Beauty

Harry Potter Bath

/ Kaitlyn Albone / Leave a comment

Yup you read that right! I’m going to tell you how to brew the perfect Harry Potter themed bath using some of my favorite Lush products (disclaimer…one of them has recently been discontinued…so if you see Grass body was…grab it while you can!) I’ll put the links to all of these in the bottom!

I’m a huge Harry Potter fan and I have managed to integrate the fandom into most every aspect of my life, including my bathtub. I have managed to do this using a perfect concoction of Lush Cosmetics products that in some way connect to the books or characters!

Step

Step 1: The bath bomb!

The bath bomb is the product that Lush is best known for and with good reason! It turns a tub of water into a mystical wonderland! The bath bomb that I picked for this is mostly based on the name, the color and the scent. I picked Phoenix Rising because of it’s fabulous tie in to both the rise of the Order of the Phoenix in the book of the same name and Faux the phoenix belonging to Dumbledore. It’s a fabulous purple color with lots of gold, seaweed glitter and a wonderfully spicy smell of apple cinnamon! It turns the water a fabulous purple color with PLENTY of sparkle to go around! (An alternate bath bomb should this one not be available is Dragon’s Egg with lovely gold seaweed glitter and polka dots!)

Step 2: The Body Wash

This is where I tie in a recently discontinued product but only because it works so flawlessly! Don’t worry though, if you can’t find the body wash, I have other ways of integrating the grassy scent of Hermione’s perfect love potion into the mix! The body wash is called Grass and ties in very well with what Hermione’s Amorentia smells like. It smells like fresh cut grass but with a hint of neroli to make it smell beautiful! I absolutely love this body wash and can’t get enough of it! Another way to integrate the grassy smell is through a candle. I know Yankee candle has a candle or two that has hints of grass in it!

Step 3: Shampoo

Not everyone washes their hair in the bath, I know, but the Dirty shower gel adds another element of Hermione’s love potion to the mix perfectly! You can also use other Dirty products that will give off some of the same scent, like perfume or soap. It smells of spearmint, which not only connects to the book and one of my favorite characters but also really wakes up the senses to keep you from relaxing too much while you’re re-reading your favorite book in the series for the 50th time.

Step 4: The Face Mask

I always use a face mask while I’m soaking in the tub, because I like to make it a head to toe treatment! I would suggest using Mask of Magnaminty to keep with the mint from the potion and the candies of the Hogwarts Express or Cupcake to tie in with the fan favorite chocolate frogs! It also has mint in it to keep with the minty theme! If you really want to bring the steam of the Hogwarts Express or potion making into the mix, prep your skin with a steamer tab!

Step 5: Ambiance!

No bath is complete without proper ambiance, especially not a themed one! So grab your computer or iPod, and go to http://harry-potter-sounds.ambient-mixer.com/gryffindor-common-room It’s amazing! It makes whatever room you’re in sound like you’re at Hogwarts, whether it be a common room or the Great Hall! I also suggest grabbing some of the spine candles from etsy that look just like Lupin’s or some of these candles from the Mud in my Blood Store http://mudinmyblood.storenvy.com/ (right now the candles are sold out but if you find the shop on FB you can see when they are restocked). Then light than candle, grab yourself a pumpkin beverage, a Pinterest recipe butterbeer or a large cup of tea and dig back in to your favorite book in the series and relax! Shut the door and pretend you’re at Hogwarts for an hour, it’ll be like you’re at a Harry Potter themed spa! Enjoy you’re bath!

Here’s the links to the Lush products!

http://www.lushusa.com/Dragon%27s-Egg/03154,en_US,pd.html#start=4

http://www.lushusa.com/Phoenix-Rising/03575,en_US,pd.html#start=15

http://www.lushusa.com/Dirty-Springwash/9999903165,en_US,pd.html

http://www.lushusa.com/Grass/9999903127,en_US,pd.html#start=7

http://www.lushusa.com/Masks/masks,en_US,sc.html

So You’re Not a Morning Person?

/ Kaitlyn Albone / Leave a comment

So, if you’re reading this I’m assuming that you, like me despise getting up early in the AM more than more horrid things you can think of. Like me, you probably feel sub-human before 10am and feel sorry for the people that you encounter this early. Before the caffeine of your morning coffee (sometimes soda) hits your blood stream, you don’t feel quite alive, you feel like you’re seeing the world and experiencing it like someone trying to see without their prescription glasses. People often mistake you for hungover, despite your sad lack of drinking the night before. If this sounds like you, here’s some tips for fooling the world and yourself into believing that you are a fully pulled together person, even before 10am.

