Spring Hurry Up! [Pink Nails]

I live in New York, and lately we've been getting at least 1 snow storm a week! From late December till early February, we've already had a total of 7 or 8 snow storms! Crazy. The temperatures have dropped dramatically. We are currently in the negatives as I type. Lately, I've been so reminiscent of the Spring season because I have winter blues. I love Spring and all the nice bright colors associated with the season. From flowers to fashion, Spring ranges in a variety of pastels, blues, nudes, purples and my favorite...pinks! To accommodate my feelings for Spring, I went to the nail salon and brought along my China Glaze "Pink Voltage" polish along with me. This color just adds a splash of brightness, happiness, and makes me kind of forget about this dreadful Winter. I've gotten a lot of compliments about my nails too. I love how the Barbie pink color meshes well with my skin tone :)

Small Haul: Earrings & Lip Products

I went to the mall today and picked up a few things. Recently, I fell in love with feather earrings! I think they're so cute and different from what I normally wear. So I decided to pick up a pair today. That's really all I wanted, but of course I picked up a few unexpected things lol. Just wanted to share what I got.

I got these thread wrapped earrings from Charlotte Russe

I got the second pair from Charlotte Russe. Both pairs were 2 for $8

I got these lovely feather earrings from Wetseal. They were $6.50
Then I went to the MAC counter and picked up the "PRR Lipglass".
Afterwards, I went to Target and picked up Maybellines ColorSensations Totally Toffe in #215 to go with the Mac lipglass. These two were made for each other!

Do you see how well they go together? I love love love it! Will review it soon on my lips!
The color on the left is MAC's PRR Lipglass, and the color on the right is Maybelline's ColorSensational in Totally Toffe.

2011 Updates

I've been away from my blog for a month now. It's not that I was busy or anything like that. I haven't been blogging for a while because I needed a break from sitting in front of the computer all the time! If I'm not at work, then I'm home surfing the web or sleeping. I took Spring semester off from school because I'm going to a new school possibly in the Fall and I'm pretty much finished with all my prerequisite classes. So I have more free time to be online. I don't go out that much and stay indoors about 85% of the time. One of my resolutions for the year was to lose weight. It's not healthy to sit down in front of the computer for a number of hours, which was exactly what I was doing. I was inactive and started packing on a few pounds. So I decided to take a break. The break allowed me to catch up on some TV shows too! My new favorite shows are now The Office, Park & Recreation, New Adventures of Old Christine, Gossip Girls, and even the news LOL. I haven't started working out yet because I still need to find time to go sign up for the gym. But yesterday, I bought a digital weight scale! I'm moving in the right direction...lol. Now all I need is some workout clothes and sneakers and my gym membership, and I'll be good to go.

Anyways, lets talk about hair. I relaxed after 8 weeks post on January 14th. The relaxer went pretty well. I didn't shed that much. If I go past 8 weeks, I usually start shedding like crazy. But since I relaxed at 8 weeks post, I didn't have that problem. My cousin relaxed my hair and with my orders, she didn't trim. My ends held up pretty well too. I was able to retain an inch of growth! I took pictures but I will be doing a big reveal of my hair progress this coming May, my birthday month. Other than my relaxer, I've been protecting my hair under my half wig every single day. I'm getting so bored and tired with this wig. I so desperately need a change, so Im thinking about getting another sew-in when I'm 8 weeks post. Which means that I'll have to stretch my relaxer to 16 weeks since I will be leaving the weave in for 2 months. I will be 8 weeks post on March 11th, so this will be the day when I'll get my sew-in! Just in time for Spring. I think I'm gonna go for the same Kim Kardashian inspired sew-in I had last time...or maybe a Teyana Taylor inspired weave with loose curls. Curly weaves are always cute and suitable for warmer weather since you can wash and go with them. Decisions, decisions...Stay tuned!

Happy New Years!

Wow....where did 2010 go? This year literally flew by. I remember New Years Eve last year like it just happened yesterday....crazy!

Anyways, every year when New Years is approaching, I get a little excited because I have a chance to start over on a fresh page. I know a lot of people see New Years as just another day, but for me, it's a fresh start. Every year at my house, my family cleans the whole house from top to bottom, does ALL the laundry so that there's not one dirty piece of clothing in the house, and throws away things we don't need so that we can have a fresh start for the year. A lot of people do "Spring Cleaning", but we do "New Years Cleaning" lol...Also, a lot of people don't believe in making resolutions simply because they can never keep them. But for me, when I put my mind into something, I can achieve it. I only make resolutions that I know are possible for me to reach. Most of the resolutions I made last year, I completed them! So I have a new list of resolutions for 2011.

