Make-up (video) tutorial: Glamorous cat eye with bold lips

Hi Lovelies!

Thank you so much for your feedback on what I should do with my blogs.  While I contemplate, here is a video tutorial on how to achieve a glamorous cat eye with bold lips.  I hope you like it and that it's useful!

So, tell me...

Are there any other tutorials you'd like to see?

Have an incredible weekend!

♡Yasi

TiLT/Things I Love Thursday

Hi everyone!

I hope you're all feeling fantastic.
:)

I've seen TiLT posts everywhere lately, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Here we go...

My 1st TiLT: Things I Love Thursday.

I really hope you'll join me in doing these.  They are so fun and uplifting!

♡My Kitties♡

I love absolutely everything about them.  

They are hilarious, no matter what they are doing!

♡Phone shopping with my Mom♡

I specifically do this only with my Mom.  She is my favorite person to shop with, and we find ways to shop together even if we're not together.  

It's super fun! (And I completely trust her advice.)

♡My UGGS!!♡

I know that Uggs get hated on a lot.  

But, I adore my Uggs!  I even affectionately call them my Ugglies. ;)

They are the only boots that keep me warm all Fall/Winter long in Michigan, and they usually last me a good 2 years.

♡Dark nail polish for Fall♡

Not only do I love love looooove Fall, but I love all the cute Fall clothes, and the nail polish-- Eeee!!

This one is a really dark eggplant color.

♡Vintage swiped/borrowed Pieces♡

I've always been fascinated with people's old clothes.  Growing up, I've collected garments from my mom, dad, and even my grandma!  

This sweater is my mom's.  She bought it when she was 18!  She told me she can still remember the day she bought it.

:)

And there you have it... my 1st TiLT!!

What are some of the things you love??

I hope you're having a fabulous Thursday!

Lots of Love,

♡Yasi

Come with me...

...to a secret garden.

There, we will hum along with the birds

in the willow tree. 

And play dress up

until

the fireflies bid us goodnight,

Dress: Boutique in L.A.
Headband: ?!
Nude pumps: DSW

Styling wholly inspired by Betty Draper, from AMC's Mad Men.
(I'm OBSESSED!)

P.S.  I just turned 27!!


♡Yasi

Cutting it off

So, remember a while back when I was devastated because I had to cut my hair short in order to fix a terrible haircut?

Well, I'd say I'm really over that now!

I've become absolutely fascinated with playing with shorter hairstyles and I've been craving new haircuts monthly.  My mom thinks I'm certifiably insane, but I love it.  Before, I had a habit of utilizing my long hair as a security blanket.  But, now that it's gone I've become much more experimental with my fashion and stylistic choices.  It's so fun to get to switch up my hairstyles and my 'look', and it has actually given me a certain playful confidence. :)

So, now for the fun stuff...

Guess what I did yesterday?

!

I love it!

How do you like your hair--long, short, shaved ;) ?

Have you ever had a transformative haircut? 

Was it good or bad?

♡Yasi  

Retro Lovin'

Every once in a while my fashion taste does a complete 180.
Not only are these changes in taste unexpected, but they make my love for fashion and style that much stronger and infinitely more fun.

So, what am I in love with now?

Retro 

retro 

RETRO!

40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's are all the rage in my little fashion world right now.

Polka dots

stripes

wide leg jeans

tucked in shirts

loose sweaters

colorful belts

skinny jeans with espadrilles 

fun skirts

and

.....

turbans??

Yes, please!

My turn...

It took me about a half hour to figure out how to make my scarf into a turban.  

Voila!

✓ Kitty Approved

Gearing up for Spring with lots of color!

Scarf- Forever21

Top-H&M Germany (J bought this for me on one of his trips!  Great taste, right?!)

Belt & bangles- H&M USA

Leggings- Express

Espadrilles- New York & Co.

What unexpected styles are you loving this season?

(((((((Happy Friday, Loves!!!))))))


♡Yasi  

Being OK with being 'average' & countering negative body-image thoughts

Recently, I've felt pretty good.  Stable, at peace (most of the time), and happy with my body.  In fact, I wrote a whole entry about it here!

However, as I wrote in the aforementioned post, I still have slip ups.  The key, though, is to quickly counter these negative thoughts and to make myself feel better about my body and the way I look.  

I have to be honest, there probably is not one time that I look in the mirror and think "wow, I am so thin-I look GREAT!".  The reason for that is because I don't look very thin anymore.  I look average.  I am not fat, I am not chubby, but I'm not uber thin.  And for so long being the thinnest I could possibly be was one of the top priorities in my life.  Having an 'average' weight was absolutely not an option.  Being 'healthy' looking was not good enough.  I wanted to look extremely thin.  I wanted to look a little malnourished, because to me, that was attractive.  >WHAT?<  

Yes, it's true.  I thought that the thinner I looked, the better I looked.  The less 'average-sized' I was, the more proud I was of myself and my drive to 'stay thin'.  I even felt like a better and more accomplished person when I was very thin.  "No, I don't want to eat lunch, I'm not hungry at all."--even when I was starving.  

