BaT.TereDCakeS

Sailor Mercury Themed Nails!

2015-12-30T19:21:00.002-08:00

Because I'm going to a wedding tomorrow, I wanted to redo my nails so they look good for it. My old nails were chipping pretty badly so it was time for new nails anyways. A week ago, I finally got my new nail embellishments!! Silver hollow nail bows!! They're so damn cute! I also wanted to do a blue color and thought it would be great if I could use my new blue nail polish that has pink iridescent glitter!! The color of fairytales. I used this chance to look up some nail designs on Pinterest and wanted to use something with negative space. I've been into negative space nails lately. I found one where it had negative space as a big strip horizontally across a nail with lace behind it. I took this idea and expanded on it. I wanted to do alternate designs, so two nails use the middle hollow negative space and other two nails has a lace background with blue tips (it gives it a nice design that would look good with the silver hollow bows). The middle nail, I wanted to make as a solid colored nail, an accent nail. I took this chance to use my new Sailor Moon nail art stamp plate!! Because it's going to be blue themed, I had three choices, I can do Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury or Sailor Neptune. Sailor Neptune is a but more on the turquoise/teal side and the stamp plate didn't have her symbol! So it was either Sailor Moon or Sailor Mercury. We've been having wet weather lately, all his snow, so I figured, hell, I'm going to do Sailor Mercury! She's my top favorite scout and she doesn't get enough attention.

Original nail idea:

The nails I came up with:

This design is pretty simple. It did take time but it's not hard to do at all. I painted the middle finger with light blue nail polish, two coats, then did a coat of the light blue with pink glitter. All of the other nails, I stamped with lace white designs on the whole nail. I then painted a clear top coat over it so seal in the designs because I will be working with tape and french nail stickers. The next step, you might've guessed, was to tape off a strip in the middle and then apply the french tip stickers to the other two nails. Painted the uncovered parts and tips with my light blue nail polish with two coats then topped it off with the light blue polish with pink glitter. Afterwards, I thought it looked too plain so I painted white stripes on the edges of the negative space. After that, I thought the nails with the tips looked too plain and dotted the edges of the tips to resemble pearls. ....I still thought the nails with the negative space was too plain so I stamped some lace borders on the stripes.
So now that I was satisfied with all of the nails, I can work on the middle one. I used my nail art stamp plate to get the Sailor Mercury star with her symbol in the middle of it. I kept the design on the rubber applicator and scraped off any access designs that I didn't want (the designs are really close together on the plate). I then filled in the star with yellow nail polish and made sure it was thick so that way it's not transparent to where if I were to apply it, you could see through the yellow so it would turn green from the blue paint underneath. After that was done and dry, I applied clear polish on top of the design and peeled it off the stamper. I didn't apply clear polish to my nail before applying the design because I'm nitpicky, so I would've messed up the design by trying to get it perfect on the nail before the paint dries. I just applied clear paint ontop and that dissolved the clear polish on the design. It came out flawless.
For the embellishments, I took a nail polish remover pen and took off the center polishes on my thumb nail so when I apply the nail glue and bow, it will really stick to my nail good. I tried glue and embellishments on top of nail polish before and it easily came off from everyday wear. I applied the nail glue and bow then extra glue on the bottom and top sides of the middle of the bow. For the middle nail, I applied light blue and light pink rhinestones. With these, I applied top clear polish and positioned the gems on top then sealed them off with about 2-3 layers to clear top coat to keep it from coming off. I like to be super thorough with embellishments because I have horrible luck with them. They always come off. I don't live a rough, hard life but for some reason, my hands seem to think so.

Industrial Piercing Bump

2015-12-11T09:52:00.002-08:00

So last year, I decided to get more ear piercings. Before that, I only had 2 lower lobe ear piercings in each ear and one industrial piercings on my right ear. I decided to get another industrial on the left ear and a 3rd lower ear piercing for each ear.

The problem that I had this time around were bumps! Granted, I figured that healing would take a lot longer if I decided to get all four piercings at once (industrial = 2, 3rd lower ear lobes = 2), especially having 3 all in one ear BUT this time I had some issues. I got bumps on all four piercings! I knew one for sure was an infection because of how it looked. The other 3 were questionable because they didn't feel or look the same as the one lower ear lobe bump that I can definitely tell it was an infection.

To treat them all, everyday I cleaned it with saline solution, made sure to clean the crusties off after I showered everyday and the one that I could tell was an infection went down in a couple of weeks so that was no biggie.

As for the other 3...well...those took a lot longer. The other lower ear lobe piercing took another month to go away! It didn't look like an obvious infection but had a bump. I was afraid it was a hypertrophic scar or keloid! So thank goodness it went away after awhile.

The industrial was a whole nother monster!! There were 4 total bumps! One on each side of the piercings! The piercing on the top of the ear were smaller than the one on the side though. I've tried sea salt soaks and it didn't seem to do too much. It did feel good and felt like it kind of helped the infection come out when I put a warm wash rag on it soaked with the sea salt solution. I tried to do it as many times as I could in a week, but with work and all, it just didn't happen. PLUS, when I did it, there would be leftover salt residue on my hair! So it would look all white and weird. If I stayed at home, I didn't care about it and you can kind of rinse most of it off but it was still slightly visible...so I prefer not to go outside with it unless I jumped in the shower first.

These bumps on my industrial piercing stayed on for about a year. After half a year, I was contemplating taking them out and wondering whether I should get it looked at. After tons of research, I saw that having them for about 6 months was normal, if you happen to be unlucky enough to get the bumps. So I figured to not stress it, that it should go away soon. The top piercing did pretty well, those went mostly away within the next couple of months or so (they were just small bumps after a couple of months). I was still doing the saline solution method of cleaning. The side piercing was still large and horrible looking! The side that was outside of the lobe was huge! And that one was problematic because I loved to sleep on the left side and it would occasionally bleed after sleeping. After a few months, I couldn't adjust to sleeping on my right side and would try to carefully sleep on my left. Most of the time it would be ok but a few times, I'd wake up to some dried blood on it. Finally, after almost a year, they're all healed. I don't know why this time around, that I had issues with these piercings because all of my other piercings were completely fine and healed with no problems whatsoever.

So the method I used to speed up the healing and finally get rid of the bumps is a surprising one. I will use this method for any of my piercings from now on. Well, when I first get piercings, I will use the saline method and if I get infections, this will be my go-to method.

Healing process method:
Every morning and after I shower in the evening, soak the ends of a cotton swab in saline solution and wipe off crusties. Make sure to get them all and I liked to thoroughly soak the piercing so the solution can go inside of it as well.
For the sea salt method soak, I would use a 1/4 teaspoon to a cup of warm water. The warm water will help draw out the infection where cold won't do anything and hot might mess with your infection more. I would then mix it in a bowl and dip my ear into it for about 5 minutes. After that, I would dip a wash rag into it (if it's still warm, if not, I would make another) and cover my ear with it, almost like wrapping my ear into it. I'd fold the rag so it would cover the front and back of my ear and apply very minimal pressure but enough to know that it's touching. I'd do that until the rag went cold, so about 5-10 minutes.

After it's "healed" but still had infection qualities:
For those bumps, I'm sure it's an infection but didn't look outright to be one. They also did not feel hot to the touch and wasn't oozing or anything, it was all very well contained under the skin and inside the piercing (which is why it probably formed bumps). After a six months, I finally tried to research and try different methods. I tried tea tree oil, this worked well but I didn't see much of a difference. Tried witch hazel and got the same slow result. The method that did work and I'm not too sure why I tried it, was using acne products.
I know, it sounds weird and sounds too extreme for a piercing...but it worked and only took a month for these bumps to go away. I don't know how I got the idea, I didn't read it anywhere but I just had the weird thought and urge to use it one day and I'm so glad I did. When I used it, it didn't burn or anything. I don't know if it's because my body is somewhat used to these products or I'm one tough ass bitch.
The products I used were Neutrogena Rapid Clear Toner (although it was orange..but it was transparent) and Clearasil Ultra Rapid Action Treatment Gel. What I loved about these was that I already had them on hand (I have acne issues because of my messed up hormones, a whole nother story for later) and the treatment gel, I found at Dollar Tree (normally $12 at Walmart)!

These are such lifesavers!! I'm not a professional so if you decide to use these, use these by your own discretion. If they start to hurt or burn, I suggest to not use them. But remember that the toner does contain alcohol in it..so it's likely...but did not burn me. Maybe try an acne product that is not so extreme. These products are extreme because they are supposed to deliver rapid results. Hence, rapid in the names. Also, things will get ugly before they get better. I was at a point where I was tired of the gross looking bump on the outside of my ear, it was huge and starting to look weird. After I used these products, the bump on the inside of my ear on the side lower piercing looked the same before and during treatment, it just shrunk, but the one outside was starting to look gross and bumpy, almost like it turned darker and started getting bumps in it. I'm guessing the infection got really bad in there before I started the treatment. During treatment, the outside bump went down in size but I started scabbing. So...it will look gross because of the scabbing, thank goodness I had hair that covered my ears. It's not your regular scab, but an infected scab, if that made sense. It will get worse before better. Shrunk down but scabbed. So keep that in mind. To be honest, I liked the idea of it opening up and scabbing, this meant that it was easier for the infection to come out. Rather than try to keep slowly coming out of the piercing hole, it meant that it escaped through the skin and scabbed up. Now, I don't know if it scabbed because of this method or because I kept sleeping on it, so also keep that in mind. You may or may not have it open and scab up. I've been through hell with this piercing, had it got hit a couple of times, accidentally had stuff get caught on it, slept on it all weird...it's been through a lot. So it can be likely that it scabbed for a whole nother reason rather than this treatment. I've also never purposefully pulled on the scab or anything.

So what I did for this method was every morning and after a shower in the evening, I would dip the cotton swab in the toner, soak it thoroughly and remove any crusts and puss. After a shower though, I would first use a dry swab to remove the already softened and kind of liquefied crusties and puss. After that, I would use a toner-soaked swab to just get any gunk I didn't get and to apply the toner inside the piercing. Once it was all clean and I kind of soaked the inside of my piercing with the toner, I would apply some acne gel to another cotton swab and apply it to the piercing. I would thoroughly get the whole bump and the hole. I only applied a small dab of gel onto the swab, I didn't rub the gel around the swab tip, I just directly applied the dab to the bump.

Another note is that I only use one swab tip for each bump and multiple swabs for each step! So one whole swab for dry cleaning after showers, where one tip was for the outside of my ear, the other tip was the inside. I know it's the same piercing hole, but one side was worse than the other so I didn't want to spread what was worse on one end to the other that wasn't that bad. Another swab for toner, another swab for the gel. And any additional swabs if you didn't get it thoroughly cleaned with your first swab. I didn't like picking up a whole crusty and trying to keep wiping the piercing with that huge crusty clump on there, so I'd use an additional swab to get the rest of what's left on a side of the piercing. Towards the end of healing, I even had the upper piercing react again and I used another swab for that one. This will result in you using a crap load of swabs a day but to not spread anything, I feel it's worth it. Plus, I bought swabs from Dollar Tree specifically for my piercings. This was to keep my good ones to be used only for ears. (I'm cheap, I like to use expensive stuff for what's intended and cheaper stuff for other purposes). When I had the upper piercing react again, I used a total of 6 swabs every time I cleaned, that's 12 swabs per day (minimum!) and 12 x 7 = 84 swabs a week! But if you go to the dollar store and get 300 swabs for $1, that's only about $2 per month. If I used my more expensive brand of swabs for it, that's around $7 per month. So there's the difference in the long run. Oh! And never double-dipped the swab into the toner, this is to prevent contamination of the toner.

