2016 Favorites

Howdy! As part of Wrap-Up Week, today I wanted to go over my favorite things for 2016. Honestly, I don't have a terribly large list of favorites for the year because financially, it was a shit year so there wasn't a ton of left over money to put towards trying out new things. But I wanted to bring you the list anyway, so I hope you enjoy it.

Beauty: Whish Revitalizing Cleansing Oil, Nuxe Multi-Purpose Dry Oil for Face, Body and Hair, Maybelline Fit Me! Matte and Poreless Foundation, elf Brow Kit, Avon Eye Makeup Remover Lotion, Burt's Bees Coconut Foot Creme, Briogeo Don't Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Mask, Cantu Intensive Repair Deep Treatment Masque, Maybelline Color Tattoo Pure Pigment in Breaking Bronze, Bodycology Fragrance Mist in Sweet Petals


Last year, I was more focused on finding lip products and this year, I've been more focused on my hair. I did a Lite Big Chop on my hair back in February (I call it 'Lite' because I just evened my hair out as best I could rather than intentionally getting rid of all of it, but I still took most of it so that qualifies as 'big chop' worthy to me) and this year has been about finding my natural curl pattern, bringing it out, and improving the texture. The Briogeo Deep Conditioning Mask is wonderful for shedding, which I'm prone to dealing with for a few reasons. This mask, however, almost completely stopped my shedding while I was using it and I'm in desperate need of the full-sized product. The Cantu masque was wonderful for softening my hair, which I needed desperately as my hair's true dry texture came out in full force this year. I've been focusing more on deep conditioning treatments, curl enhancers and hydration/moisture lotions this year and I'm looking forward to trying more products in 2017.

As for makeup products, the Whish cleansing oil was an immediate holy grail product for me. If you've never tried an oil to remove your makeup, trust me when I tell you you're missing out. This stuff was great, especially when it came to removing my mascara, which I wear a lot of, without damaging my skin or making me have to scrub at my eyes.

The Avon Eye Makeup Remover lotion is an oldie but goodie but I used it again this year when I ran out of my regular remover and it reaffirmed my love. It's another one that doesn't damage or dry out my skin and easily/gently removes my layers of warpaint.

The Fit Me! foundation was another holy grail product, because it's the first foundation that I've really loved. I've never been big on foundation, mainly because my skin doesn't particularly need it and it's always seemed a bit too heavy for me, but this one is amazing. I was lucky enough to get this from a VoxBox back in the spring and I've been yammering about it ever since.

The Nuxe dry oil works wonderfully with the Fit Me! at giving my face a bit of a glow, minimizing the effects that a matte foundation can have on the skin, and allowing the foundation to spread and blend easier. The elf Brow Kit made the list last year so I don't have to elaborate, but it's on here again. lol

The Maybelline shadow is a loose pigment and it is so beautiful that I find myself reaching for it almost every time I put on my makeup. It's beautiful applied wet or dry, it looks great against my skintone, and it stays put without tons of fallout, despite it being a loose glittery pigment. This is probably an old product because I got it at Dollar Tree but I love it regardless.

As for body stuff, this year marked my first venture into a Burt's Bees product, which I was immensely satisfied with. My favorite foot product was one from Carapex up until I tried out the Burt's Bees one. With this one, the two of them are about neck and neck now. My feet are often super dry because I'm usually barefoot, so the too legit to quit factor is high for me when it comes to foot products and this one fits the bill. I usually put it on before bed and with winter in full swing, I might double up and use both because this formula is thicker than Carapex's foot cream. Either way, it's great. Lastly, my mom got me the Bodycology spray a few months ago, which has notes of sweet pea and berries, and it's a light, tarty scent that I really like.

Books: Bloodwalker, A Beautiful Mess Photo Idea Book

As is the case with the other subjects on the list, I choose my yearly favorites out of the things in each topic that stuck out to me, that I couldn't stop thinking about. I didn't get to read a ton of books this year because my focus was on other things, but there were a few that stuck out. One of those is Bloodwalker, a YA novel (and entrant into this year's Reading Challenge) by L.X. Cain that even now, sticks out in my brain. If the title is familiar to you, that's because I reviewed it here a couple of months ago so go check that out if you'd like to hear more about it.

Another book in this year's Reading Challenge was A Beautiful Mess's Photo Idea Book, which I went over yesterday. I wish I could buy a copy of this book (partially because I'd like to mark it up with my notes and partially because my fines at the library are too high for me to check it out again lol) because it's really helped me when it comes to stepping up my game with product photos. It's also just a good book.

