Kiss and Makeup Giveaway-Closed

I promised a giveaway and it has arrived!  This giveaway was originally going to have two winners, but I thought I'd sweeten the deal a little bit and have four winners instead.  The rules are simple: to enter, you have to follow my blog and leave a comment on this post telling me what you like best about either fall or winter, as well as your email address, in case you're a winner.  For an extra entry, share my giveaway in one of your own blogposts and link to it in a comment, separate from your first comment.  I'll pick the first two winners using a random number generator, and they'll get to pick which prize they would like.  They also get to choose which two commenters on this post win the other prizes.  This giveaway ends December 5th, so there should be enough time to get more than just four people entering.  This giveaway is only for people in the US and Canada, because I am poor and that is where I can afford to mail the prizes to.

The prizes that the winners get to choose from are these.

One of these Personi lipsticks, color in picture is accurate except the pink is about two shades darker in real life, they are brand new and unopened and have Vitamin E and aloe which nourishes your lips, I wanted a good red lipstick and the 3-pack was such a good deal that I bought it and now I'm giving away the other two

this charm bracelet, I'm giving it away because I never really wear bracelets

this necklace, the butterfly looks and feels like jade but I don't think it is, I'm giving it away because it just doesn't go with my style ( I totally have a style, it's just eclectic and usually weird, and mainly consists of guitar shirts, don't judge me)

To summarize, this giveaway lasts until December 5th and is open only to residents of the US and Canada.  To enter, you MUST follow my blog and leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite thing about fall or winter and your email address.  To gain an extra optional entry, write about my giveaway on your blog and link to the post in a separate comment on this post.

Best of luck to everyone.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

With the changing of the seasons come changes to my blog. Did you see that nifty ad box in my blog's upper right corner? That's here to stay now.  And, depending on its success, more ad boxes might join it.  In other news, I'm going to start taking this "I'm a freelance graphic designer" thing seriously.  I ordered some business cards today, 100 of them.  There was this promotional deal where I got them for free and just had to pay shipping.  In hindsight, I should have probably made my company website first, but oh well.  So yeah, I run my own company now.  It's called Honeybee Designs and I plan to create my new website for free using Blogger, so you guys will be the first ones to know once that's up and running.  G and I are really starting to get into the holiday spirit.  Mainly because it's nearly freezing out lately, 40 degrees F.  So yesterday we bought pumpkin ice cream and ate it while cuddling under blankets watching movies.  Two movies we watched over the weekend that were both really good and are on Netflix, that you should totally watch, but I'm not going to review them properly right now, since this blogpost is going to be long enough without it, are Paper Man and Cherry.  Paper Man is one of my new favorite movies.  And Cherry is also pretty fantastic.  So watch those.

In football, the Washington Huskies got their butts thoroughly kicked by Stanford Cardinal this past weekend.  Let's just say we lost by over 30 points and leave it at that.  Seattle Seahawks and Cleveland Browns played a game of who sucks slightly less on Sunday.  Nobody scored a touchdown, but the Browns beat the Seahawks 6-3.  Truly pathetic.  Sidenote: in my mind, today is Monday.  Because G took the week off to work on his paper for his master's degree and I've been staying at his house until today.  I helped him transcribe his entire 48 minute long video for his paper.  It took me significantly longer than 48 minutes.

The other big news is that I am going to start reselling thrift store clothing and stuff on eBay in an attempt to make some extra money.  It was G's idea, since he always marvels at the things I find for so cheap at thrift stores, and he hasn't even seen the little black dress I got on my last trip yet.  So I plan to list all of the clothing I don't wear and use whatever money I make off of that as capital to buy more stuff to resell.  I'll blog about how that goes, of course.

In other news, I received my E.L.F. order today and I'm really excited about that.  Like I said, I'll review one product from that every once in a while on here, so you can expect to see lots more pictures of me in the future. 

And last of all, I have an announcement: in my next blogpost, I will be having a giveaway with two winners, who will each receive a tube of lipstick, so watch out for that.

I hope you are all staying warm and healthy, and I'll be back again soon.

Sick of Being Sick

Hey guys, I'm still sick.  Here's proof.

poor-quality picture of me laying in bed in my pajamas

I'm sick as a dog, a very sick dog.  This morning I woke up, and changed my pajamas for different pajamas that I didn't sleep in.  The only food we have right now is cereal, so I texted my roommate to see if she can get me some more instant oatmeal and cup o noodles.  She texted back that she's busy but she texted my other roommate.  I've received no reply.  So today I will continue my sick-day tradition of watching Gremlins at least one time while I am sick.  I also plan to watch Gremlins 2, which I haven't seen yet.  I don't know how this became my tradition but it seems fitting with Halloween coming up.

