Hey guys! Today, I went to get my braces done! It's offical, I have braces now. I have waited years to get braces. My first orthodontist appointment was when I was around 11(?) but my orthodontist said something about my jaw having to be bigger and it'll be bigger as I get taller (something like that, I don't remember exactly) so she said I should be able to get it when I'm around 16 because then I would pretty much be at my max height. So after all these years, I finally got them! I was thinking about what colour/s I should get and came up with a few colour combinations (yellow & black and white & black) but last night, I thought of a better combination. Red and green! The perfect combination since Christmas is just around the corner. Having these braces are quite annoying, even though that they don't hurt, they annoy my lips and tongue.

Here are the things that get affected when you have braces:

Eating- Omg, it was super hard eating lunch today! Biting the food doesn't hurt too bad but the worse part about eating is the swallowing part. That sounds weird but it's true. Everytime I swallow, my tongue hits the back metal part of the braces which annoys the heck outta me. Oh well, it puts me off eating at least, good diet plan ;) After I ate my lunch, I checked in the mirror to see if food got stuck in them and there were heaps! haha, like, I swear, food just came coming out from no where. At least drinking isn't too irritating so for dinner, my mum just made me a smoothie which was waaay better than eating anything.

Brushing your teeth- Weirdest thing ever! It feels weird brushing the braces. For some reason, I kept thinking what if the toothpaste went into the little gaps, like, seeped under the braces and stayed there until I took the braces off but I worry too much. After one rinse, all the toothpaste were out so I'm not worried about it anymore. Brush my teeth is annoying though, because I don't want to brush too hard nor too soft.

Talking- You get a lisp! I don't mind that I've got a little lisp, I just don't like talking because everytime my lips move, they rub against the braces which is annoying.


Love,
Elaine

Hey guys! You probably won't know this but it was my birthday 2 weeks ago and to celebrate it with my friends, my friend and I did a joint birthday event. We were originally planning on going to minigolf but due to our bad luck, it was cloudy and rainy on the day so we changed the plan and went to the nearest shopping mall instead. At the mall, we went to Cotton On and I bought a nice flower, summer dress and a good work out top (Not for major work outs though). I've already worn the dress to the beach twice haha, it's so nice and comfy! It's just a tad short but oh well. I haven't worn the top ever since I bought it but when I tried it out, it's so nice and comfy as well! It's loose but not too loose haha it's a bit long but that doesn't matter much.



Yesterday, three of my friends and I went to the beach to get a nice tan. Summer (One of my friends) and I walked from my house to the beach, and my house is not that close to the beach so it took us around an hour and a half to walk there. We were almost dead by the time we got there but as soon as we met up with our other two friends and lied down on the golden sand with the ocean breeze cooling us down, I felt energized again. We didn't do too much at the beach, we mainly just lied down and got a tan if we weren't lying down, then we were in the water.

Summer and I on the beach

Love,
Elaine

Hey guys, my cat, Gizmo had her kittens on guy fawkes night! They are adorable, almost 3 weeks old now and they are beginning to walk properly, pretty soon they'll be running around the house causing chaos. They'll still be cute even if they try to climb up our legs and give us major scratch marks. -.- haha but at the end of the day, you can't be mad at the innocent little things. Well maybe just mad for a day or two because they leave scars on you! Trust me, from experience with the previous litter, I still have a major scar and that was from the start of this year. So yeah, avoid scratches as much as possible because they may or may not scar you for life! These kittens haven't gotten really playful yet but they're soon to be. Nowadays, they're either sleeping or drinking their mum's milk. Life seems so carefree for them, wish I could be them just for a day so I don't need to worry about anything at all, expect maybe worry  about who'll steal my milk or who'll squish me while we all sleep.

These are the 3 kittens:

1. This one's no name, we haven't decided on a good name yet. Do you have any ideas?

 3. This grey one is called Tigger! (One of my friends gave me the suggestion and I thought it was too good haha and she may or may not be reading this right  now ;) )
 Love,
Elaine

Hey everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts. My life's boring these days but I'll just tell you some events that happened during these last few months.

