Category: Uncategorized

healthy and beauty, How To, humor, self-help, sleep, Uncategorized, Writing Stuff

Get Your Nails Did! Or don’t…

Rita Slanina

We have been taking some inventory as to where we are taking Rita Slanina into this new decade and well? I’ve got nothing. IMG_2572

Not a clue. No idea. Not one iota of a thought.

Seriously.

I’ve grazed through all the old blog posts, youtube videos, music albums, thespian ventures and book projects and it seems the way to somewhere… vacant with possibilities. And yet, so many possibilities, I’m thought-adjacent vacant.

Huh?

With 2020 forging on, I can’t help but feel that I’ve made sure to take a look back at yesteryear and really take pride in the new skills I’ve learned and shared with you all, offer up book suggestions that I’ve enjoyed and/or learned from, and really take an overall interest in what the future should look like for me and us here at ritaslanina.com.

I would like to venture into some fun videos this year. Yay! A few shopping hauls, another book list (naturally, said the author), and some writer and actor tutorials for you guys as well. Woohoo! Maybe even a couple vlogs from some upcoming trips planned for this year. You know, that inside peek at what I run around doing. So BOSS. As, I compile the massive list of “OMG – I. MUST. DO. IT. ALL”

IMG_1395The reality is, I just cannot do it all. Nope. At least, not with a family and all that in tow. As women, we gotta choose you know. No you don’t! Yes. You do.

*hears gasps and rejections erupt

I can’t say I’ve done nothing. But, I can say that I’d wish I could do more. MORE. MORE! How much more can you get? As much more as I want, elephant pants!

Maybe sacrificing that wonderful sleep a bit is where it’s  at… hmmm, thoughts abound.

 *insert opposing scenarios here*

HOW IT SHOULD PLAY OUT: She’s bright-eyed and bushy tailed, every moment that’s called upon her. Sleeps 3hrs/night and never has bloat face. She’s SO happy it makes everyone around her nauseas. Accomplishing goals so fast, she has time to spa day, chill on the beach, and brunch with the girls. *Garcon! Pelligrino for the table, si vous plait. Room temp.

HOW THAT ACTUALLY PLAYS OUT: sleep deprived, she wanders into her office, hair falling out of the half-assed bun she put together as she filled an overflowing third cup of  coffee before 6AM. Spills the cup. Then refills while cursing the cracked carafe of the coffee pot she has yet to replace. She sits at her laptop to get in some work on her manuscript. A case of writer’s block conveniently arrives – decides to move onto emails. Oh, wait, check casting notices… Moments later, hubby walks in on her passed out on the keys of said laptop. 

So, what does this all mean?

Sadly, not much. Argh. I know. There’s also this other side of me which wants to just kick pexels-photo-1030973back and chill. *sings, “Do you like pina coladas” as loud as possible. Re-align with my inner chi or some ish. Ohm. But, doing that would require a pullback from all things professional, I suppose. NO! Don’t! It be great to integrate that into ritaslanina.com but that’s just not part of this company’s M.O. Or is it?

Enough. 

I’ve decided pulling back the reigns a bit and re-harnessing my energies will be the best strategy going forward. Let’s see where that yellow brick road takes me!

IMG_5206Our first video of the year is up NOW on my channel. Check it out! It’s a lifestyle DIY video on doing your own acrylic nails. I started doing my own nails as more of a curiosity as to how easy/difficult it would be. And? And, it just wasn’t as difficult as I thought it be. The time it took me to do my nails vs. sitting at a nail salonwas about the same. However, the cost of doing them myself vs. sitting at a nail salon was far worth it. There are kits available everywhere and great deals. The amount I have spent on tools and products to accomplish this feat was approximately the same as one salon visit! And it has paid for itself 4-fold now. I have enough product to last me for quite a bit of fills and full sets.

If I haven’t convinced you to attempt this at home yet, watch the video below! Remember to like, comment and subscribe!! hugs!

Please take a peek at our sponsor for this post, they have great products and if you want a good starter kit, they have one! Oh, and check this  out… there’s a spring sale happening right now too! Ya’ll know I love saving that cheese!

Drill Kits  Acrylic Start Kits Glitter Gel Polish Kit 

Acrylic Powder & Brush Kits

healthy and beauty, house and home, humor, self-help, Uncategorized

Special Delivery! Or not…

Rita Slanina

What is it with two-day Prime delivery now available, that when we actually do have to wait a bit longer for something we are impatiently throwing stones at our mailboxes.

You don’t do that? Hm-mm… Just me then.

Save Big with Spring Savings! Save up to $27 off our fees on flights with promo code SPRING27. Book Now!

I’m always about keeping money in my pocket as opposed to spending it. I have not always been that way; but as I get older, I get pinching those pennies to a whole new level.

