Monday, May 30, 2011

happy memorisale day!

In honor of the Memorial Day trip up to Orlando that I ended up staying home from because of my grandfather's condition and my stupid job Mandy and I did a little shopping. Mainly because it's her aunt we were going to see so she had to go with or without me but also because who can say no to Memorial Day Weekend Sales? The following items were purchased Friday night in a surprisingly short amount of time.


                    
























I got this necklace from Old Navy for five bucks and change. I loved the ribbon flower detail. I wore it to work yesterday and got loads of compliments on it. Definitely a good buy. My only complaint is that my hair is so long that the flower gets lost in it and even when I pull my hair back the flower likes to flips around a lot. 



This is also from Old Navy and I got it for like $4.50. It's a simple brass chain with the sweetest little cream, yellow, and coral floral ribbon woven through it. I wore it on Saturday and pulled it around so the bow would show as well instead of the the chain part. This will definitely be getting packed for my June vacation. It feels like the embodiment of summer. 

My last item from Old Navy. It's a little bracelet that's half oddly shaped pearls and half braided together denim, striped ribbon, and brass chain. I haven't worn it yet but for the $2 it cost me I couldn't say no. It feels very sailor inspired but sweet at the same time and makes me want to be at the beach or sailing away into the sunset. 

Now onto my Forever 21 finds. Sadly there will be no clothes as this was a strictly accessory trip for me. Compared to my Old Navy finds this necklace seemed pricey at $6.50 but once I realized that, for a necklace, that was still dirt cheap I wouldn't put it down. This is awkward picture that makes the stone look off-center but in person it's right in the middle and looks so bright and exciting against all of pastels (which is basically everything in my summer wardrobe). The big plus was that it was pretty much the only silver piece of jewelry they had that night. I'm not a fan of that really cheap and fake looking plasticky bright gold that you normally find at Forever 21. I don't even really care for real gold very much. 

This is my last one. It's a loosely woven scarf from Forever 21 that was only $5.50. The base color is a really plain off white but is has such beautiful bright colors woven throughout. It's perfect to use as a head wrap for those days by the pool reading magazines and sipping on delicious drinks. This will also being coming with me, no doubt about it, in June. 

Friday, May 27, 2011

I love having three days off.

So I've been sitting around telling myself I'm going to update this thing for days now. I honestly don't know why I've waited until now because I've had all the time in the world the last few days. I seriously love having Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off! It's like a mini vacation every single week and some weeks it probably will be a vacay because it's enough time to go out of town for a couple of days. This week it just consisted of a lot of hanging around, though. Tuesday I stayed home most of the day adding a kazillion books to Stanza on my iphone. I couldn't really settle on one that I wanted to read so I just started reading like five different ones simultaneously. Divergent, by Veronica Roth, which I started talking about in my last update is really good. I'm a little less than half way through it and I'm so hooked. Saying it's as good as The Hunger Games series would be criminal but it's definitely got some kick to it and fills the book void if you're looking for something else in that general young adult dystopian genre. I also started reading The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella and it has totally sucked me in. I'm actually not quite sure what the main plot of the story is yet but it's about a very busy and extremely hard working lawyer who is up for partner at her firm and I already love her as a main character even though I'm only five or six chapters into it. I'll keep you updated. Aside from reading a lot I also went to Target and had a terrible experience trying to pay because no one on the planet is capable of doing their job correctly and I made the grand error of trying to buy a bathing suit that was missing the price tag. Apparently a missing price tag at Target equals armageddon. Once that ordeal was settled I went with my mother to visit my granddad at the hospital. A a cut on his leg turned into a huge infection over night so he's been admitted and will probably be staying there for quite a while. The infection turned out to be mrsa and he lives in an assisted living home so the owners can't take any chances with having him come back and spreading it to the other residents. Please keep him in your thoughts. He just recently had major surgery to have cancer removed and is overall not the healthiest of men so I'm really worried now with this new problem. Wednesday I'll get to in one minute and today I did nothing at all until around 7:00 when I went with a friend to the arena to watch the Heat game at the rally. Best. Game. Ever. We really turned it around in the last few minutes and it was so exciting and I screamed my head off cheering and it was just totally great. After that we went back to her house for a movie and some nail painting. I used one of her colors and when I got home and put top coat on it put a giant streak right in one of my thumbs. I's so annoyed. Now onto Wednesday...