1. Get 8 hours of sleep. I know this isn’t always possible, but at least try. If it’s not, remind yourself that you got far less sleep in college and you will get through the next day without killing someone else or dying yourself.

2. If you use a conventional coffee maker, and by that I mean, not a Keurig, time it to make your coffee so that you can pour and go.

3. Better yet, have it make you two cups, one to drink as you get ready and one to drink on the way to work. Set all your fixings up next to it, your mug for home, your travel mug for the car and your creamer, flavoring and sugar.

4. Pick out your clothes in the evening. Put yourself together a super cute outfit before going to sleep so that A) you actually look forward to putting your outfit on B) you know you look fierce when you walk out the door even if you don’t feel fierce.

5. Eat something!!! I always feel significantly better once I’ve eaten something. Now this is partly due to the fact that I have low blow sugar and I become what’s known as “Hangry” when I don’t eat and you should probably keep your distance until I’ve eaten if you want to keep your head.

6. Use some products in the shower/at the sink that make you wake up. I use citrus body wash and an exfoliating face cleanser that invigorates the skin and makes you feel much more alert! I recommend Angels on Bare Skin or Ocean Salt from LUSH Cosmetics as well as their Dirty or Happy Hippy shower gel.

7. Use a mouth wash that wakes you up…and bring some gum. Mint obviously wakes you up, but if just your toothpaste doesn’t get you alert and focused, get a super intensely flavored mouth wash and you’ll be sure to be alert…and if you’re going to drink a bunch of coffee…bring some fun or the mouth wash strips…your co-workers will thank you for it.

8. Do a super short yoga flow. Do something that gets your blood moving, if you’re like me and you hate mornings, running is probably not your activity of choice. Yoga is gentle movement, a gets the blood flowing without getting the heart pounding. The inversion of the forward bends will get the blood to your head and you’ll feel much better.

9. Make your breakfast and lunch the night before. I assume at this point that you’re more functional at night than the morning. So take the time at night to make your food the next day something you will want to eat. Don’t just throw a frozen meal in your lunch box, though I’m guilty of doing so myself. Get some decent food together. Make yourself a smoothie or an iced coffee and throw it in the fridge that way once your face and outfit look flawless, you can grab and go.

10. Set up funny alarms on your phone. On the days that I know it’s going to take more than one alarm to get me up, I set alarms that remind me of what I’m going to have to miss if I don’t get up. For example. Alarm 1: 6am “Get up…now” Alarm 2: 6:10am “No yoga for you…enjoy your tight muscles” Alarm 3: 6:15 “Great…your going to be tight, and now you don’t have time to shower…hope your co-workers enjoy your greasy hair and stench”. On days when my wake up time isn’t quite so early, I have Jarvis from the Iron Man films wake me up. It’s an app you can download to your smartphone and he’s really quite polite and you feel significantly less awful about the fact that you have to get out of bed.

Subscription Boxes I’m Dying to Try

/ Kaitlyn Albone / Leave a comment

First I should say, if you have tried any of these before, please tell me what you think of them in the comments below! I reply, I promise! I have not terribly recently, but within the last year become sadly (as in I spend an embarrassing amount of time watching them) watching unboxing videos on YouTube. They are fairly common among the beauty and lifestyle channels that I love so much. I have watched every kind of beauty box unboxing you can imagine. Birchbox, Impsy Glambag, Popsugar Must Have, Beauty Test Tube, Beauty Army, Big Black Bag and many others. I have also watched NatureBox ones, Dollar Shave Club, and Madame Ladybug and Bonjour Jolie unboxings (and lots of other food ones I don’t remember the names of). Here are the ones I’m dying to try (I’m sure there are more that I would love just as much but they are either WAY too expensive or I haven’t found them yet.

