DIY: Makeup Storage for your Everyday Makeup

Lately I have become quite unhappy with the way my makeup took all the space in my apartment’s tiny hall making it look messy and lacking system. I do my makeup in the hall because I have installed a bigger mirror there and the room has better lighting than my bathroom. So my makeup just spilled all over my shoe cabinet making the hall a very unwelcoming place which I didn’t want any longer. My apartment, including my hall, should be a homey and friendly place where I and any visiting friends or family should feel welcome and not overwhelmed by the mess in the entry room.

So I thought about a nice and decorative solution for my problem, which should be simple and inexpensive. And I came up with one!

Here is a list of inexpensive things you are going to be needing, supposing you want to have one of your own:

• one wooden mini box system with drawers (from: IKEA)
• one complete stamp set letters (from: your nearest art supply shop)
• stamp ink in one or more colors (I bought a whole set but ended up using only the gold color)

The rest is easy as pie. I sorted my makeup collection using the six drawers. The biggest one at the bottom is for my everyday makeup routine. It contains my favorite products such as my MAC eyeshadows, my foundation, blushes and mascara. The other drawers I use for everything else that is left. For example I have one drawer for nail polishes and nail remover as well as one drawer for all my lipsticks and lipglosses. After I sorted everything out, I fitted the products into the drawers. Which only leaves for the fun part. The STAMPING! To make the boxes more practicable for me I wanted them to show from the outside what would be on the inside. That is why I searched for a quick and easy but also decorative way to label my drawers. So I just used the letter stamps with the golden stamp ink I got from an art supply shop near me to stamp labels on my drawers. They are now reading from top left to bottom right as: LIPS, CHEEKS, EYES, RANDOM, NAILS and FAVORITES.

Stamped drawers to help me stay organised.

But do not worry if you do not use say lipsticks then use your drawer for some other stuff in your makeup collection. Make it fit for you as I did for me.

For my brushes I got out an unused but beautiful cup from my kitchen cabinet. And this is what it looks like now. All tidy and sorted. Also the stamps and the ink might come in handy for some other artsy projects such as stamping gift wrappers or cards for family and friends.

The masterpiece in my hall on top of the shoe cabinet.

What does your makeup storage look like? Have you sorted it all out? If not maybe this idea is for you.

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BOT (Back on Track) Day 8

New gym member!

Last weekend was kind of busy. I had to work late shift on Saturday (Day 6) and came home to a delicious home made pasta with tomato sauce. I am proud though that I had only a small bowl and let the rest for the cook and the friends we had over for a game night. Sunday was also busy due to Mother’s Day. Of course we had coffee and cake that day. Wanting to eat clean or at least healthy is always hard, especially when it comes to social gatherings like a game night or a day spent with family and cake. Saying no, one can feel excluded and others may feel rebuffed, e.g. my BF cooking delicous dinner and me telling him that this is not what I want to be eating right now. So I do savour a home cooked meal or a self baked cake. But I try and have only one bowl or only one piece.

Yesterday, day 8, I got myself a big treat I have been pondering about for some time now. It’s a gym membership at a gym near my home and my workplace. It’s a real splurge as it is one of the finest clubs in my home town and pretty expensive, although I get discounts due to contracts between the club and the company I work for. I was debating with myself if I really needed a membership or not for some time now, seeing that I had some grand results without it, using free fitness videos on youtube.

Pros on the list for a membership are: the equipment I can use there (be it weights, weight machines, cardio equipment, a sauna and a pool), the courses they offer, the fit atmosphere and like-minded people (I already know a handful of people who train there) and I hope for some inspiration to jump start the weight-loss again (for that I have booked three sessions with a personal trainer, I’ll let you know how that works out).

Cons include the price for a membership and me being convinced that a membership is not really necessary to see and get results (so why spend a lot of money?). I also feel a little self-concious when training there (like missing a routine and being friendly with the surroundings, but I hope this wears off). All in all I hope to get something out of it. I will be discussing my goals with my personal trainer and let you know what they are in detail. Tomorrow will be a first evaluation of my fitness. I am already really looking forward to hearing how fit a PT thinks I am after one year of working out all by myself.