I kept up this method until the bumps were completely down! Once it started scabbing on the outside bump, it did hurt to clean that bump because of the pressure. I tried not to apply too much pressure but still tried to thoroughly clean it. I used a hand mirror to help me see where I was cleaning in conjunction with my bathroom sink mirror. I highly suggest to use a hand mirror to see where you are cleaning! I got the WHOLE bump, which means I wiped the back and underside of the bump and applied the gel on the whole thing, not just what I could see if I were to only use my bathroom sink mirror.

I never took pics of the process, but here's similar pics I found on the web (what the bumps looked like before treatment):

I had additional bumps on the outside of the piercings. The pic only shows two, which are the insides of the ear.

The top bump wasn't that bad, it was the same size as the previous pic's inside bumps. (Thank goodness). BUT I put this picture in here because the bump that she has on the lower piercing on the outside of the ear, was the same size and looks as mines before treatment.

Here are current pics. (You can see how I said the top piercing started reacting a bit again):

Before and After I cleaned it. You can see in the top pic, the big outside bump on the lower piercing is completely gone. The top pic also shows that the inside top piercing bump came back a bit. The second pic shows that the top outside piercing bump that also came back a bit and how my lower inside piercing bump isn't so bad now, practically gone. I think the top bumps came back a bit because of when I accidentally hit it, slept on it and forgot to check on it nor cared for it until I saw the bump come back.

Here's the back bump, it's gone but you can see the scar left behind. Hopefully it goes away but it's not that super noticeable:

My Go-To Eyeliner!

2015-12-08T18:54:00.005-08:00

I'm sorry I rarely keep up with this blog. Busy life. I thought school would really free up my time! But instead, after I converted to a career position in my intern job, I've been so busy! And the times I'm free, I'm either playing video games or aimlessly, mindlessly watching tv (I don't even know what I'm watching half the time! Like my brain turned off for awhile). Boy, time sure does fly so fast!!

So this post is to brag about how I found my go to eyeliner now!! I love it!
A little bit about me. I've been trying to find my go to eyeliner that is not that expensive, can create thin lines, is truly waterproof, applies very dark and is smudge proof. Why this is hard for me: my skin is freaking oily and my eyes water like crazy! My eyelids get crazy oily by the end of the day (so does my face). I love to laugh, I'm around funny people and so when I laugh, my eyes tear up a bit, to where the tears chill in the corners of my eyes. I also have always had a problem with eyeliner smudging and migrating into my eyelid crease, probably due to oils and the watery eyes do not help. And recently, for the past year...I've been into think upper eyeliner lines! I've already found my go-to pencil liner, but with these, you can't achieve thin lines...at least I can't. (My go to eyeliner pencil in Covergirl Exact Eyelights in Vibrant Pearl!!)

With all that, I've been searching for a liquid liner for thinner lines. I've tried gel liners and they were really nice, goes on smooth and didn't smudge too bad and was waterproof...but...it's not that dark and doesn't give you that super precise crisp line like a liquid one does.

Products I've used so far that's worked with my oily skin and watery eyes:
~Maybelline Lasting Drama Gel Liner in Eggplant (isn't as dark as the picture, I layer this ontop of black gel liner)
~Rimmel Gel Liner in Black (my go to gel liner!)
~Covergirl Exact Eyelights in Vibrant Pearl (retractable pencil liner)

Products I've tried that failed:
~L'Oreal Telescopic Precision Waterproof Liquid Eyeliner in Black (This was TOO WATERY. It was so watery that it would be transparent so I'd have to layer it BUT if you let it dry, then you start peeling off the dried liner when you apply another layer!! It was horrible. It makes good lines though and easy to remove with makeup wipes. I also was very waterproof and smudge proof. I just hated the application. Also, it keeps too much product onto the pen because the opening is wide.)
~L'Oreal Telescopic Waterproof Mascara in Black (I know I've been talking about eyeliners but I had to add this in because this was one of the worse mascaras I've used!! Keeps WAY TOO MUCH product on the brush. I try swiping it on the edge of the bottle but it gets messy! I just chucked it. I won't be using the Telescopic line anymore!)
~And other products that I can't remember because once I discovered the Exact Eyelights Eyeliner, that's the only one I buy. The gel liners, I've had since I bought and have only recently started to experiment again. (And thank goodness I got the Telescopic line from Big Lots for around $3, I didn't waste too much money.)

Well! Now onto the product! This is the Rimmel Liquid Eyeliner:

It's a felt tip eyeliner. Here's pics of my eyes at the end of my usual work day! You can see how oily my lids are and a bit of my face. It stayed completely precise with no smudging! The only thing that changed was that in the morning, I had a bit more winged eyeliner. Nothing too crazy, just a slight wing which faded and got messed up from tears (from lots of laughter). It was no big deal to me, just wiped it off. But that's one thing to look for by the end of the day, whether your wings got messed up!

I wish I thought of taking pics in the morning so I can do a before and after but I didn't think of doing this post until the end of the day. I did take a mid-day pic, which is down below. You can the wings I usually do. I don't do very dramatic makeup. I'm a lazy and simple girl. Eyeliner and that's it. If I have time and am in the mood, I'll put on mascara. If it's a special occasion, I'll add eye shadow. The only difference between the morning and mid-day is that my eyelids are much more "matte", you can see the oils starting to build up half way through the day because of the slight shine but does not have oil build up as intense as end of day shots.

I can't be the only one with extra oily skin and problems with eyeliner that feels like it took years for a company to develop an eyeliner I can MOSTLY rely on! So I hope this helps someone else with the same issues as me.

Vidal Sassoon London Lilac!

2015-10-01T08:32:00.002-07:00

It's been way too long since my last post about my hair, since my red hair after using Loreal HiLights/HiColor red or magenta hair dye, I switched to Vidal Sassoon London Lilac!! I was tired of the upkeep of the red, you have to retouch it every 2 weeks or so and that stuff bleeds everywhere! I knew this before I dyed my hair but after awhile...well, I'm a low maintenance kind of gal.
I'm in love with the London Lilac hair dye though! The dye does fade but it is not as drastic as the red and lasts a lot longer. I've also tried the Deep Violet color in the same line and it's a bit of a darker purple color, pretty much almost an unnoticeable difference but I just keep sticking with the London Lilac.
I used this right after my red hair started fading so at first, it was like a burgundy color. Then after that, it was a consistent dark purple color. I love it because it's a nice color that looks good in all lighting. Inside your house, it'll be dark so not too noticeable, then outside it's like a screaming violet color with red tones, and under fluorescent lighting, it's a nice stand-out purple. I also bleached my hair in between to see if it would be more noticeable and to be honest...wasn't that crazy different. I bleached it to a dark dirty blonde. You can see the difference between my new growth hair and the dyed part but no so much right after you dye it. It's brighter but you can't see the difference until the color starts to fade out.
This box also covered all of my hair, I definitely use all of it but I'm able to use it throughout my whole hair. But there's no extra saturation, I know some people like to top off hair dye at the end. My tips for making it through all of your hair is to do ends first (since roots dye faster), comb your hair at the end on each section (I know some people advise not to do it because of breakage), this helps spread the dye throughout your hair and makes sure its even, do sections for sure, if you try to do your hair in one huge section, you will miss the "inside" of your hair!! I also help keep it last longer by washing my hair in warm water rather than scalding hot lie I used to and then after I condition, I rinse in cold water. I am not able to wash my hair in cold water! This dye also isn't too drying to my hair! I've used some hair dyes that made my hair feel like I played with fire!

So here's some pics to show you how it went and a few more times after I used it and when it started fading (I think pics of how it fades is useful! And note, I still have some red undertones, not too sure if it's from the L'Oreal HiColor Red dye or it's just the undertones of my hair since I do have natural red undertones):

The dyes I used (I only used the Deep Velvet Violet once! There's not really a big difference between the colors!):

Here's a timeline of my hair:

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From faded L'Oreal HiColor Red to Vidal Sasoon London Lilac!

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The Vidal Sasoon fades a lot more gracefully than L'Oreal dyes!

After another dye session, a lot more purple and the fade is less noticeable

After my last dye job. Really violet in the sun. Still really noticeable in fluorescent light.

And then the fade (in the sun and then fluorescent), it still looks good, it's not the nasty orange color I got after L'Oreal HiColor!

My next adventure hair dye experiment will be with Vidal Sassoon Salonist, Deep Violet for the upper half of my hair and Schwarzkopf Red for the lower half of my hair.

Proclaim Hair Polish

2015-04-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since I've posted anything and even though I took pictures of stuff I want to post, I've never done it and ended up deleting them. BUT I finally thought, at least do one for this year.
So I have a lot of hair problems. My hair looks dry and frizzy all the time. After a shower, my hair poofs up like crazy and takes a whole day for it to "calm" down. This morning my hair was extremely poofy after my shower. Now, I dye my hair a lot, it's been about 3 weeks since my last dye or about 4...can't remember...anyways, the point I was making was that I do damage my ahir by dying it often. I do not use any heat on it though, no blow drying, straightening, etc. I still get split ends and still have frizzy hair...makes me feel like I might as well use heat if it's still going to act like how it was when I did use all of that.
After a shower, I rub hair oil into my hair. The problem with hair oil is that if you rub too much then your hair looks greasy...like as if I never even showered. Who wants to take a shower to come out looking like they didn't at the end? I didn't shower for no reason! So I rub minimal oil into my ends and on the lower half of my hair. The other problem I have is that lately, I've been showering in the morning and because I don't use heat, my hair comes out different and all different levels of crazy on different days by the time I go to work. (I take a train to work for an hour so I always rush out of the door to catch it then I can't do much on the train.)
So at work, I've decided to also keep some type of hair maintenance...stuff, whether it's oil, leave-in conditioner, etc. On my desk right now is: Proclaim Hair Polish. Sometimes I feel wary of keeping it at my desk because let's be honest...it looks like a bottle of lube. I have to keep telling people, I swear it's hair serum or hair lube.

This calms my hair a lot! And does not make it greasy, which is why I completely love it. The thing is, I've never tried it on damp hair, just completely dry, so I can't recommend putting this on right after a shower. I'm writing this post to show you the results of this product, if you haven't figured that out yet. Sorry I write so long. This product made my hair go from the first pic to the last pic.

My hair became a lot more manageable, not as wild and does not look greased up!! Below I will show the steps of adding this to your hair. So for this first et of pics, I have my original poofed out frizzy hair. The second pic is when I applied the polish only once and rubbed it through the left side of the pic's hair. I did not use any on the other side. You can see it calmed down my hair a lot from the first pic but still not too much. How I apply the polish is by putting a couple of drops of it in my palms and I rub it between my palms vigorously for a few seconds to warm it on. This warms up the polish and helps it glide smoother onto your hair.

This next set is after another application of the polish. I still only applied it to one side of my head (the left side in the pic). It looks so much better and smoothed out my waves a bit more.

And after one more application of the polish and I also did the other side. It sounds like I rub this polish in a lot, but this polish is so great at getting absorbed into the hair rather than just coating it. This helps keep your hair healthy and suck up any nutrients that the polish provides. This is also key to not having greasy looking hair!!!

After that, I realized my hair still needed a bit of taming and can handle more polish. PLUS, I was not getting the "inside" of my hair...meaning I've only really coated the more outside strands of hair. So for the last application, I tied half of my hair up so I can put some on the "inside" of my poofy hair.

