My Skin Care Routine

My skin has had its ups and downs. Growing up, all the way until adulthood, I had virtually perfect skin. I never had any problems at all as a teenager - no acne flareups, no nothing. Due to this, I didn't really have to develop a skin routine out of necessity, to the point of where I didn't really do anything. Then, in my 20's, all hell broke loose. I started getting terrible hormonal breakouts around my forehead and chin every month, and every time it would happen I'd be left with a ton of awful looking acne scars. I tried all sorts of (cheap, I was broke) acne medications and skin products, but nothing really worked - or it would work for a while and then its effectiveness would plateau off. Luckily, the worst of my skin problems just seemed to go away on their own around my mid twenties, and I've had pretty average skin ever since. I still get some acne right before the time I get my period each month, usually around my chin/mouth area, but nothing terrible, usually. I have combination skin -my skin tends to get patchy and dry around my mouth and my forehead, and oily around my t-zone. I've been waffling around with my skin routine for the past few years, tying both drugstore and high end skin products and face washes, but in the past several months I've settled into a pretty consistent routine that's left me with solidly clear, smooth skin. Here are the products I use on a weekly basis, if you're interested:

1. Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash - this is a classic, and it just works. I cleanse with this twice, daily. I've been toying with the idea of ditching the acne products for something more aimed towards maintaining youthful appearance, but I'm not quite comfortable enough to do so yet. I've tried tons of products, including several that are much more expensive, and I always go back to Neutrogena. Plus, the ultra-refreshing scent doesn't hurt. I used to use the regular formula, but switched to the exfoliating scrub because my skin was a little flaky from the winter.
2. Eucerin Daily Protection - another drug store wonder. I use this as my daily moisturizer (both in the morning and at night), and it's the perfect balance between light and quenching. It also provides my daily sunscreen.
3. Serious Serum - this got, like, life-changing reviews on Amazon. And while I haven't found it to be life-changing, per se, it's pretty solid. I use this as a nightly spot treatment, and I've actually noticed that if I dab it on a spot I can feel a pimple coming on, it often never surfaces or disappears in about a day. And I'm still pretty prone to acne scars, and this stuff does one of the better jobs I've seen at making them fade.
4. Aquaphor - if you don't use Aquaphor, it's time to get in the know. It's a miracle worker for anything that's dry - I use it on patchy spots, but I know lots of people who also use it on dry, cracked lips and hands.
5. Murad Clarifying Mask - I actually don't use this weekly, more like when I remember to, but it's pretty great. After I rinse it off my face feels baby smooth and nice and tight in the best way possible.
6. Mitchell and Peach Fine Radiance Face Oil (in Flora No. 1) - this came in my beauty subscription box one month, and I'm still getting used to it, but it's very effective. Every few nights I'll switch my nightly moisturizer out and apply this oil to my face with a cotton swab. I really feel like it quickly balances the oil production in my face and restores moisture while zapping extra oil, as odd as that seems (I've read that when your skin is dehydrated it produces more oil, so moisturizing regularly will keep oil at bay). I REALLY hate feeling greasy/oily though, so the sensation takes some adjusting for me, and the scent is almost kind of patchouly-like, which isn't really my jam. If I ever bought this, I'd probably try a different scent.

How to Kick Seasonal Depression

I wrote this post on Seasonal Affective Disorder a year ago today. Last year was a brutal winter - tons and tons of snow combined with shockingly cold temperatures made it a hard year around here for just about everyone. I get to feeling down right around the middle of January every year, and typically stay that way until around the beginning of March, but last year it was worse than normal for me and it led me to brainstorm some ways to head it off at the pass this year. When I look at the way I felt this time last year compared to how I've been feeling this year, it's like night and day. There are some things that contributed to that that I don't really have control over - the weather's been much more mild this year, for example, but I thought I'd share some tips that I feel have contributed to my sunnier outlook this year.

