It’s something I used to be ashamed of as a pre-teen and a teen, but as an adult, I’ve realized that facial hair is an annoying fact for most people – men and women. Most guys have to go through the trouble of shaving their mustaches and beards. And, well, a lot of ladies have some form of mustache and/or beard, too! It’s just something we don’t really talk about. Whether it’s peach fuzz, a few darker hairs, or a thick mustachio, a lot of ladies have it.

When I was a kid, I didn’t pay any mind to the baby hairs growing on my upper lip, until that one day. I will always remember in middle school that I was feeling pretty good about myself, until that one day, my male classmate used “I’m going to tell everyone about your mustache” as a threat if I wasn’t nice to him! I was so shocked and didn’t realize other people could apparently see my “mustache”! I was sooo self-conscious about it ever since then. I am not proud of my upper lippie hairs but I’m definitely not ashamed of the fact that I do get rid of it.

Needless to say, that’s when waxing came into play. It worked well, but I ended up stopping because of the pain and inconvenience. Each rip would involuntarily bring out a rush of tears in my eyes, and the aftermath wasn’t so pretty for a few hours (big, red, itchy welts on my skin) so I had to be careful about when I’d do it. Because of the pain, it’s also something I personally wouldn’t be able to do by myself so it’s a huge inconvenience to pay someone to do it or ask my mom to do it (which required her free time, good lighting for her eyes, and waiting for the wax to heat up). Waxing is a great option, but it wasn’t for me…so I ended up tweezing my upper lip instead. Works really well for me, except it’s really time consuming and the pain is prolonged since it takes longer. It was just something I accepted as a fact of life and I was OK with having to tweeze it.

Until…last night! This thing finally came in the mail…

It’s a spring coil for facial hair! It’s just a simple spring with handles on each end. You bend it into an upside-down “U” shape, place it on your face, and twist both handle bars towards your face at the same time. This will move the spring and in the process, it will grab & pull your hair for removal. I LOVE IT. It is much quicker than a pair of tweezers, and doesn’t require precision! You can just go to town without really targeting each individual hair. I am amazed that I have never heard of this device until recently, through YouTube’s Jen from Head to Toe “Body Hair Q&A” video. I really wish I had heard of it sooner. My only concern is that it might not pull all of the hairs out by the root. I definitely saw hairs being pulled by the root, but I’m not sure that ALL of them were. I will edit this post for any updates on that. If it does pull all hairs from the root, my prayers have been answered, lol! This thing is amazing. I showed my mom and she fell in love with it (she also spends a lot of time plucking stray hairs and peach fuzz, and it’s straining on her older eyes), so I’m going to buy 3 more for her and me. :P

The pain is comparable to waxing and tweezing so if you can tolerate that, you will probably be able to tolerate this. It definitely depends on your pain tolerance. Obviously, if you keep up with your hairs, it will be less painful the less hairs there are to pull each time.

There are all kinds of brands out there if you are interested. Higher end ones to generic cheap ones. It’s up to you on how much you want to invest in it. I personally bought really cheap ones because I wasn’t even sure if it would work, and I didn’t feel like purchasing one for $15 when I could just try one out for less than $2. If you just do a Google search, you will find tons of options. If you’re interested in the particular one I bought, here it is from Amazon.

Update (8/30/15): It’s been two weeks and I say good results came from the coil! Most of the hair was pulled from the root and it makes my upper lip look so much cleaner. Less eyestrain, less time consuming, and no prolonged pain

Yep, I have jumped onto the bandwagon of smartphones! Practically everyone I knew had a smartphone and when I finally realized it, I was taken aback! Was I seriously the only person who had a basic feature phone still?! Of course I wasn’t, but among my peers in college and my friends…yes, I was.

My history of cell phones is kind of funny. To skip long-winded history, go straight below for current phone & pics.

