Life on Long Island: My Drunken Karaoke Experience

Drunken karaoke is probably one of the best things on this entire planet. Living in the quiet suburbs of Long Island, sometimes I just need to get out and get rowdy. I used to do this on the regular, but I'd stopped going out after my PCOS diagnosis and subsequent weight gain. Since I'm on this journey of self-acceptance and self-love, I said to myself "F&ck it, I'm dolling myself up, going out and getting drunk."

I have no shame in my bathroom picture game.Shirt: Fashion to Figure | Leggings: Kohl's | Shoes: Payless

This night was actually monumental in more ways than one. For the first time in a long time, I felt so good, and it wasn't just because of those delicious blue tropical Long Island iced teas that I'd be drinking all night. I felt confident. My hair was done, my makeup was done and I wore heels! Granted, my feet were killing me the next day, but beauty is pain, amirite?

Falling In Love With Your Bad Self ❤️

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Listen, people. I’m not going to go ahead and tell you I’m totally loving myself and perfectly confident and my life is perfect, because that’s not really the case. I still have so many insecurities and, many times, I’m uncertain about a lot of things. But, I’d say probably a couple of weeks ago, I had one of those epiphany-type things and was like, “Whelp, I’m ready to love myself because I’m really sick of feeling like shit all the time.”

I was diagnosed with PCOS last year and, one year before that, I started to show all of those annoying symptoms. I gained weight. My hormones went all out-of-whack. The hairs under my chin started showing themselves a little more than usual. And, before you knew it, I’d stopped caring about myself (which was something I seriously, seriously did back in 2012 and 2013, when I had just turned 21). I actually loved myself, like, SO MUCH, despite going through a bunch of crap with my ex at the time, who took pride in putting me down and making me feel bad.

After a lot of thinking time, reading some self-help books and indulging in numerous self-love blogs , I recently decided that it’s time to stop “waiting on my weight” (and all the other crap that’s been putting me down) and take control of my feelings.

I can’t give you a step-by-step guide to falling in love with yourself, but I can tell you some of things I’ve felt over the past few days. The easiest way to love your life is by loving yourself first. And so, in honor of International Women’s Day, I want to tell you why you should love the beautiful, amazing woman that you are!

A Letter to Myself 10 Years Ago: Volume I

Dear 15-Year-Old Self,

You’re 15, flirty and thriving. High school is a blast, isn’t it? Cute boys are everywhere, and since you developed your feminine assets at such a young age, you can be quite the center of attention, even though you’re only a freshman.

Enjoy this time and embrace your womanhood! You tried out for the school play a month ago and you landed the role of Jan in Grease, which has made you feel like you’re on top of the world. In fact, finding out that you landed a big role in one of your favorite stories of all time was probably the best feeling you’d ever felt. However, while I’ve got your attention, there are some things, good and bad, that I want to tell you.

Six Unwritten Rules of Successful Blogging

It's kind of funny; I don't have as many readers as I'd like to have on here (yet!) but, lately, people have been approaching me and asking me how to start a blog.

I’ve been an avid blogger since the very young age of just 13. I’ve used all the sites – LiveJournal, Xanga, Blogger, WordPress and even Tumblr. As a journalism major at Hofstra University, I had to learn all aspects of communications – print, broadcast and, perhaps most importantly, digital (including social media and blogging). My former classmates and I were told that blogging is essential to establishing ourselves and our brands as freelance journalists and writers.

Blogs can be used for anything and everything. You want to make a blog and only write about your favorite movies released from 1980 to 1985? Do it! Want to create a blog and cater all of your posts to your cat? Why not?! Do you want to start a blog and use it to get people to buy your business products? Sure!

No matter what kind of blog you're planning on launching, there’s a lot of ‘unwritten rules’ in the world of blogging, and I’d love to share some of them with you.

Kitchen thangs: Using shelves when you're out of cabinets

My house is a little weird. I love my house, don't get me wrong, but there's a couple of weird things about it that I definitely want to improve. Like, the fact that my house has four bedrooms and a ton of closet space, but only one bathroom with no closet or vanity. And the fact that there's two decent-sized bedrooms upstairs and three closets, but absolutely no plumbing and no thermostat up there. And there's no dining room, which kind of sucks because it's super hard to entertain guests. The other weird thing about my house is the lack of cabinet space in my relatively small kitchen.

When I first took a tour of the house, I knew right off the bat that the kitchen would need the most work. The walls were a dirty white with only the tiniest of cabinets and a greasy, broken microwave. With a little TLC and creativity, we managed to make our kitchen a liiiittttle bit more practical AND pretty!