Summer Inspiration

*Mandy's Note: I have been trying to get this post up for no joke, a month now. That's why the post says it's being posted in July, even though I didn't actually get it finished until August. Just a warning, there are going to be a few posts dated for July even though they were posted in August; I'm trying to get these late ones up. So I's sorry.*

As I mentioned in my previous post, some of my absolute favorite things in life come during the summer. It inspires me, drives me, motivates me to get out and do more. I'm not feeling terribly motivated at the moment; the weather has been completely unbearable for me and taking a toll on my health, but the summer itself is usually very inspiring for me. I've never done a seasonal themed essentials post before, so I was pretty excited to see if I could come up with some things. I started with my color inspiration for the season and just went from there. So without further ado, here is my list of summer inspiration and essentials!

I'm a big one for themes and color palettes for some reason. Different seasons have different scent profiles, color palettes or makeup looks, and I'll use that as a foundation for other things for that time period. I didn't initially intend to have so many colors, but when I look at all of them individually, I think of summer but when I was trying to develop a color profile for myself, I wanted something that touched on most of the major colors. That culminated in this list here.

Colors: Wet 'n Wild Wildshine in Be More Pacific, Sinful Colors in Boogie Nights, Wet 'n Wild Wildshine in Who is Ultra Violet?, Sinful Colors in Firefly, Sinful Colors in Sky Tree, Wet 'n Wild Wildshine in Lavender Creme, Sinful Colors in Curry Up, Sinful Colors in Why Not, Wet 'n Wild Wildshine in Nuclear War, Butter London in Champers

When I thought of summer, I thought of a bag of Tropical Skittles. Does that sound weird? lol When I think of summer, I think of loud, bright colors. They give me a fun, playful vibe that I always associate with the season. I sound like such a dweeb, huh? Well anyway, these are the colors that came to the brain when I first started trying to find inspiration for summer. I'll find a color palette or some other kind of inspiration base and go from there. This year it was in polishes, because that was the easiest (and cheapest) way to get as close to the inspo colors as I could. All of these were super affordable; I got all of the Wet 'n Wild polishes for 99 cents and even though Sinful usually retails for $1.99 (which is still an awesome price), they had a couple of half-off sales while I was building this post that allowed me to scoop the rest up for 99 cents. The Butter polish was part of my Allure Beauty Society box that I got last August.








If I'm being honest, the header photo is what I would prefer my essentials to consist of. lol I don't wear makeup on a daily basis, so for my face my only mandatory essential is a good chapstick. I'm usually barefoot, so the closer I can be to that while in public, the better. I also tend to sweat--a lot--because of both anxiety and the heat, so a good deodorant goes a long way. And finally, sunglasses because duh. I'm not one for really large routines and a long list of products (which gives this entire post a bit of irony lol) so I'm pretty late to the game with developing skincare/body routines for myself, but I've finally come around. Here's what's been working for my bod so far:

Products: Australian Gold Broad Spectrum Sunscreen with SPF30, Hawaiian Tropic Aftersun Lotion, Avon Footworks Cooling Lotion & Exfoliating Scrub in Papaya Sorbet, Equate Blemish Control Exfoliating Face Scrub

I got both the sunscreen and aftersun lotion from a couple of Influenster boxes, the sunscreen from this year’s Blossom VoxBox and the aftersun lotion from last summer’s Surf’s Up VoxBox. I’d never dealt with aftersun lotion until I received this one, but it really does do wonders for my skin. Even though my skin’s surface veers towards oily during the summer, underneath is still very dry, so if I’m not using a lotion that’s good on my skin, going out in the sun usually gives the exposed parts, my shoulders and joints in particular, a leathery texture and appearance. Both the sunscreen and aftersun lotion do a lot to keep my skin feeling smooth and moisturized, before, during and after any sun exposure. 

The Footworks line from Avon isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it’s excellent for light day-to-day maintenance. I use the scrub in the shower to smooth out the texture of my feet, and the cooling lotion after I get out to lock in the moisture. They both keep my feet looking and feeling soft on a daily basis, which is a must for someone constantly in sandals or barefoot. 

Finally, since my face gets the oiliest by far during the summer, I usually use a cleanser or scrub with salicylic acid to balance it out. I use one once a week anyway, but I up it to about twice a week during the summer to ensure that my pores aren’t getting clogged with excess oils. This removes any dead skin on my face, evens out the oil content, and gets rid of any lingering blackheads. I’ll be talking more about this product in an upcoming skincare routine review.






I really wanted a simple makeup routine this summer, and I wanted products that weren't going to break me out and were going to be easy to remove. I like some of these products more than the others, but so far these have been my favorite makeup items to use. 