TV: Narcos, The Fall, A Girl Like Her, Marriage Contract, Finding Vivian Maier, Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories

I believe Narcos and The Fall may have been on last year's list, but the 2nd season of Narcos came out in September and the 3rd series of The Fall came out in sometime in...well, the fall. lol These were amazing shows that I still fully recommend to anyone looking for something to watch on Netflix. I shouldn't have to recommend Narcos though; unless you've been under a rock I'm sure you've heard something about it by now. I successfully got my uncle and his wife stuck on it and now they're just as anxious for the next season as I am.

A Girl Like Her is a documentary-styled drama I watched this summer and there are tons of films I can watch more than once but this isn't one of them. The film focuses on bullying, a really soft spot for me, and they explore it to an uncomfortable level. If you've been bullied, this may hit home for you a little too much, but overall it's an underrated gem that I think more people should be talking about.

After years of teasing my sister for her K-dramas, I finally started watching a couple of them myself. I watched one sometime in the spring called Marriage Contract, and I really enjoyed it. I wouldn't recommend K-dramas to everyone as they're more of an acquired taste, but if you are into K-dramas then you should check this one out. A single mother desperate to finish settling her late husband's loans and get his debtors off her back enters the risky organ trade by agreeing to sell her liver to her boss's mother. In order to do that and avoid getting caught, the two have to be married. In order for her to trade her liver and get the payout she needs, her body has to be healthy, so she keeps her recent diagnosis of quickly progressing fatal (bc it's a K-drama) brain tumors a secret from everyone. As is usually the case with these 'forced together' situations, the two unintentionally start to fall in love. It had its moments of 'really, dawg?' but overall I loved it.

Finding Vivian Maier is a documentary I watched much earlier in the year and I still remember it as one of the most intriguing films I'd seen in a long time. If you didn't read my initial mention of it in one of my Monthly Favorites (and there aren't many to choose from; I only did 6 this year lol) the film is about a man who bids on an abandoned storage unit and inherits what he initially blows off as being useless photographs and undeveloped film. But as he continues to go through it in search of something valuable, he realizes he's already found something valuable--the photographs, which are of considerable talent. He puts forth a ton of effort developing all of the film, finding out more about both the photographer and the various subjects in her photos. The photographer, however, was a nanny, a long stretch from the photography career she could have easily taken on. The story that is revealed through the course of the film is totally unexpected and it was a great watch.

Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories was something I watched during the fall and mentioned during the first What I've Been Watching and I'm still in love with it. It's an anthology series of sorts, all focused around this one midnight diner and its chef. People from all walks of life come into the cafe to share memories, tell their stories and listen to others, and that's what the series is about. Each episode centers on a different dish and like I said then, I really love that the root of the show is the food, rather than just being a prop. It's not an on the edge of your seat excitement-filled show. It's simple and subtle and I think that format is what helps it shine.

Games: Virtual Town, Murdered: Soul Suspect, Skyrim: Legendary Edition for PS3

This year didn't net many new games for me except for Murdered: Soul Suspect, which I played way back in January. Hell, it's been about a year since I finished it. lol It wasn't the greatest game I've ever played, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Virtual Town comes from the developers of the Virtual Families and Virtual Villagers games, which are available on both mobile and PC, and I kinda love it. The concept with this game is that rather than being confined to your house or village, you become the owner of a decrepit town and are tasked with bringing it back to its former glory. As you grow food for your residents, clean up the town and add more things, people move in, special features become available, and your town's beauty meter improves. It's a simple game you can use when you're bored in the can. lol

I got my hands on Skyrim's Legendary Edition for my birthday this year, and even though I've been playing this game for 5 years, it's still not old to me. Once you do most or all of the quests, it can get boring like any other game, but starting over brings all the old excitement back. I started a new game a few months ago, playing the exact opposite of everything my original character was about, and it's been as fun as I imagined. I wish I had a PS4 so I can start over on there too. lol

Apps: Phonto, Phone to Chrome, Push2Droid, Reddit, Influenster, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Aviary

The primary app I use to add fonts in my photos is still Phonto. I ran into some issues with the quality of the finished images earlier this summer but after I fixed it, it worked its way back onto my favorites lists. lol I still recommend it for fontheads using their phones. What I do is add all of my unzipped fonts to Dropbox and download them from there. It's tons easier and saves you the annoying process of having to unzip the files on your phone, which doesn't always work.

