Eat Nakd

Happy Weekend!

I popping in today to share with you my new favorite natural snack! Natural Balance Foods is offering a new a line of bars and treats called Eat Nakd. This is a UK based snack making it's way to the US and thank goodness for that!

I love eating these bars for breakfast. I like to sleep as a late as I can and as soon as I get to work I'm busy immediately. These bars work great because I can eat them in between patients. They are also great for the health conscious gals as they are gluten free, dairy free, and packed with protein! Bars average round 110-150 calories.

There are so many amazingly yummy flavors to choose from! They are all delicious, but my favorite was the Apple Crunch!

You can shop these delicious snacks at http://www.naturalbalancefoods.com/nakd/.

Beauty Business Feature: Younique

Younique has quickly become my favorite makeup line. Younique's mission is to uplift, empower, validate, and ultimately build self-esteem in women around the world through high-quality products that encourage both inner and outer beauty and spiritual enlightenment while also providing opportunities for personal growth and financial reward.

Derek Maxfield and Melanie Huscroft, a brother-and-sister team, founded Younique in September 2012 with a mission to uplift, empower, and validate women across the globe. Derek and Melanie firmly believe that all women should feel valued, smart, and empowered through opportunities of personal growth and financial reward.

Younique's cosmetics development processes utilize scientific research to ensure that our products contain high quality ingredients that enrich and nourish the skin. The result is a beautifully efficacious product that is safely compatible with virtually every skin type.

Younique begins by looking to Mother Nature for the inspiration behind our cosmetics. Their in-house scientific team then formulates a product that honors that inspiration while delivering cutting-edge cosmetics. Younique's goal is to provide healthy, clean, and pure cosmetics.

Younique is the first direct sales company to market and sell almost exclusively through the use of social media. Younique Virtual Parties bridge the huge world of social media and the traditional home party business model. A Younique Virtual Party has no limits to your reach or who you can invite. This makes it so the traditional home party is not even necessary unless you choose to do it. 

I hope you all will join my Younique party. Browse products using this link.

It's a great time of year to shop for your favorite ladies. Younique offers awesome gift sets for the holidays and affordable stocking stuffers (including the Moodstruck Mineral Pigment Powder eyeshadow)! You can even share the link with you favorite person to shop for you. I did (and I'm not ashamed)! Check out some of my favorite products including Moodstruck 3D Fiber Lashes, Refreshed Pure & Natural Rose Water toner, and the complete brush set!

Shop my Younique party now!

I've also set up a Gentlemen's Only Party.

Share this link with your favorite male and tell him to get shopping!

Christmas is only 36 days away!

Weekend Haps + Monday Madness Link Up

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a great (and relaxing) weekend!

Before we get into the weekend stuff, I want to invite all of you to join my online Younique party! I'm such a huge fan of this makeup line - all natural products, gluten free, and vegan! It's worked out so well for my sensitive skin. I really love it this time of year. My face and lips can get so wind chapped that it's nice to have something gentle to use!

You can shop my online party by shopping at my party website. The party is open until November 24!

Now for weekend fun...

Friday started off with me trying to make queso for a tailgate Nick was going to the next day.

Love my little helper!

It turned out to be an epic fail. I have no idea what I did wrong. The half and half and the cheese did not combine to create a sauce consistency. Nick had to go out the next morning and get something store bought.

Cooking in my scrubs!

With Nick in East Lansing for the MSU for the game I was on my own most of Saturday. I had an eye doctor's appointment in the morning and had a massage scheduled. I also got to do some shopping. I went to Lowe's to pick out some paint samples. I've been thinking about revamping our living room for awhile now. I also like to just walk around the dream about how I can improve our home.

on my wish list

I got some really great Christmas decorations from Target and finished Christmas shopping for my nieces and nephews.

Both my sweet nieces have birthdays this month. I sent their presents to Pennsylvania and got some sweet pictures of them enjoying their gifts.

Emma showing off her mail!

My dad on the left. Emma showing off her new purse. Ella hanging out.

Ella wearing her new hair bow and snuggling her new stuffed animal!

Ella the next morning. Still loving the giraffe!

Ella

Loving Emma's face!

I can't get enough of these cuties!

Speaking of gifts and presents, I joined CG Swaps' 12 Days of Christmas! I did this swap 2 years ago and it was so fun! The ladies at CG hook you up with your partner and you buy each other 12 gifts to be opened the 12 days leading up to Christmas. It's a great way to celebrate the holiday and meet other bloggers. Sign ups end today so head over NOW and get signed up if you are interested!

DIY Stress Away Bath Soak

After working a long day I love to come home and jump into a hot bath. This homemade bath soak tops off the relaxation experience!

