.: DIY - Mason Jar Cups :.

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't uploaded a blog post like I promised I would (school and work has taken most of my life now) I can assure you guys summer school in college is not fun. (Especially if you're taking art history like me!) But that's okay I have my super summery (is that a word?) mason jar cup with me to last through the next couple weeks! So I'm going to show you guys how to make your very own. (Don't even think about buying those ratchet plastic ones from the stores, those are too #basic for us)

 

See doesn't my mason jar look better than the normal boring cups?

 Basically you only need a couple of things to make this:
- mason jar (Target, Walmart has them by the bulk *never buy from Michaels its a ripoff*)
- 1/4 rubber grommet (hardware stores such as Home Depot should have it)
- drill (with an approx. 1/4 sized drill bit)
        OR 
- hammer and nails
-pliers

These rubber grommet look like black macarons!

 Basically wash your mason jar thoroughly and pop the flat part of the lid off.

Next, you can drill a hole right in the middle of the flat lid. If you don't have a drill you can use a hammer and perforate a circle with your nail about the size of your rubber grommet. Then just use a pair of pliers to pull the perforated piece out. (Simple as that!)

Now you just have to fit the rubber grommet into the hole of your lid. (The grommet insures the sharp edges are sealed and to reduce any leakage.)

And voila! You have an awesome hipster mason jar.

Just put your favourite drinks in there and you're all set! (I did passion tea lemonade from Starbucks and green tea frappe also from Starbucks cause I work there lol!)

You can also buy re-usable straws from Starbucks so you can be more eco-friendly and hipster.

Hope you guys like this DIY! (Yeah a lot of people has done it before, but HEY one more tutorial won't hurt anyone!) Until next time guys!

Side note: I'm so ready for summer look at this outfit its so summery and hipster lol.

.: Upcoming Projects :.

Sooooooooo now that summer is finally here I have a bit more time. Unfortunately I still have class because I am attending summer school this year. However I am only taking one course for the summer semester so that leaves me with more room to blog. I'm hoping to blog more often because I have so many ideas brewing up in my head but I just don't have the time to type them and edit them. (Man youtubers must have it even harder, they have to edit their videos all the time) But I am so excited to share with you guys an upcoming project that I have been working on. I would say the new post will be unveiled in a couple of weeks the latest and will feature a collaboration with a personal friend of mine who may or may not have started their own blog/website by the time my blog post is published. This is something that is really exciting to me because if this works out well, you will definitely expect to see more of this in the coming future with the same collaborator. Keep checking back to see some behind the scenes pictures and snippets in a couple of days! Until next time guys :)

.: DIY - Closet Mirror :.

So my parents recently gave me their master bedroom (my mom thinks it's too loud and sleeps in my sister's room, my dad sleeps in the basement. They don't sleep together, they think each other is too loud) as my new bedroom. Since this hardly ever happens, I decided to use this opportunity to redecorate a new room. Since I'm almost 20 (In June), I wanted to upgrade everything I have into a more mature and minimalist style. (Yes, I've been on Tumblr/ Pinterest a lot) Instead of buying all new furniture, I decided to use my old ones and repurpose them. My first furniture (If you can call it that) is my closet mirror. In my old room, the mirror was behind the closet door and is hidden by the door. but my new closet has two sliding doors so my mirror has to be displayed outside for people to see.

Things you'll need:
- a mirror
 - paint (mine are acrylic)
- paintbrush
- rubbing alcohol (optional, used to wipe your mirror with)
- newspaper (to line your mirror with so that you don't get paint everywhere)
- modge podge (optional, if you want it to have a nice shine to it)

This mirror was purchased many years ago from IKEA and its seen better days. So i decided to give it a fresh coat of paint. The paint I chose is this mint/torquiose crafting paint from Micheals. I pretty much painted two to three coats and painted the frame over with Modge Podge. (This step was optional, but I didn't want my paint to chip so I decided to seal it)

So that's pretty much it for this easy tutorial! I think it turned out rather nice actually. See you guys soon!

Steps:
1. Tape around edges of mirror with scrap paper/ newspaper
2. Clean mirror with rubbing alcohol (Optional)
3. Paint mirror, let dry then paint another coat
4. Seal it up with Modge Podge (Optional)
5. VOILA! you're done! Hang it up!

.: Review - Lego 2013 Christmas Advent Calendar :.

