Just a quick friendly reminder that I have moved! You can catch me at my new home here! I look forward to seeing you there! Thanks again for all of your support! Now lets do great things together on my new home on blogspot!
Xo Trish
Xo Trish
THE TRISH LIST |
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Just a quick friendly reminder that I have moved! You can catch me at my new home here! I look forward to seeing you there! Thanks again for all of your support! Now lets do great things together on my new home on blogspot!
Xo Trish
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Hello all. I hope your Friday is treating you well. I just wanted to do a quick update as this has been the longest, most stressful and challenging week I have had in a while.
I wanted to let everyone know I am going to be moving this site to a new host. After only 2 months of blogging here and learning the basics, I am ready to do more advanced things with my blog and I am not able to do them easily on this host. I am also not 100% ready to commit to my own domain, so moving was the best option for me now. I am going to be working on it all weekend and hopefully able to get the new blog up and running by Monday. I am unfortunately not going to be able to move all of my current content so I will be in a way starting over. This makes me sad and happy all at the same time. I have seen myself grow over the past 2 months in my writing and this gives me an opportunity to really showcase what I have to say. I hope you will all follow me to my new home and until then have a great weekend! It is only Thursday and I am completely wiped out. I admit I am taking the easy way out by posting a throw back Thursday post, but I at least made it a fun one! But first a little back story on this one. There is a great story behind it. Promise.
Ever since I can remember I wanted to go to music's biggest night, the Grammy Awards. In my little girl mind I was going one day and no one was going to stop me! Funny I never had plans to be an actual musician, but I had big plans otherwise. When I turned 18 and was old enough to "gamble" as most sweepstakes are categorized this way, I began to enter contests for trips to the Grammy's. Mostly through magazine entries because back then (I make myself sound sooooo old) we had internet but there weren't as many options like we have today. I would search and find any contests related to the Grammy's (There weren't many.. trust me I looked) and entered them all. This process went on for years. The internet became more and more about social media and brands connecting with all of us out in the interwebs so to speak. More and more opportunities came up to enter giveaways and contests. I was now in my mid twenties and was starting to doubt my little girl dreams. I decided to add that dream to my "bucket list" and move on. If it were meant to be it would happen (That doesn't mean I stopped entering contests though! Addiction,). I had made a few life changes towards the end of my twenties and was in a dark place. I was unemployed, in a horrible relationship, and just plain depressed. It also didn't help that it was December. And winter. My only out was surfing the net and entering contests. Yes, yes I do have a problem. I entered thousands upon thousands of contests in just a months time. I found a job in January, met new people and things looked up. Then it was July. July of my 29th year. The best July of my life (So far..). I was searching through my junk mail.. random I know. There is a story behind that but we won't get into that today, or maybe ever. There it was. An email claiming "YOU ARE THE WINNER! CONGRATS". I was hesitant to open that email. What had I won? Why is it in my junk mail? Is this a scam? I opened it. Thank God. I just found out I had won a trip to the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. Still skeptical I made a few phone calls before I completely freaked out. It was legit. My dream had come true. My biggest bucket list item had been crossed off. It had only taken 29 years of my life, but I was on my way! Never give up on that dream! Okay so that turned into the longest #tbt post ever, although I'm not sorry. To this day it still excites me to remember that day. A dream come true. No story about the trip itself today, as this has already went longer than anticipated. You will just have to come back to see that post! It will be fun! I swear! Make it a great Thursday all! Last week I was standing in the break room at work watching a coworker fill up her water bottle. The bottle caught my eye instantly because it had a really nice pattern on it. I had to comment on it naturally. She raved about how she loved it and she felt like she drank more water when she used it. I thought back to my recent attempt to drink more water, remembering I was failing miserably. I was only using a throw away plastic cup that my employer offered us. She really had me thinking about the water bottle appearance. I went home that night and found one of my water bottles I used to use all the time, but was slacking in bringing it to work with me everyday. I decided to bring it in and see if that theory had any truth to it. For the past week I left my water bottle at work in order to not fall back into using the plastic throw away cup. I noticed I was drinking more water, and was close to reaching the water intake goal I was striving for. I found myself drinking more frequently and leaving less and less water in the bottle at the end of the day. What do you think? Do you think the appearance of your water bottle could improve your water intake? If you do a search on the internet you can find hundreds upon hundreds of manufacturers who cater to those in search for the perfect water bottle. You can get a bottle in just about any shape or color you could imagine. Some also come with some fancy accessories like filters and infusers. If you don't believe me, take a quick search. I'll wait. So what did you find? I'm sure it was a bit overwhelming, but your perfect bottle is out there! Clockwise from right: Fresa by Sigg | Ello Syndicate from Target | Beach Cottage by Swell | Lavendar Tether by Bobble In honor of drinking more water, I have selected a few fun water bottles I liked just to give as an example of what you can find. Now get out there and find a bottle you love! The quicker you do, the more water you will be drinking! (Btw I am not sure why the bottle on the left bottom has a darker background.. maybe it wants to stand out and be unique.. lol)
Anyone else thirsty? As I sit here on this cold evening, full with frozen yogurt, my heart is heavy for all the loss and pain in the south. I needed comfort food tonight with something to soothe both my heart and my sore throat. As I read all of these heartbreaking stories from people who are grieving, it reminds me of a time when I was in place like that. A place where you constantly looked to the sky, not only to look for danger, but to pray for help.
