Welcome to Autumn!! My favourite time of year - it's socially acceptable to drink tea and hot chocolate all the time, but it's still warm enough for only sweaters and scarves! This Autumn I am trying to start fresh with my financial responsibility. I know what you're all thinking: "Chels. You do this every year. Face it, it's never going to happen!!" But I swear, this time I'm going to do it! Instead of just saying I'm not going to spend money, I've set up  budget for myself, I am also planning a life over-haul. This time I'm going to simplify my life!!

I've been hearing more and more about minimalist lifestyles and I'm going to try it out to see how it works for me. There are 2 main reasons for this: the first being my financial strain, I shop all the time and it makes my life so cluttered. I will clean my room and a week later it's messy again - I own that much useless stuff. Honestly I'm in a terrible cycle of spending a ton of money and then getting so sad because I put myself into debt and when I finally pay it off I end up repeating the cycle. How dumb is that?!?! My second reason is my want to travel, I've been dreaming of traveling the world since I was a spring chicken. But I've never been disciplined enough to save enough money to finance my travel plans. It's frustrating to realize all I want is life experience, and I'm wasting more money than I make on material items. I'm ready to make a change. For good.

This Monday starts the first week of my journey as a self proclaimed minimalist! (Most definitions of the minimalist lifestyle say a minimalist is someone who likes to keep things simple, and uses minimal supplies.) So for my first week I decided to start off simple and give myself 3 challenges to get the ball rolling:

1. Pack my lunch/dinner every day - DO NOT BUY COFFEE
2. Take the bus to school, don't spend $8 a day on parking!
3. Sort through my bottoms and decide what I will keep and what will be given away

There you have it, my first three tasks to simplify my life! You can see that I'm starting off quite small, I'm trying to set small achievable goals so that I'll actually get them done. I know I won't be able to sort though my whole wardrobe, but going through my pants is totally doable. Every time I check something of this list I'll get a sense of accomplishment and I think that'll keep me going!! 
Tell me some of your tips for simplifying your lives, I'd love the help!!

It's that time of year again. All your favourite bloggers are promoting the Nordstrom sale like crazy and Instagram has become full of the #nsale. There's nothing wrong with that, I think it's great that bloggers are able to support a store they love while earning on their blog!! However, I cannot get into the Nordstrom sale, I truly don't think it's worth it. 

Ever since I was a little girl my dad has been trying to teach me the value of a dollar (he'll be the first to tell you that his pursuit hasn't been overly successful...). However a couple of his lessons have always stuck with me: keep your eyes peeled for sales, don't spend money on services you can do yourself, and always shop for quality. This is where my issue with Nordstrom begins!! They don't stock quality!! Yes there are high end brands, but Burberry bags never go on sale. 

While scanning through some of my favourite blogs and their #nsale posts I fell in love with a sweater. It's long, loose, grey, and slouchy - perfect for fall! Seeing that it was included in the Nordstrom sale I was so excited, but following my dads advice I looked up what the sweater was made of: 39% acrylic, 31% nylon, 28% wool, 2% spandex. In my opinion that is not a good quality sweater, nylon has a tendency to run/pull easily and acrylic fabric is very cheap. That sweater is probably only worth $60 full price but that was the sale price - this cheap sweater was originally $90 CAD. And that, my friends, is the issue with this sale. You get so excited because items are marked down, but the reduced prices are still way too much money for the item because they're not good quality. 

While I'm not a fan of the sale, I did go to Nordstrom to check everything out. (I think I was also hoping to see that beautiful sweater and it to suddenly be better quality, or more on sale.) 

I'm a broke student who is trying desperately to save money, and I'm willing to bet my favourite bag that a lot of you guys are too. Therefor I think you all will appreciate my honest opinion - if you're considering ordering online I would seriously reconsider!! 

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Confessions of a Shopaholic is basically my life story. I am obsessed with bags and shoes and somehow always want the most expensive ones. I have caviar taste and a canned tuna budget. Instead of spending my whole budget on 1 really nice item I decided I would try to find designer items a slightly different way! Thrift Shopping!!!

I'm loving thrift shopping right now, not only can you find designer items for a fraction of the price; you can also find really interesting and unique pieces to add to your collection. (Keep an eye out for a post coming up about cool vintage shoes.) I found these Badgley Mischka pumps at a local thrift shop for $98 plus an additional 70% off. So I got these beautiful $200 shoes for $30!! 

I know that these are a bit ridiculous, they're super tall and covered in glitter. But $30 is a good price for a pair of fun and flirty shoes even if they're not designer - a pair of designer shoes for that price is a really good deal. These are used shoes so there is bit of wear and tear, you can see the leather is a bit faded around the toe and the insole is torn a bit in the right shoe. But honestly, for the low price I paid I am willing to deal with these things! 

