August Favorites

Aww, it's already the end of the last full month of summer! On one hand, I feel like summer can't be over fast enough; it's been almost too hot to live. But on the other hand, I've been loving the warm nights, the late sunsets, and not needing to wear a jacket just to take out the trash. This month didn't yield many favorites for me; I've really got to start working on that...and posting on here more. Now that Summer Under the Stars is over, I won't have my attention split too much between here and ATV, so I should be able to put up a few reviews. Anyway, on to the favorites!  

Carapex Renewal Facial Cleanser, Carapex Super Moisturizing Butter Foot Cream

I reviewed a batch of Carapex products last month sometime and like I said during the review, two of the five products I tried have since become holy grail products for me. The facial cleanser has helped with my skin, which admittedly isn't too problematic, but it's helped clear my skin, even out the texture, and removed the excess oils. I read a few bad reviews before I tried it out, but none of the adverse effects have hit me so I'll file them away just in case but my skin's been much more behaved.

The foot cream has been a godsend because during the summer, when my feet are undoubtedly in their worst condition of the year, I need something that is a level above too legit to quit. This foot cream has improved the overall feel of my skin, doesn't make my feet feel crazy greasy, and it's been great for my feet since I've been using it. It's not too heavy on the feet but I feel like it's going to be awesome with socks come wintertime. It's the only cream I've been putting on my feet this summer and it's really the only one I've needed.

TCM's Summer Under the Stars

Part of the reason why I was so silent over here throughout the month of August was because of TCM's annual promotion Summer Under the Stars, which features an all-star lineup of a different collection of actors each year. It's always a lot of fun to participate in but it's also very time consuming because I make daily postings throughout the entire month over on All Things Vintage. I can barely pull off daily blogging; there's no way in hell I could ever be a daily vlogger. I fully tip my hat to those who do it. Anyway, this was probably the most tv I've watched in months, which is also time consuming because I live-tweet through the movie I selected to feature for that day, and as a result I wasn't really watching too much else. 

As for other movies, I did go see Straight Outta Compton earlier in the month and I loved it. Maybe it's stupid of me, but I feel like having Ice Cube's real son stepping into his shoes to play the part gave the film some authenticity. I absolutely loved the movie and I don't often want to go back to the movies to watch the same film twice, but I wouldn't mind seeing this one again. It was gritty, provided some understanding as to why these guys were the way they were, and allowed the message of the group to reach an entirely new audience, which I think is especially important with this being the dawn of a new generation of rap. 

Injustice: Gods Among Us (PS3)

This isn't a new game to me by any means, but I finally bought it not that long ago and while I beat it the same day I started playing, I am still stuck on it. It's actually why cosplay has been on my mind so much lately; I would love the opportunity to try my hand at creating some cosplay versions of the costumes in Injustice. Anyway, the world doesn't need one more review of Injustice but I thought the style of gameplay here was great. I had some trouble with the more complex combos than anything else, but I really loved the storyline and it reminded me a bit of DCUO, where I remember Booster Gold mentioning that there was a Squad K to handle Superman if he ever became a danger to the planet. I wonder where the hell they were for Injustice. lol

HellFire, Phonto

I went back to HellFire this month for a new tournament, just in time too because apparently, the creators have finally decided to listen to all the complaints and reset the style of the dungeon tournaments back to how it used to be. I know that was one of the biggest reasons why people started to leave the game, so resetting it might bring a few of them back. What keeps me on that site, honestly, are the cards. I love the graphics, love the lore behind them (when I remember to read) and the small competitive streak that I do have is always ignited when trying to level up my cards for these tournaments. 

Phonto has also become my new bestie, especially with Self-Love September going on. This is the only app that I use for those photos and for an app, I really like all of the customization options that it has. It already comes with a lot of base fonts, but you can add as many more as you want and edit them however you like. I wish that it had a GIMP/Photoshop feature with text layers that you could duplicate because that would make things easier, but it doesn't take anything away from the app by not having it so I can deal. It's a more than worthy option if you have to rely on mobile editing like I do. 

