SICKLY EATERS

Afternoon Tea at the Painted Teacup

I first came across the Painted Teacup when I was planning for my sister's bridal shower. It's a quaint little afternoon tea and trinket shop in a converted two-story Victorian house. The owner of the shop, Mary, also happened to be one of the women serving us. She took the time to chat with us about how she started the shop and as it turns out, when she first bought the house there was no kitchen because the family who owned it before always went out back to their grandmother's house for dinner!

Woman of the hour. Happy marriage, sister.

A few tips if you do happen to plan a trip to a tea room.

1) Make a reservation - tea rooms, especially the special ones like these, tend to be very popular, and therefore very crowded. Make sure everyone in your party has a place to sit and eat together!

2) Afternoon Tea not High Tea - people are often mistaken to call settings like this High Tea because it sounds better. However the truth is, High Tea, historically has always been for the working class and is also referred to as "Meat Tea". High refers to high noon or dinnertime, and the meal will usually consist of a hot dish with cake and cold cuts later. Afternoon tea is traditionally a bit more decadent and finger food based in its settings.

We had a citrus green tea and a orange blossom rose tea. The service was very, very good. The staff was so friendly and made sure our cups were always filled and they were so accommodating to all of our questions and requests.

We had some sort of red pepper saltwater cracker or something to much on while we waited for out food. And those cute, little glass Mason jars you see were actually party favors made by one of the bridesmades.

One of the things we all were pretty childishly obsessed with, we're these pillow puff sweets that they set out for us. They weren't really much on their own but when you out them in tea they were amazing. They had flavors like vanilla, peppermint, cinnamon, and lemon. You could choose accordingly what you thought would go best with your tea.

How do you like your tea? I had honey and citrus slices in my green tea and vanilla sugar sweets in the rose. Cinnamon sticks and sugar cubes are always nice as well.

The owner, Mary, makes all of these pastries and sandwiches herself. They were all SO good. The flavors were really balanced well and we were all more than satisfied at the end of it. I can't quite remember what the scones and cakes were in order I think it was a raisin scone, lemon square, and a coconut cake, but going clockwise from them, as I can remember, was a pineapple salad cup, savoury sweet ham and gouda sandwich, cucumber sandwich, rye and radish bite, a crescent tuna salad roll, and in the center, a cranberry kale salad.

A few we extra sweets. We were all pretty stuffed by then, it's a shame but I can't quite remember what these were except that they were sweet and delicious.

So many teacups!

We had been short a few teacups so when we asked they just pulled a few odd the shelf for us!

The gift shop has a lot of local wares and trinkets, it's hard not to want to stay and examine every little thing because they're all so unique.

The room adjacent to ours. A homier ambiance compared to our garden/parlor room aesthetic.

The is is pretty much the entrance hall way. The kitchen is to the left and the rest of the gift shop and smaller teach rooms are upstairs.

At the end of it all, it was a really good experience, a lovely atmosphere, and the people here were so kind to us. I definitely recommend the Painted Teacup to anyone planning any sort of small get together with their close friends. It's the perfect place to do it.

11:34:00 AM
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Skincare 2 || Makeup, Masks, and Moisturizers

Beauty

The thing about skin is that it's one of the, if not the, first things that someone can notice about you, especially if you've got big, red, uneven spots all over your face. Of course, there's definitely far more to you than your skin, but the unfortunate fact of our society is that first impressions do in fact, make an impression.
I work at a café, which kind of means a lot of first impressions with a lot of no-nonsense people who just want their coffee. So, it means a lot when someone stops to actually talk to you, let alone compliment you. BUT THEY DID. I had like 3 people who complimented me on my skin in one shift. And I blame it on these products.

Moisturizer

The first thing I need to talk about is my moisturizer. After the whole face rash incident my skin was so dry and just messed up, my doctor was like... Maybe you should use something a little stronger. So he actually pretty much prescribed me the highest level of unscented Vaseline Intensive Care. It's literally the most moisturizing thing ever. It does the same thing that baby oil did back when I used it every night. If it wasn't so messy, I would still use it. (Basically after you shower, while you're still wet,you rub baby oil or coconut oil into your skin and then towel off the excess.) It makes your skin so soft for so long it's the best. That's what Vaseline intensive care does for me now haha.

Makeup

The next, and perhaps the biggest improvement to my skin is the Bare Minerals Original Foundation. I mean you can do everything for your skin, but even if its perfectly healthy, it won't be perfect everyday. This foundation is perfect for me, before this I'd been using the Neutrogena mineral foundation, there really is a difference.

