Friday, October 29, 2010

I've Been Tired for Days & Days & Days

Well, Hello There!!

As I mentioned last week, It was my wonderful boyfriend's birthday.
Yayy! Because we both still live at home (UGH), I decided to use my
employee discount to get us a hotel room. And then I also attended
a Halloween party over the weekend. If you would like to see the
how-to for our costumes, please see below!!
Welcome to my blog!

Please don't be discouraged by my lack of blogging lately. I am not going to lie... I have had the week from hell. Not necessarily because its been a bad week, its just been too busy. And to add to it, because I work third shift, it also means I haven't gotten much sleep. So when I wasn't busy doing something else, I was trying to get some sleep in. But, I slept a full 14 1/2 hours last night, and am now well rested for the week ahead of me!!

I am still seeking GUEST BLOGGERS!!!! I had 4 and, and then 2 never got back to me! :'( Anyways, I'm not seeking for any particular reason. Just to introduce some more material to my blog, and to hopefully diversify my audience. My only request is that its something you could consider "green" or "sustainable". So this could be a fresh & healthy recipe, or a craft (even better, using something you would normally toss in the trash), or something beauty related like I do hear, or just an article on global warming or something. You really could take anything and twist it so that it could be "green". If you're interested, please leave me a comment, and I will get back to you!



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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Tip Tuesday #9

There seems to be two categories of make-up wearing women out there... Women who use primer and women who don't. The women who don't, do it because they've never tried it... once they do, they are forever switched to the other category.

Foundation primer is the best thing ever. It makes it so you need less foundation, it smooths out your skin for a better foundation application, and it keeps your foundation from turning weird colors (are you one of those people who gets orange foundation when you start to sweat?). Not all primer is expensive either. Go out there and find a good primer for you!


Halloween Costume Creations!! CANDYLAND!!!! :)


Hey there everyone!! Here is my Halloween post about our costumes! I was pretty excited about them. & I decided to go ahead and put them up a little early, just in case you're still looking for a little inspiration. Alex & I, and a couple of our friends decided to dress up as characters from CandyLand. (Sorry, I have my jacket on, so you can't see the full costume. It was a little chilly).

King Kandy

Our Inspiration Picture for King Kandy
King Kandy's costume was by far the most difficult to assemble, because there is just so much to his costume! We also had to be the most creative with this one. 

The only aspect of his costume that we actually purchased were red and white striped tights from a Halloween store. The rest of the costume was hand made.

Starting from the top, we made his little cupcake hat. For the base of the hat, we ended up spray painting two styrofoam bowls brown. On the inside of one bowl, we hot glued a winter hat that was lined with red and white duct tape. On the other bowl, we created a base and then covered it with cotton balls. We then spray painted this a yellow-gold color. From there, we glued this whole piece into the bowl. We then used plain cotton balls to create the white "crown" shape, with peppermint tops and the sucker from a tootsie roll pop glued to the very top. 

We followed a similar process for the top of his staff... just leave out the second bowl, white "crown" and peppermints. 

Speaking of the staff, this was made with papertowel tubes (the thicker the better!). We taped the tubes together and then stuffed them with newspaper to help keep it sturdy. We then wrapped it with white & red duct tape to create the peppermint effect. Finally, we glued the cupcake to the top.

The next step of this costume was the armor. We made this out of posterpoard that has been spray painted gold. The skirt part was pretty simple, as we just created a half-skirt, and then cut the edges in a scalloped pattern and spray painted it gold. We then punched holes in the upper corners and tied red yarn to tie the skirt on. Finally, we hot glued a Tootsie Roll Pop (with sticks attached) to each section of the skirt.

The top piece was slightly more comp-
licated. We cut out a bunch of "scales" from posterboard and spray painted those. We then cut out and painted the armor shape and attached all 24 scales. Once that was assembled, we hot glued peppermint candies to the bottom of each scale.

Alex also wore a yellow-gold t-shirt underneath, that we found on sale at Wal-mart for only $3. To create the peppermint shoulder pads, you would just not believe what we did. We purchased a filter for a shop-vac and cut it in half (so that we had 2 circles) and then I cut the seams, so they would lay flat. We then wrapped each one with red & white duct tape for the peppermint look and hot glued them onto the tshirt.

The sleeves were made with bubble wrap & spray paint. Alex wore a gold long-sleeve t-shirt (that he already owned) for warmth, so we just taped the bubble wrap to his shirt sleeves and then around his arm, loosely, so that he could still move his arms. I also glued some thing batting that I had cut out, to create the cuffs.
For the cape, we created the top piece with yarn, cardboard, and some more batting. The actual cape piece was made out of a purple fleece blanket with some batting attached to the top edge, so it would blend into the cardboard piece. We just safety pinned this one, so I could keep the blanket after Halloween.
Finally, King Kandy has this peppermint belt, that is made with red and white electrical tape, markers, old cereal boxes, and yarn.


Mr. Mint
Inspriation for
Mr. Mint
 Mr. Mint was also relatively easy. For him, we also purchased a pair of red and white striped tights from the Halloween store.

For his hat, we covered an old ball cap with the red and white duct tape to create stripes. We then glued some red yarn to the inside of the cap, to create hair.

We used electrical tape to cover an old toy hatchet.

And he ended up wearing white, instead of pink... but for his sleeves, he wore a white thermal tee with red ribbon wrapped and safety pinned around his arms. Then he wore another t-shirt on top of that. We sort of forgot about his suspenders. :( And then he just wore a pair of red shorts that he owned, and we spray painted some batting and tied them to his boots for Mr. Mint's red boots. 


