Homemade Beauty Products

Alright, ladies and gents, it's almost my bedtime. I've been staying up and sleeping in, so I gotta get back on track. I haven't made a post in a while, so I thought I'd update everyone.

First of all, I made a couple new videos on YouTube, so go check them out.

Next I wanted to talk a little about my homemade beauty product endeavor. I got my stuff that I ordered from coastal scents and the stuff that I ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs on the same day, so I was able to get started on everything! I got the stuff on monday and I've been playing around with that for a couple days. First of all, here's a link and a picture for coastal scents and mountain rose herbs.

Alright, so I ordered quite a bit of stuff from coastal scents because I hadn't found the mountain rose herbs website yet. I'll probably continue to buy all of my beauty products (plus more) from mountain rose herbs instead of coastal scents. But I did buy quite a bit of fragrance oils, essential oils, and oils from coastal scents. So! Starting out with the fragrance oils, I bought Apple Extreme, Coconut, Swiss Chocolate, Honeysuckle, Lily of the Valley, and Sweet Pea. All of those are $2.99 for 2 oz. Then I bought some essential oils, 5ml each; cinnamon leaf ($3.99), vanilla blend ($9.95), tea tree ($3.99), Lavender French ($3.99), Peppermint ($3.99), and Ylang ylang ($3.99). A couple notes about those. The vanilla blend is really thick. At first I thought there wasn't anything in it, but if you hold it upside down for awhile some will drip out. I don't know if I got a bad batch or if it's just like that, but it works well enough, so I'm not complaining. I HATE the Ylang Ylang. I always thought it was supposed to smell good, and maybe it's worse because it's so concentrated, but it's awful. I can't stand it. Whenever I smell it, it always smells worse than I remember it smelling. I also got 3 bath bomb molds (60 mm) for $2.99. Then I got around 14 oz of Jojoba oil for $16.45 and 1 lb of vegetable based glycerin oil for $4.49.

Then I got a lot of stuff from Mountain Rose Herbs, too. I got 4 oz of cocoa butter for $4.25. This stuff smells soo amazing. I haven't used it yet, but I could just sit and smell it all day. Then I got some sea salt and epsom salt. One pound and $3.50 each. Now, just to give you a comparison of the prices to coastal scents. 1 lb = $3.50 to 3 lbs = $6.95. So, coastal scents is a little cheaper, but I'm so obsessed with this website, that I don't even care, lol. Plus, I just like it a lot better. The website seems more professional, it's an environment conscious company, and the order was perfect. Everytime that I've gotten a shipment from coastal scents, there's been a problem with it. The shipping with this website is safe, fast, and cheap. Plus, they have a HUGE variety of items. A much bigger variety in oils and such than coastal scents. So, besides all of that, I bought some teas and a new teapot! I got the glass tea pot in the signature style (which reminds me of the genie's lamp on Aladdin) for $16.95. One of the teas that I got is a flowering tea called Evening stars. I'll show you what I mean by flowering tea.

It has a slightly fishy smell when you make it. It tastes more like a campfire to me. A little ashy with some woody flavors. But if you put a little honey in there it sweetens it up perfectly. It actually tastes amazing with a little honey. You can learn to like it plain, just like you can learn to like coffee, but honey eases the taste for sure! That came with 5 buds and you can reuse them 2 to 3 times, so 10 to 15 uses, and it was $9.25. I'm definitely going to buy some more of these. Maybe a different flavor, but the price doesn't bother me at all. I think it's really worth it. You can make your own decision about it, you can see what it looks like, but I'm really into to tea at the moment, so it's worth it for me! I bought another tea, called Dawn Chorus. I haven't tried it yet, but I'll post an update on how it is when I do. But it's on a special right now for 15% off. I got 3 oz for $4.20. I ordered another tea, but it was backordered, so I'll post yet another update when I get that.