Products: CoverGirl Queen Pressed Powder in Golden, Elf Sunkissed Glow Bronzer in Warm Tan, CG Smoothers BB Cream in Medium to Dark, CG Intensify Me! Eyeliner in Intense Black, LA Colors Chunky Lip Pencil in Wine, CG Super Sizer Mascara in Very Black, NYC 24-hr Eyeshadow in Brooklyn Mocha, Sally Girl Shimmer Stripes Palette

I think the summer is the time of year when my makeup routine is the simplest. I don't like bothering with 10,000 products and 2 hours of application, especially when I'm going to be out in the heat feeling like my skin is melting off anyway. The products I use should be simple to apply, stay put after application, and not smudge within minutes of being outside. One of my personal favorites in this particular bunch is the NYC shadow. If I feel like keeping it light, I can wear this shadow and nothing else because it blends out well, but if I want a more intense eye I can add one onto this one and it will still look good. It's very versatile but still summery. The Intensify Me! liner has since dried out on me so I don't use it too often anymore, but if it had continued to work properly, it would have been the only eyeliner I would have needed most days. I love bright lips for summer but for some reason I'm really starting to wonder how they'll look with darker colors once they return in fall. This wine color reminds me of berries and I've had a small obsession with berry-colored lips this summer. 

As for my everyday body products, I keep it short and sweet year-round. During the winter I might add body washes or lotions with different properties because my skin changes during that time, but during the summer the only thing I usually ask for is a good scent and moisturizing properties to keep my skin from drying out too much. 

Products: St. Ives 24-hr Deep Restoring Lotion with Almond Oil, Dial Pura Fruta Shower Gel in Guava and Watermelon, Intimate Tropical Body Spray in Coconut Hibiscus

I said earlier that I'm not usually one for long, drawn-out beauty or skin routines, and I am never more willing to take shortcuts on the routines I do have than during the summer. I'm trying to get out of the shower and back in front of my fan as soon as possible. I recently found this lotion, and even though it doesn't work for the 24 hours it's advertised for, it does work very well. I love anything with almonds in it anyway, so bonus points for that. This is also very compatible with my sunscreen, so during the summer I'll just mix the two so I can apply them at once. I read somewhere that mixing sunscreen with lotion can dilute the effectiveness of the sunscreen, anyone know if there's any truth to that? I'd hope not, because I see no fun in having to rub lotion everywhere just to go back and do it all over again with sunscreen. So I'm Team Lazy. Sue me. 

I'm usually drawn to fruity scents during the summer anyway, but this summer I really wanted something that was light, had a fruity base, and keeps my skin soft. This Pura Fruta body wash has been doing pretty good this season. Nothing particularly notable about it, I just like it. 

Finally, the same scent profile follows me over to the body wash, which I picked up from the dollar store. lol Usually when I smell body sprays from the dollar store, they have a heavy alcohol scent to them, so I don't really bother with them. This one had an awesome smell though. The coconut smell mixes really well with the hibiscus, but it's not heavy at all. It's very summery to me. 

So that's what's been in my head this year when I think of summer. If I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say bright, vivid colors, light, shimmery makeup, and fruity scents. Even though I spend all of the cold months waiting for summer, once summer gets here I always wish it gone again because the heat is unbearable. I think it's the feel, the idea of summer, that grabs at me all year, because it damn sure ain't the temperature. I hope you enjoyed this post; now that it's finally out of my hair I can start focusing on fall. LOL See you soon!

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June Favorites

This month I have to admit that I didn't try too many new things at all. All but the last week of this month was uneventful, so there's not too much to add right now but next month's Favorites list should be full of new stuff. Have you done your homework and made a small bucket list for yourself yet? I'm hoping to really kick my #rrntbucketlist into high gear for the month of July, so hopefully I'll start having more to say. I've gotten a lot of new things lately, so be prepared for a month full of reviews. I know I usually say that and then the blog goes dry for awhile lol, but all of those reviews as well as these newer ones will be rolled out very soon. Anywho, let's get to the list!

Sinful Colors polishes, Australian Gold sunscreen, Carmex Cherry Lip Balm

When I was finding my items for a summer-themed post that should be going up in a couple of days, Walgreens did their not-often-enough 1/2 off sale of Sinful Colors polishes. I was able to find a couple of the colors that I was looking for, but they stayed on my mind until after the sale, when I found the remaining colors that I needed. I think Sinful Colors is a very underrated but quality brand of nail polishes that are super affordable. The majority of my nail polishes are Sinful Colors and I have yet to buy one that I ended up disliking. I'm probably addicted to them. 

