The Latest

Natural Beauty

By

Like many people these days, I try to cut out chemicals my life wherever possible.  I make my own household cleaners and try to eat things that aren’t that processed.  I have a mentality of “I do what I can.”  I’m not OT Level 8 Thetan Crunchy, but I try to live a good life however possible.  I try to not eat splenda, I use stevia instead, and I recycle things.  I grow some of my own herbs and save a lot of weird stuff I think I’m going to re-purpose into a craft.  This is kind of how hoarding starts, just one little craft table with empty yogurt cups, glass bottles and some soup cans.  Then I’m saving  bags of hair under my mattress and trying to pass off my “treasures” to Adult Protective Services as vital to my survival.

I love trying natural beauty recipes.  I have never gone the full throttle “no-poo” hair method long term because I am afraid of being dirty and greasy.  No-poo involves not using any shampoo, and cleansing your hair with a baking soda rinse and an apple-cider vinegar rinse for conditioning.

I also like to fancy myself some kind of scientist guinea pig test dummy for stupid shit I see on Pinterest.

I saw this article about using honey to wash your face, and I was skeptically intrigued.  I love honey and it’s healthy, healing properties are a godsend for me during cold & flu season.  I am careful about trying too many things out on my face because I have sensitive skin that is super acne-prone, so even thinking about a new skin regimen can make me breakout.  But my skin’s been acting pretty good lately so I figured I’d try out the honey thing.  The basic premise is to wash your face with honey.  That’s it.

So one Sunday morning I brought the honey bear with me to the shower and washed my face.  It felt OK.  Nothing huge to report, except that the scent of honey can be overwhelming when it’s all over your face.  There’s not much to say about this except I thought it would be stickier and it really wasn’t.  My skin looked fine afterwards.

Fast forward to the next morning when I’m ready to try this honey-wash shit again.  When I was done washing the day before, I put the honey bear on my window sill just outside of the shower, so I could grab it easily in the morning when I wash my face.  I opened the cap and ANTS.  ANTS CAME OUT.  This is how I found out that ants will come in my bathroom I guess if I leave honey at the window.  The window doesn’t even open, by the way.  These voracious little honey-hungry motherfuckers found their way inside a room with a window that doesn’t even have the capacity to fucking open.

Thus ended my brief fling with natural beauty honey facial cleansing.  Cetaphil it is.

Smooth Criminal

By

This is a collaboration post with beauty blogger Kizzy over at Kizzy-Online.com. Want to know how she gears up for Summer and gets rid of unnecessary hair? Read her super-helpful post here.

 

Here in New Jersey, it’s starting to get warm again.  Summer is on the way, after a long and grueling winter, it is nice to look forward to things like pool time, beaches and being outside without my nips freezing off.  Part of getting ready for summer is getting rid of the layer of winter fur we (or at least, I…) accumulate with the excuse of “I need it to stave off winter’s chill.”  In reality, no one is seeing my legs in winter so I’m not spending the extra time shaving them.  Shaving, honestly, only takes me about 5 minutes.  I love using the Schick Intuition razor that has the shaving cream bar built around the razor.  It’s my go-to standard I’ve been using for 10 years after first trying it out while on vacation at the shore.  I’ve tried a lot of stuff in the name of getting effortlessly-smooth legs, and this is what I’ve settled on.  However, there were some bumps along the way before I found my Ol’ Reliable razor. Gather round for a cautionary tale of hair-removal adventures….

Once upon a time, 19 year old Nadine was super excited for summer and wanted to be smooth and sexy.  She had a hot date, a short sun dress and not a care in the world.  In an effort to up my sexiness, I thought I’d try Nair for super smooth legs that lasted longer than shaving.  In case you don’t know, Nair is a hair-removal cream that is essentially lye with additives.  The cream did the job and left the my legs super smooth.  The Nair also left a vague rotten-egg smell while it was doing its job.  They don’t mention that in the commercials of girls in bikinis happily singing “who wears short shorts.”  No one wants to say “who smells like burnt hair and a hard-boiled egg.”

Fully confident enough to wear an adorable sundress for my date the next day, I thought “well…. if my legs look this good and ready for anything, maybe it would work just as well on my bikini line!”  Doom.  Do you hear the ominous music playing right now, because I should have.  This was a Bad Idea.  A Very Bad Idea.  Naive Nineteen Year Old Nadine thought she was gonna get her lady-zone ready in case this date went super well.  Hello, waxing is expensive and Nair is like five bucks.  This had to be a slam-dunk idea, right?

It starts off with “well this side is uneven” and then “well now it makes this side look uneven” and that charade goes back and forth until you essentially give in and think “well how about we try the Brazilian look and be REALLY sexy” instead of owning up to the fact that you can’t do anything symmetrically.