  1. PopSugar Must Haves– This is by far the most expensive box on my list and I won’t be able to subscribe to it right away but I love watching Eleventh Gorgeous unbox theirs every month. It’s about $40 per month and contains about $100 worth of products ranging from beauty, fitness, snacks, jewelry, makeup, nail polish, books, fashion and holiday specific products. It’s a catch all box that contains usually full sized products where as with subscription services like Birchbox and Ipsy Glambag usually have some full sized and some samples. I like that the contents of the box varies every month and it contains things I can actually use to make my house or style better. They also release one much more expensive box each season like a winter, summer, spring and fall one. They usually run around $100 and they have very limited quantities of these so when the word goes out that they’re available to order, you better order yours right away if you want what’s inside, which is usually AMAZING!
  2. Naturebox– I spend a lot of time at the Disney parks and traveling (I wish I did more of this though). Being hypoglycemic, I need to eat every few hours or I become what people have lovingly deemed “hangry” …basically I turn into a very irritable crazy pants and no one wants that, trust me. (that’s putting it quite nicely). Naturebox includes different levels of subscription depending on how long you want to be subscribed for, for example a 12 month subscription costs less than a month to month subscription. They are fantastically travel friendly and would be perfect for me to bring to the parks and on planes and long car rides with me. It would stop me from spending gobs of money at the parks, which right now I do, on snacks and food. It would also enable me to eat healthy snacks instead of junk food, which I’m quite guilty of (I’m looking at you Magic Kingdom popcorn…). You get to pick out your snacks ahead of time and if you don’t like them you have the option of switching them out for something else. They have an amazing variety from sweet to savory snacks.
  3. Madame Ladybug– This one is just for the ladies. It’s a monthly period subscription box. Sounds weird but hear me out. Ladies, you spend lord knows how much on your feminine hygiene products every month. It’s absurd. You don’t like sending your significant other out to get them if you don’t have time because they 1) don’t want to take it to the register 2) they buy the wrong ones, whether they mess up the size, brand or product. Why not spare yourself the hassle of going out to get them or sending someone to get the wrong one and getting a few treats to make yourself feel better during this unfortunate time of the month. Madame Ladybug sends everything you could possible need to make yourself feel better during your period. Pads, tampons, liners and that’s so not it! They send chocolate, tea, bath and papering products, beauty products, and jewelry. Their extras outside of snacks and hygiene products change from month to month. AND if you aren’t a fan of one of the snacks they send one month, you can let them know and next month they will swap it out for something else. You also get to pick your brand of products, since we all know we are picky, don’t deny it! It just shows up at your house and you have plenty of supplies to endure the crimson tide, Tom’s visit, whatever you like to call it. There are three tiers of subscription depending on how much of each product you want, $18, $25 and $33
  4. Dollar Shave Club– first of all…do yourself a favor and go watch their video introduction. I will post a link to it at the end of the description. It’s hysterical and that alone will make you want to subscribe. We all know how obnoxiously expensive shaving has gotten. Whether you by disposal ones regularly or replace your blades on a more durable one. AND the Pink Razor Tax (their word not mine) is obscene! I’m sick of the marketing towards women of feminine shaving products, half the time the quality is worse, they have to be replaced more often and all they are is PINK! It’s stupid but I’m working on another article which will come out with a review of the Dollar Shave Club. Basically what the Dollar Shave Club is a shaving subscription service. They don’t have fancy name brand razors but I have heard that they are much better, I’ll let you know when I get mine. They send you a handle to correspond with the blades that you choose. There are there different levels of razor/blades, two blades, four blades and six blades.. The cost goes up a bit accordingly but it’s still SO much cheaper than the alternative that you can get at grocery stores or CVS or Walgreens. I’m subscribing to this immediately!! Here’s a link to their blades! razor/bladesSo these are the four that I’m dying to try soon, let me know down in the comments if you have tried any of these and what you thought! If I subscribe, I’ll definitely do unboxing videos and post them to my Youtube channel. Thanks for reading and keep sifting through shelves.

Things I’m Obsessed with This Month- June

/ Kaitlyn Albone / Leave a comment

So among the blogosphere I have found that people like to share (and people like it when they share) their monthly favorites. However, I don’t favorite things, I become obsessed with them. This month…I’m obsessed with the following

