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oneeyeddestroyer · 5 years

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Sharing Skin: The Home Game (Part 1)

Atmospheric and sensual, Sharing Skin has produced a handful of you mentioning just how much it makes you want a good bath. The goal of the prose was to create a unmistakable relaxing vibe with just the right touch of decadence. The bulk of my planning period for this fic was crafting the delicate details of each bath, piece by piece. Every aroma, every color, every bubble, every bath bomb, every drink, all the way down to the flower petals and the snacks, was hand picked to build an ambiance (as Eliot would say) and indicate the overall mood of the characters in that scene.

As a little treat, I wanted to curate some of my favorite bath essentials*. Recipes, products, mood lighting and wine pairings for your nerves!

We’re going to take it bath by bath to help you guys recreate the magic of each chapter. That was super fucking cheesy, but I bet you lived for it anyway. I think El and Margo are really starting to rub off on me. 😉

Bath One: What We Deserve

Upon entering the room, Margo’s fingers twist intricately and the room fills with cool, flickering light. She’s always loved the way Eliot’s skin looks in blue.

The first bath is pretty simple: brisk, refreshing air, cool toned lighting, sparkling wine, bubbles and a quick smoke.

While I can’t magically alter the tone and color of the lighting, I do have this pretty fucking best oil diffuser with color changing lights. There are a few really neat ones on the market, and I’ll link to a couple I have personal experience with. Easy to use, you add a few drops of essential oil into a small amount of water in the basin, and let it do all the work of diffusing a fine, gorgeously scented mist of your own creation. The lights change color in a slow, fluid movement, and some can be made to maintain a single color light with soft pulsing effects. Mine is Bluetooth compatible so I can play all the Enya I want as I take a soak.

Recommendations:

1. Colorful Essential Oil Diffuser

2. Ultrasonic Bluetooth Oil Diffuser

If you’re a drinker, sparkling wine is easily the best part of any bath. A nice, chilled wine is both refreshing and lovely balance to the heat of the bath—it doesn’t hurt to have a glass of ice water in the side as well. I’m not a huge fan of proper champagne, so I’ll share some of my favorite sparkling wines instead.

Something Dry

La Marca Prosecco is affordable a delicious. Not too dry, but certainly not too sweet either. Super lovely for people who are a little shy on dry whites.

Something Sweet

Bartenura wines are so fuckin delightful. If you like sweet wines, these are definitely for you if you haven’t already tried them. Fruity and fun, and also Kosher if I am not mistaken

A Rosé

Grapefruit isn’t everyone’s jam, but if you’re down to try something new, this shit is fucking delicious. A lot of wines get described and crisp and refreshing, and this is the first time I fully experienced what that could mean for a wine. It’s definitely worth the shot even if you’re not super keen on grapefruit. Eliot and Margo would definitely want you to try new things. 😉

For the bubble bath, instead of recommending a product, I wanted to share an easy recipe to make your own. Hand making bath and skin care products is a low key hobby of mine and it’s a ton of fun.

Simple Bubble Bath Recipe:

½ cup warm distilled water

½ cup liquid castile soap, scent of your choice (find unscented castile soap here)

¼ cup vegetable glycerin (find organic glycerin here)

a few drops of essential oils of your choosing

Combine all the ingredients and stir them until they're even and smooth. Over time they may separate, so just give them a quick shake in the container until they mix back together, just don’t shake too hard or it will froth up before it’s time for your bath. There is a premature ejacualation joke in there somewhere, I’m sure of it. 😂

I’m not a smoker, and I certainly do not smoke indoors, but I have had a casual smoke after a bath before, it really hits the spot if that is a thing you do. Some hookah, a vanilla clove, or handmade cigarettes of herbs like lavender and damiana can be truly lovely if you’re so inclined. Or, you know, you could just smoke weed like a normal 20-something, your call.

Bath Two: Intertwined

A quick dance of her fingers around each other causes the candles lining the tub to ignite, one by one. The warm flickering illuminates the room with a soft glow.

For best results, wait for a rainy day and bring a friend.

A minimalist bath after a rough night. Budget whiskey, candles, and maybe a good smoke at the end of it all before calling it a night.

Floating candles are a great way to create a simple but relaxing vibe. You can go through the delicate balancing act of lighting real candles and keeping them afloat without putting them out, or you can use these nifty, waterproof LED floating candles and save yourself the trouble. Maximum vibe for minimum effort is Eliot and Margo as fuck.

Whisky recommendations (Eliot takes his in a flask here, but feel free to have yours in a glass, maybe with a spot of water or over cold stones):

Bushmills 10 Year

Jameson Black Barrel

Knob Creek Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Bath Three: Winner’s Circle

Margo nods her approval as she settles against Eliot’s chest. With the bubble situation under control, the soft, rosy gold water is visible where their bodies emerge from bubbles. As their movements still, the water shimmers with brilliance that could make the night sky jealous as the light catches individual flecks of glitter.

