Friday Five

Just a few things that have made a life a little better in recent days ...{or months}


1) Lemon Water
I had heard about the glories of lemon water before and started to give it a try. It's quite honestly been perfect. Soothing, sweet and quite easy to turn the kettle on, wash my face, brush my teeth and pour a cup of water.  It has plenty of other health benefits that Wellness Mama discusses here.

2)Laura Mercier Lip Glace
About 6 months ago a friend convinced me to splurge Laura Mercier's lip glace. I was in NYC and need a new neutral ASAP. She claimed it would be worth the $28 price tag and I have to say it is.
Winter in notoriously dry and having returned from a 2 week trip to the midwest, I was on a pretty heavy chapstick regimen, but was loosing the little guys everywhere. I'd often just have to turn to my Lip Glace and it seemed to work just fine. It wasn't until I brought out my Chanel lipgloss that I truly noticed the difference. I wanted a bright for NYE and turned to Tocade. My the end of the night my lips were basically peeling off. It was not pretty by any means. In that moment I realized what I had in Merciers Glace, not only a fun gloss but a powerful moisturizer for every day use. I went back and bought several shades, my favorite for everyday use is Blush.

3) Yummie Leggings
Tummy taming and a solid quality legging? Yes. Please.

4)Amazing Hairdryer
I finally got my fan-cay hairdryer for Christmas! My finger dry time is down to 10 mins, 30 mins for a blow out! Cannot get better than that. If you have thick hair, or blow dry daily I cannot stress how much you should invest in this!

5) Wunderlist
For some reason when I updated my iPhone, the Reminders app crapped out. I downloaded Wunderlist to keep my random daily thoughts and reminders and shopping lists together. I do my best thinking on public transportation in the morning and its great to have this guy handy to write things downs and set deadlines.

Obsession: My Fitness Pal

Back in November, when Kingsley came back to Cali for a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving she introduced me to a lovely app, "My Fitness Pal". Essentially it helps you track your daily calorie intake and exercise.  I was hesitant at first since I've tried Weight Watchers and that turned into "Well, I have 30 points/day and if double-stuffed oreos are 5 points each I'll just starve all day and eat six oreos for dinner". But I fired it up and gave it a shot anyway.

Turns out, I LOVE IT!!!

The app has 3 options. Lose Weight. Gain Weight and Maintain Weight. When you start it up you enter your current height, weight (and measurements if you want to get serious) and your goal weight. It will then give you a daily calorie allotment so, in my case, you loose about 2lbs/week.

If you work out with a heart monitor or on a machine that counts calories then you can enter your calories burned in the exercise tab. If not, it helps you estimate based on what you did and how long you did it for. 

You also have to enter everything you eat. Which I thought was going to be a pain and make me sad, but it actually is very helpful. It takes everything you eat and breaks it down into your daily nutrition and graphs that show you where your calories are coming from. Its become a game each day to get different numbers up (or down) and I'm kind of addicted!  

It's a good addiction though because I've lost 5lbs in the last month!!