Before

The Bare Minerals Foundation is super fine and blends really well into my skin. So many people say that they can't really tell that I have makeup on my skin which is pretty crazy. Using a mineral foundation is also healthier for you're skin because it has SPF, and you aren't putting super heavy, unnatural product on your skin, which means you get great coverage for breakouts while also letting your skin breathe and heal.

After

Honestly, before you get all "Mia, your skin's so nice you don't even need makeup," it may be true that I probably don't need makeup all the time. But I also think that my tablet's selfie skin-smoothing tech is a bit too good here. My skin is definitely not perfect. In the picture you can kind of tell a little bit on the left (your right) side of my face with a few bumps and discolorations. I wish I had better pictures to show you the real difference but I just don't have the tools yet. But hopefully soon!

This isn't strictly "skincare" it's actually from my February Birchbox post but I had to talk about it again because it makes me so happy. This lip balm is so good for so many reasons. First of all, it's vegan, paraben-free, gluten-free, and cruelty-free. I already told you about how it changes color to the pH of your body, to an actually pretty noticeable color difference. I love the color it gives me and it stays pretty surprisingly long, I almost wonder if it's also supposed to be a stain.

Again, it's quite hard to get a real representation of the difference and the longer you wait the deeper the color "develops"

Masks

Ok, last one. So this product was also part of my Birchbox. It's the Hey Honey! Take It Off! Mask. It's a peeling mask that I wasn't too keen about because, I'm kind of an instant gratification girl and I didn't understand the effects of this mask much as the bubble clay mask. But, someone asked me about it so I decided to do some research and try again. The appeal (could have made a pun but I have a rule of not making puns past midnight... and it's past midnight when I'm writing this) of the product is in the honey, honey is a natural humectant, emollient, and exfoliant. In fact, my friend uses raw manuka Honey as a cleanser everynight. The mask also contains Jojoba oil, but more importantly Alpha Hydroxy Acids, which are part of the peeling process.

Ingredients:

Water (Aqua), Polyvinyl Alcohol, Alcohol, Polysorbate 20, Honey Extract, Glycerin, Propanediol, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil,
....................:
Lactic Acid, Glycolic Acid, Fragrance, Lithospermum Erythrorhizon Root Extract, Carbomer, Triethanolamine, Panthenol, Phenoxyethanol, Ethylhexylglycerin, Disodium EDTA.

What an embarrassing face of concentration...

The mask is very cooling on the skin and makes you feel really refreshed as the mask dries and tightens on your face. They say to use a light moisturizer beforehand 1) because the acids can be really drying on your skin and 2) because it softens your skin cells to be peeled off more easily? That second one is an educated guess but I think it makes sense.

I think one of the main reasons I had my doubts about the mask is because, while the mask does have its own fragrance that is actually quite nice. Once you actually start applying the mask to your face it just smells and feels like elmers glue. Which is kind of fun but also kind of not what you really want to think about with a mask. It also peels off like elmers glue which is just as satisfying as it used to be when I used to play with glue in elementary school.

Bottom line, I don't see any immediately noticeable results but I think it's just one of those products that need a little time to show its benefits.

Ok, Yayyyy! Congratulations, if you're reading this you made it to the end. This post was really long winded, I know I usually post like lots of pictures and not so many words but there's a lot to say about skincare and I didn't really want to divdie the post up again because I took the pictures of the products together. Okok, you've read enough, go get yourself a cookie or sommething.

If you have any products you'd like me to review just let me know in the comments or contact me through my email which should be in my blogger profile, as well as the "About Us" Tab!

1:01:00 AM
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College Life: Welding UPDATE.

art

This project was so fun to make. It's a bit different than from what I was first imagining but I'm really happy with how it came out.

So, I decided on a using a fish as the base model of my form because in Japanese and other Asian cultures, the fish is a symbolism of courage and persistence because they swim upstream and it's the embodiment of what I want to be. In that idea, I wanted to make my form sort of metamorphic, where the form can evolve and metamorphose into a number of different forms.

This is the origami fish I used to plan out my "map"

Yep....

Tried to make a wire version to see if my idea would work and it would all fit together.

So I went to class and I spent so much time trying to plan out my idea that I wasn't really getting anywhere. So my professor cam over and was like, "you know, you might get where you want to be a lot faster if you just start welding and seeing what works and what doesn't." She was right.

So, I welded a few parts and tried binding them together. And lo and behold, they didn't really fit...

But I also found out that my idea to bind all of my parts together worked really well and was exactly what I wanted it to be.

And so, with that information, I knew I needed to make really precise measurements and pieces in order for my piece to work and fit together really well. So I made a new map.

...and recorded and calculated all my measurements so that I can cut and grind all the pieces I need to weld together.