For almost half my life I was raised in the south. I was raised in places where people were friendly to one another in small towns, and helped you out no matter what the problem. Today it is still the same. I see communities coming together to help each other when tragedy strikes. This is what helps soothe the pain when terrible things happen. I am fortunate enough to be able to contact a dear friend who was in the path of some of these deadly storms. Her and her family are safe. It brings me relief, but doesn't make what happened feel any better. What makes it worse is this may happen again and again. Why is our sky so angry? Why must it take so much happiness from the people we love? Questions we can't really ever answer, but will continue to ask time and time again where tragedy strikes. I had plans to visit this dear friend in a few weeks. I will still go to be the friend I need to be in her time of need. To see the aftermath and the beginning of hope. My heart stays heavy tonight, but for many that pain may never sieze. For another beautiful post on these tragedies please check out The Florken's. These storms hit close to home for them. Please go show them some support. When you go to bed tonight, please say an extra prayer for those in the line of danger again tonight. I was recently on a Smiley 360 mission where I had to sample and review the Nature's Bounty Hair, Skin, and Nails gummy vitamins. I received a full sized bottle and have been using them for about 2 months. I won't say these are the fountain of youth you've been searching for, but I have noticed some positive changes while I have been taking them. My nails have always been little to be desired. They are very brittle and always breaking. It doesn't matter if I perfectly manicure them every week, I still end up with short, busted up looking nails. It is something I have learned to accept. I will never have cute fingers. I have noticed a little difference in my nails strength since using these vitamins. They don't seem to be breaking as regularly and I have some length to them at the moment. This is huge for me. Again they aren't perfect, but for me this is progress. The next thing I want to comment on is my hair. I already have crazy thick hair, so I am not lacking in that department at all. I have however noticed it has been shinier than usual since using the vitamins. I have also been growing my hair out over the past 2 years now from a bob cut I got. It may just be my imagination but it does seem my hair has been growing faster than it had been. I am just thankful it hasn't gotten thicker, or I would be in trouble! The third and final thing this vitamin is supposed to help is the skin. I will not even comment on this because I have had such problematic skin over the last 6 months due to some minor health issues. I can't judge a vitamin over something like that. It would of been nice to see some form a clear up, but right now I think my skin is hopeless! Overall I really like this vitamin. It is easy to take. The directions state to take 2 gummies a day with a meal. They taste really good and sometimes I have to remind myself that they aren't candy. They have a strawberry taste and the texture of a gummy candy. What a great combination for a vitamin! Price roundup: $11.99 for a bottle of 120 gummies is the average price. As always remember this is a dietary supplement and should be taken at your own risk. The vitamin contains Biotin, Vitamin C and D. All opinions on this post are of my own and have not been altered to benefit the company. You can check out Nature's Bounty on their website here. The weather is changing out there as we get closer and closer to the summer months. It is getting warmer and soon the kids will be out of school. What do those things bring to mind? Vacation! If you are like me and work a million hours a week and don't ever seem to plan an actual vacation, that can be a bit depressing. Spending all those nice days indoors working your little rear-end off really makes summer sad sometimes. So in honor of that vacation I do not plan to take this summer, I present to you my "Staycation". The top 5 places I would like to visit this summer, but probably won't get the chance. I will be on vacation via the internet in a glory of beautiful photos! NUMBER 5: The Outer Banks, NC (Photo credit OuterBanks.Org ) NUMBER 4: Nashville, TN, AKA Music City (Photo Credit: Nashville.com) NUMBER 3: New Orleans, LA (Photo Credit: Forbes.com) NUMBER 2: Havasu Falls, Supai, AZ (Photo Credit: Travel&Leisure) And the NUMBER 1 place I want to visit this summer is: Catalina Islands, CA (Photo Credit: TripAdvisor) I like a little bit of everything when I go on vacation. Some oceans, some culture and waterfalls are a must! I love taking photos and eating the food. I love taking in all the scenes and learning the culture. These 5 places are great places to relax, learn and chow down. I hope you enjoyed my "staycation" and will create one of your own!
Happy Sunday! I was having a hard time deciding on what to blog about today. I really didn't want to talk about the vehicular manslaughter that occurred this morning when a bunny jumped out in front of my car. I am still angry at myself for that. I got to work and wanted to think happy thoughts to get my mind off the horribe drive in. The first thing I did was check my email.