So here is what I ate yesterday:

Breakfast: espresso and skim milk, oats, amaranth, blueberries and strawberries, non-fat joghurt, flaxseed

Lunch: white rice (not my best choice but so delicious!), chicken ragout with green beans, asparagus and zucchini

Afternoon snack: one rice waffle with one teaspoon peanut butter

Post Workout snack: one banana

Dinner: one slice whole wheat bread with light cheese slice, salad made of tomatoes, cucumber, corn and feta, one hard boiled egg

My workout was rather short due to the registration process in the gym. I spent 25 minutes intervall training on the elliptical. I still feel it in my legs and my belly today.

 

More to come on Wednesday or Thursday. I’m going to post about my fitness evaluation then.

 

BOT (Back on Track) Day 3

Me after my workout and the lunch I had today.

 

Day 3 of my attempt to get back on track has been pretty successful. I worked a morning shift and was allowed to go home earlier as business was low. Thus I had enough energy left to squeeze in a little upper body and abs workout by Fitnessblender. I did this and a little warm up as this was not included in the routine.

Day 3 eats:

Breakfast: espresso and skim milk, and my everday bowl of muesli consiting of rolled oats, flaxseed, amaranth, puffed spelt, blueberries and strawberries as well as joghurt (I will take a photo for tomorrows post)

no Midmorning munch this time

Lunch: beluga lentils in a joghurt dip, rapunzel lettuce and canned tuna

Afternoon snack: hummus and a red bell pepper

Dinner: salad made of tomatoes, cucumber, corn and feta cheese, a slice of bread and a hard-boiled egg

As far as indulgences go, I couldn’t resist a treat today either. Rhubarb is in season and it is only for ab two and a half months every year. I just had to buy some and make it into a delicious dessert.

BOT (Back on Track) Day 2

Yesterday I posted about getting back on track with my eating and exercising habits. I hope to be more successful if I come back here as often as I can to post about the foods I ate and the workouts I did. This is a recap of my second day, which was yesterday.

Day 2 BOT

Breakfast: espresso with skim milk, oats, flaxseed, joghurt, blueberries, strawberries

Mid-morning Munch: rice waffle and peanut cream (no butter), one apple

Lunch: red lentils, broccoli and green beans, scampis

Afternoon Snack: a grapefruit and a handful almonds

Dinner: one hard boiled egg, 1 slice of whole wheat bread with one slice low fat cheese, salad made of cucumber, tomatoes, corn and a little feta

I also tried to drink more yesterday, which made me visit the loo a lot, also during work hours. I binged on a handful of cookies a dear co-worker brought to work. And that is a thing I don’t know yet how to deal with. I can keep my home clean of sweet treats but I cannot keep my workplace or our kitchen there clean of it. And sometimes it is really hard to say no. Especially as I felt very tired yesterday and my brain tried to tell me that a little bit of refined sugar would really help.

Starting tomorrow I’m going to inlcude pictures of the things I ate as well as recipes if I feel like sharing them.

Back on Track? Eating clean Round 2.

It’s hard to stay on track lately. With everything. My eating clean habits have been non-existent the past months. And my exercise lacked because of a constant cold that plagues me since Easter. Up and coming are two weeks off work starting next week. And I have plans for this time. Apart from a trip to Munich I want to get my eating and my exercise in order.

I want to commit to eating clean again starting today. Or actually yesterday. And I want to work out regularly starting as soon as I can breathe through my nose again.  Journaling is told to have a great positive effect on making changes and having positive results. I think this blog could be the right spot to keep a journal, make plans and setting goals, again. I have neglected it a lot, but since I will have some free time on my hands starting next week, I’ll try and come back here as often as I can.

So here is a breakdown of what I ate yesterday. I am especially proud I did not grab sweet or salty snacks.

