My life on Instagram

Here are some recent snaps from my life on Instagram.

Follow me on Instagram by clicking here.

RIP my sweet princess

This past weekend was awful. Besides being flat broke after our car broke down twice in two months, my sweet little gerbil girl had to be put down :(

She had a tumor on her one kidney which was quite aggressive. On top of the tumor were cysts which were popping one by one, filling her stomach with fluid and squashing all her other organs. I didn't want her to suffer anymore so I decided to put her down.

I'm not sure if there is a gerbil heaven but wherever she is now, I hope she is happy.

RIP

Live Healthy: Update #6

It's been a while since I did an update post, (Read update #5 here) but here I am for my newest news and check in.

Last week Tuesday's snack (kiwis ftw!!), side stepping machine, my floor setup and a little indulgent snack (bacon and cheese roll *yum*)

Sunday's home-made fruit salad, blissfully empty gym, progress pictures and me trying to concur the side plank.

I am getting a hang of this gym thing. I am gym-ming 4 times a week on average which I never thought I'd do so I'm impressed with my determination. I have a nice routine going and I feel comfortable with the machines which I was worried about when first joining. Those things are really daunting. 

I have been eating a little more unhealthily these past two weeks. We now have the most amazing butterscotch syrup in the house which goes on everything it can! But hey, its winter, I need the comfort food (small amounts though).

I am really excited to enter the 2013 Spar Most Beautiful Woman's race. I have participated the past 2 years and really want to set strict goals for this year. In the past I have seen this event as a 'fun walk' but I would really love to run it this year (just the 5km). I'll be entering the Pretoria race which is happening on the 31st of August. There will be a sea of purple in the streets this year as this is the colour of the shirts *Yay, my fave*. Entries open in the 4th of June.

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram for my update images and other Live Healthy news.

April Photo-a-day Challenge

View my previous Photo-a-day Challenge and find out what its all about by clicking here.

Here were the prompts for April

Here are the photo's I shared on Instagram and Twitter :)

Follow me on Instagram and Twitter if you'd like to see which photo went with which day.

I have decided to do the challenges once every 2 or 3 months. My Instagram feed will be ridiculously full if I take part every month. If you would like to take party in the May FMS photo a day challenge then click here to view the prompts.

TTFN

Liebster Blog Award from City Girl Vibe

So there's this thing called a Liebster blog award (which means awesome blog, I think) which is given to new bloggers to get them more well known in the blogging community and share a bit more about themselves. 

Last year (yes, talk about being slow) I was nominated by the very sweet Tazz from City Girl Vibe. Her blog is great so please check it out!

Official Rules!

1. Select 11 or less if you don’t have more bloggers for the award.

2. They must also answer the 11 questions the ‘tagger’ has set for them.

3. They must create 11 more questions to ask bloggers they have decided to tag.

4. They must then choose 11 bloggers {Please choose bloggers that’s not already nominated on this list.}

5. These lucky bloggers must then be told.

6. There should be no tag backs to the person that nominated you.

I had to answer these questions:

1) If today was your last day on earth, how would you spend it?

I would love to have a family day at an animal shelter. Picnics and playing with the animals. That would be a great last day on earth

2) What is your biggest pet peeve?

People who are rude and obnoxious!

3) What product/item do you swear by?

The Body Shop's Born Lippys (my favourite is Watermelon)

4) What motivates you to blog?

Knowing that there are thousands of people around the world, and here in SA, that read my blog on a daily basis. Getting the opportunity to share what interests me, with you, is not to be taken for granted.

5) If your room were to be on fire and you had 2mins to round up anything, what would you grab?

I would grab all my pets and make sure they are safe and unharmed.

6) What’s your biggest weakness?

Animals, duh!

7) One person that inspires you?

I want to say all single parents but seeing as she was one I would say my mom. What a daunting job!!

8) The first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “Take the day off”.

Spending the day with my boyfriend.

9) If you could swap wardrobes with any celebrity who would you choose?

Ummm, is it corny if I say Charlize Theron because she is a South African beauty?

10) If you could go anywhere in the world for 1 day, where would you go?

Zanzibar. I have always wanted to go there!

11) Summer or Winter

Both, a little bit of skin in Summer and tons of cuddles in Winter

Thanks so much for the nomination.The questions were really fun to answer. Click here to visit Tazz's blog and give her some support!

I am still gathering a list of my own nominees and I have to think of some good questions so there will be an updates post soon!

Project Life

You see some pretty cool things on Instagram. My recent find, a thing caled "Project Life" which I spotted on Amanda Rose's Instagram feed (visit her blog). The concept is to help make "scrapbooking" a little less, scrapbooking, if you know what I mean.

It's a very simple kit that you buy which comes with all sorts of bells and whistles that will help you record your life on a weekly basis. It doesn't take long as all of the artsy work is done for you. There are even different sized cards that slot in designated areas of each file's plastic sheet. I call it a no brainer way of capturing memories!

