The Em-Life: Keeping Up Appearances, Day 1

**For 1 Week (and only one week, thank goodness!) Emilee and Marquette attempted to live a life that matched up to Social Media Standards, mostly just to show what that could look like in real life and how ridiculous the idea is.**

Welcome to our series, Keeping Up Appearances, new to the blog? Start here to follow our week long attempt to live up to social medias standards!

Exhausted.
That's how I can describe day one.
Accomplished.
That's also how I can describe day one.
I knew going in to this challenge that it would be difficult, then I had a little moment in time where I thought I should be doing way more than I was and that I was going to be bored with how much time I had on my hands. I cannot begin to tell you how overwhelming this thing is already! Hallelujah it is only a week long!
Here we go! Let's just jump in, shall we?!
Have you ever had this happen to you: (*internal conversation*) "Is today so-and-so's birthday? I think it is, but I'm not 100% certain, I'll just pop on FB and double check." 47 minutes later your FB lurking on a girl you went to middle school with (who FINALLY got her braces off and is doing really well in life BTW). Has that every happened to you ? Because it happens to me all.the.time.
In order to help me focus more on productive matters I decided to take this pin and adult-ify it for myself.

http://narrowbackslacker.com/2014/05/13/theyre-rules-not-guidelines/

I modified it a bit, seeing as sometimes social media is part of my business and I'm an adult...so there's that. My modifications included that I had to do something productive for work (like accomplish a task on my to-do list) before I can turn on the TV or do anything personal on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc.). Usually when I wake up I browse social media to really keep myself from falling back asleep, I'm not sure where this habit came from but I hate it, I thought this would help me to beat it. So far so good. I didn't do anything on social media today until 2PM, I had exercised, taken care of all the animals, all my cleaning for the day was done and I had accomplished some work stuff. It was a nice break and it didn't feel like it was something I was doing just to pass time, or because I was bored or avoiding work.

Next on the list, dinner!

For the challenge we have to cook three new recipes this week that include at least one ingredient we have never used before. Today recipe used shallots, prior to the challenge I didn't know what they even looked like and was a little cautious. After I tracked them down at the grocery store I followed the directions to cook them and was surprised to find that they aren't that scary after all!

Here is the recipe I used on day one!

http://picturetherecipe.com/index.php/recipes/balsamic-glazed-steak-rolls/

I didn't realize until literally right this moment that I used brown sugar...and I'm not supposed to use sugar. Derp. Oh well, it's in my belly and there isn't much I can do about it now except for learn from this and pay more attention! This recipe was really good though! It felt like I was eating at a restaurant and not in my own kitchen! Here is my version:

Not too shabby eh? We weren't able to get the veggies quite as thin as she did, but we were cutting them by hand and not with a Julienne. It was good! A little time consuming, but delicious!

I also used some cleaning pins I found, here were the originals, my results and my thoughts on those:

http://www.listotic.com/55-must-read-cleaning-tips-tricks/

This one had zero instructions, what you see is what you get. I vacuumed my floor and rug, and then squeegeed, here is what I got!

My hair clump isn't as big as hers, but that was on my floor and I'm glad that it isn't anymore!

We got a dog about a week ago, and this is the first time we have vacuumed since we got her. Imagine what that pile would look like after a month! :o

 It is kind of hard to see, but the left half of the rug was squeegeed here and the right was not. You can kind of see a line of hair where I stopped the squeegeeing. *hehe squeegeeing...I love that non-word*

This task was labor intensive and gave me a headache from leaning forward on the floor and scrubbing for so long and also made my knees hurt form kneeling. Because of this I wouldn't do this every single week. Regular vacuuming does a lot for our carpet/house so I will probably employ this one once a month...if I am being completely honest. It does work fairly well though. Pinterest for the win!

Next I cleaned the base boards...full disclosure the only time I have done this in my whole life is when we were moving and wanted our deposit back lol

When we did that it had been so long since they had been cleaned that the dust was really caked on and was hard to get off. This pin eliminates that!

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/quick-cleaning-tip-keep-baseboards-cleaner-with-fabric-softner-165957

 The original uses Bounce, but the article itself says "dryer sheets", so I guess my Gain will have to do. I didn't realize how dirty my baseboards were already! We've only been here 8 weeks!
In the second picture it is a little hard to see, but you can definitely tell the right side is clean and the left is not. Cool trick! I did all the baseboards not covered with furniture in about five minutes! Bonus: The article says that the fabric softener sticks to the boards so that dust is less likely to stick there, so not only does it pick up the hair and dirt but it prevents it from coming back! Woohoo! I ended up using three sheets in my 1,200 sq/ft apartment.