1. I feel like this is the most important thing out of all of these to do - stay active - During winter, I tend to go into hibernation mode and curl up under a blanket, leaving only to go to work and to take bathroom trips. It seems cozy at the beginning of winter, but quickly leads to feeling sluggish and bummed out. I think it's important to try to do some kind of actual activity each day - be it a project around the house or a trip to the grocery store, just moving around will make you feel better.
2. On a related note, be productive - This past Saturday I was sitting in my kitchen, doing what I love to do (sipping coffee, playing on the internet), no worries or cares, when I felt that bummed out feeling start to creep in out of nowhere. I immediately hopped out of my chair and begin cleaning my kitchen, which led to me deep cleaning my appliances and scrubbing my floors. The distraction took over the bummed feeling, and when I was finished my kitchen was sparkling clean, which also improved my mood! Two birds with one stone! I think that a big part of my depression problem stems from boredom, so just getting up immediately and doing something fended off the gloom. And the feeling of accomplishment is hard to beat.
3. Think about exercising - That's all I've done, and it's helped me! (Har, har)
4. Get outside - I know it's freezing out there and it feels torturous at first, but pick a sunny day and do something that involves being outside for a little while - take a walk, go to a winter festival, shovel your driveway if you have snow, build a snowman. The fresh air will breathe some life into you and the exposure to the sun is vital if you get seasonal depression.
5. Socialize - It's so easy to get wrapped up in your own little solitary cocoon when the weather is awful and you just want to lounge in sweats and watch Netflix, but social interaction can be really refreshing. It'll also get you out of your head a bit, which is always good.
6. Plan ahead - Plan a couple of fun activities to look forward to throughout the winter. Whether it's a trip to somewhere warm or just a night out with friends, having something to be excited for definitely staves off gloomy feelings.
7. Bring some life into your home - I'm not talking about making babies, though if you wanna go in that direction it's definitely a mood lifter (heh). I'm talking about foliage - get some green, living things (plants, flowers, trees) and scatter them throughout your house. It brightens everything up and improves the oxygen in your home. Try not to get too bummed when you inevitably kill them. And by "you", I most definitely don't mean "me".
8. Bring spring inside - I like to do this by punching up my decor a bit with some bright throw pillows or knick knacks and lighting some fresh-smelling candles. This is one of my favorite fresh, floral scents.
9. Buy a car - just kidding. But if you have several thousand dollars to just throw around or, ya know, if your car unexpectedly dies on you one day, it definitely doesn't hurt!
10. Spice it up - I've been trying out a bunch of new recipes recently, and the variety has helped keep things interesting. Again with the boredom - keeping my mind active has helped distract me from feeling bummed.
11. Set yourself up for success - Around midway last year, I opened a savings account specifically for Christmas gifts. A big part of my funk in January has to do with feeling guilty for spending too much on Christmas and having to pay off my credit cards for the next several months. By tucking away a small amount each month (I actually put a bigger chunk into my main savings account, and have a smaller part of that chunk automatically transferred from my main savings into the Christmas account each month) I'm able to save up a pretty generous amount by Christmas, and I don't even notice it's gone. Plus, if I end up not needing as much as I have saved I can either just transfer the rest back into my main savings or carry it over for the next holiday season. Having money set aside took a huge amount of stress off of me this January.

I hope everyone's having a decent winter, or if you're feeling down in the dumps I hope some of these tips are able to help, at least a little. Depression sucks, seasonal or not, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. If all else fails, know that you're definitely not alone and there's always a light at the end of the tunnel. Et cetera et cetera, corny corny.

Food for Thought

Being that it's right after the holidays where I eat practically literally everything in sight, I've been putting a lot of thought lately into eating more mindfully. Yesterday I came across this article in the Times, which shows what 2,000 calories (which is about the average amount of calories an adult needs to consume on a daily basis, give or take a little for your weight/sex/age) looks like at a relatively large span of different kinds of common restaurants, and then shows the amount of food you can eat for the same amount of calories by cooking at home. In a lot of cases in the restaurants, 2,000 calories only got you one meal, or in some extreme cases, one item! The gist of the article, basically, was that even if you're not specifically trying to limit calories, when you cook at home you're going to consume fewer calories per meal.

Ever since we moved into our house, eating meals we've prepared at home has become much more of a regular occurrence for Jeff and I. When we were in the apartment, of course we had a functioning kitchen, but it was small and crappy and just wasn't a place that I liked to spend a lot of time in. Of course, I still baked (way more than I do now, actually), but after doing all of the baking that I did in that cramped space, I just didn't feel like putting in the effort to cook many meals. We ended up eating a LOT of takeout and Wawa, or a lot of the time I'd just eat my meals at work (which wasn't hard, seeing as I worked in a restaurant then). Even though I wasn't cooking a lot, I still tried to make a conscious effort to eat as healthfully as possible, but "as healthfully as possible" was usually still pretty unhealthy. Plus, it took a lot of effort trying to select things to eat that were relatively light, so a lot of the time I'd end up eating something like a side of mushrooms or a sweet potato for dinner. Not ideal.

