I cannot tell you how good it feels to finally wake up in the morning having slept through the whole night and not feeling total, complete impending doom for the coming day. Today I felt like I could breathe. Not just physically, but emotionally too. The sun was shining, and I am feeling 1000x better. Still not 100% energy yet but seriously, the fact that I can sit at my desk for more than 10 minutes at a time and not get dizzy from sickness or medicine feels like such a blessing.

I want to thank everyone who left sweet messages of encouragement and commiseration of having gone through a similar situation of being sick, having bronchitis, or being on similar medicines. It's hard to not feel like I am just being a whiny complainer but to hear such sincere stories about people feeling the same way makes me feel like I'm just human. Truthfully, I've been feeling like some weak excuse for a person lately. :P

Also, thank you so much for being supportive and not angry with me for having been inconsistent with the blogging and responding to e-mails. I've all but given up on formspring (seeing nearly 100 unanswered questions is giving me anxiety) but I'm sure I will get my second wind of answering gusto soon. :D

For now, I'll post something that doesn't need to much explaining... Nails!

Revlon Plum Baby is a pretty pinky-purple cream that has a bit of a retro feel to it but I wasn't feeling it as soon as I put it on. I don't know, I just need my polish to FEEL right and it didn't feel right! Pretty color though. Maybe too pretty. Heh.


Your Royal Shyness is one of my favorite polishes for its pale pink color. I almost wish it didn't have the pearly sheen though. Still on the hunt for the perfect opaque pale pink.


Secret Peri-wink-le is a gorgeous blue cream that my mother-in-law got me as part of my birthday present. Isn't it an amazing color? I thought it would look funny on my skintone but I ended up really loving it so much.


So that's it for my barrage of nail pics. Sorry I didn't list the konad plate names. I blame the illness. Being sick makes me unable to look up plate numbers. ;P Bahaha. The next nail pic spam shouldn't be as long since I actually went like, a whole week without painting my nails while I was sick. Pretty unheard of. Also, for some reason I wanted really boring medium pinks when I finally did paint them? Obviously, the sickness affected my brain in more ways than one. Hopefully this will be remedied soon.

Omg, it's so late. I think I'm going to pass out since I stayed up so late watching the Olympics. It royally pooped me out. I'm banking on waking up tomorrow with even more strength, health, and happiness. ^_^

PS. Did anyone else cry at Kim Yuna's gold metal, record-breaking performance? I am so not good with watching people cry, and I love ice skating so much. SO proud of my parent country and Yuna! It was absolutely brilliant. <3

Hey everyone. I hope everyone already knows the reason I've been out for a while. I haven't made in any secret that I've been sick and after those really bad 103 degree fevers last week I told myself I can't handle it anymore and I really am going to see a real doctor. The antibiotics the Minute Clinic nurse gave me weren't doing anything and the cough suppressants barely were making a dent in my bronchitis at all. The fevers didn't start until after going there too, so along with my very generous father to help pay for my doctor's visit, I finally went.

X-rays were taken, and thankfully there's no serious pneumonia. There was a small amount of fluid but no pooling of liquid at the bottom of my lungs or anything. He kept asking me about my asthma this or had I had bad asthma as a child, which I had never been diagnosed of in my life. Apparently my body reacts like an asthmatic? I'll definitely have to look more into that when I get better.

The treatment he put me on is a medicine called Prednisone, which is a pretty evil little steroid that suppresses your immune system so that it stops attacking itself. I'd been on it once before when I had a bad food allergy that put me in the hospital, and I still have haunting memories of all the bad side effects. Last time, the worst was INTENSE food cravings like I've never had in my life. I had gained about 5lbs in 1 week. I know that doesn't sound like a lot to some of you, but that was literally 1/15th of my entire body weight. This combined with body aches, water retention causing a puffy face and bloated stomach, depression, and important design projects I had to work on... Obviously I had reasons to be disappointed I had to get back on it.

My reaction this time around hasn't been pleasant but it's been different. I haven't had any of the food cravings, partially since I haven't been very hungry since being sick in the first place. My fevers have actually grown less frequent day to day and my coughing has gone down significantly. The bad part is that I still do have the body aches and pains and a really profound dizziness and nausea that has basically kept me in bed with nothing to do but sleep. Can you say boring and depressing? Yup, that's a summary of how I've been feeling.

So yeah. Sorry if I've been slow to writing back e-mails or sending out packages. I have literally not left my home in over a week. This is the longest time I've spent online in the last week, which is probably more than the other times combined. I'm still shocked I haven't gotten too dizzy and quit.

