Strange & Charmed

It’s that time of year again! November has come and it’s the National Novel Writing Month in case you haven’t heard! Whether you are a NaNoWriMo vet or a newbie, there are many resources out there to help you get to 50k success at the end of the month. I have rounded up as many of these resources as I could find for you, so hopefully something or other down below will make the month a little easier for you. Happy Noveling!

For Mac Users

Macworld has a number of staff members who partake in nano, here is their article series for success!

Not to be outdone by Macworld, MacLife also has a mini guide to nano-ing that includes some iOS apps as well.

Here’s a Mac app that turns off the internet for a set amount of time, for those of you who are easily distracted by the Internet. Aptly named SelfControl.

For those of you who have an iPad and want to use that to assist you with your noveling efforts, here is a link to a site with some great app suggestions for iOS.

For Linux Users

For those of you out there running Linux, this is a link of 5 Essential Linux Applications for Nanowrimo.

For PC Users

Here is a link to writer’s software and resources for PC users, not nanowrimo branded, but still useful for wrimo’s.

Popular Applications

Here is the link for the Nanowrimo trial version of Scrivener. In case you don’t know, Scrivener is a great application for writers of all types. They are also a sponsor of NaNoWriMo and if you win you can get half off the software!

Here is the link for WriteRoom, one of the distraction free writing applications that full screens your manuscript so you can focus on nothing but writing.

Here is a link to Write or Die, one of the full screen apps that prompts you to write with settings that can prevent you from backspacing, and can even start deleting your work if you procrastinate too long. This also has an iOS app in case you are interested.

Other Misc Resources and Motivation

This link is for timeline-mapping software that may help you keep track of events in your novel.

If you are having trouble naming characters, this website is very useful.

Here is Written? Kitten! Which appears to be a web app where you get a new picture of a cat/kitten once you have hit the interval word goal of your choosing. Helpful for those of you who require a dose of cuteness as positive reinforcement.

Found this series of articles from the Guardian on how to write a novel in 30 days.

Have you ever gone to a new restaurant only to take one look at the menu and want to bolt? I have to admit, this has happened to me more times than I care to admit. I seem to have a problem with trying new things, especially when it comes to food! I really need to get into the habit of checking the menu before I am seated at a new restaurant, but a recent experience got me thinking whether there was proper etiquette for such a situation. So, here’s the scenario. You take a chance and visit a new restaurant you are not familiar with, and then after being seated (and even perhaps ordering a beverage) you take a look at the menu and think to yourself “there is nothing on this menu I want to eat!” What do you do?

After discussing my dilemma with my spouse, who was also thinking the exact same thing, our first step was deciding that we didn’t want to stay and tough it out! So, in order to honor the fact that the hostess bothered to seat us and a waitress went to fetch us some soda’s, we decided it would be best to dig some dollars out of our pockets and discretely find our waitress. We explained to her that we had never been to the restaurant before and weren’t interested in anything on the menu. We slipped her a few bucks and thanked her for her time.

Overall, I think that although exiting a restaurant before you have ordered can be an awkward thing, we handled it well. The important thing to remember is it’s not what you are doing, but how you do it that matters. So, talking to your waitress and explaining your situation is a must! I guess we didn’t have to leave a tip, but since she had gone to get our drinks we felt like we needed to leave something for her trouble and the fact that she had two wasted drinks in her hand. Hopefully this will be the last time this happens to us! I will say, I still felt a bit embarrassed even though I think we did everything right.

So, what you do think? Do you think we did the right thing? Is there anything you think we forgot or should have done? Anyone a current/former waitress and been on the other end of this? How did it play out for you and how did you feel about it? Let us know in the comments!

You guys! I am a complete sucker for packaging! Okay, packaging and convenience! The other day I was perusing Sephora.com and I came across these adorable little palettes and absolutely had to have them! It didn’t hurt that they were both ultra-portable and pretty cheap, both under $25! The first is the Too Faced Glamour to Go Palette ($22)! What first drew me to this palette as you may be able to guess is the packaging! It is a super cute black glossy compact with an almost baroque swirl design and lovely feminine label.

What I love about this palette is its tiny size, it’s no bigger than a compact mirror, but inside it houses a full face of makeup in a double layer design. The top layer of the palette houses 8 lovely neutral eyeshadows that fit my makeup aesthetics perfectly, and the bottom layer that pulls out like a drawer houses a pinky peach blush, golden shimmery lip gloss and a nice light-medium tone bronzer.

The colors are all gorgeous and after applying a face of makeup with this palette I was super pleased with the results. The shadows are pigmented without being too heavy which is great for me because I am no makeup artist and heavily pigmented shadows usually end up making a mess of my face! The blush and bronzer, however are a bit stronger on the pigment, which totally works because I like a strong blusher and I can mediate the amount of bronzer I use to make sure it doesn’t go on too heavy.The lipgloss is pretty subtle, but a nice natural shade with a hint of sparkle. I used a colored lipliner first and then added the gloss on top of my lips to blend the color out to a nice rosy shimmery pink! Overall, I am very pleased with my first impressions of this palette and I love the look I was able to create quickly using it! Like I said, its super tiny but you get a lot of products so it’s a great little palette to keep in your handbag, even a small one!