Worked pretty nice right?! It did just what it was supposed to do!

Next, I wanted to streamline my morning routine, I wanted to get every drop of productiveness out first thing in the morning instead of zombie-ing my way through the first few hours. I have always seen those pins that show "10-things to do the second you wake up", or "12 habits of successful early morning risers" etc etc, so I thought I would find one that looked doable and go for it!

http://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/skinny-ms-3349575?post=4142828719&group=0&frame_type=a&context=&context_ids=&blog=3349575&frame=1&click=0&user=0&viewer=true

This pin consists of doing productive things first thing in the morning like: getting up early, drinking water right away, not having screen time for the first hour of your day, reading something positive and uplifting, moving your body, eating breakfast, getting some sunshine.

Day 1 of this went fantastic!

I got up early-ish (earlier than usual, but certainly not 5A.M), I read something positive, got my water down first thing and took the dog for an hour long walk, I didn't do any screen time until about 11:30 that morning, and I made and ate an amazing breakfast!

This one wasn't too awful on the first day, we'll see how it goes later in the week!

I have always admired women who take the time to contour and highlight with their makeup daily, I think it looks fantastic! But...I've always been too chicken. Enter Pinterest, enter a Keeping Up Appearances Social Media Challenge...

http://allwomenstalk.com/

This pin did not come with any instructions and was pretty hard to track down.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to do my regular routine and then contour as the very last thing I did or to contour first and then do everything else?! So many questions!

So I looked at the picture and tried to remember back to all those 2A.M. Youtube beauty channel binge watch sessions and thought I would do my regular routine and then contour on top after everything else was done. Here are the results!

               

Normal routine, minus mascara.

                                                                                  

 Will this thing really work?! It's a little iffy! JK, this is terrifying...I had to leave for work like 30 minutes after this picture was taken, I was so worried I would have to take everything off and start all over so that I didn't look like Snookie at work!

The Results

                    

         Normal routine (minus mascara and lipgloss)                                                   Contour Routine

I think this whole routine definitely makes my face have more definition and shape, I felt like a movie star all day too, bonus!

It turned out great! I think I look more mature, more put together, and the second my husband saw it he said, "Wow! Your makeup looks great! Did you do something different?", I showed him the middle pictures and he didn't believe me, so the next morning when I tried it again he sat in the bathroom to watch me, he had to see it with his own eyes! I was super surprised how well this went, I thought for sure I would crash and burn, but I was delightfully surprised here!

I also had people who know me well tell me that my face looked thinner that day, so I would definitely say this is a pin win! The secret? Blending Sponge!

Side note: I bought all the exact products they used in the pin, and while the highlight and contour sticks both broke in half within 24 hours of using them, the blush is stellar! It lasts all day and looks really natural. I will definitely be switching to the Revlon blush permanently.

As long as we are talking about beauty, I found another pin that pertains to my real life that I wanted to implement into the challenge. I have always wanted really clear skin, but for the last 6 years it has been a struggle for me. I've tried lots of different products that work for a little while and then I end up back at square one a few weeks into the routine. A coworker of mine showed me Acure Organic products about a year ago and I was curious so I thought I would try them out.

I literally cannot tell you how much I love their line! Again, here enters Pinterest and the KUA challenge. I have always wanted to be the person who washes their face twice a day EVERYDAY, but I just have never been that girl. Now that I have a line of skincare products I love I felt it was time to try it again. It seems like a very adult thing to do and I was excited to give it another go. Bonus, I had two of the three of the products, and the one I needed was on sale! We'll see how it goes this week, and how my skin feels!

http://www.acureorganics.com/



And last but not least for the day, I decided for the challenge ( and for life in general) that I wanted to do some sort of clean eating for the week (and the rest of the month thereafter). I had dabbled in Paleo, and Whole 30, but I wanted to try it with more intent, and since I had to make new recipes this week I thought maybe that could help me be excited about this! I was planning on doing Whole 30, but they were a little out of my range of what I wanted, so Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint was the one I went with. I've read his book (previously) and his tactics make sense to me, so along with everything else we were doing this week, we were on full Paleo too!

www.marksdailyapple.com

As you can see, day one was VERY busy. But surprisingly I felt like it went really well and that I accomplished everything I needed to that day. Maybe this challenge won't be so bad after all?? Time will tell!

Update: I forgot my squats. Oops. Completely slipped my mind. So much for going "perfect".