As delicious as boiling water is with honey, cinnamon, and pepper, I'd much rather be healthy and drinking hot cocoa.  At least I have lots of great blogs to read to occupy my time.  Thanks for being so entertaining, everyone.

And on that note, everyone say hi to my newest follower, Chio.  I just discovered her blog, Happy Dying Sun, and it's great so you should all go check it out.  I'm off to rest and drink plenty of fluids.

Also, these are some ridiculous Halloween costumes that actually exist: sexy rubber ducky, sexy pool table, sexy Hulk Hogan (complete with mustache), sexy Freddie Krueger, sexy woodchipper, sexy Scrabble board, sexy snowman, sexy Tin Man (from The Wizard of Oz), sexy Brian from Family Guy, and sexy George Washington.  The good news is there aren't any sexy Hitler costumes (that I can find anyway), but there are children's Hitler costumes.

Thoughts from a Feverish Brain

Guess what, everyone? I have a cold, once again. To make things worse, our house is almost out of food, and I don't think shopping is a thing I'll feel up to anytime soon. I only have one of each "sick day food/drink left", which means one cup o noodles, one packet of instant oatmeal, and the mix for one cup of russian tea (a super awesome drink for when you have a sore throat, which my amazing mother makes me the mix for and she's sending me more, and she totally unexpectedly sent me a check for this month's rent, because she's so ridiculously super awesome). So anyway, my death cough has returned and I'm trying to take it easy. Filling out job applications is totally taking it easy, right?! I did job applications yesterday and today I've been taking it easy for reals. Want proof? I finished watching all the shows in my Hulu queue, so I cleaned up my blogroll, then searched out new blogs to read/follow.

And then I got to thinking: there is probably some stuff you guys don't know about me that you would find interesting. So now it's sharing time!

1. I sing in the shower. I have only started doing this since I moved into this apartment and there's nobody here during the day. Some of my favorite songs to sing in the shower are I'm Yours by Jason Mraz, Love Song by Sara Bareilles, Bubbly by Taylor Swift, and Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri. The last one is super depressing but it's such a fun song to sing, in my opinion, if you ignore the lyrics.
2. My all-time favorite cheer up song is Build Me Up Buttercup by The Foundations. It's so bizarre because if you actually listen to the lyrics, it's not a happy song, but the piano part is just so cheery that you can't help but smile.
3. I can sneeze realistically on purpose. I'm not sure how/when I discovered this particular skill? talent?
4. I cannot lick my elbow, though I have attempted on numerous occasions.
5. I am super ridiculously awesome at keeping a hula hoop up, not doing any tricks, but I can keep it up for hours at a time, and have done so in the past, while either reading a book, playing my Nintendo DS, or doing my Rubik's cube, because after about 5 minutes hula hooping gets boring. I can also do the macarena while hula hooping.
6. I know some karate and could kill a person with my bare hands if I needed to, and they didn't have a gun or a knife.
7. I know how to cross stitch and it was one of my biggest hobbies in middle school and the first part of high school. It slowly became replaced by other things and I sort of forgot about it until today.
8. Not to brag or anything but I'm a pretty good flute player. I would probably play it a lot more if I could find where I put the sheet music I printed out for classic rock songs, as well as The Legend of Zelda and Mario. I may or may not have a Star Wars sheet music book and know how to play every song in it.
9. I can do handstand pushups, like against a wall.
10. I have never been trick-or-treating in my entire life, because my dad always called it "the devil's holiday" and Halloween was always the day my parents had a huge fight (just verbal but it still scars a kid), since my mom wanted us to go but my dad didn't. My dad always won.
11. I have this crazy wish to be a model, that I haven't told anyone until just now. But it's not so much to be a model as just to have pictures of me that are like model quality, and that I look really good in. I am not a photogenic person. Also, I want to be given a makeover.
12. I have just finished watching "My So-called Life", which is a show from the 90's so I might be using the word "like" a lot more than I ever should, at least for a while.

So that's some stuff I felt like sharing with you all. One more thing, I intend to design a proper blog layout sometime very soon, since it is something I haven't taken time out for, and it's really starting to bug me.