Day 1 eating clean again (Monday 05-05-14)

Breakfast: Espresso with skim milk, 3 tbsp oats, 1 tbsp flaxseed, 3 tbsp amaranth, 3 tbsp non-fat joghurt, 4 strawberries, some blueberries

Mid-morning munch: half an apple, a handful almonds, one rice waffle with peanut spread

Lunch: red lentils, scampi and vegetables (broccoli and green beans)

Afternoon snack: one grapefruit

Dinner: salad (cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper and canned tuna), 2 slices whole wheat bread, low-fat cheese slice, one hard boiled egg and mustard

 

I started my weight-journey roughly one year ago and I have come very far since then as I started out with 83 kg (183 lbs). I have lost more than 30 pounds since then. Still, I hope to drop some weight with all this again. I am now at 69 kg (152 pounds) and I’d like to drop another 5 kg or roughly 10 pounds.

Cut the crap. No refined sugar for 2 weeks (or more).

Dear blog,

I haven’t posted in a long while. Again. It seems I would most often find my way back to you in times of trouble rather than in times of joy. Because as you may know by now, weight loss is not as easy as pie.

A few weeks before Christmas I reached one of my long time goals: weigh less than 70 kg once again. Hitting that goal I felt only joy. Then Christmas came along and with it a lot of food. And I allowed myself that food consciously, knowing that what I would gain, I could, no, I WOULD lose again once the new year would knock at my door. But unfortunately this is not so as of today. And this is not because I got lazy, at least not with my workouts. I have been working out at least three days a week, using my all time favorite vids by Fitness Blender, getting engaged in their fourth installment of a workout plan. But I still don’t see the longed for changes.

Reading myself through a load of MyFitnessPal threads, I now am sure that there can only be one reason why the scale won’t budge. It’s my nutrition. Although I was making an effort there, too. At least that is what it felt like. The solution to my problem must then lie in my food intake. And as I don’t want to count calories, I will do what helped me get the weight loss started initially. And that was cutting the crap from my diet.

I decided to go cold turkey on refined sugar again for the next two weeks, tracking what I eat (not counting the calories of what I eat) to see if that can make the difference again. The only times I will allow myself some sugar is in fruits and vegetables where it is contained naturally and otherwise in dark chocolate and a spoonful of the sweet condensed milk that goes into my morning coffee (which all in all yielded good results last time, too).

I will cut:

• sweetened beverages, especially cocoa milk and chai latte fresh India (Krüger)
• birthday cake (I had a lot of that last week, due to my BF’s B day)
• chocolate cookies and gummi bears (sweets in general)
• jam and other sweet bread toppings

First step in this venture already was carried out today. I took all the sweets I had left from Christmas to work, giving them away to my co-workers.

As this is a really challenging thing to do for me, I will use this blog to come back and report how it goes, what the pitfalls are and whether it gets me the results I want.

Thanks for being patient with me.

Sincerely,

Bri

P.S.: Did you ever go cold turkey on refined sugar?

Update: travelling, weight loss journey and life in general

October as well as the beginning of November have been exciting. Because it was vacation time! I spent three weeks in Singapore and Malaysia backpacking with my BF. It has been a blast. We went to Kuala Lumpur and fell in love with the city. Also we went to the Cameron Highlands, hiked in the jungle and visited a tea plantation. We enjoyed the clash of different cultures in Penang, where we did not much else but enjoy Indian, Chinese and Malay food. A highlight was Langkawi, a beautiful island where we spent very relaxing hours at the gorgeous beaches.

If you want to experience Malaysia, you have to experience it with your taste buds. Unfortunately most things on offer came with little to no vegetables and very many things are fried. Also for my daily coffee fix I went for the Malaysian national drink iced kopi, which is iced coffee with a lot of sweetened condense milk, a real lot. But you can get fresh fruit. Mangoes, pineapples, rambutan, everything is in season all year round.

But although I came prepared (a sheet of paper with different exercises written down) I only worked out once after a lazy day on the beach, when I felt like I had to spend some energy immediately. And of course keeping track of my progress without a scale was really difficult, too. All the time I felt bloated from the unfamiliar food and like I gained a few pounds, but while on vacation I couldn’t confirm that.

Malaysia is a great country. Everything went smoothly. Next vacation will be somewhere in South East Asia again, I am toying with the idea of Vietnam in May or June next year.