 

Phone history:

When I was in middle school (~2001-2004), kids were starting to get cell phones. I never had one, even despite a “dramatic” little incident in 8th grade. I was a drama and choir kid, so we had a lot of practices after school. One day I told my mom in the morning that I didn’t need to be picked up afterwards because I was going home with one of my best friends after rehearsal. We had so much fun that it was already 8pm and suddenly my brother shows up at the front door of my friend’s house, saying I was in big trouble. That was a big WTF-is-going-on kind of moment. For some reason my mom didn’t pay attention to me at all when I told her about going to my friends house…so the entire evening they thought I had been kidnapped and had called the police. *face palm* You see, if I had a cell phone at that point, it wouldn’t have been an issue. Which I can understand why parents would give kids nowadays a cell phone even if they don’t really need one. Despite that silly incident, I STILL wasn’t given a cell phone yet.

In high school, my ex and my friends chipped in to buy me a pre-paid cell phone for my birthday. It was very thoughtful of them. I still couldn’t use it to talk and text much, but it was definitely convenient. I had that flip phone for a while until finally my family added me to their plan because I absolutely needed it for college, and I got a purple flip phone with Verizon. I had that phone for a few years in high school and for more than half of college. It was an OLD phone…I had to put tape over the back cover to prevent it from falling out and the battery died within a few hours until I finally bought a replacement battery and back cover.

Thankfully, after many years with that old phone, I upgraded to a qwerty board sliding phone – still a feature phone only. But at least I didn’t have to use the old T9 way of typing on a flip phone anymore. I really loved that phone. But as my luck would have it…only a few months after I had the phone, it got ran over by a car. LOL. In my own driveway. I guess it fell out of my pocket one day and it landed on the driveway (which slopes down to the sidewalk/gutter).

I thought I had lost it, but I found it had been run over and dragged all the way down to the gutter area. It was slightly wet and my hard case covering the phone had a tire mark on it. LOL. To this day we still don’t know if it was my dad’s car or my boyfriend’s car that actually ran it over, but it wouldn’t matter if we did know. That phone is useless to me now. Miraculously that was a pretty damn good cover because the phone looked brand new…the only issue was the LCD screen. It seemed to be messed up on the inside (no damage on the outside) because it was a jumbled screen of nothingness when I turned it on. So I had to shell out money to buy the same used phone on ebay.

 

My first smartphone:

After my 2 year contract was up, my family switched from Verizon’s pricy (but quality) plans over to T-Mobile. Service isn’t as great, but it is a great deal because I can finally get a smartphone with internet and unlimited texting for the same price I had a dumbphone with measly texting and no internet at Verizon! Finally! …Of course money is always a thing, so I went for a smartphone that was “free” (free after rebate). The deal of the day that I went for was the HTC One S.

This baby is thin as heck! Even with a very protective case it is still very thin.

In comparison with my old phone, it’s crazy how much bigger the screen is and how much thinner it is. 8MP camera? Sweeeet.

Of course…there are two things I really miss having that my basic phone had. The physical qwerty board and the battery life. Oh boy, do I love that physical keyboard. I could text without looking at my fingers and typos were almost non-existent. Battery life lasted me about a week especially since I didn’t use it much for actual calls. Now I’ve already gotten used to the draining battery life of smartphones and the stupid typos, but it doesn’t mean that I like it. But ’tis the sacrifice we must make for a wonder phone that can give you your emails, literally tell you how to get somewhere, take quality camera photos, give you the weather, find the best restaurants nearby, and give you endless entertainment when you’re bored…till your battery dies, that is.

Wheee, finally had the chance to visit a Daiso store – it is the home of really cute and random items for $1.50! They have some items that are more expensive as well, but they are appropriately labeled. I am a SUCKER for really cheap and cute things. It contains stuff I never knew I needed! Daiso is completely cute-ified. The minute you walk in, you’re surrounded by the color pink and lots of hearts. Every man’s worst fear, muahaha.