  1. http://www.dailylook.com : Ok, you caught me…I’m obsessed with fashion, beauty, all things style, from me to my house. DailyLook is very popular among the YouTube and beauty blog crowd so I decided to take a look to see what it’s all about…and I’m hooked. I haven’t bought anything because I’m quite broke but still, it’s such a fun website to window shop on that I could spend all day on it…but I don’t, I swear! If you want to check it out, check it out (and if you find something purchase worthy, purchase away!) via this link because it helps me get look points to shop with and you can do the same with your friends. http://www.DailyLook.com/?refMemberID=87410568934919854&aaid=inviteGet15
  2. New Girl- Clearly I’m behind the bandwagon on this one, but I just started watching it, literally tonite and I’m hooked. I don’t necessarily like the movie star hot shot that Zoey Deschanel has become as I knew her as an underrated actress and musician first but hey, the comedy is quite relatable to my life and it’s witty. (technically this is a July favorite but hey, I was excited)
  3. Anthony Bourdain- I watched No Reservations all the time and went to look for it on Netflix and didn’t find it, sad day. What I did find was Unknown Parts! I watched everything that was on Netflix and fell back in love with the sense of humor I had forgotten about since giving up cable and Travel Channel with it. Now I have a serious travel bug! I have since found his old show A Cook’s Tour on Amazon Prime and I am working my way through that. I’m dying to read his books, starting with Kitchen Confidential, hopefully as I travel, because, you know, that would be epic.
  4. Cucumber water- I know this is random and odd but stay with me. I went to the Grand Floridian Senses Spa for my birthday and since then…I’m hooked. They had spa cucumber water there and I am now obsessed with drinking it all the time. It’s so refreshing and calming, I don’t know what it is (besides having drunk it in the most calming place I have ever been) but it’s just wonderful.
  5. Old Movies- I love old moves to begin with and I have always loved them. My Fair Lady legit changed my life. But more on that in another article. This month I have especially been drawn to old movies. I went on the Great Movie Ride in Disney’s Hollywood Studios one day and thought to myself “they don’t make em like this anymore” which is super depressing to thing about. But I watched Footlight Parade and fell in love with it, Manhattan, the Woody Allen Flick (no I’m not fond of his recently brought to light life choices) but the movie was charming, as his movies always are. Arsenic and Old Lace has been a favorite of mine since my roommate made my watch it in college, and I had forgotten just how horrified and hysterical Carey Grant’s face can really get. It was just a great movie month. I also had the pleasure of watching Song of the South, a rare treat!
  6. Zoella, Marcus Butler, Thatcher Joe and Alfie on YouTube- Now, every year around Vidcon, I discover new YouTubers. These ones I discovered just before Vidcon and I love them all. I discovered Zoella through Tyler Oakley, and all of the others from Zoella, since everyone but Tyler is from around the same area (at least that’s what I gather) in the U.K. They all have amazing channels and I encourage you to check them out, along with my channel (link here). They really re-inspired me to become involved with the YouTube community and I think I’m going to keep at it, along with this blog. So, view, subscribe and share! Everyone helps!
  7. Social Media in General- I have always loved social media, always used it, always loved how it connects people who are incredibly far away. But this month, I rediscovered how much I really do love it. How many amazing ideas you can find on pinterest, how many amazing YouTubers there are, how many creative people live in the wonderful world of Tumblr and how creative people can be in 140 characters on twitter.
  8. The idea of old fashioned rail travel- I recently discovered that there is a real rail line that functions much like the old fashioned railways in the Golden Age of Rail Travel. I would majorly love to take one of these trips and see what it was like to really travel in style, old suitcases or trunks and all. I would love to take a 2-3 day rail trip just to see what it’s like. Everyone travels by plane now a days and while I love doing that as much as the next person, I would love to just ride the rails for a bit.
  9. Decorating- I haven’t even moved into my new apartment yet and I am already dying to start decorating. Now, some of it will have to wait till I’m a bit more financially secure but I love the idea of settling into a place and making it my own, with my own little touches. My spaces may look a bit divided and strange at first as I find a balance between my Disney and artistic style but I think a balance can be reached and it will look mad cool. As soon as I’m settled in and decorated, I will be filming an apartment tour.
  10. Style- Now, I’ve always been in love with style. It’s how you define what’s on the inside on the outside. I love jewelry, I love makeup and I love clothes, shoes and accessories. I just love how you can make your style all your own and since I don’t particularly care how people perceive my style, unless I am in a professional setting, I do just that. I have my own look, sometimes several different ones in a week, from preppy, to vintage to bohemian, I love it all. Since I wear a uniform to work, I don’t get to express my personal style particularly often but I do love it when I do!

Let me know the things you are obsessing over this month in the comments! I love learning about what people are loving at the moment! Follow me on Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook etc to see what I’m up to and get the most up to date posts. Follow the blog, subscribe to my channel and Keep Sifting Through Shelves.

▶ Disney Beauty – YouTube

/ Kaitlyn Albone / Leave a comment

Hey readers! Check out my new YouTube Channel where I will post, basically whatever I want. I love beauty products so I will talk about them in addition to current issues and I will also be putting a vlog playlist on the channel as well, to document my travels both in Disney and outside of it. I would appreciate it more than you know if you would check it out and subscribe to my channel and follow me on my other social media! Keep Sifting Through Shelves!