Glamour Doll Eyes Cosmetics

Long time no see! That’s mainly because I’ve been sticking with the same hairstyle and the same makeup routine (well, I haven’t really been wearing makeup, but, yeah…). Suddenly last week I was aching for some eyeshadows and thought I would visit one of my favorite pure pigment sites, Glamour Doll Eyes. I just wanted to share my mini-haul with you all (you can click on the pics to bring them to their full size):

Very pretty, right? Love these colors? I can’t wait to use them on myself and others. I should be posting pics soon. Ciao!

God Speed,

~ACG

Faking Big Hair

We all see the natural girls with the big beautiful hair and drool. Maybe you are one of the naturals with big beautiful hair and you are nodding right saying yep, I keep’em drooling. And if you are, I’m totally green. Reina is my name and shrinkage is my hairs main game. As soon as water hits my hair my curls curl up on themselves until they are nice and tight to my scalp. Usually I don’t mind this, but I miss big hair. I love big, curly hair. Not big Texas hair like this:

Yeah, because that right there is what I can’t do. But I’m talking naturally curly big hair like this:

And this

And yes please this

As I was struggling to think of what I should do with my hair since it was time for me to take my braids out, someone in one of my facebook groups posted this video:

Ding ding ding! Now why didn’t I ever think of doing that? So super cute and easy. I knew I didn’t have to necessarily have that exact wig (although I do love it and plan to buy it in the future), I just needed a curly wig. So I headed to my local bss and snatched one up and…voila!:

What do you think? I, for one, am in love with it! I have big hair, yay! So I bought it, whatevs. It’s big and I love it! I can see me getting a couple of curly wigs and rotating them throughout the summer.

I am still doing the castor oil challenge, but honestly, I have no way of determining if it’s helping or not. My hair was in braids for the first 2 months of the challenge. But I figure it’s castor oil, it can’t hurt.

So what are you going to do with your hair for the summer months?

~ACG

P.S. In that pic I’m wearing my favorite new lip color. It’s Wet N Wild Megalast Lipstick in Sugar Plum Fairy I believe.

Hair Update: Castor Oil Challenge

Hello my lovelies! How is everyone doing on the Castor oil challenge? I hope you’re sticking with it the best that you can. I am officially out of castor oil so I need to buy some more today. Yup, that does indeed mean that I have been sticking with it. I haven’t really updated on it because…well…look at my current hairstyle…

Yeah, I kept my hair in a protective style for the first week of March, and then I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed hair! Big, fluffy, glorious HAIR! So that Saturday I sat down, re-watched season two of games of thrones and threw as many braids in as possible. Then I found the cute little hair bow tutorial on pinterest this morning and thought what the heck, let’s give it a shot. I like it! I can’t wait to get home so I can do it right instead of at work without a mirror in a rush, but I really like it!

I’m also doing the castor oil challenge on the babies hair. I can definitely say it has gotten fuller, although it hasn’t really gotten longer, if that makes sense. I don’t really care how long her hair is, I just want that trauma spot to grow in as much as possible.

So update me ladies! What kind of castor oil are you using? Are you starting to see any results? Details! Details!

~AHG

Here We Go – Castor Oil Challeneg Check-in

Hello guys and dolls! I think I need a standing ovation for blogging again so soon lol. I’m trying to make this the new me. Anyway, as promised, here is my photo for the Castor Oil challenge. This was taken on Saturday, March 2, 2013.

I swear my hair has been the same length for 2 years, ugh. Apparently I don’t know how to keep my ends. Hopefully this castor oil challenge will help. How are you doing on the challenge? Are you keeping up with it? Have you run into any struggles yet? For me it’s finding a protective style I like enough to keep in for more than a day. Any styles you’ve tried that you absolutely adore?

God Speed,

~ACG

It’s Snack Time!

There’s something that keeps popping up in my Facebook news feed and I was wondering if any of you have ever tried it. It’s called Naturebox.

I’ve seen it for some time now, but the new promotion to get your first box for $10 a month is reeling me in (promo code is: SNACKHEALTHY). With your membership you receive 5 full-sized packages of healthy snacks. You will receive new snacks every month and the best part to me is that you can cancel at any time! So have you tried it? Do you like it? I think I’m really going to go for it!

