing and for at least the next day after using them, my skin feels softer and looks brighter. Since I don’t use them regularly though, I can’t really say anything more than that. I know that these having hyaluronic acid in them is supposed to be a good thing too, but honestly, the word “acid” used in the same sentence as the word “face” makes me uncomfortable. I’ll probably stick to the green tea masks.

The left is the bronzer and the right is the eyeshadow. This is under a light in the apartment.

The eyeshadow and bronzer I haven’t actually used. I swatched them, because that’s what you do, but I don’t use a lot of eyeshadow and bronzer. They just aren’t my jam. I thought the swatches looked pretty nice though.

I like the mascara. I use it with a primer, obviously, but it works. I think most mascaras work pretty well with a primer, but I have found a few that didn’t work super well, and this was not one of them.

As for the face scrub- I’ll be tossing this out before I finish using it. The description on the ipsy website says that every people with sensitive skin love it but I don’t see how. I have pretty normal skin- gets oily when I don’t wash it for a bit but is generally okay. THIS STUFF BURNED. I love face scrubs. I looooooove the way my skin feels after exfoliating. Unfortunately, after exfoliating, it felt like there was salt poured all over my face. This was not a good feeling. I don’t think I’ve ever given anything from ipsy one star until now.

 

Food

The only full meal from BA we could make- but it was really good.

I am a Blue Apron customer. I originally signed up because I was curious and with a Rooster Teeth promo code, I could get $30 off, making my first box half price. Because I am stingy, I didn’t finish signing up at that point. I held out and they sent me an email for $40 off. Still wasn’t enough. Then I got the email for $50 off and I finished my membership and got my first box. Since then I have had a love/hate relationship with them. I believe that $60 is too much to be dishing out monthly for these meals so most of the time, I’ve been skipping weeks and only getting the boxes when they’ve got meals that look especially tasty in them. Since my first box however, all the of the boxes I have received after were boxes that I didn’t actually want and only received because I forgot to skip them. On 9/1, I received one of these boxes.

I was upset a) because $60 that I was not expecting to spend was now going to be spent and b) because I forgot about it, I didn’t even get to pick which meals I received and I got the default meals, one of which was barbecue baked chicken breast, sweet potato salad, and sauteed green beans. I spent $20 on barbecue baked chicken breast, sweet potato salad, and sauteed green beans. You can’t see my face, but it is unamused.

Since the box came in on Friday morning, I was at work so I asked Luke to bring it in and put all of the ingredients away. He did so and didn’t say anything was wrong with any of them. That Saturday, we decided to make one of the meals that turned out pretty well. On Sunday morning, I decided to go through all of the ingredients, just to see what we had. I pulled the sweet potatoes out of the pantry to find that one of them had turned completely to mush. What’s worse, somehow there was liquid in the bag that proceeded to leak all over the kitchen floor. I was livid. Luke then informed me that the sweet peppers in the fridge had also looked a little funky. I pulled them out and surely enough, they were moldy. I immediately took photos of it all and sent Blue Apron an angry email stating that for $60 I should not be getting bad produce (this wasn’t the first time) and would be cancelling my account. They responded the next day saying that they credited $10 to my account and how to cancel my account should I choose to proceed that way.  This confused me as I have never seen a company actively tell people how to stop being customers. I guess they have so many that they figured they didn’t need me anymore.

I have yet to cancel because I don’t want that $10 to go to waste, but I will after I use it up.

Life

My job hunt is still active. I am still working part-time at Ulta, though not many hours. I am still working temp in the same office I have been since August and today, I had an interview for the permanent position. In about a weekI also have an interview for a different position at a different company. I don’t want to jinx any of it so that’s all the information I am currently putting out there, but I’m nervous and pretty scared. A lot of what’s currently scaring me is the potential to have to choose which job I want because I don’t know right now. I’ve been talking to many people about this and I haven’t come up with a clearer decision. I suppose that is a bridge to cross when I get there however, because I could only get offered one or neither and then all of this anxiety was for nothing. We’re hoping for a much better outcome than that though.

Besides that, I’ve been dealing with needing to get a TX driver’s license and that has been a whole process that I can’t wait to be over.

Luke and I also bought season passes to Six Flags Fiesta Texas which is in San Antonio. The passes we bought will get us into any Six Flags though, so whenever we’re home, if anyone wants to go to Great America, we are there. The passes were supposed to be a birthday gift to Luke, but I just didn’t have the money to cover it so the surprise was ruined. So I still have to find a gift for him. If nothing else, I’ll bake him a cake. I can do that.

Thoughts on No Longer Being a Student

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Yesterday was the first day of school at my alma mater, The University of Tampa, and at Austin Community College, the school Luke is now attending. While he is not big on photos to document big moments, and his parents did not have to move their baby boy into a dorm for the first time, I still saw many move-in photos from UT on social media over the weekend and it made me a bit nostalgic.

