My Weight Loss Story So Far

                                                                 

                                                               
Well my first blog post ever on this site already gave you a look into the struggles of being bigger for me.  After a year or so of trying to eat right, research food, exercise nothing worked. Sadly. It was hard to be positive which was half the reason I quit blogging. How could I be a good source of motivation?
Last year when I switched to an IUD birth control they tested me for PCOS but never got back to me. I figured it must not be that important and let me stick out this new birth control and see what happens. I went to a nutritionist to help me learn food as well on their recommendation and referral.  I tried what the nutritionist said, I've done everything you could ever find. I can't tell you how many hours I've sat trying to figure out what to eat and when.  Nothing worked. So much so that I started eating less and less just to see when I'd finally lose something.  That point was only drinking 1 cup of coffee, minimal water, and an apple and half a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. That's it. Even ten I'd lose one or two pounds after a week of it. Fast forward to a few months ago, I started exercising even more. I even joined a Bikini Series Challenge with a friend and worked out more than ever before.  Others in the community were losing weight and inches, seeing a difference somehow. Not me. I kept at it though until I had pains and ended up having to switch birth control.  At the same time I asked about the tests I had taken a year ago and this doctor finally listened and told me I had PCOS.
   If you don't know PCOS stands for Polycystic ovarian syndrome.  It causes a lot of things including infertility, acne, weight gain, hair loss, hair growth in different places and other things. This led them to giving me medicine called Metaformin.  It is a harsh little drug that you have to slowly build up to your full dose.  This tends to correct infertility (or at least boost chances) and help people lose weight.
I've been taking this for about a month now and with the right eating (most of the time) I have lost 5.5lbs. I have not been exercising because until your body is used to this it makes you sick.  Now that I'm accustomed to it I still get sick if I eat things that are too carby like pizza and bread or anything really sweet.  It's a bummer but it does make you more strict with what your eating and how much.  So if you have a craving, be prepared to not eat much and get sick for awhile. Though strangely the first week I started taking it I could only eat really late at night and it was things like nachos. Apparently my body is confused.
  I know this is a short random post but this is my beginning and I hope to have better updates in the future.  If you have any questions about what I've been through in more detail or any about Metaformin please just leave a comment below and I will get back to you!

                                                           
                                                                     

June Favorites

Hello everyone! Well I picked one of the craziest weeks to try and start my blog back up again. Hence the lack of posts. Today I want to share with you some of my recent favorite things.  This will include, well, everything I can't get enough of. Food, skincare, makeup, music, you get the drift. I love hearing about what people have been enjoying, especially if it becomes a staple in their life.

                                                          SKIN CARE

I suffer from acne and combination skin. I always have but recently it has been worse because of PCOS hormones and birth control craziness. absolutely nothing I did helped.  I still struggle and have a fair amount of scars but it's mostly under control now.  This mask I picked up maybe a couple months ago and had time to really test it out.
                                               

Peter Thomas Roth Therapeutic Sulfur Masque

This little guy is spendy but I have found it is so worth the price.  You can pick this up at Sephora for $40.  This seems to have the most bang for your buck having 5oz, and you don't need much at all.  Like I've said I've had this for probably 3 months and have not made it half way through the jar.  The first couple of times you use this mask it will probably burn, and burn your eyes from the sulfer, I know mine did and it sucked big time but I stuck it out and the feeling only lasted a few minutes.  After that though it just has a cooling, tingling effect. I like to assume it was really attacking all the gunk in my pores those first few times.  

I don't find this mask overly drying which is fantastic for anything getting rid of acne.  I always follow up with a moisturizer but my face doesn't feel tight after using this.  If you have those red angry acne spots you can put a little of this on it and leave it on for a couple of hours or overnight as a spot treatment, it really brings the irritation down.  All in all a fantastic try if you suffer from acne, and you can put this on your back or chest (it says so on the jar) if you suffer from those. Sephora's return policy is fantastic, just keep the receipt  until you know you like this.

Next is a drugstore spot treatment.  There isn't much to say about this stuff except my skin doesn't respond to salicylic acid very well, it always prefers benzyl peroxide. For a long while I could only find the clean and clear spot treatment with the benzyl peroxide, maybe I was just blind.  But it soon became way too harsh on my skin and while it may have gotten rid of the spots, it dried out my skin like you wouldn't believe. I decided I'd rather take a couple extra days getting rid of a zit than drying it out and dealing with the flaking.  

