Stitch Fix #5 - BEST. FIX. EVER.

OMFG You guys. Seriously. I had a thought. It's like Stitch Fix is a Rules girl. Remember that book? And all the crazy dating advice it gave you to make men want you? All the playing hard to get and remaining a mystery and such? Well, Stitch Fix has been luring me in and pushing me away and FINALLY after all that teasing, they gave me EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED. I'm keeping everything. That's right. I said it. Everything. All the items. They all fit perfectly. They were all flattering. They were all adorable. The prices were all awesome (in the context of Stitch Fix, anyway). I just can't even. All my previous sadness is forgotten. You win Stitch Fix. You win. I should point out that I asked for something green as I am singing in a St. Patty's Day concert. I also continued to demand grown up person pants. On to zee fix!!!

PANTS! HOLY CRAP! Like....normal person pants. Like....over the age of 18 pants. Pants I can move in. Pants that aren't suction cupped to my thighs. Pants that are long enough. Holy Jesus. These are the Margaret M Ariel Trouser in dark gray. They are being offered for $68. Why, yes. I think I will. They are a size 8 and they will look lovely with some heels. Enjoy my argyle socks. Note the lack of splotches on my mirror. You are most welcome.

This cardigan rocks. It is the Caramela Benfield Drape Front Cardigan in Purple. $58 smackers. I *might* have an addiction to drapey cardigans I can wrap around my freezing cold torso. No idea why....*cough* still 10 degrees in March. Curse you Mother Nature!!! *cough* It's so soft. And it is all mine. 

Close up of the heathered portion.

This is two items. First the 41 Hawthorn Freddy Sleeveless Chiffon Dress in green. Green is my favorite color. Also $58. I was concerned about the silhouette. I thought it might make me look bunchy or shorter in the torso, but I dig it. I need to lift some weights and get a jacket, but this is very nice! We also have the Zad Cassy Hollowed Clover Long Necklace. $28. Hello. No brainer. This is my perfect accessory.

Close up of pretty clover necklace that is ALL MINE.

And finally, because I'm a sucker for a scarf AND a quirky print The Look By M Lara Bicycle Print Infinity Scarf. DUDE. BICYCLES. Oh right...$36. 

Close up of the cuteness. YAY!

Yeah...this was what I've been waiting for. The big winner in which I buy all the things. So, The total was $248. Minus the $25 credit. Minus the 25% off discount for buying ALL THE THINGS! I'm paying $166 for all five pieces, which works out to about $33 a piece. Not bad if I do say so myself. I think Stitch Fix is getting better little by little. They definitely listened to everything I had to say last time. It was honest, but it wasn't great. I tried to be diplomatic, but I was pretty let down. I had Sasha again and she did a brilliant job this time around. I tend to think that sometimes these poor stylists get hosed by what they have in stock. Or lack thereof. I still think this can be remedied by communicating with the clients. Asking them if they mind waiting an extra week or letting them know what alternatives there are if what they're looking for isn't something that's available. A quick email would be enough. I hope they take those suggestions I made to heart in my responses from last month. As always, I appreciate it when people use my referral link, so Here it is again. If nothing else, this has been an adventure and I have some GREAT pieces that I love to wear, even if I've had some serious duds. I will continue on in my relationship with Stitch Fix, especially since it's hard for me to shop what with work and school and all. Did I mention that Organic Chemistry is a bitch? Have you guys tried Stitch Fix yet? What did you think?

March Julep Maven purchase

Bonjour! This month I was SO excited about the Julep Maven box because they were featuring lip stuffs! You could get a polish box with the lip gloss of your choice OR you could get the lip scrub and moisturizer duo. I chose the scrub and moisturizer since I am all polished out from my Cupid Mystery Box (Although I *did* buy the Wizard of Oz polish set for a certain cousin's birthday). I also added on a lip gloss in my favorite lip color (a nude pink). I have just utilized the scrub and moisturizer and can I say, WOW. I have lips of a pretty good size. My lower lip is CONSTANTLY drying out and flaking no matter how much water I drink or carmex I put on. The scrub is great. The applicator is also a little rough and there's a moisturizing balm in it, so it doesn't feel like sandpaper. The intense moisturizer smells of coconuts and is thick without being sticky. I tried to get a good shot of the gloss on my lips, but the lighting is the suck in my house and frankly every picture looked oddly sexual to me. So none o' that. However, here are some shots of the products themselves.

I say it every time. Julep NEVER disappoints me. Love this stuff!

Klutch Box goodies!!!

Hello all in blogger land. I recently received a rather awesome coupon from Klutch Box (again). This time they'd send me their New Year's Resolution box for $2 plus shipping ($8)! It had previously sold for $25. I really enjoyed the first box, so I said, what the hell! It arrived yesterday and I was totally stoked when I opened it. Check out the photo...