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Prepare for discombobulation; you have been warned.

I've been MIA for a few days.  I had the most awful migraine headache EVER for three days straight.  G was starting to get worried about me and started tossing around words like brain tumor and brain aneurysm, which started making me feel pretty worried too.  But he talked to his mom, who is a nurse, and she said it's most likely just a migraine, and if I start having other symptoms with it to see a doctor, but for now just to take some ibuprofen and try to sleep it off.  So that was Wednesday through Friday.  I felt quite a bit better on Saturday and had just the tail end of the migraine hanging on, but I took some more ibuprofen and it let go by game time.  Which was great, since I got to watch the Washington Huskies thoroughly stomp the Colorado Buffaloes 52-24.  We are now 5-1.  Washington Huskies are now a ranked team, number 22 in the AP ranking.  We take on number 7 ranked Stanford Cardinal, who has had an undefeated season so far, on Saturday.  It's certainly going to be interesting.

Now my allergies are being ridiculous, but other than that I'm feeling great.

I would like to welcome my newest blog follower, The Silver Swann.  She's really friendly and very nice, so be sure to stop by her blog and say hi, maybe enter her bracelet giveaway.  She can also be found on Etsy, which is where we first "met" one another.  She handcrafts some amazing jewelry, and you should go check out her Etsy shop as well.

And now I would like to wish a happy birthday to one of my first subscribers ever.  She's a lethal combination of writer and fashionista.  She's got looks and brains, and some super-cool tattoos.  And she writes an awesome blog.  So if you get a chance, stop by and tell her happy birthday.

Tsaritsa, I hope you're birthday is super duper fantastic and  you're surrounded by your loved ones having a great time right now (now, as in, when I'm writing it, not when you're reading it, unless you normally surround yourself with your loved ones to read blogs).  Anyway, I thought I'd go along with the theme of your dad's birthday greeting, and get you something cat-themed as well, so here's a cat playing you happy birthday.



And the last thing I want to discuss is E.L.F.  I never knew how inexpensive some of their makeup is!  I always hear people talking about their stuff and I just assume it's some sort of brand that I can't afford.  But I stumbled upon their website yesterday, and if you're poor like me, listen up.  They have all of the basic stuff you need for $1 each!  I'm not sure how great the quality of some of it is, but I know that it's been in different magazines and stuff.  Anyway, I ordered a bunch of stuff, since they sent me a code for $10 worth of $1 each products for free with a $20 or more purchase.  So I bought $36.95 worth of products, with shipping included, for $26.95, and I'll be reviewing everything once I get it.  I'm pretty excited, since at the moment my makeup collection is very small.  I only have one brush, one eyeshadow palette, three single eyeshadows, one mascara, one eyeliner, foundation, concealer, and two kinds of lip gloss.  I will be getting two different palettes, one with 60 eyeshadow colors, 20 lip colors, 3 blushes, and 2 bronzers, and the other with 20 lip colors and 28 eyeshadow colors.  That is the $20 portion of my order.  For my $1 each products, that would end up being free, I chose: a foundation brush, a blush, 3 different kinds of lip gloss, a lipstick, a mascara, an eyeliner, a foundation, and a concealer.  It should arrive in about 10 days, and then I'll review one product every time I blog.  If you visit their site right now, they have 2 really great deals going.  The first is you can get an 83-piece set that normally costs $35.00 for only $3.50, with any $25 minimum order.  The other deal is free shipping on an order of over $25.  These deals cannot be combined, however, as E.L.F. only allows one code per order.  Their site is very user-friendly, and if the inexpensive products are any good, I'll be saving lots of trips to the drugstore.  So I'll just have to wait and see if these products are any good or if the saying, "You get what you pay for" applies here.

I have an announcement: Sometime in the not-too-distant future, I'll be doing a giveaway, so be on the lookout for that.

Another Post for the Ladies

Does anybody want to buy some shoes for $15?  Maybe some shoes like these?
 
How about purses for the same low price?

 
Or maybe a nice jacket such as one of these for the unbelievable price of $15?  Have I got your attention yet?



Not to mention fashionable clothing (including swimsuits, jeans, tops, skirts, and dresses) for, of course, $15.

You're probably wondering why I am spinning such fabulous tales of a magical land where clothing can be sold as these insane prices.  Maybe you think I've been hitting the cough syrup too hard.  But no, click here and all of your wildest dreams will come true.  (Well, maybe not the one where you're sliding down a rainbow while eating chocolate, but all of your inexpensive clothing dreams will most definitely come true.)

