It is Saturday, after all! I feel that I’m always trying to cross off 15 things from my to-do list every day. I’m one of those people who likes to play a game of “beat the clock” or “minute to win it” with my to-do list.
I’m going to use today to take time to learn, grow, and reignite the passions I have. Maybe I’ll end up discovering a new passion that I didn’t know I enjoyed?
I live in a big city, and I feel that everyone around me is always doing something. You can say it feels somewhat of a different “peer pressure,” but I feel grateful for it. It helps me to be stay productive and focus on the things I’ve always wanted to do.
I do admit that I can be somewhat of a workaholic. I enjoy working around the clock and being productive. There’s nothing quite like getting. things. done!
Shoutout to my cousin @elaineaprilia for suggesting this topic! For future topic requests, DM me via my Instagram @tiffihearts.
You’re done with college! Congrats! You’ve achieved a big milestone and that’s something to celebrate. Four years of your life have gone by and I’m sure there were a lot of late nights of studying (or “studying”), morning exams, and great memories with your (hopefully, lifelong!) friends.
Some of you may have received full-time job offers to start working in the fall and that can be a comforting to know what you’re doing next. On the other hand, some of you may be trying to find a job now, and it’s becoming more difficult during these unprecedented times. My piece of advice is to hang in there. Things that bring unexpected twists and turns, while it can be hard to grasp right now, will ultimately make you a stronger person.
Regardless, it is a good idea to start preparing for your job before you start. Below are ten tips on how to prepare for a new job, which I’ve learned over these past years.
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The Smarty Femme Guide: Top 10 Tips on How to Prepare for a Job
The sun is out! Rather than being at home, you’d rather be doing ________ [fill in the blank].
Trust me, I totally get it. When I was in college, I was still studying through mid-June since classes were held on a quarter system. When the spring and summer months rolled around, I just wanted to go to the beach, relax, and drink passionfruit La Croix. #FlashbackFriday
Once you have a full-time job, you may miss having an entire summer to do everything (or nothing) that you wanted to do. You really need to savor those precious PTO days. But, then again, you’re (hopefully) getting the weekend off. You can choose to take care of your plants, get some ice cream, use your jade roller – whatever R&R means for you. You do you, smarty femme!
Keep in mind that you can still have a great summer. Whether you’re inside or outside the house, being in a good mood (and mindset!) is essential.
To help, here are some summer tunes to get you in that sweet zone, with TSF commentary:
P.S. The Smarty Femme’s 2020 Summer Playlist will be linked below. Follow The Smarty Femme so you don’t miss a post. Click the Follow button on the top right-hand side (desktop) or bottom right-hand side (mobile).
Shoutout to @vnstphnie for suggesting this topic! For future topic requests, DM me via my Instagram @tiffihearts.
I’m a skincare junkie, no question about it. While my skincare collection hasn’t reached levels to that of people featured on Hoarders, I do have a lot of skincare products. I enjoy testing out different formulas and I try my best to be diligent about my skincare routine.
Not only does it feel good when I’m slathering on some yummy-smelling moisturizer (#amirite), but I find it important to be investing in your skin’s future. Take care of your skin now to prevent problems later. You don’t want to look back and wished you should’ve taken better care of your skin five years ago.
In my recent blog post, I showed an unexpectedly useful item I use – my jade roller. I really like the jade roller since it helps to de-puff my face, increase circulation, and develop glowy skin. I’m not an skincare expert, but these were the things I’ve seen when I use the jade roller frequently.
How to Prep Your Jade Roller for Use:
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Time to burn off the bag of chips you ate the entire day!
5-7 min read
Did I really just eat that entire bag of chips? Quarantine life might’ve got you feeling some type of way, especially if the only workouts you’ve been doing are from your fridge and to the couch. If you’re like me, I like to munch on things when I’m bored and being at home makes it so much easier to eat everything within my reach. Chocolate chip cookies, aka my weakness, are only 20 steps away. Yikes!
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It takes a lot of effort to be mindful of what you’re eating and make sure that you stay on your diet and fitness track. If you’re trying to avoid getting the “pooch” around your stomach area, you’ve come to the right place. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve tested out at-home workouts that don’t need a lot of space or equipment.
I live in a high-rise building in the heart of San Francisco and having space is a luxury. My husband and I try our best to limit the things we buy (except for necessary and useful items, of course) to avoid cluttering our space. I personally have found that over time, we tend to accumulate so many things – clothes, shoes, decor, and random gadgets. When I was moving to and from apartments, I really had to de-clutter and let go of many items since there was too. much. stuff!