Now that we have a kitchen that I love to cook in, I cook at least 4 nights a week, and a lot of the rest of the nights we eat leftovers from previous nights (which is also generally what I eat for lunch). I try to limit eating out or takeout to one night a week, sometimes two if we're extra busy or have social stuff going on. I'll admit that I'm not the greatest at meal-planning; I usually just buy a bunch of random stuff that can be mixed and matched to last throughout the week, and fly by the seat of my pants. I could definitely save time and money by planning better, so that's something to work on, but I feel like I've gotten pretty good at working with what I have, especially when it comes to putting leftovers/odds and ends from previous meals to work. I used to be terrible about throwing food away, but now I at least put forth an effort to use what I already have before going out and buying new stuff.

As I've mentioned before (since you probably didn't catch my subtle sarcasm), I don't diet. That said, I do try to make healthy choices overall. Sometimes I'm good at this, sometimes I fail completely (I say, as I munch on a pretzel rod smothered in Nutella). Since I've been feeling (physically) pretty gross from all of the indulging I've done over the past few months, I'm trying to make a concentrated effort to freshen up my eating and pack my meals with actual nutrients that I've been ditching in favor of butter and cheese. Oh, all of the cheese. I don't cut anything out or make all sorts of crazy swaps to make my food practically calorie free or swap all of my refined grains for farrow and chia seeds, because that's not practical for me (and Jeff would probably leave me), but I do try to pack my meals with tons of nutrient dense veggies, and attempt to make little switches here and there, such as quinoa or brown rice instead of white rice or pasta. Another thing that I do that actually makes meals easier as well as healthier is to eat primarily vegetarian a few nights a week. I don't really even do this on purpose a lot of the time; some nights it's just easier to throw together a meatless dish.

One thing that I like to do on nights I don't feel like working out a composed dish is to throw together whatever I have laying around, especially vegetables that are looking on the sad side or bits of leftovers from previous meals. For example, the other night I made this:

Carmelized Onion and Spinach Bowl

Loosely adapted from Dinner a Love Story

Slice a couple of onions, and cook in a glug of olive oil in a sauté pan over medium low heat for 15-25 minutes (the longer you can wait, the better they get...but you have to keep an eye on them). Once the onions are nice and brown and melty, toss in some salt and pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Add a generous handful of spinach, and sauté until the spinach wilts. At this point, you have a very tasty topping for...anything you have on hand. I served mine over a little bit of brown rice cooked in chicken stock, and Jeff's over some leftover penne. It'd also be delicious over quinoa, a baked potato, some couscous, or whole grain spaghetti (which is how I serve it on the reg). If you're feeling saucy, it's great with some crushed red pepper flakes, or if you're feeling cheesy it's great with some parm grated over it.

I did this with onions and spinach, but you get the idea. You could do something similar with whatever veggies you have laying around - roasted cauliflower is always great (as is roasted broccoli), or a favorite of mine is pan seared brussels sprouts with corn cut off the cob. Get wild. Dinner's a piece of cake.

Yoga Breaths

As you may have noticed, I have a tiny, little bitty temper problem. I am naturally (I guess), for some reason, pretty short on patience, and it takes very little for me to fly off the handle. Unfortunately for my sanity, I am also pretty passive-aggressive, so instead of just blowing up, I internalize my lunatic urges. Recently, in some situations I've noticed that I can actually feel my blood pressure rising. I get light headed and tense, and I can actually feel my blood coursing through my veins. That ain't good, folks. So before I hulk out (or drop dead), I've decided it might be in my best interest to look into some stress-relievers.

I once mentioned to one of my work colleagues that if I'm speaking to someone particularly heinous that I have to "take yoga breaths". She found that hilarious, but that's a thing I actually do. I take long, deep breaths in through my nose and out through my mouth, and if I focus on my breathing, it tends to slow my heart rate and calm me down a bit.

Does anyone have any good tips on how to de-stress in an aggravating situation? Or, better yet, on how to prevent things from getting to you in the first place? I always thought of myself as a laid-back person when I was younger, but in the more recent years I've come to the conclusion that I was flat-out wrong and that I'm super high-strung. I'd love to be one of those people who just laughs when something goes wrong, but I just get tense so easily. Luckily, these feelings don't hang out for too long, so as quickly as I was triggered, I'll be happy as a clam again 20 minutes later. Is this sort of thing something that's just part of who you are, or can you tailor your personality to become more go-with-the-flow? It's definitely worth looking into.

Who knew?

I just found out that Jessica Alba is the co-founder of The Honest Company, which makes great all-natural products for your home and children. And after reading this article, she actually seems really down to earth and cool. It made me want to be her friend. Who knew?

