Tag Archives: tutorials

I LOVE date nights, but sometimes we have a really hard time deciding what to do.  So when I stumbled upon this Date Night Mason Jar DIY on Pinterest, originally crafted by Life in the Green House, I thought this was an absolutely brilliant idea for us.  Daniel and I tend to be pretty indecisive when it comes to activities, sometimes wasting hours of time trying to decide on a variety of options.  I loved the idea of committing to just pulling a stick out of the jar and boom, there’s our date night with no decision making required!  I also thought it would be a good opportunity to think of more creative or unique dates, so we don’t fall into the same dinner and a movie pattern.  I’ve had this DIY on my list of to dos forever, and I finally finished it!  See below for my modifications and instructions:

Here’s what you need:

• 1 mason jar
• Jumbo popsicle sticks
• Ultra Fine Point Sharpie in black
• Red acrylic paint
• White acrylic paint
• Chalkboard paint
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Red food coloring (optional)
• Mod Podge (optional)

Here’s what you do:

The first thing you want to do is decide on your categories and colors, and then come up with some date ideas!  I chose red, dark pink, light pink, and white. One thing I changed from the original DIY was how the sticks are colored.  Instead of spray painting the entire popsicle stick, I decided to just paint the tips, creating a paint dipped effect.  To do this, I simply measure about an inch and a half below the tip and made a pencil marking on both sides.  I used the first completed stick as a template for the rest.

They turned out exactly how I pictured.  I love how clean and modern they look!

Here’s what I did for color coding and some of my date ideas for inspiration!

Red sticks are mostly nighttime dates out on the town, and they are a little more expensive and take some planning.

• Sushi dinner
• Downtown “food hop” (appetizer at one restaurant, dinner at another, and dessert at a different one)
• Dinner and a movie (a little cliche, but we rarely go out to movies, so I still love this one!)
• Dinner and drinks on Mississippi Ave.
• Weekend away
• A night at the theatre
• Concert or sports game

Dark pink sticks are also nighttime dates out, but are less expensive.

• High school mall date (go see a movie and eat at the food court, haha!)
• Bowling
• Ice skating
• Drinks and dessert at a fancy restaurant (great way to try a more expensive restaurant without breaking the bank!)
• Afternoon matinee and dinner at home
• 4th Friday free museum night (check out your local museums, many have free nights!)
• Happy hour and bar games
• Dinner and beer sampling at a brewery

Light pink sticks are date nights at home.

• Homemade sushi and movie rentals
• Matinee out and dinner at home
• Homemade pizza and board games
• Fondue dinner and dessert
• At home wine bar and cheese plates (grab a few different bottles of wine and do your own tastings!)
• Strip games and drink champagne while taking a bubble bath (this is a great one to spice things up!)
• Hot oil massages (another spicy date night, great way to connect and a free massage never hurt!)

White sticks are daytime dates.

• Oregon zoo
• Wine tasting at vineyards
• Lunch and beer sampling at a brewery
• Museum and food carts
• Rock climbing gym
• Aquarium
• Matinee
• Brunch and a hike or a game of tennis
• Dim sum and a walk at the nature preserve
• Baking and puzzle making
• Ice skating
• Movie or TV marathon with delivery

I chose to repeat a few of the dates, because a couple of them fit into more than one category.  This was a really fast and easy DIY, I think the longest step was coming up with the date ideas.  Take a look at the finished project!

While I don’t think I’ll have a problem remembering the color coding, I did like the idea of a color code key just in case.  The original DIY had a printed label attached to the jar with a ribbon.  I had wanted to paint the lid in chalkboard paint and create a key that way, but the jumbo sticks were a little taller than I initially realized.  So instead, I painted a popsicle stick in chalkboard paint and created a key that way!

I abbreviated some things to make it easy.  N is for night, D for day, In means at home dates, and the $ signs are for expensive and less expensive.