Here's some images of how it's done.

See? So simple and I must say, I am crazy about the idea!!

If this is too simple for you and you'd still like to add some of the scrapbooking skills you learnt from your mom or grandma then check out what Amanda does with her Project Life albums. It is simply sublime!!

I am making a contingent plan to get a hold of one of these kits and start getting creative but at R1099.00, that might take a while.

Have you heard about Project Life before?

Live Healthy: Update #2

Here I am for another quick update on my  Live Healthy quest :)

I have decided to start taking "in progress" photo's to get you ladies motivated. Below is me on my way to gym (completely forgot to shave which was ridiculously embarrassing) and a few firm favourites that I am currently consuming!

Yes I am one of those who sucks her stomach in when taking these types of photo's but soon I wont have to "suck in"  anything

I would love to see your gym outfits or even your progress pictures! Tweet me @msclairabella or just use the #LiveHealthy when sharing your pics on Insatgram

TTFN

Miss Claira-Bella

Xoxo

Things that inspire me

Follow my Pinterest board here

Original Cocktails knocks my sock off!

As a part of our LadyBloggers goodie bags (not like they actually fit into a goodie "bag"), all the dinner attendees received a six pack of assorted Original Iced Cocktails to test out and brag to you guys about so here I am, giving my honest opinion about these fantastic home cocktail packs which completely knocked my socks off!

I received 6 yummy cocktails in my box; Singapore Sling, Strawberry Daiquiri, Margarita, Mojito, Pina Colada and Cosmopolitan. Being a typical girl, my favourite would be the Strawberry Daiquiri because of the sweet fruity taste. *YUM*

These "cocktails in a bag" are so so easy to 'make' and dress up. All you do is put your bags into the freezer for about 8 hours (although mine froze in under 4 hours), take it out, mush up all the ice (before opening the bag) and then serve it into fancy glasses. You can pop some real fruit in and add some decor like a swizzle stick and an umbrella. You can even do the garnishing the glass edges thing that the fancy bars do.

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that these weren't around when I had my "Vegas" themed 18th birthday party. We had to buy all the cocktail recipe books and make them ourselves on the night for all my guests. What a mission!

I really don't see why I cant have a cocktail party every weekend now that these beauties are on the shelves!

Follow Original Cocktails on Twitter and like their Facebook page. You can also pop over to their website to find out what else they have for you.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!

Have you tried these delish cocktails yet?

Miss Claira-Bella

My life on Instagram

Pictures can be quite a personal thing as it shows a lot about a person and the life they live. Here is a little snippet into my life and the pictures I share with you fantastic people on Instagram!

Follow me on Instagram here or search for MISSCLAIRABELLA!

Xoxo

When did life get so busy?

It seems that when ever I do a "I'm back" post on my blog, I disappear for another few weeks, posting erratically and not getting to do my weekly inserts like 'in my sample basket' and my 'pretty polish' posts. When did life get so busy? I thought I'd give you an update on my personal life and why you shouldn't disown me just yet!

Here's the low down!

So I just started a new job after being unemployed for over a year. This was a bitter sweet moment for me because being employed and earning money is really a necessity these days, but I knew that my blog wouldn't have my full attention anymore. This made me really depro because blogging has become a huge passion of mine and I love sharing great things with amazing people like yourself.

Unfortunately it is tough to make a career from blogging unless you're a stay at home mommy or already have a career in the magazine/PR industry. It's really not a place to make money (no, this isn't a self pity post. Please continue reading). For now I have just come to terms that my blog cannot have 100% of my time and attention.

I have also gone through an emotional change in my life. My boyfriend of 4 years has just gotten a huge career opportunity in JHB which means, after living together for over a year, we are now living in separate houses, 1.5 hours away from each other. Not a biggie for my blog as we still see each other on the weekends. Problem? He "took" the internet with him so I am left with a tiny MTN dongle with 2MB *Correction: 2GB* of data to get me through the month. *Insert shocked faces here*. No more Facebook stalking, pinning on Pinterest and definitely no online shopping. Not having uncapped data has limited my resources and how many images I am allowed to upload for each post.

Lastly, I have been putting a lot of my attention into my new venture with BeutyBulletin.com. If you haven't read the numerous Beauty Bulletin posts on my blog then catch up by clicking here. I have been asked to do weekly articles for the ladies site and have been putting a lot of time and effort into this because it is a great privileged and the community of ladies is just fantastic. You can view my latest article here. I suggest popping onto the site and read the articles I have written for the community.

This is most definitely not a good bye post! I still have tons of reviews on PR packages that have been sent my way. I just wanted to explain why I have not been posting as much and you should catch up on posts you might have not seen. There is a categories section on the right hand side of this page. Browse and leave me some comments.