I got this sunscreen in my Blossom VoxBox and I am still extremely happy with it. My favorite sunscreen was the COOLA sunscreen before I was sent this one, but even though the Australian Gold doesn't have the cucumber scent and is a little thicker than the COOLA, it does its job very well. It doesn't have a heavy scent or formula, it sinks into the skin, I use it daily on my face and it doesn't clog my pores, and it doesn't leave my skin looking greasy or shiny afterward. I can mix it in with my lotion or face cream with no problems and it sits well underneath my makeup. 

I ran out of my Aquafina and wanted to switch it up a bit, so when I saw the Carmex in a balm tube, I picked it up. The smell isn't quite as strong as the Carmex in the pot but otherwise, it's the same ol' stuff. It's really been helping keep my lips moisturized and I don't have to keep reapplying every 5 minutes.  

none this month!

It's a rare month when I don't have a favorite book to talk about. I haven't been doing too much reading lately; I've had so much going on (in my mind LOL) to try and get organized that reading was not on my list of priorities. Well it was, I have book reviews up the wazoo to do, but they just got pushed to the bottom of the list with everything else that I wanted to do. I got really thrown off towards the middle of the month and have been stumbling ever since so I'm hoping that this week I can finally get everything straight again. Then I'll be able to get back to my reading so there will be something here for sure next month. 

Braxton Family Values, Swerved

Braxton Family Values is one of my guilty pleasures. Sorta. I tire of the drama pretty quickly every episode (so clearly, the genre I should be watching isn't reality LOL) but I used to love this show when it was about sisterhood and actual family values. Now that Scandal and Vikings are between seasons, I find my Thursdays quite boring after ATV's TNT and Smackdown are over, which ended up bringing me back to BFV. I've been gaming quite a bit lately so I haven't been watching too much tv (even though I have several shows DVR'd so I can review them) but this is one of the things that I do watch. I probably won't finish the season out, but I've been watching it consistently this month so here it is. 

Swerved is a new show on the WWE Network and I've been wanting to see it since they started showing the previews a couple of months ago during Raw and Smackdown. It's sort of like Punk'd for wrestlers. It's basically a show where various pranks are pulled on different Superstars at arenas before events and usually, another Superstar is in on the prank. I thought the premiere episode was stronger than some of the other shows on the Network but I think it has a bit more potential for longevity than some of the other original shows. In this first episode, Dolph Ziggler pulled a shock prank on some of his co-workers, Renee Young got a few more with a fake cooking show, and a poo microphone really pissed off Darren Young. I loved it and can't wait to see what else they come up with. 

AfterFocus, Layout, OneTab

AfterFocus and Layout are a couple of photo apps that I've been messing with lately, and OneTab is a Chrome app that has saved my yellow derriere on a number of occasions. AfterFocus allows you to change the focus of a photo and blur the parts of your choice, Layout gives your photos really fun and colorful looking filters, and OneTab allows you to save memory in Chrome by condensing your tabs into one tab. I really like AfterFocus since I don't have the Aperture feature on my phone's camera and this app allows me to mimic it for my photos. I like being able to choose the focus of my photo and I think it really does enhance the final result of the picture. Layout is a great app if you're trying to combine a piece of different photos into one larger photo. I used that app to create the first Sister Summer photo that I posted on IG a couple of weeks ago. If you're into the #iggoals sort of photos, this is a good app to go with if you're trying to include snippets of multiple pictures into one. Finally,

OneTab is pretty simple; if you're like me and have 19 windows open in Chrome at one time, you have the option to save them to OneTab, where you can open them again at will. You can also star or lock a tab or a group of tabs, which locks them to the OneTab window and you can go back to them whenever you want. I have my OneTab set to open whenever I open Chrome and that makes things easier to keep track of. Make sure to bookmark the sites just in case though because the last time it updated, I (and tons of other pissed off users, according to the reviews left for the app after the update lol) lost all of my info and saved tabs. For the forgetful, multi-tasking folks out there, this app is a helpful resource to have. 

none this month!

Another thing I wasn't doing too much of this month was randomly surfing the 'Net. All of my internet activity was based on specific things, most of which were for blog posts, so I wasn't really trying to find new things. I'm actually thinking about combining this category with the Apps since I don't have too many website posts up here yet, but nothing's been decided. Either way, no new websites this month. 

Blog calendars, flower headpieces, 4th of July projects and recipes, desk decor, cutoff shorts

I finally got around to making a dry erase blog calendar, the DIY for which will be up in a few days, and minus the aforementioned bump in the road earlier in the month, it's really been helping me keep my intended posts for both blogs in mind. I got my inspiration from LaurDIY's DIY Wall Organizer and even though mine isn't even close to being that Tumblr-worthy, it does the job for me. I tried to make this a bit more affordable in terms of the frame I used and the decoration, and it's not bad for my first calendar although I'd love to make another. 