Wonder Forest

If you're a beginner to blog or website design, check out Wonder Forest. Dana has an entire encyclopedia of knowledge on both blog and website design, customization and coding, and if HTML doesn't make your brain hurt then it shouldn't be too difficult to implement into your site. There are also a number of articles on how to strengthen your blog through your content, audience reach, and how to strengthen your skills as a blogger. I think it's an excellent resource for someone just learning the ropes. She also offers her services for blog design, holds classes to assist bloggers, and has premade templates for sale on the site. 

Cosplay costumes, desk organization, fall room decor and accessories, T-shirts

As I mentioned earlier, cosplay has been on my mind quite a bit lately, partially because of playing Injustice and Dynasty Warriors. I've been looking at the different character outfits, trying to figure out which would be the easiest, cheapest or most fun to cosplay, either for a convention or for a "Cosplay in Real Life" inspired outfit. It's fun to break an outfit down into its various compartments and challenge yourself to figure out where you can create the base materials for said outfit from. I came out of my IMVU experience with a lot more respect for and understanding of cosplayers, and I'd love the opportunity to bring some of my ideas to fruition someday. 

Most of my desk is finally organized the way I'd like it and I'm quite happy with it. It's been an ongoing process, partially due to my not really having a direction for it at the beginning of the year to finally getting inspiration but not the money during the spring, to being able to carry out most of what I wanted this summer. It's still not finished and I suspect it'll take awhile longer because of the money factor, but when I'm done I'll probably do a small DIY post on it. I'm really pleased with it so far and since I've been using it, it's helped my productivity skyrocket, which I needed for SUTS over on ATV for August. I think for me, I need an environment that speaks to getting work done in order for me to get in gear. When my health issues are flaring up, it really doesn't matter what environment I'm in at all, but it's been a really good motivator to at least try now that my desk is in working condition. 

Since fall is right around the corner, I wanted something festive I could decorate my desk with. I have a few ideas I want to try out and if they end up successful then I'll do a DIY on them, but I'm not sure yet. I love the various decoration options that come with the changing of the seasons. It helps me engage in the moment, in the season, and take everything in. I guess that sounds cheesy but stuff like that helps with me. 

I'm still looking to DIY some t-shirts. Since I can't afford a lot of the t-shirts I really like, I'd like to do a similar inspired shirt so I can still walk around in all my proud geekiness. I've already started buying shirts, but I want the time to figure out what I want to do with them before I potentially ruin them. LOL

Fall inspiration, Dunkin Donuts caramel iced coffee, cosplay, website design, 30-day challenges

Even though I love summer, the heat has been unbearable and feels like it's been going on forever so I'm looking forward to fall. A little bit. lol Not looking forward to having to put on layers of clothes and stay indoors for months again, but I'm looking forward to not having any more days at 95 degrees or higher. One thing I always love about fall is the color scheme and the difference in the types of makeup you can do. I keep my makeup light during the warmer months because duh, but fall is when I start to get into the darker, smokier looks again. I love mattes and darker colors during fall, so I look for both fashion and makeup inspiration to show those things off. 

I don't mind Starbucks, but it isn't the end all, be all in coffee for me. I love some of the sweets though. lol I've tried cold coffees from a number of places but wasn't able to find the one that did it for me until I went to Dunkin' last month and ordered a cold coffee. I'd never ordered from there before, so I randomly asked for some caramel in mine and it was one of the best cold coffees I've ever had. Not overloaded with ice or sugar, the brew doesn't leave a strong aftertaste and the caramel mellows everything out. Yum.  

 As I've mentioned a couple of times, I'm more of an amateur cosplayer in real life but I have what I call 'virtual experience.' LOL *Geek alert* (This is a side note, but as I writing the 'geek alert,' I had to push my glasses up on my face. Geek style. LOL) Basically, I was part of a RPG website called IMVU, which is something like Second Life, and I used to roleplay on there in a number of different roleplay factions. Even though its a virtual existence and you get to build your character and the advantage of that over a forum-based RP is that you get some visuals and real-time responses during an active scenario, imagination is still required. You get to build the look that you want your character to have, get to build their various forms (if that's the kind of RP you're in), in essence build their life on this site, all of which takes imagination and creativity because you're creating something from scratch. And then if you're a product developer or photographer (I was both), you get to either create products if you can't find exactly what you want or photograph others in their various forms, both of which were a lot of fun to do. So it gives you some experience in creating your own looks, and being on IMVU with so many different kinds of people from all kinds of walks of life (I mean seriously....it's so amazingly diverse and that's one of the things I loved about it. If you were in a crowd that understood you, there was no judgment if you came in a chat room looking like a pixie. If you were around real-life style chatters, however, all bets were off. lol) gives you more courage to really do you. Which then, in my case after I left IMVU, emerged as a love affair with cosplay. Really long way around a simple interest, but that's some of my story with discovering the joys of cosplay.