                                                         

Neutrogena On the spot acne treatment

This is gentle but I believe helps. I'd give this a shot, especially if you don't have extremely stubborn acne.  This has 2% benzyl peroxide instead of the 10% you see in other brands a lot of the time. I also like that this doesn't leave a horrible white cast (even though it comes out white) so you can wear it in the day.  

                                                       Entertainment 

Sadly I don't have many product favorites this month, I wasn't fully planning on needing any.  

I discovered a new youtube channel that I adore, it's always a good laugh.  These two men have two channels that I watch that is basically a little talk show called Good Mythical Morning and Good Mythical More.  The latter is the after show of the first.  

If you would Like to click to Good Mythical Morning click here.

Next is a little show called Supernatural.  I know I'm probably super late to this wagon as I believe it is on the 9th season but I just stated watching it on Netflix. Me and my husband have been marathoning it for two weeks and are on season 5. It's so addicting.  

It's about two brothers hunting down urban legends in different towns and saving people. Then the continuing story line develops further as well. So ghosts, demons, vampires, changelings, it's all fair game.  I don't want to spoil it too much in case some of you haven't discovered this awesome show yet.  But let's all take a moment to appreciate one of the brothers named dean.  

                                                                  

Dean Winchester played by Jensen Ackles

Who doesn't mind staring at this for hours ;) 

So these are my favorites for the month, I'm hoping to have more for July but sometimes you get to stick with the old favorites. Let me know if you also enjoy some of these or if you try them out! 

Quick and Easy Teeth Whitening

Hi everyone! I know I probably don't have a huge audience but I just wanted to say I'm sorry for being gone for roughly a year I'm guessing.  It has been a very long crazy year and it still is. However I really want to try to make this blog a thing of mine. Not just a whim hobby.  I set up a word-press account but I'm still figuring it out.  The address for that is afternoonramble.wordpress.com. I will be following a rough schedule there and here so I will be posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  My current idea is Rambling Monday, Weight loss Wednesday, and Foodie Friday.

So now that that is out of the way onto the title of this post.  I apologize beforehand for not having before and after pictures. This is just something I do when I feel it's needed.

Imagine, you wake up and enjoy the most delicious cup of coffee before getting ready for the day.  Today you feel fierce and decide to rock a red lip.  Looking into the mirror you think "I'm hot!" and then you smile.  Your mojo pools onto the floor as you see yellow teeth.
   Has that happened to you? It has to me.  I always gt confused how yellow they seem to turn overnight.  No way am I paying 40 bucks for white-strips so I came up with the easiest way to whiten your teeth.  Depending on your store you might spend $6 or you might just have these on hand.  You will need hydrogen peroxide and a Q-tip, whitening toothpaste is optional.

• Take your Q-tip and dip 1 side into the peroxide
• Smile like you're applying for clown school, teeth bared
• Brush peroxide on top set of teeth (don't put on fillings, it will hurt), Keep smiling!
• Repeat process for bottom teeth and you guessed it, keep smiling

You want to keep this ridiculous smile on so the peroxide doesn't wash away right after you put it on. Stay like this for roughly 30 seconds. During this time I like to put everything away and get my toothbrush ready.  I like to use the Crest whitening toothpastes for good measure and just brush your little heart out. And that's it!  Easy thing to add to your routine right? I only do this once a day for about a week but depending on your teeth sensitivity or if you feel your teeth are really yellow you can do this two times a day.  

   You might prefer this method because it's cheap, quick, easy, isn't as harsh for those with sensitive teeth, and doesn't give uneven whitening. Are you confused by that last one?  Well I used a sample whitestrip and when I took it off I had blinding white polka dots on my teeth. As soon as I smiled you could tell, cute right?  So I had to warn my husband so I didn't scare him away when he got home. Luckily I fixed it with the peroxide trick after a couple of days. 

If you try this out please comment and let me know below!  

My Paranormal Experiences

Hello everyone. I have been absent for a long time, all I can say for that is school is killer. It's the day after Halloween and I hope everyone had a good one but I still thought I'd share these stories with you even if it is up a little late. If you don't believe, fine, to each their own.

First off, I've had wayyy too many for my liking. My friends and I were really into the paranormal, wanted to go on ghost hunts and were just fascinated by it. Partly because we had had a lot of things happened to us, before we met and after.  Also I'd like to say we were not these people who saw a dust ball and automatically said everything was a ghost. We tried to find explanations, re-create what happened.  I won't say all of them, but I will put a few.