1. I got my ears pierced.. AGAIN! Last time I pierced it was when I was 8 or 9 years old and I barely remembered the experience so I forgot if it was painful or not which was good I reckon because then I wouldn't be too scared to get it done if it hurts. But yeah, I got it done in a pharmacy  in Westfield, Albany. I chose these small silver studs that were only $18. I reckon the earrings look pretty good because it's always nice having a small pair of earrings and it can match with other earrings I'm wearing for my lower, other ear piercing. The best thing about piercing my ears is that it didn't hurt me one bit! Well only like the teeniest pinch but it'd be weird if it didn't hurt even the slightest bit. The pinch only occurred when the needle thing was in my skin, which was less than one second. Once it was done, I didn't even feel like it poked a hole through my ears haha. I've had this piercing for almost a week now and I can take it out/change the earring in 5 more weeks! :D Can't wait to change it! Right now, ears do hurt a little. Like, not a painful, can't stand it, kind of hurt though, thank goodness. The pain is similar to a bruise, if you touch it, it hurts a little but I don't mind.

The silver stud is the new ear piercing

2. This isn't that exciting, but I painted my nails! hahaha, well it's got a pink base coat and then I just dotted a variety of colours. Each nail on a hang had a different colour and the other hand had the same colours.

okay.. it looks kinda shit in a photo but it's mainly because you can see the  mistakes I made

3. School. School has definitely taken up quite a lot of my time because there's school but on top of that, homework as well. It's the holidays now but it's still no good because I've got to study for my final exams D: I've done a little bit of studying but I probably won't pass with that so I'll probably be studying hard out during the week before the exams.

Love,

Hey, I'm sure all of you have played the olympic mini games that Google created. You can play the game/event of the day if you just go onto google's home page. Most of them are fun, but some are boring. I've played them all and here's my little review on them.
The first event that came up was hurdles. I have to admit, my first try was horrible. I kept knocking over the hurdles, which made my guy run slower but after one or two tries, I got the hang of it and didn't knock down one at all.

My bad score



My best score. Still pretty bad haha only got 2 stars

It's so easy to knock down the hurdles, but once you know the perfect timing, it's so simple

Action shot

Second game, basketball! I liked this one, it wasn't the same throughout the whole game because after a certain amount of shots, the guy will move back a bit, which means that you'll need to put more power into throwing the ball. This game needs a bit of strategy, unlike the hurdles one.

My best score. Don't diss, 2 stars are pretty good

sccoooooreeee!

Slalom canoe, I was absolutely terrible at this. I don't like this one as much because I'm too bad at it. I only played it once though but I kept crashing at the sides.

My best score. This is my second attempt at the game. Not too bad actually.

During the game, you go through the green posts to get an extra boost to go a little bit faster.

If you missed out on playing the games or just wanna play them again, here's the link to them all!

• hurdles: http://www.google.com/doodles/hurdles-2012
• basketball:http://www.google.com/doodles/basketball-2012
• slalom canoe: http://www.google.com/doodles/slalom-canoe-2012

Hi, this blog post will be about a range of stuff, bits and bobs from the past weeks. (I only just remembered about the photos now)
GIANT CAPLICO! It's a biscuit? Fake ice cream? Don't even know how to describe it. It looks like a Cookies and Cream ice cream cone. But it's not actually ice cream, it's got a filling that reminds me of the Cadbury Bubbly chocolate filling and it's got a chocolate cone. It's quite sweet, but I like it. I couldn't stop taking bites out of it. It was good but got a bit sickly after eating it because it's so sweet. Yvonne bought this product from Japan so I'm not sure how much it costs. It wouldn't be that expensive because she ate a few over in Japan.

This is the inside of it, no more brown biscuits :(

 These following photos are of different days, some is even from last year. I don't know what to do with them so why not show them to my 1 follower haha

I got bored on the car ride to Albany. And plus, the wind coming in made my hard fly nicely ;) I used a beauty shot effect so my skin seems whiter and smoother than usual.

Just a camwhore photo. wahh, I want my old hair back :'( I don't literally want the same hair back but I want my hair to look like that now.