Plus, that hair!! She is so damn pretty.

What up, 2014?

Whew. I'm not normally huge on the whole "New year, new me" hoopla, and I don't usually set specific resolutions, but this new year really feels like a breath of fresh air. This past year spun a little out of control and I got a little off-base, so I'm looking forward to reset and refresh a bit. I feel like I'm in a really great place for 2014 to be the best year yet (I said before that every year gets better and better, and I stand by that), and so I've set some goals (RESOULTIONS, if you will) for myself to stay on track. I kinda started off with broad, general goals, and then set smaller, more specific plans on how to get there. Here's what I'm looking to do this year:

Get back on track with a healthy lifestyle.

I don't diet. I used to when I was younger, and then I got smarter and wiser and realized that diets are stupid and don't work for the long-term, and are also generally pretty unhealthy. So I usually just try to be generally healthy about the way I eat and stay as natural as possible, and if I want to eat something greasy and fatty and delicious REALLY BAD, then I eat it. In moderation, if possible (sometimes you just have to eat a whole pizza. It happens.) About halfway through the year, I got busy and stopped really paying attention to what I was eating and how I was eating, and I pretty much completely stopped working out. And now I feel like crap (physically). Time to get back to it. Here's what I'm gonna do:

1. Work out every day before work (at least four days a week). 

I now have a gym AT work, which gives me exactly ZERO excuses not to get there. And for at least the first few months of the year, I'll be working from 12 pm - 9 pm, so before work seems like the best plan. I've found over the past year that I'm actually kind of a morning person (believe me, I was just as shocked as you are at this realization). Getting my butt out of bed is difficult at times, but once I'm out, morning is my favorite time of the day. So I want to start an actual routine, so that it becomes like clockwork. This may have to be adjusted according to my schedule (I'm trying to get rid of the late shit as quickly as possible), and I'm giving myself one day a workweek wiggle room just to set myself up for success.

2. Eat (pretty much) only stuff that I feel good about eating.

I thought about this, and at first I was going to try to be a lot more specific, but if I pay attention to what I'm doing, I'm usually pretty good about this one without having to give myself actual rules (which makes it a lot easier to stick to). My only specific rule is no commercial soda (meaning I can still drink natural, carbonated beverages like club soda with a splash of fruit juice) and no fast food if AT ALL avoidable, both of which I've already basically eliminated from my diet (though I started slipping a bit with the soda rule over the holidays). So this means that I try to keep my diet about 80% natural, I try to stick to healthy fats (though I need to work on moderating my healthy fat intake, meaning not eating avocado on literally EVERYTHING and eggs by the pound), and I try to limit my red meat consumption to a few times a month and my meat consumption in general to a couple times a week. This should be a lot easier no longer working at a steakhouse, and no longer BAKING FOR A LIVING. I was seriously worried that I was going to give myself diabetes when I was having to constantly taste batters and doughs.

3. Try to be more active, in general.

I felt I had to add this one because I'm going from being on my feet 70% of the day every day to sitting at a desk staring at a computer all day, every day. When I was serving, I felt justified to spend all of my leisure time vegging on the couch watching tv or sitting in a bar. Now that I'm a lot less active in general, I'm going to try doing more active stuff just for fun (and I'm going to try to convince Jeff to join me, which will be a feat in and of itself). I want to start trying new stuff, exploring more, and being outside more. I'm not going to bother pushing myself to get outside more when it's cold because I just don't have the capacity for it and it's not gonna happen, but at least when it starts warming up I'd like to get out more. I'd really like to buy a couple bikes and start riding around.

Figure out what my idea of "fun" actually means.

Okay, this one's pretty vague. I say this because my life has changed so drastically in the past year, that I still think that I need to be doing the same things I used to do to have fun, and I don't even realize it when I'm enjoying myself a lot of the time. I don't have the time, energy, or honestly the money to "go out" the way I used to, and if I really think about it, I don't WANT to. I was actually really bored with it, and was probably well on my way to getting into some kind of trouble (or at least people thinking I was a fool). That certainly doesn't mean that I'm going to stop drinking altogether, or that I'm never going to go to a bar again, but I need to stop thinking that I'm missing out when nothing that exciting is really happening.