What You'll Need:

1/4 cup of Epsom salt
1/4 cup of baking soda
5 drops of Stress Away essential oil
5 drops of Peace and Calming essential oil

What You'll Need to Do:

Mix all ingredients together.

Store is glass jar or container.

Sprinkle into running bath water.

Relax!

Monday Madness Link Up 11.9.15

Happy Monday and welcome to the second link up of November Twenty Fifteen!

It was another low key weekend over here. I went and got my hair done on Saturday morning. I added a few more highlights and had some angled bangs added.

Nick met me at the movies afterwards.

We saw Spectre, the newest James Bond film. I tried to get Nick to stand in front of this gigantic movie cut out, but he wouldn't do it. Overall, I thought it was another great Bond film. The newest ones always have really great stories, stunts, and special effects. My favorite part was probably when Bond took out two guys while he had his hands tied together and was blind folded. James Bond is such a bad ass. However, I mostly like the newest set of James Bond movies because of Double Oh Hotness himself, Daniel Craig.

Dude looks good in a suit. He's in the top five of celebrity crushes.

We ended up watch Skyfall on Sunday because I could not remember a thing from that movie.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on the blog, doing chores, and hanging out with my littlest love!



My Reading List

I have always loved reading. It's the perfect hobby for a Michigander. You can read by the lake during the summer and spring and enjoy a good book wrapped up in blankets inside in the fall and winter. Here's my list of current reads. Share your book suggestions in the comments!

Currently Reading:

Goodreads Synopsis: THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES tells the story of three generations of women devoted to delivering new life into the world—and the secrets they keep that threaten to change their own lives forever. Neva Bradley, a third-generation midwife, is determined to keep the details surrounding her own pregnancy—including the identity of the baby’s father— hidden from her family and co-workers for as long as possible. Her mother, Grace, finds it impossible to let this secret rest. For Floss, Neva’s grandmother and a retired midwife, Neva’s situation thrusts her back 60 years in time to a secret that eerily mirrors her granddaughter’s—a secret which, if revealed, will have life-changing consequences for them all. Will these women reveal their secrets and deal with the inevitable consequences? Or are some secrets best kept hidden?

On Deck:

Goodreads Synopsis: Thirty-nine year old Rachel is having a really bad year. After losing her job and breaking up with her boyfriend, Rachel has inherited her late aunt's house, her beloved border collie, and a crowded rescue kennel, despite the fact that she knows almost nothing about dogs. Still, considering her limited options, she gamely takes up the challenge of running the kennel. And as Rachel starts finding new homes for the abandoned strays, it turns out that it might not just be the dogs that need rescuing.

Goodreads Synopsis: The only piece of information that Summer Davis takes away from her years at Peninsula Upper School -- one of the finest in the Brooklyn Heights-to-Park Slope radius, to quote the promotional materials -- is the concept that DNA defines who we are and forever ties us to our relatives. A loner by circumstance, a social outcast by nature, and a witty and warm narrator of her own unimaginable chaos by happenstance, Summer hangs on to her interest in genetics like a life raft, in an adolescence marked by absence: her beautiful, aloof mother abandons the family without a trace; her father descends into mental illness, haunted by a lifelong burning secret and abetted by a series of letters that he writes to make sense of his feelings; her best friend Claire drifts out of Summer's life in a breeze of indifference, feigned on both sides; and her older brother fluctuates between irrational fury and unpredictable tenderness in an inaccessible world of his making. Uncertain of her path and unbalanced by conflicting impulses toward hope and escape, Summer stays close to her father while attending college, taking him to electro-shock therapy treatments and trying to make sense of his inscrutable past. Upon his departure for a new and possibly recovered life, Summer begins to question the role of genetics and whether she is destined to live out her family's legacy of despair. But it is only when Summer decides to leave New York herself and put off a promising science career to take care of her great-aunt Stella -- bedrock of the family and bastion of folksy wisdom, irreverent insight, and Sinatra memorabilia in a less-than-scenic part of the Pennsylvanian countryside -- that Summer begins to learn that her biography doesn't have to define her...and that her future, like her DNA, belongs to her alone.

Goodreads Synopsis: Years ago, Lyra Davis left behind a world of wealth and privilege and the people she loved most in the world, unable to reconcile the expectations of her celebrated family with the longings of her own wild heart. Now she lives quietly among a community of expatriates on the isle of Capri, slowly, carefully learning to live fully for the first time, flourishing in the friendship of a singular man who recognizes in her a kindred spirit. 
Granddaughter of the reigning doyenne of Newport, Rhode Island, wise beyond her sixteen years, Pell Davis is poised to take her place at the pinnacle of society. Yet she and her young sister still long for the mother who ran away from them when they were children so that they could be raised by the father they adored. Pell knows that Lyra felt she loved them best by leaving. But with her father now dead and her sister veering dangerously into fantasy, she will travel across an ocean to find the mother she remembers and the deeper truths they all need so desperately….

