New Year's Resolutions

Hey guys! This time I've decide to rant on some New Year's resolutions. I hate them. I don't know what it is about them but I can not stand them. I feel like you should try new things and make good choices all throughout the year, not just after the new year starts. I'm going to go through a couple of common resolutions that I think are just plain dumb. So lets get started.

image courtesy of The Odyssey

1. Lose Weight/Exercise/Diet/Be Healthier

This is the big one that I don't understand. You shouldn't need to wait until the new year to be healthy. You should try to eat healthy as much as you can. I feel like this is a big way that people start their new year off wrong. Chances are you're going to go all out and try the paleo diet when you're not ready for it. Then people get upset when they don't stick to their new and healthy lifestyle and some even gain more weight from binge eating. If you really want to lose weight, exercise and diet you should gradually ease into it and the sooner you do it the sooner the results will come. If you think about your resolution to be healthier at the beginning of December you should start then. That way when January 1 of the new year comes around you'll already be seeing results.

2. Learn Something New

Do I really need to explain this one? There are chances to learn something new everyday. You can literally go on this thing called the internet now and find ANY information you want. Just go to a news publisher, for example The Wall Street Journal, and choose an article to read. THAT'S LEARNING PEOPLE. You obtain new information when you read. I think that wanting to learn is great but it shouldn't be a resolution.

3. Help Others

UGH. Why do people need the new year to start helping others. Even if you volunteer once a month you're still helping someone. You don't even have to volunteer to help others. Hold a door open for someone and that's helping them. Yeah, it may not be a great act to humanity but you're still helping somebody. Also, just smiling at people may help them. I've heard a story about a boy who didn't think he should live because no one was kind to him. He decided to walk to a bridge near by and made a plan. If just one person smiled at him on his walk to the bridge he wouldn't jump. If no one did, he would. He committed suicide. Being kind helps others and it shouldn't be a New Year's resolution.

Sorry to end that on a sad note but that's one of the reasons I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. They basically give your lazy butt an excuse from doing something. If you want to accomplish something just do it. It's unfortunate that we live in a world were we need motivation to do things that should be human nature. I hope you guys take these words to heart. Thanks for listening to my long rant on New Year's resolutions. See you soon!

p.s. I know that started as a light hearted rant on New Year's resolution but really think about what I said.

The Struggles of Blowing Bubbles

Hey guys! I've decided not continue onto my second part of the Jackson Hole Trip series because it happened a little while ago and I felt that post wasn't really going anywhere. So that leaves me at this one. It's a little short story about a drive with my dad. I hope you enjoy it!

So, as some of you know I live in Park City, UT which is about a forty-five minute drive to Salt Lake City. My mom works is Salt Lake and because we only have one car right now, a silver Mini Cooper with a black convertible top, we drive to there to pick up my mom just about everyday. These car rides hold various conversations like the one in my Dad Jokes post.

Now as my dad and I were rambling through a unrelated conversation I blew a bubble with my gum. For some of you not very exciting, but for that small percentage of people who through their whole childhood could not blow bubbles, you people are not alone. I am with you.

Since I was about five I have been trying

image courtesy of confertionarynews.com

soooooo hard to blow bubbles. Like, it got a little ridiculous. I tried to get my nannies through the years to teach me and they've all failed. Literally all of them. All of them had different ways of trying to go about it. For example, one way they tried to teach me was to make the gum into a flat oval type shape. Then you get it on the tip of your tongue and hold the edges of the oval with your teeth. Finally you just blow air out. You're probably thinking one of four things: I have no idea what that means, that sounds so easy, yeah that's how I do it or YEAH I'VE HAD PEOPLE TRY TO TEACH ME IT THAT WAY AND IT DOESN'T WORK. Well, I agreed with later until this card ride. There are a couple others tips that you can check them out here.

I could never get that sequence quite correct and was the most frustrating experience for a kindergartner ever. If you can't blow bubbles with your gum you understand. Keep trying, it eventually does work.

So anyway, my dad and I are in the care when BOOM I blow a bubble. I freaked out. I was just like, "OH MY GOD DAD NO WAY I JUST BLEW A BUBBLE." He just about looked at me like I had six heads. A little puzzled he asked me to explain and when I did he responded with a chuckle. I know it's not that great of an accomplishment but I did it. 