1. Spend more time with people I really and truly enjoy, and stop trying so hard to make friends with everyone I meet.

I don't want this to sound like people that I'm acquaintances with suck, or that I don't appreciate them. All I mean by this is that I've met so many people over the past 10 years that it's dizzying. Between all of the moving I've done and all of the various jobs I've had, I've come across way more "new" people than probably most people my age have, so I've gotten into this mode where I'm just constantly trying to make new friends with EVERYONE, because I'm used to it being necessary. I'm not AGAINST making new friends if I click with someone or if I have a lot in common with them, but I seem to collect groups of people that I have literally nothing in common with and have nothing to really talk about, and then I feel bad about neglecting them when I don't have time to hang out with everyone I know. I have a solid number of people that I truly enjoy spending time with, and I want to dedicate more time to them and developing (or re-developing) solid friendships and less to hanging out with people I don't really even know, or that are half my age and make me feel old and lame. Which leads to...

2. Stop feeling so guilty.

Going from young-adulthood, where your friends are EVERYTHING in life, to full-blown adulthood, where your family becomes your main focus, is hard, and I'm having growing pains. It's hard to get over the idea of your group of friends being your entire support network and knowing where you are and what you're doing and what you're thinking every minute. In fact, just writing that with the assumption that it's no longer true is making me feel guilty. I have that thing that a lot of women have where I feel like I have to be everything to everyone in my life, and I get spread so thin that I'm never really there with anyone. I need to get used to the fact that I'm just going to spend less time with friends, and start really taking advantage of the time that I DO get to spend with them. And when I'm not with them, I need to stop feeling like I'm abandoning them and feeling guilty for not being there for everything that happens. If something big happens, good or bad, I'll be there. That's what matters. And on the same note, I need to get used to my FRIENDS having families that are now THEIR main focus, and to not feel abandoned by them, or left out. I have to find a balance, and feel okay with it.

3. Create more.

Now that I'm pretty much set on the career front and don't have to constantly rack my brain trying to figure out what I want to DO with my life, I have a lot more time and energy to actually be creative. I've gotten really into design over the past year, and I want to make my home beautiful and personal. This could mean painting, or DIY projects, or home improvement projects. I also (as I mentioned) want to get back into blogging consistently, so I'm going to try for at least 3 times a week. And of course, I'm excited to get back into baking for fun.

Get back to making our house our home.

This one is the most self-explanatory, and was the most easy to set specific goals for. We got busy and complacent and completely stopped working on our house, and it still needs a LOT of work. Honestly, this place already feels like home to me (and I think to Jeff and Grooby as well), but I want to get the ideas I have to make this place my dream house into action. Here's what I want to have done by the end of the year (while trying to be realistic in a skills and budgetary sense):

1. Put stuff on the damn walls.

I have developed a phobia of hanging pictures. This is ridiculous. I think it dates back to technology class (what my middle school called "shop class") with Mr. Chitester (sp?). That guy terrified me, and the first thing he taught us was to properly measure. Somehow the terror that he instilled in me made me permanently afraid of measuring ANYTHING, and now that has projected onto being afraid of hanging pictures in the wrong place, and them not being straight, or evenly measured, and it looking like an unprofessional mess. This has lead to my walls being literally BARE. There is no art, or family pictures, or mirrors, or ANYTHING hung ANYWHERE. Anything that's on the walls was either already here, or hastily thrown up by Jeff when we moved in just to put it somewhere. I really noticed how detrimental this was to our home's overall feel during the holidays, when we were actually using our dining room. It's pretty much just a bare room with a table in the middle of it, and in pictures it looks TERRIBLE. It looks like we just moved in. We've been here for six months. I need to get over it, because mama loves her a gallery wall.

2. Get going on the office and guest room.

Other than taking that pile of junk out of the guest room (the pink room) and a mess and Jeff's clothes in the office (the blue room), those two rooms pretty much still look exactly like these pictures I took back in July. It's getting really old not having a functioning guest room (we've actually entertained way more than I thought we would), and Jeff really wants to have his own space in the form of the office, so I'm itching to whip these rooms into shape. I have specific goals for each room for this year, because both rooms need a bit more work than we can probably get done or budget for this year alone. As for the office, that carpet is probably going to stay for another year, because I think we're just going to re-do the whole upstairs floor all at once. So I want to get the carpet in the deep-cleaned, and then I want to get the room painted and at least get a desk in there. And obviously the window treatments (and closet "doors") need switched out. And as for the guest room, I'd like to get a large area rug in there to cover up the white painted floor, and get a bed and nightstands in there with fresh linens. I'm really excited to decorate in there, but I'm not really sure what I'm going to do yet. I'd like to have it painted and get those awful curtains out of there by spring. I think from there on out it will be pretty much smooth sailing.