My bangs look a bit weird in the last pic, but you get the idea. So for the final look, you can see my end are so much more calm and contained. They look at lot more sleek now that I put more effort in getting all of my hair rather than just the outside. I'm also going to put my hair up in a bun just to give it some curl. I only left my hair in a loose bun, tied at the nape of my neck for about half an hour or so. The longer you leave it in, the more defined curls you will have. The left side of the pic looks like it doesn't really have curls, but the curls are more on the "outside" of my hair where the "inside" of my hair is hiding them. I don't know if that made sense...To straighten my hair a bit more, I just tie my hair into a loose ponytail at the nap of my neck. I'm not sure why that works for me, might be because it gathers all of my hair and they weigh each other down and stick to each other? I'm not a hair specialist but that made sense in my mind. And sorry I look high in the bottom pic...I'm too lazy to take another.

Sorry it seems like a crap load of pics. I thought it would be easier to see each application side by side with the previous pics! You can find this product at Walmart or Sally's. It's commonly found in the "ethinic" hair section....or in simpler terms, the black hair section. (Growing up in the hood, we never called this section by it's "politically correct" term.)

Red Hair Update

2014-09-05T12:53:00.001-07:00

It's been a few months since I've gone red headed! And let me tell you, I'm getting sorta tired of it.
I love the color, and when I see red on other people, it makes me appreciate it more but like I said in my previous post...it's a lot of damn work to keep up with.
I refresh (I call it refresh rather than retouch because my hair looks horrible before I redye it. So it's refreshing to see bolder color) my hair with semi-temporary hair color and conditioner mixed together.

Doing this makes my hair bleed much more than when I dye it with L'oreal. So when water drops fall off my hair onto the carpet, you can REALLY see it. With L'oreal, you can see it if you look for it.
I also hate having to refresh it every 3 weeks or so. 2 would be preferred but I'm lazy and I hate having to spend money that often, even though I knew I would have to spend money to keep up with it. Sometimes, I even let my hair get close to orange before I redye it. This does make it somewhat brighter when you refresh it but I don't really care to go all the way to orange to redye it, unless I wanted a brighter red.

I've been using Ion Brilliance Color, in Red and Magenta. One time, I tried Red. Liked it, but watched a YouTube video and the girl said she likes Magenta because it fades better. I tried just Magenta the next time and, to me, it still faded the same. It wasn't really much less yellow even though it is pink-based and not yellow-based like the Red dye. The next time, I tried Magenta and Red equally, and to me, it seems like the results are all the same. The only difference is that Magenta is a bit darker. This last time, I tried Magenta, Purple, and a bit of Red. It just came out Red. I was hoping it would come out darker, a more maroon color but it didn't really work. I also can see the purple washing out very, very quickly even though there's really no purple results. So all that for not.

This next time, I'm using Jazzing in Cherry Cola to see how this one works and how long it lasts. I'll probably do it this weekend, and if I remember, I'll update my blog on it with pics.

Also, for the past two months, I just stopped doing my roots. I get too lazy to dye my roots one day and then the rest of my hair in semi the next. I tried doing both at the same time and that also was just an excruciatingly long process. I'm thinking about maybe just growing out my natural hair and end up with a red ombre hairstyle. It will take a few more months to get it to be a good ombre since right now, it just looks like I have grown out long roots but at the end, I'm only going to have to use half of the dye I use and end up with half the time to do my hair. And if I get REALLY tired of it, I can just cut it off next year. Applying the semi kind of lifts up my color, so it's becoming a good ombre. I predict that in the next few dyes, I'll have a very good gradation going on. I have good gradation now but it would be sweeter if it was a bigger gradation, if that makes sense.

Nail Art Binge

2014-09-05T12:38:00.002-07:00

I'm not sure how I even got started with getting back into doing my nails! And when I mean, "do my nails", I mean more than just painting them one color. I think it was because I started to actually paint my nails again that the binging started. I also saw on eBay, all of the cool nail art stickers that you can buy. Simple, easy, fun! I can do stickers, much less work than the damn nail stamps. Here are some of my nail art, that I've been proud enough to take pictures of...and remembered to take pics of.

Sailor Moon inspired! Well Sailor Jupiter to be exact! I've been obsessing over Sailor Moon again! And got this idea from one of the sticker sheets I bought off of eBay. I only used two stickers, on the thumb and pinky, but they're roses with lace designs and a couple of little gold rhinestones. The green nail polish, by Nika K that I got off Groupon that came in a set of 5 nail polishes. These nail polishes are the best I have in my collection. I haven't tried Essie or any other expensive nail polish. I usually get Wet n' Wild, which is pretty transparent in all colors, so multiple layers are definitely needed. I have some various ones like NYC, Sally Hansen and a couple others that I don't remember. I bought the set because it was cheap on Groupon and I read good reviews on them and they are really worth it! Cheaper than Essie and OPI...but probably only with the deal (which came with Red, Blue, Green, Silver Glitter, and a speedy Top Coat!!). I also super glued a bow, which came off after a few days since I tried to glue it ontop of the nail polish.

This one is Sinful Colors nail polish, can't remember the color name but I love it! This is a more thicker nail polish, which some people can see as good, but for me...thick is good just so the color is more solid than transparent when put on but when you apply it, it's more difficult, messy and you have to apply it right and smooth the first time. I also used stickers from eBay on these and the same type of bow as the picture above. This time around, I glued the bow to my nail first with super glue then let it dry, applied more super glue around the glued area, let it dry and then painted the nail carefully not to paint the bow. The bow stayed on forever. I also decided that gluing the bow on any of the other fingers is not a good idea, since it's hard to do things like shampoo your hair and it gets caught on everything. So the thumb is better and more towards your cuticles helps with not getting the bow caught on anything. The bows stayed on my nail until I purposefully took them off.

This one is Maybelline color Show in Sky Blue Metallic (?), can't remember if that's the actual name or not. I love this color. My favorite color is blue and light blue is preferred. This is like a Frosty Blue, reminds me of the movie Frozen and Cinderella! This one is more plain than the others since I only did the blue paint and painted the tips with the Nika K Silver Glitter polish I have. Beautiful winter combination!! I also painted my middle finger all silver glitter. I think the way it is pictured below reminds me more of the movie Frozen than Cinderella, but I realized, if I add a pink bow to my thumb, it would turn into Cinderella nails...weird rant and weird how a single pink bow can change a whole theme of nails...well, if you think like me. Note to self though, use more than one coat of base coat, the blue stained my nails.

Panasonic Close Curves Wet/Dry Shaver Review

2014-03-13T22:52:00.000-07:00

I don't know how I even got to looking and buying this shaver but boy am I glad!!
I completely love this shaver. I got it today and read so many rave reviews that I tried it right away. I LOVE IT! 5 out of 5 roses!!

You can do this dry or wet. I tested dry because if I was ever in a rush to go somewhere, I can do this in my car if my boyfriend's driving or when I'm parked really quick. It was soooo smooth. It caught no hairs and was really quick. My legs were at their full potential though, my hair was the longest and thickest as ever (thanks so much Indian genes). So this took awhile but I would say that it took almost the same amount of time as shaving. I had to go slowly and run the shaver backwards to get rid of the hair that's caught in the razor. But hell, this is a lot less messy than shaving. I didn't have to go through the trouble of getting in the shower, sit on my tub, apply shaving cream and shave multiple times while getting cuts and fearing the worst around my knee area.
Say goodbye to nicks, cuts, bleeding, razor bumps, shaving cream and disposable razors. This baby was completely harmless to my skin. I ran this over my knees multiple times and my elbows without fearing I was going to get wounded.
This shaver cut as close as a shaver. I'm pretty sure the next time I use this, to get stubble, it will only take me a couple of minutes, maybe not even that, to get each arm and leg.
I hope it lasts a long time, most people say they keep their razor for more than 2 years then replace it. You can buy replacement parts for it but each part was about $8 (you'll probably have to buy the outside blade and the inside blade which are each $8), so pretty much close to the price to buy a new one.
This is rechargable, so that is a huge plus...but, it has a "space saver" charger and the connection is on the square plug thing that you put in the outlet...there's no cord at all. So this takes out the possibility of using it while it charges.
The shaver states that it takes 12 hours to charge, which is nothing if you just plug it in at night before you sleep or during the day before you go to work. I would only charge it if I know I would need it the next day though (so I would plug it in the night before).
This is so great for quick-growing body hair, especially if it's thick! And it's such a great price! At $20, it's completely worth it to buy!! I wouldn't even be mad if it died after a year because of this cheap price and effect!!
This is the best product I have ever bought and I will NEVER go back to a razor and cream ever again. This baby is here to stay..or at least the method will.

L'Oreal HiLights Second Review

2014-03-12T23:08:00.000-07:00

So I said in my first review that I will post up a pic of when I wash out the heavy oil in my hair so you can see the true color, here it is:

This is my second attempt at dying my hair with the L'Oreal HiColor dyes. I mixed Magenta and Red Hot the first dye job and then the second dye job consisted of Magenta and Red. I like it, it brighter than the first and you can really see the Magenta...but in all honesty, I want to go brighter now!!
So...I did :D This time I only use Red. It's so much brighter, but I still have the darker ends problem. For all three dye jobs, I did from ends to roots and my ends still didn't turn out too bright. What's weird is that the top layer of my hair is a good red but the bottom layers and still dark. Maybe when I piled my hair, since I did a loose twist, the top layer was on the inside and it kept heat in longer? Not sure, but next time I dye my hair, I will only do the layers on the bottom, the parts that aren't light enough.

Also to note, I did use 30 developer in the 3rd hair dye job. My hair is way too stubborn, I thought I was going to regret it, thinking it was going to turn out really bright, but it came out perfect at the roots. The brightness I wanted. ..Now only if I can get that color in the rest of my hair. Maybe another 2 weeks, and I will dye the dark parts of my hair. And then post pics of those results...damn my stubborn hair.

I Spit on Your Grave Movie Review

2014-03-12T22:58:00.001-07:00

I wanted to check out this movie because I heard it was a really good movie. That it was really bloody and gory and a really good revenge movie. Of course, to make a revenge movie, you need an event/scene to make the revenge happen...to make it all worth while.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

I thought and wanted more blood and gore. Disturbing to watch at first because of the rape scene, and it doesn't help that it took up half the movie. This wasn't just a revenge nor just a rape movie, it was a half and half and I would've loved to see more revenge...than rape. Too much rape for my taste...kind of a weird start off. I don't see too many rape movies where the first half hour is seeing her half naked, making it seem like she was just asking for it, seeing the rape (go on for another half hour), then seeing her naked again for a little more while...very uncomfortable. To me, it felt like they were trying to have her seduce you at first, to show that the boys weren't ALL in the wrong, like some of it was on her for walking around half naked. Then the rape scene. This takes TOO LONG. Bluntly, half of the scene was rape foreplay. Disgusting but true. Then they get on with it and they prolong that by having her walk away slowly, in a daze, into the forest and somehow, the guys are already waiting in an area that she walks into. Then it continues, the disgusting partake in the event of why I do not trust most men. I don't trust people in general, but men the most.

This also shows that, the authority isn't good for shit. I saw some comments on the trailer page in Youtube and a couple of people mentioned, "Well, they didn't have to die" or "Well, they didn't deserve to die", and then topped it off with, "We let the authorities take justice". Yeah, because the authority takes justice for people all the time. Especially, when they pat you down, smell your ass, grab your titties and call for more rapists backup. Let's just face the truth, some justice is served and some are not. We have many real cases that involve injustices. People not bring put away as they should and even excessive "justice" being brought upon citizens.