God Speed,

~ACG

The LOC Method: Moisture Heaven!

Ok, before anyone says anything let me put it out there that I know that I’m late! I know it. I often am when it comes to these hair trends. Heck, I don’t know what half of the acronyms mean! But can I tell you how happy I am that I found out about the LOC method? I mean I’m ecstatic! Over the moon! Jumping for joy! Doing cartwheels! Dancing like Johanna who…dances like Elaine from Seinfield…yeah… I’m that happy!

For the longest time I’ve been seeing people on Facebook and Twitter say “yeah, I do the LOC method and it works great!”or “what products do  you use for the LOC method?”. Meanwhile I’m sitting here scratching my head saying what the heck is the LOC method??? So, I asked Mr. Google and that’s where I stumbled upon this post on Curly Nikki’s site. Basically LOC stands for Liquid, Oil, Cream. First you apply a liquid to your hair, like water. Next you apply your favorite and then you cover that with a creamy moisturizer. Now, for the past year I’ve been using water, then a creamy moisturizer and sealing with oil. I didn’t see not one bit of change and my hair was still desert dry by the end of the day. So when I read the post on curly I got super excited. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing wrong!!! So I got to it. I co-washed my hair as usual, then I applied my mixture of OVOO and jojoba oil. Finally I put on AfroVeda Shea-Amla Whipped Butter Cream. My hair was instantly softer! By the end of the day my hair was still soft and actually had shine, imagine that! And guess what?!? You’re not going to believe it because I know I didn’t. 48 hours later my hair was still soft and moisturized. This process is a winner for me! I do it about every other day just because and I simply love it.

If you’ve been doing it, what products do you use? If this will be your first time trying it, let me know how it works for you!

~ACG

Product Review: Sweet Therapy

One of my favorite things in the world is homemade body products. Finding a great bath and body company and mixologist almost seems next to impossible, but on my search for the perfect body scrub I found one!

I had the opportunity months ago (ok, yeah, I’m really late with hippin you all to Sweet Therapy, sorry!) to try out some Sweet Therapy products. Everything I tried I was great! The lotion was very moisturizing, the lavendar room spray was perfection, but by far my favorite product was the mango body scrub. The Moisturizing Mango Body Scrub… Hunny! Let me tell you! It smells so good I wanted to eat it (but didn’t of course, I’m not crazy…well, not that crazy)! Seriously. And after I scrubbed myself down with it my skin was left feeling satiny smooth. The wonderful thing about this product is that it leaves your skin looking and feeling hydrated all day long. This scrub is everything, I promise you! My only complaint about Sweet Therapy is that I’m thirsty for more scents. Gimme more Sweet Therapy, gimme more!

You can order Sweet Therapy products on etsy. You can also like their facebook page here. Hurry and go get you some! I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.

~ACG

For Richer and For, Well, Richer…

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

So a couple of weeks ago the Braxtons Family Values reunion aired and some folks gasped at something Toni Braxton said. She said that if she were to get married again it would be wonderful to marry for love and money, but if she had to choose between the two, she chose love. I agreed. Hear me out…

Before I got married I too was inlove with the idea of love. I love love! I love giving and receiving love. Love is addictive! However, what I wasn’t was confused about what marriage is. You can not live on love alone and it frightens me that some of the people I know have the mentality that you can.I want to marry someone that I’m in love with and I believe that no matter what comes our way, love will bring us through”.Really? That sounds like some fairytale, hippy stuff that my experience says I can’t subscribe to.  I mean, is that why they say finances are the #1 cause of divorce? Because I guarantee you most folks aren’t getting divorced because their spouse makes too much money.

