30. Three boys. Married to a sexy geeky genius. I cook, eat, drink, craft, dance. Live for my dirty vodka martinis.
     

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Dare to Compare

I love to get items that look or perform high-end for a great price.  That’s why I’m totally addicted to mark!  Check these out:

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DTC GG Dare to Compare

DTC JG Dare to Compare

DTC KIG Dare to Compare

DTC OTD Dare to Compare

 

</center>You can get any of these mark. products at my eBoutique HERE: http://rchristian.mymarkstore.com

Wanna be a rep?  Sign up with referral code 9698262 and choose Paula Martinez from the “mentor” drop-down.  You’ll get AT LEAST 30% off all the wonderful mark. products!  Just sign up HERE: http://meetmark.com/yes

Hump Day Dump Day

I don’t know if I mentioned before, but I had decided awhile back, before Quentin was born, to pursue a career as a freelance makeup artist. Then life happened and I actually kinda forgot until Monday when a friend asked me to do her wedding makeup. It was a true lightbulb moment and I’m now taking steps to chase my dreams. icon smile Hump Day Dump Day

Speaking of makeup, YouTube has changed my life where skills and secrets are concerned. Marlena from Makeup Geek is a fellow round-faced gal and taught me how to contour my face and look slimmer. Praise God for that, right?! Then there’s Kandee Johnson, who is totally adorable and is also changing my life one video at a time. I love her undereye concealer technique! I tried it this morning and I can’t believe how amazing it is.

Every night, I get home from work fully expecting to go to bed early. And every night, something holds me up. Last night, it was watching YouTube makeup videos.

I have at least 15 ongoing projects in my house at any given time. I need to start doing one thing at at a time until it’s done. Otherwise, I take like 5 steps back. For example, I started cleaning and organizing our room weeks ago. Then I started jumping around the house and now our room looks like it did before I first started on it and was never finished in the first place.

Today I have on squeaky shoes. You know how some heels you wear, the tops of your toenails rub on the inside of your shoes and they make noise? It’s usually with pointy toed shoes. I hope I’m not the only one.

Something Wild

Y’all know I love mark. I make no secrets about that! I have only had a couple of mark. products I didn’t absolutely love. Sometimes I find something I think is the best. thing. ever. One of those things is the Something Wild purse. Wowee. I have so much love for this bag. And now, it’s only $21.99, but Thursday is the last day for this price! It won’t even be available for purchase after then, so jump on it.

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If you want to make this bag YOURS, order up here: http://rchristian.mymarkstore.com

Losin’ It: Let’s do this!

Before I begin, let me get real with you. As I type this, I’m snacking on Sixlets and Dr. Pepper.

I have battled with weight issues all through my adult life. Since having Nick six years ago, I have been “trying” to get rid of a lot of extra weight. I never lost all that weight because I never tried hard for more than a week at a time. It’s so much more fun to have lots of adult beverages, eat chips and salsa late at night, and lounge on the couch watching Bravo in your spare time. Right?!

My weight has instead fluctuated through the years. Now, my family is complete. I’m having no more kids. I’m still holding onto lots of baby weight that HAS TO GO. There are no more excuses. Now is the best time to lose it for good. I mean, even my allergic-to-diet-and-exercise husband is shedding pounds. He looks great and I’m so amazed at his diligence. He tracks what he eats and works out pretty much every day!

In order to keep myself a bit more accountable, I’m going embarrassingly public with this journey.

In the past two weeks, I’ve given things a decent run, but hit a few roadblocks. Roadblock #1 was somehow injuring my knee on like Day 4 of Jillian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred. I have taken a few days for it to feel better and in those days came Nick’s 6th birthday party. Oh, hello brownies and cookie cake, toffee dip and sixlets. Ugh.

So here we go. Party is over, knee is feeling better. Time to get to business. To help keep myself accountable, I’m getting back to MyFitnessPal as well as tracking my progress here.

Time to get embarrassingly public. Here are the “before” pictures. This is today. Sure, I kinda started a few weeks ago, but I’m considering myself to be starting over.

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The lighting and picture quality is horrible, but I kinda like it that way. As it is, you can see the stretch marks that start at my bikini line and radiate outward. Ew.

Anyway, so here it is. ~150 lbs. (Wii Fit says 153, my mom’s scale says 146. So I’m splitting the difference until I get a scale for our house.) I hope to update this weekly, but probably not pictures weekly. Maybe every 3 weeks?

Oh dear blog….

I have missed you so.

You may or may not noticed that my blog was down for a couple of weeks. I won’t get into the details, but I was working some things out with my hosting and domain and messed some stuff up. Anyway, I’m back now and have so much to post about.

Be sure to stay in touch, because I have lots of good stuff coming your way!

Life-changing products

I use the phrase “life-changing” or “it changed my life” way too often, I’m sure. Maybe I’m a bit dramatic. Well, you know what? Sometimes I really do feel like something as simple as a song or a good piece of cake can change my life. Here, the three things that are changing my life lately:

Jane Iredale pencil eyeliners

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A couple of years ago, I discovered that I can’t wear pencil eyeliners. I tried brand after brand, even those meant for sensitive eyes, and no matter what, my eyelid would blister where it was applied. I used strictly liquids and gels for awhile and then I asked my friend Shasta (expert in all things skincare and makeup!) what brand I should try next for pencils. Sometimes you just need a pencil liner and I’m too stubborn to accept that I can never wear one again. She recommended Jane Iredale liners, so I spent $11 on one. That may not seem like much money to anyone else, but I’m used to spending way less on my mark. liners. Once my Jane Iredale liner came in, I ran to the bathroom to apply it, then sat back and waited for the itching and blistering. It never came. I slept in the liner just to see what would happen. No negative consequences! I will admit I like the application and staying power of my mark liners better, but that doesn’t matter because I can’t wear them! I’m so happy to have discovered Jane Iredale, thanks to Shasta!