Confession: I spent way too much time on the Lush website trying to dream up this bath. I suffered through hours of product reviews and ASMR videos of “Lush Cocktails” before I finally settled on the right mix of products. I will never look at a strainer the same way again.

If you’d like to soak in your own gloriousness a la Bath 3, you’ll need to pick up Sunnyside (a lovely citrusy bubble bar with glitter for DAYS) and The Comforter (the classic black currant bubble bar that many considers Lush staple, and a personal favorite) from your local Lush or order them from the website. Combined, they make the prettiest rose gold. It’s everything, I promise! The bubble bars are designed to be broken apart and used in small chunks, because they create a serious amount of bubbles. I’d cut them in pieces and use a small chunk of each, or you can go buckwild like El and Margo, but expect some serious overflow if you do it right.

Oh! And bonus points for setting up a trophy to gaze at as you soak.

If you liked one of the wines from the first bath, you can easily pair it with this bath too, or you can use one of these. I will alway have more wine to recommend.

Something Dry

Ruffino Prosecco is lovely, dry and fruity. It can be a touch pricier than La Marca, but not by much. Totally affordable—as most proseccos are— and tasty. Even if you don’t really like dry whites, it’s hard to go wrong with a prosecco.

Something Sweet

Martini & Rossi Asti. Affordable, sweet, Italian sparkling wine. It’s self explanatory and delicious.

A Rosé

I told you guys I live for Bartenura wines. The Malvasia di casorzo is seriously one of my favorite wines. Sweet and fruity, it’s just really fucking good. I won’t try to sell you with somm lingo and flavor notes like “wilted vines” and “fresh tennis balls”, just drink the wine. If you like sweet, it’s awesome.

Bath Four: Delusions, Major and Minor

Notes of ripe, juicy peach, and hint of honey fill the air. The bath water is a bright, creamy orange with a soft light glowing from beneath the surface. Their subtle movements create a shimmer as they stir the water.

Margo lightly strokes the water and hums as she considers her next choice. She brings her hands together, rolling her wrists over each other before stitching her fingers together in an intricate shape. A deliberate tap of the surface of the bath with her middle finger causes the water to turn pink beneath her touch. The color ripples out from the point of contact in concentric waves, quickly changing the entire bath. With the same finger, she traces a small sigil on the back of Eliot’s left hand to tie him into the spell. Eliot makes three quick taps along the surface of the bath. Orange, yellow and red diffuse into the water, the edges of Eliot’s colors are much more feathered and frayed than Margo’s. The colors swirls together, blending into beautiful gradients when they come into contact with each other and the pink hues from Margo. The result is somewhere between the light of a setting sun and an abstract painting.

I have a couple of ways you could recreate this bath if you’re so inclined. If you want to go for the bright, peachy vibe complete with Bellini, a peach scented bath bomb while you rub yourself down with scrubee will give you that mix of ripe stone fruit and honey. (And don’t skimp on scrubee, that bad boy will leave your skin silky smooth and hydrated as fuck and the scent is incredible) The bath bombs I wanted to recommend seen to mostly be out of stock, but I hope a few come back for the summer months.

Peachy by Lush

Pretty as a Peach by Bath & Body Works

Honey Peach by Sabon

Basic Bellini recipe:

One part peach nectar

2 parts prosecco

If you want to get really fancy with it, you can purée a couple of peaches and mix one part of that with 2 parts prosecco (or you can flip those proportions if you want a more fruit heavy cocktail), but if you want to get fancy without doing a ton of work, you can buy a peach nectar instead. Just make sure it’s the good stuff, actual peach nectar, and not some sugary “fruit juice blend” where none of the fruits involved are actual peaches. I’ve used both Goya and Jumex. I always garnish with a peach wedge or wheel.

If you don’t want to go with the peach bath, you could do a multicolored bath instead. Hot Topic has a cute dragon egg bathbomb that changes a colors as it fizzes and finally settles into a nearly black final bath color. It’s super fucking huge and so much fun.

Continued in Part 2

*I am not paid or sponsored in any way shape or form, nor am I associated with any of the above brands, licenses, etc.. I’m just overly enthusiastic about a fanfiction I wrote and a slut for good bath vibes.

#the magicians #eliot waugh #margo hanson #lush cosmetics #wine #whiskey #bath #fanfiction

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hoovercj · 6 years

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January 2018

After a mostly successful 2017, I'm looking forward to a good 2018. I didn't have space to explain them last month, so I'll do that now and let you know how I'm doing.