Bonus:  As you can tell from my pictures, my mason jar is red.  I had seen a lot of pins about mason jar tinting around the same time I saw this DIY, and I really loved that look.  So I decided I might as well stick to my red tone theme!  I followed instructions on Momtastic, and I believe I used roughly 20-30 drops of food coloring to get this deep red color.

This was such a fun DIY, I don’t know why I waited so long!  This will be great for our indecisiveness and give us the chance to be more spontaneous!  I’ve even left some room to add new dates as I think of them and when the seasons changed.  What are some of your favorite date nights?

I’m sure many of you have seen the wondrous trend of Highlight and Contouring (HAC) on Pinterest, and probably want to see if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.  I know I did!  I really wanted to see if it worked because I don’t feel like my bone structure stands out on film that well.  If successful, perhaps this could be a camera friendly trick to land more roles!

As I’ve mentioned before, Maskcara is my go to blog for beauty videos, and was one of my first introductions to HAC.  So I’ve only followed her tips on how to Highlight and Contour thus far.  She basically does it in every makeup tutorial, each time a little differently and with different products.  The two products I bought upon her recommendation was the L’Oreal Paris True Match Foundation Powder in Deep Cool for Contouring, and Maybelline New York Dream Lumi Touch Highlighting Concealer in Nude for Highlighting.  Being a beginner, I’m not sure if these colors are working for me, since I don’t notice much of a difference in my before and after shots.  Take a look!

This is the first time I tried HAC out.  Not really noticing much of a difference here, maybe a little more definition on my cheekbones.  Because I’m new to this, I think I’m a little worried about going too heavy, as I don’t want it to be obvious in person.  This could be why there isn’t much of a contrast between the two photos.  I also think my Highlighter could be one shade lighter.

This is my second attempt.  I think I got a little better, or am I just imagining it?  I think I’m seeing more definition on my cheeks, a sharper jaw line, and a thinner nose.  I find it so hard to tell though!  Is it the makeup or the angle of my face?!

Third time’s a charm, right?  I think so?  I definitely notice more of a difference between the before and after shot.  Overall it looks like my bone structure is more defined and my face is a little thinner.  I also have a bump on my nose (thanks to the Austrian side of my family), which looks less noticeable after HAC.

All in all, I was expecting more of a drastic difference after seeing all those side-by-side comparisons on Pinterest.  Beauty blogs make it look so easy!  Either my bone structure is already more defined than I think it is, or I’m just doing it wrong (most likely the latter)!

If anyone has any tips or tricks, or know what I’m doing wrong, please share in the comments section.  I’d love to hear from you!

I plan on coming back to this topic again in the future with another HAC series, to see if I’ve improved at all (and if I can take better photographs of makeup).  Stay tuned!

One of my absolute favorite beauty blogs is Maskcara, and as I’m trying out new makeup looks, I find myself constantly gravitating to all of her videos.

One look I thought I could pull off (and had almost all the right makeup for) was this Megan Fox inspired look.

I really loved how soft and natural this makeup was, while still being incredibly sexy (of course, maybe that’s just because it’s Megan Fox).

Here is how Maskcara’s completed look turned out.  Gorgeous, right?

As much as I wish I could go out and buy all the products she uses in every makeup video, the sad truth is I can’t.

I’m sure many of you can’t either, so at the end of this post I will list what I used.  Who knows, maybe you have some of the same products too!  Or maybe they will just give you an idea of how you can substitute with what you have!

I have to say trying to find good lighting in my house is impossible!  So I apologize for the light switch, but this seemed like the only halfway decent spot.

Hard to tell because I’m a little washed out, but in person it looked more like the examples above.  Hopefully I will learn how to take better pictures as I do more tutorials!