Love your faces!

Miss Claira-Bella

Xoxo

January music favourites

#1. Mumford & Sons - I will wait

#2. Coldplay & Rihanna - Princess of China

#3. The Lumineers - Ho Hey

#4. Imagine Dragons - It's time

FMS photo a day - December!

Since breaking my Instagram virginity, I have gotten to follow some really great bloggers and icons in society. One of my favourite things to do on instagram is search different hash tags like #whereilive, #whatiate and my ultimate joy; #catsofinstagram (Yay for the cats!!).  

I also came across #fmsphotoaday which I learnt is a "photo a day" challenge from a blogger called Fat Mum Slim. She gives a daily prompt (a word or sentence) and you post a photo of your interpretation of the prompt. It adds a really fun element to your otherwise boring daily routine. For the month of December, I joined in the fun and here are some of the photo's I posted!

Follow me on Instagram to see all the images I uploaded for December 2012 :)

I am not sure I will have time to do the Januray 2013 challenge with being back at work and moving houses but If your curiosity is intrgued then I suggest having a look at the January challenges here. 

Note that you don't have to upload your images to Instagram, you can choose any social media platform as long as you use the hash tag 'fmsphotoaday'.

Let me know if you'd like me to carry on with the challenges again in March/April, I should have my life back together again by them *Hopefully*.

Leave me some comments and links to your photo's if you also took part in the December photo a day challenge by Fat Mum Slim :)

Miss Claira-Bella

Xoxo

Christmas Spoils

My family knows that I love The Body Shop which is always a good thing! I was so excited to be given a few Body Shop products as gifts for Christmas!

I unwrapped a very pretty tube of selection shower gels from my mom. I think these mini 60ml bottles are the perfect way to get a little bit of all the best scented gels. It's also a really good idea if you don't know which scent you would like. I have only ever tried the Strawberry scent of this collection so it will be a nice change to get to try different gels.

The second gift, I actually picked myself. My boyfriend is not one to mess around with guessing what I need or like so when doing Christmas shopping for the family, he pulled me into the Body Shop and said "choose!". I needed a new day moisturiser and was tired of the heavy pore blocking lotions I'm used to so I settled for the Aloe Soothing Day Cream which has worked amazingly on my skin so far. I hope to do a full review for you soon.

Thanks to my awesome family for knowing me so well!

I'm back!

I am so sorry I have been away from my blog for an entire week. I have been sick in bed with an infection in my wisdom tooth which was so painful *ouch*. My doctor put me on some serious 'we're not messing around' pain killers that knocked me out for hours.

Good news is that I really missed everyone and now that the holidays have arrived, I have tons of posts ready for you to read on your road trip, on the airplane and even on the beach!

Thanks to all my loyal readers who popped over to my blog every day even when there were no new posts. I really appreciate it!

Miss Claira-Bella

Xoxo

Memories for Monday

This was my little prince, George, who was taken to kitty heaven way before his time. I still think about him a lot even though it has been 3 years. I feel that he took a big piece of me with him :(

My Boyfriend's Manicure

Guys never really groom themselves properly and often end up looking more scruffy than when they started. The number one example are a guys' nails. Guys usually wait two weeks before realizing their nails are too long and they just chew them off with their teeth. They also have the toughest cuticles that are long enough to make a leather rug!

Every lady secretly wants their partners to take a bit more care about their grooming routine...sometimes we just have to step in and do it ourselves!

My Boyfriend and I "What a Hottie" Grrr ;)

Seeing as I am a nail fanatic, I cringe when I see the state of my boyfriend's nails sometimes. You can clearly see the thought process that went through his mind. "Ah, my nails are long but the clippers are upstairs...I'll just bite them off and neaten them later"...and that "later" never comes.

I have taken up the task of doing his nails at least once every two weeks, although he has gotten into the habit of telling me when they need to be done (what a spoiled little turd).

Here are some tips and tricks on how to give the guy in your life (boyfriend, dad, brother or even son) a great mani that wont leave him feeling like a girl.

#1. Don't set up a "Spa" type of setup. This will most likely cut a huge chunk out of his manhood before you've even started. I suggest just casually sitting on the couch with a cushion and small hand towel on your lap where he can place his hands.

#2. Once you realise that a mans nails are the thickest things ever, your life will be a lot easier.

Things like nail clippers and nail files, need to be the 'heavy duty' type. I took out my little nail clippers (in the picture above) and my boyfriend just laughed at me. He then proceeded to take out "the big guns" which helped soo much!

Men don't continuously buff their nails and wear nail polish so their nails aren't thinned out and have tons of moisture, making a really great combination for strong, healthy nails. Maybe we should take a few notes from them ;)

#3. Start off by clipping the nails with a pair of nail clippers. I love really short nails on a guy but I'm always careful not too cut too short because that is frikin painful. Depending on the length, cut the nails so that there is a small strip of white showing. I do this step very roughly because the plan is to file the nails afterwards.