My goals for the year

Lose weight

Let's start with my biggest goal of the year (pun intended). This is where most of my energy was focused this month. When I graduated high school I weighed between 130 and 140 pounds (60kg). I finished 2018 weighing just under 200 (90kg). I’d like to see myself get back down to 160 someday, but my immediate goal is 175. The goal is “simple”, but as many of you know it isn’t “easy”. Different things work for different people and I don't know what will work for me long term. That said, there’s three obvious pillars that I'm focusing on now:

The first is to simply eat (and drink!) less -- Success! No drinking this month and I've controlled my portions both at work and at home.

Next is eating healthier -- I've been filling half my plate at work with veggies and planning healthy meals for evenings at home. And the food has been delicious (homemade butternut squash and coconut milk soup has been my favorite) and filling (who knew how tasty and filling spelt was? a couple weeks ago I didn't even know WHAT it was!). I've stopped eating out at fast food places and I have to say, I can really feel the difference. I didn't realize before how often I felt bloated and uncomfortable from the food. Now I feel fresh and light most of the day.

Lastly, I need to exercise more -- I naively thought last year that if I simply set a goal for running a half-marathon quickly, that my lifestyle would adjust. That didn’t happen. This year I don't have any running goals, I'm just going to try to be active. And so far so good! I've been working out every day before work and waking up early to work out on Saturdays. Some days it was hard to get out of bed, but I always felt like it was worth it afterwards.

So, what has all this gotten me?

I bought a Nokia Body+ scale to track my weight and body composition (body fat, muscle mass, water) and the results are clear:

Jan 1: 197 lbs (89.3kg) / 32% body fat

Jan 31: 182 lbs (82.5) / 27% body fat

That's 15 pounds and 5% body fat down, over halfway to my first goal! Of course, the first half of that was mostly water weight, but thanks to my scale I can see that the body fat % is steadily going down too, so that means my diet and exercise are working. I hope I can keep these habits up in February and with some hard work and luck, maybe I'll hit 175 by the end of it.

Stop biting my nails

This is a big one for me. I’ve been biting my nails since I was a child, and I really want to ditch the habit. I’ve actually been working on this one since Halloween and I’ve only had a couple small lapses since then. But January was a good month! I haven't bit them at all and I've clipped them a couple times. There are still some urges, but they haven't won yet.

Hang out with friends for non-drinking events twice a month

I love the people I work with and 2017 was a great year, but I realized that I wasn’t meeting up with people nearly as often as I’d like to, and when I did it was mostly parties. I don’t want those to stop, I just want to add more. I want 2018 to be a year of board games, dinner nights, knitting meetups, and yet-to-be-determined adventures.

This month, Silvia and I went to a couple movies (Pitch Perfect 3 and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and I went to alone to a Spanish movie called Insomnio. When it comes to friends, though, I only saw them at parties or the bar (even if I wasn't drinking), so it doesn't count.

Silvia and I did attend a Danish-German language event at my language school and spent the evening speaking almost no English, so maybe that was half a victory?

Crafting Checklist

Now that I have a healthy habit of crafting I have a small checklist of things that I want to do at some point this year. I know that the blanket I’m working on now will take me at least a few months, maybe even longer if I take breaks between the parts of it, but I’m comfortable committing to it. Also, there are two “challenges” that I also want to complete this year. I might change my mind during the year, but I hope not :-)

Finish Hue Shift Afghan

Socks (baby socks count)

Something with Cables (knit or crochet)

Unfortunately I spent so much time focusing on my weight loss goal that I didn't complete even a single stitch this month.

Mini Goals

Each month I want to set one or two new goals. These could be anything from “learn to roll my R’s”, “try macrame”, “practice a new programming language”, “eat a piece of fruit every day when I get to work”, etc. If you have suggestions, let me know!

Last month I had two mini-goals that I wanted to nail to kick-start my weight loss goal:

Survive month 1 of Insanity - I did it! 6 mornings a week before work + Saturday I got up and kicked ass.

Not drink - As I mentioned earlier, I didn't have a single beer or shot or any other alcoholic beverage this whole month! Part of it was to see if I could, part of it was to help with my weight loss. It was actually pretty great, I went to bed feeling good and woke up Saturday and Sunday mornings feeling even better!

I have two goals for this month, too:

Brush my teeth after lunch at work - This just seems like a nice habit to get into instead of just morning and evening

Finish "Fire Emblem: Awakening" - I bought myself a Nintendo 2DS XL for Christmas and I started playing this game. It's been a lot of fun and I want to finish it in February.

Well, that's it! It was very much a month focused on one thing, but I'm very happy with the results. Hopefully the next months will be a bit more balanced, but of course only time will tell.

#lifeblog #retrospective #resolutions

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