Rachel Knows... D.I.Y. Pore Strips.

I was going to go to Publix earlier and buy some Biore Pore Strips, when I remembered that I knew how to make my own pore strips at home. I learned this lovely little D.I.Y. tip by surfing Pinterest. I pinned it from this site. This is a very inexpensive, quick, fun trick that really honestly works just as well at those expensive pore strips. What got me thinking about pore strips was the fact that I haven't seen much change in my pores since I started using my Clarisonic. That was the main reason I got the Clarisonic, for my pores. I thought maybe if I cleared out all of the built up gunk that the Clarisonic might have an easier time cleaning out and shrinking my pores. I think it will take a few days of doing the pore "strips" to actually work, but using it just the one night made a difference. I did things a tiny bit different than the website that I got the "recipe" from. I'll show what I used and tell you how to do it yourself at home.

Rachel Knows... Ear Piercing Update!

I forgot to tell you what happened with my earring. I hadn't looked at them at all since I got them pierced on Friday so I went to look at them in the mirror and they had some discharge and "crusties." I got a Q-Tip and the saline wound wash they told me to buy and was gently cleaning around the wound when all of a sudden the little bead that was on the hoop came off! Here's a reminder of what it looks like:

Rachel Knows... Ear Piercings!

Sooooooooooo... I got my ears pierced. This is only, oh, about the 7th time I've gotten it done. No, I don't have multiple piercings. I have one in each ear. It is just that every time I get them pierced, they become horribly infected and I have to take them out. I even got two piercings in each ear one time. You're talking about hurting. Man that was some bad pain when all four of those got infected. I always went to Claire's to get my ears pierced. I kept thinking I was getting the wrong metal type. I went back over the years until I'd tried every metal type they offered. None of them worked. I decided to do some research and that lead me to a tattoo parlor and body piercing studio. They offered piercings called Anatometal. It is surgical grade stainless steel. It is the same stuff they use to implant into humans during surgery. This stuff is guaranteed to not cause a reaction. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but with my track history, I'm not holding my breath. As most of you probably know and for those of you who don't, (Mom, I'm talking to you) body piercing studios use hollow point needles. They do not use guns. The guns are bad news bears. They tear up your ear, they aren't sanitized properly and they just all together suck. While I was getting pierced I was talking with my piercing lady, (I don't know what their title is) she asked me to tell her about why I'd had so many piercings, yet none of them lasted. That got us talking about Claire's and piercing guns in general. They told me that in Texas piercing guns were outlawed, because of a hepatitis outbreak that they traced back to a piercing gun at a local mall. Thousands of people were affected. They have sterile jewelry that is inserted, but the guns themselves aren't sterilized and they use them on everyone. Another thing that isn't sterilized that is always used at Claire's are the markers that they use to put the colored dots onto the ear. They touch everyone's ears. So gross when you think of the thousands of greasy, dirty, funky ears that marker has touched and then those germs are thrust into the huge puncture wound seconds later. No wonder people are getting sick and why my ears keep getting infected. Well, like I said I'm not holding my breath, but I really pray these work and that I can have pierced ears for my wedding. Everyone in Nashville should make a trip to Icon Tattoo and Body Piercing. Ask for Betty Ann and tell her Rachel sent you. (She'll have no clue that I am. Ha-Ha) Here are the results of my excursion.

 















I finally have hoops! Plus, they have cute little pearl beads on them. I really love them!

I got further in depth in the video about my piercing experience, past and present. I also talk more about my conversation with my piercing lady about why guns are so bad, plus I demonstrate the difference between how a single needle piercing is so much different that a piercing gun. Don't ya love demonstrations? Ha-ha. Just watch it, why don't ya.

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Mineral Eye Shadow swatches and big pores.

I FINALLY, after meaning to for probably a month now, have gotten swatches of my e.l.f. mineral eye shadows. I love, love, love their mineral eye shadows. They honestly feel and look just like the uber expensive Bare Minerals brand. The e.l.f. eye shadows can be found at http://www.eyeslipsface.com/ for $3 a piece. It is such an insanely, amazingly incredible deal when you get them home and realize how much product you're getting for $3. This stuff could last you years if it didn't go bad. I don't know what the shelf life on these guys are though. Sorry. :-( I do however know that these are an incredible investment. I have every color besides the greens and the blues. I don't do greens and blues. Nothing against those who do, it just doesn't float my boat, but if it puts the motion in your ocean then more power to ya. Wow. My dial is just set to cheeseball tonight. Ok let me put up the picture and describe these beauties to you.