As you can see, a wide variety of food stuffs for being healthy and getting in shape in the New Year. Some of the samples were rather large, so I was VERY pleasantly surprised. I absolutely feel like I got my money's worth with this purchase.

I received:

1. The Jaali bean lentil and rice. I got one of these in the last one. That one was coconut rice. I love that they include these. I haven't had one yet, but I will be cooking one up shortly. 
2. Core Power Protein drink. Strawberry banana flavor. This thing has 20 grams of protein in it. Bam! Protein. It's labeled *light*, but I was pleased to see that it was sweetened with Stevia and not some other wretched sugar substitute.
3. FRS Healthy Slim appetite control and natural sustained energy chews. Strawberry Melon flavor. They sent a bag of 28 chews! I'll really be able to get a sense if they're working or not. They taste pretty good. It's supposed to help you feel fuller faster and give you more energy. I've been trying them. I'm not sure if they're doing anything. I'll report back.
4. Agro Labs wheatgrass shot. I'm so excited to try this. All organic and made with banana and pear juice. Full of B Vitamins and green tea extract. 
5. Power Bar performance energy blends in banana blueberry.I guess you're supposed to eat this before you go to the gym to give "fast energy to muscles". Again, no artificial ingredients. We like that here. The taste is...a little odd, but not bad.
6. KICK BUTT amped energy balls. I'm always tired from work and school, so I was excited to see these. They say they're grape flavored, but there's chocolate, honey and caramel in them. Hrrmmm...there's caffeine, creatine and ginseng in them. 
7. The next thing was a bottle of 30 capsules of raspberry ketones. I had to look up why I wanted to take that. I guess they're supposed to rev up your metabolism and aid in weight loss. I was stoked that they sent such a big bottle. I've been taking them the last two days. I'll let you know if anything happens.
8. IPS egg white chips! Aged white cheddar flavor! I'm saving these for a school day. Gluten free, all natural. 130 calories in the bag. I hope they're tasty.
9. Think Thin chunky peanut butter bar. It's sugar free and gluten free and has 20 grams of protein in it. Basically a protein snack, so you don't fall of the proverbial diet wagon when you're on the go.
10. Think Thin Crunch coconut chocolate and mixed nuts bar. NOM. Also heavy on the protein.
11. OMG! Antioxidant drink. It was....not good. All I could taste was weird berry-ish flavor and artificial sweetener. I hate artificial sweeteners. 

I also got a few coupons for some of the products in the box. I'm so happy with these boxes. I get to try all kinds of tasty (mostly) new products. I would have a hard time paying full price, but I certainly will take them up on any and all discount codes they'd like to send me. Anyone else ever try one? 

Julep Cupid Mystery Box.

Dang you, Julep! Every time I think I can't possibly want anything else, you present me with something I totally have to have. For Valentine's Day they offered up three different mystery boxes. A Manicure, Pedicure or Make up lovers box. I chose the make up lovers box. THEN they offered an extra addition for $9.99. So I got that too. I also got the Freedom Polymer top coat and a color they offered a few months back named Jillian. I had to, right? Right. It took kind of a long time to get here, but I was SO stoked when it did because what was inside was Awwwesommmeeee!!!

This is what came in the box. The box itself was $24.99 and I got three additional polishes for $9.99. Note the adorable picture of me and my sister as tiny children in the background. So, 6 polishes, an eyeshadow palette, mascara, eyelid primer and rock star hand cream. The top coat and 7th polish were extra things I ordered and weren't part of this promo. I also had a coupon from when I initially signed up, so I paid about $42 for this haul. That comes out to $3.50 per item. Bargain city.

The back side of the eyeshadow palette lists the names of the colors

This is the photo of the palette itself. It's called the Sweep Eyeshadow Palette: Neutrals. I love neutral colors and had been eyeballing this particular palette for a while now. I'm glad I didn't get it. It retails for $24 ($19.20 if you're a maven). The Cupid box was $24.99, so with one product it pretty much paid for itself.

The mascara is no longer available in the store. It's the Boho Glam Lengthening mascara in dark brown. Usually, I prefer blackest black mascara, but I can always use extra mascara. 

This is the Blank Canvas Mattifying Eye Primer. It sells for $22 ($17.60 for Mavens). I used this yesterday with the eyeshadow and this stuff made the eyeshadow stick like glue. It never faded all day. I was really impressed. That was about 18 hours of perfect color. I had no trouble removing it when I washed my face, FYI.

 These were the colors that came in the box. Their names, in order from top to bottom are Lindy, Nan and America. The Lindy is a chunky pink sparkle, Nan is coral and America is a red small sparkle with large white and blue sparkles in it. I wouldn't have chosen these for myself, but they were cute.