Have any of you guys found great deals like this lately? Hopefully some of you guys will stumble upon a great find like this and fall in love with thrifting!! 

Happy Monday - enjoy the week everyone!

Hola! Once again I took a hiatus to try and figure out my own life... Being a young adult is really crappy sometimes. 

This post is going to be uber short, but I wanted to let the internet know that I'm back and ready to roll! I have lots of ideas for content for here and want to start pumping some out! I can't say I won't take another hiatus in the Fall (I'm taking a University level French course...). But I can promise I'll always only post things that I'm proud of and fully stand behind. 

​I'm so happy to be back! 

I've been a fan of Lululemon since I was 10 years old, it's super cute workout wear, awesome customer service and best of all it's Canadian! However it is an extremely expensive brand, you also need to be willing to spend a lot of time on your laundry because Lulu products should almost always be hung to dry (even if the tag says differently).

I have some Lulu products from over 5 years ago that have lasted amazingly well. In fact, my very first item from Lululemon is a sports bra that I sill use, it's still in almost perfect condition. That being said, I have Lululemon products from 1 year ago that are pilling and coming apart at the seams. I think the brand started to go downhill as soon as they started outsourcing their production. Their fabric just isn't what it used to be but the prices keep rising!! 

In high school I only owned 1 sports bra: which was Lulu, and danced in it every single day, but this bra is still going strong it's not even slightly pilled! However the leggings I bought last year are extremely pilled and stretching out like crazy. I'm sad to say that Lululemon is not worth the money, I love the designs and the fact that it's Canadian, however their quality has been steadily declining and I don't see it getting better anytime soon. 

Final Verdict: Not worth the money, especially if you want longevity from your workout wear! Sorry Lulu but you've changed and I think we need to see other people. 

Hey guys!! So sorry for my absence, I have been completely swamped the past 2 months and haven't been able to post! But I'm back and should hopefully be posting on a regular schedule. 

Today I wanted to show you guys what I do with my empty perfume bottles. A lot of perfume bottles are absolutely adorable and it seems wasteful to just throw them away! So instead I make crafts with them. I've seen a lot of people put flowers into their old bottles; which, I think is adorable. I like to fill mine with glitter to spruce up my dresser or desk in a subtle way. 

Step 1: Honestly, this way the hardest part! To get the spritzer off of the perfume bottle I twisted and pulled to loosen it. I then took a steak knife and tried to wedge it under the cap (definitely be careful at this part). I kept repeating these steps until I could pull the spritz/cap completely off!

Step 2: Rinse your bottle to get rid of any old perfume dregs, I added a tiny bit of soap and swished it around before rinsing about a million times. Place your bottle upside down on a towel to dry!

Step 3: Fill your bottle with glitter! I chose a rock glitter with finer sparkles mixed in; which, I got from Dollarama for $2. I would recommend using a funnel for this part, but if you don't have one a piece of paper rolled up works perfect! 

To finish this off I just placed the old top back onto the bottle!

There you have it: a super cute and easy way to repurpose your perfume bottles. I think this looks so cute on my dresser with all my other favourite perfumes. (You can see I'm getting low on my current bottle of Daisy!!) 

I've missed this outlet and I'm happy to finally be back! Thanks for sticking around!!

You know the aisle right before you pay in Sephora, it has all of the 'cheap' products that are really just test sizes so it feels like you're spending less money on your favourite products? That is where I found this and decided to purchase it because I loved the Glamglow Powercleanse face mask. Before I talk about this, I want to tell you that I used this for about a month, I know you should try something for two or three, but after one month I could tell this wasn't the product for me. 

This product is supposed to change from a mud formula to a 'gentle, effective foaming lather to dissolve oil, make-up and impurities" it's also formulated to target problematic skin. First things first, where is my super effective foaming lather? It did not appear, I just felt like I was rubbing mud on my face. Gross! Second, the black mud colour did not disappear easily, I had to scrub to get it off and even then my skin had a weird grey tinge to it. I'm a big believer in being gentle to my skin, especially when I'm trying to cleanse it and this product was just so harsh! I had to scrub my skin raw and pull on my face to get the mud off. I was only able to work the product into a lather once, and it was the most pathetic lather ever! In terms of taking your make-up off I think the Supercleanse did an okay job, nothing spectacular and probably not good enough to justify the $45 price point (thankfully I bought the $16 version). 

I'm sorry you guys, I know I usually review things with a more positive spin. But I usually buy things that have been recommended to me so they're usually pretty good. This was such a disappointment to me and I really wanted to love this, but just couldn't get on board. I do not recommend this product, but if you still really want to try it then I would suggest asking your Sephora rep to give you a sample!