Spornette Little Wonder

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I have never EVER been able to tease my hair and get it to stay that way… until now. I was introduced to this TRUE little wonder by Pink Lou Lou. The girl always has a hot little pouf going on and now I can too!! Look, my first pouf’d ponytail!

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I definitely still need some practice, but I love the difference it makes in my hair! I can make bedhead look intentional with this thing!

Lysine ointment + supplements

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supplement Life changing products

I have always suffered from having damn cold sores. Many times I have called in sick to work or skipped school because of them… mine grow into HUGE clusters in the center of my upper lip. It’s horrifying. Well, that’s all over. A couple of years ago, someone told me about L-Lysine supplements, found in the vitamin section of pretty much any store. I was told if I take one daily, I’ll never have another cold sore. So far, so good! For whatever reason, I don’t get them when I’m pregnant, so I stopped taking them during this most recent pregnancy. 6 weeks after giving birth, I got a damn cold sore. I took 2 vitamin c tablets and 2 L-Lysine and ran to the store for a surface treatment. I found Lysine ointment and it was SO MUCH CHEAPER than the usual treatments. The cold sore went away quickly and you can bet I haven’t missed another L-Lysine dose!

Goals for 2012

I don’t really like to make resolutions, but I always have goals set for myself… not just at the start of the year, but always. I constantly alter them. I may set out to read 50 books, then scale it back when I take on a project I feel is more important. For me, this is the way to go because reading 30 books certainly doesn’t make one a failure. (Would just like to interject here that there are no such reading goals on my list.)

Instead of resolutions, I’d like to just strive for two things this year: To lose 38 pounds and to be a better ME. Well, the first is a very hard and fast goal, whereas the second is quite vague. I ran across this “Become a better you!” printable on The Project Girl. I plan to do one every month. It gives me a great opportunity to set mini-goals all throughout the year. Go check it out on her blog!


betteryou Goals for 2012

I’ll share my January mini-goals with you tomorrow!

Christmas Part 2

After opening gifts from Santa and having a leisurely morning of playing with new toys, we headed to my hometown an hour away to see my parents. We met up with my brother and his girlfriend at my mom’s house, where we all exchanged gifts.

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And because I just realized that there wasn’t enough left of the story for a Part Two, I’m going to throw in some “What I Wore” right here in this post.

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I used something Santa brought me to give myself some fab root lift (more about that in another post). Unfortunately, I ran out of time and patience mid-curling my hair, so I put it in a pony. The good news is, thanks to that same stocking stuffer, my hair never looked better pulled back! When I asked Dustin if he noticed anything different about my ponytail, he said, “It looks more alive.” YES!

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As far as what I wore, I basically wore the cardigan and yoga pants outfit from here, but wore flats and a different scarf. The scarf was actually given to me by Lili in a bloggers’ scarf swap in the fall. Love it!

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I dipped into my eyeshadow trio from mark that is no longer available, but you can find similar shades here.

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Christmas Recap Part 1

I am still mourning the fact that I don’t have a camera right now and until about February, it’s not really in the budget. So, I don’t have many pictures from Christmas and what I have is pitiful. My stepson Jude came from Orlando and stayed with us the week leading up to Christmas. That was absolute insanity. The boys really enjoyed themselves, which means they worked me to death. I took care of all FOUR boys (under 6) while Dustin went to work in the evenings. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.


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Through a turn of events I don’t want to get into, Jude ended up sleeping in our bed the whole time he was here.


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Once Jude headed back to Florida, things slowly started getting back to normal except, of course, for Christmas. This year I decided to start new traditions. We started a LOT at once, but it was fun. We started Elf on the Shelf right after Thanksgiving. How fun! We also started Christmas Eve traditions. We gave the boys PJs to wear to bed that night, a Christmas book to read before bed (The Night Before Christmas), and gave each an ornament that represents something they were interested in this year. The Christmas Eve photos are exceptionally blurry. I didn’t realize there was some sort of gunk all over my cell phone camera’s lens.


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After opening their traditional gifts, we all had refreshments. For Mom and Dad…
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Ice cream for the boys…

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Once the boys were in bed, I gave myself a festive manicure, then Santa came!


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After opening gifts early early Christmas morning, we lounged around and played for awhile, then went to my mom’s house.


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Hump Day [Photo] Dump Day

I have so many random pictures on my phone and had intended to fully blog about some of them. But ya know what? It’s just not happening. Too much going on this holiday week. So instead, you get lots of photos, some with explanations, some without.


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Harper shared his train with Quentin.

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Sharing is hard. Harper fell asleep here that night.

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This was the first day I got dressed in something other than maternity pants… new yoga pants.

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I’ve also been pairing my yoga pants with men’s flannel, because my stuff doesn’t fit.

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My new favorite, Chicken Parmesan Bake. Recipe coming soon. In fact, I have lots of new recipes to add to the “Simple Recipes” page.

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Oh yeah. That happened.

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Loving cloth diapers more and more every day.

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Quentin hates tummy time…

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… but loves resting on the floor after.

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Nick has been playing a lot on the Wii, with his tongue sticking out.

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I got dressed and did my hair for Nick’s Kindergarten Christmas program. That’s always news.

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Always with the weird faces.

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Wrapped teacher gifts with NOTHING wrapping-related, since I forgot to get anything. Used mark. delivery bags and covered the logo with scrapbook paper and free printables. The gift was body lotion from mark and rhinestone-studded pencils, if you’re curious.

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Just a funny example of the weirdness that abounds in our home. Irreverence and reverence sharing a wall.

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This little dude has been smiling at me!!!! The highlight of my life!

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