This is back in last year when I had my 15th birthday party

I look shocked haha. But I'm not, I just put on a long lasting lip gloss and was waiting for it to dry so it was really sticky and I knew I shouldn't rub my two lips together. This is for a birthday dinner for one of my best friends, Rachel. This is also when I still had long hair. I plaited it to get the wavy effect.

MY SHORT HAIR D': I looked to the side so I could take a selfie because the side of my head isn't that hairy hahah

My hair wrapped in gladwrap because I attempted to permanently straighten my hair at home. (My mum just bought a $50ish product for people to straighten their hair at home) It doesn't straighten hair as well as going to the hair dressers but it might just be my mums technique that's bad (my mum did it for me).

Love,
Elaine

Hi! My mum bought my sister The Sims 3, Late Night expansion pack. Well it's for her but we all play. I play much more than my sister but that's only because she's got work so I have the computer all to myself in the weekends. I love playing sims now because we've got two expansion packs installed and while you can go clubbing at night, you can play with your pets in the day. That's not how my sim's day goes though, my sim gets really tired easily and it takes like an hour to go out to the nearest club or bar or house party. Which sucks because by the time I get there it's already midnight and my person will drop down.

My current sim family:
In the family right now there is a young adult called Lilly Orlando (Orlando was a randomized last name). Lilly has two Yorkshire Terrior dogs, one puppy and one elder dog. The elder dog is the father of the puppy. Wondering where the mum is? She got stuck (it was a glitch/bug) in the wall. So to end her death, I just sent her away to the animal shelter. There was nothing else I could do unless I wanted to wait for her to actually die. The elder dog is called Zack and the puppy is called Rose (It was computer generated). The mum was called Pippa.

Vampires:
I've seen loads of vampires roaming around town. They have pale/blue skin and red eyes (I think). You know when one is near you because in the sims moodlet area, it will say 'hunted'. I'm definitely going to turn one of my people into a vampire some day. I want to make a vampire that's nice and friendly during the day but then kills/drinks/turns the most people during the night. You can even be vegetarian vamps! I don't know how you'll stay alive though.

Question of the day: Have you ever become a vamp (in this game)?
Love,
Elaine

Hi beautiful geeks (I've been watching too much beauty and the geek hehe), sometime this year, I read in a magazine on how to do this really simple bun (for your hair, not food). I attempted to do it, but I knew I would fail at it because I have never ever done a perfect bun in my entire life. But this time was different. I did each step carefully to make sure that I don't make any mistakes or skip a step. In less than a few steps, a bun was on the top of my head! Most bun types don't stay in shape, I know what you guys are thinking, it would work if you used hair spray dumbass. But no, I will not use hair spray or gel because that stuff is hard to get out of my hair! And I hate how if there's too much in one part, it goes rock hard. I'm no hair expert so judge me and tell me that I'm using gel or hair spray wrong. I've never been a fan of using hair products, except for shampoo and conditioner, of course. Besides having shampoo and conditioner in my hair, nothing else is there. This hair style is perfect for those who don't want to damage their hair by drowning it in hair spray because when I did this hair style, not a simple drop of hair product was needed. I have hair that aren't too heavy, since it's not that thick. But I even tried this hair style on Yvonne and it didn't fall out of place on her head. I thought it would just plop out at soon as I finished doing it, but with thousands of bobby pins, I got her hair to stay there. Nah, just kidding. I only had to use 2-4 bobby pins for it. (Almost the same amount for my hair and Yvonne's) Plus, don't forget, you don't need a drop of expensive hair products to make it stay in shape. I don't think this hair style will work if you've got hair above your shoulders (hair from your whole head, not meaning your fringe or anything) because it won't be long enough to reach the top of your head but you can try to have the bun at the back of your head instead, but I've never tried it like that so I'm not sure if it will look as nice. I also don't think that the hair style will work for people with really heavy hair because it'll be so heavy for your head. I swear, my neck was getting sore from the extra weight on my head hahah. I know, it sounds stupid but my head felt lighter when I took out the bun.
equipment:

• bobby pins
• one hair tie
• hair spray (if you really need to)