Anyways, after the grotesque scene, we're still left with her naked body. For another 15 minutes, we see her walk in the forest..naked. As if seeing her half naked, like as if we're supposed to enjoy that right before a rape scene, wasn't enough. We had to get full on nudity right after a rape scene for a few more minutes. It's just uncomfortable at this point. And you also wonder to yourself...why is this bitch walking so slow? Yes, she's traumatized, but she's walking as slow as a zombie (Walking Dead slow), when these men can easily just walk over, hell, not even walk over, just shoot her. But for some reason, they also slowly follow her to a bridge. They prepare to kill her and she raises her arm. At this point, you know that she's about to jump, no one in their right mind should raise their arm waiting for a shotgun death and yet, these guys didn't realize that. She jumps and is not seen, seems like for an hour or so? Scene "changed" and they were still there so they must've been there for awhile. What I wonder, is how did she get away?

I discussed many possibilities in my head, maybe she swam underwater all the way downstream...miraculously somehow. And then I thought, maybe she swam underwater to the bridge and came up for air under the bridge so they wouldn't see her and just waited there...forever. Of course, you know that she is not dead. Otherwise, what kind of movie is this....a rape movie...which would not fend well in the industry...not even in the porn industry.You find out that she survived in the woods the whole time...so how does a city writer know how to survive in the woods? How to hunt rats and fish old-school style. Maybe internal survival skills took over...hmmm, I kind of highly doubt that with our people in this country now and the fact that she couldn't even hold her wine glass and put her laptop on her lap at the same time. But she survived and now she's out for revenge.

The revenge is pretty realistic. Not too graphic at all really, it was...pretty much like I said, realistic. Most people are violent but not too violent to where you start going Hostel and Saw mode, super brutal. But for a movie, I don't want realistic, I want movie. I want blood and gore and lots of torture. And there was NOT ENOUGH. I wanted long torture and lots of bleeding over time. Some more body parts getting cut off. The revenge was short. I don't know if they meant to make it "short and sweet". But revenge should be LONG and SAVORED. Especially when the damn rape scene and half naked and full nudity scenes were TWICE as long as the revenge.

Regardless, I liked it. I never dislike revenge. I'm a Buddhist and even though we are not supposed to condone to violence...we believe in Karma and I'm a believer in harsh karma, harsh VISUAL karma.

L'Oreal HiColor HiLights/HiColor Review

2014-02-24T21:18:00.002-08:00

I've been wanting to dye my hair red for a veeeeery long time. So long, that I never thought I would really do it unless I was drunk. BUT, I finally grew a stronger vagina and went for it. It's still not a super bright red like Rihanna's hair color or just bright red like most people have done with these hair colors but I like it and maybe it will fade to a brighter red. I think after a few times of dying my hair, it just won't dye brighter as much as other people's hair has. There's red halfway down my hair but it's still pretty dark, even after a second dye. Pretty let down by how dark it is. But it could be due to the a couple of factors. I oiled my hair like crazy after I rinsed out the dye (shown in the pic directly below) or it could be because I mixed colors rather than just dye it straight up one red color like others.
I wanted a dark red color that was bright. I got that color...I just want a bit more bright in there, especially halfway down my hair. It's still pretty dark. Almost like a dark, dark cherry red.

Because it wasn't as bright as I wanted but is still the best dye I have ever used, I would give this a 4 rose rating.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND L'Oreal HiLights and this way of achieving red from dark hair colors. I DID NOT WANT TO BLEACH MY HAIR. This is a great and successful way of getting from brown to red without that much damage. The dye does contain some bleaching components but not so much to where your hair feels like hay (I regretted bleaching my hair years ago). It is also said that this way is more true to its color. You shouldn't get a brassy color, or fade to a brassy or orangey color like how you would if you pre-bleached your hair.

Anyways, here's my results from the second attempt (and sorry for the no make-up):

So from the pic you can see that halfway up my hair, it looks great. That's the bright I wanted throughout the whole hair but it didn't turn out that way. Again, I don't know if it's because I heavily oiled my hair or if it's really that dark. I again, do still recommend this method for achieving red hair from black or just dark hair though. I would keep using this hair dye for future red dying.

READER DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL AT ALL, WHATSOEVER.

All of the information in here, I learned from reading articles, blog posts and experiences and viewed a few videos. I will post the Youtube videos I liked and viewed at the bottom of this whole post.

So overall, this was a messy and somewhat expensive experience. It was expensive because some of my choices and the fact that I had to buy EVERYTHING. It cost me about $60 for everything in the list below. It can cost you less if you buy other things that I can list after my bought list.

What I bought:

Salon Care 30 Developer (16 oz. bottle) $3.69

Salon Care 20 Developer (16 oz. bottle) $3.69

L'Oreal HiLights (Red Hot) $6.49

L'Oreal HiLights (Magenta) $6.49

L'Oreal HiLights (Red) $6.49

Ion Color Sealer Conditioner (bottle/tube not small packet) $6.99

Colorful Professional Protein Filler (Red Red) $5.29

Clear Tinting Brush (Large) $.99

Sally's Clear X-Large Bowl $2.00

Sally's Black and White Hair Clips $2.39

Tax $2.97

TOTAL $59.27

I bought two different numbered developers, 20 for my roots and 30 for the rest of my hair since root dye faster and much better and brighter. In the end result, you see that my roots are super bright. Well, that's my mistake because I got lazy and just put 30 on it rather than 20 like in my first attempt. It probably would've come out all even if I did 20 but it's soooo much work. I also bought reusable gloves because I dye my hair a lot and I know I would like this dye enough to keep using it after reading a viewing videos of reviews of the L'Oreal HiLights dyes. I bought two bowls and brushes, one for my roots and the other for the rest of my hair. I also bought the big tube bottle of Ion conditioner rather than just the separate individual packets because I know I will want to use the conditioner later on, maybe once or twice a week to keep the color in longer. I got large brushes because I have long, frizzy...and a lot of hair so I thought a bigger brush would fasten my dying process. I also needed clips because I had none, I only have fat scrunchies to tie my hair up and I didn't want to have to use those to hold my hair up with red dye everywhere.

NOTE: Do not use a metal bowl and do not use clips that have a lot of metal. The clips I bought had metal on the top part of the clip but was not going to touch my hair. I bought the protein filler because it seemed like a good idea. I wanted thorough color, even when it starts to fade, I don't want blotches later on and you can also use it for touch-ups. And I bought four hair dye boxes for two applications. Two for each application to mix because I didn't want super bright Ariel red hair...at least not for my first try. I needed to see how red would even look on me, so I wanted to go bold just not Courage the Cowardly Dog Muriel's-In-Trouble Bold/Brave.

If you already have hair dying supplies, such as the bowls and brushes, then your cost would just be the developers and dyes. The developers, will last you both applications! And the 20 will be plentiful for any touch-ups in the future and future dye job. I bought the big bottle because I didn't think the small one would completely do the job. I wish they had an inbetween bottle but there's only small, big, and gallon size (I think it's a gallon). You also don't need to mix colors like I did. Red, Red Hot and Magenta are beautiful by themselves. BUT you will still need two tubes of dye for TWO applications. If you have dark hair that has been dyed previously, you will definitely need two applications. If you have virgin black hair, you probably only need to do one application with 30 developer. You can also just use one developer for all of your hair rather than do roots and rest of your hair separately.

If you don't already have the supplies, here's how you can lessen your cost:

Disposable Non-resuable gloves $1

Sally's Clear X-Large Bowl $2.39 (It was $2 each in my transaction because it was 2 for $5. Other bowls were a bit more expensive by a few cents)

Clear Tinting Brush (Medium) $.89

Ion Color Sealer Conditioner (Packet) $2.39

L'Oreal HiLights (Color of Choice, Red, Hot Red, or Magenta) $6.49

Salon Care 30 Developer (16 oz.) $3.69

TOTAL $23.34 (not including tax)

Prices will range from store to store but should be all around the same price. This is for BUDGET-CONSCIOUS people. If you have some more money to spare, I would suggest to buy the color filler, it's recommended by a lot of hair dyers. I also would buy one more Ion Conditioner packet if you have long hair. Two packets could probably last 3 applications, using up most of one and still have enough in that packet and the second packet for another. And if you dye your hair a lot, I would suggest reusable gloves. But you can always buy the gloves later when you have more money. Same with the Ion conditioner, you can always buy more packets or a bottle later on when you get more money.

As a FOREWARNING: Red hair is a lot of money and suffering! So much care and moolah to spill out of our life!

~You will have to care for your hair in cold water. I'm not looking forward to it, but I really want to try red. So you need to shampoo and rinse in cold water! After you're done with shampooing and conditioning, you can always turn your shower back to warm or hot, not saying you need to completely shower in cold water.

~Red will stain EVERYTHING. Make sure to rinse out your tub, walls and shower curtains after a shower. And your red hair will always bleed in the shower and when it's wet. So shampooing often,wet hair and rain will be your enemy. I got a bottle of dry shampoo to use so I only have to shampoo my hair every other day or two days. And for certain times, you will want to blow dry your hair. I hate blow-drying my hair but right after I rinsed my dyes after each of the two applications, I blew dry it since the dye is still "fresh".

~I've heard red can rub off onto your light shirts on the back of your neck. DON'T WEAR LIGHT-COLORED SHIRTS WHEN YOUR HAIR IS WET. If you like to dry your hair naturally, either wear a shirt you don't care about or wear black.

~Towels would have to be black, purple or red, or something you don't care about.

~I heard you have to touch-up your red hair more often than other dyes. So it fades faster than other dyes. I dyed my hair red burgundy before and it bled for like a month or two. BUT the color stayed in for about 2-3 months. Then it starting showing the faded color by turning brown. When I dyed my hair black or light brown, it bled for a few days and stayed in my hair for almost ever. This can be done with dyes like Manic Panic and such. But I will be reviewing more videos and posts for touch-ups and post what I found and have done.

Now onto before and after pics:

Before the Red Dye Job. It looks kind of reddish, but it's a brown with a little tiny, teensy bit of red.

After the first application:

It came out pretty well. For this first application, I mixed Magenta with Red Hot. Despite the Red Hot name, Red Hot is actually a darker red than just Red. So I did this mix because I was too scared that it would turn out too bright. I would actually LOVED this color but I wanted brighter!! Remember to mix 1 part dye and 2 parts developer. So there was a lot more developer than what you see in videos on Youtube since I used two tubes rather than one. There was enough to cover all of my hair and to top it off after I done with my whole head. What I did different from Youtube videos (I will post a link at the end of this blog to which ones I viewed) was that each section of hair, I combed, brushed on dye (20 on the roots and 30 for the rest) then combed it again and brushed it with dye again. It was a long process but I got overall same color results. After I was done with all of my hair, I literally dunked some fingers in the rest of my dye and just slapped it on the hair below my roots then just piled my hair ontop of my head and covered my head with a plastic shower cap. I also blew dry my ends and halfway up for a couple of min. I waited 30 min or so then went to go rinse it out. I did not shampoo it like how it said, just rinsed in cold water and conditioned. I wanted the color to stay on for a day longer before shampooing. After showering, I HEAVILY oiled my hair with Garnier Fructisse Triple Hair Oil Spray (which I regretted buying because it made my hair too greasy but now it's useful) then blew dry it.