My boyfriend probably hated me for it, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself by going through every aisle. When I like to browse, I really like to browse. I go through each aisle in order to look at everything. My mom has been weathered by age so she absolutely hates dawdling around – she’s a go in, buy what you need, and GTFO type of person. So if we ever go together to a store I want to browse, she’d probably ditch me and tell me to meet her back at home when I’m done. LOL.

My boyfriend has grown accustomed to my browsing habits, but on this particular day we went to Daiso, we had a big meal at Buffalo Wild Wings and he was in a food coma. Which meant he was sleepy and grumpy while I wanted to give in to my browsing, lol. He was a party pooper, but still endured my browsing.

I limited myself to just 4 things since I didn’t have much cash on me. I’ve been looking for cheap picture frames everywhere! Daiso is heaven-sent! I like displaying pictures, but I don’t feel like spending $20 on one frame. Why are frames so expensive??? Is it because they are made of wood and glass I guess? Anyway, Daiso has both plastic and glass covered frames (with lesser quality of course) for $1.50 so now I can display a ton of pictures for the price of one normal-priced frame.

I also got a Nintendo DS stylus that attaches to the “phone charm” slot of the DS so you’ll never lose it.

The popsicle mold was a ” MUST BUY” kind of thing for me, just because I used to imitate the whole homemade popsicle thing when I was a kid. I would put orange juice in ice cube trays and stick popsicle sticks in them, lol. I’m thinking fruity popsicles or banana popsicles with this mold.

I LOVE DAISO! We have to go back soon! And boyfriend promised we’ll go when he’s well-rested so that he’ll want to look around and buy stuff too, rather than be a party pooper. Hey, he should be happy! Instead of bugging him to take me to a candle-lit dinner, all I ask is to go to a cheap store where I buy my own crap. haha.

Firmoo sent me a free pair of prescription sunglasses for review on my blog! Check out firmoo.com if you’re interested in getting some cheap glasses or sunglasses for yourself. Your first normal pair is free to try (Lens + Frame)! All you have to pay for is shipping.

Recently, I received my prescription sunglasses in the mail – okay I lied…I actually had to pick it up at my local post office because nobody was home when it was delivered. The post office that my package was sent to was the most ghetto place ever! There wasn’t even an official parking lot. You kind of just have to parallel park alongside the shady curb or park at a taco place nearby and then walk over to the post office. LOL. Anyway, I digress.

It came inside of a bubble-wrap padded envelope. The sunglasses were inside of the case. Also included was a cloth, a nice pouch, a screwdriver keychain for the glasses, and a few extra screws. The screwdriver/screws are very handy; I hate it when your glasses get loose, or you lose a screw. I actually really like the world map design of the case itself, not too many glasses come with default cases that have designs on them.

As for the glasses themselves, they fit me just fine, and had the right amount of tinting. My eyes are still visible while wearing them, but there is enough tint so that the sun doesn’t hurt my eyes. The only thing that bothered me was the very tip of one of the stems. The plastic was a little rough at the end, so it kind of hurts if I don’t take care when taking my glasses off. The rough plastic would scratch my ear a little upon removal.

Other than that, I am so happy to have received my pair of prescription sunglasses! To be honest, these are my first pair of sunglasses that are prescription. Thank you, Firmoo! In the past, I would have to wear normal sunglasses with no prescription and since I don’t wear contacts, obviously I couldn’t see far objects very well. Now I can wear a pair of sunglasses while driving or be able to see objects at a distance when I’m out in the sun. Whoo! No more missing out on seeing something weird in the distance that my friends point out to me while I’m wearing my sunglasses, haha.

I have a funny story about my first time wearing these sunglasses while driving! As soon as I entered a parking structure, it was dark inside, so I was like, “Oh crap, I better take off my sunglasses so I can see better.” I took ’em off my face immediately, and realized that was a BAD idea – I forgot I kind of need them to see clearly, since they’re prescription, LOL. My normal prescription eyeglasses were in their case, so they weren’t readily available to stick on my face. So I immediately put the prescription sunglasses back on my face. hahaha. Whoops, I had a bit of a silly moment right there.