Step 1: Brush your hair to make it smooth and luscious

Step 2: Gather your hair into a high pony tail that forms at the top of your head, or where you want the bun to be (you can tie your pony tail to make sure it stays in place but it wasn't a step in the magazine)

Step 3: Start braiding/plaiting your pony tail until you reach almost the very end of the last strand

Step 4: Holding onto the parts not braided, wrap the pony tail plait around the base/hair tie

Step 5: Grab a bobby pin and stick it where the end of the plait is

whoohoo! Your bun is complete. You can use hair spray if you really wanted to make sure it stayed in place for the entire day. Use more bobby pins to secure your hair and your make sure some shorter hairs are stuck up for a neater finish

done! this is before I put in bobby pins to make it look neater

done! see all the bumps? put boby pins there to make it look nicer

Good luck to all of those who are attempting this hair style. It's super simple so you won't need much luck from me and once you get the hang of doing this, it won't even take 5 minutes to finish it.

Question of the week: What's your favourite hair style?

Love,
Elaine

Hiya! The first week of term 3 finally ended and now there's 10 more weeks until the next holidays. I'm nervous for term 4 because that's when all the big, NCEA exams are happening. They are worth quite a few credits and I wanna pass year 11 so I'll be studying hard to get each and every credit that I can get.
Wahh.. there's no more good television shows anymore. All of the best shows got to the end of the season :( Including Desperate Housewives (last episode EVER.. sob..) and Two Broke Girls and Glee! (another last episode EVER.. I think)

This weekend, I'm going to be lazy and just relax. All week I've been so tired and now I can finally rest but with Hazel and my whole family awake quite early (at around 7-8ish), it's super hard to be able to sleep in. I don't mind that much, since I can't fall back to sleep if I already know it's morning unless I'm dead tired but that never happens.

Last weekend, while it was still the holidays, I went to get my haircut. It's not what I wanted but the hair dresser did do what I asked for. I wanted it to be more of a 'V' shape but they just cut it dead straight. Asian hair dressers are better. Well I've only been to three hair dressers in my life and two of them were from Hong Kong. One of the two hair dressers were great because they shaped my hair to fit my face. Because I'm a push over and I had no idea how I wanted my hair so I just told her below my shoulders, layered and she shaped it without me having to say. I want that hair dresser forever haha. When I got home, my mum helped me cut it thinner by just cutting the insides of it and it definitely got waaay thinner, I was so glad because if she didn't cut it, it would've looked 10x worse.
[I won't post a photo for this post, you'll see my hair in other posts in the near future]

In the holidays, I started playing Final Fantasy XIII-2 (13-2) It's fun and I love the combat style. I admit, I'm bad at doing the equip and I was bad at the level up stuff because I went to the 5th or 6th world and I still had no idea how to level up my people because I never went into the Crystalium page. I found out eventually because I was complaining to Yvonne that I could never kill the 'Royal Ripeness' (the tomato boss). Once I knew how to level up, I kept leveling up their strengths (Sereh- Magic and Noel- Commando). I had so much CP that I got them both to level 60 all at once. But since I'm skilled now, they're both at level 99 for their own thing. I've also taught them medic, synergist and saboteur. I still have no clue what synergist and saboteur does but oh well. I think synergist is when your person can put spells (like poison) on enemies.. or is it saboteur? Hm.. I keep forgetting. Sereh is good at the poison spell but I wanted Noel to put poison on enermies while Sereh attacks them with her magic. (That's the technique I'm trying for a boss that I can't seem to defeat) I love the game though, just not when I can't defeat a boss. Especially if you spend ages trying to defeat it but die after like half an hour of trying.

I'm gonna start a little game to replace the question of the week/day things at the end of this post. Well, íf I think of good questions then I'll ask but for now, I'm going to write one line of a song and you guess the song name and/or song artist in the comment section. Fun right? I hope so.