Wednesday was my one kind of busy day. I got up at five in the morning to go to the gym and then almost died while I was in spinning class. I guess my blood sugar dropped or something because I had to stop half way through the class because I started seeing spots and getting really dizzy. I stopped for some Starbucks on my way home and in a few hours I started feeling normal again. I spent the rest of the day with my mom. We went to lunch at Panera and after we ate we went to a jewelry store that was in the same strip mall because I wanted to look at Pandora bracelets. I wasn't going to buy one, just check out prices and different charms and stuff, but she surprised me and bought me the starter bracelet. Best mom in the world? I think yes. Then I circled all of the charms I want in the Pandora book they gave me because she apparently plans on having my whole family buy me beads for it whenever they ask her what I went for my birthday or Christmas or whatever. After that we went to the sweet super discount nail shop and bought a whole mess of colors. Everything we got (except some cutical oil and remover) is in the first picture in that second row up there. From left to right the colors are: Turquoise & Caicos, Lion Around, Jazz, Your Hut or Mine, Kiss the Bride, and French Carmal. The first four are Essie, the next one is Orly, and the last one is Color Madmic. Later that night I painted my nails Turquoise & Caicos and fell in love with the color. I've never been huge on straying away from basic pinks and nudes but lately I've been all over more adventurous colors. After our polish shopping we stopped at Jamba Juice for a little pick me up before going back to the hospital where we spent the majority of our early evening. My grandfather fell asleep not long after we got there so I picked up a few magazines from the gift shop and brought up a get well soon balloon to tie to his bed for when he woke up. When we got home we ordered Chinese take out for dinner and watched Indiana Jones while we ate. 

Tomorrow I'm back to work (yuck) but at least I get out in time to make it to my favorite yoga class of the week. Starting tomorrow I'm going to start hitting the gym hard like I used to. Between work and all the Heat games I've really been slacking. No more of that if I want to get in shape for my vacation in just over two weeks! 

And now a little question to leave you guys with: I need to make a new relaxing playlist for sauna time and bubble bath time so what are some of your favorite songs to chill out to? My personal favorites are Moon River (Any rendition but I'm partial to Audrey Hepburn's) and Playground Love by Air but I'm looking for all kinds of suggestions. Plus, I think one of the best ways to get to know someone is by finding out a little something about their musical tastes. 

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Well I should be sleeping but...

instagram O5.21.11, a photo by lula mae barmes on Flickr

So I used a new LUSH Bath Bomb tonight which was their Sex Bomb. It smelled really nice and turned the water all pink and fluffy and was just perfect for relaxing. The only real downfall was that it left the horrible purple ring around my tub that I was just far too lazy to clean off tonight. There was no glitter or confetti or pieces of flowers or anything in this particular bomb with I liked. It's not that I don't like some of LUSH's other products' little surprises but sometimes when you just want to soak and chill out and maybe read a little random stuff fluffing out of your bomb can be a little distracting. 

Since I started with the bath bomb picture I guess I go through these counter clockwise which brings us to the juice picture. My mom brought me home a bunch of Odwalla juices since I'm really pick about what I eat/drink while I'm home. I have this weird thing where I won't even look at something edible if it's been sitting about for more than like 15 minutes which means I almost never end up eating anything she cooks. A part of me feels bad about that but my weird OCD part definitely overshadows it. Odwalla things are perfect for me because they're really healthy and filling and individually packaged. This picture is of their blueberry juice which is absolutely delicious. My favorite Odwalla drink is the strawberry protein shake which is the perfect breakfast. It tastes so yummy and gives me a really good portion of the protein I should be eating in a day which is good because as a vegetarian I need to watch that. 