Website design is something I need to look into since being able to hire a blog designer really isn't going to be part of my life in the near future. I'm trying really hard to understand what HTML is so that I can do what I want to do with both of my blogs. I took a class in high school my senior year so some of the basic terms I am slightly familiar with but I barely...and I mean barely....scraped by. HTML just isn't my thing. One of the things that I've learned in life is that you can never learn too much and the more you can learn to become a Jack..or Jill..of all trades, thereby decreasing your need to seek outside help, it does nothing except serve to make you better. Many bloggers have to learn HTML at some point if they didn't go into it already knowing about it, and it's becoming imperative that I learn this, especially because I don't have the option to seek outside help. The look of one's blog can be a representative of the content and if you're a review blogger like me, it's extremely important that my blog has a clean look but still speaks to my personality and the content that I post. To be honest, the current design is very mismatched with the quality of the reviews that I'd like to put out, which doesn't make me confident when trying to pitch myself to companies. I would totally understand if companies didn't select me for their jobs because my blog doesn't reflect the professionalism that I'd like it to. Despite my cute nerd icons for the headers, I think those too, especially because I don't have pro level graphics design experience, may give my blog more of an amateur look rather than the look of a blogger who wants to be taken seriously. So HTML, website design and the like are definitely on my must-learn list. 

Lastly, 30-day challenges have been on the brain in spades lately. Currently, I'm taking part in Self-Love September, which thankfully was started as an open-ended challenge, because with me being too ambitious for my own good, I thought I'd be able to get it done within the month, but failed a few days in and now I'm behind. I think I might want to push it and do one more for December, just to end the year on a strong note. That's undecided though. Let's see how Self-Love September works for me first. 

Well that does it for me this month. I don't have too many new favorites, which I'm realizing is becoming a thing for me, but they're old goodies so I don't care. I rambled much more when it got to my Random Things, but I feel like that's sort of a reflection of my mindset lately, which has been more random than focused on just one thing. That's fine with me too, some months I'm really stuck on one or a few things, while other months my mind is all over the place. August was definitely a bit of both, which results in nothing but scatterbrained randomness and nonsense. lol I have a couple of reviews coming up within the week, so stay tuned for those and I'll see you soon!

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Self-Love September

When I first decided to post about this challenge, I thought I'd share my personal experience with self-love and how I learned to love myself, but I realized that I'd shared so much of the story that the challenge was pushed further and further down the page. lol So I had to start over and seriously condense it so the point of the post wasn't lost. But anyway, ever since I did my 30-Day Wellness Challenge (which I promise will be up soon) back in May, I've been itching to do another challenge of some kind. I got busy with trying to cross items off the Bucket List for the majority of the summer and all of August was pretty much consumed with completing Summer Under the Stars over on the vintage blog, so I didn't really have time to look for another challenge to do. Over the past month or so, I've noticed that the topic of self-love has come up a number of times in personal conversations and I thought a challenge focused on that would be a natural follow-up to those conversations. In one of those talks, I remember telling the person I was talking to that when I was younger and at times even as an adult, I wondered how one could know when they were doing something that promoted self-love. What specific actions could I execute to purposely show myself love? When the question was returned to me within that conversation, I found myself surprised...and proud...that I had a multitude of answers. It took me a long time to come into the knowledge of how to properly love myself, but then I realized that in small ways, I'd been doing small self-love actions for years, and you probably have too. But I remember back when I couldn't answer the question at all, so I looked online for some help on what it means to love oneself and actions that could help start the process, and I came across this article on mindbodygreen about a 30-Day Self-Love Challenge. It was perfect timing and killed two birds with one stone. I actually meant to post this a couple of days ago so that if you wanted to jump in the challenge at the beginning of the month with me you could, but my laptop hates me again so it held me off for a day. I'll mention that in another post.