2011 Resolutions:

1. Lose some weight

2. Eat healthier. Eliminate fast food and junk food from my vocabulary and diet

3. Go to the gym 3 times a week (starting January 1st)

4. Finally get to BSL

5. Save $2000-$3000 in savings (I'm a broke college student with a part time job)

6. Re-invent myself. Since my hair is getting longer and healthier, I want to focus on make-up and weight loss now

7. Go to a new school to finish nursing

8. Put more faith in God and praise him more

9. Drink water more often than juice

10. Be more generous

11. Clean my room on a regular basis...I'm so lazy at times lol

12. Re-decorate my room

13. Take care of my skin

14. Prioritize better

15. Have more self-control

16. Get 8 hours of sleep every night

17. Stop spending so much time in front of the computer, and read more books

18. Be more frugal

Frugal Eyebrows

I haven't gotten my eyebrows done since November 13th! Its been a month and 5 days and I've been walking around with cave woman eyebrows...lol. But lately, I haven't really cared for my appearance because I've been too busy studying for finals, working, and being too tired for...everything! I waited a month to let my eyebrows grow back because when I last got them done, I hated the way they turned out. Lee, the lady who does my eyebrows at the nail salon, is very popular because she's the most skill full worker. So at times, I feel like her "celebrity" gets in the way and she just does what she feels like because she knows that you'll come back to her. I live in a small town, so there's not a lot of options when it comes to getting your eyebrows done by someone you know who does it good. People usually come back to her but never know what to expect. Well, I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want someone to mess up my eyebrows and expect me to come back in 2 weeks. I decided today that I will start doing my own eyebrows again. I remember when I was in the 7th grade, I used to do them myself and I was pretty good! Until I was old enough to get a job and relied on others to make them look good. I want to save money and do them myself and have them come out how I want them to come out. Today I went to CVS and bought a few eyebrow tools. When I got home, I got to working on my eyebrows!

Tools:

• 2 eyebrow brushes (bristle brush & 1/2 brush 1/2 comb)
• Eyebrow pencil to fill in brows
• Eyebrow shaper
• Eyebrow scissors
• Tweezers
  

One side is done, the other side is not. I'm just trying to show a comparison. For the eyebrow that's done, I tweezed them, shaped them and trimmed them. Then I filled them in with a dark brown pencil. I know I need to fill it in more towards the beginning, but it was late and I wasn't going anywhere so I didn't bother lol. No more paying $7 bucks every 2 weeks to get them done again!

Blow Drying Relaxed Hair Safely!

Relaxed hair, as you already know, is a lot weaker than natural hair. The chemicals in the relaxer break down the protein bonds in the hair strands making your hair more susceptible to breakage and damage. Everything you do to your hair should be done carefully and with caution to avoid a setback.

Yesterday night, I decided to blow dry and flat iron my hair. I am currently 2 weeks post relaxer. After a fresh relaxer, my hair tends to have that flatness that I hate! So I always use my one and only heat pass when I'm 2 weeks post just to check to see if my thickness is still there.

Blow drying my hair safely:
-Wash/light protein/deep condition/leave-in/moisturizing heat protectant
-Air dry for 2 hours
-Section hair into 4 parts
-Before blow drying each part, apply a pea size amount of moisturizing heat protector
-Blow dry section with lukewarm air
-Use wide tooth comb to detangle section while blow drying
-Don't hold dryer to close to the hair, hold a few inches away so that the heat distributes evenly

Results:
Hair should be nice, thick and have a lot of flow!

Eating Healthy: Turkey Burgers infused with Salsa & Swiss Cheese!

In the beginning of 2010, one of my goals for this blog was to blog about random new meals I tried. Well, this year, I tried several new things, but just never got around to blogging about them. The pictures never came out right in my eyes. If you're gonna post a food blog, I like it when the picture is nice and crystal clear. My pics never came out that way, so I never tried to even blog. Well today, I was starving and wanted something fresh and new. I decided to try a new meal. It was delicious!! I took pictures, and guess what? For some reason this time around, the photos came out pretty decent!

I made turkey burgers infused with salsa and Swiss cheese and added a side of boiled broccoli and carrots!

Ingredients:
(You will need)

• 1 pound of ground turkey

• 1 can of Original Rotel Salsa
• 1/2 of a lime (to clean meat)
  

• Slices of Swiss cheese (optional)

(depends on how many burgers you want with cheese)

• 1 Maggie chicken bouillon cube

Instructions:
Start out by boiling the brocolli and carrots first because you want them to be nice and tender. Remove ground turkey from packaging and place in a large bowl. Squeeze juice out of 1 half of a lime over the meat. Crush 1 Maggie chicken bouillon cube with your fingers and sprinkle over the meat. Mix everything together with your hands. Open the can of Rotel and drain the water out first. Pour salsa over the meat and mix together with your hands. Put your skillet on the stove and add about 2 table spoons of vegetable oil to it. Shape burgers and place them in the skillet. For burgers with cheese, place 1 slice of cheese on top of burger and place another burger on top of cheese. The cheese should be sandwiched in the middle. Let each side cook on the skillet for about 5-7 minutes each. In about 25-30 minutes or so, everything should be good and ready to eat! Bon Appetit!