The One You Feed

There were not all too many things I lived by, I didn't have a life full of routines, although my cup of strawberry tea with milk and a little sweetener ever morning would never go away and I didn't get inspired or motivated very easily. Even though this was case for a very long time, I still tried my best to find a quote or saying that would suit me. I read through lists and lists of quotes, Pinterest became my best friend and I even tried coming up with my own! But I could find nothing that made me think differently, something that made me feel like it was something to live by and eventually I gave up...

This might sound terribly overdramatized, but I really felt as if I needed something like that to remind myself that I couldn't just sit around all day doing nothing, feeling miserable. Sometimes you just need to stop looking for things and wait till they come on your path. And on my path it came! The thing I was yearning for, not exactly a quote or a saying, but something to live by nonetheless. It was a tale and it goes something like this:

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson
about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between
two "wolves" inside us all.

One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies,
false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good.
It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute
and then asked his grandfather:
"Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

—A Native American Metaphor

 At first sight I didn't really think about it that much, yet somehow it got stuck in my head and for days I kept on thinking about it. And then one evening when I thought I had messed everything up that could be messed up, I was in my room crying and telling myself how stupid I was and that it was all my fault and after that I started to blame the world and everything in it and kept doing that with raising anger... Let's say that I didn't handle my emotions very well at the time... But then it suddenly hit me: I was feeding the bad! I was feeding the anger, the envy and the regret. I wasn't doing myself any good and I knew that it was only going to get worse if I kept doing this. So I got up, made myself some tea, wrote a letter to myself to get my thoughts straight and went for a run, to really let everything out.

 

Now, I have to be honest and say that this particular night didn't change my life drastically, but it did make me more aware of what I do everyday. I try to ask myself every evening whether I have fed the good more instead of the bad and somehow it gives me peace and goals to follow.

The reason I tell you this is because I'm really curious if you have things that you live for or quotes you truly stand by. Let me know!

♥ Love, Vivian

20 Random Facts About Me

Good morning! Today I wanted to share 20 random facts about myself with you, hope you enjoy!

1. I've had a Scoliosis surgery back in 2011. It sucked.
2. I have a secret passion for 80s rap music, but the Beatles will forever be my favorite band.
3. My biggest fear are sink holes. I get sweaty hands only thinking about them. *shivers*
4. I absolutely love sports and exercise, but I'm not very good at it.
5. I love travelling, it's my favorite thing to do. I practically save up all my money, just so I can travel.
   
6. I'm messy. My room is especially messy, but my notebooks never are.
7. I can't throw stuff out. I have the hardest time doing so.
8. I write myself letters, that I never send.
9. I adore books like Listography, Wreck this Journal and One line a day. It's really fun and I recommend you to try one or more.
10. I run instead of taking anti-depressants. It works really well for me. 
11. I adore attention, but I don't ask for it in a loud annoying matter
12.  I drink Strawberry tea with almond milk and sweetner every. single. morning. No exeptions
13. I don't eat meat, because I hate the way it tastes. I do eat fish.
14. My agenda is always full. Having to plan an appointment with me is never easy.
15. I can't dance. I just can't.
16. I ran my first 10 mile race yesterday and I'm pretty proud of myself ^^
    
17. My friends describe me as the most random person they have ever met.
18. History class is my absolute favorite class
19. I get forced every year to celebrate my birthday. I succeeded in not celebrating it only once.
20. I own about 200 bottles of nailpolish and I bought maybe 45 myself, the rest were gifts.

What are some random facts about you?

♥ Love, Vivian 

KIKO Energy Mask

Do you have an oily skin? A skin prone to breakouts? A skin that needs detoxifying? Or just a skin? Well, I might have found the perfect mask for you! This energizing mask by KIKO looks pretty cool because of its black colour, but is it any good? Let's find out!

 First of all, Kiko chose a very hygenic way of packaging their masks. You don't have to dunk your hand in a pot which will only get bacteria in it. The tube is pretty small so you can easily take it with you while travelling.
The packaging itself looks a bit too plain if you ask me, but I know that a lot of people like its look.

The active ingredients in this mask are the Kaolin and the Magnesium. Kaolin soothes dry skin and reduces oilyness and magnesium prevents wrinkles and combats skin allergies, such as eczema.

Now for the real test: my skin before and after the mask

So you'll probably notice the redness on my chin, but that's from the warm water I used. My skin does in fact look a bit smoother, though my pimples were only reduced a tiny bit the next day. Not as spectacular as I was hoping for.
My skin doesn't feel dry, which, for my sensitive skin, is a good thing.

