Revamp and obsession.

Morning all!

What do you think of the blog overhaul? I am liking it so far, I am still by no means done with it, but it is getting closer to what I see in my minds eye.  I am still pretty new to the whole blogging experience, but I am learning new tip and tricks every day and I feel like I am making progress. I meant to post a "health & wellness wednesday" post yesterday but I got caught up doing a couple signs for Record Store Day for work (one of my jobs is at a record store, and record store day is this saturday 4-21) so by the time I could have posted it was 3 AM and I can't ever write anything that makes sense that late, so I decided to wait until today. (Here are the signs if you are curious:)

Speaking of health and wellness, I am eating breakfast while I type which is weird but I am making it work. I am eating my normal "girl in a hurry" breakfast today which consists of 2 blueberry multigrain waffles topped with natural peanut butter and sliced bananas, a container of Stoneyfield's O' Soy strawberry yogurt (they have been out of the yummy SO Delicious strawberry coconut yogurt since the first time I found it *frown*) and a cup of coffee with 8th continent complete vanilla soy milk. It's high in protein and fiber and easy to eat while doing other things (ie blogging *laugh*) any way, back to my original point, I was planning of talking about something yesterday health and wellness related and I kind of came up short. I thought, "think of all the awesome new recipes you have found... oh, but haven't had time to try to cook them yet.. drat." So, in leu of that I am going to talk about my current obsession with the smell of my Shea Moisture conditioner and my never ending quest for the perfect perfume.

It, for me any way is pretty much the quintessential perfect fragrance for me any how. It is vaguely floral and somewhat sweet but with the perfect amount of spice and musk to balance it out. Well, thats all well and good, unfortunately the ingredient panel has been less then helpful, it says it is scented with honeysuckle. Then a little led came on in the back of my mind, "Oh! They make lotions!" so zoom, off I speed to Walgreens and stake out the lotion aisle, and... nothing. What? Where is it? So then I wander around and finally find some in the baby aisle, which is fine my skin hates everything. I crack open a bottle that is labeled chamomile, frankincense and myrrh, inhale excitedly, blink a couple times and then disappointedly put the bottle back on the shelf. It smelled like skittles, definitely not what I am looking for. Much like beauty products I battle with my body about perfumes pretty often. My body is not a fan of fake fragrances, I can't even use most fabric softeners unless they are unscented. Not to mention I will not dish out hundreds of dollars for perfume, I just won't. So here is the list of perfumes I have used over the years.

ages 14 to 18: Custom Vanilla, cinnamon, tea oil blend my mom and I would make together, it was delicious but the cinnamon really irritated my skin and people were always asking what I had baked.

Ages 18 to 23ish: Patchouli, orange and clove oil. It gave me the musky, earthy notes I constantly crave and didn't make my skin hate me too much, but I just sort of out grew it.

24 was when I started really experimenting with store made perfumes, what can I say I am a late bloomer and I can't stand cloying or sweet smells. Tried several, all kind of just fizzled. I settled on Bath and Bodyworks Breathe Comfort 'warm vanilla milk' scent and I still have that bottle. It is good and is sprayable.  I also used their cherry blossom scent, but it dries down to a horrible cat pee-esque smell on me for some reason on certain days, so that is long gone.

26 to nowish- My arsenal is comprised of Victoria Secret's 'amber romance' spray and Woodsmoke & Vanilla Perfume oil from Firebird Bath and Body on Etsy. I like both but I am not a fan of the dry down on the amber romance and I really love the smell of the WS and vanilla, but its a roller ball and I am not a fan of that sort of applicator, so that brings us up to date. I do have a tiny bottle of Flowerbomb for when I need to smell lady like, but I am not a big fan it was a gift.

So all that brings me back to where I started and what I plan to do. I am going to attempt to make my own custom body sprays. One that is honeysuckle, agran oil, frankincense and myrrh and one that is vanilla, blackberry/ black cherry, caramel, sandalwood, musk and amber. I'll document the process and let you all know how it works out. If it does; it will be fantastic, if not, well I'll have to start making soaps or something to use up all the oils I'll be buying *laugh*

 I had better get moving though, I need to get those posters for record store day printed out and actually make my self look like a member of the human race. Oh and put on some purfume!

See you later Lovelies!

Things I like. (I like too many things)

I'm starring at the rain right now listening to a mix of A.K.A.C.O.D, Leonard Cohen and Morphine, it a very mellow Friday the 13th. I have a phone appointment with the diet pill guru at 2, I shouldn't be mean, he could be a legitimately nice person and their products could be something I really could get behind, I will reserve judgement on weather this is really a pyramid scam or not depending on what he says today.


I have really been hitting the bricks on my blogs and my websites lately, something in my head just keeps saying, "just keep doing what your doing, it will work out for something." Leading me to shake my head and wonder what the something is. The main problem with my intuition is that it is so vague, rather then giving me a yes or no, I get a maybe, or a could be, or a possibly. Thanks me, that's a huge help.


Back to the blogging though, since I have been searching high and low to learn just about everything I can about anything blogging related, especially design because it is so difficult for me, I found a couple fantastic websites which if you blog you should check them out!

❥ Makin' Cute Blogs

❥ puglypixel

They both have fantastic tutorials, great information, cool graphics and are just generally awesome. They also have pretty rad freebies and some fantastic paid packets too for all your blogging design needs *drool*.


