braids

Watching a lot of Game of Thrones has made me want to put my hair in braids more. I'll watch some tutorials probably soon to attempt some of the looks from the show. I wanted to share this hair inspiration with all of you!

I'm sort of joking with the last picture. Man, they've got some great hair on this show. I'm going to go recreate all of these looks now!

Until tomorrow,

Caroline

a productive and unproductive week

As the title suggests this week I was pretty productive and unproductive. Uh, wait, whaaat? You probably asked yourself. Well I'll tell you. Monday was Memorial Day so all I did was help get a dinner ready for my cousins. I guess that's pretty productive. The rest of the week was either spent crying because of the Nats, applying for jobs, watching Game of Thrones, or trying to clean my room (it never really gets anywhere). You can decide for yourself which of those were productive and which weren't. Yesterday I had to get my dad from the doctor's because he had a procedure to break up a kidney stone so I picked him up but earlier that day before I got him I spent time with my amico going into every single store in Tysons 2. We didn't buy anything. So you could say the productivity balanced out the un-productivity. That's alright, right?

It's finally Friday so you know what that means!!

Likes:
1. The bathrooms are finished!! The bathrooms are finished!! No strange men walking around my house everyday!
2. Getting thank you notes written and putting them in the mailbox
3. My panama hat :-))))

Dislikes:
1. Cleaning my room - it's a never ending process
2. Hormonal breakouts
3. Waking up later than usual

Tonight my sister and I are going to see the Nats play. Let's hope we actually get a win.

Until tomorrow,

Caroline

A summery patriotic-y cute outfit

I wore this outfit for a Memorial Day party last weekend and I decided that it was perfect for just about every summer event. Fourth of July? Great. Firefly outfit? Perfect. Going out in DC outfit? Oh yeah, definitely! It is the bees knees, the cats pajamas, and could be a normal person's pajamas. Ok, here is the outfit.

The hat is from h&m, the dress is from h&m, the sandals are from Target (they're from last summer but there are similar styles there now!), the nail polish is Essie's A-List. 

The dress is so easy to wear and so comfy. It is great. Also very inexpensive. I was going to say cheap but then you'd think it was, well, cheap. I was and am still in love with the panama hats from J Crew last summer and now this spring/summer but they are $60 and I do not have $60 to spend on hats so those will have to be a no go. I found this one at h&m for a fifth of the price and I said to myself, "This is it! This is what you've been waiting for!" I got it and there has been absolutely no buyer's remorse. The quality is not as nice as the J Crew ones but I am still very happy. 

I'm really looking forward to wearing this around town this summer. 

Until tomorrow,

Caroline

Really Good Recipes #2

Over the weekend we had family coming over so my mom decided to make a big Memorial Day meal that included barbecue chicken, roasted vegetables, and other delectable side dishes. She didn't know what to make for dessert so I said I would find something on Pinterest to whip up. What I found I already knew I loved because we had made it before. This is the most delicious, decadent, chocolatey goodness bar anyone could ever imagine. Be warned: you will want to make this right away and then eat all of it in a matter of minutes. I am not exaggerating. Proceed with caution.

Double Chocolate Oreo Brownies

Ugh, these are so good. We served them with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream and everyone went gaga. A riot almost broke out they were so delicious. Ok, so I am sort of kidding but they are really good. Here are the ingredients:

1 package of Oreos, crushed

3/4 cup of butter

14 ounces of sweetened condensed milk

12 ounces of mini chocolate chips

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.  

2. In a food processor or blender or in a plastic zip-lock bag crush up the package of Oreos into crumbs. If crushed in a zip-lock bag, place crumbs into a large bowl.

3. Melt the butter and pour into the crumbs. Mix well into the crumbs. Take the mixture and completely cover the bottom of a glass 9x12 baking pan pressing down the cookie and butter mixture to create the bottom layer crust.

4. Pour the condensed milk into a bowl with a cup of the chocolate chips and put in the microwave for 30 seconds to melt the chocolate. Afterwards pour the mixture on top of the cookie crust. 

5. Sprinkle the remaining chocolate chips evenly over the chocolate and condensed milk layer. 

6. Put in over for 10 minutes. Once done, take out for 30 minutes on a cooling rack, then place in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

7. Take out, cut into squares, enjoy!!

It is a really easy recipe and have I mentioned how good it is?? I'm going to try and resist eating more of it now. 

Until tomorrow,

Caroline  

Good Guide

During my Dead Week trip to Myrtle my friend told me about an app she really liked called Good Guide. It is an app that grades products based on how good it is for the user's health, the environment, and society. My friend said she checked it before she bought anything and it made me super curious about the products I had, loved, and bought a million times. It is a really great app because it tells you the ingredients that are in the products and which ingredients are low, medium, and high health concerns. It is amazing how many of these are in products that I use. I was shocked. It is also really great because it also tells you healthier alternatives to the products that do not rank so high in the health category.

There's also a website!

There are a few, good and bad products, I wanted to post about that really surprised me and will definitely affect the way I shop in the future. Here are the products:

Covergirl Lashblast Mascara: This product surprised me because it got a rating of zero for health. Zero??? I've put this on my eyelashes so many times. What makes this so bad?? I looked through the ingredients list and the one ingredient that gets the worst health concern is actually an ingredient that hopefully will be substituted soon with something better. If you go look up this mascara on the app you'll see what I mean. I will wait to repurchase this until that ingredient is taken out.

Monistat Soothing Care Skin Protection Powder-Gel: You might be wondering why I would look this product up but I actually use it as a primer before foundation. Many of the ingredients (almost all) are the same as the Smashbox Photo Finish primer, a primer loved by all gurus and bloggers alike. This product surprised me, 1. because it got a 10 on health, and then 2. because it got a 3.2 for environment and society. The 10 is extremely good. This was the first product I've seen with a 10 rating for anything but the 3.2's are so low. That's horrible! Although those are some pretty low scores the 10 is amazing and it works great as a primer.

Method All Purpose Cleaner Spray in Lavender: I always thought cleaning products were absolutely horrible for the environment and for your health but just about everything Method product I saw got over an 8 rating for everything. That is amazing. We use the all purpose spray at my house and I always loved using it because it never made my head hurt. Now I know why! The hand soaps also got a great rating.

Nars Blush in Orgasm: I didn't think that this product would get any high ratings (I looked up the Urban Decay Naked pallets and they all got horrible scores) but it did get a great rating for environment. It got over an 8 for environment which brings up its overall score so much because the other two scores are nowhere near it. According to the app, the Nars company is ranked in the 25% of all companies due to it's environmental practices. Who knew makeup products could be better for the environment than your face.

Go look up some of your favorite products and see how they rank! It will definitely make you rethink repurchasing some things.

Until tomorrow,

Caroline

Happy Memorial Day!

I kind of took a few days off to spend time with friends and family. Normal posts will start again tomorrow. Here's a picture of my and my new love as an "I'm sorry" for not posting in a while.

Until next time,

Caroline

Winter is coming

My mom and I started to watch Game of Thrones today. We only watched the first half of the first episode because she had to get ready to go into DC. We'll watch the second half tomorrow. Hopefully things don't get too interesting after tomorrow's half or else I might try and watch it without her. She doesn't know how to find the episodes so I'm pretty much the only way to find anything at the moment.

Now I finally (sort of) get this meme!

There's not too much more I'll post about today. I've been getting slowly back into running so soon there will be an update on that. I haven't done too many outfit posts recently so I'll get back into those soon too. Woo, much to look forward to on TLS. 

Until tomorrow,

Caroline