Princess Lolli
Inspiration for Princess Lolli
The most critical piece for Princess Lolli's costume was her lollipops. We made a trip to the candy store and purchased 3 smaller ones for her crown, and one larger one, just for her to carry. We broke off the sticks to the smaller ones and glued them to a toy crown that we found at the Halloween store. (unfortunately, one broke). You can't really tell in this picture, but we had to use packaging tape for them to stay, because the glue just wasn't strong enough. That was the one downside to her crown, was that it was quite heavy.

She purchased a yellow halter dress, which we safety pinned Tootsie Roll pops to the bottom of. For the top, we made circles with red yarn. (In some pictures, that top part is more of an orange color). We also used pink spray temporary hair color for the hair.

Just for fun, my friend used bright pink eyelashes that we found in the Halloween section of Wal-mart.




Queen Frostine
Inspiration Image for Queen Frostine
I was Queen Frostine, and this was probably the easiest costume of the bunch. The hardest part was finding the perfect blue dress. I found this one at walmart.com for only $14, and the only downside was that it was a very dark blue (much darker than in the picture). As you can see in the picture, She has two white sections on her dress. I only created the one in the middle because the top one kind of looked ridiculous with my dress. But I used a strip of batting, stitched the sides so it was tapered, and hooked it in the back with safety pins.

As for the crown, we used a little girls crown from the Halloween store, which had some boa-like material attached in silver and white. I also used the temporary dye to paint my hair blue.

The final step for my costume was the wand. Mine was made out of a stick wrapped in blue electrical tape with two small paper plates glued to either side. The plates were sprayed light blue, except for the edges. To create the points of the snowflake, we added sparklers (of all things!). Boy, was I scared someone would light them!! We also covered the plates with hot glue and craft glitter, and then used spray glitter to help seal (so we wouldn't have a huge glitter mess).




















So these were our Candyland-Themed Halloween Costumes! I hope you enjoyed this post. I really wanted to share it, not only out of pride, but also because of the creativity we used... from vacuum filters, to paper plates and bowls, to duct tape and electrical tape. 

Everyone have a happy & safe Halloween this year!!


Monday, October 25, 2010

Freeman's Feeling Beautiful Facial Clay Masks

My family has recently purchased to clay facial masks from Freeman (at Wal-Mart) and I really wanted to talk about this because one of my goals is to replicate them into a healthier version. 

Both of these masks are made with Kaolin Clay and I have found they are great at smoothing the texture of the skin. Because of these masks, I have really been obsessed with kaolin clay (I just purchased a facial cleanser with it from Lush, so I'll let you know how that works out soon). These products are also full of essential oils to benefit your skin. Obviously, because there are two products here, the oils will be different because the purposes of the masks are different.

Unfortunately, both of these masks list multiple parabens on their ingredients list. This is the primary version as to why I want to make my own. 


The first mask, the Avocado & Oatmeal mask, is very soothing and it smells great, very spa-like. This is great for inflamed and irritated skin. The second mask is the Mint & Lemon mask. This one is smoothing due to the clay, but it does awesome at brightening the skin. I'm serious, my skin looks amazing after rinsing this mask away.

So, I would recommend using these products because masks really are great (although I would definitely use a fresh mask, if it is possible) but just use caution because, while they contain many beneficial ingredients, they also contain a few bad ones as well. 

Keep an eye out for an update to this one after I get some clay ordered, so I can make my own masks and have a recipe for you to try as well!

Please remember that I did purchase both of these products. Actually, my mom purchased the Mint & Lemon mask, and I've just stolen it. :) But anyways, I am not affiliated with this company at all and am writing this some-what review of my own free will.

Friday, October 22, 2010

You've Got No Fear Of The Underdog, That's Why You Will Not Survive

This week's title comes from "The Underdog" by Spoon.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Guess What!!! As of right now, I'm almost at 200 followers!! How exciting is that? I bet I'll get over 200 by the end of the day today! Keeping my fingers crossed!!


My Week in Review!! Friday night I spent carving pumpkins
with Alex. That silly boy decided to cut out the face BEFORE
scooping out the seeds. He was just too excited. :) And then
spending some time with friends before heading out to the haunted
corn maze last Saturday night. And then finally, during the week,
I made another trip to Goodwill (in an attempt to purchase the
stuff that I was unable to from my last trip) and picked up this
lamp. I'll have pictures up when I finish it sprucing it up.
Happy Birthday to MY Hunny!
Mr. Alex's birthday is on Tuesday, so I plan on celebrating it this weekend. I'm too excited, because we're getting a hotel room. Keep in mind, we both still live at home with our parents, so it will be nice to get away for an evening. I'm also going to take him out to dinner... I'm thinking Texas Roadhouse? I've never been there, but I think I remember him saying it was his favorite restaurant. I can't wait!!!

&& Then On Saturday, The Reveal Of Our Super Cool Halloween Costumes!!
I will be presenting to you:

King Kandy, Queen Frostine, Mr. Mint, and Princess Lolli FROM CANDYLAND!!!!

And our costumes are seriously going to kick butt... especially because their all homemade! We even got created enough to use a ShopVac filter for one part of one of the costumes (& I bet you can't figure out which part!!). I'll make sure to have a post next week with how we made our costumes.  

Oh!!! & As Always, I'm still searching for Guest Bloggers! Remember, it has to be either "green" or "crafty"...basically. Comment, if you're interested!



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