I constantly find new ways to DIY it which almost ALWAYS saves me a fraction of what I’m paying someone else to do and more often than not, upon figuring it out myself, I tend to do a better job of it and no one is the wiser.

don’t mean to brag; but…

Unless you brag about it.

Yeah, I do that.

Anyway, I ordered some really cute spring nail polish (gel) in January.

It’s March.

Exactly, and it’s still not freaking here.

It would be one thing if I ordered it off the Wish App. Girls, you feel me on that one?

shop til you drop, baby!

If you’re not familiar, the Wish app is a shopping app where you buy direct from overseas – for waaaaayyyyy cheaper than we can buy in the states. While this is a pretty cool app and from time to time I have had to delete the damn thing to control my impulse shopping; I have generally not had any issues with it.

Friends, family and the like that I have passed along this sweet app to have not always had the same experience as I have had. The clothes don’t fit right, the packages never arrived, customer service never responded to me, etc. You get the idea. Yeah, don’t download the app? No. That’s not what I’m saying, pay attention.

Shop MissMaryofSweden.com now!

I, on the other hand, have had good experiences with the clothes (they run two times smaller than American sizes), most of my packages arrived safe and sound (and even earlier than expected), and when there was a customer service issue, they responded quickly and in some cases returned my money for a damaged item, or non-received item, etc.

delivery status update, please.

Great experiences! Like you said. Right.

Now, I tell you the background story on the Wish App because if I was waiting for over two months for an item, it is to be expected. My expectations are in line with how the Wish App works.

Well, I ordered nail polish (gel) from the Wish App, and it NEVER arrived. Customer service was great, they refunded my moula and so I decided to buy from Amazon. I LOVE Amazon. By the way. LOVE!! Plus, I figured it’d get to me within a reasonable amount of time. Compared to… you know, never.

So when I ordered a set of cute trendy spring colors gel nail polish, I didn’t anticipate waiting longer than a week, maybe even two! IWhich is why I chose to order from our beloved Prime account in the first place. I wasn’t going to leave it to chance. Heaven forbid I get a letter from customs thinking I’m trying to smuggle in contraband beauty products!

I’ve been waiting for months. Literally.

Let Me Break It Down…

tik-tok… just a waitin’ fool

JAN 30TH: I’m waiting, so I swipe a nude/glitter polish on my nails and I lay in loathing.

JAN 31ST: I hate this color.

FEB 13TH: Still waiting…. I pop off my nails a few weeks. Do some outdoorsy hiking crap, get dirty. No worry on the nails even though they look like all holy hell and my girlfriends frown when they see I’ve still NOT re-polished and primed.

FEB 20TH: Still waning. I mean, waiting. No… waning. I’m definitely waning, or maybe it’s whining.

FEB 21ST: Either way, I’m still waiting. And now nail biting.

Simpli-Home.com

MAR 7TH: Focus on my 2-a-day’s at the gym, catch up on some reading, cleaning and organizing my space.

MAR 14TH: Decide to give my short, natural nails a swipe of white polish. I feel cute, trendy and rockin’. For about a day. Re-organizing my space. Again.

Put it here. Move that there…. la-di-dah

MAR 25TH: St. Paddy’s Day has come and gone. Still waiting. Peeled off that white-off, paper mate, look which was no longer working for me. Decide to check the delivery tracking. APRIL 9TH?!! Delivery expected by April – freaking – 9th!

APR 2ND: Stares out the window, looking for the stork to bring newborn nail polish colors to my doorstep. Wonders if they had to make the formulas from scratch upon receiving my order. And also, why didn’t I notice the delivery expectation date when ordering?

So, as of this post, it still has not arrived. And, since the delivery expected date said the ninth, it’s likely I won’t see these little bottles of nail beauty for another week.

MORAL OF THE STORY

CHECK THE DELIVERY DATE WHEN ORDERING.

*hence, read the fine print!

EVEN on AMAZON.

EVEN when it’s TWO. DAY. PRIME.

healthy and beauty, humor, self-help, Uncategorized

The Coffee Switch

Rita Slanina

It’s not for everybodyAs promised, my coffee rewind. Yay! pexels-photo-1251175.jpeg

My coffee obsession – annihilated. Boo.

My journey on that hashtag caffeine-free life. Hashtag don’t.

So, you are not going to believe this; but I have ACTUALLY switched to decaf.

What?

I know. Pigs have officially flown.