Rachel Knows... How to get extreme, look at my pretty rings and my dog is so clean!

I started a new workout program today, so that I can get in shape for the wedding. I knew I weighed more than I wanted and I knew my belly was the largest part of me, but I think I was in denial of just how bad it was until I saw the pictures of myself in my wedding dress. I looked pregnant! That is just unacceptable. Vanity wise and health wise. This is no shotgun wedding. This wedding has taken 8 long years to get to and it isn’t taking place because I am pregnant and have to get married, so I’m not going to look like I’m pregnant on my wedding day!!! :-X  I started ChaLEAN Extreme. Man oh man. I'm so much weaker than I thought I was. She is on there lifting 17 pound weights, 12 pound weights and on some exercises for the legs, 25-30 pound weights. I don't have a large variety of weights. I have the 1.5 pound weights that came with my Zumba, 3 pound weights and we just bought 5 pound weights. I wanted to get some more, but Jeremy wanted to make sure I could do this before we invested anymore money into it. Good thing I just bought 5 pound weights because that was MORE than enough. I was sooooooo weak and jellified when I was done that they only thing I could do was go lay down flat in my bed, because even sitting up took to many muscles at that point and I was just spent. I better see some progress on this! I would show you my before pictures I took today, but they are just hideous and I don't want to subject innocent readers to the horror.

Rachel Knows... Hey! I can do that! Pottery Barn Moss Letter replicas.

Slap a high-profile name on something and people will flock in droves to it. Pottery Barn could put their name on a piece of petrified dog poo, call it art, and people would pay $100 for it. I know that is such a cliche analogy, but it is so true. Pottery Barn sells moss covered letters for $79. I, on the other hand, created basically the same thing for $8. That is quite a difference. It took maybe all of 45 minutes to complete. It didn’t feel that long though. I’d been seeing pictures of these letters online for many years used as wedding decorations and I just thought they were too cute. I never could find them anywhere pre-made besides Pottery Barn and I sure as heck wasn’t going to pay that dang much for an R and a J. If you consider shipping and tax, you’re getting close to the $200 mark. Remember how I said it cost $8 for one? Well, let’s go back to the 1^st grade and practice a little arithmetic. That brings the grand total of this almost Pottery Barn caliber project to a whopping $16. Quite a big savings, eh? I’m going to hang these on the front door of the mansion I will be getting married at. I think it will look adorable. Ok, now how to make these bad boys. After I got done making mine, I Googled Pottery Barn Moss Letters hoping that it would take me straight to them on the Pottery Barn site, so I could compare mine to theirs and while it did do that, it also led me to about 50 other tutorials to make replica moss letters. Follow other probably more thorough tutorials or follow my awesomely cool tutorial. I didn't follow any directions in particular I was just winging it, but this is what I did. 

Rachel Knows... A Coat of Paint does Wonders!

I meant to post this several days ago, but I completely forgot. I repainted my room in March. It is Club Soda by Behr. I loooooove this color and I love Behr paint. I will never use another kind. Their colors are always accurate, they apply like a dream and they are very low odor. The last one is a huge plus in my book. Anyway, I painted my room and I spray painted four frames that I already had hanging in my room. They were gold before and I don't like gold. I don't judge those who do, I just don't. I painted them in RustOleum Titanium Silver. It is a gorgeous color. It is light silver with tiny, tiny glitter specks in it. You can't notice them until you're right on top of the paint and if the light is shining the right way.

This frame and the word art that is in it cost probably $1.25. I'm guesstimating about the paper and the ink from the printer. I got the frame at the Dollar Tree. I love that store. Everything is literally a dollar. The word art is based on Subway Art that I'd been seeing around on the interweb. I am no good at anything like that, so I just wrote down phrases for Jeremy and I to look at if we're getting angry with each other or angry about any type of situation. It is a cute little addition to the room.

Rachel Knows... How to ramble nonsensically!

I’m not just aimlessly looking at wedding sites or blogs, oblivious to the prices and thinking, “Ohhhh! How pretty!” anymore. Now I’m looking at them and thinking, “Ohhh! How pretty! Wait, it costs how much?!”  

Rachel Knows... Not to let her Mom use high tech equipment!