Anyway, I decided to take on this challenge, not only because I never miss an opportunity to give myself some lovin' (not that kind ya nasty), but because it can be helpful to others starting out on the journey of taking time for themselves and learning to love spending time alone. I came to the realization that I needed to take time for myself and do things that I genuinely enjoyed, just because I wanted to do them. When I came across the 30-Day Self Love Challenge, I figured this would be a good time to make me stick to my goal of putting forth the effort to make myself feel good and take advantage of the opportunity to spoil myself. I don't mean that in a superficial way. What I mean by that mainly is that instead of expecting or desiring certain things from other people and being upset when I don't receive them, I would rather ask and get it from myself instead. So instead of feeling empty and upset like I have noticed many single people (myself included at one time) tend to feel because they're alone, I'd rather feel full and loved, because I am full of the love I consistently show myself. The mentality that nobody can treat me better than I treat myself has helped teach me to regard myself with nothing but the utmost respect, love and care. It has also ensured that I no longer put myself in situations that aren't the healthiest, with people who won't treat me well. That's not just for boyfriends, that's for friends and even family. Not only will I no longer allow myself to be put down and insulted by others, I try not to put myself down, insult or beat myself up like I used to. I won't compare my body to others and allow myself to feel worse about what I have..or don't have. I want to feel special to somebody one day; I mean who doesn't? But I need to feel special to myself first, and if I won't tolerate certain things from others because they hurt me then I shouldn't tolerate them from myself either. Nobody can treat, spoil or love me better than me because now I know exactly what I want and what will make me happy. It's not a long list of things and none of it is material-based, but they're all still important to me. If someone can come along and raise the bar because he loves me that deeply, then great. But if not, that's great too. I'm kind of a catch so whether some dude gets to reap the benefits or I do, it's still a win for everyone involved, right? LOL I kid. Sorta.

Anyway, since I have had that mentality, I try to spoil myself every now and again with a special treat, I'll challenge myself to go somewhere I've really wanted to go and just enjoy the experience when I get there, or I'll just lounge at home and do something I want to do. Everything that I normally expect from others, especially the things I look most for in a relationship with someone else, I give myself first. Respect, time, attention, consideration, a true commitment, trust, and love. Actions that foster those things help me to recharge my batteries, they make me appreciate what I can give to others a lot more, and I now know how to avoid my tank being depleted by others. I've learned more about what I want, I know how to articulate it now, and I know what fills me up/depletes me emotionally, all of which were things I didn't know definitively for a number of years. I knew I wanted to be treated with all the attributes I named, but I wasn't sure how to articulate what behaviors showed me those things, which I'm sure confused my boyfriends at the time. All of the attention, time, effort, support and love I would show to boyfriends I now put towards myself and to be honest, I feel more loved now than I did in some of those relationships. I think self-love is extremely vital to one's well-being and sense of self in general, so if you're struggling with taking time for yourself or learning about how to show yourself that you are indeed loved, I think you should take this challenge with me.

The original challenge is one that can be started at any time, but I wanted to do it for the month of September and finish up before the holiday craziness sets in. For me, the challenge is Self-Love September (I'm an alliteration fan, in case you couldn't tell by now. Hello, Pinterest Project and Subscription Box Series. lol) and the challenge is doing something for the sole purpose of your enjoyment or peace of mind for those 30 days. The original challenge has a template of sorts that you can use to develop your own list, which was a great starting point because I wouldn't have had the first clue of where to begin. Maybe you do some of these things now, but they don't feel as special as they should. You're doing them, but they're just normal things to you and you don't see them as self-love building actions. Make those small things feel more special. Start from the template list (I would paste it here but even if I properly source it I still feel like I'm stealing lol) and come up with your own list. I'm keeping some of the original things, but putting them in different days and adding a few of my own things to the list. Follow me on Instagram to keep up with the things I've chosen for that day; I've already posted what I did last night (earlier this morning, I'm an insomniac) and what I'll be doing later today for Day 2 of the challenge. If you decide to do the challenge, tag your posts with the challenge's original tag, #30daysofselfiecare and for the blog, use the tag #rrntselflove so I can see what you're doing. I really hope you decide to participate if you come across this post and if you do, good luck!

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