Posted on in MAKEUP/BEAUTY

DECEMBER BEAUTY FAVES

Hello there, pals! I wanted to share with you all some of my favorite beauty/makeup products that I have been digging for the month of December. Upon compiling my list, I realized that I got nearly every one of these things at ULTA, and that is when I realized that I really need to stay away from ULTA for my wallet’s sake. Anyway, let’s get on with it!

First on the list is the Murad Acne Starter Kit

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Down here in my part of the world (lovely Greenville, South Carolina), we typically have chilly and very dry winters that are super harsh on my skin. I am usually pretty lucky for the majority of the year, skin-wise, and have very few to no breakouts – but from late November through February, I look like a hormonal teenager.

In the past, I have splurged on Proactiv, which works very well, but is also very expensive. I have heard good things about the Murad acne line, and decided to pick up the starter kit. It includes a clarifying cleanser, an acne spot fast fix, an oil-control mattifier (this I have admittedly not used, as I don’t have a tendency to have oily skin), and an acne clearing solution.

Overall, I have been very impressed with this kit, and would definitely purchase it again. I noticed a difference in my skin within about a week (my break outs cleared right up and my skin regained some brightness). You really get a lot of bang for your buck, product wise, and truthfully, it really isn’t much different from Proactiv. They are similar skincaIMG_5056re systems and work pretty much the same way – but buying Murad through ULTA means that I get rewards points, and that absolutely is enough of a perk to make me lean towards Murad in the future. I also like that these products are small enough that I can toss them into a tiny Cinderella mug that I had literally no use for when I bought it. Thanks for making adult acne fun, Cinderella!

 

Next in skincare, I have the VITABATH Lavender Chamomile Body Wash

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OH.MY.GAWWW. This smells so amazing – and the scent really carries after your shower throughout the day. As far as the actual shower process, the body wash itself is so gentle, you immediately relax as soon as it is applied to your skin.

Because I loved the body wash so much, I also picked up the VITABATH Lavender Chamomile Lotion –

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and #NOREGRETS. Both are $7.99 at ULTA, and are currently on a buy 1, get 1 half off sale. You get a TON of product here – each bottle is 12 delicious ounces. Bonus: there is a travel size of the body wash that you can find at ULTA, too. YAAAAS!

 

Onwards to haircare!

My largest complaint with my hair is that I have a lot of it, but that it doesn’t have any body. I’ve used tons of products that promise luscious and thick hair in the past, and have always been disappointed – so when I ran into NOT YOUR MOTHER’S Plump For Joy Thickening Hair Lifter

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and saw the low price point ($5.99 at, you guessed it, ULTA), I was willing to try to find love again. And boy howdy, is this one a keeper! I use two pumps of this product in my hair – applied when it has been towel dried after a shower – and I’ve let it both air dry naturally and have also dried it with a hair dryer, and I’ve found that either way, my hair becomes an actual small creature that I think has a pulse and most definitely a zip code. It makes me feel like Priscilla Presley, and for that alone, I’m tickled. Definitely recommend.

Another haircare item – I love curling my hair, but am lazy and usually cannot be bothered. I also find that, because I have a finer hair texture, my hair does not respond as well to curling wands or irons. So I decided to give the Conair Flexible Rollers

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a try, and I’ve been dazzled! They are VERY easy to use and produce a gorgeous curl that really lasts throughout the day (I tested this in Florida humidity, so I feel like I’ve done God’s work). One note: I personally like to wear mine to bed at night with a satin cap over them to keep them in place, but if you are very sensitive to something annoying you while you sleep, I wouldn’t recommend going that route, because they are not the most comfortable things in the world to wear to bed. These can be found at ULTA for $14.99.

Lastly, a gift that I have fallen in love with – Stephanie & I did a makeup exchange, which is pretty much like Christmas for makeup lovers – I boxed up a lot of stuff that I was getting rid of, and she did the same, and then we swapped and went at the offerings like vultures – one of her giveaways that I kept is Maybelline’s Color Sensational Creamy Matte Lip Color in “Ravishing Rose”

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This is definitely a holy grail color for me, I have pretty much worn it every day since she so kindly gave it to me. Drugstore lipsticks can always be very hit or miss, but this is a definite hit – I LOVE the color, love the texture, and love the payoff and pigmentation. It also doesn’t have that gross smell that some drugstore lip colors can have. Literally no complaints here, just many, many grateful thanks to Stephanie for a new favorite! $7.99 for a tube at ULTA!

That’s it for this month! I accidentally went to ULTA again last night (I’ve really gotta stay out of there) and bought a few new things, so I’ll return at the end of next month with more faves to share. Please let me know if there is anything you think that I would love that I can check out! xx

Posted on in MAKEUP/BEAUTY

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We all have our Christmas traditions … collecting the yearly Urban Decay Vice palettes is one of mine. Combine this snazzy new baby with the new camera that Santa brought me, and I forsee (FINALLY) making some makeup tutorials for you guys! I can’t wait. Let me know what kind of stuff you’d like to see!

Posted on in FUNERAL SERVICE

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

l-r: 1. My classmates, professors, and I after the ceremony. 2. My certificate. 3. My FUNERAL DIRECTOR PIN! 