I finally blew a bubble. I must have Snapchatted like ten people telling them how stoked I was and the majority of them responded as my dad did. Now this is when the bubble, haha get it like the bubble I blew with my gum, bursts. I was so excited and decided to explain to my dad how its so much harder to blow a bubble with more gum. He looked at me, again, as if I had six heads.

"Max, you know it's easier to blow a bubble the more gum you have," said my dad.

My heart sank. I mean his explanation was logical and I did have about five pieces of gum in my mouth. Such a let down. At least I did it though, after fourteen years of life I was finally able to blow a bubble with gum.

Just because I think you guys will this funny, I was on FaceTime with a friend while writing this post and just hit myself in the face with my phone. So just to wrap up that sentence, I am a pathetic nerd who can't blow bubbles with gum and hits myself in the face with my phone. So, yeah you know that's my life right there. I hope you guys enjoyed my anecdote (ooooooo vital vocab points right there). See you soon!

Jackson Hole Trip Part 1

Hey Guys! As some of you may or may not know I am on the Park City Ski Team and we had a training camp this past week (ish) at Snow King in Jackson, WY. Let me tell you, it was a pretty fun camp.

a picture of Snow King during ski season
image courtesy of jacksonholetraveler.com

In February of this year I tore my anterior cruciate ligament (acl) and if you don't know it takes about seven months, after surgery, before you can go back to playing sports. It's been just about seven and a half months since I tore my acl and this ski camp was my first opportunity to train since my surgery. 

Loading up the van in Park City was one of the scariest things I've ever done. I had a couple issues with my knee recently and had been worried about skiing on it, but my doctor cleared me for Jackson and I decided to go. We packed all of our stuff into our U-Haul: two pairs of skis, two pairs of poles, my boot bag, my tuning box and my duffle bag. As if that wasn't enough, I also had a bag in the van with me which consisted of all my school stuff. 

My in-car bag broke and while I ran to Cole Sport to get a new one everyone took their seats leaving me in the very back corner next to all the guys. There were only THREE girls in our red van. Already this trip sounds interesting huh?

Well I dealt with my seat and it wasn't all that bad. We had fun playing gangster rap and playfully making fun of each other for the whole five hour trip. Although, there were a few arguments about what music we should be listening to.

ANYWAY, we finally made it to Jackson where I found out River was my roommate! This was pretty exciting because River and I get along pretty well.

Then it was time to go to bed on the first and I was really nervous. Like, REALLY nervous. It was pretty scary to think I was going to be skiing again because that's how I injured my knee.

I woke up the following morning, got ready and made my way out to the big red van to leave for Snow King. And then . . . 

Stay tuned for Part 2! I'll tell you guys about believing in my knee again and of course all the fun stuff that happened in our free time! See you soon!

Dad Jokes

Hey guys! So the other day I was in the car with my dad when I realized just how stupid some dad jokes in the world are and I thought hey I should blog about this.

Somehow dads seem to think that it's funny to embarrass and make fun of you. In a nice way of course. I remember this one time in like kindergarten when my dad kept using that snot joke. You know, the one where they pretend to hear "snot" instead of "it's not". That was when all these dad jokes really started for me.

Now, I know they're not all THAT bad, but it's really annoying when your dad is laughing at you for having a monstrous pimple like I did in the car the other day. But it gets pretty annoying when that is all you hear about the entire car ride to Salt Lake City (about twenty-five to thirty minutes from where I live). 

Then there are those dumb dad jokes like the one in the photo over

image courtesy of 98five.com

there. Those are the jokes that really get me annoyed. Something about them just bothers me. I mean, I guess they are a little funny. It's almost like the thing that bothers me the most is that the answer is always SO obvious that it leaves you feeling stupid afterwards.
For example: "Why can't you hear a pterodactyl use the bathroom? Because the pee is silent!" Like why couldn't I think of that?

I always feel so awkward when I'm with my friends and their dad makes a joke that isn't good but you have to laugh. You know, trying to be polite to your friend's dad. We all know secretly that every dad does that. And when they know it's corny but they say it anyway.Yeah, we all know that most dads do that too.

Overall dad jokes leave me pretty annoyed which is why I was almost in tears when my dad started using them again. We were in the car and he said, "Do you like seafood?" and opened his mouth showing me the sushi we were eating in the car. I pretty much face palmed. My dad has never really been THAT corny but rather decides to act that way and embarrass me in front of my friends. I guess it's just typical dad stuff that happens right? 