Guess this song: "My mind is a warrior, my heart is a foreiner"

Love,
Elaine

Heyah! This is another of those candy things (similar and same brand to the donut candy). This candy stick is banana flavoured though. Even better? Hell no. This one tastes disgusting! Trust me, I will never buy this product ever again. It’s just a fake ass banana candy and you dip it in chocolate and then sprinkles. The only thing that tastes edible is the chocolate sauce, it tastes like Nutella or anyother chocolate spread. I have no idea what the name of this product is because everything is written in Japanese so I don't know the actual name for this product. I'm not trying to be all negative on this product but I swear, it tastes disgusting. I gotta say, it was fun in the process though. Even though that was only like a minute because all you have to do is pour the chocolate and sprinkles into the plastic tray.

The packet. Look appetizing... right?

From left to right: Toothpick, banana sticks, sprinkles, chocolate sauce. And of course, the plastic tray where you put the sprinkles and chocolate.

The chocolate sauce looks disgusting, I know. aha. The original sprinkles were pale and only bluey purple and pink but Yvonne added in sprinkles that we've got at home (they're the brigh colourful ones).

It's super hard trying to push the toothpick in the banana

Dipping in the chocolate with the sprinkles gone all over the place and mixed in with the chocolate

The finished product looks like that! yum yum in all our tums! NOT! It only takes one bite to regret ever eating it

Question of the week: Would you eat this?

Love,
Elaine

Hello! Holidays started last week and to celebrate the fact that there's no uniform rules while at home, I painted my nails! I haven't painted them in so long, mainly because whenever I try to make cool designs, it always fails. But since it's holidays, and I was so bored, I decided to try paint my nails and give it a nice design. I searched on youtube for some cute nail designs but nothing good came up but I searched for it on google and it came up with a blog post Cheesie (cheeserland.com) did. It had steps on how to do this simple nail design. I used the same nail polish colours as her because on my first try I didn't want to ruin it and make it look weird. So I stuck with being safe. I love this design because even people with short nails can do it (I have short nails so I know for a fact that you can do it too!) I think that these nails are perfect for parties! I don't know, they just give me a wild vibe haha.

Equipment:

Clear base/top coat (Sally Hansen), baby pink nail polish for base (Pinkey, bought from Sasa), pink nail polish for dots (Sylvie, bought from Sasa), black nail polish for around dots (Nail Color), nail polish remover, pink tool (toothpicks can be used as substitute), Q tip

Step 1: Buff your nails so they are smooth and clean.

Step 2: Paint a thin layer of clear base coat. This will protect your nails. (Even though, if you're painting your nails, you're not really protecting them in the first place) You don't have to do this step, it's your choice.

Step 3: Paint a layer of baby pink. It has to be a light shade of pink because you don't want it to stand out as much as the actual leopard prints. But you do want a layer of baby pink because it contrasts with the pink prints. In the picture below, you can't really see but I did apply a layer of baby pink nail polish.
Step 4: Use a darker shade of pink and just paint random dots (doesn't have to be perfect) around your nails. Don't paint them too close together though and don't paint too much because the black lines will be hard to fit around. I advise you to use a toothpick (or those fancy tools) to do the dots, unless your brush is thin.

Step 5: Use your black nail polish and draw lines around the pink dots. I used a tool similar to a toothpick because the lines have to be quite small.

Step 6: You can add other stuff to your nails now. Like glitter. You don't have to, you can just leave it as it is. I did a few strokes of glitter for one nail on each of my hands. (I only did it on two nails because from experience, the glitter was super hard to get off)

Step 7: Paint a thin layer of clear top coat nail polish to ensure that your nail will look nice and shiny!

Step 8: If you got some nail polish outside of your nails, then get nail polish remover and a Q tip then just dab away the little bits of nail polish that always seems to go out of the line -.-

note: after each step, make sure you wait until the paint dries!

the finishing product:

This is my right hand, I'm not even gonna show you guys my left hand because it looks like shit. 10x worse than that ^

Question of the day: What's the most amazing nail art you've done? Give me some ideas.

Love,
Elaine

Hey guys! I absolutely love doing side plaits; I used to always do them last year and the year before. I only stopped doing them because I permanently straightened my hair again in the middle of last year (when I was in HK) and I didn’t want to ruin it by always braiding my hair. If I have naturally straight hair, I would still always have a side plait.

• Bobby pins (at least 2)

• Hair tie (one)

You're done!

Side

Back

Elaine