In flourescent light. It's a dark magenta with red higlights.

In natural lighting

The very next day, I did the same thing but I did not use 20 on my roots (damn my laziness, I wish I did). I also did a mix of Magenta and Red (not Red Hot). I did the Red instead of Red Hot because I wanted it Magenta with brighter red highlights (or color in the sun). I also didn't blow dry it while I was waiting for the dye to process...I wish I did. I waited 30 min or so, rinsed in cold water (no shampooing still), conditioned then out of the shower, I heavily oiled it and blew dry my hair. I think the red is lighter in my hair than in the pictures because the pictures show my hair heavily oiled (which makes my hair look wet).

Second attempt:

I will take more pictures and do another post once I shampoo it tomorrow and it's dry to see the real results. The oiling made it darker and I'm sure that not shampooing, left a lot of red in my hair. The color reminds me of a vintage-style red...almost like the Moira from American Horror Story?

After the dyes, my hair does feel a bit frizzier, but I'm not sure that's due to my blow drying or the dye job. The Ion conditioner is amazing though. It makes your hair feel super soft and amazing. It also helped detangle my hair after the rinse. Even with the comb jobs, once you start rinsing, it turns back into chaos so thank goodness for the conditioner. I recommend heavily hair oiling to help repair your hair from the dying stress. My hair doesn't feel so damaged, not like when I used box dyes so that's a plus! And from my transaction from Sally's you should be able to tell that this was my first time ever dying my hair this way. I have ALWAYS used box dyes but, man, you cannot (or at least I can't) get results like this with a box dye. Now I don't feel so afraid to dye my hair this way. It's not different from the box dye, just that you have to measure stuff out yourself (which I actually just eye-balled).

Youtube videos I watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifo9bEwVSLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xctzIvdxcRM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtS3WMJJvYs

So! I guess that's it? I will make a new post for my results after I shampoo and dry my hair! I hope it's brighter but if not, I can always re-dye it to a brighter color later, once my roots start getting too long (like in my before pics) or once it starts fading.

2014 Kawaii Sailor Moon Calendars!!

2014-02-20T19:44:00.001-08:00

I just finished my 2014 calendars!! And may I say, they are super kawaii! It's a Sailor Moon theme with images I found on Deviant-art! None of the images are created by me. I repeat, the images are not mine. I just compiled the Calendars and designed them with the artist's images. There are links to download all of the claendars as one PDF file and a link to my Google Drive to download each calendar separately as a JPG. Links to each artist are also provided!

Sneak preview:

Please tell me if there are any issues with downloading them or with accessing my Google Drive. This is the first time I have used Google Drive and I hope I changed the permissions correctly. To access the calendars, just go to the "2014 Calendars" link up above in the navigation bar.

My Super-Chapped Lips?!

2013-08-12T20:25:00.000-07:00

Ever since I've moved to Utah, I've had super chapped lips. Maybe the air is drier here than in Vegas, sometimes Vegas can get humid and maybe it has the right humidity for me, don't know but ever since I moved here, I've had super chapped lips problems and way-too-frizzy hair problems! I've learned with my super chapped lips that I cannot use just any chapstick.
I tried the classic Chapstick, in mint, cherry and regular...nope, doesn't work. It'll soften it right away and a few minutes later, it will get chapped again...and more than before.
I tried Blistex, in regular and raspberry lemonade. They didn't make my lips soft at all, they just coated my chapped lips and made it...made my lip skin...harder? I guess I can describe it as that...but it gets harder, to where I pretty much have to peel it off (gross, I know, sorry).
I tried a couple of others that I don't remember what they're called.

What does work for me:
Burt's Bees Tinted Lip Balm
https://www.burtsbees.com/other/best-sellers/tinted-lip-balm.html?cm_vc=PRODZ1

Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer
https://www.burtsbees.com/other/gifts-her/lip-shimmer.html?cm_vc=PDPZ2

Maybelline Baby Lips
http://www.maybelline.com/Products/Lip-Makeup/Lip-Balm/Baby-Lips.aspx#shadedetails

Carmex
http://mycarmex.com/lip-care/original-tube

Softlips
http://www.softlips.com/product/classic/

The Burt's Bees chapstick is the best product for me. It outlasts the others that I've listed and I looove the color! Now, I..will be honest. I only bought Burt's Bees because they were cheap and it had color. Because I don't like wearing a lot of makeup (I only wear eyeliner) and I hate lipstick, I thought tinted chapstick would be the only way to go for me to add some color to my dull look. My local Ross had Burt's Bees chapstick bundle packages for only $7!! It had beautiful colors in the package. It had the Burt's Bees Tinted Lip Balm in Red Dahlia and Burt's Bees Lip Shimmer in Fig. Now, this is a huge leap for me. I'm spending money on tinted chapstick that I don't know if it will soften my lips or look good on my lips or with my skin tone. I was hoping that since it was a chapstick, that it wasn't going to be really pigmented and thick. To my surprise, it's perfect! The Tinted Lip Balm looks a bit diluted with more chapstick but actually came out a lot more red than I thought, but it was diluted enough to give my lips a nice color, with some gloss, without over doing it. The Lip Shimmer looked so dark, pigmented and thick in the tube but once you apply it, it's actually less pigmented than the Tinted Lip Balm! It still has great color and gloss and is not overly pigmented like lipstick. (One day, I will post pics of the results...or maybe not if I don't remember. If not, I'm sorry). And just to add...even though I've never tried these before, they were such a great deal and I've heard so many great things about this brand, that I bought three of these packages! And a job and steal well done! :)
They lasted me quite awhile, it's been..quite a few months, almost close to a year ago...I know that sounds weird...and that I shouldn't keep these that long? But it's because I don't use one tube at a time. I keep one next to my bed, one in the living room, one in my car, one in both of my backpacks (one is for work and the other is for school) and one at work.

The second brand that I love is Maybelline Baby Lips in Cherry Me. I've never used this brand before so the Cherry Me was the first Baby Lips I've used, along with the color. Again, I wanted color that's subtle and not overpowering like lipstick. This is a pretty amazing chapstick, has great color (more bright and pigmented than the Burt's Bees...so it's a bit more adventurous) but it's diluted enough to look gorgeous. It's glossy and makes my lips very soft. It will soften my chappest lips, although, sometimes my lips are so chapped that my skin is pretty much dead and needs to get peeled (again, sorry for being so gross lol but it's reality for me).
Here's a pic of me with Maybelline Baby Lips Cherry Me, although it's a bit more reddish.

The other choices are listed and those work well but not as great as the first three. I really love how these tinted lip balms have worked for me because I have weird lips. Dark ontop and light on bottom (pretty common) but I have this weird dark lipline look to my lips too, as you can see from the photo.

New "Ink It!" Covergirl Eyeliner Review

2013-06-26T09:05:00.001-07:00

Covergirl's come out with a new product:

Ink It! By Perfect Point Plus

Get inked — without the commitment! Ink It! colors glide on smoothly and easily without skipping, dragging, or pulling. Our bright, bold shades last all day long.

Review: I was buying new eyeliner and decided that my new favorite was Covergirl's Eyelights in Pearl Black (I think that's what the color was called). It's my favorite because it was the longest lasting eyeliner I've ever used that doesn't smudge as much as others I've used and doesn't migrate into my crease as soon as others. I went into the Covergirl section and saw this display. It was also one of the cheapest eyeliners they had ($5.94). It states that it is "Crease proof", "Smudge proof", "Long lasting", and "Waterproof". It also states that it allows expert precision and the darkest, boldest colors. This sounds perfect right? Well, I'll just state now that this was the biggest disappointment that I've experienced when it comes to eyeliners!

It deserves an only one rose rating because of how big the disappointment was!!

When I first tried it, I loved it. As I applied the eyeliner, it really did have a really dark, bold black color. It was very solid and smooth and glided like a breeze. It did give me great precision and because it's so bold, it looks like I've used a liquid liner without the hassle of a liquid liner. So I was really impressed and had high hopes that the other statements were true. I have oily eyelids. A horrible problem of mines, because I can't really wear eyeshadow, even with primer, it still will gather at the crease (just not as bad with the primer). So I was hoping, since this eyeliner was the only eyeliner with the "Crease proof" claim, that it really was "Crease proof".

The Eyelights eyeliner will not smudge until toawrds the end of my work day, so it will be smudge proof from 6am to about...2 or 3 pm. It also depends on how much laughing I do or smiling. It also goes into my crease but only at the end of the day and it isn't that much. I can also sleep with this eyeliner, with other eyeliners, when I sleep, it will smudge and look all crazy. This is why I love Covergirl's Eyelights eyeliner.

This Ink It! eyeliner was a huge dissapointment. It smudged after 3 hours, giving me the horrible racoon under eyes. It went into my crease. It didn't smudge on my lid where others would go into my crease and spread around on my lid, this one just creates a really defined dark line in my crease.

I haven't tested the waterproof part as I do not go swimming but since it smudges so much and even though sometimes I cry and laugh, I can't tell whether it smudged from not being waterproof or if it was already smudged.

Don't even try this eyeliner. Yes, it's dark and provides great precision, but you will not want to deal with the constant smudging underneath your eye and constant crease migrating. I will now just go back to buying the Eyelights eyeliner.

My new office!

2013-06-16T10:21:00.003-07:00

I loved moving out of my old apt to a 2 bedroom townhouse. It's perfect (except for the fact that the people who lived there before us....were not clean people, ew). There were a lot of things wrong with the townhouse in terms of...when the snow melted, we had bags of trash in our backyard and lots of various trash laying around, they broke a few things, etc. BUT, it's big, has a fireplace, is two-stories, has a bakcyard, allows pets and we have super-quiet neighbors :D
The one thing I was excited about was the room that was going to be converted into my office. With me in school and working at home half the time, I needed my own room where I can sprawl out my work. I also had tons of books and pretty much needed my own library. My solution, rather than just keep buying more and more bookshelfs and taking up my whole room, was to build one in my closet! I didn't need the closet in my office, obviously, since it's an office, so I googled ways to build a bookshelf in my closet. It took a few searches before stumbling on an awesome video! The thing with me is, I wanted my bookshelf a certain way. I did not want to build it with shelf brackets, as it will cause breaks in my books and not allow maximum book storage...plus, it wouldn't look as great. So this video was a lifesaver! I knew how to do it but not how to explain it to my boyfriend...he just wouldn't get it...he's more of a visual person at times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTIQxX6MrHs

I did exactly as this guy said and it turned out amazing!

Before the unveiling. Yeah, those are Bleach dolls lol

Ta-da! I freaking love it, and it fits all of my books and more! (Yes, those are all mangas...but not ALL of my mangas)

I found a solution to my manga addiction, for now, it will do until I fill this all up too! Then I will just buy a bookshelf and hopefully my addiction will die down lol

I also applied shelf liners to the wood to give it a more elegant, soft look rather than the plain wood look.

And...here's more pics of my office.