O+ Biggi - Oxygen Plus

It all started when I read somewhere that caffeine ages you, causes wrinkles and basically changes your body chemistry to some degree – causing health problems. Are you a doctor? No. But,  I’ve been an avid caffeine consumer for pretty much my entire adult life. As I imagine, I’m not alone in this. You might be. Cases of Red Bull. It gave me wings! Multiple cups of coffee in the morning. So much I should’ve bought stock in it. Afternoon. Oh, and night. Stock up sales on Monster energy drinks. Added them to my cocktails even. Google it. There are plenty of articles on the subject. Hypochondriac. Maybe!

pexels-photo-1161928.jpegThe odd dynamic? I don’t even drink soda. I’ve never even liked soda; yet, I was drinking all these energy drinks which were just a chemically, hyped up version of… soda.

Flashback to my 2018 New Year’s Resolutions… I added “quit drinking energy drinks” to that list. Epic fail? It took almost a year to do it. No freaking way. Approximately… a year to the day. Totally flabberghasted. I began weening myself off at first, with only drinking one can per day, then serendipitously found an organic version made by the Rockstar brand. Saw you peddling that slurp on IG. Right. If you follow me on social media, you’ll remember my plugging those on my stories, literally on a daily basis, and no.. they were not one of my sponsors. I actually love those damn things.

Don’t cringe.

They didn’t have that bad an aftertaste.                           

Focus. The point is, they were replacing my daily bad habit with a “healthier” alternative? Um, not really. Well, this one still amped me up with green coffee beans and cane sugar. Still sounds like a bad habit. Right. Anyway, after the adjustment of the pounds of sugar added to the original ones dissipated and… my palate eventually adjusted.  Quite tasty! *rolls eyes. Sure. 

You don’t realize how much sugar and caffeine these food and beverage companies cleverly put in our products! They don’t HAVE to include every drop of what they put into their goods on those little nutrition labels. They only have to accommodate the minimal requirement and/or maximums of the FDA. (For those of you not up to speed on your government acronyms, thats our Food & Drug Administration.)

Don’t worry, hopping off the soap box now to pin the rant for another time.

*plop, tosses tirade into the bushes

Takeya USA

Fast forward to current day. I crossed that “no energy drinks” off the list for good. Yay! So, since I conquered my fatal attraction to energy drinks, I swapped them with Kevita Kombucha drinks. I know.

Hasthtag: New Year, New Me.

Hashtag sick of hearing that too.

Anyway, It’s not for everybody and really, you can get those probiotics from a daily vitamin and that may be a better angle that’s worth investigating; but, for now, I’m loving those little – largely-overpriced – drinks. Sucker. Yup!

And let’s not forget that regardless, I’ve replaced a bad habit with a good one! And that’s really what its all about anyway, right?

Yeah. But there’s no caffeine.

Back to the coffee, no coffee situation. Being a “lifer” with the coffee intake, it was also time to relinquish my grip on that morning crutch as well. So, I switched to decaf. Oy vey, did I have a tough couple of days thereafter. But, as with the other kicked bad habit by way of heart-palpitating energy drinks, I acclimated, and have been fine.

PICTURE IT NOW: Face down in the driveway, whispering for anyone to put a cup o’ joe in that mug that I keep shakily raising as feet walk by.

The newest thing I read about was also that drinking coffee before 10am contributes to the mid-day slump! ( <~~ I’ve added a link to such an article – check it out.) And since we all know and loathe that midday slump. I decided to test that too. I moved my mug of amazing to after my workout, around 9-10 AM. And you know what? No, midday slump!

Playing devil’s advocate, I switched it back to the first thing I do after waking up…. narcoleptic by noon.

So the moral of the story is… pushing caffeine out of my life has been a lot easier than I thought it would be. It was slow, and steady. And guess what?

You’re still drinking coffee?

Yes. But only decaf. But the way I see it…

I won the race!

Woop! Woop!

– LET’S RECAP – Removing caffeine takes time. So relax and just do it on your own timeline. Here’s what worked for me! (FYI/it took me a year)

PHASE ONE:

  1. First, remove multiple energy drinks per day down to only one energy drink daily.
  2. When you’re ready, switch out your daily energy drink to an all natural version.
  3. Finally, replace all natural energy drinks with probiotic drinks.

PHASE TWO:

  1. If you are drinking multiple cups of coffee each day, the first thing we need to do is stop that. Drink only one cup per day. Be aware that you will get groggy without those extra cups; but be strong! It will subside.
  2. When you are ready, usually after a couple weeks, or months, switch that one daily cup to decaf. This is the hardest part. IMO. You will feel sluggish for a couple days but it will pass.
  3. Finally, Reach for a large glass of room temperature water. Add lemon, if you like. Do this before your cup of coffee. This new habit of reaching for the water will eventually replace that decaf cup of coffee.
Move along…

So, for now, I’m enjoying that decaf-life with a dash of longing for no wrinkles, and natural energy. The dependency on caffeine is rampant. And at least there are chocolate covered coffee beans within reach. Just kidding. But ignore the immense amount of images in the coffee-porn folder on my desktop!