(upbeat music)
(sipping tea)
- So recently I've been kind of bad.
(laughs)
Not bad but I've just been very lazy
and have been procrastinating on a lot of things.
The post-holiday period is always kind of weird for me,
it's been so hard for me to get back into the work mindset
I guess, because when you're on holidays
you're like permanently on rest vacation mode
and it's been hard for me to switch out of that,
so the past week I've really, really fallen behind
on a lot of things that I should have been doing.
I've been trying to be better
to myself about taking rests and breaks.
I feel like in the past whenever
I would take a break, I would feel almost bad about it
and I would yell at myself and say like,
Amanda why are you taking a break?
You don't deserve to take a break.
But this year, my goal is really to learn how to take rest
and be okay with it because it's really important
and it's kind of hard for me
to untrain myself from that mindset
because I am so used to like work, work, work, work, work.
So you know what, it's okay that I did took a week off,
procrastinating on all my tasks,
that just means I need to work harder today.
So I've assigned today
as like my productive catch-up day post-holiday
which will be good.
I'm actually going to like get ready
and everything today,
I've mentioned this before
but getting ready is really therapeutic to me.
If I just stay in my pajamas all day
and try to work from home in my pajamas
there's no separation in the day
which means my mind is still in sleep mode,
so getting ready even though I'm not going out anywhere
we're still kind of on lock down here in Toronto
and I work from home obviously
so I don't need to get ready technically
but it really does help
so I've been trying to do that a lot more
and I've found that it helps me a lot with my productivity.
So I'm gonna do that.
Wear your sunscreen kiddos even if you're inside.
(upbeat music)
Okay, I finished my makeup,
I'm just gonna eat a little bit of breakfast
while my hair air dries a bit
and then I'll quickly do my hair
and then we'll get started with the work day.
So let's get it.
(spoon clinks)
I'm just eating some, what type of loaf is this?
It's like ginger bread loaf, it's pretty good,
it tastes really good with coffee.
(upbeat music)
Okay, looks like my hair is fully dry now
so I'm gonna quickly curl it a little bit
and guys, I've been getting so many comments
and questions from you guys about my hair recently,
I don't know what it is.
Every time I look in the comments of my videos,
there's a top comment about my hair
and then even during my streams
and in my DMs people have been asking me
like how I saw my hair.
They say that it's been looking so much healthier
which I am very happy and proud of because I agree,
I think it's been looking a lot healthier and a lot better.
The kind of like an underlying journey
on this channel of me regaining my hair health
after doing that whole bleached thing.
I wanted to quickly run down what I've been doing
with my hair in terms of hair care.
This video is sponsored by Function of Beauty
so thank you to them.
If you guys don't know about Function of Beauty yet,
they are actually the current shampoo
and conditioner line that I'm using
and basically on their website, you can fill out
a two minute hair care personalization quiz.
So it's really customizable and personal,
they even print your name on your shampoo
and conditioner bottles which I think is really cute.
And of course the most important part
is what's actually going on in your hair.
So it is a 100% vegan cruelty-free
and there's no parabens sulfates, toxins or GMOs.
This is my current formula,
mine is super focused on hair health, hair repair,
hydration, shine, all of that and I love it,
I've been using the same formula for the full year.
This is actually my second bottles,
these are my empties from this year.
One of my all-time favorite scents in the world is Pare
and they actually have that as a send option
so mine is Pare scented, I love it
and you can even choose no fragrance at all
which is great if you're really sensitive to fragrance
and perfumes and stuff like that.
And then finally, in terms of products
the only other thing that I use in my hair
is the hair serum, the Function of Beauty hair serum,
and with this, all I do is I pump a couple pumps in my hand,
run it through the bottom half of my hair when it's damp
and then it just adds that extra little bit of shine
after I've styled it, it looks great, I love it.
If you guys wanna try out Function of Beauty for yourself
I'll be sure to leave a link in the description box below
for 20% off your first order.
Yeah, that's everything in terms of hair care.
I'm gonna go ahead and style my hair.
(upbeat music)
So there's only a few strands left,
I want to show you quickly how I curl my hair.
Basically, I'm just using this like one inch curling wand,
it just has a clamp
and instead of wrapping it around the barrel like this
which I find gives you like very croissant hair,
like I don't know, it's very twisty not as natural,
personally I want like S waves in my hair
so what I've been doing recently
is I'll just take a strand of my hair
and I'll start at the very top at the base
so that it gets more volume
coz you know, you wanna curve downwards.
So I'll literally just clamp it like this
and then I'm holding my hair kind of loosely.
Once I've held it for like a few seconds,
you see there's like a dent there
and I just switch my wrist, kind of like that
so that now it goes under and wraps around.
So you're creating that like S shape
and then I'm gonna do it, I hope you guys can see well
and then once you hold it on there
you twist your wrist again
so that now the clamp is going over.
The only thing that I like to make sure is that the ends
are always curving inwards towards my face like that.
And then once I do that
like look at how perfectly wavy that curl is.
(chuckles)
I didn't mean for this whole blog
to become about my hair but we're going with it.
(sighs)
I just burn myself.
(mumbles).
In order to get even more volume,
I'll just take the top layer of my hair
and just hold the curling iron
so that you get like more volume of top.
You want your hair to cool in that position,
I'll just take these clips and clip my hair
so that the volume is up like that
but they're just these like cloth clips
and I'm literally clipping the volume up together.
Look kind of funny but it cools down
like that, which is nice.
What I like about this method is that
I don't need to put in a lot of product.
A lot of people will put in like dry shampoo
and sea salt spray and all of it
and then your hair just feels super crunchy
but I feel like all ready
I haven't even added any products to it,
my hair looks pretty natural
which means I can reduce the amount
of products that I put in my hair.