The KIKO Energy mask costs: €5.99

Verdict:  Comparing price with quality, this mask is a pretty good deal. The packaging is pretty handy and stirdy but not expensive looking. The mask itself doesn't do wonders for your skin but it does make it look a bit better. Overall I would recommend this mask to those of you who have an easy to take care of skin, but still want a little extra.

What masks do you use?

♥ Love, Vivian

My Lake Garda Vacation: Day 13-18

Here it is! Finally the last part of my lake Garda picture diary. It took a while but we're finally ready to share it with you. The last days were days of hiking and visiting Venice as well as Milan. Here we go!

July 20th - Day 13

My Lake Garda Vacation: Day 7-12

Part 2/3 of my vacation diary. Day 7-12 where I went to visit Verona and Sirmione, hopped on a cable car and went swimming in the lake. Let's get started!

July 14th (Day 7)

The water of Lake Garda was pretty cold

Feeling like a child on the monkey bars :D

My Lake Garda Vacation: Day 1-6

Hey lovelies! I just got back from my vacation to Italy and I thought it would be fun to show you what I did there :P Here is the first part of my vacation adventures :) I've decided to split it in three separate post because I didn't want to make these too long. That would be boring. Let's get cracking!
Day 1 (Tuesday 8 July)

We started out leaving the rainy Netherlands with me driving. Since I'm only 17 I'm only alowed to drive in NL, so that is what I did. I was travelling with my mom and one of my friends.

L'Oréal Subtle Soft Micellar Make-Up Removers

Micellar water, models swear by it, celebs swear by it and even make-up artists like, Lisa Eldridge, use them in their daily routine. But what makes this water so good? And why would you spend money on cleansing... water..? Well, I will explain all of that in this post. Plus I'll review the new micellar cleansers by L'Oréal.

DIY 2 Ingredient All Natural Hair Lightener

Since I've gotten a bit bored of my red hair, I decided to go back to a blond colour, preferably my natural hair colour. Now as some of you might know, red and orange tones are the hardest ones to get out of your hair. I could bleach and tone my hair a couple times, but that would seriously damage it. So I decided to do it in the least damaging way, which would be the natural way. One of the ways I discovered was to make a DIY hair lightener with lemon and chamomile. Here's how to make it.

Viva La Diva Lipsticks

When I was in Norway last year for holiday, I discovered the Swedish brand Viva la Diva, that was founded in 2000. Their goal is to make high quality cosmetics for reasonable prices. So every woman can look like, well, a Diva. My boyfriend, at the time, wanted to give me 3 of their lipsticks. So I bought a red, a pink and a blue one, because why not? After a year of using the lipsticks, I can honestly say that they make me want to go back for some more. Here's why.

Maybelline Babylips

Ususally I'm not the person to follow all the trends and hypes, but this time i decided to just  try it. Just to see if it was worth the hype I bought one of the Maybelline Babylips. These things are so popular right now and for only 1 euro I couldn't resist. I chose the "mint fresh"-one because it had SPF20 in it. If you want to know wether I think this lip balm is worth the hype or not, keep reading.

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil

These eyepencils are probably one of the most used products by beauty guru's. The Eyepencil in Milk is the most popular one so I decided that that would be the first one to buy. The second one I bought was Rocky Mountain Green, because I don't have that much green in my makeup stash. Want to know what I think of these pencils? Read on!

Jasmine Scented Hair Oil

Ever since I started dying my hair red, I've been trying to take care of my hair as good as I can. I heard that jasmine oil was very good for your hair and scalp, so I wanted to try it. This jasmin scented hair oil isn't exactly the oil I was searching for, with all of the perfume in it, but I guessed it would work. Let's get this hair mask going!

Baking Soda to the test

Last week, I went to an asian foodstore here in the Netherlands. Together with some other stuff, I bought some baking soda. Supermarkets in NL don't sell baking soda, so I was happy to find it in the foodstore. I decided to test two uses for baking soda right when I got back home. The first one being a face exfoliator and the second being a foot bath. Here we go!

Viv's Life ~ March No. 1

Welcome, welcome to the first edition of Viv's Life! I try to make it sound exciting, but it isn't that exciting at all actually... I just show you what happened in my life last week and that's it. So without further do: My week:

Saturday:

On saturday I went to Münster with school. It was a lot of fun and Münster is an absolutely beautiful city.