So, the first thing I made was an "antiseptic cleansing gel". Well, it doesn't look much like a gel to me. It's very liquidy, maybe I made it wrong, I don't know. I love the product *in theory*, but I haven't used it long enough to tell if I like it in reality. It has all the right ingredients where you would assume that it works perfectly. It uses aloe vera gel, which would help heal any open blemishes. It uses lemon juice, which helps to reduce redness and smooth out discolorations. It uses tea tree oil, which has great healing and cleansing properties for your face. It uses witch hazel, which is a great toner and astringent to just go that extra mile in cleansing. And it uses glycerin, which acts as a cleanser. So, in theory, this is an amazing product. It seems to be working so far, but I've only used it like two and a half days, so time will tell.

Next I made a bath mush, which I haven't used yet. I made some apple pie bath salts, which I also haven't used yet. I made a chocolate body scrub, which works beautifully. It only uses sugar, olive oil, liquid soap, and cocoa powder. The liquid soap is a nice addition because it makes it a lot easier to get it off. Oil doesn't come off with just water, so this almost makes the wash stage obsolete. You could probably just rinse and go with this and it would leave a wonderful chocolate scent... maybe, lol. But the scrub is great, it made my skin really soft. I made a chocolate milk bath, which was nice. It made my skin a little softer, but the scrub worked miracles where the bath only worked wonders, so, it smelled nice, but not necessary. Although something about the bath made my toenails look fantastic, lol.

I started a new hair routine today, it seemed to work great. All that I did was put some honey on my hair while I was sitting in the tub, and then when I turned the shower on to rinse everything off, I just washed my hair with some baby shampoo. It made my hair really soft and shiny and clean. I think I'm going to keep doing that.

I also made a lip scrub with just a little sugar and jojoba oil. Oh, and I decided that instead of buying a makeup remover, I would just use some olive oil. Sure, that may be kind of bad for your skin, but I figure, "hey, my eye area gets dry anyway and I'm just going to wash it off in about three seconds, so no big deal." It seems to be fine so far. My makeup comes off like a dream. So, the nightly routine is as follows. Use olive oil to remove makeup. Cleanse with antiseptic cleansing "gel". Rinse with warm water. Use a mixture of vitamin e oil and tea tree oil as a moisturizer. Use lip scrub until sugar melts away. Apply Burt's Beeswaz chapstick. And I just take off my makeup and cleanse with cotton balls.

So, I'm super tired right now. I'm gonna go to bed and I'll come back and finish this tomorrow. I think I'll go back to some of my older posts and spruce them up a little more with videos and pictures, yay!

Xenosaga: Episode 1

***Be warned, I'll be reviewing this game as I play it and there will be spoilers to the story. Once I finish the game, I'll write a summary review beneath the specs, but seeing as there is supposedly 80 hours of gameplay, that may take a while since I don't have over 3 full days without sleeping, eating, or going to the bathroom to devote to this game at the moment. As it stands, you can safely read to the next group of astericks (****) without reading any plot spoilers.***

Alright, so I bought this game yesterday and I really enjoy it so far! I said I was going to do some reviews on books, games, and films, so I figured this would be a good place to start. Then I'll see about getting some movies or books done. I might do Baby Mama next, I *adore* that movie. So, first off, I'll just start with the basic specs of the game.

• Works on the Playstation 2 console
• RPG, or role playing game, meaning you pilot the main character (or in this case, main characters, more on that later) through the game
• Like most RPGs, it is only one player
• The case boasts over 80 hours of gameplay and four mini-games
• It's rated Teen for blood and gore and violence
• The animation style is Japanese

Now, I only played it yesterday, so I don't have the best handle on the game yet. I put in about 5 and a half hours of playtime. I'm obsessive and a perfectionist. I like to explore every nook and cranny of a game when I play it the first time through, so I've really only made it to the second stage so far.

I enjoy the battle style, it's fairly complex. I wouldn't recommend this game for very young children. It took me a while to get it down, and I'm still not even sure I'm aware of all the little tips and tricks. It's a very detailed game, which I really enjoy. You can only have 3 members in your battle party which you have to decide before you enter the fight. You can't change companies in the middle. It doesn't matter how many people you have in reserve, if the characters on the battlefield all die, then the game is over and you better hope you saved it recently.