Next we've got my everyday lunch. Wether I'm working or shopping or off and sitting around doing nothing I usually always end up making my way to Starbucks for lunch and getting a Birthday Cakepop and some kind of drink. During half price frappuccino hour (I called it Frappy Hour, I dare you to tell me that isn't catchier) I was all about the Mocha Coconut Frap but now that they're back to being full price I've switched over to ice say caramel macchiatos with extra caramel. But I had a terrible experience yesterday where they used a giant sheet of ice in my cup instead of cubes like normal people would use and when I tried to stick my straw in all of the coffee came out and spilled all over me and stained a brand new white shirt I was wearing. After that I think I might be getting ready switch up my drink again. What are some of your favorite Starbucks drinks? I'm always looking for new things to order from them.

Finally we come to my super sweet customer service superstar ~award~. I use the term award very loosely because it's really just a flimsy little piece of paper that I don't even get to keep. I'm so complicated at work and I give the basically everyone I work with that hasn't proved themselves worthy of my good graces (aka 99.9% of the store) such a hard time that everyone was really shocked that I even got a nice customer comment. Shockingly enough I'm nice to the people that shop at our store. Well, at least the ones that don't spend their time at the register screaming obscenities at me because they forgot their coupons or lost their receipt or did something else that's in no way my fault that they're anger about. This will be a post for another day but get ready for a little something about my cashiering pet peeves and what not. 

currents, a photo by lula mae barmes on Flickr

Now I'm sitting in bed watching Rocky & Bullwinkle because it's on Netflix instant and I remember loving this cartoon a whole lot when I was young. Fractured Fairy Tales is definitely my favorite segment on this show. It's so silly and ridiculous and I can't help but laugh. I also have some Adele playing softly in the background because, really, why not? Her voice is perfect and sounds like what I imagine something really majestic and awe-inspiring like a unicorn with a diamond tiara and glittering fairy wings would sound like. I'm also reading Divergent by Veronica Roth. I just started reading it like two minutes ago, actually. It's a dystopian young adult novel that's supposed to be amazing like The Hunger Games was amazing so I'm hoping this fills the book void in my heart. This is going to be a series though and this first book just recently came out so I'm a little nervous. I can't even begin to imagine having to wait more than five seconds between my Hunger Games books. I don't know how that people that ready them as they were released even survived. I guess possibly the same way I did when Harry Potter was being released. In other words, they didn't. Anyway now seems like the right time to sign off on this because I've like to get at least the first chapter of this book done before I go to bed and it's already 7:00am and I have to be up at 12. My sleep patterns are so ridiculous. 

ps. Please excuse all of the crazy typos that I'm sure are in this. I'm too tired to go back and proof read anything. 

xoxo

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Add me on Instagram: cherhorowitz


So I know I'm a little bit tardy to the party but I kept seeing people talking about this Instagram app on my tumblr dash and I knew I'd had it downloaded for a while but I'd never really used it before. I had originally downloaded it because it looked like a free alternative to the Hipstamatic app but it's really so much more. It's a social network that I can be described as twitter-esque where you can post pictures and give them vintage effects and share them with anyone you follow as well as liking other pictures and leaving comments. You can also upload straight to flickr from there. I started really using it yesterday and after I posted the first two or three pictures I was hooked! My username on there is cherhorowitz if you'd like to follow me. 

My instagram shots up there also my day in pictures for yesterday. I woke up at an obscenely early hour to go to the gym and then the beach but my plans were foiled by my friend sleeping in so I spent the first couple of hours of the day just playing with my new app. Then, once she finally woke up, we went to Starbucks with her mom for some breakfast which, for me, consisted of an iced tall soy caramel macchiato with extra caramel and a birthday cake-pop. Afterwards we dropped her mom off at home and headed out on a nail polish mission. Mandy found this place where you can buy Essie polishes for $3 and O.P.I for $4 so we went over there and I bought five Essie colors for about the same amount I'd have spent at Ulta on two. It was really exciting. I bought Topless & Barefoot, Fiji, Van D'Go, Angle Food, and Borrowed & Blue. Since last night I've used probably all of them and taken them all off. The colors are gorgeous but Essie polish and I have our differences. That's a topic for a whole other blog post, though. After our polish party we went to Victoria Secrets to check out bathing suits and I found this amazing Bombshell one-piece that has the sweetest little side ruffles and boning that totally makes me look knockout awesome. Unfortunately they didn't have my size though. I went a size down because I figured if I can close the size I was looking for all the way at the last tab and it's still a little loose maybe I could just use the first tab on this and it would fit okay. The answer was no, though, so I'll be spending the rest of today on an exchange mission. Then we had lunch at Chipotle, which is not pictured, and I had to go to work. I'm such a good employee, I cut my day in half to go in for three hours just to help my favorite manager close. Where is my gold star, Express? After that I talked my dad into buying me Pinkberry for Dinner and I came home and did my nails. Exciting, right?

