Jingle VoxBox

For a few years now I have been part of Influenster, it's a website that send you products (for free!) to be reviewed!

I recently just got the the Jingle VoxBox and here's all that comes in it:

First up, Cetaphil Moisturizing Cream: I LOVE this cream! I have used it off and on for years. It's prefect for this time of year to slather all over your body. I use this from my head to my toes, literally. I've used it for my face cream and love it on my arms and legs during the winter. Can you tell I love it?

Next, Biscoff Cookies: I have never heard of this brand until now and I am on the hunt for them I'm my area! The packaging states that it's "Europe's favorite cookie with coffee" but I devoured one pack with tea... damn they were good. They are hard, but dipped in tea or coffee they are perfect. Just think of dipping a cookie in milk, but coffee instead!

Next, Ore-Ida Tater Tots: Influenster included a coupon to get your a free bag of tater tots. My husband isn't a fan of tater tots (weird, right?), but I love them, so more for me!

Next, Hallmark, Itty Bittys: I got Rapunzel! We don't have any kids, but I can't wait to surprise my friends daughter with it this weekend! It's super cute.

Next, NYC City Proof 24HR Waterproof Eyeliner: I already have this particular liner in green and purple, but you can never have enough make up! I received a brown liner and it's perfect because I was in need of one!

Next, Kiss True Volume lashes: I don't know about you, but I love false eye lashes. My husband thinks they are weird, but I love that I can give my self va-va-voom lashes in just a few minutes. I have used false lashes since college, not every day, but for special occasions. They can be made with different types of hair, but these particular set are human hair. I know that sounds weird but its super realistic that way! And not going to lie, I have these lashes in my stash already!

Next, Kiss Lash Adhesive with Aloe: It go with the lashes I got lash glue! I've never used this one but I love that there is aloe in it! I can't wait to put it to use New Year's Eve!

Lastly, Pure Ice Nail Polish: I got the polish in "French Kiss". It's a beautiful blue, not quite royal blue, but a perfect color! I use blue nail polish all the time! And you guessed it, this is going on my nails tonight!

If you would like to join Infuenster, go here!

Until next time,

Kandi

"I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes."

One of My Favorite Winter Dishes

One of my favorite winter dishes during the fall and winter is this (pictured below)!! This recipe is so stinking easy, fool proof, good for you and filling.

Here's whats in the soup:

- 1 cup of Bob's Red Mill Veggie Soup Mix

- 1 pound of browned ground turkey

- 1 box of chicken stock (2.5 cups)

- Half a cup of water

- 1 can of corn, drained (frozen corn works too!)

- 1 cup frozen green beans (or a drained can works too)

- A little shredded sharp cheddar

To make the soup: Add cooked ground turkey, soup mix, and liquid in a pot. Once the soup mix looks tender add the veggies! Once its all cooked serve with a little cheese on top!

For the biscuits I follow the Red Lobster mix! They are so good and so easy!

The soup has a blend of peas, lentils, barley, and vegetable pasta offers 11g of protein per serving. You seriously can't beat that.

Enjoy away!

Until next time,

Kandi

Mini Review: Maybelline Rock Nudes Palette

I am a huge Maybelline Cosmetics fan. They are by far my favorite drugstore make up brand. So, with being an avid lover of the brand and already owning the previously released palettes, I had to have this one: Rock Nudes.

I was able to find this palette at CVS in their new display for Spring 2016. I have yet to see it online!

Here are a few swatches of the palette with no primer on my hand. They aren't the best, but they aren't half bad too! I love the color scheme and have used this a few times already. I think the two purple shades on the bottom row are my favorite shadows from the palette.

As I play around with this palette, be ready on the lookout for a look using this palette!

Until next time,

Kandi

Plan with Me: Christmas Week

Lately I have been using the Happy Planner by MAMBI for the last couple months. Previous I used the Erin Condren vertical (January through August) and horizontal (September through October) layouts for this year. I decided to give MAMBI a try, it's affordable and good quality for what you pay. I do really like Erin Condren and one day I might go back to it. For now, this is what I'm using. 