Back home everyday life set in immediately as I took every single day of leave I still had for this year. So I went to work showing off my tan and caught a cold next thing. That means as I am still curing that I still do not work out. But I did take the chance and got my nutrition back on track after the vacation. Which basically means I am back to oatmeal in the morning, a healthy lunch with loads of vegetables and a salad in the evenings, a few cookies or dark chocolate for snack. And I had a chance to step on the scale. Yesterday I came in at 70.8 kg (which is 155.8 lbs), so I lost another 2 kg since the beginning of October. I am really happy about that and I feel great too.

I remember when I started back in March with 83 kg (or 182.6 lbs) my initial goal was getting fit and under 80 kg. Now I am not very far from being under 70 kg, which I was last time more then 10 years ago as a teenager. Apart from feeling great I also look great. Here is proof:

I lost especially around my chest, tummy,arms and thighs as well as hips. Or in short around everywhere. I can wear horizontal stripes without them making me look bulkier.

Another success is, though I didn’t eat that well during my vacation and I didn’t work out except for the occasional hike in the jungle or swim in the ocean, that I am able to at least maintain my weight.

As this is already a very long post I want to finish up sharing what my next posts will be about:

1. 12 week new body makeover with Cassey from blogilates starting December 1st

2. clean eating recipes

3. weight loss updates

4. goals

That is my update. What do you think?

A typical day working out with Fitness Blender

I think I already mentioned that I totally love Fitness Blender these days. I just thought I’d share a typical day of working out with their free YouTube videos. Usually I go for a warm up, some HIIT routine and/or strength training and a short cool down.

Here is what I did yesterday:

• Quick Total Body Cardio Warm Up
• Happy, Healthy, Strong Body Boot Camp – Strength and Cardio Tabata Workout
• Fitness Blender 8 Minute Abs Workout
• Fast 5 Minute Cool Down and Stretching Workout for Busy People

All in all it took me 32 minutes to complete this. The estimated calorie burn lies between 158 and 274. You are going to need an exercise mat and a set of dumbbells and of course a good internet connection. Otherwise Fitness Blender workouts are great because they have a great effect on your body’s appearance and you can do them at home for free.

Why do I or don’t I blog?

I have issues with blogging consistently. I started this blog because I thought it would be fun to share my journey from fat to fit with people who are interested in the same thing. And I started it because I wanted it for myself, to keep track of what happened when and why. This journey is not yet over and still… I am an inconsistent blogger.

The main reason for this is that writing posts does not always come easily. Sometimes the words just flow. But there are also the other days when  you know you should post something and either you have no idea about  what or you have trouble to find the right words. Also we all have busy schedules and next to inspiration finding the time is often an issue.

Thank god, it’s only blogging I fail to have time and inspiration for, because I still like to do fitness and try healthy recipes and read other peoples’ blogs, too.

But I want to get things going on here again. Because yesterday I took the time to read some of the old posts I did back in March and it’s interesting for me to recap how far I have come. That is why I want to post stuff I do and share it with you guys again.

There are already two months of updates missing on here. That is why I will include one right away.

On the 8th of July I posted that I had overcome a long-lasting weight-loss plateau. I weighed in at 75 kg that last time. Last week I weighed myself in at 72.8 kg (or 160.5 lbs), which means a loss of 2.2 kg in the last two month. I am happy about that and about the fact that I soon will hit the 150ish lbs region.

ALSO THIS IS OVER 10 KG or 22 lbs DOWN SINCE MARCH! YEAH! 

What did I do to reach this? I may have told you already but I took up a new job in June. I am very happy with this job as a sales person because it’s a very active job. I don’t sit all day long as I did in previous jobs or in university, which also upped my activity level from sedentary or lightly active to very active. In conclusion I also burn more calories because my Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) increased. And although I haven’t been good eating-wise the last two months I still shed pounds. The reason for my bad eating habits are practically a time thing, because I have to take food to work and sometimes I don’t have time to prepare something healthy. Besides a lot of people I know are happy enough to celebrate their birthdays in summer, like BFF, father, brother, mother and other friends. There was practically no weekend without a party and a cake.