Sometimes I'll just spray some hairspray
or something in it but that's pretty much it.
I'm gonna let down my little sprouts now
now that they've cooled down, there you go.
Like, look at all that volume,
all right, there we go, hair done, let's get it.
I need to stop saying, let's get it
I just don't know how to end off blog clips.
(inhales)
(gentle music)
(desktop keyboard clattering)
(gentle music continues)
All right, lunchtime,
but lunch I'm just eating some leftovers.
I have some Brussels sprouts and vegetables,
I feel like it doesn't look that appetizing
but it's just vegetables.
And then I have some turkey meatballs here
so I'm just gonna eat that.
This morning I finished a lot of
the desk work that I had to do,
a lot of times, my mornings will be dedicated
to administrative things like emails,
that's also when I'll bullet journal
to plan out the rest of my day,
what else I need to do for the week
any calls or meetings that I have to do
for shop stuff kind of around the morning period.
But after lunch, after I finish eating,
I'm probably just gonna,
Oh I need to record a voice over for my video, upload that
and then I'm think I need to head out to the bank
and the post office to get some other errands done.
Kind of a random boring day
but that's also pretty much most of the days
during Toronto lockdown quarantine.
I've gotten used to it
but of course it's been kind of tough,
especially living alone during lockdown.
I'm obviously I'm very lucky and grateful
that I'm able to have a job
and still work and be healthy during all of this
but living alone during the pandemic
has been an interesting struggle for me
and I think a lot of other people who live alone can relate.
I consider myself an introvert
so at the beginning I was like
I don't need to go to any of my social obligations,
I can stay at home, I'm definitely a home body
but now that I really don't have the choice
it's kind of like,
wow I really took for granted social interactions.
If any of you guys are living alone during lockdown
let me know what you've been doing to stay safe
and I feel like that could be its own support group.
For me it's just been trying to find small ways
to break out of that really redundant routine,
like yesterday I went skating a little bit, that was good.
But other than that, I don't know.
I feel like I'm a fish in a fishbowl
like swimming around the same small radius in my apartment.
(chuckles)
But it's okay. We'll make it through guys.
(upbeat music)
I'm gonna record my voice over now,
this is actually my least favorite part of making a video.
I don't know what it is about recording voiceovers
but I hate it.
I think it's because at that point
the video is so close to being done
and I just want it to be out in the world
and the only thing stopping me is speaking into a microphone
which I end up messing up a ton and rerecording a lot
which is funny because a lot of you guys say that
you find my voice relaxing during the bullet journal videos.
I get two comments, it's either your voice is relaxing
or two, you sound like you're about to cry
or you sound like you're sick.
Which one is it?
(upbeat music)
I'm finally done, the video I finish the voiceover
it took me a lot longer than I expected,
it looks weird later right now because in Toronto
it gets pitch-black at like 4:00 PM.
Oh my God, why am I so out of it right now?
I'm gonna publish it literally right now
and it is up my friends.
Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to do a lot
of the things like the outside errands
that I had been meaning to do today.
I wanted to go to the bank
to do some like bank transfer things
and then drop stuff off at
(indistinct)
but that'll have to wait for tomorrow
because everything is closed now.
What I think I'm gonna do is clean my closet.
I'm a little embarrassed to show you guys this,
my closet is actually a ridiculous mess
and I've been living with it like that for the past week.
Whenever I put off these tasks
I make it seem like such a big deal
and then once I actually finish I'm like, wow, Amanda
that really wasn't as hard as you made it out to be.
So I'm sure it'll be fine, but I'll show you guys
this closet is an actual mess
and that'll take us right to dinner time
so I'll probably have to get some groceries
or something and make some food after that.
I don't really want to talk about this.
(laughs)
The drawers don't even close,
I don't even know how I've been getting stuff
out of my closet.
I've just been squeezing my fingers through the cracks
to try to grab anything. I need to fix that.
(indistinct)
Look at this. Marie Kondo would be losing her mind
if she saw this.
How do I let it get to this point?
(upbeat music)
Guys look, the drawers actually close, it's a success.
All right, I'm just going to go ahead out
and get some groceries for dinner.
(upbeat music)
(dramatic music)
(water flowing)
(knife chopping)
(cooking)
(dramatic music continues)
Worked up a sweat cooking, but I finished.
It's just pasta with vegetables,
I put some cherry tomatoes, zucchini, red onion
garlic, mushrooms and then this is beyond meat sausage,
which is pretty good.
I'm really not the greatest cook in the world
this probably like the extent of my cooking capabilities
just stir frying vegetables and throwing pasta with it
but whenever I do cook, I just make sure to make a lot of it
so that I don't need to for the next couple of days
coz I'm very lazy.
Cooking is just so much effort,
I don't know how people cook every day.
Pretty good, you can never go wrong with pasta.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so I should probably wrap up this video
because I'm about to pass out from a pasta induced coma.
Every time I eat pasta
I just want to curl up into a ball and sleep
(sighs)
I think I'm losing it guys.
I hope you guys enjoyed hanging out with me today,
I always feel like these blogs are kind of boring
but then you guys say you enjoy them
so hopefully seeing my semi-productive day
was entertaining in some way.
Amanda you did well, you did enough today,
pat yourself on the back.
You guys too, pat yourself on the back.
For the rest of the night,
I'm probably just going to chill a bit
maybe clean up a bit more around my apartment,
coz there's still some clutter and stuff.
And then maybe listen to some music on my record player
which I do every night, but this was fun.
I hope you have an awesome day.
Keep doodling and I will talk to you in the next video.
Bye guys.
(upbeat music)