Phone to Chrome and Push2Droid saved my life since Chrome to Phone went dark back in the spring. Because I do the majority of my editing on my phone, I need there to be a clear path between my computer and phone. Push2Droid helps when I'm trying to put a photo on my phone from the computer, and Phone to Chrome helps when I find something on my phone's version of Chrome and need to send it to my computer. Push2Droid also saved my ass back in October when I thought I'd lost over 500 sites of information, which I'm going to talk about more in the Websites section.

Reddit released their app this year and I mentioned it during either April or May's monthly favorites post, but I'm still enjoying it. After years of being intimidated by it, I finally embraced parts of Reddit and it's been a great source of motivation, an easy way to get important news, and get inspiration for projects. Influenster was on last year's list and it's on this one too because it's helping me sharpen my reviewing skills, I'm still getting reviewing jobs from them, and it's just fun to use.

Soundcloud as always saves my ass when I'm trying to find new music. I've said this a lot of times before but I don't often use Spotify anymore so I'd be completely music-less without Soundcloud. If you like underground, electronic or anything in the dubstep/ambient families, you should try out Soundcloud. I'm about a month into a 3-month trial Soundcloud Go subscription, which I'll be reviewing when I'm done.

As I'm going to mention again in a few minutes, Tumblr is awesome if you're looking for visual inspiration on something. There's a bit of everything, there's something for everyone, and the style of photography in many shots is really inspiring. It helps make things a bit easier when I'm putting my seasonal inspiration posts together to just download the photos directly to my phone from the app.

Aviary is the other app I use when I'm editing photos and now I have even more packs to edit the photos with than I did before. It's really easy to use and doesn't require too much effort or work to create a good picture. The filters and other image manipulation tools help a lot with improving the quality of your photo and giving you something high quality looking without the price or work involved.

Websites: Tumblr, Hootsuite, Google+, PINCHme, OneTab, LunaPic

Tumblr is one of the biggest resources for me when it comes to creating my seasonal inspiration posts. A lot of the items in the 'See' category, especially the 'Headspace/Vibes' section, are from Tumblr. For someone like myself who relies on visual inspiration as a way to express themselves or get into a particular state of mind, Tumblr is great. I post on there occasionally, but they're mostly reblogs. I'm not that committed. lol

Hootsuite is a social media management tool I found earlier in the year and for the time I used it, it was awesome at helping me manage all of my social media without needing 35 tabs open at once. I was able to see everything from both blogs at the same time and because I promote my blogs using different social media sites, it can be tedious to remember which blog is promoted using which site. Hootsuite condenses it all so you can do it at once. If you run multiple sites or have multiple accounts for one site, this would be an efficient resource to have in your pocket.

I finally started utilizing Google Plus for my blog posts this year and it's done quite the job for me ever since. My individual post views have gone up, my monthly numbers have gone up, and depending on the post those numbers roll over to future posts. It can be a little tedious having to remember to promote the post on different sites, but Google Plus has made it worthwhile for me.

Finally, PINCHme isn't a new site to me; I've been using it for a couple of years but this year I finally got some good products that were worth reviewing out of it. The Maybelline mascara I reviewed at the beginning of the month was actually a pre-release product that PINCHme let me get my hands on early and a few of the items you'll see in the next Sample Roundup are from there as well. If you're a smaller review, home or beauty blogger and don't yet have the budget to make purchases specifically for your blog, check them out.

Another thing that has saved my life this year is OneTab. I wish they'd allow users to create accounts and save their tabs that way, but I digress. Earlier in the fall, my laptop battery finally called it quits on me and I had a OneTab page with over 500 tabs open at the time. I thought I was going to cry until I remembered I'd sent the page to my phone (using Push2Droid) and I was able to retrieve my tabs, then send the page back to my new computer, where I added it to my new OneTab page. lol OneTab is a lifesaver.

LunaPic is something I found last month and it's helped a lot when creating header photos for my posts. Since my header images have the subject icon on one of the sides, I often have to go through hell in order to create it on my phone and even then it still doesn't always come out right. So what I do now is edit the basic photo then send it to Google, where I can download it onto the computer and finish my editing from there before adding it to the post. Even though that still sounds rather complicated, it has made things a lot easier for me.

DIY: organization tips, home decor/improvement, wall art, photo equipment, SFX makeup, DIY For Cheaper inspiration, Cheap Gal's Guide topics

One of my biggest goals this year has been organization. How to organize my room, how to organize my blogs, how to organize my life. Right now I have a mildly controlled chaos going on, but I can feel it starting to spiral. lol So one of the biggest things I've been looking into is organization and how to make it work for me.