(The front of the box)

So for Christmas a good friend of mine bought me this Lego 2013 Christmas Advent calendar as a gift. I've always wanted one and actually never gotten around to buying one for myself (because back then I didn't have a job and when I finally did I forgot about it) While my friend got herself the David's Tea advent calendar she decided to get me the Lego one. Lego came out with 3 different Christmas Calendars this year, there is the one that I have which is considered the Lego City brand, there's a Lego Star Wars as well as the Lego Friends brand for the female demographic. I'm so glad she got me this one because out of all three I prefer/ like this one the most. (I'm not a big fan of Star Wars and I'm not into the Friends line since I'm not a girl... even if I try really hard... just kidding... what?  So this piece actually folds out into a big panorama setting so that you can put your daily presents on top to display. There are some good points about this as well as some bad points.

(The inside of the box after you flip the opening flap)

(The minifigs in all its glory)

I really like that Lego puts out minifigures in these sets because what good is a Lego set without some minifigures. The ones that Lego put in here are all really well rounded (Ex. there's Santa, a kid, a female firefighter, policeman and a couple more) I like that it's not just male minifigures and gives out female ones as well as kid body parts too so that it is more diverse. Another good point about this set is that even if  you have a small child that loses bits and pieces of their Lego sets they won't have to worry because this calendar comes with a lot of extra pieces. Like seriously after I was done this calendar I had so many sausage pieces left I don't even know what to do with them. I guess I can just put them into my Lego box which basically means they'll all just fall to the bottom sides of the bin. This set actually lets you build this whole Christmas dinner table complete with a bench as well as a Christmas tree with presents underneath with a fireplace right next to it! It's so detailed and nicely build that I even put this whole thing up on display right afterwards.

(my two favourite figures from this set)

Of course with every positive points there's got to be some negative ones, though they are just minor points it's still worth noting them. Though the set does relate itself to eachother nicely, there's at least half of the calendar where I'm just wondering what this or that has to do with Christmas... like really an astronaut, go kart racer, burgler, policeman, firefighter, and this mechanical arm thing... nothing in there even relates to Christmas at all... so I would like to see MORE Christmas related items. Personally it felt like Lego thought of half of it with care and the rest just filled with their left over Polybags or something because it does feel like they didn't even bother with it.

(what is with the race car driver and firefighter?)

So all in all I really liked this set. I actually would get another one for myself this coming Christmas. even though some days felt like the creators of this ran out of ideas and randomly shoved extra pieces in from precious LEGO sets. Younger children should have no problem with this, HECK I was never this picky when I was younger... well maybe a little. I would rate this LEGO Christmas 2013 Advent calender 3/5. Being more on the pricier side and having weird non Christmas themed days.

(I still LOVE this set!)

(Happy super belated holidays!)

.: Haul - Boxing Day December 26th 2013! :.

So every Boxing day I usually have this tradition where I go shopping for good deals with my mom. But as the years go by, I grew up and I guess my mom and I just started going our separate ways in terms of shopping. It sounds so corny but my mom used to bring me shopping every Sunday and that was our only bonding time. This year my mom and I both decided to go together but in the end we still decided to ditch each other for our own friends.

So, I went to the biggest mall within British Columbia as well as Downtown with my friends and my mom decided to do the same with her friends. The biggest mall here in British Columbia would be Metropolis Metrotown. (At least I think it is the biggest one here, if I am wrong please feel free to tell me otherwise!)

So this Boxing day my goal was to buy clothes and only clothes because I already bought the other stuff that I wanted during this years Black Friday sale. bought sooooo many video games.  But there were only 3-4 stores that I really wanted to go to try to see if there were any good deals: H&M, Forever21, Urban Outfitters, and Topshop/Topman. So my first stop was Urban Outfitters and there were actually some pretty decent deals on. I think it was like 50% off of sale items, but unfortunately I couldn't find anything that I actually wanted or can wear because everything was either extra large or large (guess I was late... we went at 9:30am which I thought was early until one of my best friends told me she went at 8am with her family) I did find this really nice looking dress shirt with hearts all over it which I thought would have been nice for Valentines day (not that I have anything to do) but I could have worn it as an opened dress shirt (that's my style during the Spring/ Summer times)

So my second stop was at Topshop/ Topman and that was where I actually found my first couple of purchases. I got these two pants that I have been wanting for a long time and just didn't want to spend that much for them since I didn't think it's worth it. But a lot of stuff from Topshop and Topman are 50% off as well and that's when I saw the very comfy track pants and the very sexy black skinny jeans.

Up until now I've only had one pair of track pants for exercise or just lazy days but those pair didn't really fit sucks to be short.  These pairs fit perfectly and they have this really tropical kind of design that I really like it reminds me of this tropical beach and maybe just maybe it might motivate me to exercise more? Just a thought!