These were the extra three for $9.99. Their names from top to bottom are Angela, Kennedy and Stefani. Angela is a great iridescent teal color with a purple tint. Kennedy is...well...not that attractive. It looks yellow-y tan. Not great. Stefani is a nice silvery/gray with a smidgen of gold sparkle. All in all, I liked the colors. Except for Kennedy. It's kind of icky. 

This is the photo of the polymer top coat and the Jillian polish. I REALLY like it. I'm really pleased. 

Like I've said before, I've never been disappointed with a Julep purchase. I'm super excited (again) for the March box because they're featuring a lip scrub and a smoothing/conditioning treatment as well as their glosses. I'm a lip gloss junkie, what can I say? My lips are also super sad from winter, so I'm totally needing the scrub this month. I wasn't super attracted to any of the polishes, so I'll be going with the make up box again.

As always, if you love you're free to use my Julep referral code if you like.

My First Graze Box

I was out for cocktails the other night with a few of my ladies discussing our problems with subscription boxes and they told me about the Graze Box. It's full of awesome sweet or savory snacks. Their focus is on healthy, whole food snacks. I should mention that the packaging the snacks come in is recycled and they even offer ideas on how you can further reuse the packaging. They make over 90 different snack mixes. Everything is portioned out in cute little packs and you get 4 different snackies per box. The first and fifth boxes are free and it's only $5 a box. Given the free stuff and the already awesomely low price, I could not refuse. The sign up process is pretty simple. You give them your information, you let them know if you have any food allergies and you're on your way. You can also specify how much you like the items they already have based on their descriptions. I hate super spicy things, so I nixed everything that was full of cayenne pepper. However, I LOVE wasabi and horseradish, so I gave those a big thumbs up. After you get each box you can rate how much you liked each snack and you SHOULD because they have an algorithm that tells them what to send you based on how much you like what they've already received. I wish they let you leave feedback, but so far its just a rating scale.


For my first box I received smoky bbq corn snacks, white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake snack mix, eleanor's apple berry crumble and summer berry flapjacks. I was hoping for 2 savory and 2 sweet because I'm more of a savory snack kind of girl, but I want to try everything, so maybe in the next box I'll get more savory things. Here are the photos of the box and the nutritional information that they send you. As you can see all the snacks are pretty healthy from a nutrition standpoint. I don't feel like eating anyone of these would make me fall off the diet wagon.

So far I've only eaten the bbq corn and cashews and the berry crumble. The berry crumble was SUPER delicious. The bbq corn and cashews was good, but a little too salty. This is why I wish I could provide more detailed feedback. I'd totally try out the bbq corn again if they reduced the salt. If you're a fan of dried fruit and nuts and seeds, like I am, this is definitely a great choice. I will more than likely stick to this because I'm always looking for little snacks to take to school, since colleges primarily serve terrible teenager food. Someone who's concerned about the elasticity of their arteries wants to eat something a smidgen healthier. You can specify nut allergies and gluten allergies when you order, fyi, so you'll never be sent something that will send you into anaphylaxis. I only wish I could get them every week instead of every other week. Nom nom nom. 

If the Graze Box interests you, this is my friend code: D3ZC1ZGYP

Adventures in Medical Ethics

So, after 12 years as a pharmacy technician, I finally had my first brush with  a situation at work that made me ethically uncomfortable. Clearly, I can't go into a whole lot of detail because of HIPAA regulations. I was happy only to be peripherally involved. Basically a patient became pregnant knowing it was high risk and today in order to keep the patient alive we had to give that patient a drug that will more than likely end/seriously harm the pregnancy. All possible options were on the table for this patient and the choice to receive the drug was....not without a ton of education on the part of the hospital. I believe the choice to be the crueler of all the options that were available. In my mind, knowing that this was a very likely scenario, early termination would have been the preferable option. I don't know for certain, but it's my belief that religion played a part in the decision. Which, if I'm being frank, disgusted me even more. Many of the medical professionals involved in this case were agitated about it. This is not something any medical professional wants to do. The communication involved was unreal. Anyone would question this choice and so everyone who might even remotely be involved had to be contacted. Of course, it does no good to show emotion or judgment in front of the patient and that was called into question today as some colleagues were expressing their agitation maybe a bit too loudly. The whole thing just made me really sad. What would have been best for everyone, medically and scientifically speaking was disregarded and lesser choice was made because of, what I'm assuming are religious beliefs. More than likely, the same outcome, but in one situation there is responsibility to be had and in the other, blame can be placed elsewhere. People are of course, entitled to their spirituality, but when I feel it becomes a scapegoat, I take offense to that. No, these are not easy decisions. They're probably the most difficult ones that you could ever possibly make, but isn't it cruel to wait it out knowing that it is near to impossible to carry the fetus long enough for it to survive out of the womb? I have no say, of course and kept my opinion mostly to myself except to say that it was very sad. I imagine that when I finally become a respiratory therapist that I will come across these situations more frequently. It's very uncomfortable to be involved in this kind of thing on any level. I was impressed with the professionalism of our clinical coordinator. She was involved from the start and completely judgment free in all our discussions. I have no idea what her personal opinions are. She thoroughly researched every possible decision and presented all the medical options to the immense team of doctors involved. At the risk of sounding like a goober, I hope I grow up to be just like that. As an RT, that is. Lord knows I do my best, but cases like this really call your beliefs into question and make you think long and hard about what you would do in a similar situation. Anyway, this will be on my mind for a long time. I see an adult beverage in my future.

