It's April and that means Cherry Blossom season, which often spans over a week or two where the flowers open to their fullest potential before falling away for another year. Now while I don't have a chance to experience such wonder and splendor since I believe the flowers opened in early February or March in California and went away in a matter of a few days, I know the lucky ones living in the East Coast and better yet, in Japan, will be able to experience it for themselves.

Courtesy: Sakura Hotel Hatagaya

In Japan, they have parties or rather picnics around this time of year, where they gather in parks and have a massive picnic with friends and family and just sit there to enjoy the flowers. Sometimes alcohol is involved and almost most certainly involved if it is a company function, but otherwise, I think it seems like a very awesome experience.

After all, nothing screams ethereal beauty like delicate petals floating down from dozen of trees.

Courtesy: Onlien Travelers Guide

However, just because you can't enjoy the beauty of the celebration on the West Coast doesn't mean that you still can't celebrate it through fashion. I know for a sure fact that San Francisco has a Cherry Blossom festival every year where thousands of people go to enjoy the festivities and the food of Japan.

As for me, I think I'll dedicate this month to wearing softer colors like shades of pink, peach and white. I admit, a large portion of my wardrobe rotates between black, shades of gray and shades of blue. So it'll be a challenge, that's for sure.

I think I'll start with some pink nail polish and work my way up.

Essie in French Affair, essie.com, $8

Pure, soft, romantic and simple by romanticgirl featuring gold stud earrings

Hula hooping always came naturally to me when I was a kid. I don't even remember learning to hula hoop because as long as I remembered, I was good at it. In fact, I taught my aunt how to hula hoop. Though at that time, it was easier said than done. I don't think telling her "to move like this, like me" was much help, but I like to say that I was the inspiration that sparked her interest in hula hooping. But hula hooping wasn't for everybody and I quickly learned that when I was trying to teach my mom and my other aunts how to do it. Their reactions after a few dozen tries were quite similar to the reactions of the people in this comic.

So why do I bring it back up now? Well, after years of not touching a hula hoop (pretty much since elementary school and beyond) I decided to pick it up again. But instead of playing around with the flimsy hoops I've used back when I was a kid, I decided to try out the heavier hoops designed for adults -- specifically to lose weight. In college, due to my erratic eating habits, I've gained a couple of pounds over the course of three and a quarter years. I've been wanting to lose it ever since I've got home, but didn't know what approach to go for it. 

While my eating schedule has been more routine lately, I knew that these pounds weren't going to drop themselves without some exercise. I was never much of a runner and now that I'm home, I can't use Just Dance and just dance the weight off, so I decided I'll pick up hula hooping again. I invested in one of the weighted hoops and have been hooping for the past two weeks.

At first, I was apprehensive about starting again because my first thoughts were: what if I completely forgot how to hoop? I mean, it's entirely possible considering I have little to no recognition of any of the Calculus I learned previously in high school. But unlike the Calculus I learned in high school, picking up the hula hoop was like picking up a bicycle again for me.

I was afraid for nothing.

So what's my progress? Let's just say it was a brutal start. You never know that you can get bruises on your waist until you use a weighted hoop. The appearance can be unsightly and the pain makes it so that I can only use it about 10 minutes at a time. But gradually, I've increased it to about 20 minutes and surely I'll be up to half an hour before the end of this month. I haven't been tracking my results that closely, but I do feel healthier and my organs seem to get an intense massage every morning and it's a whole lots more entertaining than running -- at least for me.

For the first 18 years of my life, I had a love and hate relationship with makeup, simply because I failed in putting it on without either poking my eyeball or applying too much. Even for my high school prom, I didn't really wear much makeup, at least nothing that was really noteworthy. I was lucky I didn't stab myself in the eyeball when I wore eyeliner that night. So why is it that, fast forward, three years later, I'm actually wearing more makeup than before?

I suppose college happened.

I went from a fresh faced 17 year old to a 21 year old who wears eyeliner, mascara and concealer (absolutely needed when you go to college) when she goes out to work or to the mall. Even so, I still consider myself a novice in makeup. I semi-mastered the eyeliner flick and I can curl my lashes and put on mascara like a pro now, but eyeshadow is still undiscovered territory for me. Translation: I stick to one shade when it comes to eyeshadow and I try not to blend too high up because it looks strange on my Asian eyes.