So now it's a whole new day and I'm still sitting in bed painting my nails because, like I said, Essie and I don't see eye to eye. I ended up going with Steady As She Rose from O.P.I's Pirates of the Caribbean line which is a purple/cement color. From pictures I've seen  I thought it would be more of a white/pink but this is actually a really pretty color and not as similar to all of the other colors I own as I thought it'd be. As soon as my nails dry I'm heading out to Starbucks and then for some shopping and hopefully bathing suit exchanging. Buying a new camera is also on my to-do list today all though that highly depends on how much of it I can talk my mom into paying for. My old camera which had been in the process of dying a slow and painful death finally kicked the bucket last night with a never ending lens error message. When I got home tonight I'll hopefully have some pictures with my new camera to post which will be great because I'll probably also have some shopping to post about. 

Until next time, cuties.
xoxo

Monday, May 16, 2011

wonderfully random world

sunday morning, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

I love having Sundays off and getting to sleep in and relax all day. Usually I try to at least plan something productive and tell myself I'll go through with it but today I did absolutely nothing. Since doing nothing at all is obviously very uneventful and quite boring I'll go ahead and write about some of last weeks highlights. First off my camera broke yet again but fortunately it fixed itself a couple of hours later. That picture up there is the first one I took once the lens stated coming out again. Please enjoy my random mess above my desk. I was so excited the it started working again that I spent half a day taking pictures of pretty much anything I stumbled upon so please enjoy all of my random celebratory shots. 

catverus snape, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

I like to call this little fellow Snape. He's not really my cat but he stumbled onto my porch almost a year back and I fell in love with him. He comes back from time to time and I leave food out for him and play with him and stuff. I named him Snape once I realized that he was going to be around for a while. Apparently he belongs to the women across the street from me which is worse than him being homeless because this poor things is seriously underfed and far too tiny. Someday I'll talk my parents into just letting me keep him for real. I seriously doubt Cat Lady would even notice one of her many are missing and my cat would get over the jealousy and they'd become friends in time.


I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up the second book in the Hunger Games series and found this awesome bargain book on sea shells. I'm almost as passionate about sea shells as I am about The Hunger Games. Let me just take a moment to say that I've finished the entire series and it was so incredible and I got so attached to the characters (mainly Peeta) that I actually feel alone and empty now that I don't have a next book to read. This same thing happened with Harry Potter. Call me dramatic if you must but I honestly get far more invested in some of the books I read than my actual life and then once I finish them I don't know what to do next. I just sit around wishing there was more. A part of my wishes The Hunger Games had been as bad as Twilight so I could've finished the series and been relieved because it was finally over instead of crying for two hours. 

sugar sugar, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

On my way home I stopped at Whole Foods to buy a couple of pistachio french macaroons and had to wait at the bakery for at least an eternity. I'm not really sure what took so long seeing as there were a couple of employees standing behind the counter but apparently gossiping away was of more importance than actually helping a customer so I took a picture of the pretty cakes while I waited. I get so annoyed when people don't offer good customer service. I don't exactly love my job and I certain don't have anything remotely resembling good feelings towards the majority of our costumers but I signed up to work there all on my own and as long as I'm there I'll do my job the way I should. 

storybook jewelry, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

I found these little charms at Nordstrom and I fell completely in love with them. They're the most precious little things that I've ever seen. They're like little pieces of a fairytale and I seriously just wanted to buy them all. I ended up buying a total of zero, though. They were a little on the pricey side and I don't even know what I'd have done with one of them let a lone a whole mess of them. I was feeling partial toward the one that says Magic and has a little unicorn on it though. 

do you believe in magic, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

My dad saw this trick on Effin' Science on their bar bets you can't lose segment where you magically pull a dollar bill out of two glasses filled with water. He recreated it over the sink because I was certain there was no way he wouldn't spill at least half of the water between the glasses. He actually pulled it off and I was fascinated and then I tried it and spilled tons of water. I couldn't hold the glasses together without them slipping all over the place. Needless to say I won't be making any bets involving glasses and water and dollars anytime soon. 