You can employ different tactics while fighting. Magic, or as it's called in this game, ether; items, which is basically where you can just take any items from your inventory that are for medicinal or battle purposes and use them in place of your turn; moving positions; A.G.W.S., which is an automated robotsuit that you can use to improve your attack power and resistance to attacks, more on these later; and the last one besides basic attacks is guard.

Guard actually has quite a few uses in this game. A character can use guard to reduce the amount of damage received from a specific attack. Sometimes the enemy will skip a turn to prepare for it's next attack and it announces this. It might be a good idea to heal your characters with one person, preferably the one in the back, which takes the least damage, and have the others use guard. Also, if you're saving energy to do a high powered attack, you can use guard. Guard saves two Attack Power (AP) points, whereas using an item saves one. Also, you can choose to end your turn early to save points, but unless you're fighting weaker enemies and you only need one hit to kill one, I would not suggest doing this. You may knock off 20 some Hit Points (HP), but you also leave yourself wide open for an attack.

Ether is very useful, as well. It took me a little while to fully understand the system. It's not as in-depth as the skill grid on Final Fantasy XII, but it does have a similar system. You must upgrade one ether skill in order to get to the next, and you can not see what skills are available until you have the means to upgrade to that skill. But these are your basic magic skills. Protect, magic protect, heal, heal all, slight heal, sleep, etc etc. These do of course use Ether Power (EP), so you have to keep an eye on your gauge and the amount of EP used in each skill.

The items I've run in to so far are mainly for medicinal purposes. Raising HP or EP, mainly. Other items can be used for revival, escaping a battle, removing poison, removing ether effects, and so on and so forth. Like I said before, using items only uses 3 AP (out of the given 4 per turn), so if you use an item twice you'll have saved enough AP to perform a special high powered attack, which I'll explain a little more later on.

Moving positions is can actually be a fairly useful thing. As I've already mentioned. The back row receives the least amount of damage from attacks aimed at all party members and cannot be reached for singular attacks. This is a good spot for the designated ether user or perhaps just someone that you'd like to keep alive so they can benefit from the experience points at the end of the battle. The only negative thing about the back row is that you cannot perform normal attacks. The only thing that can perform non-etheral attacks are the A.G.W.S.

The A.G.W.S (Anti-Gnosis Weapon System) is a robot-like shell that you can pilot during a battle. To equip and remove the A.G.W.S takes one full turn (each, two turns total), but it is worth it. The A.G.W.S has a much higher attack and defense power. The A.G.W.S has it's own HP, and if you run out of HP while you're inside the A.G.W.S you cannot be revived. You also cannot use or benefit from items or ether while you're equiping the A.G.W.S. All "repairs" must be made before the battle begins. You only get one attack per turn and with an A.G.W.S you aren't allowed to use a high powered attack unless you have equiped the same weapon on both hands. I haven't done this yet, so I won't talk about it.

Now for the basic attacks. You get two attacks per turn. The attacks do the same amount of damage, so it's nothing special. The level I'm at right now does about 50 damage per hit, so that's a total of 100 per turn. (Excluding Kos-Mos. Kos-Mos does about 150 per turn.) You're given 4 bars of AP at the beginning of each turn. If you save 2 bars of AP, so that you have 6 in total, you can perform a special, high powered attack, or a tech attack as they're called in the game. Sometimes these attacks aren't anything special, sometimes they are. It all depends on who's using the attack and what they're using the attack on. For example, Shion was fighting a robot, her normal attacks were 50 each, and her tech attack was 60. Kos-Mos was fighting a boss, her normal attacks were 80 and her tech attack was 190. It all varies. Also, you have two different types of attacks (including tech attacks). Close range attacks and long range attacks. All of the long range attacks that I've seen so far have been electrical attacks as well. Which work especially well on electrical enemies.