Oooh, spoke too soon. Gonna go lay down again. <3 you girls. Thank you Eki and Lisa for the amazing V-day love packages you sent, it means more to me now that you could ever, ever know. And thank you everyone else for your support and understanding. I hope you are all able to stay healthy and happy and safe.

xoxo

Blegh, been feeling the worst of this whole sickness these last couple of days. Migraines, fevers, chills, coughing... Maybe I'm sick with more than 1 thing since I'm actually on antibiotics now! I don't know but I've been incredibly fatigued which I think always happens to me when I start taking antibiotics. Does that ever happen to anyone else?

I was trying to "sweat out" the fever this morning, which I think did help me feel better. I hate the feeling of sweating but it did seem to break the fever. Hubby didn't grow up with that method, so I wonder if it's just an Asian thing. :P

Anyway, thought I would quickly post some photos up from that photoshoot I was talking about when I did the camera comparison post.

The photog was the same guy who took my Vintage Planes shoot so he called me up to just do something random and fun. I put together this outfit on a whim. It reminds me of school uniforms with a dark twist and I think it contrasted nicely with the beautiful fall leaves.


Outfit:
grey tank top - Abercrombie, white beaded skirt - Abercrombie kids, cotton blazer - BB Dakota, skinny tie - Penguin, garter belt - DKNY, stockings - ebay, boots - Alice + Olivia for Payless

Oh, and I wanted to mention. Thank you so much for all of your support while I've been sick in comments and on twitter! I can feel the love and care and I really appreciate it. <3

I'm gonna take another nap now. I am resting guys, I promise!

Yay! Finally a new tutorial! I've had so many requests for a Valentine's Day look so I recorded this so I could get it up in time before the big holiday. For those of you who have been following me for a while, you'll recognize this as the look I wore last year for Valentine's Day! I really liked the look so I recreated it to share with everyone. ^^

This look is basically a hot pink eye with a smoky charcoal as the contour color. I do want to mention that although I used Wonder Eyelid Tape here, monolidders can wear the exact same look just without the tape.

Hey guys, life has been really hectic lately with staying home from work, trying to get better once and for all. This sickness has really been kicking my butt these last few weeks and I've been holding off on going to the doctor since I'm between insurances but I might just have to bite the bullet and go anyway. It's been so difficult not to be down and depressed when I feel fatigued all the time but I'm doing my best to take things easy and get a lot of sleep.

One thing that's been keeping me going is building my new computer. I spray painted the case pink and it's all put together now with pretty lights, but I'm going to find some bling for it to fully decorate it before I post it up. ;) But I forgot how time-consuming and frustrating it is re-installing all of my programs and getting old files to work as well as they used to on the other computer! Oh, well, baby steps to get to my dream machine.

I know you really want to get to the important stuff of this post so I'll get to it! Here is my review of the Dueba DM23 Grey lenses that received as part of my sponsorship with Pinky Paradise.

Here are the lens vials (Barbie packaging) and cute animal case, a hippo.


The pattern is quite wide so you won't get any blurriness around the pupil hole with these.


Can I just say right now that these are woah-mama the hugest looking lenses that I've ever tried? Technically, the 14.5mm diameter is the same as the Big MX21 Cosmo Brown lenses but for some reason these look sooo much bigger. I think it's because they are such a darker color that it has more of the effect of black lenses without being as harsh as actual black lenses. I'm already a petite person with small eyes so I'm sure someone with larger irises is going to want lenses just like these to actually give them the dolly look compared to smaller circle lenses. As for me, I think I prefer the smaller 14.0mm lenses.

Here is the effect of the lens compared to my plain eye.


And my whole face. Very dolly-like!


I will admit, it does look more natural from far away and I think it looks nice in pics but it probably requires more makeup in general to balance such a large iris. ;)


Yup, yup I am loving my velvet leggings and old black dance legwarmers. It's SNOWING AGAIN! D:

Tomorrow if I'm feeling up for it, I'm going to try to record a V-day makeup tutorial. We'll see if it happens.

xoxo

Oh, PS, I re-uploaded the Brown Eyed Girls "Abracadabra" inspired video tutorial for those of you who were waiting for it. Please comment & rate since I lost the ones in the past. :)

Just wanted to let you guys know my smokey eyes monolid tutorial is back up on youtube. I got a TON of requests to bring this one back so I tried to bring it up in priority again!

If you have the time, please comment and rate since all previous ones are gone. ;)






Here is the original blog entry for this look. I just realized my bra is hanging out in that last pic. OOPS! XD

By the way, I noticed today that I got my first Youtube award! What the what? You've gotta be kidding me! :D It's very exciting though, so thank you to those who do visit my youtube page. I'm quite humbled since I don't have that many videos and I never thought this could happen so I hope I can share this achievement with all of you.


I know 62 isn't a super high number but it sounds incredible to me! I promise to make more videos in the future since it seems like a lot of you really find them helpful with blending. ^^

Okay, today has been a bit tough for me so I'm gonna shower so I can wash away today and be prepared for tomorrow and the new exciting things it brings. :) Goodnight!