Ever since I’ve started making videos, I’ve gained a whole new appreciation for lipstick. I hate leaving lipstick remnants all over the place, and I love to kiss, so I’ve avoided it before. But on camera it makes a major difference, and since I became a redhead I’ve been loving wearing bright bold lipstick. The redder the better. So I’ve been on the hunt for how to make it stay where I want it, and not all over Atti’s cheeks.

This is the answer. It’s unbelievable. You put this on and you’ll still be wearing it when you wake up the next morning. The texture takes some getting used to, it’s a little bit like you’re putting a coat of paint on your lips, and with the darker colors you can sometimes get a demarcation line where your lips start to get moist, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING lasts like this stuff. Kissing, eating, drinking, even using chapstick. It stays.

It stays so long it’s almost a new kind of problem. Which I discovered one morning after the bus picked Atti up and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. 8 in the morning is a little early for bright red lipstick, at least when it’s accompanied by disheveled hair and pajamas. I’m sure the busdriver was wondering what I’d been up to all night.

I’ve gotten back to exercising now that I’m well enough to get out of my bed and back to life, and in the four months I took off from it, I seem to have lost all respiratory conditioning. My muscles aren’t sore, I’m not exhausted, but I can’t even Zumba my way through one song without clutching my chest.

Since I’ve never had an asthma attack when I wasn’t exerting myself, I haven’t been anywhere near as serious about treating it as I should have been. I think I still have my dad’s voice in my head scoffing at my mom when she told him he had exercise induced asthma. “That’s just called being out of shape,” he’d say, redfaced and wheezing. Today is the first day when I can say, nope. Not at all. Not true.

I should have known ages ago, but I’m never one to accept a limitation willingly. In college I put off PE requirements until my last semester and had to take two aerobics classes back to back three times a week. That’s two hours of working out every other day and even by the end I couldn’t get through the first class without needing to catch my breath. When Bear gets back to working out after a break, he might push too hard and throw up. I have never ever ever gotten even close to that feeling. I pass out first.

So until I condition and medicate my lungs well enough to not kill me, I have two choices. Do a short workout and be frustrated with my lack of progress, or do a short workout, sit in my sweat for a couple of hours, do another short workout, and then hope I’ll have less time being frustrated. My football player husband is getting a kick out of my “Twoaday” workout plan, I’m just hoping that I can reach a point where I’m not hacking up asthmatic phlegm all day.

If you hear “Smoked Salmon” and get grossed out at raw fish, then this is the stuff you want. It’s not necessarily spicy, the “hot” refers to the cooking process “hot smoked” which means that the smoke that flavors the fish came from a hot fire that the fish was also close to, which means that the salmon is cooked by heat as well as flavored by smoke. It’s delicious. It’s like eating salmon jerky without that dried out jerky texture.

I first ate this as a kid when my dad, who loved to fish, started investigating other ways to use his grill and made up pound after pound of hot smoked salmon. As an adult I’ve only ever found it two places: a specialty fish market, and the Fresh and Easy grocery store.

It is the perfect lunch with some bread and veggies, or just eaten with my fingers right out of the package for a super healthy snack. All the health experts are always raving about how great salmon is for you – cancer fighting, healthy protein, brain food – but who takes the time to cook themselves up a salmon filet every day? This is so dang convenient that I can be lazy and feel virtuous at the same time.

I get a surprising amount of grief about my fingernails on my different blogs. I never pay attention to other people’s nails so it always takes me by surprise, but my oh my people who care care an AWFUL LOT.

I like having pretty nails, but with all my cooking and crafting and diaper changing, it’s far more important my hands are scrubbable than decorative. Whenever I take the time to paint my nails, they start chipping in a matter of hours.

Until I started using a base coat and a top coat. This has made an amazing difference. I can keep a manicure for a week at a time now! Suddenly it’s not just something for women who don’t need to constantly have their hands under water, fancy nails can be for me too!!

I am just now coming to appreciate lipstick. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or that between Foxy Like A Crafter and my Youtube channel I’m suddenly seeing myself on camera a whole lot more, but suddenly I find myself a lot more drawn to lipstick than I ever have been before.

But, I’m also a very kissy mama. This poor kid is always getting slobbered on, and while I might appreciate bright lipstick, Atti’s not such a fan. I needed something that wouldn’t get immediately transferred off as soon as I kissed my boy or took a drink.

I really like these Revlon Just Bitten lipstains. They’re like markers that you color your lips with, and then after they dry you cover them with lip balm so you don’t get a dried out look. I’ve got a ton of colors and the ones I love the most are the really dark and bright ones. Red lipstick can be tricky to keep in place, so a marker you can get so precise with is a pretty great way to tackle it.

The last time I went to the beauty supply store, I was asking advice on my hair coloring from the sweet gal working there. She took me by the hand and showed me all kinds of tools to make my home hair coloring easier, and as she was filling me up with brushes and mixing bowls she grabbed a pack of these little razor combs. They were only a couple of dollars and I was feeling spendy so I told her to throw them on the pile.

I initially thought I was buying them for Bear to clean up the back of his neck between hair cuts. He’s also inherited his father’s eyebrows which are prone to one rogue extra long one, so I thought these would be great for that. They are, but I use them way way more often than he does.

I’ve never really gotten the hang of cutting my own bangs unless I want to just cut them straight across. Since I prefer a rough texture, I have a long history of jagged cuts and attempts to prolong the work of my stylist between visits. I have constantly been cutting them too short, avoiding a mirror for a few days, and then shrugging resignedly. But once I discovered these little razor combs that all changed. I can get the rough texture I like, and I can take off just the tiniest amounts. When you want you bangs longish but not in your face, 1/4″ makes a massive difference. With this I can get my fingers out of the way and make tiny little precise cuts, and then rough it up.

One of my biggest makeup dilemmas is my dark under eye circles. I’ve been trying and trying to find the best combination of makeup and technique to hide them, and I’m sure it will plague me my whole makeup wearing life. But I did find one trick that really helps. The inside corners of my eyes are where the darkness is at its deepest, and the shadows created by my nose doesn’t help anything. So in the corner of my eye I’ve started using a dot of light eyeshadow. I love this cream version from L’Oreal, it’s close to my skin color so it doesn’t look obvious, but it’s got enough shimmer to reflect some light into that darkest corner. I’m all about finding simple no fuss tricks since I am barely committed to this whole makeup thing, and this just takes a quick little dab.