For the most part, I’m pretty confident that one thing women look for in a marriage is security. Not having money is stressful. Not knowing where your next meal is coming from is STRESSFUL. Love can’t pay your bills on time for you. Love can’t stop you from having to declare bankruptcy. Being married has opened my eyes. Yes I married my husband because I loved him, but that’s not the only reason. I also married my husband because he was God fearing, had a personality I could enjoy “forever”, finanacially savvy, and he was a hard worker. Now say I decided to marry someone from years ago, who didn’t have those qualities. I would be miserable, but not for long because I would be in divorce court getting rid of him. January 12, 2011 my husband and I had our babygirl. June 2011 I was laid off. Laid off…with a baby…with hospital bills to pay from my 8 day stay there on top of many other bills. If my husband wasn’t who he is, more than likely I would be in someones shelter. Could our love survive that? I doubt it. I believe we would fight hard for it to, but in the end being homeless and penniless would leave us bitter and at odds with one another.

Marriage is hard work. Hard.Work. Whatever you’re facing in your relationship is nothing like what you face in marriage. Above everything else, marriage is a ministry. The devil fights marriage like it’s his only job. He knows how much God loves marriage so he desires to tear marriage apart. You come up against a lot in marriage, you just do. Don’t get me wrong, marriage is also very fun and gives you a sense of security that you may not experience otherwise. It’s a love and commitment deeper than anything else I’ve ever experienced. I love marriage. I love what it stands for, I love the way God blesses through it. It’s a beautiful thing. But God created marriage so that you could have a helpmate. I don’t remember reading, and please point this out to me if I’m wrong, that marriage was simply so that you could love love love! Love is the bonus, love is a gift. I’m blessed to have married a man who I love and who loves me. No, I wouldn’t marry for money only and I highly doubt Toni Braxton would either. But if you don’t believe finances are just as important than love, you are highly mistaken. I’m not an advocate for divorce at all. I’m constantly the one telling folks to stay, work it out. But I do understand that sometimes you can just be stretched too thin and not have anything else to give.

I’m not saying go out there and marry the first guy (or woman) you meet that has fat pockets. What I am saying is marry wisely. Money comes and goes and yes, love does help carry us through tough times, but there are certain stressors that you could avoid by not letting your heart make all the choices. Marry someone who is committed to working as hard as they love.

~ACG

It’s All Just Too Much…

I keep feeling like I should write something about Whitney, not only because I loved her, but because everyone else is paying tribute, so shouldn’t I? The thing is, I feel lost. I feel like 2011 started a wave of death and sadness one on top of another. We just keep getting slammed with it, even into 2012 and it doesn’t cease to hurt. Losing Whitney Houston hurt.

When I checked into twitter and saw all of the tweets that we had just lost Whitney, I rolled my eyes and thought dear God, twitter kills everyone off. And while that is still true, I could no longer be in denial once reputable news sources started reporting it. My blood ran cold. I started having an anxiety attack. How is this possible? Why is this happening? What’s really going on? Most importantly, why do I feel so sad?

I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out that I was feeling the way a lot of other folks were feeling. Was I allowed to feel this sad? I mean, I had never met Whitney Houston a day in my life. Did it make sense that I was feeling as strongly as I was. I had to give myself permission to grieve.

I grieved because I had hope for Whitney, that she would be the come back kid. That she would get better and do better. I was silently waiting in the background for it to happen. I grieved because of Bobbi Kristina. I don’t read a lot of tabloids, but I often hear about her doing things that as a mother, makes me quite concerned. How empty and lost she must feel now. Who will guide her? I grieved because of the memories. While so many others were posting their favorite Whitney songs and videos, I couldn’t. I couldn’t watch them, couldn’t listen to them, just couldn’t. It was taking me some place I didn’t want to go. I grew up listening to Whitney Houston. My mom and I use to stay up on a Friday night and watch a vhs tape we had with nothing but Whitney Houston videos. We would sing Whitney Houston songs to one another. Yeah, I grieved because yet another part of the memory of my mother left this Earth.

It was too much. It is too much. I am ready for this week to be over. I’m ready for the wake and the funeral to be done with. It’s too much.

That’s all I really have to say about the passing of Whitney Houston. I really did love her. For the part she played in my childhood and for that beautiful voice that could raise goosebumps on my arms.It is evident that she will be missed. I hope everyone keeps her family in their prayers.

~HG

Ahem…

Go Giants! Tis all.

~HG