So in order to make my pieces really precise I needed to cut everything about 1/4 of an inch more than I need and then grind everything down to the right length.

First half of welded parts..

Bound form.

And trying to see how I could move and shape the form.

Folded form.

This is when I just finished binding the entire form at like 4 in the morning.

Folded full form.

So, there's a subtle difference between this photo and the title photo above. If you look at the lines of the map on the ground, they're much more structured and cleaner looking than the lines in this picture.

I wanted to figure out a way to express the mutability of the form and show the original form and where it came from. The idea is that you could theoretically fold and unfold the form into whatever shape and development of itself that you'd like as a way of saying that everyone is sort of at different parts of their own swim upstrwam, they might not be completely where they want to be yet, but they're still on their way to being the courageous fish they want to be...... hahahaha but seriously.

2:50:00 AM
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Skincare 1 || Why I care and Bubble Clay Mask Review

Beauty

A lot of people probably don't know this but over Christmas break, I had a pretty bad skin reaction. I don't know if I have sensitive skin, but I do have a lot of allergies and conditions that make my skin a little temperamental. If you want to hear the looonng story read on, if not, skip down to the next paragraph.

***

So, I may or may not have mentioned in previous posts that I have a bit of a lactose problem. In the past I would have digestive issues but I would just sort of pass it off as a bad day. But another thing that I have is allergy related eczema and asthma. I've always loved dairy.... so much. My favorite foods were ice cream, yogurt, melted cheese.... ugh. Whenever my family suggested that dairy might be the cause of my eczema and skin issues I'd be in complete denial.

BUT THEN, I'd finally decided that my digestive dairy issues had started being uncomfortable and inconvenient enough that I would start to try limiting my dairy intake. So the day before winter break, I thought that I might as well have one last hurrah. I ate a whole bunch of ice cream. And that night and the next morning, I broke out with the worst face rash I'd ever known could happen. It looked like every single one of my pores had like a bubble over it and like I'd been very severely sunburned or something. I wasn't so much worried about how I looked so much as the texture. Those who know me really well, know that I can't deal with even looking at certain textures and patterns. I actually cried one when I was little because I dreamed or hallucinated a textured ceiling in my sister's room. ANYWAYS, even though it's completely healed, it's still left my skin a bit bumpy and sensitive but not only that I noticed that it actually aged my skin as well. It's very subtle and virtually unnoticeable by anyone else but me, but it made me realize that I needed to take better care of it, in stead of treating it like and infinite resource that will always heal itself when I abuse it.

***

My tablet has some skin clearing tech in its selfie technology but you can see some leftover bumps on my skin especially on the left.

So from then on, I've been trying to treat my skin better. Trying really hard to eliminate dairy from my diet and moisturize and all that stuff I couldn't be bothered to do. People say that your 20s are when you should start trying to care more about your skin so I decided to try out a few products I'd been hearing aboit, and formed my new skin care routine.

First off! Masks

The Elizavecca Carbonated Bubble Clay Mask

This is the mask everyone's been talking about. It's an all natural carbonated clay mask that bubbles up on your face to stimulate and really gently exfoliate your skin.

The reason why I love this mask isn't for the fluffy cloud face, that actually kind of bothers me actually and I can't look myself in the mirror because I hate the look of the texture. But I love how it feels and for once I actually feel like it cleared up my pores and made them smaller. It's quite rare that I find a skincare product that has any sort of immediate noticeable difference so I'm really impressed with it. Just looking at the ingredients you can just tell it's great for your skin.

Ingredients: green tea extract, aloe vera leaf extract, matcha powder, charcoal powder, pomegranate extract, fermented soy extract, alantoin, peony root extract, oregano leaf extract, white willow peel extract, portulaca extract, cinnamon extract

Stage 1

The clay actually bubbles up really quickly and pretty violently haha so make sure you apply quickly and sparingly unless you want clay bubbling into your eyes and nostrils.

Stage 2

It's actually pretty tickly so make sure you find something to distract yourself with in the meantime.

Stage 3

This is after about 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes you're supposed to add a tiny bit of water and rub the clay back into your face for another 2 minutes so it turns into a normal clay face mask again. I think what this does is actually extract all of the stuff in your pores where the first part is just bringing all that stuff to the surface.

Washing off the clay is kind of a mission, it sticks to your face pretty darn well. I like to just sort of let the pressure of the water take it off in the shower, but when you're trying to just wash it off normally in the sink there's still a pretty good amount stuck on your face after like the 10th rinse. I think using a muslin or washcloth would probably help alot and the washcloth would probably be easier to wash under the faucet.