I don't know about you, but junk mail is off the hook these days! I'm pretty confident that 98% of my daily mail is junk and spam. I enter a lot of sweepstakes and such, so I shouldn't really complain but omg! As I was weeding through the 10,000 junk emails for the 3 I actually wanted to read something caught my eye. An email subject said, 'This email will inspire you'. It got me thinking. Junk mail has a very good way of pulling you in to read them. Make you almost click on that link before you come to your senses and move on. That email wasn't all that inspiring by the way, but it did inspire me to write this. Next time your blood pressure is rising as you weed through all that junk stop a minute to read some of the subject lines. That email about losing 20 pounds by Memorial Day probably wont really help you lose weight, but It could inspire you to write about your fitness tips or maybe start your journey to weight loss. That email that will promise you the top 10 tips on revamping your living room could inspire a blog on your own livingroom and your decorating tips. Or perhaps that email about that hot date you need to take can inspire a date night for you and tips you would give on making it a magical night. I always strive to turn anything negative into something positive. You will never get rid of spam 100% so embrace it with new ideas and inspirations for your everyday lives. It sure took my mind off that poor bunny this morning. Make it a great Thursday! Book Review! It's another lovely day here in the northeast. Grey skies, cold drizzle and miserable moods. Sounds like a perfect day to stay indoors and read! I recently joined a book club to help me get back into reading and to find some new gems to fall in love with. I don't know about you, but I get into a book reading rut where I read the same authors over and over and kind of lose interest fast.
The first book we read as a group was Karen Joy Fowler’s ‘We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves’. This would not have been a book I would of normally picked out myself, so it was already paying off to be in a book club. I was not familiar with the author, so I was not sure what to expect when I started this read. For me the book started off slow and I almost put it down, never to be finished. The story is narrated by the main character, Rosemary Cooke, as she takes us through some tough times in her family life. Up until the second part of the book I was very confused on the sibling situation and why a family would get rid of a child. It all becomes very clear in the second half as we learn the Cooke's took on raising a young chimp, Fern, as she were their child. Rosemary and Fern were raised together and that takes a toll on a young family. A lot of family drama becomes of this when Fern needs to be let go and her older brother lashes out against animal testing. This book brings a lot of attention to the animal testing and cruelty that went on in the 70's and is still around today. It also takes you deep into psychological behavior due to such events in life. Rosemary Cooke told the story as if she were the who was witnessing all of this crazy stuff happening around here, when in reality she was the one who was experiencing a lot of psychological damage from the lifestyle her family chose to live while she was a child. It also digs deep into animal psychology and how they react in different situations. Though this was a slow read, it was a very interesting one. I felt like I took away a lot of knowledge and I felt the emotion in the story. If you are looking for something that will make you think, and give you some knowledge, this is a good book. You must give it time, but it does come around. I didn't want to give away all of the book, in case someone wants to read it for themselves. Have any of you read this book? Are you familiar with the author? Let me know what you thought! This excitement of a blog probably should of been posted yesterday but I couldn't let go of my Easter love/hate/rant I posted. Now that I got that past me I can blog about the exciting mail I got yesterday! I checked my mail and there were 3 large envelopes. Two of the envelopes were recognizable as to where they came from and then there was the unidentified one. Dun dun dun... This probably excites me more than it should. Its like Christmas in my mailbox. If you have followed any of my posts you will know I am a freebie fanatic. I got back to my apartment and had to instantly rip open the envelope containing my mystery gift. To my surprise it was a contest win from Physicians Formula. I was nearly in shock. I have only been entering their contests for a million years now. (I know, I know. I am only a 30 something girl, but sheesh that's how long I have been trying to win the giveaways they have hosted on their Facebook page). I had won the new CC+ Cream. I was so excited and also pretty happy I posted that Easter post yesterday because now I got to wear it a day to give a little review. The first thing I noticed and that I give them a gold star for is, they got my shade correct! I am a fair to medium skin tone, not always the easiest to match. I am also one of those adults who has been blessed with the presence of what I call never ending acne. I have had acne since I was a teenager and it has never gone away. I have also been blessed with 2 pretty large blemishes on my chin for the past 2 weeks, so getting this in the mail was a gift from god. I put it on this morning and it covered pretty good. My skin looked even and ready to start my day. Not to heavy but I could feel it on my skin more than I liked. I got to work and heard those magic words, only people with acne understand: "You're skin looks nice today". Score! My day had been made, and I give props to the CC cream on my face by Physicians Formula.
Lesson learned in this post: Never underestimate the unidentified envelope! There could be good things hiding in there! Do you enjoy your mail most of the time, or is it mostly bills/junk? What's the best thing you ever received? Spill it in the comments! Would love to hear your stories! Xo Trish |