Anyways, onward to my usual routine:

1. SEPHORA EYESHADOW PALETTE: I bought this around half a year ago and it has loads of different colors arranged into separate little mini palettes that you can pop out and stick into a case and toss it into your bag. It's very useful if you don't like lugging a huge box around and you know what kind of color scheme you're going for. I usually use the ashy gray to fill in my brows and the brown/taupes, grays and copper on a daily basis.

2. ELF Studio Brushes: I got these on sale. Their set of brushes usually retail for about $27 without shipping but they were having a storewide 60% off that day and I got them for only around $11 dollars and then I split the shipping with my roommate. They're great brushes for the price and quality.

3. LANEIGE SNOW BB CREAM: It has a SPF of 41, which is slightly strange, but it works really well in covering my blemishes. For those who are not familiar with BB Cream, the consistency is somewhat between a concealer and tinted moisturizer and most of them are multi-purpose. They have properties that ranges from fading acne scars to whitening/brightening your skin. If anybody wants a more in-depth explanation and swatches, just leave me a comment below.

4. URBAN DECAY PRIMER POTION: I think this one doesn't need an introduction. It's considered a Holy Grail product by makeup gurus and it does the job well in keeping your eyeshadow and even your eyeliner put without creasing or smearing. One tube lasts me almost more than a year so it's completely worth buying.

5. SHISEIDO EYELASHER CURLER: I've mentioned this before in a previous post about how my stubborn lashes won't stay up unless I use elephant strength, but this baby here does the job so I use it practically every day. If I'm in a rush, I always make sure that my lashes are at least curled because it gives the impression that I am more awake.

6. MAYBELLINE INSTANT AGE REWIND, ERASER DARK CIRCLES IN NEUTRALIZER: I use this for my dark eye circles and yes, I use it in the neutralizer shade rather than...an actual shade. The color is more yellow so it fits my skin a lot better. It diminishes my dark circles and I also use it around my nose.

7. CLINIQUE DRAMATICALLY DIFFERENT MOISTURIZING GEL: What I currently use as my moisturizer. This product is also considered HG to many makeup gurus and I understand the hype. It's very moisturizing and it's pretty light and blends into the skin effortlessly. The only thing I don't like is how it doesn't have SPF.

8. MAYBELLINE BABY LIPS IN PINK PUNCH: I've also mentioned this before in a previous post and between this and my EOS balm, they're pretty much my go-to at the moment.

9. EOS BALM IN STRAWBERRY SMOOTHIE: On the days I don't want to go natural, I grab my EOS balm. It's moisturizing without being sticky and it doesn't have any discernible taste.

10. MAC BLACK TRACK FLUIDLINE: Another HG product. I recently acquired it and it's by far one of the best gel liners I've used. It goes on smoothly and is jet black. It doesn't smudge until I remove it at night and lasts forever. There's a lot of product in the pot, so much that I wonder if I'll be able to use it all before the gel dries out.

Leave me a comment if you want a more in-depth review of any of the products.

So recently, my hometown (okay, it's more of a massive metropolitan, but doesn't it sound nicer and more homely when you use "hometown") decided to get rid of plastic bags from supermarkets and the majority of most shopping centers and stores. I say a "majority" because to be honest, I'm not so sure myself about the "rules" because some clothing stores still give out bags while some clothing stores will charge you per bag. But one thing is for sure, plastic bags have been eradicated from supermarkets unless you are willing to cough up 10 cents up to $1 per bag.

Needless to say, most people don't.

So now, what do you do whenever you decide to go on a supermarket run? You bring reusable bags! Now reusable bags aren't a new thing, but they've been mostly under the radar because nobody paid much attention to them when you have plastic bags. But now that it's mandated, supermarkets, big megamarts and even clothing stores are marketing their "own" tote bags to shoppers. The one problem I find with most reusable bags are that...you simply forget to bring them.

You throw a couple in the trunk of your car with full intentions of using them the next time that you're out shopping, but more than once, you'll forget because "plastic bags" are still too deeply engrained into your minds. I have done it countless of times these past two months. As a result I end up either returning to grab my bag and lug it around or I stuff the things I bought into my purse. It's not a pleasant sight, to say the least. There were occasions where I've seen people coming out of the supermarket juggling a gallon of milk, a box of cheerios, a couple apples and some bananas, all because they forgot their bags.