What's even more sad is that recently I have been peaking at pictures of myself throughout the last few years.  I remember the exact body-image feelings that I held in almost every single one of those pictures.  And in almost 80-90% of them I remember feeling utterly disgusted with my 'fat, chubby body'.  I remember how I berated my body while getting dressed for every single event.  I recall the excruciating hate that I single-handedly peppered myself with (daily, if not every time I caught my own reflection in a mirror).  My getting dressed and feeling terrible about myself, and constant state of hunger, left me in a terrible mood almost all of the time.  I tainted every single experience I ever had with horrible and ugly thoughts about my being.

I cannot describe to you how sorry I feel for my former self.  I wish I could go back in time and shake myself and tell me that I am absolutely insane if I think that 107 pounds is fat.  But, alas, it probably would not make a difference--as I hadn't yet learned all of the lessons I needed to learn to get to the place that I am now.

My point, though, with this post is to tell you that I still get those ugly thoughts in my head when I get dressed, or when I look in the mirror.  But, now I have learned that I cannot trust my own initial reaction to the way that I look.  If I thought that I looked disgusting and fat when I was obviously so thin, then, clearly, I have a warped way of viewing myself.  

What I try my hardest to do now is to dress in clothes that make me feel good about myself.  If I don't like how a pair of jeans is fitting, then I change into another pair that make me feel better (or I wear a dress or a skirt).  

Then, if I still look in the mirror and get terrible "I'm so fat-- I need to lose 5 pounds NOW" thoughts, I remind myself that I thought those exact things even at my thinnest, and that losing weight will NOT make me feel better about myself.  I remind myself that I look healthy and that's a great thing.  I'm not hungry all of the time.  I can enjoy food with everyone, without having to worry about calories and weight.

But, in order to get to this place, I had to do one thing:  I had to learn to be OK with having an average weight.  I'm sure I am still considered 'thin' for someone my size, but to me, I am just average now.  My ultimate goal is to prioritize my life and my self-worth to revolve around my experiences and not the number of pounds that my body weighs.  And if that means that I look not-as-thin, but can go out and have a good time with my friends and family and not constantly worry about food,weight, and how thin/fat I look in my jeans, then it's absolutely worth it to me.

 =)

When food loses its power

Yay!!!  Cheers all around!

Ladies and gentlemen, I never thought I would write this post.  In fact, I've attempted to write this post three times today already--Each time, writing one sentence, and closing out the page.

So, here goes...

After 1 year and 2 months of working on overcoming my ED-thoughts, and intuitively eating (more recently) and exercising regularly, I believe that I have in fact gotten 'THERE'.
Where is there?  THERE is the place where I eat based on hunger, where I enjoy foods that I'm craving, where I exercise when I want, where I look at my body and like how it looks.  The reason that I was so hesitant to write this post was because I still have days when I feel 'fat', days when I'm down, days when I look at pictures of 'skinny' me and wish that I was thin again (because I looked soooo much better, right?  WRONG!).  But, I finally decided to write the post anyway, because most of the time I am happy with the way I feel and look.  Most importantly, though, I am writing this post because I have finally gotten to a place where I'm not afraid of food.  WHAT?!?!?!?!?

I am not kidding you when I say that I can't believe I actually wrote the above words.  How can I not be afraid of food?  How can I not fear the calories that are in everything?  How can I not constantly be thinking about food (because if I'm not constantly analyzing my intake I will gain 1,000 pounds and DIE.  Right?  WRONG!)?

Well, somehow, through all my trials and tribulations, through all the ups and downs, through all the crying and skin-tugging, through all the stress of gaining 5 pounds of healthy muscle, I made it here.  Let me tell you this:  I have not restricted in months.  I have eaten consistently without restricting my intake.  And in the last couple of months, I have practically stopped counting calories.  Sure, if a menu shows calorie counts, I'll browse over the numbers.  But, now, it may or may not affect my choice-- I will still order what I'm craving.  The brilliant part, however, is that I've somehow learned to keep eating until I'm hungry and to stop eating when I'm full.

So, basically, in my 26 years on this Earth, my eating habits have reverted back to childhood-- when everything was instinctive.  Bravo!  BRA-VO, Yasi!!  


