Girly beauty post, stuff I use.

Today I had a rather adventuresome shopping trip. Amanda and I went out to Worldmarket for awhile just because. Then we headed to my parents house to pick up an indoor electric grill to use for dinner. After that we made a run to the liquor store (there will be another blog about what we purchased there) then Dillons, and finally Wal-mart. While at Wal-mart I found this foot scrub. I happened to be in the health and beauty section and thought I needed a little treat. So far, this stuff is amazing! The scent is minute, not overpowering, and it leaves skin feeling soft. I would suggest getting it from Wal-mart because getting it from the actual company, you'll pay a little more.

Now this I picked up to try today. I've got the dreaded adult acne problem and sensitive skin. However, Aveeno has never failed me (used their body wash when I had an allergic reaction), so I thought I would give this a try as well. I'll have to keep you updated. It was also purchased at Wal-Mart.


Ivory, been around for over 125 years and I'm pretty sure my Great Grandmother used the dish soap. I, on the other hand, recently discovered the 'Simply Ivory' body wash while looking for a decent body wash on a previous shopping trip to yet again Wal-Mart. I LOVE this body wash. Typically I get something off brand or get my body wash from the Dollar Tree, but never again. This body wash leaves my skin soft, rinses clean, and doesn't have an over powering scent.
As for shampoo, never ever skip out on getting a cheap brand. In the realm of shampoo, you get what you pay for. What works best for me is the Pantene Pro V Classic Clean. I have oily hair and this just seems to do the trick. I really do love this shampoo. I typically get it in the family size from Wal-Mart. Are you sensing a trend here? I tend to shop at Wal-Mart because I'm on a budget and I can get more bang for my buck.

As for conditioners, I don't recommend buying some knock off or off brand either. Since I color my hair every couple of months or so, I use Herbal Essence's Color Me Happy. It does take a minute to rinse it from the hair but afterward my hair is so soft and easy to brush through, which for a tender headed person is important.
I don't really like body lotions or hand lotions. I'm not fond of that left over oily residue that seems to be prevalent with all lotions. However, Amanda wanted to try a body lotion since we both seem to have really dry skin in the winter months, so we tried this. It's not bad. The scent is a little stronger than I'd like, not that it's a bad combination, it's fine, I just have a sensitive nose. And it doesn't seem to have quite as much of the oily residue problem that a lot of other lotions have.


When it comes to perfumes, I don't really wear a lot. Since I am on a tight budget, I can't afford things like Tova or perfumes you would find in Dillard's or JCPenny. I like a lot of oil perfumes like Patchouli and Dragon's Blood which you can find in various places. My Mom and I get our from a little, local Metaphysical store called Journey Books and Gifts. But for those who can't find stuff of the like there is always Bath and Body works. I do find them a tad expensive but since I don't wear perfume that much, I don't mind getting a body spray/splash for their prices. I happen to like Japanese Cherry Blossom.
And now comes to my own personal aromatherapy. A company called Nippon Kodo does a line of Morning Star Incense and my absolute favorite is Sandalwood. They have other scents that are pleasing, subtle and yet still potent enough that you know it's burning. Really, this is a wonderful brand to have around. You can get it from various places, pagan or metaphysical stores might carry it, but you can find it from a ton of places online for decent prices.
Now if you want something a little stronger, Nag Champa is the ticket. Some days, when I want to get rid of the cooking smells in the house or if I know company is coming over, I'll light a stick of Nag in each room and open the windows. The scent lingers in the air for a good day or so. While it's burning it's stronger but it lightens up after awhile. Nag Champa is widely available, I'm even able to find it at a couple of local gas stations in town.

A better day and I donated...

Yesterday I went to get my hair cut. I've been thinking for awhile that I need a little bit of a change for a sort of pick me up. I've typically had really long hair for most of my life. At the longest point I could sit on it. In recent years I've kept it a little longer than my waist like the picture to the right only with bangs.

So, when I walked in to get my hair cut, I knew I wanted it shorter and with some texture and layers. I spoke with the hair stylist and she said with as much as I wanted to take off if I took off a few more inches I could donate it. Well, as scary for me as it was, I had her take what they would need. I had an Aunt who passed away from Breast Cancer and ever though she never chose to wear a wig, I thought it would be good to give a little to someone who wanted to wear a wig. I figure if I can deal with being weirded out for a few weeks with short hair so someone can have a little dignity, it's more than worth it. I take pretty good care of my hair so I hope they can use it to make an awesome wig for someone.