Well fear not, the dark ages of forgetting is ending because I have discovered the solution.

Reusable & Foldable in Cute Strawberry Design Shopping Bag, meritline.com, $1.99

Voila! They look like a bunch of harmless strawberries, something that you see when you're browsing through a store, but they're actually, foldable reusable bags.

Presto chango, they unfold into a tote that you can use to store anything from groceries down to article of clothing.

Courtesy: meritline.com

I've never realized the practicality of this little strawberry (I received one as a gift years ago.) until I decided to bring it along with me one day when I went to Target. I looped it onto the handle of my purse and left it hanging like an accessory and when it came to checking out, I pulled it out, unwrapped it and placed everything inside. Now granted, the bag is a bit flimsy and thin because it has to be for it to be able to fit inside the strawberry, but it does a pretty good job holding everything and that included a carton of eggs that day.

More and more companies are also releasing their own types of unfoldable bags, but thus far the strawberries are the cutest ones I've seen. They are fairly cheap, come in a multiple of colors and are reasonably small so that you can throw them into your purses or hang them on your backpack or on the handles of your bags.

So tell me, what are your thoughts on going green and eliminating plastic bags? And would you buy and use a strawberry if your city did?

Fee-fi-fo-fum. There goes the girl with the wide feet.

Okay. So maybe it doesn't rhyme, but I never said I was a poet. Now why in the world did I decide to start my article with a saying that you'd see in a Mother Goose's nursery rhyme book? Well that's because for the longest time, I truly believed that I had hideous feet. Since then, I've gotten over it, but I'm still envious when girls are able to squeeze into those perfect pair of heels or into ballet flats without stretching them out.

Yes, I admit it. I have wide feet. And not only wide feet. Wide thick feet as it raises up higher than the majority of people out there.

Alexander McQueen Braided Multi-strap Leather Sandals, theoutnet.com, $493 (sale)

So shoes like the ones above with all the straps and doo-dads feel pretty much like bondage wrapping around my feet. I can't even get my feet through halfway. Usually when something like this happens, I go a shoe size up, but at that point, it fits in the front, but is too loose in the back. For many girls who were born with wide feet, sneakers were often our choice in footwear and usually the wider the shoe the better (because Pumas and Converses were also one of the offenders when it came to wide feet). In my case, I went through middle school and a majority of my high school wearing Vans because they were incredibly roomy.

Vans Rowley Shambles, blackholeboards.com, $45.49 (sale)

They weren't the most fashionable pair of shoes I owned, but they sure were the most comfortable. Although as I got to college, I began to experiment (in terms of shoes) and I wanted to wear flats, boots, sandals and heels. The only problem was, I never knew which one would fit well. It also didn't help that most shoes made for wide-feet were unflattering, to say the least. They didn't possess the same "prettiness" that you can only find in normal size shoes. Not only that, while most of my friends ordered their shoes online, I wasn't able to do the same because once again, the wide feet STRIKE again.

So for a poor college student, I spent the majority of my three and a quarter years in college in pain, for the sake of beauty and fashion. I'm sure we all went through that phase before. But eventually I found comfort in Payless who often carries wide shoes in a handful of cute designs.

Lower East Side Chelsea Flats, payless.com, $16.99

For instance, I purchased this pair of flats and by far, they are the most comfortable flats I've owned...after finally breaking into them. But even so, I endured the momentary scrapes and bruises so that I could finally obtain a pair of flats that looked flattering for my feet. They still didn't have the same delicate appearance, but they were the closest thing that I could ever get to perfection -- at least with my current budget anyways.

As for heels, I'm still walking the fine line between purchasing heels that fit well, but look drabby and relatively unfashionable or fighting against the pain and wearing shoes that don't fit me perfectly, but leaves me feeling sexy, but bruised. I believe that one day a shoe designer out in the fashion world will make a shoe that looks just as good on wide feet as it does on normal feet.

For all the wide feet girls out there, don't ever settle. There is a perfect shoe out there for all the Cinderellas in us. Even if it means that glass slipper has be a smidge wider.