Wow. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is an absolutely amazing book and I think everyone needs to pick this up and give it a read. It is a true story and the main character is former Olympic runner Louis Zamperini.
The story told in this book is unbelievable, while I’m sure the story itself would make this book amazing on its own, Laura Hillenbrand’s writing just takes it to a completely different level. I don’t like giving too much away in my reviews, so I will just say that this book is about survival against all odds-particularly pertaining to the lives of POWs in Japan during WWII, but also much more. I had no idea, absolutely none whatsoever, what happened to these POWs and the stories just make you appreciate the life we have now and the sacrifices that were made to preserve that life.
I love WWII books as it is, and this has now surpassed all of my previous reads as my favorite. The research that had to go into this book is just mind blowing. I highly, highly recommend you give this book a read!!
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Summer is just around the corner and you know what that means…skin, skin, and more skin! Shorts, tank tops, bikinis…they all have the same common denominator. If you live in the Midwest like me, or anywhere else where the winters are less than pleasant, you know that the dry, cold weather does absolutely no favors for your skin. So now that spring is in the air and that first spray tan of the season is quickly approaching…I’ve been doing double duty on my skin to whip it back in to shape for the warmer weather. These are a few of the products I’ve been using, along with my L’OCCITANE favs, to help get my skin bright, soft, and smooth for the upcoming summer months.
*LUSH Aqua Mirabilis Body Butter: This first product that is all the on the right in the silver tin is my absolute favorite new product find. This bar exfoliates my entire body like no other exfoliator I’ve ever used. The buttery formula just melts right on (which is why you need a tin for shower storage). The ground almond shells in the bar are just course enough where you can feel the exfoliation but not so rough that you feel you’re going to break the skin. The scent is light and somewhat nutty and natural, with a little sandalwood and rose thrown in as well. This would be the perfect prep to even out your skin texture before a spray tan. Love it!!
*dirt Sow + Reap Luxe Salt Scrub: Another body exfoliator that I loved so much I just had to include it. At $45 for a 12 oz. jar it isn’t cheap, but I was able to try a bit out when I received a small sample in my Birchbox this month and this might just be a splurge I need to make in the near future. The first thing I noticed about this product was the fresh, clean, lemony scent. It smells delicious and the scent lingers on your body after you get out of the shower. When I first put this product on my skin I didn’t really think I’d like it. Once you start rubbing it in, the salt dissolves and I didn’t think I was getting much exfoliation. I’m used to scrubs that have hard little pieces that you can really rub into your skin and they don’t go anywhere until your rinse it all off. Once I got out of the shower though, my opinion changed dramatically. Not only did I smell deliciously lemony, my skin felt so smooth I just couldn’t believe it. I think the salt gave me all the exfoliation I needed before it melted away and the oils left over really hydrated my skin and left it feeling great.
*LUSH Oatifix Fresh Face Mask: Another fun new LUSH product that I found and absolutely love! No link for this one because LUSH’s fresh face masks are made, well, fresh-and are only good for 3 weeks after they are made…so they keep this stuff refrigerated in the LUSH stores and you can only buy it there. Oatifix is their moisturizing mask and it definitely does what is promised. Made with oats and bananas, once you smear this on your face you’ll just want to lick it off because you smell like an oatmeal cookie! This mask is great for dry, sensitive skin and I feel like its given me back all the moisture in my face that winter just sucked right out.
*Clarisonic Mia2 Skin Cleansing System: If you don’t already know what the Clarisonic is, I suggest you head over to Sephora.com right now and read all the reviews. This thing has become pretty much a staple in skin care-I think they make one in almost every color and design now at Sephora. I wasn’t quite as blown away by some reviewers who say that this changed their life, but I’ve been pretty happy with my Mia2 since I purchased it several months back. I only use it once a day, usually at night, and it leaves my face looking and feeling so smooth. A great way to prep your skin to absorb all that good moisture from your night cream.