If you love a bargain as much as me, then you had better click that link.  Then pinch yourself to make sure you aren't dreaming.

I was doing some early Christmas shopping today and got a $10 off coupon for shoebuy.com as a bonus gift.  Does anybody want it?  It expires October 31.

When Life Gives you Overripe Bananas

Or more accurately, when you notice your roommate's bananas will surely go bad by tomorrow if they aren't eaten as soon as possible, you bake banana muffins.  That's what I did this morning, and they are delicious.  There were only two bananas, so I made half the recipe, except I still used a whole egg, and not a half, and they turned out very moist and delicious.  At the risk of making you drool on your computer, here's a picture.

Notice how I couldn't resist taking a bite out of one before snapping the photo.

In other news, G and I finally beat Little Big Planet! The end was very challenging, as the end to any proper video game should be.  We'll still be playing it a lot though, since we haven't collected all of the items on every level yet.  Last week, I made some blackberry syrup, which really isn't too difficult unless you wait too long to strain out the berries and then it turns into blackberry jelly.  It was super delicious with some homemade (not from a mix) pancakes on Saturday night.  I even made one pancake into the shape of a heart for G, a sort of lopsided heart, but making pancakes into shapes is not an easy thing to do.  We didn't do anything this weekend, aside from beating the game, except lay around watching scary movies and cuddling.  He tried really hard to get me to watch a scary clown movie, but I refused because I am scared to death of clowns.  Like if I see a clown in real life, I have to walk on the other side of the street and avoid eye contact with it.  It's not because of any movies either.  It's partially because of John Wayne Gacy and partially just because a smiling clown looks evil no matter what.  After unsuccessfully trying to convince me to watch a scary clown movie for at least 20 minutes, he relented and we watched Hellraiser III, even though neither of us have seen the first two.  We found out that you can still understand the third even if you haven't seen the first two, and it's kind of a dumb movie, but it was alright.  I give it 3 out of 5 stars.  I have discovered that I love Indian food, which I never had before meeting him.  His mom brought some home for us on Saturday.  (He lives with his mom right now, until he finishes his master's, because rent is free and college is expensive.  He has the entire finished basement to himself.) Anyway, we had garlic naan and mango curry and lamb with some sort of delicious green sauce and saffron rice.  It is my new favorite food.  I also discovered that I no longer hate orange juice.  I actually like it a lot.  My grandparents always used to buy this really sour orange juice when I was growing up, so I thought I didn't like orange juice.  Now that I realized that I like orange juice, I am going to drink a lot of it, so I hopefully will stop getting sick so often.


Having a boyfriend has been amazing for my self esteem.  He tells me I'm beautiful all the time.  On Sunday, I was getting ready for church and I didn't put on any makeup except foundation and he told me that I look so pretty all the boys at church are going to hit on me (which they did not).  Anyway, I just took a random picture of myself.  I haven't taken a shower today or brushed my hair, but I still think I look pretty good.  And don't think I'm all full of myself or anything.  I used to have zero self esteem, possibly a negative amount, so it's good that I can look at myself and not feel like I'm horribly unattractive.

I love the way this shirt brings out the green in my eyes

In other news, I haven't heard back from either place I applied for a job at yet.  When I was on the Ave on Sunday, I noticed at least four stores are hiring, so I'm going to go check them out before church on Wednesday.  Hopefully I'll get something soon, before I have to dip into my life savings to pay my rent.

Check out this cool mural I saw when I was hanging out with my friend a few weeks ago.  Dinosaurs, alien (plant?)s, and mutant flowers, oh my!

Read this if You're Female or if you know someone who is

I was looking at my blogger stats and noticed a url that mentioned something about free clothing.  Curious about what the catch is, I clicked the link.  This site that sells clothing has a program where if your fashion or lifestyle blog gets enough traffic, they'll send you a free item of clothing to talk about in your blog, and you get to keep the clothing.  It's a pretty sweet deal for all you fashion bloggers out there.  I'm talking to you, Amanda.  Even if you don't have a fashion or lifestyle blog, I checked out their store and they have some really great stuff for literally any budget.  And when I say any budget, I mean they have hundreds of items that cost less than $5.  They have 409 pairs of shoes that cost under $10.  That's right, shoes!  There are also a ton of super cute boots for under $20.  So whether you're a female trying to expand your wardrobe without spending a lot of money or you're a guy wanting to buy a surprise gift for your lady friend, but you don't have a whole lot of money, you should definitely check it out.  And don't forget that Christmas is just two months away.  It's never to early to start shopping for presents.  They take PayPal and most credit cards.  It does cost $15 to ship from their store in China to the United States, but you'll save so much money on everything that it will outweigh the shipping cost.