3. The kitchen.

Oh, man. It makes me nervous writing this one down, but I feel like it gives me a little more of a push to actually get it done. I'm apprehensive about the kitchen. It'll be our first big undertaking as far as home improvement goes. But, I'm gonna say it. By the end of the year, I want to change the backsplash, which means I also want to have all of the walls painted. I'm not going to commit to ripping out the plaster by the end of the year just yet, but we'll see. And while we're doing the backsplash and the walls, I also want to take out the cabinet over the island and install open shelves. Being sandwiched next to the fridge and set directly over our island makes this cabinet almost impossible to access, and I love the look of open shelves to display dishes. I recently bought a set of simple white dishes, so I feel like I can actually display them out in the open now, which would really help my "my dishes are currently stored right in the middle of where all my food is, which doesn't make any sense" dilemma. And I'd really like to have my ever growing mug collection out in the open. I have no idea how any of this is going to go, but I'm jazzed about it, at least in theory.

4. Lighting.

There is exactly one lighting fixture in this house that I don't hate, and it's in our upstairs bathroom. All of the other ones got to GO. And the foyer and living room are both SCREAMING for lighting fixtures, because neither of them have one at all, in general. At the moment, my goal is to get a new pendant in the dining room by the holidays next year (probably sooner, because the one that's there now drives me bonkers), install a pendant in the foyer (however the hell you do that), get rid of the pastel ceiling fan in the guest room, and put in new lanterns outside. There's something wrong with the electrical outlets out there, so we'll have to figure that out, too. I want that figured out before summer (and certainly before next Christmas, because our neighbors put up Christmas lights this year and we couldn't, and our side of the house looked sad and forlorn).

There is a LOT of other stuff I want to get done to this place, but a lot of it is little stuff, and I want to try to be realistic about the big stuff. So I'm gonna stick with this, and consider anything else that gets done a bonus.

Take more pictures.

I don't really know if this fit in somewhere else, but I just remembered it and I feel very strongly about it. I LOVE having pictures, and I usually don't remember to take any until the last minute (or the last hour of a party, when all of the pictures that get taken are blurry and off-center and taken with my iPhone). I keep forgetting to ask for a good camera for Christmas, so it looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy one for myself. I want a grownup camera, not just a point-and-shoot digital crap camera, that takes beautiful pictures and actually captures moments. And I want to learn to use it. And then I want to ACTUALLY use it. And then I need to remember to actually have pictures printed. Now that we have a house to display pictures in, it'd be nice to actually have pictures to display.



So, those are my goals, both broad and specific, for the next year. I'm really excited to be able to gather myself and take a breath this year. It's nice to have a lot of my more major goals covered so that I can work on the little stuff and not have to stress out about huge milestones. I hope you guys enjoyed your holidays, and are as pumped for 2014 as I am. Cheers.

Pinterest success! Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Milkshake

I'll admit it: I'm a Pinterest junkie.



Pinterest is addictive. Let's just admit that. It might seem lame, but it's a good idea. A virtual corkboard to keep all of the interesting things you find online - outfits, recipes, DIY projects, funny little snippets, anything. It keeps everything organized and at your fingertips. It's great.



Anyway. Specifically, what I wanted to discuss is this shake I found on Pinterest. Now, I've found a lot of dubious recipes on Pinterest, and some that didn't SEEM dubious, but yielded disastrous results (I've also found a lot of successful recipes, but that's not the point I've clearly set out to make). This shake recipe was one that SOUNDED kind of gross...or at least like it would turn out boring...but the picture on the pin looked so delicious that I just had to try it. And it turned out to be absolutely delightful! Allow me to share.

The idea behind this shake was to make, I guess, a chocolate peanut butter milkshake that's not horrifically unhealthy. The only ingredients are frozen bananas, cocoa powder, natural peanut butter, almond milk (which I didn't have, so I just used regular 1% milk), vanilla extract, maple syrup (which I didn't want to use, so I used agave nectar), and ice. The recipe listed specific amounts of ingredients and instructions, but all I did was this: break up a frozen banana and toss it into my ninja with a big spoonful of natural PB (I think the peanut butter being natural is key, otherwise it'd make the shake too sweet), a tablespoon of cocoa powder, a big splash of milk, a tiny splash of vanilla, a squeeze of agave, a tiny pinch of kosher salt, and a scoop of ice, and blend it until it was smooth. I expected it to be mediocre at best, but it was freakin' delicious! It tasted like a rich, thick chocolate/peanut butter/banana milkshake, and it was only mildly sweet, which somehow made it taste more decadent. The amount that I made  added up to be about half of the recipe that Pinterest yielded, and I shared it with Jeff. I think that the full amount that I made would be a perfect size for a filling breakfast, or for a really satisfying dessert - and it's relatively healthly and low calorie, at least compared to a traditional ice cream shake. I highly recommend throwing one together; it takes about 45 seconds to make.