The most wonderful part, though, is the dissolution of the control I just had to have over my food intake.  I used to literally freak out if I ran out of my usual 'safe foods'.  If I didn't have the breakfast foods that I was comfortable with, I wouldn't know what to do with myself.  Same with lunch-- if we didn't have foods that I had deemed 'okay to eat', I just wouldn't eat.  Now, somehow, miraculously, food has lost its power over me.  Instead of planning my meals out way ahead of time, I now have the attitude of a 16-year old boy (again, much age-reverted improvement on my part ;) ).  It's more: open the fridge, "What do we have to eat?  I'm hungry!".


If I was British, this is where I would say: This is bloody brilliant!!


Getting here was NOT easy.  It sucked.  It sucked a big one.  I had to gain weight.  I gained about five pounds, and hated every one of them.  My body shape changed completely.  Instead of having a small top and a 'squishy' bottom, my body evened out.  My skinny arms got bigger, and my legs toned up.  I had to buy new pants because I went up a size.  Even the shape of my face changed!

In the beginning, I had a lot of binges because I didn't know how to control myself.  I didn't know if my body really wanted/needed something or if I was eating something for the sake of eating.  And I'll say it again, gaining those five pounds SUCKED.

But, overtime I have learned to like my bigger, more firm, healthy body (most of the time!).  I had to learn to like the way I looked, and somehow this improved my self-confidence.  A funny fact is that when I was in the throes of my ED, I felt ugly if I wasn't wearing make-up.  Like, HIDEOUS ugly.  In the last few months, I've grown to appreciate the way I look, even bare-faced.  I now only wear make-up when I feel like it, and wear much less of it. =)

On top of all that, a couple of months ago, I got a terrible haircut which prompted me to cut all my hair off.  I really think that my hair was the last security blanket from my 'ED days'.  With my long hair I kept comparing myself to the 'skinny me'.  Like, gosh I was so pretty and skinny back then with my long hair.  Well, my hair's still the same, so I technically *could* look that way again if I just lost a few pounds.  Chopping my hair off made me look entirely different.  With my hair way shorter (and cuter, I think!), I didn't look anything like the skinny/ED me.  It really was a final push to separate myself from my ED-ways... almost like a reward.
With my new hair, I even started changing up the way I dressed to fit my healthier body.  I was (am) inspired!  And inspiration can only lead to great things.
Overall, I'm not sure how important a 'new look' is for other Recoveries, but it really helped me embrace the new 'healthier me'.

But back to the reason why I finally decided to write this post.  To be honest, the reason that I decided to write it was because I wanted to show you guys that it is possible to get to a place where you're happy with what you're eating, and happy with how you're feeling and how you look.  I feel like I sound like a self-help book, but recovery is possible!  Full happiness is possible!  

But, even as I write this, I know that I'm still going to struggle on and off.  And you know what?  That's OK, and it's very normal. :)


I love you all so much, and couldn't have gotten to this place without all of your help, your kind words, and your support. <3

~Yasi

Accepting and shopping for a healthy 'new' body

Please be aware that this post discusses clothing sizes and may be triggering for some.  If these topics trigger you, please do not proceed.  =)

I was just catching up on your new blog posts, and I read Lily's and Kelsey's posts on how difficult it is to shop and outfit a new and different, curvier, and healthier body.  I've posted about this a few times before, but, I think it's an issue a lot of us recoverers have to deal with, so I'm going to write about it again.

The honest truth is, one year ago when I decided that I was going to get healthier, work out, and eat better (and not in an ED-way), I didn't fully realize what I was getting myself into.  I wasn't aware of the emotional, difficult, and frightening road that was ahead of me.  And most notably, I did not even fathom that gaining weight and possibly not-fitting into my clothes was going to be an issue.-- this probably speaks to how completely unaware I was of suffering from disordered eating.  I thought I was just 'watching my weight' and making sure I didn't get 'fat'.

What brought on this post is that I had to go shopping for jeans this weekend.  Being a fashion-loving gal I desperately 'needed' a pair of jeggings that fit me correctly.  I had spent the past year wrestling, kickboxing, and playing tug-of-war with my size 0 skinny jeans.  I would pull them on, and they would want to spring off my muscular thighs and ass like a cheetah after a meaty antelope.  Sometimes I would  wear the jeans even though they were uncomfortable.  Why?  Because they were a size 0 and I despised the fact that my jean size had gone up.  DESPISED.  It made (still makes) me feel like a failure.

Now, my jean size is ALL.OVER.THE.PLACE.  I cannot tell you how aggravating and challenging this is.  I can no longer go into a store and pick up a size 0 knowing that they will most likely fit (picking up a size 2, just in case).  I now have to grab anywhere from a size 0, 2, 3, and 4 for my curvy and healthy body (Oh no!  NOT a FOUR!!!!  What the hell does size FOUR mean, anyway?).  Yesterday was one of the days where I had to not only face a size 4 jean, I actually bought them because they looked nice on me.  However, just because I bought them doesn't mean I've stopped berating myself for 'getting fat enough' for a size 4.