There's no picture for this but I'm watching what I believe may by Rose's last episode on Doctor Who and I think I'm going to feel just as crushed as I did after Mockingjay when this is over. I started the series from the beginning a few weeks ago and I felt oddly betrayed when Christopher Eccleston got replaced. David Tennant has grown on me since but I don't know how I'm going to cope with The Doctor getting a new companion. I really loved Rose with him and I swear if they really stick her in the alternate universe forever I think I'm going to have a breakdown. This episode is going to make me cry. I can already feel it. 

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Follow my blog with bloglovin

monday morning

monday morning, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

I woke up super early today and decided to paint my nails before I had to go to work. I had started painting them last night but I got this terrible migraine and just ended up messing them all up. Originally I had planned on using a really pale shade of pink that leans towards white but I ended up going with Insta-Dry in Sonic Bloom which is an orangey-red shade. I love this polish so much. Seriously, one coat and you're good to go. It really does dry in a minute or two, too. I found this Essie base coat on sale at Target yesterday which was nice because, even though I hate base coat passionately, I really need to start using it. My nails have been splitting really easily lately. I'm not about to blame my short nails on weakness because I'll openly admit to the fact that I bite them but I really have been trying to cut that nasty little nervous habit lately. Unfortunately, every time I've let them grow a bit they snap right off. This base coat is supposed to strengthen your nails and promote growth so we'll see how that goes. 

the best lunch, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.



After work, which started off really nicely but then managed to end terribly, I went to lunch with my mom at the Cheesecake Factory. I was mad because of work and because I had to go by school to pay for my summer classes and my mom appeared to have had a bit of a ruff day as well so we settled for comfort foot and split some onion rings, artichoke hearts, stuffed mushrooms, and mozzarella bites. Everything was so delicious! I want to feel like eating there two days in a row is a bad thing but I just can't seem to talk myself into it. I know their food is far from good for you but it's so tasty that I can't be bothered with carrying sometimes. We did skip dessert, though, so at least that's something. Last night we split a slice of their new red velvet cheesecake and it was the most decadent slice of heaven ever served on a plate. I swear I'm not even exaggerating. 

hunger games, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.

My mom wanted to go check something out at Borders after we ate. I'd like to take a moment right now to express my anger at the fact that my Borders is still very open. I love Borders and don't actually want it to close but I know so many people that have gotten the most amazing deals of their book buying lives in the weeks leading up to a Borders close. Anyway, a friend of my mom's needs some help with a website so she wanted to look at a book on html. My mother is the least computer capable person on the face of the entire planet so I'm not sure the book was as helpful as she'd hoped. I went ahead and picked up a book for myself while she looked around. I bought The Hunger Games which everyone else in the world has probably already read by now. I have very strong feelings about investing my emotions in any book series. Harry Potter stole my heart when I was just a little kid and has never let go and Twilight made it impossible for me to even hear the words glitter and vampire in the same conversation without reacting irrationally. I almost got sucking into the Percy Jackson series but then I misplaced the firsr book before I finished reading it so I really can't say much in it's favor or otherwise. I only bought The Hunger Games because a friend of mine from work was telling me about how amazing the series is and after listening to her praise it for a few minutes I was sold. I know there will be tears  and, even though I'm just a few pages in, I know the movie adaptation will make me want to throw things but I'm embarking on this journey anyway.