I use sticky notes and page flags to mark the important things or not-so-important things. This week nothing big was happening.

For this week I used stickers from Planning Roses and wood printed washi tape from Michael's.

I used the "to do" headers over the morning section with heart checklists. I plan to use them to keep track of my daily checklists.

Since these stickers are made specifically for the Erin Condren I lined the bottom section of the boxes with the lighter wood washi.

I also labeled the day boxes with "today" headers.

I used the full boxes from the kit during the week and one in the upper lefthand corner. I normally don't use these, but I like to for holidays or special occasions.

Using some of faux washi and functional included in the kit I filled in some of the white space. Once again, I usually don't plan this way, but it was fun! I also put wash at the bottom of the other two rows of boxes.

Once I added the final stickers my spread looked like this! This sticker kit is my style, almost to a tee! Our home decorations are in the same rustic theme.

I also snuck in a couple tassel banners from Rory's Sweet Addictions. They are my favorite to annotate birthdays. This week happens to be my Dad's and Husband's birthday!

And here's how my final layout looks! I'm in love!

I needed up adding a side bar on the left to keep track for important things, main to-do's, my goals, my workouts, and main things for next week.

I hope you all enjoyed my plan with me. I absolutely love planning and organizing my weeks. It's relaxing to me and helps me feel less stressed.

Follow me on Instagram @kandilorene to see more of my planner and more pictures of my spreads.

Until next time,

Kandi

Our Christmas Tree

This year we finally get to spend the holidays together. Last year my husband was deployed, it was our first set of holidays as a married couple. So, this is our first Christmas as a married couple. My husband likes to decorate like Who-ville exploded, I prefer to decorate a little more lightly.

Last year I barely decorated; just enough to make it feel like Christmas. So this year, I let my husband decorate as much as he wanted. 

We are moving in January to a larger house (finally!), so the majority of the decorations were centered on the tree!

Our very first Christmas we started the tradition of getting a yearly ornament and a couple fun ones. We have started adding on your dog, Zero, to the family ornament since he gets spoiled like no other. Our fun ornaments are usually centered around The Nightmare Before Christmas. We are both basically grew up on the film. 

It was also important to us to keep traditions of our childhood going. David's family hung stocking of family pets who have passed to keep their memory alive. We have two stockings on our tree for Charlie, David's cat who was his childhood pet, and Galena, my cat who I got right after college who was madly in love with David. Yes it's a sad thing to keep these on the tree but these two cats helped shape us in ways you wouldn't think.

We tried, and I stress the word tried, to get a good photo of our little family in front of the tree. It wasn't quite successful but in the years to come it will be a funny memory.

Until next time,

Kandi

Viva Las Vegas

We really do take vacations for just the two of us. Our vacations are usually trips to visit family who live far away. With the military life style we don't get the opportunity to get away as often as we would like. So when we get to, we make the most of it!

It seems like like we have started a tradition of getting away, just the two of us, for a few days. Two years ago we spent a few days at Disneyland. But this year we went to Las Vegas! We have been wanting to visit Vegas for so long, especially before we have kids. 

Our first night we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel. If you can, I highly suggest it! It was so amazing to see all of Vegas from so high up. The Paris hotel is pretty centered on the strip so you get a view of almost everything!

During our full day we literally walked the whole strip! It was a long walk, we are talking something like 6-ish miles. Our hotel provided a map of the strip (when they tried forcing us to buy tickets for a show) so we set off to see it all!

One of the things we had on our list was to see the Titanic exhibit at the Luxor. We were going to buy tickets from Groupon, but then waited till we actually got there after I read about the TIX4TONIGHT ticket stores. Forget Groupon and for the ticket stores! The original ticket prices through the Luxor were $35 per ticket; Groupon was $28.50; and we scored from tix4tonight paying only $23! That was a savings of $24! 

The exhibit had a ticket rule of no photography, but I'm a rebel and of course snapped a few photos. That was before my flash went off and I almost got us kicked out of the exhibit!