As I'm going to mention somewhere below, I love home decor and improvement projects. They're some of my favorite DIY projects to create or tweak. When I have the space and money to dedicate to doing them more often, they'll be here. Wall art is often, in my opinion, overpriced to the level of ridiculousness and I'm not here for it. Creating your own is tons cheaper and a lot more fun. You won't be able to sell it to an auction house or anything lol, but it'll give your home more of a personal touch.

Same goes for photo equipment and SFX makeup; they're the sources of both a personal desire to learn and an upcoming DIY series here on the blog. SFX makeup in particular has become a big interest of mine over the past couple of years and even though I don't like scary or gory movies, I LOVE gory makeup.

That brings me to my next two things, the DIY For Cheaper and Cheap Gal's Guide series that I've been looking to start on the blog at some point. The basis of the DIY FC series is based off of home decor and the Cheap Gal's Guide is basically a crash course into a number of subjects but tailored to the gal with empty pockets. I'd love to go into more detail, but I'll save it for when I can finally get the projects off the ground.

Things: yoga, branding tips, seasonal trends & inspiration, vlogging, photography equipment and resources, recipes, apartments and home decor, food trucks, business, podcasts

This year, I did my first yoga challenge. My primary doctor has been recommending I try yoga for years now as he wants to keep me off anxiety medication until I can't manage it on my own anymore. The challenge I tried was two weeks long and I've been much more open to yoga ever since. Unlike the wellness challenge I did a couple of years ago, I was a bit more excited to try and integrate a daily yoga regimen into my day. I'm starting a new challenge with Wanderlust on January 9th, so we'll see how that goes.

 I've realized that one thing I struggle with is branding myself. I have to admit that for the longest time, I kept coming across branding articles and tips but always blew them off because I didn't really feel I needed it for myself. This year though, I took an interest in trying to create a brand of sorts for myself and it's something I'm trying to figure out going into next year.

Seasonal trends was a big deal for me with this being the first year I really committed to creating seasonal inspiration boards. Those were some of the most fun posts to create because they have nothing to do with reviews, integrate different things from the site into the post, and are done in a way that I don't often see. They were also the hardest though, partially because I don't normally keep my eye on trends. Still loved creating them, but I need to start working on them earlier so I can release them on time for once.

Vlogging was a focal point of the things I watched this year mainly because it's good background noise while I work on a post. I went back and forth on the idea myself before ultimately waffling because there just isn't anything interesting enough going on in my life. Maybe when things actually start moving around I'll revisit it. Would anyone even watch them? I dunno. But for myself, I think it might be fun to try.

I really wanted to continue stepping up my game with the product photos I took, so I spent a lot of time looking at different photography equipment and trying to learn about their functions. I'm also preparing to do a post on said equipment so I needed to learn everything I could before I got started.

Because I'm in the start-up process with my food truck, I've been combing any relevant cookbooks I can get my hands on, trying to figure out new ways to cook dishes or bring in flavors to dishes I can already make. Exploring food and the tons of flavors, cooking methods or other items I can pair it with to create the best end result is a bit like science for me. The possibilities are often endless and I thoroughly enjoy experimenting.

If I have to reiterate how badly I want to move out again I may lose my head. I am dying to have my own place, if for no other reason than because I need an environment I can control so that I can work on the blog in peace. I've always loved home decor and it's what I'm most excited to DIY--I already have a series in the works dedicated to that very subject--but when I have to cram 29 years of life into one room, it's just not feasible to go on trying to create new things when I have nowhere to put it. It'd be nice to finally have my own place and do what I want with it.

Another iron I've been waiting years to put in the fire is podcasting. I've wanted to have my own podcast since my very first blog back in 2008. At the time, I wanted it to be an anxiety-based podcast, where I could talk more in-depth about issues related to anxiety because I understand people will only read so much. (LOL have you seen the length of this post? I know you're not still reading!) I no longer run that blog, but my desire to have a podcast hasn't gone away. I started seriously considering it sometime this spring, and it's been in my head ever since.

I know this post was super long, but the way I view it is if you were to watch me doing this video on YouTube, it'd probably be a 30 minute plus video. Yearly favorites videos are always the longest, so I'm hoping for some leeway that my yearly favorites posts will also be the longest because I'm covering so many subjects. There are a few things here that were on last year's list I'm sure, especially in the DIY and Things categories, but the Beauty and TV sections have the most new items. What were some of your favorites this year?