My beautiful wall of calmness lol

This is my desk (IKEA Expedit desk)

I found more appealing ways to put all of my supplies in (all cheap too)

All in all, my office was renovated cheaply. I found lots of stuff on clearance or on sale. That whole wall of pictures, mirrors and clock was all on sale (shadowboxes were gifts). The pretty pearly decorative white thing was from the thrift store for $1. The other pretty, white jar things (cream, sugar, and cookie set) were on clearance for $3, the blue pencil holders (actually are candle holders) were each 20% off, the tall glass was on sale for $4, and the little cute globe was 20% but was still $8 (the most expensive thing on that desk lol). The only thing I've bought full-priced was the IKEA expedit desk. For the Buddha canvas, flower glass art, leaf glass art, and the forest canvas, it was all discounted but was only $90 all together. Sounds like a lot but they're bigger than they look and that includes shipping. The mirrors were on clearance for $5. Below the collage is a bookshelf that holds my printers and wireless equipment, but also a Buddha statue, two Himalayan salt candle holders ($7 each) and two fish bowls ($1 for the geometric one and $2 for the round one) with bamboo and bettas in it. It's amazing what yo can buy at thrift stores or when things go on clearance or sale.

My boyfriend always complained about me buying stuff in our old apartment since I bought all of this stuff over time before I moved and it took up some space, but it all paid off :D

Walmart.com Customer Service is Sh!t

2013-06-10T09:30:00.001-07:00

Oh, how I love Walmart. No, not really...not too much anymore. Not after how shitty their payment processing is. It's like playing a game with their payment processing. Keep trying different payments and the same payments over and over until it goes through. So far only Bill me Later works...and that's only half the time. I like to buy my Virgin Mobile top-up cards through Walmart since it's cheaper and has none of those other annoying phone fees nor taxes. But trying to buy these cards are getting ridiculous. I've tried Paypal to directly fund from my bank account and to try BillmeLater. Didn't work. Tried it again for BillmeLater through Paypal. Didn't work. Tried my debit card directly. Nope. Tried BillmeLater. Fuck that. Tried Paypal to use my debit card. Screwed.
Wow, how I love you Walmart. It's like playing a game with my money. Thanks for all of the pending transactions for the next few days you piece of shit payment processing errors. WTF is wrong with your system.
Oh, and here's the best part. I decided to email walmart.com's customer service. This is our conversation. It's pretty short due to the fact that they never replied back:

My last reply back to them:

___________________________________________________________________________________

That was the most unhelpful answer I have ever received from a company. You should probably read the whole inquiry rather than pick out key words and give out stupid answers that are barely relevant.

----------------------------------------------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------------------------------------------

Walmart Resolutions (reso@cs.walmart.com)

6/03/13

Hi Ajanta, Thank you for contacting Walmart.com regarding the cancellation of your order. Most items that are available on Walmart.com can be purchased using Bill Me Later. However, there are a few ex

From:	Walmart Resolutions (reso@cs.walmart.com)
Sent:	Mon 6/03/13 10:42 PM



Hi Ajanta, Thank you for contacting Walmart.com regarding the cancellation of your order. Most items that are available on Walmart.com can be purchased using Bill Me Later. However, there are a few exceptions. The following items cannot be purchased with BML: Digital Music Downloads Photos Tires Pharmacy Online Gift Cards Live Plants Ajanta, if we have not fully answered your question or you have additional questions, please reply to this email. Sincerely, Walmart.com Customer Care
Original Message Follows
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
06/03/2013 12:45 PM from you:
Hi, can you tell me why whenever I try to purchase this card, it gets cancelled. I tried Paypal to directly disperse funds from my bank account, tried Bill Me Later directly and before tried Bill Me Later through Paypal. I don't know why you can't "verify" my accounts when you've done it before. This is really frustrating and downright annoying. It's almost like playing a game, trying to see which payment will go through. Seems like Paypal never works with your website and the other form of payments are cards that you play in a game of chance. If the walmart.com payment process was materialized as a person, I would have punched it and I'm a very patient person.

Oh, how I wish the walmart.com payment processing was a person, I'd like to fuck him up. I'm usually not that mean or quick to anger like this, but this is completely frustrating. I have decided to just buy the damn minutes on the Virgin Mobile website and pay the extra like 7 bucks.

Feria Power Reds Intense Deep Auburn R48

2013-06-10T09:19:00.001-07:00

I DO NOT recommend this hair dye. Flat out, straight and forward, not a good dye at all and most reviewers out there agree. Which is why it got a 1 rose rating.
I know that your hair color will never turn out like the box, since my hair is naturally black, it's always darker, and I'm ok with that, I like my colors dark...but this hair dye....ugh.
For the past 2 years or so, I've been obsessed with dying my hair, and that obsession involved reds. I wanted to dye my hair something noticeable but nothing too outrageous. Weird coming from someone who used to bleach half her hair and dye it bright colors like hot pink and cotton candy blue or stick in different colored extensions. Anyways, since I've been obsessed with trying out different colored of reds in my hair, I've tried a lot of different brands and colors. Every single dye have dyed my hair to somewhat close to the box or a bit darker.
This dye, was the worst I've ever tried. It does not even look close. It's a dark, blood, cherry black color. You can't even notice the red until the sun hits it.

Background (before the dye):
My hair is naturally black, I've been dying it red for quite some time. The last dye I tried had amazing results but was not lasting at all, everyday I would see the dye come out and with other dyes I've tried, it would seep out for a week and afterwards, would be fine. This was the Garnier for darker hair with oils (not the one in my review section). I will not try that again either. So, before I dyed my hair, my hair has been faded from different tones of red (lighter by my roots, darker hair overall and lighter at my tips, the tones are due to my bleaching a long time ago and then having them grow out and trimming my hair). After the Garnier faded, my hair was a light brown to black and so I thought that it was time for a change. I actually really liked my hair before this dye job, it was red in the sun but brown and black otherwise so why I dyed my hair, I don't know. Actually, I do. Because I'm dumb. Because of the different colors in my hair or tones, everytime I dye it, regardless of which dye, it comes out with the different tones of the color...if that made any sense. It will all dye red but some parts will dye darker than others. This Feria dye, dyed my hair all ONE color, so that's weird.

During the dye:
The dye process was normal except for the many components to this dye. Most home box dyes has a big developer bottle with developer creme in it, the dye in a tinted bottle, directions, gloves, and a conditioner for afterwards (and maybe a small tube of oil). This one includes the developer bottle with cream in it, a dye in a tinted bottle, a tube of red dye, oils, shampoo tube, conditioner tube, gloves and instructions. In the box, it tells you to mix evrything in to achieve the color in the box, EVERYTHING. This made me think that the other reviewers who were unhappy, did not put EVERYTHING in and mix it. So this box comes with two dyes, a brown one and a red one. The brown one looks normal, brown, liquidy, looks like brown hair dye. Sign #1, why would a red hair dye contain this much brown hair dye, that's odd. Sign #2, why are they seperated, I don't know but the dyes that worked for me was already mixed and even though it isn't hard to put all of these ingredients in, I thought it was so the red could be super strong. I put in the oils last and shook it like no tomorrow. Started applying dye in my hair, and let me tell you, after 5 min, this dye burned my nose hairs and my eyes. I was literally crying the whole time and the fan was on. I've never gotten so teary-eyed before this dye, that's how strong it is. It was like any other home box dye, messy but I did it.

After the dye: I checked my hair numerous times and decided to keep going for another hour. My hair looked like it did not change to any form of red at all. After I followed the directions to take out the dye (can't remember if I had to shampoo or not), and then conditioned and rinsed, I waited for my hair to dry naturally to see the results. This turned my hair to almost black. Like an intense deep red black...all in one color. Since my hair has many different tones, I can't see why it did this. But it literally looked like it was black with a slight red undertone rather than a bright red like the box or any type of noticeable red. My hair did feel soft after the dye, probably due to the conditioner. The conditioner smelled pretty good BUT a warning, it has glitter in it. When it says "Shimmer Conditioner", it means it. It's shimmer conditioner due to the glitter in it, not because it's a conditioner that makes your hair super shiny (it gives it some shine but nothing completely amazing). So even when you rinse out this conditioner for many, many minutes at a time, the glitter will stick to your hair. And when it's dry, expect the glitter to rub on everything and fall everywhere. It's like I had shiny dandruff. I would only recommend this conditioner if you were going to go out clubbing or if you wanted your hair to feel extra special, but I would not like this conditioner on before going to a gym.

Conclusion: Never will buy this dye again. I don't know how they dispensed this dye without testing out their formula first, or if they did, why they thought this passed the coloring test but I would not recommend this dye.

*UPDATE* It's been a couple of months since I dyed my hair with this. It's been fading rather quickly. Every single day, I've had the dye come out for a month straight. Now, it looks like a nice medium red, but I couldn't wear any color but black for shirts, for a long time. I don't want to go through that again, for these results. I would like my hair to dye how I want it the first time rather than wait a couple of months for somewhat good results.

Where did it all start?

2013-06-10T08:59:00.003-07:00

Now that I think about it, I don't know where my hauntings started. I don't know if I had an overactive imagination when I was younger or if I was really scared for a reason. I know that I have an overactive imagination but the hard part is telling what part was real and which ones wasn't when I was younger as I can't remember everything clearly. It almost seems like my mind has always been opened to ghosts...or at least to the thoughts of ghosts. I remember I was always scared at night when I was younger, thinking that something was always there waiting for me outside of my door. I also remember that after I lived in Compton and moved to Riverside, I wasn't as scared of the dark but then I started to be afraid of the backyard, never wanting to look out the windows towards it. It was the reason why I hardly fed my turtle after dark, which is a horrid thought now that I thought about it because I often forgot to feed him before dark. Everytime my mother forced me to go feed him, I'd run like the wind to the garage, gave him his lettuce and hauled ass back. Yeah, I got my cardio in as a child.
I can only vividly remember my hauntings after I moved from Riverside to Nebraska. Oh boy, what a change. From big, ghetto cities (I've always lived in the hood) to a tiny, mostly white town...and to the countryside nonetheless. We moved there due to family already residing there and an available free house in the country house and job. It all seemed like we were hooked up until we found out that it was really scary living in the countryside where the nearest house was a mile away, completely dark at night, and was completely surrounded by cornfields (thank goodness I never watched Children of the Corn...actually still haven't). Me and my sisters were scared because it was so dark and quiet, something we're not used to.
I'm not sure if the haunting in Nebraska started because of this event or if it was just because it took time for the spirit to start acting up. But, all in all, it seemed more because of this event: my stepdad going under the house. Even though we lived in Nebraska, we didn't really have an underground shelter, we had a basement, but it wasn't a full sized one. To get under there, you have to crawl through a small hole, none of my family really wanted to, especially my sister and I, since we're scared of spiders, the only one who really didn't care was my stepdad. I'm also not sure why he decided to go down there but he did one day and brought up all of this old stuff. Lots of old silverware and china, there were more down there besides the silverware and dishes but he didn't bring it up and I didn't dare go down there to see for myself. Now I wish I did since I'm a bigger history buff but back then, I was scared shitless to go down there.
After a couple of months after he ventured down below, my cousins and uncle moved in with us due to a divorce. They were the family that we moved to Nebraska for. I didn't mind though, even if I had to give up my room and share one with my little sister and female cousin (my room was for my two older male cousins and uncle). It was actually really fun living with them, all three of my cousins are cool. My male cousins were funny as hell and my female cousin became my best friend.
Even though my uncle was going through a divorce, his wife still visited us. She would come over to bring over food or hang out. We all loved the food part of course, she was an ok person but she always brought her crybaby son...not a fun little boy. He cried more than my two little sisters combined...he cried because he spilled milk out of his mouth, I don't know about you, but I would laugh at myself, not cry. Anyways, sometimes she would bring food over a bit later into the night.
One night, we heard a knock on the door. My cousin and I were watching TV in the living room, it was pretty late into the night. We heard a knock on the door. Both of us looked at each other. We didn't know what to think at first and then thought...maybe it was my uncle's wife.
"It's really late into the night, why would she be here this late?" We both thought in silence as we looked at each other in fear. Well, if it was her, it would be best if we let her in, so I went to go see if it was. I peeked through the window of the door. I saw no one. Seeing no one scared me, I even looked out towards the front of the house from the window to see if I could see her car. There wasn't any cars out there.
I was a bit creeped out as I turned around.
"Um...no one's there", I said not sure what to make of the situation.
"Are you sure? Did you check to see if a car's there?", my cousin asking to find any type of rationalization.
"Yeah, I checked...no one...I didn't see a car there or any cars driving away." (Forgot to mention that we lived off the main road and can see anyone driving away or to our house for long distances.)
I just sat down back on the couch and continued to watch tv. We both didn't say more about it, I think we were both trying to just forget about the whole thing.
About half an hour to an hour went by since the mysterious knocking.
KNOCK KNOCK.
Oh my god...
We both jumped and looked at each other. It probably about midnight at this point of time. We were both thinking, after realizing the time, that it probably isn't my uncle's wife...but we were both hopeful that it was this time. My cousin went up to check this time, she walked to the door slowly, peeked her head through the window. She looked back at me...the looked on her face told me that no one was there.
"Is it her?" I asked.
"No....no one's there...", she told me.
"Car?"
"No cars..."
"Maybe it's the dogs?" I asked, hopeful that the dogs are awake and were messing around and ended up accidetnally hitting the door.
"They're all asleep," she said as she walked back to the couch.
She sat back down next to me, for the next few minutes, we watched more tv until he heard another KNOCK. This time, we turned off the tv and booked it to our room.