I have two nights that always stick out in my mind from when we were together, and when we talk about old times it's obvious these are the ones she remembers as well. Oh and btw, we always say her house old house is haunted (she's since moved out), because there are just so many things that go on there.  Anyway, I was spending the night at her house and we needed to be up early to go to a car show and help run a booth.  Between her and her sister they have quite a few cats. I know animals are always ones to freak you out.
        Well everyone was in bed, including her sister and we always slept in the living room, she on the couch and myself in the recliner. All the lights were off and we decided to go to bed finally, her sister had the cats locked in her room with her. We shut our eyes, and in the silence...click,click,click....click,click...we looked at each other. No lights were going on or off and yet it was the same click from a lamp. As if someone was turning it on and off. She went down the hall to see if it was her family, everyone was asleep.  So we tried to go to go to sleep again. Click..click..click........click..click click. It wouldn't stop for a good 10 minutes I think. Next thing you know we hear her cats hissing and growling like crazy so we jump up and the cat is in the corner near  us. We couldn't figure out what she was hissing at and then we realized...why is the cat out here? So we went to her sisters room and asked her if she had let the cat out. Well we had woken her up out of a dead sleep and her door was literally locked. So...how the cat got out is beyond me. It was a crazy night, and neither of us slept very well.

Another story in her house is one of the greatest ones I think. Because we didn't talk about it much at the time but at school a couple days later we realized we had heard the same things. It was confirmation that we weren't just hearing things and that we heard the same thing without realizing what was going on.

Another night at her house, we had pulled an all nighter. We decided to go to bed when we realized the sun was coming up, but we were both on the couch. It's one of those big L shaped ones. As we were going to sleep I heard a young woman's voice say something. I thought it was her saying something to me but no she hadn't. I was a little freaked but kept to myself and fell asleep.
     I'm going to call my friend A during this. So A's experience was she heard a young woman say "hey"  and she thought it had been me, because it was so loud in her ear and clear.  At the time we did the "did you say something? no did you?" game.  At school we were talking and realized we both heard a young woman, closer to her but enough where I could hear it. Freakiest thing ever to know you had someone talking to you.

Now I have a few recent ones of my own I'll share with you. My daughter was very young, only a few months and was sleeping in a little rocker next to my side of the bed. My husband was working through the night so he wasn't home but I remember someone kicking the bed, hard next to me. I have no other way to describe it.  That was it but still haha.

Another similar one, my husband was working through the night and my daughter was the same age. I had turned over since I had woken up and was still trying to go back to sleep when I felt someone sit on the bed next to my legs. Full on sit down, I was groggy and thought it was my husband before remembering he wasn't home. No one was there but man I felt it.

Can I just say ghosts need to knock it off with bothering me while I'm in bed? haha

More recently, a couple months before we moved it was morning, and I was still sleeping, but the bed shaking woke me up. I remember thinking it's an earthquake or a ghost. I was just really annoyed. I've had my bed shake before multiple times but I guess I was just fed up either way.  I said, "go away" and I still don't know why I decided to do that to this day. But it was a mistake.  Next thing I know I have someone poking the crap out of my neck and each time with a "No, NO, NO".  It hurt sooo bad. And it scared me to death and I'm still scared something like that will happen again.

So there are  few of my experiences, hopefully they weren't too scary and you enjoyed them. If you don't believe, hopefully you just got a kick out of them.  Hope you all had a great Halloween. If you have any experiences yourself leave them in the comments below!

And most importantly:     DON'T LET THE GHOST STEAL YOUR CANDY!

Art

I really miss drawing. I miss reading too. There is just never enough time during the day.

                                                           

8th grade, one of the first 

also one of the first

not so skilled at painting

my best, it won a ribbon at the fair

yes it has no face

for a friend

How to apply for Mycaa: A Simple womans breakdown

                                                                   

Hello military spouses! I'm just going to get right into it. Mycaa is a pain! At least trying to figure out how to
go about getting it and enrolling in school.  I know for maybe half a year to a year I have been asking off and on for help applying for this scholarship. The answers I usually got were contact your school adviser or just go to the website it will tell you.  While that's fine and dandy for some people that just doesn't work for me. Never has. I need steps, explanations before I start diving into things. I get too confused with how does it work? So maybe your like me and had the same experience. Well luckily I'm at the home stretch of enrolling in Career Step and thought I'd share my experience with you.

1) Alright first thing I did was to visit the education center on base to get the website and information I needed to apply for Mycaa. Well I got home and it didn't work! I use Google Chrome and it would not let me on. So I went back and had them get me onto the site. Really it's just your computers settings because it has a different type of certificate since it is a military site. At any rate just open up Internet explorer. It's annoying but everything you do for this will be done through explorer. It says it's not secure up top, but if you go to the education center, they will just do the same thing.