It's summer, so obviously I'm going to want to roll out a cute headpiece. I struggle sometimes with wearing them and being afraid that people will look at me strangely, but you know what, I like them. Whoever doesn't like them or doesn't like how I look in them doesn't have to look at me in them. LOL They seem pretty simple to make and affordable to boot, which is usually my deciding factor, so I want to learn how to make a few of them. 

One of my favorite holidays is the 4th of July, so it's one of the days I usually go all out for. Every year I'll look for new projects I can do for the day or fun new recipes (appropriately colored, of course) that I can try out. 

I cleaned out my desk back in December, and despite my efforts, it has become overrun with clutter again. This time I'd like to redecorate as well as reorganize, so this one's back on the list because I need some ideas. 

Finally, I've been kind of late on the cutoff short boat. I didn't care for cutoffs too much as a kid, because for a poor kid, cutoffs meant you were too poor to buy shorts, so you took old pants and made them shorts instead, which made you fodder for teasing. And that was usually the case, so I didn't even really have a defense for it. Since I was already getting teased, I wasn't trying to invite more of it by wearing cutoffs, so after a couple of times of being teased like crazy for them, I didn't wear them again. I was staunchly against them up until adulthood, but about a year ago I finally started to like them, and now I love them. lol 

Photography, school supplies, makeup & nail polish, baskets, cold coffee, cutoff shorts, crop tops and bucket lists

Now that I'm finally getting into these photo apps, I've started to love editing again. I used to use GIMP to edit my photos but I found that it took longer, I couldn't edit on the go, and I wasn't as pleased with the final result. Editing via app is much easier since I can take, edit, save and upload the photo and Blogger will get it automatically. I can then promote it on IG without needing to re-crop the photo, whereas with GIMP I'd have to repeatedly resize the image and the quality suffered as a result. I've been learning how to take better photos with the resources I have rather than learning how to use equipment that I don't yet own, and it's been fun to learn. 

The most wonderful time of the year--school shopping--is right around the corner already, and I can't wait. I have had this obsession with school and stationery supplies for about as long as I can remember, so even though I'm not in school anymore I now have blogging as an excuse to buy more stuff. I really don't need any more pencils, pens, notebooks or crayons....but I want them. lol

Baskets are another thing that I've picked up a sudden need for, and I still don't know how to use them all yet. I think the colors of the baskets are what did me in. lol At one time, my room was completely unorganized and stuff was everywhere. Then I got it into piles but had nowhere to put it. I'm hoping that containers help move me to that next stage of organization, and then eventually I can cut down some stuff. There's a system for recovering packrats. lol

Despite the fact that this is the absolute worst time of the year for me to be drinking cold coffee, for some reason I can't get enough of it lately. I tried a mocha frappe from Starbucks and it was okay, then a caramel mocha coffee from McD's and wasn't crazy about it, but where it's at for me are the caramel frappes from McD's. They taste great, I'm addicted and my guts are angry with me but hopefully I won't have to feel their wrath for too long. 

Once again with the cutoff shorts. I would now much rather make a pair (the irony, right?) of cutoffs that I like than buying a pair for $16 or more bucks at the store. That's where thrifting comes into play. The jeans are already softer due to wear, so they're easier to cut and manipulate into the style of cutoffs that you want. It's much cheaper and much more fun because you made the shorts yourself, so in a 'take that!' moment to my childhood, I love making a pair of cutoffs that look good. When people ask me where I bought them, it gives me pride, not shame, to admit that I made them. It's so easy to do I wonder why more people don't just make them. 

Another trend that I've been late to hop onto is the crop top trend. I thought they were too cute in the '90s and I spent way too much time twisting up all of my tops until they were hopelessly wrinkled at the bottom, my entire underage stomach was out in the wind, and my mom was yelling at me about both things. Adulthood was when I started looking at them differently, and when they came back into fashion a couple of years ago I was not on board at all. Times have changed and I was on a mission to own at least one, so I could wear them with my shorts. I'm not in quite a rush to make one of those lol, but I was determined to be more adventurous with my clothes and buy--and actually wear--a couple of them. 

Bucket lists should be an obvious choice given the last post I did. I have a lifetime bucket list, but I never thought of doing a seasonal one before. Since I would really like to get out and just enjoy life for once, it too became a near obsession as I tried to find exciting things to include for me to do this summer. The bucket list was born and even though I haven't started crossing things off of this one yet, I'm already thinking about if I want an autumn list and what I'd put on it. 

That does it for me for June's favorites. I have more random favorites than anything else, but because of everything new that I tried lately, next month's list should be pretty lengthy so put your snacks on ice now. lol Have you done your homework yet? I'd love to see or hear about your bucket list items. I've got a couple of posts coming up this week, so I'll be seeing you back here in a few days. I hope your week has gotten off to a great start!

Off to answer for my inexcusably late posting over on ATV,

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