After awhile, we both got used to the knocking late at night as we watched tv. We stopped questioning it and just lived with it, as we're never going to investigate it, nor tell our parents. It happened a few times, mostly during the weekend. What I realized, was that it always happened before a storm. As I mention this, you might think, "Oh, if it's before a storm, it must be the wind picking something up and hitting the door". Well, if the wind can open the door to our porch and curve it to hit our front door twice, then yeah, it could be the wind. I noticed the "storm knocking" after it happened quite a few times, but each storm that we heard knocking, we always had a tornado warning. I'm thinking that it's a good ghost, one that was trying to warn us of a potentially lethal tornado storm. This helped me ease my fear of the knocking. It will still make us jump whe nwe heard it, but we weren't afraid after I realized this. It did scare my cousin when she went to get a drink of water. I asked her if she wanted me to go with her. She declined my offer and decided to go by herself. A minute later, she ran back in the room with a terrified look.
"What happened?" I asked, concerned about what happened.
"I was at the water dispenser and I heard the knocking on the other door." (We had two doors to enter te house, one through the kitchen and one through the living room with a windowed/walled porch with another door to enter the porch to get to the two doors.)
"Oh...uh...did you check to see if anyone was there?" Knowing damn well that no one was, it was around midnight again and if I were her, I'd be too afraid to check by myself.
"No."
"Oh ok, well, let's just pretend that never happened...but next time, I'll go with you."
"Alright, sounds good." I think it was hard for both of us to sleep that night...and this time...there was no storm approaching.

My family only stayed there for awhile, about half a year before moving back to the big city. This time, Vegas. I asked my mom why we were and she said because my parents were tired of the tornadoes. I think the last straw was when we actually saw one outside of town, a bit too close for comfort. If you can see it, you're too close. Even if it was miles and miles away. So we pretty much high-tailed it out there.

I later got in contact with my uncle's family when one of my male cousins decided to move in with us. My stepdad was getting old so he moved in to start a new life and to help out my family. He was really awesome, I loved him because he was the first person that I could feel that I could open up to and depend on. It actually made me cry when I realized this. Being the oldest out of my blood-related siblings, I didn't have anyone to go to or depend on, just little siblings who depended on me. Anyways, he moved in and after awhile, I asked them about when they moved out of the house, why they did, etc. He told me and that's when I had the idea to ask him if he ever experienced anything odd in that house, without telling him of my stories. (Everything that happened to me and my cousin, a.k.a. the knockings, was when we were both up alone, since my male cousins were in high school, they were always out or asleep). He told me a couple of stories that are quite interesting.
One day, he was alone with his girlfriend in the house. His brother went to some party and was gonna stay over there and his dad went somewhere and wasn't going to be back any time soon. My cousin and his girlfriend decided to take pictures. They took it of them with each other and then of each other seperately. Of course, being teens, they decided to take some "naughty" pics...of the girl with her top off. After a few of those pics, they decided to just take pics to send to their friends, to make it sendable to their friends, they took pictures of only their faces. My cousin took a picture of her face, with her face on the side of the frame, rather than have her face in the middle of the frame. After the shot was taken, he looked back at the photo. There was something odd in the picture beside her face in the thumbnail. He clicked on the picture to select it to view it in fullscreen on the camera. There was a face. It was a man's face right next to hers. He showed it to her. They both got creeped out and decided to go somewhere else, leaving that house behind for the day.
We all get up in the middle of the night sometime to go to the bathroom. Well, this one night, my cousin woke up to go to the bathroom. From his room, he turned out to the hallway and walked towards the bathroom. Atthe end of the hallway, is the kitchen...with the kitchen door directly in sight. He looked at the door and realized that he saw a figure in the door window. He thought that he couldn't see things clearly because he was still half asleep. He continued on to the bathroom and after he was done, came out and looked towards the door again. The figure was still there, in the window. Now that he's fully awake. He can see the figure's face. It was a man behind that door. A man that staring back at him. M cousin was frightened and power walked it back to his room (even during this event, his pride forced him to power walk rather than run).
After that incident, some time later, his brother disappeared in the middle of the night. My cousin woke up and saw that his brother wasn't there, asked his dad if he knew where he went and then after realizing that both of them didn't know where he was, they went to go look for him. They only had two vehicles, one was my cousins and the other was my uncles. My cousin's brother would never drive both of their cars unless he got permission from them so they knew that he didn't go anywhere. This was confirmed when they went outside to check their vehicles. He wasn't in the living room watching tv, nor was he in the bathroom. So where was he? When they went outside to check their vehicles, they noticed a small, dim light inside the garage. The garage was closed and they thought it was weird that the light was on. The garage was used for storage rather than for car parking, so this was strange. They opened the garage to check it out. There he was...my cousin's brother. He was sitting in a recliner, just rocking back and forth, with his eyes closed...like he was asleep but was awake enough to rock himself. They called out to him, he didn't react, so my uncle went and shook him. He's tough man, my uncle, I'm surprised he didn't yell at him and smack him. He then woke up and my uncle and cousin asked him what he was doing there. He said he didn't know. He was surprised that he was in there. They all just went back inside and went to sleep. Til this day, we all don't know if he was sleep walking or...what?
As I said before, my uncle is a tough man. You will almost never see him cry. He has a stern, mean look to him. He pretty much looks like he's from the Japanese Yakuza even though he's from Laos. He has his hair slicked back all the time and wears a long, black trench coat. He doesn't look like one of those weird guys that wear trench coats, he actually looks like that he's from the mob. His voice sounds very frightening too, although he is such a kind man to females...females of the family, I'm not sure how he treats females outside of the family. He'll be kind to the males but be really tough to them. When my male cousins were young, they were trained on how to fight and defend themselves, to always be alert. One day my cousins came home from school and as they opened the door, my uncle punched my little cousin in the face (the one who's telling me these stories). After the punch, he said with a stern face, "Always be alert". My god, this was a tough version of the karate kid. So yeah, he's a very tough man. But after all the incidents, he decided, it was time to pray. The last time my uncle ever prayed was when my female cousin was born. He prayed for her be born healthy because his wife at that time, was drinking and maybe doing drugs. She came out completely fine, but after all those years, he's never prayed. I don't know if it was Buddhist prayers or what (they're generally Buddhist but once foreigners come to America, they end up converting to a different religion due to different reasons), but he got my two cousins together and had all three of them pray for quite some time. They were praying to cleanse the house of any spirits or negative/unknown energies. After this, nothing weird ever happened in that house.

After I heard these stories, it just helped me confirm that my female cousin and I weren't imagining things. We weren't the only ones that experienced weird happenings. I never felt any bad energies, I always thought it was a good ghost, since he always liked to warn us of incoming storms. Maybe there was more than one, or maybe my family moving out affected the ghost in some way to where he was getting stronger. Either way, it was really weird and that changed my world.

Maybe I'm Crazy?

2013-05-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

My family and I have moved a lot, we've lived in California half of our lives, then to Nebraska, Vegas and Utah. And for some reason, everywhere I move, I seem to always have weird things happen. It might be ghosts or I might just be crazy. Everytime we've moved, my parents get's the biggest room or master bedroom and since I am the oldest, I'd get to choose my room, which is usually the second biggest room.
It makes sense that a bigger room would be colder right? Compared to smaller bedrooms. Well, when I pick my bedrooms, they're usually normal room temperature but once I start to get used to the place and settle in, it's always the coldest room in the house...my paren'ts bigger room was even warmer than mines. I always tried to laugh it off by saying that it's because of my room layout, because it was laid out to where it seemed "spacious" rather than having objects closer together.
Well, I can't laugh it off when weird things start happening. It's only really happened to me, well, I'm the only one that really acknowledged it. My parents are superstitous but their views on ghosts in houses are, "I don't care if there's a ghost in the house. A house is a house. I don't care if it has ghosts or not, I'll live with them. You better be glad we have a place to live." ...yeah, they're pretty hardcore Asians. Truth be told though, I am glad I have a home, that we aren't homeless but dammit...why did the ghosts have to be there? Somewhere inside of me, I feel like as if something is following me but the occurances that happened at each house were completely different. I don't think my sisters have experienced anything or they may have, brushed it off or ignored it. Either way, I didn't want to ask them and get them scared.
I will have to write seperate posts for each of the houses I have experienced weird things with and link them back here.

I'm living on my own now and even though I'm not scared to walk around at night (with the lights on lol), I'm starting to hear noises again. It also doesn't help that I can hear my neighbors walk up and down the stairs or hear them walking in their bathroom (our floors are WAY creeky, creekier than haunted houses I've seen in movies)...or at least I hope it's my neighbors haha I can tell when someone is walking in my townhouse or in my neighbor's, it's my super hearing that helps so I haven't had "anyone" walk around in my hall or up and down my stairs....yet...and hopefully never will. I will admit though, when I hear my neighbors, sometimes it scares the crap out of me. But I have dogs now, so all is good, I have company when my boyfriend goes to work at night.

It's been about about 4 months since I've moved into my townhouse, it's a real nice townhouse if you take out how the previous tenants were gross. (Because of the snow, there was a lot of trash hidden in our backyard, lots of cigarette butts EVERYWHERE, it was literally covering every inch of land. There was also trash everywhere and actual trash bags full of trash...were these neighbors lazy or what? And in addition to that, there were a few problems, broken things and such BUT the kicker is that I had 3 people come over to ask for a previous tenant. Not friends. Oh boy, no, not friends. I think one guy was a "server", the other one...I'm not sure since I didn't see him and the last one was an officer. What did these people do? I'm not sure but I keep getting their old mail and some of the letters are from the District Attorney.

Anyways, I'm starting to hear noises, like someone is at the front door...as if they're standing there thinking or doing something and accidentally hit the door or the rail and then never end up knocking or ringing the doorbell. It's the only place that these mysterious noises are coming from. At first, I thought it was my super hearing, just hearing my neighbors but then I can tell which ones are right infront of my door or farther than that. Either way, it's not ok, if it's a real person, then I don't get why they're there and if not, then dammit, why do I keep moving somewhere that has problems.