Today was a very busy day. I officially have a wedding date, venue, a photographer, a dress, veils (I didn't know you needed more than one, but apparently you do?) a wedding ring, a wedding coordinator and an officiate. I'm getting the picture that my mom was a little more bothered about me "living in sin" than I thought she was, because she sure is whipping this thing together. Ha-ha! I was very excited today. So was she. She kept volunteering to take my picture at every place we went. We aren't really big picture takers, so I knew she was pretty excited. She said three different times, "Oh no! We didn't get a pictore of you at the photographers!" I said, "Momma, I just sat on a couch and talk to some guy. There wasn't much of a photo op there." Let me show you how most of her pictures turned out:

Rachel Knows... Low Calorie Mocha Frappes!

This will probably be the last "cooking" tutorial that I will be doing because frankly the mini pizzas and this mocha frappe are all I have in my repertoire. Ha-ha! I am in the slow, slow, slow, did I mention slow, process of losing weight. Being lazy and hating cooking leads to one, easy solution: fast food. Fast food leads to fast fat. From the time I was 12, until the time I was 22, I weighed 106 pounds. Never a pound more, never a pound less. My metabolism came to a huge grinding halt when I turned 22. (I'm 26 now) Long story short, I gained 50 pounds. 50 FRIGGIN' POUNDS! I lost 32 of the 50 pounds, but I recently gained 13 back. I'm hanging my head in shame over here, as I drive to Taco Bell. Yes, I started eating fast food again. I just can't quit you Taco Bell and Sonic. One thing that contributed to my weight gain to start with was my love of McDonalds' Mocha Frappes. Those things were glorious to me. When my fiancé and I moved into our apartment, McDonalds was 3 minutes up the road. I was going there to get a Large Mocha Frappe, three times a day. I'm ashamed now, but at the time, oh my was I happy. A large Mocha Frappe has 680 calories in it. That is more than half of my daily caloric intake! That's 2040 calories in the Mocha Frappes alone, not to mention all of the other crap I was eating. No wonder I got so fat! Also, I'm not sure if the McDonalds' Frappes have caffeine in them or not. I don't drink caffeine. They aggravate my panic and anxiety attacks, but that is a whole different issue. I don't even like coffee. I don't like it at all, so it is really weird I'm so addicted to this drink. I needed to find a way to take care of my craving while not consuming so many calories and not drinking the caffeine. I Googled and Googled. I finally stumbled across this recipe on Good Housekeeping. I double the recipe because I'm gluttonous. I figure 250 calories is better than 680. Let me say it one more time, because I think this is the 800th time I've said it already, but I am lazy, so of course I adapted this recipe to fit around my laziness. I don't drink coffee and the easiest way for me is to make up a batch of instant coffee that takes around 30 seconds and refrigerate that until I need it. I don't even use hot water, the cold water works just fine. I don't see the point of using hot coffee in an iced drink.

Rachel Knows... Mini Pizzas!

Well, this is my second post and I'm already straying from my original concept for this blog. I just had to talk about these mini pizzas though. I'm obsessed. I got the idea from Dashing Dish. I tweaked her recipe to allow for my laziness and hatred of cooking and cleaning. She has all kind of mixing, stirring, folding, water application and quite frankly Homie don't play that. http://youtu.be/_QhuBIkPXn0 My method takes about 5 minutes, not including the pre-heating time of the oven and the actually cooking of the pizzas.

Rachel Knows... No Good Way to Start this Bad Boy!

Hmmmmmm... Never knowing where to start is what keeps most of my ideas from ever coming into fruition. I guess a simple introduction is as best of a place of any to start. I love the internet. It makes me feel like a borderline genius because everything I could ever want to know is right here in my computer. Instead of me having to store it all in my own brain and remember it myself, I can just access it on the internet. That being said, I love to learn about new things. I can access my "brain" at any moment and learn about something new or learn a new way to do something. This is how I've stumbled across my latest passions. Makeup and nail polish. In this crazy world, I think it is nice to have something shallow and pretty to focus on. If makeup and nail polish makes me happy and if it can make someone else happy and feel good about themselves, then no one should be the judge of that. No, we aren't winning the Nobel Peace Prize or building schools for impoverished countries in Africa, but we are taking time out of our day to escape from everything and indulge in ourselves. Plus, makeup and nail polish are just so fun and pretty! Ha-ha! I have tons of makeup and nail polishes to swatch and take pictures of. I've gotten this scary introduction out of the way so let's get down to the fun stuff!