I hope you enjoyed my rant about dad jokes. I guess they're a little addicting because when I was writing this I couldn't stop looking at this page. Let me know in the comments if your dad makes terrible, corny dad jokes and we can cringe over it together haha. See you soon!

Cracked Porcelain Doll Halloween Costume Part 2

Hey guys! I'm back with part two of my Halloween make up! Enjoy!

Next you're going to want to draw the cracks on your face using black body paint or a liquid eye liner. If you decide to use black body paint, make sure not to add too much water.

A pretty creepy version of me with the doll make up on

When you have the correct consistency, take a very fine paint brush and paint on the cracks until you're satisfied. This takes a lot of work so be sure to practice as much as you can. For the picture to the right I didn't paint my neck, but like I said in part one it is a good idea to. Otherwise you look very odd. It is A LOT easier to do this look if you reference something because then you won't over do it. I referenced Madeyewlook in her video and I believe she referenced dolls from a video game. You could also try looking up cracked porcelain dolls on Google to make them as realistic as possible.

After you've finished painting the cracks you can start to make even more realistic by shading around them. You can accentuate the deep holes that the cracks are supposed to be making by leaving a thin line between the actual crack and the shading. Also, make the shading closer to the crack darker and fade it out to make it look like a nice shadow.

A final finishing touch that leaves your make up looking really creepy-porcelain-doll-ish is putting some gray eyeshadow in your laugh lines, dimples, and forehead lines (if you have these). It adds the affect that you're always smiling and is creepy to the max.

I also decided to tell you guys about my Halloween dress on this post because why not right? As you may or may not know I got my dress at a store called Dressed in White. A lot of the dresses there look kind of like old night gowns, and literally EVERYTHING was white. Now, I picked a dress that was all the way down to my feet and I thought it would be cute to pin it up underneath and have a certain puffiness to it. It actually turned out pretty cute and I recommend this method. I wore sheer white stockings and Mary Jane looking flats. I decided to curl my hair as a finishing touch, but that's totally up to you. 

Well I hope you enjoyed my two part tutorial! Let me know in the comments if you would like to see another tutorial like this one and if you decide to do this look for Halloween! See you soon!

Cracked Porcelain Doll Halloween Costume Part 1

Hey guys! Like I said in my last post I'm going to give you guys a tutorial on how to put together a cracked porcelain doll costume. I'll also include my tips and tricks on how to make sure you costume is the best it can be. I'll be doing this post in two parts: the base layer of make up and the details. So let's get started!

Porcelain Doll Make Up

Now for the make up look you don't have to go out and buy all of the items listed below. I'll make two lists for what you definitely need and another for what isn't necessary but will make your look a hundred times better. DO NOT feel obligated to go buy everything on this list because that could be very costly. FYI this look is supposed to look creepy so don't judge the pictures.

What You'll Need:

• white face paint (for the brand I used click here)
• foundation brush
• black liquid eyeliner

100x Better:

• black face paint
• translucent setting powder
• matt pink blush
• grey eyeshadow 
• white eyeliner pencil
• black eyeliner pencil
• baby pink lip stick/stain
• small detail brush
• eye shadow brush
• powder brush
• fake eye lashes

Now like I said before DO NOT feel obligated to get all of this. The first list is the most basic you can get with this look. You can also pick and choose what you want out of the second list. There's no make up nazi that's going to yell at you if you decide to do it differently than I did so do whatever you feel comfortable with.

I will be writing the tutorial based on having all of the items listed above but if you choose to do less simply skip the parts where I use the other materials.

Tutorial:

                           

this is what the base should look like

First you're going to want to paint your face with the white face paint using your foundation brush. After you have a base of white that you like go over it with your translucent setting powder using your powder brush. This will give you a similar appearance to that of porcelain and will help your make up stay put. Make sure to cover your neck and ears because other wise it looks plain weird. Don't worry about covering your eyes because if you do it will crease. Also, I know this picture is really weird looking but you'll see how much better it looks with the cracks later on. I was also trying really hard not to laugh and that's why my face looks so dreary. And just so you know I am NOT cross eyed ughhh. 

where to put the blush on your checks

After you have your base you'll want to apply a thick layer of blush on the apples of your cheeks. This will give you a creepy look. I also chose to spread the blush out and up from the apples of my cheeks but that's a style choice and completely up to you. By the way, I know that picture is even weirder than the first on but you couldn't see the blush other wise.