There are mini-games. I've only come across two of them so far. One is basically a search and destroy type game. There are 18 red doors hidden throughout the game, and the keys are hidden somewhere else. The game is to find the doors and then find the keys, or possibly vice-a-versa. Inside the doors are usually just a corridor with something useful at the end. The second is a card game, which I forgot about and haven't really checked it out yet. So, more on that later.

***Storyline***

After an intro of sorts, the game starts with the character Shion Uzuki getting ready to dive into a simulation, this is where you learn all the techniques in a non-battle area. There is no possible chance of death until you request to switch to battle mode. Now, this simulation is where you're first introduced to KOS-MOS.

Kos-mos is an abbreviation for a long name that I can't remember. Basically, Kos-Mos is a super hot android that is wicked strong and can kill just about anything, unless you're controlling her that is. She can die in battle, so don't get cocky. She does have the strongest attack and takes the least damage from a hit in the beginning group, though.

***Also, let my mistakes serve as a warning for everyone else. Never buy used games. I just spent like 3 hours trying to beat this stupid boss and now the damn thing won't load, so even if I restart the fucker it'll just go back to before the boss and then it'll probably skip in the same damn spot. Urgh, I'm so mad right now. Anywho, on with the review.***

After you fight the boss in the simulation, you get to spend some time running around the area. You find that you're on a ship called the Woglinde and there's quite a bit of stuff to explore. Once you're finished exploring you make your way up to the bridge and make a report. All the while there's video clips of the commander talking with someone else, it doesn't really explain anything, but it lays the foundation for a it-all-makes-sense-now kind of moment. Once you give your report, you make your way back to your room and fall asleep.

At this point, the game decides to go into a bit of a movie sequence, which is nice if you're trying to eat something and haven't managed to pull away from the game long enough to take a bit, lol. It explains a few things and then it leads to an attack. The attacking party is an enemy called Gnosis. They're a species, it's not a specific person or anything, but I'm not really sure I understand them. From what I get so far, they're a spirit type entity. You can't defeat them unless they're made real, which is where Kos-Mos comes in. She brings them into reality with something called the Hilbert Effect.

Introduction

Alright, so I started a blog with LiveJournal.com, but I decided that I didn't like that one very well. I was just going to copy and paste my first few blogs from that one, but I decided not to. With something new, you should always start fresh. So, here we go. I'll do a quick introduction for myself, even though there's a little bit of an intro on my profile. Also, if you have any questions for me, feel free to let me know. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

So, starting at the beginning, I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But I don't consider Oklahoma my home. This is the reason I call myself a gypsy. (Romani = Gypsy, in case you didn't know.) I don't really consider any specific place home, unless I'm happy there. Where ever I currently live and feel comfortable living is where I call home. This is really nice because that means I'm fortunate enough to have a couple homes. I never have to feel homesick when I go anywhere, because if I'm happy, I AM home. If I had to choose one specific place though, I'd choose Washington state. I moved there when I was about six and we stayed there until I was ten. I consider this my most impressionable time, so that's where I feel that my life was changed the most. After that, we moved to South Dakota and I stayed until I graduated high school, I moved in with my boyfriend at the time, and then I went to a semester of college. That brings you up to date, where I currently live in California. We moved around a lot because of my mom's job. She's a computer programmer, but she works by contract. So, once her contract expires, her employer has the option to extend her contract or send her packing.

I spent the most time in South Dakota, but for most of the time I was there, I hated it. I don't really consider that place my home. I do consider that place to be the home of some of my best friends though. The last 6 months I lived there, I managed to meet some really great people and I became close with a lot of people I hadn't known before. In high school, I used to be a bit shy. I was very independent and I'd spend a lot of my time in the library reading, or at home (more than likely reading, lol), so people really didn't spend a lot of time trying to get to know me. Besides that, I was an "outsider" and people in South Dakota aren't very accepting. I did date one guy for probably about 5 years total, off and on. He was the one I moved in with. We were happy a lot of times, but we weren't meant to be together and that lead to a lot of heartache for both of us. I moved to Washington in 2007, because I was unhappy in South Dakota and I thought moving there would make things better. When I got there I realized that it wasn't the location, it was my life. I was simply unhappy with my boyfriend, my job, and where my life was headed. I broke up with him, moved back to go to school, and I feel that I grew up in a lot of ways.