On Tuesday of this week, I went to the pinning ceremony at my school for the 2015 graduates of the funeral services program. As most of you know, I have never attended a graduation in my life (okay, well, kindergarten, but does that really count?) and I had little interest in breaking my own poor attendance streak by attending this ceremony. I didn’t really know what to expect from it, and didn’t really care – after all, I have recently been “burned” by the funeral industry, and it felt silly to be lauded for something that I am not currently an active part of. But my family and my friends convinced me to go, and like most everything you end up going to that you originally didn’t want to, it was completely worth it. In actuality, it turned out to be a really touching and life changing moment for me.

In October of this year, I was fired from the funeral home that I had been working at since December of 2014 – and naturally, this did not thrill me (to put it lightly). I felt angry, betrayed, used, taken advantage of, hurt –  and above all things, horrifically and terribly afraid. I wasn’t afraid of not having money – I knew I could easily find a job doing hair or, if worse came to worse, I could sign up for unemployment to get me through until whatever came next. What I was surprised to find, as the shock of everything started to wear off and I was able to take a good, clean look at my thoughts, was that the only thing that I was afraid of was never feeling as complete and as whole and as exactly where I was supposed to be in life, if this was it for me, as far as the funeral business went. I was afraid to lose what all this has meant to me, and the gift that it has given to me.

Despite how much it all has meant to me and how furiously I have fought for all of this, the whole thing has been a very sore spot in my heart for the last few months. Thinking about it, missing it, resenting the things I was forced to do and endure during my time at that mortuary, being pissed as all holy hell for what had to happen –  those kinds of things took a mental toll on me, and I started to find myself asking “Well, do I even still really want to do this?” After all, I’m a blank slate right now, a page waiting to be turned – I could keep foraging on with this funeral stuff, or I could pick up and be someone else entirely. I hated to think that way, and I hated the idea that two terrible people and one bad experience could rob me of something that means the world to me, but I also had to be honest and confront what I was feeling.

Thus, the conflict with the ceremony. Like I said, it felt silly to go to this thing and have people say nice stuff about me – me, who was fired, me, who couldn’t cut it, me, who lost everything – but I went (mostly so that my mother could finally watch me walk for SOMETHING), expecting nothing, and leaving with everything.

Since losing my job, I have thought a lot about the whole experience, and what I kept coming back to was a feeling of not being enough. This wasn’t meant to bash myself in any way, it wasn’t an exercise in self abuse by any means –  it was just an honest assessment of my worth in the funeral industry. And when it comes down to it …. I’m not worth so much. I can meet with families, I can plan and lead a funeral, I can do cosmetics and hair for the deceased – but that’s it. I can’t embalm. I can’t cremate. I can’t answer certain questions that were asked of me by families, because I didn’t have the education, experience, or know how to answer them. So, simply, the fact that there is an entire sect of this business that I am not trained in didn’t sit well with me. I am the kind of person who has an overwhelming want and need to know everything, to never be unprepared, and to be totally self reliant, and a tough look back at my time spent at the funeral home told me that if I was going to hang in, I was going to have to step it the f up.

In my quest to find “what comes next”, one of the things that I have given some thought to has been going back to school to complete the science portion of the program, IE learning to embalm. If I’m sticking around, I never again want to have to say “I don’t know” or to be the one in the room who is worth the least due to inability – but frankly, I just was not  sure if I could stomach it. In fact, I was pretty sure that I couldn’t.

The reality is this: dead people can be gross. I mean, look how disgusting the living can be. Dead people are not exempt from the gross factor of humanity. And the things that you have to do to make them presentable, well …. let’s just say, it isn’t for the faint of heart. It isn’t that I didn’t want to embalm – I want to do anything and everything that I can to strengthen my overall skill set and keep my star in this industry burning bright – I just doubted myself. I mean, I can’t even eat chicken off of a bone, let alone carve into a dead person like a Thanksgiving turkey! So I just never let myself seriously consider it as an actual option, because I was so sure that I could never do it.

Well, it turns out, yep, I think I can. In fact, I think I most certainly can. Because as I sat there with my classmates on Tuesday at that ceremony that I didn’t even want to go to in the first place and listened to the guest speaker address us and congratulate us for the life that we have chosen despite the personal and emotional hardships we constantly endure for the sake of serving those who need us – I remembered exactly how I got here and why. And I heard it as clear as day in my mind. “You’re going to do the science program. You know you have to do this.”

It was just like that. I literally thought “Aww, shit.” to myself, because it was that clear to me. There is no choice – this is what comes next. So after the ceremony, I took my little fanny over the funeral services building, toured the facilities, met with a counselor, and here we are. Gearing up for round 2.

As I told my friend Jessica, when I was filling her in on the news – this need (because it is a full fledged need, not just a want) to help these people, this insatiable drive to do ANYTHING that I can to make what they are suffering any less painful, is absolutely shocking to me. I don’t even like to talk to strangers in the checkout line at the grocery store, but by God, if their mama just died, I will hold them to my bosom and comfort them from a place I didn’t even know I was capable of. I’ve never considered myself a nurturer, never considered myself maternal, never even considered myself particularly empathetic – so I don’t get it. But I guess it isn’t really for me to get. For some reason, this is what I am supposed to do. I mean, I’m going to have to take chemistry again, for God’s sake, so if I’m willing to do that, this crap must be for real.