*Shea Terra Organic Marula Shea Body Nectar Spray Oil: Shea Terra is a brand that I recently discovered after watching this beauty vlog by Elle Fowler. She actually talks about the next item on my list but when browsing their website I came across this product and decided to give it a try. At first when I saw the words “spray oil” I was a little hesitant, I didn’t want to be walking around looking like I was greased up and ready to lay by the pool in Mexico, but my skin has been pretty dry lately so I decided to give it a try and I’m so glad I did! The scent is very sweet and smells like a muted almond oil, which I absolutely love. I spray this on my arms and legs and rub it in a bit and my skin just soaks it up. After about 5 or 10 minutes this stuff is totally absorbed and my skin feels so soft with no oily residue to be seen. I’m excited to start using this on a regular basis to see the positive effects it will have on my skin.
*Shea Terra Organics Bananas & Baobabs Whipped Shea Butter Body Creme: I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been loving me some banana scent-and this product is packed with it! So…if you’re not a big fan of the banana scent this exact product might not be for you, but it does comes in several other scents so I suggest you check it out and find one that fits your fancy. I’ve been using this on my legs on top of the marula oil spray and they feel awesome. So soft, so smooth, and so deliciously scented! I love both of these Shea Terra products and I have a feeling I’ll be trying more out in the future once these go dry…their prices are reasonable and they offer 30% off your order almost every month! (Just sign-up for their mailing list and you’ll get the coupon code)
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As promised after my review of The Book Thief, I read The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings in no time at all AND watched the movie this weekend-so you get the treat of 2 reviews in 1! I’m really not the best at summarizing books and explaining why I liked or didn’t like them (maybe this is why English was always my least favorite of classes), but I do read a lot and want to share my thoughts on the books to the best of my ability.
First off I will say that I don’t think there has ever been a movie that I liked more than the book-Twilight, Marley and Me, Harry Potter, The Lincoln Lawyer, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo….its just impossible to translate all the details you get from the book into a movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Harry Potter and Twilight movies, but reading the books first and then watching the movies as a complement to the books is the way to go.
The Descendants was no different. However, they did a really, really good job on the movie and I thoroughly enjoyed both-George Clooney was just amazing, as usual! I think what I liked most about the story is that it just seemed so real (aside from the multi-million dollar piece of land they own in Hawaii). The characters, the events, I just kept expecting to look back at the cover and read “based on a true story”. You really felt the pain and struggles the characters were going through and in some way could relate those issues back to your own life. Teenage angst, friendship, loss of a loved one, following through on what you believe in….these are just little snippets of “themes” I found to be prominent throughout the story. Not the biggest pick-me-up of a story, but well worth the read and the watch-The Descendants gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars from me!
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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a pretty big beauty product junkie. I love trying new things but there are a select few items that I absolutely love and are staples in my product inventory. A few L’Occitane products have recently been added to my must-have list. L’Occitane was a store that I had passed in higher end malls before but never went in-it just looked a little too fancy for me. A couple years ago my coworker introduced me to my first product from L’Occitane (pronounced Lox-ee-tahn), their Shea Butter Hand Cream, and I am now a full-on L’Occitane junkie!
This, in my opinion, is the holy grail of hand creams. It is absolutely amazing. The scent is light and beautiful but not overpowering. The cream is thick but is so easily absorbed and non-greasy, and it just makes my hands feel amazing. I have tubes of this everywhere-in my purse, on my bedside table, on my desk at work-I couldn’t live without it. At $28 for a 5.2 oz. tube it isn’t exactly cheap, but try a travel size and I’ll bet you’ll be willing the shell out the $$ for the full size tube. *Fun fact: This hand cream is sold every 5 seconds around the world!