Over all the exhibit kind of sucked. I'm a huge Titanic lover (have seen since I was really little) so I have seen these multiple things about it. I saw this exhibit in 2000 and I remember it being longer and having more artifacts to see. We visited a Titanic exhibit in the Anaheim last spring and it was way better! There were film clips explaining things about the wreck and more artifacts.

Another thing we did to save money on food and drinks was to bring some of our own. I pack some granola bars, oatmeal packets, a sliced up sub sandwich from Vons, yogurts, gatorade, cans of beer, and wine. I also brought an empty water bottle to put some wine in to drink while we walked around. I carried beers in my purse so David could have a few while walked around. Each drink is about $7 and up! No thank you!

We did splurge and get Fat Tuesday's twice. They are are alcoholic slushie drinks and oh so delicious.  For Vegas and the drinks being a foot long, they were super affordable! They were $14 for the initial drink and $11 for refills. When we had dinner at Treasure Island our first night David got a mixed drink and it was $12.

Visiting Vegas at the very end of November we were able to see the holiday decor begin going up. Lots of the hotels had beautiful Christmas trees and other decorations. Sadly we weren't able to see the seasonal garden set up but at the Bellagio since it wasn't set up quite yet. At least I was able to convince David to get a "kissy" photo in front of the big tree.

Until next time,

Kandi Lorene

Erin Condren Horizontal Life Planner Purple Spread

Hello Everyone!

For 2014 I fell in love with the Erin Condren Life Planner... and I fell into the world of decorative planning. I have always used a paper planner, well since middle school. And now that I think about how long that's been... well it seems like a long time!

When the 2015-2016 planners by EC came out I fell in love with the horizontal! I still miss the vertical at times and one day I might go back to it, but at the moment my brain is working in the horizontal format.

I began going sticker crazy trying to find practical and functional stickers that fit the horizontal. I know you can cut down the vertical sticker (and I have multiple times) but I wanted to cheat some days! After the cost of buying stickers on Easy became pricey very quickly, I began exploring ways to make my own.

Avery has a great web site that you can make stickers within their predetermined formats. I strongly suggest their 1.5inx1.5in boxes that you can make plenty of things with!

Then I discovered that Silhouette has a free design program and I went to town! So many ladies on the EC Horizontal group on Facebook expressed their want/need for this spread, so here I am to deliver!!

Please download and use at your pleaser! All I ask is if you use this spread please give me the credit for it like you would any other sticker shop! I put lots of time into this and would love to continue designing layouts for ladies in the future. Feel free to tag me in you Instagram posts (I'm at @kandilorene) or on Facebook (also @kandilorene)!

I plan to use this spread for the week of November 2nd-8th! I hope so of you ladies join me and I can't wait to see your spreads!

How I plan on printing my stickers:

1. I will be printing my stickers on Avery sticker paper (here) or you can print on regular paper and use sticky adhesive on the back!
2. Follow your printer directions to print them correctly
3. And cut! I will be cutting these by hand, I do not own a cutting machine.

Please give me all type of feedback to help me make these better in the future! 

Get your own Purple Spread by Kandi Lorene

Always,

Kandi

I deleted everything!

It's been a long while since I sat down and wrote something.

Well over a year...

I first started to blog about everything and anything... but I realized I blogged to try and be someone I wasn't.

So I deleted everything on this blog. Everything is gone.

Time to start fresh and be me.

The truth is, I began blogging about four years ago and I was just starting to learn who I was as a person. I've come to figure out what kind of person I want to be and a code of moral standards I want to live by, but I'm not sure what I want to do with my life.

I'm 25 years old. I just recently quit my full time job with a corporate company. I'm enjoying time with my husband and dog. I'm really starting to enjoy time by myself.

Since I was 14 years old I've always worked. I did summer jobs, after school jobs, full time jobs, jobs I've hated, jobs I loved, and jobs to just pay the bills. And now, I'm job free.

I'm playing housewife and not too sure how I feel about it. I don't know how to be a house wife.

This is my first housewife week, it's Wednesday, and I'm already procrastinating about things I should do. Like call about some bills and paper stuff. Nope. I'm taking time for me and I think that's perfectly ok.

There's nothing wrong in still trying to figure out who you are.