Once we got home from our little mom and daughter afternoon and I had to rush and change into gym clothes so I could make it to yoga. I had never gone on a Monday night before and I really didn't enjoy it much. I love my Tuesday yoga and Wednesday yoga is different now that we have a new teacher but still great. On Thursdays my pilates instructor teaches yoga which I love because he really focuses on form in a way I feel my other instructors don't and finally Friday yoga is my favorite. On Fridays I have this really lively and funny, incredibly flexible little instructor called Ernesto that's always pushing for us to try harder and learn more while really making us work out. I didn't even crack a sweat tonight. I wasn't in the mood to go to the gym tonight to begin with so forcing myself to go just to be let down by my class was not definitely not the highlight of my day. After that was done with I came home and watched a few episodes of Goosebumps with a friend. I miss my 90s TV shows more than I could ever even try to explain. 

Tomorrow I've got spinning at the crack of dawn (which is actually in about two and half hours) and then I think I might spend the day cleaning. My room is a bloody disaster right now. There's clothes everywhere and none of my nail polish is put away where it belong. I've got books all across my desk, coffee table, and nightstand and I've really got to vacuum. I always tell myself I don't mind a mess but the truth is that any disorder at all makes me twitchy so I really need to get this under control. 

Sunday, May 1, 2011

relax, take it easy

relax, take it easy by lula mae barnes
relax, take it easy, a photo by lula mae barnes on Flickr.


I've been meaning to post this forever now and I'm finally getting around to it only because I bought a few new LUSH products today and I don't want the things I plan on reviewing to pile up. Anyway, there are three bath bombs in this picture (from left to right: Twilight, Golden Slumbers, and Sex Bomb) but I'm only going to talk about two of them right now because I've yet to use the last one. I'm going to start with the one didn't really care for which was Golden Slumbers. This bomb is describes as a soothing and relaxing with a lavender fragrance that, as the name implies, helps you get to sleep. I popped this in the bath, after a particularly long day, expecting a long and relaxing bath but what I got was just disappointment. Let me start off by saying that taking the large size of this bomb into consideration it fizzed out in no time at all. Most of LUSH's larger bombs float around in my bath for fifteen minutes at the very least but this one was gone almost immediately. The scent also wasn't as strong and lingering as some of their other products. Much like the scent the color and texture that came from this bomb were less than amazing. I expected it to at least tint the water a bit or add a bit of fluff but it failed to do so. Although those three factors were definitely let downs they weren't the deal breaker for me. This bomb has little bits of lavender sprig in it that absolutely drove me insane. There's nothing peaceful and relaxing about tons of tiny little pieces of nature floating around in my tub. Picking them out of the tub after my bath was a nightmare and even though I washed my hair after soaking for a while I still found lavender bits on my pillow the next morning. In it's defense I did get to bed rather quickly that night so it does do what the name implies. This is, by far, my least favorite LUSH product to date and, although the lighter scent might be nice for those more sensitive to fragrances, I wouldn't recommend it unless you actually enjoy a bit of a clean up after your bath. 

Now onto the good since no one likes to leave on a bad note. The Twilight bath bomb was actually one of the best LUSH products I've tried to date. This picture definitely doesn't do it justice but it's got a bit of star pattern going around it and is really just as lovely to look at as it is to use. I love when they do something more creative than just a ball you drop in the bath. A lot like Golden Slumbers, Twilight is also supposed to be a very relaxing bomb with a lavender scent. This little gem takes quite a long time to fizz out and starts out tinting the water pink with little bursts of orange and slowly fades to purple before finishing off with a dark shade of blue. There's also some glitter that fizzes out as the colors change that felt reminiscent of stars in the night sky. Normally I find bath bombs with glitter to be extremely annoying because of the clean up involved after their use but Twilight had just the right amount and didn't leave me or my tub looking like a sunbathed creature from a Stephanie Meyer's book. The scent this one gives off is just as impressive as the color. The lavender and vanilla fragrance envelopes you while soak and just makes all of your worries fade away. When I went into the bathroom the next morning I found that the scent was still faintly lingering around which I found nice. My skin felt smooth and my mind at ease after about an hour of floating in Twilight filled water. This is definitely a product I would recommend to anyone looking for a little relaxation or just a beautiful bath since the colors really do looks like a sun setting.