I did it!

A few weeks ago I told you  that I had signed up for the electric run, because I needed a change. I wanted to get back in shape. I didn't exactly stick with the plans I made, because some unforeseen, not so nice things happened. Sh*t happens but that doesn't mean that I should stop doing the things I like. I went and did the race and let me tell you; it was awesome!

Review: Bourjois Color Boost Lipstick

When I was shopping for a spring lipstick last week, I saw this Bourjois lipstick in the corner of my eye. It reminded me of the Clinique Chubby sticks, which made me quite happy. I'm trying to save up so my budget doesn't allow me to buy too many high end products. Reading what Bourjois promised me made me even happier. They promise: A lipstick that lasts for 10h, feels like a bare lip, feels comfortable and hydrates your lips and is waterproof. This lipstick also has SPF15. You can already sense how stoked I was. I decided to buy one in the shade '04 Peach on the Beach'. This peachy colour really gives me that spring/summery feel which makes me feel happy.  Let's test this thing!

Jump roping: The best exercise for calorie burning

Dkal Inc. / Getty Images

Want to burn a lot of calories as quickly as possible, but don't feel like running? Well I have a quick tip for you: Get your jump rope and get moving! Not only is skipping a lot of fun, but it also burns more calories than running does! Jump roping burns approximately 800 calories an hour. If that isn't motivation then I don't know what is. Some more benefits are:

• It's fun. It might bring back child hood memories and if you have kids you could skip together.
• It's cheap You could buy a good jump robe for 10 euros, which is nothing in comparison to some other fitness equipment.
• You can do it practically anywhere Some of you might not be able to skip inside because of low ceilings. You can do it in your garden, in the park or even on the patio.
• It's small and light Jump ropes are the perfect equipment to take with you. They're light weight and easily fit into a brief case.
• You can use the jump rope to improve strength, agility, coordination or endurance. You can improve strength if you use a weighted jump rope and agility with a speed rope.

Now that we've established that jump roping is amazing, let's make it into a little challenge. As said before, 1 hour of jump roping burns approximately 800 calories, so 10 minutes burns approx. 130 calories. Skip for 10 minutes a day for an entire month and you burn 3900 calories, which is more that 1 pound burned! This will make a perfect addition to your workouts. So:

Skip 10 minutes a day for a month and burn more than 1 pound. Good luck!

♥ Love, Vivian

Review: Rimmel Apocalips

The perfect lipstick: Opaque, long lasting and with a reasonable price. It's like I'm on a never ending quest. Brands come out with better lipsticks every week. I'd love to try all lipsticks out there, but that is fanancially and timewise pretty impossible. I did come across the Apocalips-hype and I immediately wanted to try the Apocalips line. They might not be the perfect lipstick (they're actually liquid lipsticks), but they're pretty damn close.

Back To Fit

Something you might not know about me: I really, really like sports. I'm rubbish at most sports, but I like being active and I was very fit in 2013. I was able to do 10K's and I started to try more and more sports. Being active made me a very happy girl. But since life always has up and downs, there came a problem: My back. I've had had scoliosis surgery back in 2011 and I still have problems with it. My back was to weak for the distances I was running, my form got bad and eventually I started getting serious knee and shin problems because of my bad running problems. I was told to cut back.

 Since it was December, I decided that I could take two weeks off of all of my workouts and focus on the holidays. But two weeks turned into four weeks and that eventually turned into eight weeks. I started to get less and less happy at that time. I had used running as an anti-depressant because I was afraid of real anti-depressant medicine. My grades got worse and my relationships as well.

I could never have imagined that quitting excersize would make such an impact on the way I feel. But now, to make a long story short: Two of my friends noticed that I wasn't feeling well and being the good friends that they are, they signed me up for the Electric Run. Meaning that I have to be able to do a 5K at the end of March. I'm a little scared, but also confident that I don't have to run a good race. It's a fun-run and that's exactly what we're going for: having fun.

I'm writing this post because I want you to know what I've been up to and I want to try and inspire people to get fit as well. I will keep you up to date on my fitness journey. Even though I have to be very carefull with my exercise. I want to continue doing it because it means so much to me and it makes me feel alive. No more quitting exercise for me.

For now, I'll be focussing on the 5K and I'll be doing the 7-minute workout everyday for the next month. Wish me luck...

Do you like to exercise?

♥ Love, Vivian.