It starts with good intentions to have a sexy vagina, impress a guy you’ve been lusting after and feeling like a woman.  The end result is the fact that you don’t put lye near your private parts.  You don’t use Nair on your vagina region thinking that the indications on the bottle CLEARLY stating that fact is just trying to rain on your parade.  Don’t do it.  Summer is coming, and you want to enjoy it.  Not end up cancelling your plans for days on end and laying spread-eagle with an ice pack on your vag for days on end.  That’s not how you start the summer at all.  But by all means, if you want a horribly chemically-burned private area that makes you want to just live in a bath-tub full of ice like someone just stole your kidney, by all means, put Nair on your cooter.

 

Amazon.com Customer Reviews for Veet echo my sentiments quite well.

 

Be sure to check my pal Kizzy’s blog and see what she’s got going on 🙂 

 

The Story of Nope: My Morning

By

 

My day started terribly.

I’m a failure at adulthood, and I don’t know how often any of ya’ll wash your bras, but me?  They live in a pile on the floor for about a week and I gentle-wash and then air dry them.  But anyways, there’s a pile for “worn, but wearable” clothes on my bathroom floor next to my hamper of “definitely dirty so probably don’t wear this, but I bet you’ll try anyways you dirtbag, at least don’t wear the shirt with the taco stain on it” clothes.

This morning, I did my bathroom routines of cleansing and satanic sacrificial rituals to the gods of “make wrinkles and grey hairs stop,” grabbed a bra and a pair of jeans from off the floor and headed into the bedroom to finish getting ready.

I went to put on my grey bra and saw a little piece of lint on the inside.  No big deal, I thought, that is what happens when your bathroom floor is your wardrobe.  That’s just life on the streets, yo.  As i went to pick the lint off, THE LINT WALKED AWAY FROM MY GRASP, BECAUSE IT WAS A SPIDER.

 

 

 

 

 

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

A SPIDER WAS IN MY BRA.

 

All aboard the nope train to FuckThatVille.

 

 

 

 

Then I threw my bra on the floor and screamed and lit the whole house on fire.

Congrats to my Giveaway Winner!

By

Using Rafflecopter I drew a winner for my giveaway!  It was my first time using this website’s service and I was very impressed at how easy it was.

 

Congrats to Kizzy!  One of my best good internet friends 🙂

kizzy

 

If you don’t know by now, Kizzy is an awesome person who runs a sleek and relatable beauty blog, Kizzy-Online.com.  She has great make-up tips, recommendations, giveaways, and sometime she even puts up pics of her adorable son.  I’ve benefitted from her blog in that I found a face cleanser that actually works (got it free from one of her giveaways and have been loving Coral Actives ever since), and I learned how to get my eye shadow to stay put all day…. (read about eye shadow primer here).  I’m basically a clueless toddler when it comes to putting on makeup.  If I have a good eyeliner day, you better believe I snapchat, instagram and text that selfie to anyone I’ve seen in the past 10 years.

Kizzy and I have been online-buddies for a few years.  We became twitter friends through the shared interest of our favorite podcast Keith and the Girl.  KATG recently launched their app for iPhones in the app store so make sure you download it – It’s so streamlined and easy to get to all your favorite features of their show.  My favorite part of the app is that it sends me a little alert to let me know the show is starting!  Keith and the Girl just celebrated their 9th year of podcasting.  I’ve been listening since the wayback, and though it may sound corny, this show has been a huge part of my life.  I’ve listened to Keith and Chemda through the good times and the bad.  They’ve made me feel better when I was going through my divorce.  When I’d found out that they were going through their own breakup as I was going through my divorce, it made me feel so much better, to know that I wasn’t alone in my hard time.  I’ve been introduced to some awesome comedians that I wouldn’t have otherwise heard of and now follow their career successes like a proud mama bear.

So basically Kizzy should be thanking Keith and Chemda for the personal hand-crocheted item I’m going to start making for her is what I’m trying to tell you.

(Also if you’re reading this and going to KATG week, I’m probably going to the 4/18 show if you’re gonna be there!)

Click Here to subscribe to Keith and the Girl in iTunes

katg week
katg.com

New Blog Home ! Giveaway ! Special !

By

Thanks to my boyfriend Mike who is starting his own small business/personal touch web design services for people at his new site Dimension Six Design, I now have my own domain, new layout, and have moved away from Blogspot.

I’m a difficult “client” by the way.

Mike:  What kind of website do you want?

Me:  I don’t know… something cool looking.  With pink.  And modern.  And round.  And thingees.

Mike:  …..ok, but what does that mean?

Me:  I don’t know!  Why don’t you know!  I just don’t know!

It was like getting blood from a stone discerning what kind of things I actually wanted.  All I could tell him definitively was that I wanted rounded corners, thingees that link to my Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.  Definitely check out my tumblr if you’re into weird shit.  I update that (reblog shit) on the daily.  And “like” my facebook page.

I mentioned I was going to do a giveaway, and this one is special and it is different.  To celebrate my new blog’s home, I want to personally crochet something for you.  Something little, let’s not go crazy.  I’ve been really into making these coffee sleeves lately and I will make one of those or some other small thing of your choosing … for 3 lucky winners.  I’ll pick a winner next week, so enter below and comment or tweet at me to let me know you’re in it!

*AND BOOKMARK MY NEW URL – NightCaffeine.com

a Rafflecopter giveaway