Happy New Year!!!

Happy 2013 everyone!!!!
I must say, so far this year is not what I expected as my family and I spent the past two days sick and in bed....oh well, it can only get better.

After all that occurred last year I'm hoping that the next twelve months are a little more low key. After July, life seemed to move on fast forward-my fiance got a better job and literally ten minutes after that call, my mom was rushed to the hospital unable to breathe; only to find out that she has heart disease. My adorable little potato of a nephew was born in August and a week later my mom went back to the hospital for single bypass surgery. Since then the main focus in my house has been her ongoing recovery. Thankfully, aside from a few colds and an ear infection, everyone is now heathy(ish).

Every year I come up with resolutions, yet, I never keep them...this time around I came up with "goals" that I feel quite confident I can keep for myself.

*Keep my eye on what I want out of life
I'm really hoping to stay focused on what I want and to make a move to get it.

*Watch my spending
Right now I'm tossing around either going shopping once a month or having month-long no buys all together. Either way I feel like this will probably end up helping me to save money in the long run.

*Reduce my cluttered life
I have a lot of stuff and not that much room so I want to start cleaning house as well as trying to have a little more organization in the process.

*Keep up with my blog & diary

*Try to stay healthy
 ~drink water: I'm beyond horrible with this; in fact, I've had to go to the ER for dehydration numerous times
~take vitamins
~schedule that dr's appointment I've been avoiding
~get my blood checked
~get more sleep...or at least don't go to bed at 1:30 when I have to be up at 6:30

*Try not to let people get me down and not take everything to heart

*Be there for my son and fiance

I'm really excited to see what this year brings and am confident that it's going to be good...hopefully, by completing these goals, I'll be a step closer to happiness and finding myself. I wish you all a safe, happy, and healthy year and may all your dreams and goals come true.

As always, thank you for taking the time to visit my blog..it is truly appreciated :)

Resolutions

What I love about New Years is the fact that everyone gets a fresh start. I attempt to set resolutions but very rarely keep them. However, these are the ones I've come up with:

*Try Not to Let Little Things Get to Me
I have to stop letting every little thing stress me out because it's starting to effect my health. All this does is turn me into a ball of nerves.

*Let Go of The Past
I have the worst habit of holding onto everything until I eventually explode. This year I want to work on learning to let go and look to the future.

*Write in My Diary
For some reason I stopped writing in my diary after the summer ended. I want to make a point of going in a quiet room even if for only a few minutes to write again.

*Pray
I used to pray every night and then I just stopped. I want to change that and pray nightly before going to sleep.

*Improve My Relationship With My Fiance
Between work and my son, it feels like my fiance and I have just been going through the motions for the past few months and sometimes it makes things feel like something's changed. I'd like to work harder at our relationship. We need more time to actually talk to each other (sans phone and/or tv).

*Get More Sleep
Sometimes I like to relive the days when I basically had no reason to wake up in the morning....Back then my schedule would be going to sleep by 7am and waking up around 5:30pm. Yeah, that doesn't work when you have a baby and a job.

*Drink More Water
If I had a dollar every time a doctor told me I was dehydrated I'd be rich. I was doing a little better with drinking but recently I find myself going back into those bad habits.

*Eat a Healthier Breakfast
Working in my office it's easy to pour a packet of oatmeal into a cup and be on my merry way. I'd like to start eating something a little more substantial like yogurt, a protein bar, or eggs.

*Be Nicer to My Face
When I get dehydrated or stressed my face breaks out. I do bad things to those breakouts and that results in angry looking, hard to cover, red marks. I want to try very hard to not only stop this but also to stop touching my face in general and clean my make-up brushes more often.

*Stay On Top of Cleaning
I'd like to try keeping everything cleaned throughout the week as opposed to spending all day running around the house getting it done....that goes for laundry as well.

Here's hoping that come this time next year I'll be able to look back knowing I was able to complete all of this.

Back to the Daily Grind

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday...I certainly did! Christmas Eve was spent at my aunt's house with the rest of my family, unfortunately, my fiance' and son stayed home because they were both sick. As much as I missed them I was glad they weren't there because I quickly found out that almost everyone was sick as well.
What I look forward to the most about Christmas is being with my family because everyone has so much going on that we don't really get a chance to see each other often, especially my cousins. They're teenagers now and thankfully still aren't too cool for these things.

Christmas day couldn't be more perfect-everyone spent the day in their PJ's. I absolutely loved playing with my son. That was probably the best gift of all.


I hope everyone has a fabulous Tuesday!


*Future Post Ideas*
~Gift Spotlights
~Gift Reviews
~New Mission
~Lipstick Review
~Wen Overview

Stay tuned!

Happy Holidays All!!!!!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to with everyone a happy holiday!

Gift Idea: Make-Up Bag

I was inspired to do this from a video by Emily Eddington of Beauty Broadcast (I just love her!!!!)

I put together an affordable gift for someone who is just starting to wear make-up. With this set I went with all E.L.F. items that were neutral (plus I checked with about five women all with teenage daughters for their approval) and finished off with a cute Modella bag.

Here's what this consists of:

EyEs:

*E.L.F. Studio Eye Transformer

*E.L.F. Essential Brightening Eye Color in Ethereal

ChEeKs:

*E.L.F. Studio blush in Candid Coral

LiPs:

*E.L.F. Hypershine Gloss in Blossom

*E.L.F. Essential Therapeutic Conditioning lip balm in Strawberry Creme

*Modella 2 pocket makeup bag

The entire kit was not expensive at all. The bag was purchased from Walmart and the cosmetics were from Target and eyeslipsface.com. What's nice is this doesn't have to be just as a holiday present, it can be for any occasion.

Again, I want to thank Emily Eddington for this great idea and I encourage you to make your own.

Holiday Nails!!!!

Kandee Johnson recently posted a tutorial for holiday-themed nails and that inspired me to create my own. It was very simple and took no time at all to do it. I call them my "Winter Wonderland/Candy Cane look".

You can use a varieties of different brands/shades for this but for me I used the following:

-Wet n Wild Fast Dry in Clear

-N.Y.C. in Broadway Burgundy Frost

-Sally Hansen XTreme Wear in White-Out

-N.Y.C  in Starry Silver Glitter
-L'oreal Paris Pro Manicure Top Coat
-toothpick

I started this look out by applying the Wet n Wild top coat and following that I painted them red or white on every other nail.

~Candy Cane~
To get the candy cane look I dipped the toothpick into my white polish and drew little lines across. They didn't come out perfect, but I think they look really cute.

~Winter Wonderland~
This is a different take on Kandy Johnson's. She used silver craft glitter and only coated the tips. With mine I just painted a very light coat of my Starry Silver Glitter polish over the White polish.

It's that easy!

I hope you try this out for yourself or even your own take on it! If I can do it so can you!

Have a Happy Tuesday! :)