Friday, December 4, 2009

Adorable!

This video stars my celebrity crush (Joseph Gordon Levitt) and my style idol (Zooey Deschanel)! Happy Friday and Enjoy!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

DIY Picture Frames


Everyone's favorite fab four!



I adore this picture!


These only take a couple of hours to make, and they are a nice personal and fun touch in any room. I took two pieces of cardboard, and covered them by gluing on a collage of pictures that I had cut out of magazines (In Style magazine and the Anthropologie Catalogue are great for this). I would recommend using a paintbrush to apply the glue. The pictures of the Beatles and the dog wearing a wig (so ridiculous!) are actually post cards that I got from an art supply store, and I figured that since they were black and white that they would really stand out against their colorful backgrounds. Have fun!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Love Potion #9

Urban Decay's Primer Potion seems to get all of the love, but I would argue that U.D. has an even better product out on the market. I'm pretty sure that their Eye shadow Transforming Potion is truly magical. Harry Potter ain't got nothing on it. On one end, you have a fine brush, that allows you to turn any of your eye shadows into a liquid liner (which I feel that Too-Face's Liquif-Eye does a better job of), but it's the wide line brush on the other end that makes it an indispensible beauty buy. It basically allows you to paint on a creaseless wash of color (note the art terminology). Absolutely gorgeous, and it makes the need for a primer--wait for it-- disappear (see, magic)!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Eat to Live



Have you heard of Dr. Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live diet? I started it a couple of weeks ago, and I feel great. Basically, you eat a mainly plant-based (fruits, veggies, legumes) diet, omitting all animal products. This is not your college dining hall variety of vegan (french fries and two pieces of lettuce). You can pretty much eat as many vegetables as your stomach can physically hold.
By now you are probably going, this girl is nuts, why isn't she eating deep fried Twinkies and swigging natty light like the rest of us?Well, to answer your questions, I have celiacs (a gluten intolerance), so there goes the Twinkies and the beer. I'm also allergic to dairy. Basically, I can't eat much besides fruits and veggies anyways, and after reading Dr. Fuhrman's book, which offers sound medical science and refers to peer-reviewed scientific journals, I had nothing to really lose (besides about 15 pounds, of which I've lost seven). I would recommend checking it out. Even if you can't imagine following a diet like that, he makes several interesting points about nutrition in general, which might convince you to throw away that twinky, and pick up a carrot (or twenty).

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Why I Think that Lauren Luke is the Cat's Pajamas



If you haven't heard of Lauren Luke, you have been probably living under a rock. She is the amazing youtube beauty guru, who shows how to create awesome beauty looks (such as Effy of Skins' makeup)in videos that are generally under 15 minutes. Not only does she have that going on, she has her own makeup line, By Lauren Luke, which Sephora just started carrying! I especially think she's great because she has done all of this while having Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), which I also have. One in ten women have PCOS, but many go undiagnosed. It comes with a ton of yucky side effects ( a greater risk for diabetes, acne, possible infertility, depression, general badness), and sometimes it can really feel isolating. It is a real confidence-sucker, and I know from experience that it can be hard to feel attractive or likeable when you body seems to be rebelling. In spite of this, she puts her youtube videos up, teaching us mere mortals beauty tricks, which in turn bring confidence (how can you not feel fabulous knowing that your makeup is the same as Anne Hathaway's red carpet Oscar look?). If you haven't already, check her videos out.

My Lip Gloss is Poppin'



Yes, I did just quote Lil Mama. It's still summer, and even though I am raring at the bit to wear fall's deep, deep lips, I feel weird wearing lipstick (obviously there are some exceptions). However, I am not opposed to a good lip gloss during the summer months. Currently, my favorite lip gloss is the Jelly Balm by L'Oreal Hip in Succulent. Though a bit expensive for a drugstore brand, it has the quality of a a more upscale brand. I don't find it to be sticky, the color is beautiful (they aren't kidding around with a name like High Intensity Pigments), and best of all, it is long lasting. Seriously. For some weird reason, lip gloss seems to disappear off of my lips within 15 minutes of putting it on. I don't know if I constantly lick my lips (I really hope not-- I don't want to be the freaky girl who walks around licking her lips all of the time), but this stuff actually stayed on. A miracle! I like to put a little bit of foundation on my lips before I apply it, to get an especially amazing color pay off. Fer serious.

I Have Found Love In a Spray Can (Dry Shampoo)





For my entire life, I have had to deal with my hair looking beautiful and bouncy in the morning, but by mid-afternoon, looking flat and gross. Enter dry shampoo. It is lift and body in a bottle. A spray here, a spray there, a quick scrunch and a brush through-- and shazaam! Shampoo (as in the live real kind!)- commercial hair! The problem is that most dry shampoos are expensive. I happen to be a poor college student, and I have to spend most of my money on textbooks and food (by textbooks and food I mean clothes). Luckily, there is Batiste. For a little over $7, you get over 5 ounces of dry shampoo-iness-- more than twice as much product as the cheapest kind that you will find at a more upscale beauty shop, for much less money. I really like the Batiste "Blush" scent. It kind of smells faintly of baby powder and roses, but the scent fades quickly. I bought mine at Sally Beauty, but you can also find it at Amazon.com.

Eyebrow Massacre



I have really thick, Brooke Shields-esque eyebrows. Or I did, up until two weeks ago, when I accidentally destroyed them. It started off innocently enough-- one pluck here, one pluck there, until I noticed that one eyebrow was much larger than the other. Easy enough, or so I thought. I could just pluck the one a little more until it matched the tinier brow. Except that's not what happened. The originally more prominent brow suddenly became the smaller one! When my mom saw my eyebrows, she was horrified. They looked thin, awful, and sparse-- and it didn't help that the Sephora catalogue came a week later, saying that big eyebrows were in. So now I'm in the painful growing out stage, and it is extremely hard to resist the urge to tweeze. But at least they are growing back-- I heard that Jean Harlow had her eyebrows shaved off for a movie, and they never grew back. So, I guess that the lesson here is: less is definitely more when it comes to plucking eyebrows, especially if you are a pluck-happy lunatic, and don't shave off your eyebrows, because it is possible that they might not come back.