Okay, so the second palette I picked up from Too Faced is this Jingle All the Way Palette ($25). Now, I picked up this palette because it was absolutely too clever to pass by! From the front, this palette is a nice compact case filled with 11 eyeshadows, a medium bronzer and a bright pink blusher, but from the back it has a little secret!

It is actually a 2 in 1 makeup palette and iPhone 5 case in an adorable print! I just had to have it! So, basically the palette is just a palette in and of itself and it fits into the iPhone 5 case. You could leave the palette in the case or pop it out easily and use the case on your iPhone. It’s basically the greatest idea for a holiday gift that I have ever seen (well, may not the best I have ever seen, but its pretty close)! The colors in this palette are again mostly nice neutrals, but they also incorporate some lovely colors as well! I love how they actually give you 9 smaller shadows and 2 larger matte colors as a base/highlight/blending color. The bronzer in this palette is a hint darker than in the previous palette, but I can still make it work (I am not big into dark bronzers because I am usually super pale except for in the summer when I am just regular pale!) but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the bright pink blush in this palette! The brighter the pink, the better, in my opinion! Now, this palette doesn’t include a lip product, but that’s fine by me and still an awesome value since you get so many shadows!

So, be honest, are you loving these adorable Too Faced Palettes as much as I am? Have you tried any of these before or any other Too Faced products? Are you a sucker for packaging as well? Or perhaps you love these palettes because of the all in one convenience factor? Let me know in the comments!

I have been out of college now for 6 years (yikes!) and I still often think about all the wonderful things I did and learned during my years there! Like most life experiences, however, I often find myself wondering how my life would have turned out had I made different choices and did things differently. If I had the chance to turn back time and start college all over again, I would most definitely be the embodiment of some college cliché, taking advantage of every opportunity, working harder on my school work and going on more adventures! So, since I know there are college freshman all over the world who have just completed their first few weeks or so of their college experience, I have decided that now is the time to share my biggest regrets from college so that perhaps others can learn from some of my mistakes and make the very most of their undergrad years!

1. I regret that I didn’t work harder! Cliche, I know, but its the truth. Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I have been one of those people who never needed to work hard in order to get good grades. In middle school, high school and yes, college, I just sort of skated by on my natural intelligence, but now I see that had I actually applied myself, I may have been able to do wonderful things. My laziness in college is something I frequently find myself making up for in my life now, as I work myself to the bone at my day job and then with this blog all in the hopes that one day my hard work will pay off! Let me tell you, it’s a much better idea to do the hard work in college because the work you do in those four years can really shape the rest of your life. Don’t skate by like I did, make sure you are putting in 110% to your work!

2. I regret that I got a boyfriend my freshman year. Relationships in college are one of those things that I think most girls are interested in, but they really aren’t the best way to spend your college years. I know that once I found a boyfriend the second semester of my freshman year, I became a ghost to my friends. I spent way to much time with him and doing things he wanted to do and not enough time developing relationships with roommates and hall mates. Since I was also in a sorority, it was especially alienating for me to have a boyfriend during these early college years because I kept feeling like I had to choose between him and them. Of course, I choose him far too often and as I began to feel more alienated from my friends, the cycle continued so that I was inevitably spending all my time with him. Don’t make that same mistake. Boyfriends can wait until after college, they seriously, seriously can!

3. I regret that I didn’t go abroad. College is seriously one of the best times to spend a semester or two abroad in a foreign country. For me, it was something that I considered out of the question because of my finances and of course, my boyfriend! Looking back, I could have afforded it and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to leave my boyfriend for a few months, in fact it probably would have done me some good! I honestly think that it should be a requirement for certain majors to visit a foreign country before they graduate because it really is such a valuable life experience and it opens your eyes up to the rest of the world outside of your little pocket of the universe!

4. I regret that I didn’t spend more time getting in touch with myself. This is sort of a weird regret, but they say college is the best time to find yourself and I certainly wasn’t spending much time looking! I was more occupied with making sure I got all the classes I needed to graduate and trying to enroll in classes that would fulfill requirements for both of my majors so that I could inevitably save money and graduate early. I wish I had taken more trips and gone on little adventures. I went to college out in the mountains and there were so many things I could have done and tried that I just didn’t bother with because it didn’t fit my narrow idea of what a successful college experience meant. So make sure you spend your days exploring everything you can. Visit the astronomy tower, go on a camping trip, experience the world around you to the greatest extent that you can. It will help you develop character and learn things about yourself that you never knew!

Do you have any regrets from college that you wish you could pass down to younger generations to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes you do? Are you a current college student who has made some of these mistakes and perhaps can learn from them before it’s too late? Let us know in the comments!