I'm starting to think that I'm either crazy or a magnet to haunted places.

How to Change Icon Text Colors in Windows 7

2013-04-22T11:41:00.000-07:00

Today, I noticed that my icon text color sucks with my new desktop background (which is super awesome because it's a bg of most of the super women heroines), so I went into the "Personalize" window and of course, it's not so easy to find where to change the icon text color. After a couple of Google searches, I finally figured out how to do it. People have suggested downloading softwares or doing other long or complicated processes, but I'm a sinple person and like to do EVERYTHING the easy way if possible and I always try avoiding downloading softwares for something so small.
The horrible, cold, hard, annoying truth about why the hell it's so hard to solve this super small issue:
Windows 7 is designed to change the icon text color to best fit the image or color background AUTOMATICALLY, it's designed to be smart enough to perform this process for us but with multi-colored images, it's a bit on the confused, dumb side. And because of this futuristic, hidden process, it's a bit more work to change the icon text color.
After reading some posts on this issue and some solutions, I just went to go do my own troubleshooting with bits and pieces from other people's fixes.

Here's my SUPER DUPER EASY WAY of how to change your icon text color:

1. Right-click on your desktop background and choose the "Personalize" option.

2. Go to "Desktop Background".

3. In that window, choose "Change Background Color" in the lower-left hand corner.

4. Depending on what color you want your text (either white or black), choose the opposite. So if you want white text, choose black. If you want black, choose white. The only options for the icon text color is white or black, sorry no cool colors for us, the fancier we want our interface to look, the less options we have of changing (ironic but I guess this is how the future will be). After choosing a color, you will see a preview of the font color of the icon name change.

5. Click "Save Changes". Choosing a background color will NOT change your desktop IMAGE, only the color behind the image.

It really wasn't so painful to do this but was much more painful to do the research, not as bad as other things I had to figure out but enough that when compared to the actual process, it's just kind of ridiculous, especially when I got a lot of "download this software" answers (my arch nemesis of answers).

**Note: This only works if your drop shadow is removed from the icon text titles. To remove the shadows from text, go to Control Panel and type in "performance" in the search box. Then click "Use tools to improve performance". In that window, select "Adjust visual effects" on the left-hand side. Once that window pops up, you should see a box where you can scroll down, scroll all the way down and deselect "Use drop shadows for icon labels on the Desktop", then click OK.**

I'm not going to lie...

2013-03-16T23:03:00.003-07:00

I completely forgot that I had a blog! I've just been to crazy busy with work, school, moving...being super lazy and worn out ahahaha Well even though this move has been keeping me super busy and is very money-consuming, I'm really happy and ecstatic that I did! I moved to a bigger place, away from my one bedroom apartment in a huge complex full of kids, cigarette smokers, a neighbor next to me who always asks to borrow money and my crackhead neighbors downstairs! I moved to a two bedroom, beautiful townhouse and it is super quiet! No dumbasses bumping their music in cars in the middle of the night or morning! I did have a parking war though, ugh, I wanted to slash some tires, if they want to park in my spot, then they can park there til they can buy new tires dammit! It's been taken of though but took like 2 weeks to settle. I'm ecstatic to move because I now have an office/study! I have room for ALL of my mangas...I have 481 mangas and boy....I was only able to stick half of them up in my one bookshelf that I could only have because of my small one bedroom. I didn't buy another bookshelf to put all of my books though...I transformed my closet in the office, into a HUGE one! ...well my boyfriend did....but it's beautiful and it still has two and half shelves (if I include the floor) to put more books on! After I fill that up though...I'll need to find another solution....eek....I should control my addiction for manga buying lol. After I calculated how many books I will have altogether if I complete all of the series, it'll total up to around 800 (I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep up with what books I have, how many, how many in the series I have and will have if I complete it and the percentages of completion, I'm kind of an Excel geek, but only to this extent, I can't do coding crap). I will have to do another post of my bookshelf and post links on how to do it, it costs me about...$100 though, but that's because I had to buy some hardware like a stud finder, small leveler, big leveler. It would've been around $70 if I didn't have to buy those additional items...but they are essential! The $70 is mostly what the wood costs and includes the shelf liner I bought for it. Anyways, tada for now...we'll see how long it will be before I post another...post xP

Excel 2010 - Send Only One Sheet (Highlighted Cells)

2012-07-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

My coworker wanted to find out how to only send one sheet to people because she has this massive master excel workbook but doesn't want to send the whole thing, only a sheet with information that only they should see.
I googled everywhere and there really isn't a possibility to export and send a sheet unless you do it manually.
I did however find a way to send highlighted cells, columns or rows into an email automatically. The only thing that sets back this process, is that you do have to have Outlook, have it set up, be conencted to it and have it opened.

These are the steps you take:
1. Right-click on the quick acess toolbar or ribbon (the quick access toolbar is the bar with the small buttons that are small waaay on the top-left corner of your Excel. The picture below depicts me right-clicking in it).

2. Choose "Customize Quick Access Toolbar".
3. It'll give you two lists. The left list ("Choose commands from:") are buttons/commands that you can add to your current quick access toolbar and the right ("Customize quick access toolbar") is a list of commands that are pre-existing in your quick access toolbar.

4. From the left drop-down list, choose "Commands not in the Ribbon".
5. Scroll down to "Send to Mail Recipient".

5. Choose "Add>>", to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. You should now see it on the other side of the list.
6. Choose "OK".

7. You should now see a button with an envelope on the top-left corner.

8. Click on your new button. A window will pop up that will ask you what do you want to send.

9. Choose "Send the current sheet as the message body". 10. A whole section should appear right underneath your Ribbon.

11. You can now add your recipients, subject title and also add any other necessary text if you wanted in the "Introduction" field.
12. Choose which cells, rows, or column you would like to send out.

13. After you have decided what you want to send, choose "Send this selection". The section should disappear.

The message you just sent will look like this when they open it:

Well, I hope that helped some of you!
Sorry if it was crappy instructions! I was in a rush :S

Bye!

Kindergarten Hilarious Premonition Dream

2012-05-16T15:39:00.000-07:00

So I'll try to start from the beginning of my life. I'll tell one story in each post and try to keep in within a timeline.

During my lifetime, I've had a lot of weird dreams, and a lot of them were dreams of something of the future. Many of us experience Deja Vu so I didn't think it was that weird or uncommon. A lot of us have this psychic ability that hasn't been tapped or is very subtle. I just remember this first premonition just because it was hilarious.

At the time I was going to Kindergarten, I was a child who loved watching Sailor Moon after school. One of those kids who rushed home to watch cartoons and thought school was ok but watching Sailor Moon was the best.

One night, I had a dream that I was walking home from Kindergarten with my mother and trying to hurry to catch the next Sailor Moon episodes on TV. On the way there, this boy was riding on his bicycle on the street, zooming past us. He was around 11 or 12, looking like he was trying to ride with the wind. Once he zoomed past us, a car infront of him was pulling out of the driveway slowly. He freaks out to where he tilts his bike down to the right, causing him to fall down with his bike. I laughed so hard in my dream that I woke up and then went back to sleep.

The next day, it happened the same exact way. I didn't remember the dream until I saw him zoom past us, making me think: "Hmm...isn't that the boy in my dream?" *Falls down* "OMG I DREAMT THAT!!"

I laughed really loudly, my mother told me to shush but I just couldn't help at laughing at the fact that he fell and the fact that it actually happened.

Update? Idea?

2012-05-16T14:51:00.003-07:00

You know, everytime something creepy comes up in a conversation, I can't help but tell my own scary stories and scary stories that have been told to me. I LOVE scary stories and I love sharing my experiences because it is something unique that happened to me. So I always love, love telling these stories. I'm thinking, I might want to start typing up these stories and keeping them in a book so I can go back and read about my experiences if I ever wanted to. I have quite a few so maybe I'll post up a story whenever I remember to. I'm really bad at putting posts up, mostly because I don't think many people read my blog anyways. :)

But because of my interest in the supernatural and all things weird and out-of-this-world, I've had quite a few things happen in my lifetime and quite a few things I've heard from people.

PDF to Word Document Problems & Solutions

2012-05-09T16:48:00.001-07:00

Had hectic day at work today! Everybody and their buddy wanted me to help them! Multi-tasked to the max today!
One of the things I had to do was convert a PDF document to a Word document.
Sounds easy right? Well usually when I convert documents, it goes ok. There are some funky things going on with the formatting but nothing too horrible.
Well this was horrible.
I couldn't convert because of some stupid error talking about not having a font? Which was dumb because I had the font. Calibri. How do I know that it was Calibri? Because it's the default font in Microsoft Word now and it's been that way for awhile, so I know what it looks like now. So that was stupid.
I tried copying and pasting and that went ar-tarded. Every word had a line break.
So I went ahead and found an online PDF to Word converter and did it that way. It converted it. Thank goodness, because I was doing this for a man who is like the mega big boss of where I work.
I found it dumb how I have the Adobe Acrobat X Pro.

Even though it converted, it still had formatting problems.
All of the spaces between words were either double or triple spaced.
The margins were insanely off.
There were line breaks at random areas.
The footer and header were being dumb.

So to get this fixed, this is what I did:

Deleted all header and footers.
Got rid of the line breaks (there were a lot but not unbearable).

What got me stumped was how the hell do I fix the double and triple spaced words and the stupid margins? I know what you're thinking, margins? You had a problem with the margins? Do you know how easy it is to fix that?
Yes...yes I do. BUT when I tried to change the margins, it would give me some stupid error and not change it.

Like a normal person, I googled the answer to the double and triple spacing problems. Thankfully, I found it. I forgot where. I did intense searching and found it in a forum. I give credit to whoever the hell gave this advice:
Go to REPLACE.
In the FIND WHAT box, enter in two spaces: " "
In the REPLACE WITH box, enter in one space: " "
Hit REPLACE ALL and it will solve the double-spacing problem.
I did this for triple spacing " " and replaced all. Sometimes it does not make all of the replacing it needs to actually do the double-spacing replacing about three times until it says that it made 0 replacements.

After this space replacing solution, I highlighted all of the pages and put normal margins. For some odd reason, the spacing solved the weird margin thing.

You might also notice that some letters looks "squished". This is normal when you convert a PDF to a document.
To fix this:
Select the whole document, meaning every page.
Right-click and choose FONT.
Go to the ADVANCED tab.
You'll see "SCALE" and then a blank drop down box to the right of it.
In the drop-down box and choose 100%.
Click OK.

I found out this problem through manual troubleshooting. I just highlighted the squished letter and found out what the hell is wrong with the font and found that the scale is set to 50% so setting the scale to 100% should work.
So far, this made the document look almost "normal".

Bullet lists aren't bulleted, the bullet symbol are texts so you can delete it like a normal letter and if you enter a new line, the next line will not have a bullet symbol (since it has been converted to normal text, like when you insert a degree sign from the "Insert Symbol" window).

There are some lines that are centered aligned rather than left aligned, but those lines were mostly the lines that were ar-tardedly converted with unecessary line breaks, so it was easy to find and fix since it's along the journey or fixing the line breaks.

I hope the whole font error gets fixed with the newer version of Adobe Acrobat -__-;;
If I can't convert with the actual program and have to resort to some site on Google, that's just sad.

Hopefully someone finds this useful. I had to do a lot of Googling to take care of these simple problems.