2) Be sure you know kinda what you want to do before making an account. It will ask you and will make it a lot easier to just go through if you're not second guessing. Register for that, easy peasy. If it takes a few minutes on one of the pages and seems frozen, just leave it alone. It does a live DEERS check so it takes it a few minutes. I promise it will load the next page.

3) After this hopefully you have a school chosen. Whatever school you decide you want to attend (mine is just an online school) Contact the Career counselor/adviser.  They make it super easy. Just let them know you aren't sure about all the steps to using Mycaa and they should be more than happy to give you emails with the steps you need.   They will provide you with an attachment of a career plan.  On the Mycaa website on the right hand side it will ask you to submit a Career plan. This is where the email from your adviser will come in handy, it should tell you how to fill out every line of that form.

4)Now once you submit that call the 1 800 number at the top of the page, it probably says SECO next to it. You need to make an appointment to have a consultation call. This takes 10 maybe 15 minutes to do. They ask you a few questions like your name, email, address, spouses branch, pay grade things like that. After you make your appointment you get to play the waiting game. I personally had to wait a week for my call so definitely get on that.  Whoever you talk to will also send you an email asking you to make a SECO account. This is different than the Mycaa one. Be sure to do that before your call, it will make it so much easier.

5) Your consultation call can last up to an hour is what I was told. Mine really took 25 minutes. I think it depends on what you want to do career wise but just be aware to set aside that amount of time just in case. They basically ask what your goals are. Now between the time of making your appointment and the actual call you may have seen that your plan has been deferred. Don't panic. The consultation call fixes that. They approve your plan after that call. Contact your adviser and let them know that you have had your call and that you are approved.

6) They will now probably send you two emails. One with step by step instructions to apply for FA (financial assistance). I know that is weird. But once you get approved to use Mycaa you then have to actually request the amount of money you need.  The other email will be a electronic signature so that they can enroll you once your FA has been approved. I did both of these things this morning. Now I wait. I was told it can take up to 2 weeks for it to go through but that it rarely takes that long. Maybe a week if that.

And so far, that's all it takes! It sounds like a lot but with the helpful emails from your adviser it's really very easy. Annoying if you don't use explorer but not too bad. And there you go! A little breakdown of what happens. If you have any questions please contact me here in the comments or on Twitter. The link is up top :)

How to use up bad mascara and other lash tricks

Ok so this post will be a little scattered. Just a few random things I've come across that work for me personally to get my best lashes possible. It's really hard to get pictures of the full effect on here though so please try it for yourself!

                                                                     

Tip #1: Always tight-line.  For those of you who may not know Tight lining is basically applying eyeliner below your top lashes.  You know the water line right? Well same thing on top just under those lovely lashes :)  You don't have to be heavy with this, in fact I rarely actually apply the stick liner there. I usually take a flat thin brush rub some liner from the stick onto that and push it into the lashes. this will give your lashes a fuller look without screaming "I'M WEARING EYELINER!!!"  Focus on the outer third of your eyes with this.

Tip #2: Do the tight-lining before your eye shadow. I find I have to pull up my lid a little bit to get my eyeliner on and I hate messing up eye shadow after spending all that time on it. You can touch up if need be but you should be fine. Plus this gives it time to set.

Tip #3:  When using an eyelash curler blowing on it, running under warm water, or blasting it with the hair drying for a couple of seconds can help your lashes curl better and last longer!

Tip #4:  Curling your lashes seems to be a "Must do" for people and some may wonder what it's actually doing. Honestly, you may not need to curl them! I figured this is true for myself, my lashes are pretty long and are already curled a little bit. So if you're new to this concept try a cheap curler like one from Elf, I think it's $3 so if you find you don't benefit from it no harm done.

Tip #5:  If you find your lashes don't hold a curl throughout the day try applying a very light coat of waterproof mascara (try a lighter shade like black brown) and then follow up with your normal mascara.

Tip #6:  Have you bought a mascara that you loved but found it smudged on you like crazy? I mean black all over your cheek kind of crazy? Try the trick above! Not only will it hold a curl but when I tried this my mascara didn't smudge!

Tip#7: Less is more in my opinion. If you try the tight lining go a little lighter on mascara, you don't want to be clumpy spider eyelash girl.  


Remember my last post on the Revlon lash potion mascara? Well I can use it now thanks to tip number 5!

                                                                   

I'm sick and just out of the shower..excuse me