Hey There Curly Hair || Wash n Go and Shameless Selfie

For all you curly haired ladies (and gents) out there you know how hard it is to just get your curly hair to look good in it's natural state.

A little back story. My last relaxer (chemical straightener) was in January of 2008. I transitioned for about 28 months before I was completely natural in mid 2010. I usually do twist outs, braid outs, blow outs, or a puff. Never have I done a wash n go. Why? Because it should be called a wash, rake gel through each clump of curls, let the gel set, fluff and separate curls if need be and pray that you don't smoosh your curls as you get dressed. Then you can go.

Phew. I got tired just writing that. 

But since my hair was in twists for about a month I noticed my curls were poppin like THAT girl at the club. But in a good way. Plus I'm on a no buying spree until I use all of my hair products (post coming soon) and I had a small tub of eco styler gel that I hadn't touched in about 2 years. I figured it was now or never.

The picture below is my second day hair of my wash n go after sleeping on it and making it through a Saturday morning spin class. I used a mixture of eco styler and homemade flax seed gel (50/50).

My thoughts? In.love. Let's just hope it lasts for about 5 days before I have to redo it.

Less is More || Reclaiming My Inbox

I'll admit it. I'm the type of person to enter my email into sites for their one time coupons and what not. It probably doesn't help that I have three four five email addresses (that I know of, I probably have more if I take a second to think about it). I have my yahoo which I use for my main email, my GMail which is my professional email (i.e. it's on my resume), I have the email address for my business Love-Lea, LLC,  I have a Comcast email whose sole purpose is to just exist simply for the sake of having Comcast as a tv and Internet service provider, and then I have my work email.

Not too bad right? Wrong.

Five email addresses means I have five times the opportunity to sign up for "exclusive" coupons for stores and merchandise and what not. True. But that also means all of those "exclusive" coupons and what not that I signed up for translate into the thorn in everyone's Internet presence side. Junk Mail.

And because I'm a self-proclaimed coupon queen, three of my inboxes have changed from having a specific purpose (for the business, for my professional life, for my family/friends) into one big clusterf... mess of junk mail.

Situation 1: I was in Peru for a week total. Meaning I hadn't checked my email in 7 days. Why did I touch down in Baltimore only to find that I had 300+ emails in my Yahoo! account, 50+ in my professional account, and 20+ in my business account? Clearly I must be more popular that I thought. Not.

95% of those emails were junk. Coupons from stores announcing their "Super Last Time We'll Ever Have Prices This Low For Real, For Real" Sale or daily deal sites, I'm looking at you Groupon, Living Social, Schwaggle, KGB Deals, BMore Bargains, MobStub, Google Deals, and SniqueAway. Funny Story? I was getting daily emails from all of those places, sometimes multiple per day depending on the cities I subscribed to. That totalled to about 15 emails per day just from those daily deal sites.

I realized that I was going a little cray cray just from deleted emails. So I did what I should have done a while ago. Every email that I found myself deleting without even reading, I simply hit 'Unsubscribe'. So hopefully within the 7-14 business days that it takes the computer to tell itself to stop sending me emails, I will have less clutter in my inboxes and more peace of mind. I'll also spend less on those impromptu purchases of a professional culinary knife set endorsed by a celebrity chef that is on sale for $29.99 plus free shipping. But that's another story for another time.

Moral of the story? When life gives you a bag of lemons for 70% off...hit Unsubscribe.

Less Is More || My New Year's Resolution

Hello Party People!

I'm back from traveling the world to Peru and figured I'd put my bloggin' hat on and get back at it.  It's now the third week of January and I hope you all have put away your $6 (or $12 if you're doubling for the first few months like me) that goes towards the 52 Week Challenge! It's not too late to start and I'm sure you can find those $6 in your couch, car, extra purses, bags from college, or if you finally unpack those suitcases from going to Peru.

So I've introduced the Bloggin' on a Budget series. Now I'm going to introduce the Less is More series. They're related yes, but going on different principles. The Less is More series will focus on what I chose to be my New Year's Resolution. Less.Is.More. So in this series I'll update you on how I plan to stick with my resolution way longer than people do at the gym. It'll cover decluttering, organizing, parting with that pair of jeans you've had since high school knowing that you don't fit into them and all that jazz through every part of life. Because for the most part, less truly is more.

Stay tuned lovers.

Blame it on the Pisco Sours

**Warning...super long post**

Just came back from dinner from the first night in Peru. I'm going to try to explain what happened over the last four hours but you have to promise me that you 1) will not judge, and 2) remember that I am telling the truth, the whole truth, so help me God.