A lot of the changing rooms are closed in many stores during Boxing day, fortunately I'm mostly a medium when it comes to shirts so that's easy to do. For pants though, I do have another strategy that I think most people should do when they go shopping during big sales or just in general if they are too lazy to try on stuff because that's the kind of person I am. I open up my notepad app on my phone and write down all my sizes for pants for different brands and stores accordingly. That way I won't have to worry about being a different size for another store if all my sizes are jotted down on my phone!

My black skinny jeans was a breeze for me since I just saw it, grabbed it, paid for it right away. There's not much to talk about these jeans other than the fact that I bought the exact same ones a year ago but I broke them because I have fat thunder thighs... so these new ones are my new replacement ones for them.

I then went to this store called Stitches that I believe is only available in Canada (it maybe called Rue21 in the states) But I bought this melting diamond t-shirt that was only $7 and this New York sweater that I originally didn't really want it and just bought it because I felt like I should buy one more thing from this store because everything is so cheap and I didn't want to go line up and fight with other people in other stores at the time. But once I got home I was actually really happy with that sweater purchase because you can never have too many sweaters and since I live in Canada even spring is going to be sweater weather.

My last clothes related purchase of the day (I did buy some non clothes stuff but they are Christmas gifts for friends) was at Forever21. It was the last store of the day and after the massive mall (We went to almost each and every store... not just the ones I wanted to go to) we were all so tired out and kind of irritated to just get home. One of my friend wanted to go get some tea or food from this coffee shop near by while my other friend needed to pick up a birthday card at the dollar store across from Forever21. So we split up for 5mins as we each did our own thing, I tried to be as fast as I can because I didn't want to keep them waiting and I doubt I could even find anything in there. (their male department or actually any male department in any clothing store for that matter is always so small and I actually find that so sexist and rude of them. Gosh you know sometimes guys want more varieties of clothes just as much as girls do.) But surprisingly they had 50% off of clothes for many of the stuff in the men's department and 3 jackets caught my eye immediately after walking in.

 

The first jacket is this denim jacket that was originally only a large but I found its brothers and sisters and had one last medium size left and I grabbed it right away. All of my friends know that I have a very large collection of denim jackets and denim shirts because I've been really into denim lately. To me denim is easy to pair clothes with as long as its not the same coloured denim (denim on denim is only okay if its light to dark denim in my point of view never the same or similar coloured denim together) This jacket is more on the heavy and thick side which I've started wearing already as a winter jacket.

I found this really nice camo patterned jacket/ dress shirt on my way to pay for that denim jacket and fell in love with it, I think it is more of a jacket but its not thick enough to be a full on jacket alone I would probably have to wear something thicker on top of that so that I can stay warm during the harsh Canadian cold. If it's another thing that my friends know about my closet is that next to denim, camo is my second biggest current obsession at the moment. I really like camo pattern clothing (other than pants) because it can be accessorized so easily and they always look great with a light coloured shirt and some dark coloured pants.

Lastly, I found this leather-ish jacket right next to the camo jacket that was literally just begging me to take him in to my closet, so I did. I use the term leather-ish because let's face it nothing at Forever21 will be REAL leather its just plastic leather, or as I like to call it "Pleather". I recently bought two new pleather jackets from Forever21 just weeks ago and what separates this one from those two is that this one is only pleather on the sleeves and the rest of the jacket is another material which I like because it does add depth to the jacket not just all pleather and boring.

 

All in all I was really pleased with my purchases even if I didn't buy as much stuff as I have originally wanted to. But I did spend a lot, I think I broke last years record of $288 because this year I've spent around $300- 330. I'll see you guys next time!

.: Mini Review - Fine liner pens :.

This is the first of my mini review series containing basically items that are too small to really have an in-depth review of.

So over the weekend, one of my close friend and I went to our local dollar store and decided to buy some baking supplies, well for me anyway. While waiting in line I saw these pack of fine liner pens and I thought to myself they look really sleek. So I decided to give them a try, turns out they're actually not that bad. Personally for only $2 (yeah yeah I know its not even $1 but dollar stores here in Canada are like that) its fantastic.

yeah I know there's a piece of paper right behind this but I was trying to show you guys that I was testing it out...

I actually thought they were similar to those Staedtler brand ones you know the ones that are a huge rip off and cost like $12 for just the same amount of pens. Honestly for the price of these fine liner pens you really can't complain much about the quality of them but I have seen a lot worse in terms of quality of dollar store pens. You guys should totally give them a try if you ever happen to run into these babies. Heck I might actually buy another pack as back up for when I run out of these ones since I think I'm going to use them for my next semester in college.

Score: 4.5/5

I know I'm a bit late but Happy New Year guys! May 2014 be even greater and better than 2013!