Friday, December 26, 2014
Christmas, FrostyVoxBox, and it's been almost 18 months!!
First off, wow! It's been a long time and I'm sooo busy with three kids at home, I barely have time to pee alone! But it's almost been 18 months since my surgery and everything is going amazingly well. I look and feel great, I still get a little bit of swelling over my stomach scar if I go a little too crazy on the exercise but nothing severe anymore. I actually just ran my first 5k just a few weeks ago!
So, pretty proud of that! Christmas and Chanukah for us pretty much revolved around karate. Amazingly both my husband and 10 year old tested and received their certified 1st degree black belts, and my 8 year old received her conditional black belt. Needless to say that kept us crazy busy for a while! 
Just in time for things to settle down a bit I received my second VoxBox form Influenster! I love getting a VoxBox, it's fun to get to sit down and review things for free (meaning I don't pay them to receive the products and they don't pay me to review them, got it?).
Fist off I got this e o hairstyles brush in my box. Now, it looks and seems very cool. It's made of eco friendly products and is supposed to give me a "full volume" look. Problem is, I already have really thick curly hair, so if I even tried to use this on myself it would give me a very frizzy full volume look that I rally song want! So I have chosen to register this to my sister in law, we'll see how much she likes it. For her long straight hair instead!
Next up I received some Thyme! A bit of a strange thing to review I think, but hey, I'll take it! So I used this puppy all over the place yesterday in my Christmas dinner...
I used it with a little salt and sage and mixed it with a LOT of butter and rubbed it all over my turkey. That alone received rave reviews from my family, and it also added a nice flavor to my drippings for gravy. I also added the Thyme and some garlic and avocado oil on a mixture of butternut squash, mushrooms, red pepper, red onion, and and asparagus that I roasted for veggies... So yummy! I could eat it all day!
After all that Christmas goodness I got to try out Celestial seasonings Candy Cane lane tea. A great end to a heavy holiday meal. A nice, light pepperminty green tea. With a little side of red vines bites to share with the kids, hahaha. I'm a fan of red vines anyway, but I liked the small pieces and cherry flavor.
Sorry it's sideways, it's the only photo I took before it was inhaled by kids!
And finally the big combo! Makeup! What girl doesn't like to have a little fun playing with makeup? And free is even better. So yesterday I broke out the makeup and tested Rimmel Landon's Scandal eyes... I like the look of eyeliner, I really do. But I have had such issues with the stuff that I hate wearing it. Every pencil I've tried has been almost impossible to mark on my eye lids, either I can't make a mark without a lot of painful pressure or the line is really inconsistent. I've tried liquid liner but it's just too harsh of a line for me... But this stuff, the "scandal eyes" was Ah-Maze-Ing! It went right on, smooth as could be! I was practically jumping up and down I was so happy and excited. I will definitely be buying another one of these babies in the future!
Then comes the lipstick. NYC Expert Last Lipcolor in Sugarplum. Now although I'm not 100% sold on the color, it's a teeny bit pink for what I usually go for
It was a very nice lipstick. Both my mom and I tried it and we agreed. It goes on nice and feels super creamy, which is good. The coloring is nice and shiny and overall very pretty, and it did last a decent amount of time. No, it wasn't one of those lip stains that last forever and stains everything, but it did last several hours of eating and drinking and surprisingly did not leave bit lipsticks marks on cups or other people's faces after beeping kissed. I definitely give this two big thumbs up!
Sorry for the bad photo quality, front camera on my old 4s isn't great!
Now, I hate to do this, but I absolutely have to give a bad review, major thumbs down to one product in my box. This...
Um, yeah... Gentle makeup remover my foot. This may as well been water for all of the makeup it removed, which is to say none! All it did was smudge and near my eye makeup all over, forcing me to rub my eyes repeatedly and I finally had to resort to cocnut oil (which worked wonderfully by the way) to get my eye makeup off since I was out of my usual remover. It's been almost 9 hours since I used this stuff and my eyes still feel irritated and raw. A definitely do not buy!
But on the plus side I got a nice creamy serum from Boots No7 to try on my irritated skin this am and it really felt nice.
Now, I've gotten Boots face creams before at Walgreens and I will say I'm a fan. Everything ice tried from them has been great. Now with such a small samplei can't really speak to the two week wrinkle reduction claims on this serum, but I can say it smelled nice, not too perfumy and it felt really good going on and my face is soft after.
So, overall my Christmas and Chanukah season has been great! Writing review has been fun, but I'm definitely looking forward to a few days to relax before New Years!!
Monday, May 19, 2014
GoVoxBox and 9 month post surgery update
A while ago I joined influenster for fun, it's an interesting way to get to try new products! So today I got my first box, the GoVoxBox, full of interesting health related products to try. This is what I got-
A fun group of things! Unfortunately I personally connot use half of them... The food shake mixes look good and somewhat healthy, and my three year old tried the berry one and loved it, but it can't try it because I am currently doing low crab trying to get my post surgery body into the best shape for a bikini this summer (I'll show you that in a bit). Same is true for the blueberry flavored almonds...can't because of sugars! I also have no intention of using the platter sport tampons, first I don't use tampos because every time I've tried I get sick, vomiting and passing out, yuck! And second, they're scented, and I don't really want to stick anything "scented" inside my body.... I'm sensitive enough to perfumes as it is outside my body. I'll let my kids use the coupon for a free Muller yogurt to try, we really enjoy yogurt! But I fully intend to use the bath salts for myself!
Haha, my little buddy was sooo excited to get a box in the mail! "I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes."
Now on to surgery stuff. I'm what 9 months post surgery at this point, and I know I've been horrible about updating! I've been incredibly busy! But I'm definitely working on my new body and enjoying its perks (like bikinis!). I did gain some weight after surgery, not at first, but after a while because I couldn't exercise then Halloween, thanksgiving, Chanukkah, Christmas, New Years, my Birthday, our Anniversary, Valentines....well, you get the idea! So my brother and sister in law discovered a new diet called "The Carb Nite Solution", and we all decided to try it. It's a different type of low carb diet that truly burns fat and not muscle, meaning that the fat loss comes with easy muscle definition and great shape!
So this is a before and after from the first few weeks. I've lost a total of about 12lb and several inches! I'm feeling pretty confident about my post surgery body and am actually looking forward to summer! I still get some swelling just above my scar, but that's sompletely normal until about 12-18months after surgery to completely go away... The swelling isn't too bad, it's just a little "pooch", but I'm definitely looking forward to my stomach staying flat all day, not just first thing in the morning!!
Now as promised, I got a bikini! Actually, two, hahaha. And please ignore my pasty whiteness...
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