In a lot of ways, and as much as I hate saying it – I think my old mortuary did my a favor by firing me. Because it literally fired me UP.  Now don’t get me wrong -I still hate them with every ounce of hate in my body and still think they are insufferable megalomaniacs who deserve all they have coming to them – but everything happens in its own time and for its own reason. I almost feel like I needed the nearly full year of working in a funeral home as solely a director to get me to the point where I could become an embalmer, too. Some people can do both right out of the gate, and that’s amazing for them – but I needed to come into this on my own terms, in my own way, and at my own time. I guess it seems like if you are meant to do something, it will find you, no matter how long it takes. Mine found me at a pinning ceremony, on a day when I thought I was finished with every last bit of school forever, but, you know, whatever. It was my time.  Part of me wants to say that I would have never imagined as a kid that I would grow up and build my life around death – but another part of me can so clearly look back with fondness at my weird little behind and just say “girl, you were always bound to catch this train.” So here I go. Time to catch my train.

So that’s the tale of my magical pinning ceremony. On top of coming to a major and life altering realization, I also just got to hang out with my friends, family, and peers, and come together over this really big thing that we all did, and that felt really dang amazing. And quite frankly, if I had missed the chance to exit a graduation ceremony while “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen played and we all laughed at the gorgeous irony of it all, I’d kick my own ass.

So, I guess I better dust off that ole Lisa Frank trapper keeper, because them school bells are about to ring a ding ding …. AGAIN. 2016, bring it. As far as I’m concerned, the only things that I can’t do are the ones that I never try.

(And as far as next year’s pinning ceremony is concerned …. well, count me in for that one, too.)

Posted on in Uncategorized

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

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EPCOT, December 7, 2015. Dress by Torrid.

So, surprise! Here we are.

The first post in my new space.

I guess I should explain, for starters, why I felt like it was time to find a new space to begin with. I have been writing as Minxual/at Minxual for nearly six years now, but recently have made the decision to shut that site down and move on to bigger and brighter things.

Nothing really happened that triggered this move. There was no big scandal or need to flee from my former internet home. I guess the long and pretty boring short of it is that I just sort of outgrew Minxual and what it represented to me. With Minxual, there became a sort of underlying dread, or maybe it could even be classified as a fear, that I felt when it came to producing content. There was no fun in it anymore. I felt a lot like I was being controlled by a space that was supposed to be a space that I was in control of. I felt typecast and stereotyped (completely by myself), and could not separate myself from a feeling of failure or disenchantment that came every time I posted.

There was also just the want to shed skins, to move away from past lives. The person you are at 23 and the person you are at 29 are complete and total strangers to one another, and that became more and more apparent whenever I would log in to post something. It is also important to mention that at its origin, Minxual was a retaliation blog. I had my little wings crushed by a boy who treated me badly all those years ago, and Minxual was my soapbox, my way of harnessing that pain and shame and trying to make a revolution out of being scorned. Like anything that is born from a place of malice or bitterness, it’ll never really get off the ground, and it will never really do anything much besides fester. Not to say that I feel that I’ve spent the past six years festering at Minxual- I am and will always continue to be really, really proud of the work that I did there, and proud of the fact that I tried to turn something painful and ugly into something bigger and better – but I’m definitely not the same girl that I was back then, nor do I want to be. I had a lot of fun for a lot of years being a minx, and a minx I shall always be at heart  – but the past is in the past. She is in the past.

What I really craved, at the end of the day, was just a blank canvas. No expectations. No forced deadlines. No constant want to apologize if what I posted was sad instead of funny or felt unimpressive. Just my own space for me to share whatever I want, whenever I want to, for whomever might be passing through. Read it, don’t read it, I don’t care. I’m posting for me. And I’m really, really excited.

Lastly – the name change?

Well, that’s pretty easy, of course. Ashley in Wonderland is a spin on a few different things – my love of whimsy, my love of Disney, and my fascination with the concept of “Wonderland” itself.

The thing that I’ve always found really interesting, about the concept of Wonderland, is how much and how little it can be at the same time – somehow both beautiful and sinister, a lot like life is.

I remember being a kid and seeing the Disney film and wanting to go there SO badly – but as an adult, you look at that movie and you see it all completely differently. Wonderland is beautiful, but terrifying. Fantastic, but dangerous. And that’s sort of how my life feels right now. Everything is so very exploratory, and I think Wonderland is just the place to do some really good investigative work about who I am as a person and what the world around me means. Because some days, my wonderland is just as it sounds – the beautiful reality of every day life, when things are so bright and so intense that everything feels just like a dream that you don’t want to wake up from. And at other times, my wonderland is a warped and twisted creature, a living, breathing, all-consuming thing – and those times are just as important to acknowledge.

So, here I go – down the rabbit hole.

Welcome to Ashley in Wonderland.