Linking up Jenn and Jessi today !

Monday Madness Link Up 11.2.15

Hi! I hope everyone had a really fun Halloween ... and happy November!

On Saturday night I gave our candy to our neighborhood kids. It rained the whole time so there wasn't a great turn our and most kids were in their winter coats or ponchos so I didn't even get to see many costumes! However, it was still fun. I used cheapy LED battery powered candles to line our front walk way and it turned out to look pretty cool. Scout was Yoda this year for Halloween and he was a hit! The kids and parents loved it. I heard things such as "Yoda puppy," "Bye Yoda!" and I had one kid run down the driveway back to his parents and excitedly tell them, "That dog was Yoda!"

I also found some time to catch up on Bravo's Ladies of London. Let's talk about the Carolines.

Caroline Fleming (left) needs to stop wearing blue eye shadow. It's hideous. Something about her just seems a little off. Caroline Stanbury (right) is the biggest bitch ever. I don't think she's a nice person in real life either.

After work on Tuesday I'm hoping to head over a local blogger event. I've never been to a blogger meet up, but I'm looking forward to meeting other bloggers in my area and support a local shop!

I have two other fun events towards the end of the month. Can't wait to blog about all of them!

Finished The Geometry of Sisters over weekend and it was really good.

Nick and I watched 3 Days to Kill. It was really weird. So weird that I can't even tell you why. Did anyone else see it?

Good Reads: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

Good Reads Synopsis:

American Rebecca Porter was never one for fairy tales. Her twin sister, Lacey, has always been the romantic who fantasized about glamour and royalty, fame and fortune. Yet it's Bex who seeks adventure at Oxford and finds herself living down the hall from Prince Nicholas, Great Britain's future king. And when Bex can't resist falling for Nick, the person behind the prince, it propels her into a world she did not expect to inhabit, under a spotlight she is not prepared to face.

Dating Nick immerses Bex in ritzy society, dazzling ski trips, and dinners at Kensington Palace with him and his charming, troublesome brother, Freddie. But the relationship also comes with unimaginable baggage: hysterical tabloids, Nick's sparkling and far more suitable ex-girlfriends, and a royal family whose private life is much thornier and more tragic than anyone on the outside knows. The pressures are almost too much to bear, as Bex struggles to reconcile the man she loves with the monarch he's fated to become.

Which is how she gets into trouble.

Now, on the eve of the wedding of the century, Bex is faced with whether everything she's sacrificed for love-her career, her home, her family, maybe even herself-will have been for nothing.

My Thoughts:

I'm in love! As a Royal Watcher I knew I would love this book. I've always wondered what happened during Kate and Will's courtship because it has been closely guarded by the pair, their family, and their friends. This book gives a juicy glimpse into those what-ifs by following the same timeline of The Cambridge's love story.  This novel turned out to be a really nice piece of original fiction deviating from Will and Kate's story with the use of original and well developed characters. I knew I'd love it, but it was even better than what I bargained for.

Weekend Recap + Monday Madness Link Up

Happy Monday! Hope you all had an amazing weekend and are ready to take on the world!

Nick and I had a little date on Saturday night. We went to a place called the Crooked Goose and they have amazing food!

The 'Bar Burger' was out of this world. The meat was cooked perfectly, the cheese was the perfect degree of melty-ness, and it had this sauce on it called 'boom boom sauce' which I suspect was just Thousand Island dressing, but I don't care because it was delicious.

On Sunday we went on a family grocery shopping trip. Usually I grocery shop alone so it was nice to have company. Plus, I've been working 45+ hours per week so it's nice to have some help.

Success!

So our landscaping looks like shit. Pardon my french, but it's the truth. The people who owned the house before us really, really liked plants and Nick and I really, really don't. So we've neglected it for the last 3 1/2 years and now it looks like total shit. We got a quote on the work we would like to have done and it's $2,000. Umm no. I'd rather take a vacation.

So this weekend the soil was really soft in one spot so I ripped some plants out.

It felt amazing! I'm too embarrassed to post what the rest of the yard looks like so that should tell you how bad it is. I'm going to try to get out what I can the rest of this fall and finish and plant grass next spring.

We spent the rest of the weekend cuddling our pooch and watching my favorite Sunday night TV - Home Fires and Indian Summers on PBS.