My next fav L’Occitane product is the Almond Shower Oil. Again, I love, love, love this product! I discovered it somewhat on accident-I bought a bunch of products over Christmas for my coworkers and I got a mini-version of this shower oil in a free gift with purchase. The sales associate told me to try this for shaving so I did, and I haven’t looked back. I’ve never been a big shaving cream user-water and a razor was all I ever needed-but not anymore. I slather this shower oil on my legs in the shower and while the light, almond scent was enough to keep me coming back, the silky feeling of my legs afterwards sealed the deal. The product doesn’t bubble up like a regular shower gel or soap, but kind of creates a white, creamy lather on your skin. Again, $24 for an 8.4 oz bottle of shower oil is a little pricey, but the bottle lasts a long time and its a little luxury that I’m willing to spend a little more for.
Last, but certainly not least, is the Almond Milk Concentrate Body Moisturizer. I love this because it smells exactly like the shower oil-a very light, clean almond-y scent-it is my favorite! The texture is a mix between a cream and a lotion, it goes on very silky and like the hand cream it melts right into the skin and is non-greasy. At $44 for a 7 oz. jar this cream is definitely a luxury and I only use it on “special” occasions when I want to feel really good (or when I’m really just jonesin’ for the delicious scent!).
I’m super excited because they’ve added a couple new products to their Almond line for the spring-if I get the chance to try them out I will definitely let you know what I think!
First off, have you ever heard of Goodreads? If not, and if you’re a big book reader, I highly recommend you check it out. If you go down on the right side of my page at the very end there is a link to Goodreads and a little window showing all the books I’ve recently finished. It is basically Facebook but just for books. You have friends and you can see what books they’ve read, are currently reading, or want to read in the future. You can also see ratings and read reviews similar to Amazon. Add me as a friend so I can see what you’re reading!
So onto my book review. I read a LOT of books, so I’m going to try and post my reviews on here from now on-nothing too in-depth, just a quick few thoughts on how I felt about the book. We’ll see how that goes.
A few days ago I just finished the book The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The narrator in the book is Death and the main character is Liesel Meminger, a young girl living with her lower class foster family in Nazi Germany before and during the height of WWII.
I liked the book because you got to see a side of Nazi Germany that you don’t often hear about-the struggles the German people faced during that time and stories of those who didn’t agree with the Nazi movement and how they defied the regime. The book was very well written and I felt very connected to the story and the characters at the end. This wasn’t, however, a light, easy read. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a heavy read every now an then but I really felt like I was going to be quizzed by my high school English teacher on the symbolism and hidden meanings when I finished reading each chapter. It was a great story but maybe just a little too much for me-on a scale of 1-5 I give it a 3.5.
Next on my reading list is The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings. When books are made into movies I always like to read the book before I see the movie. This book is pretty thin, so it should be a pretty quick read. I’ll let you know my thoughts when I’m done!
Have a great weekend!!
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Is your workout playlist in need of revamping? Do you need some fresh new tunes to keep you going through that tough cardio? Do I sound like an insurance salesman right now? Yes, yes, and yes!
This post is going to be short and sweet but I had to share the latest and greatest addition to my iTunes library with you. One of the owners of my gym finds all the greatest mashup websites and when I heard his latest find while busting my butt at bootcamp last Thursday I immediately thought to myself-I need this mix!! For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term “mashup” …according to Wikipedia, a mashup is “a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another.” Basically pure awesomeness.
I especially love mashups when I’m doing cardio because I get bored of songs really fast. I need something new to keep me going when my legs just don’t want to move anymore. Enter bootiemashup.com’s Best of Bootie 2011. This mashup combines some favorites from the 80′s and 90′s with today’s hits. You can download a few different versions, 1 is a continuous 80 minute track and another that I downloaded breaks it into separate tracks so if you want to skip ahead you can-but I haven’t needed to skip ahead yet! For example-track 4 has Bubba Sparxx Ms. New Booty, Ray Charles Georgia, Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris Welcome to Atalanta, Outkast Ms. Jackson, and a little Queen thrown in. Just do your self a favor and download it to see for yourself! 