Here is a list of what I used:

Clinique Superbalanced Makeup Foundation in Ivory
Clinique Superbalanced Powder Makeup in Natural 2
L’Oreal Paris True Match Foundation Powder in Deep Cool
Maybelline New York Dream Lumi Touch Highlighting Concealer in Nude
L’Oreal Paris Voluminous Million Lashes Waterproof Mascara in Blackest Black
CoverGirl Perfect Blend Eye Pencil in Mink
Sephora Collection Pro Lesson Palette: Brown Eyes
Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer in Raisin
Ben Nye Eyeliner Pencil in Black

I love wine and I love Halloween, so when I saw this great DIY project on Pinterest by Lombardo Lagniappe, I knew I had to try it.

Our house is severely lacking in Halloween decorations, but this DIY was a pretty quick, painless, and somewhat inexpensive (depending on what supplies you already have on hand) way to fix that.

I mainly followed the original design, but changed a few techniques and aesthetics to suit my needs.

As you can see, I chose to vary the shape of the bottles rather than keep them uniform like pictured above.  I really loved how each bottle seemed to fit each “character” perfectly.  I already had these lying at home in our recycling bin, but if you don’t (and you want to keep this project inexpensive), you can’t go wrong with 2-Buck Chuck from Trader Joes!

In fact, the bottle on the left is Charles Shaw Chardonnay, and the bottle on the right is Charles Shaw Merlot!

Being on a budget, I couldn’t really justify buying all of the spray paint colors that were used in the original DIY.  Specifically because I didn’t know when I’d use them again, since I didn’t have any projects in the works that used spray paint.  So I chose to only buy the Frosted Glass spray paint (which I found at Home Depot), and use acrylic paint I already had for the rest of the color.

I’m sure it definitely took longer than just spraying them and using paint pens for the detailed work.  But I have to say I really liked the texture that came from hand painting them.  Not to mention the feeling of accomplishment!

And here they are, my ghoulish wine bottles!

I followed the taping suggestions from the original blog post.  For Frankenstein, I sort of followed both examples.  I cut the notches first, and then put the tape on the bottle.  Once the paint was dry, I used an exacto knife to trace over the notches again so the paint wouldn’t peel off with the tape.  Because I couldn’t find black glitter at the store, I decided to nix it.  And in the end, I don’t think they really needed it!

Here they are on our dining room table!

A pretty spook-tacular addition, if I do say so myself!

This is the Part 2 of my post Lil Bit More Skills.  This was a little hard to write, as it’s very personal and delves into to some not-so-great feelings.  But I felt it was important to share, since I know many of us feel similar things at some point in life.  Often simply being able to relate to someone going through the same thing can instantly make you feel a little bit better, and I hope this post has the power to do so.

3.  Get Back to Me

It sounds a bit cliche, but after living in Los Angeles for 4 1/2 years, I feel like I’ve lost myself and a huge chunk of my self esteem.  I’ve known what I’ve wanted to do since I was 13 years old (be an actor), not only did I know, but I passionately pursued this career with an unwavering determination.  Which, lucky for me, proved to be fruitful and continued to be so throughout college.  Without thinking I was the best and had no room for improvement, I still had confidence and believed in my abilities.  Without thinking I was gorgeous, I knew I was attractive.  I did not feel inadequate.

I’m not sure when it happened exactly, but LA changed all of that.  It was not only the lack of performing, but the complete lack of auditions that made me question my abilities and my choices.  It was not fitting into a particular beauty mold that suddenly had me criticizing everything about myself.  I had never felt bad about myself when I saw celebrities in movies or magazines, but when you are completely immersed into so much of that superficial nonsense, it’s hard not to feel bad about yourself.  It’s hard not to lose yourself.

Well, there’s only so much of that you can take, and I needed a break from it.  I happily moved to Portland for that break, and I plan to use this transitional time for new beginnings.  While I’m working on the self improvement and skills mentioned in Part 1 of this post, I will also be working on health, beauty, and fitness.  For extra confidence boosts, I will be trying out various makeup and hair tutorials, diy treatments, fitness plans, and basically anything I find on the oh-so-addictive Pinterest.  They may be wrought with trial and error in the beginning, but hopefully you’ll stick around to see me master new techniques!