Dinner tonight was interesting in more than a few ways. We got there and it was a buffet sort of thing so of course we ate. Then one of the guys at our table convinced the server to give us one free round of pisco sours (the native drink of Peru). Now, pisco sours -to me- are a mix of a whiskey sour and a margarita. Either way it's delicious but you really only need one to have a good time, two to be the life of the party, and three to be THAT girl/guy that people roll their eyes at because they're ruining their buzz. I only had one but pair that with not really eating for a solid day and a tad of dehydration and I bypassed step one and moved right into step two. The life of the party.

Well....sort of.

The thing about studying abroad with people you don't know is just that. You don't know them. And they don't know you. So you are able to re-invent yourself and no one would know that wiser. I could be THAT girl or I could be the laid back one. Maybe I could be the shy introvert who would rather listen then perk up in conversation (i.e. what I usually am). But instead, I chose to be the outgoing one that would put fun over what people thought of me and realized that this may be my only time down in Peru. So I better make it a good, yet responsible, time.

And tonight. I did something that I would have NEVER done without a few too many drinks in me in the States. And by few too many, I mean not being able to remember what happened the next day.

I, Karla With a K, danced on stage. AND I had a blast.

I'll wait for the applause to die down before I continue.

Now before I explain to you how I got on stage and why there were dancers on stage at dinner you have to remember that everything I am telling you is completely true. No matter how unbelievable it sounds.

After the buffet of foods that didn't have a name intestines dressed up as tripe (those mischievous intestines) the entertainment came out. In the middle of this historic building that seemed to have Morrocan influences was a dance floor, well more like stage. At the end of dinner the lights dimmed and the show started. The first dancers represented the three different types of Peruvians and went through the history of Peru in dance form (at least that's what I got out of it). First there were the coastal people. Pretty mundane but cool nonetheless. Second came the mountain people. They were the more traditional dancers. Probably the type that you would think of when you think of traditional Latin American dancers. But next *fans self* next came the jungle people.

Now I'm not sure if it was a coincidence that the jungle people were the darkest of the three groups, but nonetheless they made me feel as though I was watching my friends get on with their bad selves. There was grinding and shaking that made all the people in the group, who obviously haven't seen this type of dancing before, start fanning themselves. First dance was done and they went through the rotation again. When it got back to the jungle people, the next dance they did something I can only describe as trying to light each others' butts on fire. As in candle to a piece of cloth tacked to their backside. The girls were shaking and shimmying away from the guys who were trying to light their butts. And it's all fun and games until someone's butt gets lit on fire.

Welp what do you know. They came down to the audience and asked for volunteers. Well the guy had been eyeing me since he was on stage and lo and behold, pulled me on stage. For a split second I though to myself, "No Karla With a K, don't do this" but then I said "When in Rome...do as the Peruvians." So I shaked and shimmied and glided around stage with the guy who kept cooing at my "mamacita, mamacita". Well if this butt fire thing was a game, I would have won. My butt was sans fire at the end of the song and I ended up having a blast.

Peru - 0, Karla with a K -1.

But wait, there's more! After that butt fire dance there was what I can only describe as Edward Scissorhand meets West Side Story meets break dancing B-Boys.  The group of 6 or so young guys started dancing with what appeared to be shears that weren't connected. So think of two parts of the scissors. They were clacking and clinking their shears together and having a good 'ol time until the battle began. The music changed and each young man went to show their stuff in battle formation. One spun on his head, the other put his foot in his mouth while flipping (literally), the other did what looked like a bedroom move, and another did back flips...with shears.

And then the finale came. It was a light show meets Nikki Minaj inspiration meets rave after you pop the molly meets two people in monkey/wild animal suites. And more Edward Scissorhand boys.

By the time we all pulled back from the table to get ready to go the only thing we could say was "What in the entire [bleep] just happened?"

Welcome to Peru.

Bloggin' On a Budget || 52 Week Challenge

Taken from a post I saw on fb. For one those random updates from people who like everything was worth something.

This right here? Is how I'm going to save some extra dough this year. Simply follow the savings plan above and by New Year's next year you have around $1,300 to spend on booze for the party. anything your little heart desires.

There are a few ways to do it. The simplest way (in my opinion) is to do it electronically via mobile/ online banking. If you don't already have a savings account (that you utilize only for savings, not dipping into because those shoes are too cute to pass up) that would work perfectly. If not, get one.

Or you could just put it in a mason jar or fancy box/jar/holding apparatus in your bedroom. At the end of every week, deposit the said amount into the account and watch you're money grow. It's really simple. For the week of the year, put that amount into the account. $1 for the first week, $2 for the second week, $3 for the third week and so on and so forth.

Who's with me?

Oh and if you're extra special, why not do two savings accounts at once? Or even double the amount you put in there?