Resolutions (beauty and personal)

Hello, Beautiful!

Happy New Year's Eve!!! I hope everyone has fun tonight ringing in 2011! Be safe! Don't drink and drive!

Everyone seems to have New Year's resolutions, even small things. So I'm wondering, what are your New Year's resolutions? Let me know what your 2011 beauty related resolution(s) and your 2011 personal related resolution(s) are.

My resolutions...

Beauty Related:

I would like to commit to always taking care of my skin, morning and night. I know when things get busy I sometimes skip a morning or a night of washing my face. I hate that feeling! I need to try extra hard in 2011 to really focus on my skin morning and night, every day no matter what.

I would like to commit to buying less beauty products. This past year I think I purchased more beauty products than most years. I just need to think twice on each beauty purchase. I'll ask myself these five questions:

1. Is this a product I'll use on a daily basis?
2. If not, is this a product I'll use at least once a week or once every two weeks?
3. Do I already have a similar product that I'm happy with?
4. If I don't like the product can I re-purpose it? (return it, give it away, make samples, sell it)
5. Is it on sale or reasonably priced? Can I find it somewhere else cheaper?

I know I tend to buy a lot of beauty items because they are on sale... and that is part of my problem. I'm cheap, so when I see a high-priced item on sale I need to buy it. It's the bargain hunter in me. And that's a problem!



For my personal life, my resolutions are:

Continue living a "Be Love" type of lifestyle. It's not easy to be love all the time, but when I am living that way I find that I'm so much happier and less stressed. I laugh and smile a lot more! Stress ruined my health in so many ways. It's not an over night fix to repair all the damage that was done to my body but I can see a lot of improvement. When I go to the doctors my blood pressure is so much lower than it used to be. Just yesterday it was 106/75. That tells me I'm able to keep my body chilled out more, which is so helpful! I want to continue to work on this stress-free lifestyle and get my health back to normal.

I will get my broken nose fixed this year, along with my teeth. I actually plan to get this all done in March or April. I've been saving up for awhile now and I think I'll be ready to get this done. Well, I hope so. That probably means no vacation this summer, but I'm okay with that.

Of course I want to lose weight, but for me that is directly tied to my stress level. No, I don't over eat when I'm stressed. My body now over produces cortisol thanks to the stress I had several years ago owning my own business (a gourmet dog treat bakery... which I also sold jewelry to raise money for animal shelters). Naturally, every time you stress your body produces cortisol and cortisol makes you fat. I was stressing so much with my business that I poisoned my body with cortisol. Now my body naturally makes it all the time because of the length of time it was producing cortisol on its own. I've tried to go on meds the docs wanted me to be on, but they made me so sick. After trying to wean on and off and back on them for nearly a year, I gave up on meds. I decided living stress free would be the real fix, and I believe it is. I'm able to lose weight when I am stress free. Oh, and I should mention that I had gained 100 pounds in a year and a half.... yeah... 100 freakin pounds! Going from a size 4/6 to a size 18/20 was NOT fun (this happened nearly 3 years ago). For the past year I've been stuck between a size 14 and a size 16.

My weight loss journey is a little different than most, but I know I can still beat this! If all it took was exercise and diet it would be a piece of cake to get rid of the weight. Honestly, I love working out and I've never had a problem with staying in shape. Even after my pregnancy (which I gained over 50 pounds), I managed to lose it all in eight months. I stayed that way for several months... and then the stress set in and the weight gain began. It wasn't gradual either... it would be 10 pounds at a time or 8 pounds at a time (in a week). I have my body working against me, but the less stress the better!

My husband wants me to stop working all together until I'm back to normal because he knows how much time and effort I put into my work. But there is no way I could do that. I have to have my own thing going on! I love ValentineKisses.com!!! Don't worry, ValentineKisses.com isn't going anywhere! If I feel stress coming on I'm able to just say "enough is enough" and stop whatever I'm doing. That could mean this blog doesn't get updated every day or new products aren't on the website as frequent, but its okay because that's not important. The most important thing is responding to customer's emails and phone calls, and getting all orders out within 1 to 2 business days. I've always done that! Even when I was in the hospital with health problems I was still concerned about packing up orders and my husband helped out. The day I got back I finished packing up the orders and got them out within 2 business days! Yes, I have helpers here at ValentineKisses.com, but they're just helpers (not employees) and they only help out from time to time when it's really busy (I'm too much of a control freak to let anyone run the business while I'm on vacation... I just delay shipping out orders when that happens).

Anyhow, enough about me... I can tell I'm rambling on and on now! I've got to get ready and get to the store to pick up supplies for tonight. Rum & gingerale... yum! I also make "Sweettarts", which is orange soda, vodka, and Kool-aid packets (grape and cherry). I don't drink very often... but when I do, I like to really go for it, haha. Especially if I'm at home where I know I don't need to worry about driving or finding someone to drive. It's nice to let loose and just get stupid for a night! Enjoy yourselves tonight... BE SAFE!

Let me know your resolutions for 2011!