Ok, so as usual this blog post is turning out to be a bit longer than I thought it would be so the rest of the skincare stuff you see in the title picture will probably be in one or a few other posts. Hope you found this interesting! Let me know if you'd rather hear about something else like my makeup, clothes, life things, or anything else! It'd be really nice to hear some feedback. :)

11:32:00 PM
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Birchbox//February

birchbox

For over a year now I've had a subscription to Ipsy cosmetics, a makeup/beauty monthly subscription service founded by Michelle Phan. But it came to my attention that Birchbox, which some say is the original beauty subscription service, had bigger and better products than Ipsy did for the same price of 10$/month. My original response to that was that I was supporting the start up of a company I had a connection to and that Birchbox didn't have free makeup bags.

Well, years have passed and while the company is doing well, I realised that I wasn't entirely happy with the products I was getting and the makeup bags were kind of getting old. -glances over at multicolored pile of makeup bags-

SO I made a change! Hello Birchbox! Birchbox actually also offers MEN'S BOXES with a whole bunch of manly stuff like shaving accessories, skin care, flasks, and idk... other manly stuff. Turns out their manly stuff is super fancy though, so it's pricier than the women's subscription. But if you're a guy who has no idea what to buy but wants to up his game a little, you should check Birchbox out.

Check out their subscriptions here!

I just received my February and March boxes on Sunday and I'll be trying out all of the products and reviewing them this month, with updates along the way.
But for this post I'll just give my first impressions about the February box, so without further ado, this is what's in my Feb box!

The theme of this month's box is What's the Occasion? The idea of the box is to give you a few things to up your game for the month, whatever the occasion. The products are supposed to be things you can easily use everyday but help you get that not so everyday look and feel. For a lazy girl like me, anything that helps me clean up with less effort is a plus.

The thing about Birchbox is that they customize the box to you by letting you take a profile quiz when you subscribe. I think I put skin and hair care as one of my most important things so I received a lot of products to that end.

I received 6 products, including a gift product I received for subscribing (the one outside of the box), 4 of which I would say are almost full sized products. The other two are pretty generous sample sizes. The full break down of products is pretty well varied, they covered eyes, lips, skin, hair, body, and a fragrance!

Products and First Impressions
(Going clockwise from the box)

¤ Fuji Green Tea Body Butter* | The Body Shop
Haven't it tried yet but I know TBS body butters, this can't go wrong

¤ Original Crema Conditioner* | Terax Hair Care
Seems just like a normal conditioner to me but since it's supposed to be good for frizzy, color damaged hair, I used it as sort of a leave in conditioner. I rub a tiny bit into my wet hair after I shower.

¤ Take it Off! Exfoliating Honey Peel Off Mask | Hey Honey
Might do a short post later on using it and how it went.

¤ BOOST Color Enhancing Lip Balm* | ARROW
I LOVE THIS. It's a vegan mango seed oil lip balm, that changes color when it hits your lips. It uses the pH of your skin to change to a color that enhances your lip color. How COOL is that?! Mine changes to a reddish hot pinky color that I quite like. All while moisturizing your lips like a really good lip balm. Lazy girl approved!

¤ Eau de Parfum, Emelia | TOCCA
It's a scent I surprisingly like it's definitely floral which I don't normally like but I think it has a tropical, fruity, citrus-y hint that makes it smell really fresh to me. Definitely a more sophisticated scent than I'm used to but maybe it's time to graduate.

¤ Evercolor Shadow Stick* | Mally Beauty
This is a pretty nice color and really easy to use. Honestly, today I was running late for work so I just swiped it on and added mascara and I really quite liked it (picture post later). It can also be used as a primer, eyeshadow base, and eye liner, which I know to be true having used similar products for the same uses. It's also supposed to have great staying power despite how creamy the formula is, which I will test out and let you know later.

*Full sized

All in all, I'm really happy about what I got. I can't really complain. The lip balm is full sized, as it has a full bullet of lip balm in it when I know a lot of companies only give half a bullet in their sample products. Another thing that Birchbox does is give you a list telling you how much all the full sized versions of your products cost. Mostly for the convenience of buying them in the future, but also letting you know you're getting your money's worth. I mean, the lip balm alone is full sized and costs 14$... I only pay 10$/month for the box... I'm satisfied

10:03:00 PM
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It''s here... the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2

Meet the solution to all my blogging problems. The Samsung Galaxy tab s2.

Brand new baby. It's a pretty big step up from the tab 4 I used have. Both the front and back facing cameras are a lot better. And the screen resolution is so much nicer than my eyes have ever seen but my eyes haven't seen much so maybe that's not a very credible statement.

Ok, my boyfriend said it looked good so I bought it okay!?