The next step is do your eyes. Using a light grey shadow and my eye shadow brush I applied a light coat of the color on my lid. I then went in with a darker grey and put it in my crease for some definition. Because I had the shadow out I went ahead and put the lighter grey under my eye so that they appear to be bulging out more.

Then once you're done with the shadow you can apply some pencil liner in your tight line (the thin line of skin under your top lashes that rests really close to your eyes) on both of eyes. Apply liquid liner to the eyes with a slight wing. Last, coat your eyes with mascara an the eyes are done for now!

To be continued . . . see you soon!

The Process of Buying a Halloween Costume

Hey guys! So, it's just about that time of year when all the little kids in your neighborhood come to your door asking for candy.

image courtesy of wholelifechallenge.com

Yeah, Halloween. Now I happen to love Halloween. It's that one time of year when you can make yourself look absolutely ridiculous and no one looks twice. Now this year I was pretty sad when I didn't automatically have a costume idea. I guess that's when you know you're a little too old to be dressing up and going out trick or treating with your friends. But who cares right? So I had to come up with a costume.

Now this was the hard part. I came up with two ideas that I thought were pretty cool. The first was to be a sugar skull. I was pretty much set on this one until I found out that someone who's friends with a lot of my friends was a sugar skull last year. Now just because I didn't live in Park City last year doesn't mean people would let it slide. So I came up with my second idea to be a cracked porcelain doll. I found this really good tutorial on youtube of how to do the make up and if you want to watch it click here. Now if you watch that video you'll see that the make up she did is amazing. Like I don't even know what I was thinking trying to copy it but a girl can dream right?

So I decided that a cracked porcelain doll was my best option for a costume. I dragged my dad along with me to Zurchers, a party supply store if you didn't know, in Salt Lake so that I could pick up my make up. Now looking back on that experience I probably should've thought about the quality of white face paint I was getting when the paint didn't have a cover and was under a dollar. But you know I wasn't really thinking. After our stop at Zurchers, where my dad decided to buy a fake gold tooth and mustache just to embarrass me *says while cringing*, we went to Ulta, a shrine to all make up on earth, to buy the other things I needed.

Now for the actual costume part. Like the clothing. Oh, you know what I mean. I struggled with this for a while. How can I look like a porcelain doll without looking like I'm about to go to church? I was stumped on this for a few days. Luckily for me there's this store Dressed In White right by the Zurchers and Ulta that my dad just happened to see. So, later on that week we went back to that strip mall to look through that store. For those of you that are like, "You drove that far for a costume? Twice?" um no it was not just for the costume my mom works in Salt Lake and we pick her up everyday so hah!

Anyway, we walked into the store and literally everything in the store was white. I'm not even joking when I say the only thing that wasn't white was the color of the walls. So this cute little old lady comes up to my dad and me and asks what occasion we were buying the dress for. Yeah, didn't think about an answer for that question before walking into the store. I didn't want to offend her but . . . before I answered anything my dad gave me a hesitant look and then explained that it was for a Halloween costume. The lady went ballistic on my dad for assuming that we could just walk into her store that was for proper occasions, like communion, and buy a dress for a costume.

I'm totally kidding. She was so nice and helped me pick out the perfect dress for the costume. I got you there didn't I *terrible winky face* but we didn't tell her that I planned to get dirt all over the dress and rip it up a little so haha yeah. Ok back to the story. So I went home and tried on the dress with the make up and it was incredible.

I hope you enjoyed my rambling on about buying a costume but it was a pretty fun experience. Sometime soon I'm going to post a tutorial on how to do the make up, what you'll need for it and how to dirty up your dress. In that post I'll actually put a picture of me in the costume. I would show you now but I have to make sure you'll come back to my blog some how right? Let me know what you guys are doing for Halloween. See you soon!

DIY Fruit Infused Water

Hey guys! So let me start this post off by asking, how many of you like to drink soda? Probably a lot of you. Now I won't judge because I like to drink soda too. However, it's not the healthiest drink in the world as most of us know choose to ignore. I decided to try and find a healthier alternative to soda which brings me to the title of this post. I've always seen those pretty pictures of water in mason jars with fruit and mint like the one below.

image courtesy of greenblender.com

Now if you're smart you would probably would've followed a recipe from pages like this one. But why would I do that when I could come up with my own recipe right? So now I'll leave you to the recipe I wrote up. I'll be writing my tips at the end.