When I moved back, there was a lot of stuff that happened in the span of six months. More than you could imagine, but even though a lot of it was a mistake, it helped me realize the important things. Like the fact that I can be as independent as I want, but that doesn't mean I have to cut myself off from the world. Friends are a blessing that I missed out in the beginning years. I was hurt in the past in a lot of ways, and I just didn't like people. But people try to be good, at least to your face, and that can really help when you need it. I learned a lot of other things, like booze and I don't really mix, lol... at least if there's a guy in the vicinity. I tend to loose all dignity and reserve. But even the mistakes were fun. It gave me a lot of memories. For example, one time I went streaking in a freezing cold corn field and got bruises and cuts all on my feet and then I was drunk, so I totally biffed it and skinned up my knees and hands, lol. But that's nice, you know? You lose the ability to do stuff like that when you get older. You do that when you're young, before you realize you look like a jackass, lol. But really, you don't realize what you're missing out on when you stop. It's so... freeing to just run around and act like you don't care what people think.

I do that a lot. I pretend that I don't care what people think of me. I think sometimes I forget that I'm just pretending, too. :P But it's a good thing, because people admire someone that can really be themselves. A lot of people think I'm brave and fearless just because I don't let other people influence me or get me down. They also think I'm brave and fearless because I don't let the thought of failure stop me from doing anything. A lot of people were amazed when I moved out here. I decided I wanted to move the weekend before I left. I just packed everything up and went. People don't understand that moving away from your friends and family isn't the end of the world. With technology, your friends are only a phone call or mouse-click away. And besides, you can always go back to where you started. A lot of people come to me for advice, and I think that's the reason why. I realize that nothing is permanent and nothing is as "life or death" as we pretend it is, and other people take that for wisdom. But seriously, the girl you want to get into bed isn't going to matter ten years down the road, and if she does, then it doesn't matter what you do now anyway.

Ten years down the road is always what people try to think about. Even though they pretend it doesn't matter, long term is always on people's minds. I always try to think about the here and the now. I don't get distracted by something that doesn't matter yet. Ten years from now will matter ten years from now. And yes, what you do today will shape your circumstances in the future, it's today that you have to think about. But that's my philosophy on things. Take it or leave it. Everyone deals with life in their own way, and this just happens to be what works for me and I try to take it in to my everyday life.

My everyday life is what I'll be talking about in this blog. Like I said on my profile, I moved to Southern California to pursue a career in entertainment. I'd like to be an actress. So, I'll be blogging about the things that I learn. Hopefully, I'll learn new ways to apply makeup, which is useful in auditions and just plain useful. Public appearance is always something that people don't understand. If I can learn something about that down here, then by god, I'll share it, lol. I'll share things on voice technique. Voice is a big part of acting, whether it be singing or just acting, you can convey a lot with your voice. So, I'll blog about certain techniques that I'll learn and little life tips to improve your voice, like don't drink carbonated drinks and such. I'll also be taking classes on acting technique, so I'll share what I learn from that as well. And maybe I'll throw in some Spanish, French, and Japanese. I love learning foreign languages and speaking other languages is always useful. I plan to study dance and other forms of movement, such as martial arts and exercise. I'll share information on that as well. I'll also keep everyone updated on the type of diet that I pursue and the type of exercise that I do. I'm going to study programming languages. C ++ and Java, specifically. My mom is a computer programmer, like I said, and she'll be learning new languages, so I'll help her out with that, since that's an interest of mine as well. I'll also be making my own beauty supplies, such as bath bombs, bath salts, cleansers, soaps, moisturizers, masks, and etc. so of course I'll share the recipes and tips on those as well. And all of this will correspond with YouTube videos that I'll be making, so you can watch and read what I have to say.

But I have a lot to catch up on. So, I'll continue that in another post since it's no longer the introduction. Thank you all for taking the time to read this and I hope you stay tuned. There's a lot more coming up.