What's really sad about the ordeal is that I *know* that women's sizes are complete bullshit.  This completely ridiculous bullshit concept was even proven to me in the same Express dressing room that I decided to buy the size 4 jeans.

I had grabbed a handful different types of skinny jeans in sizes 0, 2, and 4, and I had it narrowed down to a jean called the Stella, and another similar style called the Zelda.  They fit very similarly, but the colors were different:  the Stella was a dark inky wash with gold stitching, and the Zelda was a dark black wash.  Oh, and the other thing that was different about them was that the Stella that fit was a size 2, and the Zelda was a size 4!  Imagine my annoyance--two nearly identical jeans, that fit almost exactly the same, but in two completely different sizes!

Why, why , WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Knowing that I liked the black-wash (size 4) Zelda's better, I was faced with a difficult, but rather absurd, decision.  Do I buy the Stella's because they were a size 2, or do I buy the Zelda's in a SIZE FOUR?  Do I succumb to my sad state of 'fat-ness', or do I buy the jeans I like less because the size tag makes me happier?

After much debate I finally decided that I liked the black-wash Zelda's.  I even changed out of the pinching size 0 skinny jeans that I had worn to the mall, and pulled on my new big-girl jeans in the dressing room (after paying for them, of course!).

I wish that I could tell you buying the cute Zelda jeans made me realize that it's ok for me to be a size 4, and that I had some huge epiphany.  But, the truth is, I didn't.

Even though I know that I could fit into a size 2 in a similar jean and I'm not a fat-ass, and even though I generally like my new healthy and fit body, I still hate that I have to buy a bigger pant size.  I miss feeling like a dainty little thing.

That night, I put on my new jeans and went out and had drinks with J.  What else could I do?

I even took pictures of myself in a mirror to prove to myself that I look fine, and that I'm not 'fat'.  I took the pictures because I knew that I could look at them later and realize that the crazy was all in my head, and not reality.

So, tell me...

Have you ever had a similar experience?

What did you do?

If you are recovered or in recovery how do you deal with shopping for your healthier body?

Old Hollywood

My friends' wedding is tomorrow.  I LOVE weddings.  Well, I love parties in general.  And one of the reasons I love parties is sort of silly...  I absolutely adore getting dressed up.  It's one of my favorite parts of a special occasion!

I almost always figure out what I'm going to wear to a party way before hand and it's only because I am so excited about the putting together a cool outfit!!

I put together an outfit for this wedding in June.  See here.

The more I thought about it, I wasn't sure if this wedding was going to be fancy enough to wear a headpiece.  And I didn't want to wear the blue shoes without the headpiece.

As time went on, I bought another little black cocktail dress from Forever 21.  This time, I wasn't sure what shoes I was going to pair it with or really what style I was going to go for.  But, the deciding factor ended up being my hair.

If you knew me you would know that I am suuuuuuuuper lazy about my hair.  I basically let it do whatever it wants.  I'm a shower and air dry kind of girl.  But since I have wavy hair, sometimes it can look a little crazy.  But most days it looks somewhat interesting (to me anyway! haha).

Anyway, getting to the point.  The wedding is tomorrow at four and the only hair style that would really go with this new dress would be if I straightened my hair or if I curled it with a curling iron.  However, I have a very very very busy day tomorrow:  Picking mom up from the far-away airport at 10 am, final wedding meeting with the reception hall at 1 pm, and my friend's wedding at 4 pm.  So, where would I find the time to straighten my hair??  It usually takes a good hour for me to straighten my hair.

So I decided to do the one hair style I always do when I'm in a pinch, but with an added twist.  I tried a basket weave braid around the front of my hair, starting at the left ear, working my way to the right.  I then tied the loose hair into a side pony tail, curled the pieces, and pinned it into a side bun.  It took probably 15 minutes and I think it looked pretty good!

And it looked very Old Hollywood so I decided to accessorize the outfit with bright red matte lipstick from MAC, a long loose pearl necklace and pearl earrings, and I finished off the look with peep toe pumps.

Yay!  Style problem solved.  And I think I can put this together very quickly tomorrow.  :)

Polish me Happy

  

Every season has its popular nail polish colors.  What's hot this season?  Pale blues, grays, pinks and yellows.  These light, almost neutral, colors are wonderful because they go with pretty much everything.  It's a little pop of color that adds interest to any outfit!  And lets not forget that pale colors look amazing with summer tans ;)

  My favorite polishes are usually red or pink.  But I decided to branch out a little.

  What are your favorite polish colors this season?