Hi there! So I think its been about 3 months since I last wrote…yikes, I think that’s a new record! Quite a bit has happened in those 3 months so I’m going to try and sum it all up so everyone is up to speed.
First off, Mike asked me to marry him! And I said YES!!!! Haha! Of course 
It was December 23 and we went out to dinner at Deleece, the restaurant where we first met 3 1/2 years ago. I’ll get back to the engagement in a second, I haven’t really gone into the story of ‘Mike & Lauren: The Early Days’ on the blog so let’s just do that now. We met on Match.com in April 2008 and after wooing me with his witty banter over AIM, we went on our first date in early May to dinner at Deleece and bowling at Diversey Bowl-about $120 and a couple disastrous games of bowling later, he asked for a kiss goodnight and the rest is history (know that the disastrous games were on my end, Mike is a phenomenal bowler). 3 1/2 years, 3 dogs, and 2 condos later…might as well make it official!
So back to the engagement-we went to Deleece and I was none the wiser. I always thought I would know when he was going to pop the question because he can never hide anything from me-but he was good, real good. He just casually mentioned that maybe we should have a nice dinner on Thursday and oh we just got a new shipment of champagne from our wine club-”let’s bring a bottle”. So, over freshly poured glasses of champagne, Mike passed a pretty little box across the table and asked me to be his wife. It was an awesome moment in my life that I will never forget. He did very, very good.
Here's the sparkler from Dimend Scaasi
At Higgins celebrating after dinner
So, we’ve set a date for June 22, 2013 on the Isle of Arran of the west coast of Scotland at Darven Cottage. We stayed here for a couple days when we visited Scotland in 2010 and absolutely loved it, we could not think of a more perfect, beautiful, intimate location to say ‘I Do’. From Scotland, we plan to stop in Cairo for a few days to see the pyramids of Giza and then we’ll be flying to the other side of the world to Bali for the rest of our honeymoon. We are super excited and I can’t wait for next June to get here!
So yea…kind of big news, can’t wait to be the couple in an upcoming Match.com commercial (that would be kind of hilarious!). A few other fun notes of what’s been going on in my life-I started a bootcamp at Kru 2 weeks ago and it is kicking my butt! In the 2 months prior to that I lost 10 lbs! Woohoo-nothing like an impending wedding to give you a little jump start! We also have 7 weddings to attend this year so that offered a bit of motivation as well.
I’ve also been eating vegan for the past 2 weeks-no meat, no dairy-and its weird to say, but I don’t really miss meat all that much (shhhh don’t tell my family!!). I’ve been doing lots of tofu, tempeh, and veggies, and a few of the other not-too-weird meat substitutes here and there and I’m feeling pretty good. With the training camp my trainer would like me to get 120g of protein and 160g of carbs/day which is a difficult ratio to attain when you’re not eating animal protein. However, with my Sunwarrior protein powder helping me out, I usually manage to get close to 100g of protein/day which is pretty darn good. I’m usually a little over on my carbs, but what can I say-its tough! More bootcamp and get-in-shape-for-the-wedding updates to come!
I haven’t been doing a whole lot of cooking lately, from cookbooks or recipes that is. I wake up super early to workout so to speed things up in the morning I’ve been making a huge batch of tofu and veggies on Sundays and just eating that throughout the week for lunch, so nothing too exciting. Now that I’m up and blogging again, that might be a little motivation to pull out one of my many (many, many) cookbooks.
I’ve also gotten back on my beauty addict kick. Its been awhile, but I just got a little bored with my products and make-up and needed to spice things up a bit. I’ve found all these fantastic beauty bloggers on YouTube so I’ll be sharing my latest beauty purchases with you all on here too. It might be a bit of a mishmash of things on the blog so you’ll just have to pick and choose what you want to listen to me talk about!
Hope your weather is as beautiful as it is here in Chicago!
Bailey and Ruby
Goodnight!!