Just Clipped

 #4. Filing will just finish off the nails and you have more control of how short you want the nails to be. You probably know this but I'll 'say' it anyway; don't try make a square shape for the ends of the nails, rather stick to the natural shape which is round. Because a mans nails are quite thick, there will often be sharp edges after filing so I suggest taking the nail file and filing it at a 45degree angle on the tip of the nail to take away sharp edges.

Just filed

#5. The next battle are the cuticles. Men aren't in the habit of pushing their cuticles back daily so you have a thick band of skin on the nail and they're really tough and dry.

Long, rough cuticles

Soak his hands an warm water and if possible, use a hand scrub/mask to help moisturise the skin. I soaked my boyfriend's hands in a bowl with Sh'zen's Spa Manicure for 5min. This is one of my fave manicure products because it works really well and it's perfect for man hands because it has a citrus scent, in stead of a, "I feel like a lavender princess" scent.

Soaking for 5-10min

#6. Once the his cuticles are soft, take a cuticle tool or orange stick and carefully push back his cuticles. Even though they are tough and long, it still hurts if you use too much force or do it too quickly. There is a very soft patch of nail under the cuticle and if you press hard against it, it can damage the nail and cause a lot of pain.

#7. I also took a 4 way buffing block and lightly buffed away any major ridges on top of the nail. Don't buff too much because completely smooth nails aren't very masculine. (This step is optional)

Neat cuticles and pretty buffed nails

#8. Apply a hand cream or cuticle oil to help the nails get a boost after being "tortured"

And your're done!

After doing his nails many times, I thought that it would be really handy to have a mens nail product range. I know you get hand creams etc. but a nail range would encourage men to look after their hands and nails a bit better. Do you know of any?

I hope this was a helpful post! Thanks to my awesome boyfriend, Malcolm, for letting me use his hands for this post. Follow him on Twitter (@howsemj) and send him some nice comments because he was super shy about me posting this :)

Miss Claira-Bella

Xoxo

The Dreaded Miacup

I follow a few really lovely "green" beauty bloggers on Twitter and the current craze they're all talking about is a new menstrual companion called Miacup.

The concept is pretty easy to grasp. It's an alternative to tampons and pad's, where you insert a little purple 'cup' (5cm in length) which collects the menstrual blood like in any normal cycle. It has a suction feature which makes sure there are no leaks and your cup wont suddenly fall out while shopping. Once your Miacup is filled, you break the suction and empty the contents into the toilet like you usually would. You then rinse it in a basin and insert it again. You can read about it's features here.

Images from miacup.co.za

I understand the need for an "eco friendly" alternative (if you can call it that) to something you would just throw away. Unfortunately I find this concept rather horrible. They say the 'mess', when emptying your cup, is the same as if you were inserting a tampon but I am not convinced.

Let me give you a scenario; you're out in public and realize you haven't emptied your cup in a while (apparently you can go up to 12 hours without needing to empty the cup) so you run to the nearest restrooms. You pop into a cubicle and empty the cup but the situation has become a royal mess, "Crap! I need to rinse the cup". Just your luck, as you come out the cubicle to rinse it, there is now a queue and the room is filled with ladies. How embarrassing, having to hog a basin to rinse your bloody cup. *Cringe* Aaand then you have to get back in line, holding your little cup, so you can insert it again.

I am in no way bashing the idea and I'm sure some ladies need an alternative to tampons for health reasons but is this not re-inventing the wheel? I would love be in the mind of the person who invented this and view the thought process they went through and what was their reason for needing the Miacup.

^Was it because tampons and pads are expensive? Hellooo!? Life is expensive. Period. (lame joke...*noted*) by the way, the Miacup will set you back by R394.95.

^Was it purely because tampons make up a lot of waste in our sewage system? I'm sure a lot more ladies would accept the idea of a better disposing/refuse system rather than someone trying to convince them to wear a period collecting cup.

You can read more about Miacup by visiting their website for tips on how to insert it, remove and store it and any other questions you may have.

Ah! I feel that modern society is creating a world where its okay to think that if you buy a product like this, you're helping your environment and your health will improve or not be compromised. "Let me empty my Miacup before I go to the store to buy a carton of cigarettes". It's the same concept as buying a meal from MacDonalds and ordering a diet coke. I could go on for hours.

Am I just stupid and not really 'educated' on the subject or do you feel the same? I'd love to hear your thought's on Miacup and the general issue of companies selling "eco friendly" products to make you feel like "you need to do your part" in helping your environment.

Sjoe!

Miss Claira-Bella

Xoxo

P.S. The rant at the end of this post is in no way directed solely at Miacup. I am just using the Miacup as an example. Click this link for an interesting read.