Happy sipping! 

Weight loss tips for the new year!

Happy new year everyone!



I know that A LOT of you probably have made the resolution to lose weight in the next year. Or "eat better" or "tighten that ass up" or "be healthy" or what the eff ever. So, being as wonderful and helpful as I am, I have decided to give you some of MY personal weight loss tips. So, without further ado:

Jessi's Weight Loss and Diet Tips!!!!!!!

1. If you don't like it, it doesn't count.  Sometimes I'll start eating something, and even though I don't HATE it, it's just not really my cup of tea. If this happens to you, just go ahead and continue eating it. In fact, you might as well just finish it. Calories from food that you're not enjoying don't count, and therefore will not cause you to gain weight.
2. Homemade food is ALWAYS healthy, and therefore practically calorie free. So, you've decided that instead of going out and eating a decadent, calorie-dense meal, you're going to cook a healthy meal at home.  However, somehow along the way you purchased all of the ingredients for gigantic steak burritos with a shitload of guacamole, sour cream, and refried beans, and have decided to make humongous homemade margaritas and fried ice cream. Not to worry! When you cook something yourself, it ALWAYS has less calories than whatever you would have ordered at any restaurant, and you may therefore eat, like, FOUR burritos and drink an entire pitcher of those margaritas! You probably burned off more calories cooking than you ate, anyway. You go, girl!
3. When you're drunk, the calories that you consume don't really exist. If you can't remember eating it, you didn't!
4. Also, calories from alcohol aren't real calories. Really, what harm could a bottle or two of wine cause? It's just grapes! Don't kid yourself, though: don't order frozen, blended drinks. I mean, c'mon. Fattie.
5. Calories from small pieces of things don't count. Say you're eating some cookies. Bad, right? WRONG! Just break those babies apart, and graze on them throughout the day! Broken cookies are practically diet food! Because they contain NO CALORIES! You can eat about eight cookies in total, but as long as they were broken you have NO IDEA how many cookies you've consumed, and therefore will see NO ill effects! This also works with eating a few chips at a time, or pretzels, or bites of ice cream...just don't even THINK about sitting down with a WHOLE BOWL. Don't be disgusting.
6. If you go to the gym and then immediately leave, it counts. Forgot your earbuds? Gym's too busy? You think that guy lifting weights looks suspicious and will probably murder you? No problem! Girl, you made it to the gym, and that's what counts. Go take a nap, you deserve it!
7. Coffee creamer doesn't add up throughout the day. Uh, the caffeine cancels it out. Duh.
8. Running one mile a day, twice a week makes you A RUNNER. Even if you walk 3/4 of the mile. And runners are hot! Congratulations, hottie!

There you go! I hope my tips were helpful and inspiring. Don't give up, 2013 is your year to shine! 

This is not about anything.

Some thoughts for the day (musings, if you will):



Will I go blind or some variation thereof (eyes falling out, etc) if I wear my contacts literally from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed every single day? I'm talking during naps, in the shower, in the pool, while drunk, while cutting onions...every minute. My optometrist recommended taking them out after work daily and wearing glasses to "let my eyes breathe", and also giving my eyes "a day off" frequently. I don't do this. I REALLY hate wearing my glasses. It's not an aesthetic thing, it's a comfort thing. I don't like it. They make the bridge of my nose sweat, and they make it difficult to lay down. I REALLY like to lay down. And I like being able to see things while laying down. Like, say, my TV. So. Oh, and also, I only switch out my contacts for new ones every three to six months. I'm supposed to do that every single month. I have not noticed any ill effect. I'm really just waiting to go totally blind one day out of the blue.



