De-Clutter or Remodel?

I really love my blog. I love posting & I love reading everyone else's posts. But something bothers me every time I log in and click "View Blog". 

I hate the way my blog looks! Maybe because the more gadgets I add to it the more cluttered it looks. Or maybe it's because I blog about so many different things, but the background of my "cookie cutter" template is a wine glass. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love wine, but I love lots of other things too, hence the blog title. I don't want to lose myself in this blog so I probably better straighten it up a little bit. 

I don't really want to start from scratch, I think I just need to edit a little here and there. And I love blogger, so I won't be switching to some other place like WordPress or something (I love love love my dashboard!!!)

I want my template to be a little bit more custom, something that fits what my blog is all about,. But, I'm not sure where to start with the whole custom template thing. Does anyone have any ideas? To start things off, I'm trying out this custom signature thing, because I want a nice personalized "out' at the end of every post. I don't know. I'm up at 1am brainstorming this whole thing, trying to figure out which road to take. I will come up with something, eventually. If you're reading this, thanks. Hopefully I will come back soon all custom and personalized! Goodnight...

Blue Monday

Happy Independence Day!!!

My mani today is not going to be one of those traditional 4th of July manis, because that's really not my thing. I love to see it on other people, but it's just not for me, at least not today! Besides the holiday, today is also Blue Monday. So in keeping with the theme, I have a color that's at least on the blue side of the color wheel...turquoise! I have two colors that I just knew were the exact same color so I did a mani comparison:

 

I bought Jesse's Girl Glee on my birthday and just knew I already had something similar. I got home, and there was its twin, OPI Catch Me in Your Net  sitting on the shelf. From the pics, you would think that the OPI would pale in comparison because the shimmery glitter in JG looks super intense right? After all, the bottle says high intensity nail color...

Well, not really. Maybe it's the thickness of the glass bottles, or maybe it's the amount in each bottle?

There's really no difference here that I can see. Can you? Well, there is a tiny bit of VNL on the OPI nails, but they both look like blue-green shimmery glitter polishes to me! I hear these polishes have another dupe out there too...Zoya Charla. I don't have it to compare to these, but there are lots of good swatches all over the internet if you wanna check it out too.

It's always hard to get my camera to focus on detail, but it's even harder when the detail is glitter. But you get the point of what I'm trying to show you, I hope. I applied to coats of each color with a base coat of American Classics Gelous. I did not apply a topcoat because I wanted to see if I could tell a difference without the added shine that a topcoat gives.

Sitting at a red light, I just happened to look down at my hand and decided to take this pic with my iPhone. Even with the blurriness, they are still exact dupes. So you choose, Jesse's Girl Glee for around $3 or OPI Catch Me in Your Net for around $9. Either way, same results. Since I can't tell a difference in these two polishes, I think I will wear this mani all day...Happy Blue Monday ya'll! Thanks for reading!

Homemade Bath Salts

Yea! I'm finally gonna show yall one of my most favorite things to do in the world! As I mentioned in my "About Me" I love making homemade bath products, so today I'm going to share one with you. I'm sure we all love bath salts, but we hate to buy them because sometimes they can be really expensive, or you add them to your bath water and you can't tell that you ever added them. Well try my recipe & tell me what you think. Below are the ingredients you will need...

 

I played around with these ingredients for a long time to figure out what works for me. You can do the same. The mixture I used today was:

1 cup Epsom Salt

1 1/2 cups Coarse Sea Salt

1/4 tsp. Baking Soda

2 Tbsp. Olive Oil

1 Tbsp. Baby Oil

10-12 drops Scented Oil

 2-3 drops Food Color

This is what you should have. I always use a wooden bowl and spoon because I don't like the way the salt sounds when you stir in a metal bowl (that whole fingernail / chalkboard thing). You don't have to add color, but if you do, mix thoroughly.

After you've mixed it all up & it should look like this...

 

Voila! You're done! Super Easy right? I used blue food color today because the blue kind of  makes it feel spa-like. The scented oils I used were Eucalyptus and Lemongrass. I used 15 drops of Eucalyptus and 12 drops of Lemongrass. I like my bath salts to be strongly scented. and more therapeutic so I use essential oils instead of fragrance oils. But beware, essential oils are a bit more expensive! Use less if you need to, or smell as you stir to get the strength you want.

 

I can't wait to use this one, it smells so nice & relaxing...like the inside of a massage parlor at the back of my favorite spa...

Now just pour them into a cute (air-tight) container & place them on your bath tub until you're to use them. All my cutesy containers were being used already so this is one of my backups, which works for me because the amount I made today all fit perfectly in here!

So there you have it! Your own homemade bath salts. So, to soften your bath water & soothe tired, aching muscles, add 2-3 scoops under running bath water. Enjoy...thanks for reading!