I have gone to taking my measurements once a week and working out at least three times a week. My newest obsession is Fitness Blender’s 8 week fat loss program. I like it because it is so versatile and their workouts include a warm-up, some sort of routine like HIIT, Barre, weights, kickboxing, etc and a cool-down and sometimes even yoga or Pilates. Their workouts mostly take about 45 to 60 minutes and keep my body guessing (great for not hitting that plateau again).

To sum things up and bring this very long post to an end: I am still on track and I miss blogging and that is why I want to share more with you again.

Fourth Weigh-In and Weight-Loss Plateaus (7-8-13).

My last weigh-in was on the 31st of May. And I didn’t do one at the end of June. That’s for a good reason. I had nothing to report. My weight had stalled since Mid-May. Nothing was happening to the numbers on the scale not down and also thankfully not up.

I had hit the well-known weight-loss plateau everyone who goes on a diet and an exercise regimen hits sooner or later. I have read a LOT about weight-loss plateaus since then. One very interesting piece of information says that this plateau happens to most people when they have lost about 10% of their original weight. I started at 83 kg and stalled at 76 kg. That’s pretty close to those estimated 10%. Most important reason for this is that your body takes that stalling time to adjust. Adjust to what I asked myself? To your new healthy way of living, eating and exercising, and your new metabolism regimen due to your previous weight lost.

Nonetheless I was discouraged. I wanted to lose again. I read tons of tips to break the plateau. Most were reasoning about changing your workout regimen in order to keep your body challenged. I incorporated some Tara Stiles yoga, walking and even jogging, and cycling to my exercise. I also read that keeping a food journal could help to identify some pitfalls in my diet, like maybe I was eating way more than I thought. I already kept a journal at my fitness pal (MFP) and couldn’t find a reason for my stalling weight-loss there. I ate 1200 calories a day and worked out five times a week. Other tips included to be patient and stick to your healthy habits. Sooner or later one would start losing again. That was not what I wanted to hear. After all I had consistently lost about 1 kg per week over a period of 7 to 8 weeks. I didn’t like it to just stop.

Two weeks into June I started a new job. I am a Sales Advisor with H&M now. I am walking and moving things about all the time during my working hours. My activity level increased from moderately active to very active.

Ultimately I think that increasing my daily calorie intake did the trick. I stumbled across a very informative post on MFP about weight-loss and the caloric deficit that is necessary to achieve this but also how important it is not to eat too less. Now this is where my problem may have been. With the 1200 calories and working out five times a week not eating back the calories I burned during exercise I was not nourishing my body correctly, although my primary goals was to be healthy not slim. I upped my calorie intake to 1700 calories per day (still creating a deficit with that) and monitored it closely until I got a feeling of how much food I could consume to reach this number.

Now I banned counting calories as well as the scale as it was driving me crazy. I have hid the scale in my wardrobe and told my BF I was not allowing myself to step on it twice a day anymore. I work out only three or four times a week, as with the new job this is easier to maintain for me.

I measure myself once a week on Monday morning. I step on the scale and take measurements of my neck, biceps, waist, stomach, hip, thigh and calf. I realized I cannot force my body to shed the pounds, I will have to be patient and stick to my habits. It’s been hard to come to this realization. I will have to trust my body that it will start losing again, when it is ready.

So today, when I stepped on the scale there was this number: 75 kg. I already expected it as my measurements with the tape the last two weeks signaled in this direction. It means a sudden 1 kg or 2.2 lbs down after 6 weeks waiting patiently. I am happy about this. And I hope my body has adjusted and will keep shedding weight some more. I hope this is the break of my first weight-loss plateau. If I understood correctly, there might be some more to come.

I have no pictures for you this time because as you can imagine not much happened to my appearance. Nonetheless I hope you will not let yourself get discouraged of your healthy way of living once the scale does not show the effect you expect anymore. Keep doing what you are doing. Be patient. I know, I know. It’s not what you wanted to hear. But still.

Have you had similar experiences? How did you break your weight-loss plateau?