Also speaking of drooling (I am a bit of a slobberer if I don't make an effort keep it in check ha ha.) I am loving kale chips lately. I am sure if you have gone to any healthy food blog in the past few months you have seen the recipes. Let me tell you they are actually worth it, even my anti-vegitable roommate will devour them with the same gusto used to devour an entire bag of potato chips. I admit I am not a big fan of greens, they all taste like grass to me, and while I will eat a salad in the summer if there are tons of fresh fruits and veggies to add into it, I vary rarely just eat plain greens of any type. I urge every one to try them, I season mine with olive oil, pink sea salt, smoked black pepper and turmeric ( SO Spicy! YUM!) Kale aside, I also have been enjoying Erin Baker's Breakfast Cookies in Vegan double chocolate chunk and So Delicious dairy free coconut milk greek style strawberry 'yogurt'. I love it there is a dairy free yogurt option finally that tastes good. Thank you So Delicious! If you can't eat dairy but are craving yogurt, give this stuff a try, you won't be disappointed at all, and for those who hate coconut, you can't taste it at all. It tastes just like dairy yogurt, but milder! 

❥ Erin Baker's Wholesome Baked Goods

❥ SO Delicious

I just completely lost my train of thought. Drat. I suppose on t hat note I will go and make some kale chips for lunch.

Ick.

Or rather Ich, short for Ichthyophthirius multifiliis (also known as white spot disease); It’s a parasite that lives on the slime coat of fish and all fish keepers dread the appearance of those little white dots. Today while trying to take pictures of my new tanks I noticed my betta “Promeitius” had 3 white spots and I basically freaked, not only for his health but also for the health of all the other fish in that tank.  I treat ich as naturally as possible, I am not a believer of dosing up my fish with antibiotics or other medicines, so my usual coarse of action is cranking the temp in the tank to a balmy 86 degrees and adding aquarium salt. (ich can’t live in high water temperatures nor can the freshwater variety tolerate salt).  

Speaking of fish and fish related things, I will be closing my “Miss Ellyse’s Aquatics” blog and just posting the content here instead. I think snouts heart sprouts might be easier to remember for most people, even though most fish don’t have snouts.   So in the coming weeks there will far more fish and aquatics related posts then before.  If there are ever any topics you would like for me to blog about please don’t be shy. I love suggestions; they make my life a lot easier!!

What else is going on in my life currently? I am battling a horrible infection, so I am really weak and I am not being able to get done ever 1/16^th of what I should be getting accomplished however, I am going to dig through my storage unit to find my box of bags so I can have a few ebay auctions to try to raise enough money for that Epiphanie Clover Camera Purse I posted about in one of my previous posts. It seems silly being as I do not have enough money for the $800 dollar camera I plan on getting, HOWEVER, I will have a better paying job soon and I WILL have a new camera that I can manually focus.  I did manage to get my little point and shoot digital camera fixed, however trying to take photos of anything fast moving (ie fish, shrimp, cats, dogs) is not exactly a piece of cake. I manage to get it done, but for each picture that I manage to get in focus there are 25 that I do not, which believe me wastes a lot of my time (something I have hardly any of.) Focus and fast movement issues aside, my little camera is working pretty well again. It will work great for taking pictures of who knows what. Most likely food, as I have been stalking several blogs lately especially “Delighted Mama” which have tons of amazing alternative recipes which use natural and nontraditional sweeteners and healthful ingredients. This whole infection thing is getting me to try to take better care of my self again, which I sometimes forget about when I am running around like mad and trying to be super woman.

I look forward to feeling better so I can get some spring cleaning under way as well as planting my little garden and getting my outdoor fish tubs set up. I am glad I had been forcing myself to wait because the past 4 nights have been well below freezing again, which would have been detrimental to my little fishy friends. 

Spring is in the air!

Today was pretty fantastic (well aside from the hurricane force winds!) I was finally able to get out to visit my moms farm today and fraternize with my ducks and thousands of goldfish!

I do mean thousands by the way, I really need to make sure I get some sold this fall, as the pond is way over stocked. The ducks help a bit with keeping the population down, but each goldfish can lay 50 or more eggs, so 5 ducks don't make a dent really.

Speaking of ducks, there are 2 drakes now, so I am hoping that there will be far more baby ducks this year... I really love cute fuzzy baby ducklings, more then almost anything I can think of, except for maybe baby bunnies.

As I type I am eating a delicious salad of young dandelion greens, violet greens, baby spinach, baby red spotted romaine, one of the first tomatoes from the greenhouse, and green grapes that were on sale. It is beyond delicious.

Things will be back in full swing again around here soon, and hopefully a new job will be as well so I can procure a new camera for more gorgeous photos of snouts and sprouts!

My aquariums also are in full swing, including adorable baby bristle nose plecos and several new colors/ patterns of platies. Happily growing in front of my aquariums are also two new happy little plants I rescued that I believe are in the haworthia family (maybe Haworthia cuspidata and H. magnifica var. acuminata) They seem to be doing much better now that they have been liberated from their 2.5", very root bound pots and are now stretching out in their new shallow dish containers. I'm very excited this year about trying to get all my plants repotted in proper succulent friendly planters and letting them live out doors for as long as possible.