Since graduation in May up until the first of August, I was not working. This was not such a strange feeling because I’m used to having the summers off. As a student for the last 16 years of my life, I’ve gotten used to being busy as can be from August to June and then being a carefree kid in the remaining months. I knew this wasn’t going to continue to be the case however, which is why it was still scary even though it felt normal.

Now that I have been working for about a month at this temp job, I feel like I am back into a routine, much like the same routine I have known since I was five. The problem however, is that a) since this is a temp job, I am very likely to get thrown out of this routine very soon and b) even if I can keep it permanently, come May/June, I’m going to be ready for a three month break that isn’t going to come.

Even while I feel that I am back into the routine, the amount of free-time that I have when I get home from work has been weird. When I was younger, homework was no big thing for me; I finished it within an hour of getting home from school and then I had the rest of the night to go outside and play with the rest of the neighborhood kids. As I got older, this playtime went away. In high school and even middle school, my time at home was to be spent on homework and studying- there was no time for dilly-dallying (I still dilly-dallied… at the cost of my proper sleep schedule).

Then I got to college and found a ridiculous amount of free-time again. I went to classes for four (or less) hours a day and then had the rest of the day to do nothing as I pleased. I started to get bored so when I found an organization that I liked, I latched on and didn’t let go for my entire four years at UT. By the time I graduated, I think I’d spent more time in the Student Productions office than in my own rooms on and off campus. It was there that I’d found a love for event planning, so it just made sense that I was going to spend every free hour I had in the office. Even if I wasn’t exclusively working on programs, I found a way to make myself busy.

Now this temp job has me up at 6:30 am and home at 5:30 pm with nothing to do until I go to bed around 11 pm. With Luke working nights, I’ve been alone too, some nights unsure of what to do with myself. Recently, I’ve been crafting, working on ideas for this blog, and other personal projects. This has been a lot of fun, but I’m still missing something (and need more money) which is why I’m so excited that I’ll be working at Ulta.

This will hopefully be taking up a lot of the free-time I spend doing little to nothing at home, in an environment that I love. Ulta is a store that I’ve wanted to work at since I could work and, though it is part-time and at a pretty low wage, it will be something to keep money coming in if I don’t make this temp job into a permanent one. I still have my fingers crossed on that though.

And now, just to reminisce, the first photo taken of me at UT. I’ve used it a lot to look back at the times, but it’s still definitely one of my favorites.

With my roommate from Freshman year, Sammi at the first event at UT that we attended, Man of Steel in Falk Theatre. If we hadn’t gone to this I don’t think I’d have gotten involved in SP.

10 Years

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In mid-to-late August 2007, I was in an interesting place in my life. I was 12-years-old, going on 13 come November, and I was what one could call an emo preteen. I felt that the world was against me and like I didn’t have many friends or anyone to lean on or look to. One of my older brothers, Kaz, was away in Colorado attending the United States Air Force Academy and the other, Toby, was going into his senior year of high school. Knowing that he wouldn’t be around in a year to help me through the difficult time I was going through, he decided to bring me to youth group at a church that was not ours and not even Catholic.

I’d fought going for a few weeks, also believing that God had turned his back on me, but eventually caved. Since it was still summer, the “class” part of youth group hadn’t started yet so the activities for that night were to play soccer in the big field behind the church. This was a great way to ease me in because I didn’t know anyone and would have felt awkward in the class if I had just been thrown in.

I don’t remember much else from that night except that I had fun and I’d met a boy. That boy was Luke.

Fast forward through the next ten years and here we are, celebrating ten years of knowing each other and me putting up with him through all of that time. It is not ten years of friendship and definitely not ten years of being together. We have not even hit one year yet there.

I’m not going to go into the all of the details of those ten years because I think he and I would both agree that there were some times that we’d like to leave in the past. It’s all gotten us to where we are now though- living together in Austin, happy as clams… most of the time.

To go into the details would also be to invade the privacy of someone else and put her on blast, something I do not want to do. The past is the past and I am looking to the future.

What I can say about where we are now is that it is partially thanks to Rooster Teeth and RTX, and we are happy. We’ve both learned from our past experiences and are willing to continue learning. To paraphrase something Luke has expressed to me before, if we’d started this relationship back when we were so young, one of us probably would have messed it up by now and we’d be lacking our best friend, something that we’d already been through a few times and don’t want to do again.

To celebrate the past ten years, on Saturday, the first day we’d been together for dinner since we started working, Luke decided we’d have ribeyes, my favorite steak. Yes, steak is expensive. No, we didn’t buy it just for this. Steak is surprisingly cheap in Austin and as of yesterday, we’d gotten four meals out of the two steaks we made on Saturday night.

To accompany the steak, we also made garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, kale chips, and fried plantains. It was a good dinner and a good night watching Descendants 2 for the second time.

Below is a bit of a photo representation of how far we’ve come. We were babies. Now, we are toddlers.

2008 30-Hour Famine at Our Saviour’s United Methodist Church in Schaumburg

August 2013, we hung out for the last time before I went away to Tampa for school

They have to go together because they are the embodiment of our relationship then and now

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most recent photos of us from RTX 2017, cosplaying as Gwen and David from Camp Camp