Now what I walked out with is the same length as Sophia Bush in this picture. It's not styled the same way, I wear my bangs differently but it looks okay. Although, my Dad says it makes my face look rounder.



After getting my hair cut, I went home and got ready to go out with the roomie/gf to see some friends. I did the hair curling, makeup, snazzy clothes, the whole bit. We stopped by Quik Trip for some cigarettes like I had planned on and our favorite cashier said to me, "OOO, who let you out of the house"?! That felt really really good.

We met up with some friends and hung out at a club here in town. I saw some people I haven't seen in so long. It was so nice to see them again and even better to talk and joke around. After the club the roomie/gf and I went to one of our friends house with another friend and stayed until 7am this morning. I actually ended up falling asleep on their sofa while we were talking and I felt really bad about it but they didn't mind.

All in all it was a fantastic night and I feel pretty good today. At the moment I'm at my parents house watching a movie with my Mom and helping her make Bierox. I wanted to order pizza but Mom doesn't like Pizza Hut and since I would be the one paying and that's what I wanted... Well, I just decided to cook. I'll get pizza some other night.

A week of sucessful fail... At least I'm getting that right, right?

As I sit here inhaling the stench of trash that needs to be taken out and a litter box that needs to be done (thank you Galen for taking that nice, ripe, poo a few minutes ago and thank you roomie for not doing your bit of the chores), I look back on my week of epic fail. Or was it a week of epic failure?

I didn't really have plans this week. I started it a little sickly, very depressed, and lacking any semblance of drive what so ever to do anything at all. I did take my mother to her pain management appointment. So on one hand I suppose I was being useful and helpful. That should make me feel good or at least a little better, right? Not so much.

As the week progressed I picked up my house and even helped out with my parent's laundry. That's being useful and hey, I even ran an errand for them. However, no writing was accomplished, no crafty pick me up was done, no job hunting (not that I really could at the moment anyway), and by yesterday I pretty much didn't want to talk to or see anyone at all. In fact I was so depressed that I all I wanted to do was stare at the wall and that upset me even more. I'm 26 years old and I get so damned depressed that I have to force myself to get out of bed every day. That's just down right scary. And I am on medication for it too but apparently it's not doing it's job.

The worst part about all of this is, people want me to be social and hang out, go do things, laugh and have a good time. I don't know why, I don't want to be around me, why the hell would anyone else? I mean I don't want to get out of bed much less take a shower, put on make up, do my hair, and dig through my closet to find something presentable to wear. Shit, most of the time I do things because it's what other people want and if I do them they shut up and leave me alone. I guess that's where it brings me to no one gives a shit about what I want or want to do and no one wants to leave me alone about being left alone. It's frustrating. Being around a bunch of people is actually somewhat draining and terrifying. People are even getting mad at me for not talking.

So success for me as far as a failing at leading a healthy, happy, productive life. I have to go to bed now because I have to get up and get pretty tomorrow and go out. Roomie and I are taking my cousin to a club. For the most part I like that and I think I'll buy pack of cigarettes because smoking is fucking fun and I like taking smoke breaks with people. Humph!

Birthday Party aftermath...

Last night Amanda and I drove down to Mulvane Ks, to my pseudo big brother's birthday party. Little did I know that we would be attending such event in the garage. It was a clear night last night, out in the country, and probably only 10 degrees fahrenheit. While there was a small space heater and a wood stove in attempt to keep the chill at bay, it failed. Most of us were convulsing from the cold and yet because it was a birthday party and the parental units in the house were sleeping, we remained in the garage to play Shadowrun with Fallout 3 elements. After about five hours of game play, good fun and chatting, I'd had enough uncontrollable shivering, gave Lucas and his girlfriend and hug and hightailed it out of there.

Needless to say we had the heat in my jeep on full blast and then when we got home we turned on the heat full blast. It took forever to get warmed up. I was still freezing by the time I crawled into bed. However waking this morning wasn't as fun as hanging out with friends. I'm achy, got some sinus congestion, a little cough, and I still smell like woodsmoke.