Popsugar Must Have February 2014 Review

Hello out there. Are you up to your eyeballs in snow? I sure as hell am. Pretty sick of it, but whats a girl to do? At least I rent, so someone cleans up my driveway and sidewalk for me. :-D

So, as you may be aware I have become...somewhat addicted to subscription boxes. My Subscription Addiction has been enabling me. She posts coupon codes all the time which permit me to try all these boxes out at a reduced price. So, recently there was a 50% off coupon for The Popsugar Must Have Box, which has become one of the most talked about boxes out there in internet land, so I decided to try it our for $20 instead of the usual $40. This is what came in the box. I yoinked this photo from My Subscription Addiction too.

The clutch looking thing is a jewelry roll from Gorjana valued at  $45. There are three zippered pockets inside. I'm thinking it will make a better clutch than jewelry roll. The color is a smidgen more orangey in person. I adore it. I will definitely be using it this spring as a clutch. It's too cute. I also got a $25 gift card to use on their website. I got an ADORABLE ring.

It was $40, so it was very reasonable at $15. Plus shipping, of course.

The Sugarwish candy ($6) was a bag full of tiny cinnamon hearts. There was also a coupon code, but I'm not going to be using it. I can get candy I like cheaper and I really don't need any dang candy.

The face serum is from Nourish ($24), an organic brand that I've seen at Whole Foods. I bought a vanilla body lotion of theirs awhile ago and love it. This serum has argan oil, rosehip and apricot in it. I put it on last night and it left my skin feeling very moisturized. This is going to become part of my evening routine.

The lip color is a lipstick/lip gloss duo from Model Co. ($25). It's a really adorable nude color on me. I really like it. I layered the gloss over the lipstick and my mouth looked all model-y and hot. Rowr.

The candle is a travel candle from K. Hall ($11). It smells like Peony. I was a little worried that it would be too floral for me, but it smells so beautiful. I'm stoked that I like it. Scents are very hit or miss with me.

The Nail polish is by NCLA in the color Rodeo Drive Royalty ($16). It's a nice dark red. I'm not sure how it'll stand up against the Julep polishes I'm addicted to, but it's a nice color, so I'm willing to give it a whirl.

Then there's the Dial ($3)....o_O.....yeah. Well, I guess Dial is itchy to promote their new body wash and is hitting the subscription box arena, so this one was a "special extra". Not so much on the special. I will not use this. I have some Body Shop chocolate body wash I'm addicted to right now. Also, I prefer not to put synthetic everything all over my super sensitive skin. My roommate won't use it either. He likes bar soap. Maybe I can pawn it off on my sister and her fiance? Takers?


The total combined value of the box not including the gift card was $130. I'm not counting the gift card because I had to spend money to use it. I spent $21.50, so I'm pretty excited about the value of it. There were A SCHLOAD (yes, that's a word) of negative reviews about this box on the internet. I'm not really sure why? Maybe we're all getting too spoiled by these things? I've said before that I might feel...meh about products, but I can't really get pissed off with these things if I'm getting more value out of it than what I paid.  If I HAD to come up with a complaint it would be that this box was very beauty focused and I was hoping for a little more variation. It IS supposed to be a lifestyle box, so there should be home things in there too. There has been more variety of items in previous boxes. I can't see myself keeping this up for very long because it's kind of on the expensive side, but I do want to get the March box to see if there are any St. Paddy's Day items in it (There better be St. Paddy's Day items in it. *shifty eyes*).



FYI, I have another Plated box (I guess I should talk about the first one?) coming next week, a Petit Vour box coming in March and the FabFitFun VIP box ALSO coming in March. I'm super excited about that one because it's supposed to contain $175 worth of items. I had a coupon for that one too. It's a quarterly box, so there's only 4 every year and I feel a little better about spending that amount of money on something that isn't every month. I also got sent another coupon for a Klutch box. I really liked the first one, so $10 for box number two was beyond reasonable. And a friend of mine encouraged me to try Graze box. It's $5 a box, but your 1st and 5th boxes are free and it comes with 4 different bags of snacks. You can specify what kinds of flavors you like and let them know if you have a food allergy. I'm excited for that one too. I'm always looking for healthy snack alternatives.

It's all sunshiney out now. I hope some of this friggin' snow melts. Ugh. Can it be spring, please?