That Football Post I Promised

Normally I watch a lot more football than I did this weekend, but this weekend was mine and G's 1 month of dating officially anniversary.  We've actually been dating for more like 3 months.  We went out to anniversary lunch at Red Robin, and had burgers and fries (I picked the place) and it was great.  Sidenote: I know that a girl's boyfriend is supposed to pay for her food and that's completely normal and everything, but I still feel weird about having him pay for stuff, like at fancy restaurants.  For example, he took me to a fancy Italian restaurant for our one-week anniversary (we had that because he knows he's my first boyfriend ever) and I was sort of really awkward the whole night because I knew it was costing him a lot of money.  Thankfully, he thinks it's cute when I'm awkward, so it was alright.  At any rate, I pick un-expensive places when he has me pick where to eat and I order just about the cheapest thing on the menu, because apparently I'm weird.  I'm not going to try to psycho-analyze any of that because this post is not for me freaking myself out or whatever.  It's for talking about the two football games that I watched this weekend.  Oh yeah, our 1 month anniversary was Saturday, so I only watched the Huskies game that day, and then it was G's niece's 5th birthday on Sunday so we went to her party and we only caught the last half of the Seahawks game, except for the fact that we both fell asleep and missed the end, but i know the score anyway.  Very very long story short, I'll only be commenting on the Huskies game this week.

And guess what? The Washington Huskies beat the Utah Utes 31-14, making them 4-1 with a bye week before playing Colorado on October 15.  The Utes had way too many turnovers and their quarterback Jordan Wynn ended up having to sit out with an injured shoulder, the shoulder of his non-throwing arm, while our quarterback Keith Price played the entire game with both of his knees injured.  Originally, the Utes had started to recruit Keith Price, but then stopped when something seemingly better came along, and Keith Price was determined to show them what they missed out on.  Their motto for the game seemed to be, "If it's not broken, don't fix it", as Keith Price continued to hand-off the ball, more often than not to Chris Polk, a key player in Saturday's game against the Utes.  Chris Polk got a first down nearly every single time he ran the ball, chalking up 189 yards on 29 carries, moving him into second place on UW's all-time rushing list.  By the 4th quarter, UW fans were saying, "We got this", while Utah fans were drowning their sorrows at the impending loss.  It was a good game, and really proved how tough Keith Price is, and I for one, am proud of the Huskies.

So guys, that was for you, despite the fact that it's probably irrelevant for everyone who reads my blog, but a promise is a promise, so there you go.  I blogged about football.

After the game, G and I danced for a while and then we had a basketball competition.  He has a little basketball hoop on his bedroom door and two small "basketballs" and we play horse occasionally.  On this particular occasion, we made a bet which I was sure I would lose, since I was drunk and basketball is very very difficult when drunk.  If I won, he would take me to the Space Needle, and if he won, I would bake him cinnamon rolls (keep in mind that I don't have money and that my cinnamon rolls are awesome, okay still not a fair bet but whatever).  Anyway, I owe him cinnamon rolls now.  But he did end up with an "h" at least.

One more thing, Sunday night he asked permission to kiss me, which he has never done ever (he's never asked permission, I mean. we kiss a ton), and it was super sweet and I loved it.  Also, I figured out how to get his Sim City 2000 to work on Windows Vista (It was made in 1993) and I was watching him play it and I was helping out, keeping an eye out for fires and stuff like that and I started calling him Mr. Mayor, and then he left for a few minutes and left me in charge of not letting his city be destroyed while he was away.  When he left, part of the city was on fire, and when he came back I had put it out and he let me keep playing and started calling me the mayor's wife, which I totally loved.  And then later, he drew a heart out of trees he planted on the game.  We are such nerds.

This morning, I couldn't go back to sleep and it was like 6:30 so I went to check my email on his computer and I saw a file on his desktop called "most wanted movies", so I transferred the file to my netbook and I am going to surprise him by downloading all of the movies for him.  He's been pretty stressed lately, because he is refining his paper to get his master's degree in psychology, and his paper got rejected the first time, and this is his last chance, so I think this will be a nice surprise.