So I drug myself out of bed, wrapped up in a blanket, checked my Facebook, and perused youtube for some music videos. This is one from a band I'm pretty fond of, Sirenia. The song is called Save me from myself. While I'm not feeling the lyrics, the actual music is very nice.

To Dye or Not to Dye 2

Same Question but for my Male Character.

Purple?



Sliver?



Red?



Black?



Plum?



Teal?



Blue?



Or Green?

To Dye or Not to Dye?

I recently got one of the costume packs for my Guild Wars Characters. I really do like the red and plumb dress I have now but I also like some of the other color combinations. So I took some pictures of some possibilities and now wonder what everyone else thinks.

Black?



Red?



Blue?



Green?



Sliver?



So what do you think?

Guild Wars Fun

I've been helping my Dad out with some of the Prophecies Missions and Quests for the last couple of weeks. Well, it's the last day of the Winter's Day Celebration and I've been taking screen shots of some of the neat stuff. Mostly I've picked up tonics but the really cool thing is coming up. Above is one of the tonics you can get from collecting candy cane shards and giving them to the Winter's Day Collector.


I think this one was called Yuletide Tonic.



This one was a Mischievous Tonic



This one was a rabbit tonic someone kindly gave me.





And this last one was also kindly given to me by a fellow player. I don't remember what it was called but it turns you into something at random. For me, I was a black Moa chick.

Not a good start to 2011

Cousin Sheena says that if you don't eat black eyed peas at the 1st of the year then you'll have bad luck. But that's supposed to be a superstition and while I do believe some hold water or carry weight, I don't put all stock into them. However, maybe this one is one of those I should pay attention to. But does it really mean something if I didn't know about it before today though?

My first run of bad luck this year would have to be with my bank and my electric company. You know how you set up a one time pay-over-the-internet deals to pay a bill online and its just supposed to be the one time. Well I did that for my electric 4 months ago. For the last three months my roommate has been paying the electric through her online bill pay and she has a different bank and there hasn't been a problem until last month. It seems that our electric company decided to take the electric payment out of my account without permission or authorization and take the payment my roommate paid them. What gets me is that she paid the electric several days early so the electric was paid on time but still they removed money from my account. That's Bad business no matter how you cut it and since we couldn't get a hold of anyone at all today we'll be speaking with them bright and early tomorrow morning.

So where did that leave me? Overdrawn. I went to talk to my bank about it today and they wouldn't do anything, wouldn't even help me one single bit. All they would tell me was to call the electric company. Now never mind that I have been having problems with my bank for sometime. They constantly lock me out of my online checking and I constantly have to call customer service and wait forever to actually talk to someone to get it unlocked. I pretty much gave up on the online checking bit, it's crap and their 'extra security' is basically bull shit anyway.

So assuming I can get the electric company crap taken care of and they WILL be crediting the money they stole from my account back to my account, then my bank WILL erase the overdraft or they will have a very big problem on their hands. I'm not going to pay for someone stealing from me period.

A diffrent Christmas holiday...

As I've said before my parents and I planned to skip family Christmas at Grandma's this holiday season and we did. Instead I had my parents come to my little apartment and celebrate with Amanda and I. It was a rather nice quite affair. My parents brought their dog, Kali, to which my cats Yoda and Galen, weren't the most happy.

We didn't have the 'traditional' turkey dinner. Instead we had a pineapple and cherry glazed ham, cheesy scalloped potatoes, yams, blueberry and cherry cheese cakes, orange jello with mandarin oranges, broccoli cheese soup, and something my parents call green goo (which is actually pistachio pudding with pineapple and marshmallows mixed in).

All of it was very tasty and while we cooked, we listened to Gregorian chants, and I snuck around with Amanda's camera snagging pictures of my mom. She hates it when we take her picture. I also got some pictures of my apartment and a few of the animals. As I don't have a digital camera but rather a nice one from the 1970s, I still need to turn the film in and wait for it to be developed.

But all in all, it was a really nice Christmas and for once I didn't have to worry about what I was wearing, if someone was going to say something, didn't have to be on my guard, and I could really relax and enjoy it.