I love Adam Scott. No. I'm IN love with Adam Scott. Not, "I enjoy his work", or "I like the movies/shows he's in", or "I think he's cute". No. I'm in love with him. There's nothing that makes him INCREDIBLY appealing to me as an actor, though I do enjoy his acting offerings. He is everything that I look for in a man. Pretty boring looking, dark hair, skinny, dresses pretty boring, reminiscent of a hipster without actually being one. I have a very distinct aesthetic (that's today's word) taste in men, and it consists of a very specific type of blandness. I don't like my men to be super hot. Unless their name rhymes with myan schmosling. I am seriously way way way more attracted to boring looking dudes. So he's got that going for him. And then there's his personality. His sense of humor is as dry as it can get without being non-existent. He's sarcastic. He's boring and polite enough to appeal to the 85+ crowd. He seems quite intelligent, and a little pretentious, but not really outwardly so. He's nerdy, and his character on Parks and Rec loves superheroes and shit, so I just assume he does in real life as well. I'm into that. I assume his taste of music is something like "indie rock mixed with random obscure hardcore", which is my ideal "guy music type". He's the type of guy who, if I were to know him in real life, the majority of my girl friends would say "Really?? Ugh Jessi, your taste in guys is SO WEIRD.", which is generally what I aim for. Guys, I've clearly put a lot of thought into this. He's THE ONE.

Sidenote: There is apparently also an Adam Scott who is a golfer. That is not who I am talking about; however, it IS the guy who has a supermodel girlfriend, who I previously thought was the girlfriend of MY Adam Scott. Upon further investigation, I found that MY Adam Scott is actually married. So. There's that. It's okay, Hollywood marriages don't last. He'll be mine.



I'm not good at posting pictures on this here little blog. I don't really know how to do it other than in the most simplistic manner, and don't know how to change the size, or the placement, really, of my pictures. This could be alleviated with the smallest amount of research, of which I am not going to do.



I've been wearing a lot of dresses lately. A reasonable assumption would be that I'm doing so to appear nice, or possibly more feminine. Or that I'm trying to get noticed. Now, don't get me wrong. I LOVE attention. And I like to look pretty. However, the reason that I've been wearing dresses is because I am SO INCREDIBLY LAZY that it's almost unbelievable. The long and short of it is that a dress is ONE article of clothing that you slip over your head, and THEN YOU'RE DONE. No figuring out outfits, no putting on pants, no layering, no NOTHING. AND they keep you cool. AND I may have run out of every single reasonably clean article of casual summer clothing that I own for a period of  time. I might even wear THE SAME maxi dress I wore yesterday simply to get my eyebrows done today, even though I actually did laundry yesterday, just because it's sitting on top of my laundry basket.




Spotify has this feature that enables you to play a streaming radio station based on playlists that YOU'VE created. When I found this out, I was VERY jazzed...what a perfect way to find new music based on MY music taste from a SPECIFIC subset of songs and artists that I'VE created! I decided today, however, that I'd generally just rather listen to the damn playlist that I've so painstakingly created in the first place. Most of the songs that they play on the station that aren't already on my playlist are just rejects from my playlist that I didn't want to hear in the first place, and since I spend HOURS and HOURS tooling through the vast Spotify universe, I rarely find music that I wasn't aware of in the first place. So. Don't call me a control freak.



I'm tired of writing things that no one is ever going to read for the time being. Goodbye!

First Blog; Jessi's Thoughts on Fitness

Alright, first blog post! I've started numerous blogs in the past, none of which anybody has ever read, all of which I lost interest in/forgot about pretty much immediately. I assume this will be no different. Stay tuned to find out!

My first little blogling will be about fitness. I'd like to preface this by saying I'm all about being fit. And in my opinion, it's more about being healthy than about being thin or skinny; you can be skinny as the day is long and still be gross and floppy and unfit. So. Healthy=good; unhealthy=less good.

However. More and more recently, I've found myself being surrounded by people who are LUNATICS about "being fit". Everyone these days seems to be either all about crazy supplements and protein powders and cleansing goos and all sorts of weird, gross concoctions. We'll call this group of people the "meatheads".

And then there are the fad diet people. These are people who either limit what they eat to a crazy degree ("I'm only eating kale and fish food this week!"), or take diet pills or drops or...uh, salves (?), or simply don't eat in general. We'll call this group of people the "idiots".

Basically you guys, what I have to say is simple. I'm not trying to criticize any particular group of people. (well okay; yeah I am. Y'all are dumb.) Staying relatively healthy and in shape is not complicated. The secret is...(drumroll please)...DO MORE! Just do more shit. If you're doing stuff, you're not stuffing your face with all sorts of junk because you're busy. I know that when I get fat, it's because I'm sitting on my ass, and when I sit on my ass, I eat food. So get up. Go outside. Run. Or don't run. Go shopping. Start a fight club. Make out with your partner of choice. Learn how to tapdance. Make a house out of cards, because that shit is frustrating, and you'll be far too distracted to eat cookies. You know. Et cetera. Do some stuff. That's it.

Stay blogtastic!