What You'll Need:

• 1 package of raspberries
• 1 package of blackberries
• water
• 2 small bowls
• 1 fork
• 1 glass/pitcher

Directions:

Rinse your raspberries to make sure that you get all of the dirt and leaves off. Then put your raspberries in a small bowl. Take your fork and mash up the raspberries to the texture of your liking. 

Do the same with the blackberries in your other small bowl.

Once you have your two bowls of mashed berries you have to options. The first is to pour a pitcher of water and mix the berries into that. The second is to pour a glass and mix spoonfuls of berries until it is to your liking.

Ta da! You have some berry infused water! You can totally do this with any other type of fruit. So one tip would be to leave some water in the bowls while mashing up the berries. The only other tip I have is to not think about how gross the mashed berries look. If you've ever seen the new version of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory the berries look a little like the mashed up caterpillars the oompa loompas eat. Yeah I know pretty gross.

Now let me just tell you some idiotic mistakes I made so you find some sort of joy in this post. As most of you probably don't know the tap water in Park City, UT is pretty contaminated with metals that you shouldn't really drink. Well I completely forgot about this and realized after I mashed the berries that I needed cold water. My parents don't put our bottled water in the fridge so I had to go get the water and wait for it to get cold. When I came back to the fridge I found that somebody had taken the bottle I put smack in the center of the fridge *cough cough* thanks a lot mom *cough*. Now yeah I probably could have used the tap water and yeah I probably could've mixed the berries into the room temperature water but eh.

So I guess I should probably compare the water to soda. Honestly the  mashed berry water wasn't all that bad. If you don't stock the soda in your house and replace it with the water it wouldn't be THAT bad. Try it out and see how you like it. I know I'll try replacing my soda with the infused water.

One last thing. I thought it would be a really good idea to put a few mason jars full of fruit pulp and juice that I could scoop into my glasses of water. I might also try putting protein powder in the mixture. Let me know what you guys think and if you want to see any more mixtures.

Well I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures into the DIY infused water world. See you soon!

Why and What Am I Blogging? (Introductory Post)

Hello and welcome to Fresh Advice! As the caption says this will be a blog about anything and everything. Basically what that means is I will be writing about whatever I feel like for at least the rest of the school year. Why the rest of the school year? Because at my school the Ninth Grade Honors English classes have to write a blog during the year. That's the whole reason I'm writing this. I know that a lot of my classmates don't want to write a blog and to be honest I'm not jumping with joy either. But I will say that I'm going to try my best to write a nice blog for the people who actually bother reading it. So, I'll talk about some topics that will be covered on this blog.

Although the name of the blog says "Advice" this blog will not be strictly advice. Something I will frequently blog about is some funny things that happen during the day. For example, say someone says something funny at lunch, it will probably end up being on the blog. There might also be a separate page for funny quotes on the blog after I get it all set up, but I'm still unsure. 

image courtesy of memegenrator.net

Another frequent type of post on my blog will be routines and DIY. In no way am I an expert in these two topics but they're things that I enjoy doing. I hope that you enjoy reading about these because some of the DIYs out there are pretty cool. *realizes that I sound like a complete nerd* But seriously they can be really interesting to try out with friends. 

Maybe I'll try these halloween costumes.

One thing I really enjoy looking for are interesting baking and drink recipes. They're pretty cool but who actually tries them right? Well, something I want to take away from this blogging experience is to try new things. That means that if I post a recipe it will also be a review on it. As the school year goes on I might end up just posting the recipes and not writing a review on them.

Lastly I will try to post about vacations I take during the school year. Because I competitively ski race we travel to different states a lot and I'll try to get a picture of them to post. Although, sometimes ski races get really time consuming and there's not time for a blog post. I can guarantee that I will try.

So right now I'm not sure how frequently I'll be posting but towards the end of the school year it will definitely be at least once a week. This is because the posts are graded more and more frequently towards the end of the school year. I'm thinking about doing a blog post every week, even when it's not required, but this whole blogging thing is still pretty new to me so we'll see where it goes.

I think that pretty much wraps up this post. I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with the internet. If you'd like to know more about me and my experiences go check out the about me page in the pages bar. Also, let me know if there is anything specific you want me to blog about. Thanks for reading my first post! See you soon!