What helps to keep me motivated is that my friends and I like to work out together via a Zoom call. It’s a lot more fun when you have friends that keep you accountable in working out. We work out together once a week and try out different exercise routines. When you do your next workout, why not bring your friends along for the ride?
Below are my top picks that are becoming my go-to workout routines. I also add in some Vinyasa yoga every once in a while.
Weekends are blissful. After working a long work week, it feels so refreshing to be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want. You want to take a sip of your homemade iced tea lemonade? You want to binge-watch The Circle?* You want to take care of your thriving house plants? Yes, you can do all that and more on the weekends. Ahhh, amazing.
On the flip side, you can also be productive, if you choose to do so. This weekend, I chose to take care of some things on my to-do list, and I am so happy I did so.
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Below are three things I did this weekend:
1. Cut Up Fruit
When you’re starving and looking in your fridge and pantry for a snack, it feels so easy to reach for unhealthy snacks since they’re so accessible. For healthy snacks, you may need to wash and cut them up before you can eat them. But when you’re absolutelystarving, you think, “It’s okay if I eat this unhealthy snack this time. I’ll do better next time.”
Unfortunately, you find yourself saying it a little more often than you like.
To curb those unhealthy habits, it’s a good idea to start forming new ones. On the weekends, I like to chop a lot of fruit and place them in these glass containers (which I received as a bridal shower gift – thank you!). Since I’m already using a couple of glass containers for leftovers, I had to resort to using some plastic containers. But, I typically enjoy using the glass containers since I find that they help fruit last longer.
In the photo above, I cut up pears, apples, grapefruit, oranges, and mangoes. I’m actually taking a bite of the mangoes as we speak. So delicious!
2. Wash bed sheets, bath towels, bathroom rugs, and living room blankets
I had to do several loads of laundry this weekend. I like getting started at laundry first thing in the morning so I can do other stuff while I wait for them to finish.
When my husband and I were trying to find a place in San Francisco together, we made a list of things that we wanted our place to have. Having an in-unit washer and dryer was high on our list, since we really didn’t want to deal with laundromats and wait around for our laundry all day.
Laundry took me the whole day since I was doing other things at the same time. I didn’t feel that it was too much of a chore since whenever I wanted to take a break from doing whatever I was doing, I just did more laundry!
3. Deep Clean My June Oven
The June oven is an amazing tech + cooking device. It’s not just a toaster oven since it does so much more. We use it every day from making toast, roasting vegetables, to cooking and broiling meats. My husband won it from his company’s hackathon and chose the June oven as his prize (Yay!). Given the amount of things that we’ve toasted, cooked, and baked, it was definitely overdue for a deep cleaning.
I created a paste mixing equal parts of baking soda and dish soap. I also covered the oven burners with aluminum oil so the paste wouldn’t get on them. I used a sponge to apply the paste and let the mixture set for about 45 minutes. Afterwards, I used a slightly damp paper towel to clean the paste out. The June oven is looking so much better after the deep clean!
So, those were the three things I did this weekend. Below are three things I’m choosing to focus on this week:
3 Things I’m Choosing to Focus on This Week:
1. My Skincare Routine
I recently ordered some skincare and hair care items from Sephora. When the package arrived two weeks ago, I organized my skincare products in my drawers, but I haven’t figured out which products to try out first.
I’m going to carve out some time to look through my skincare and haircare items and pick out a few items to play around with this week. I’ve been sticking to my regular skincare routine (and my jade roller isa part of it), but it’s time to add a few new products to the mix. I can’t wait!
2. Deep Clean the Bathtub
This is probably my least favorite out of the three things I’m choosing to focus on this week, but one that I really need to do. When I last cleaned the bathtub, I ended up destroying a sponge since I scrubbed a little too much. This time, I’ll be using a long handle brush to clean it. Hopefully it goes well!
I’m a fan of non-toxic ingredients for cleaning solutions. My go-to solution is a mix of baking soda and vinegar. I find that vinegar is especially helpful when you need to tackle hard-water stains.
The pros to doing this is that I’ll probably take a bath after my work is done. Can’t wait to use some Lush bath bombs!
3. Carpel Tunnel Prevention Exercises
I feel like I’m always on my computer. For work, I’m on it for 10+ hours every weekday. Then, I edit my YouTube videos and write my blog posts on The Smarty Femme. As a former athlete, I find that it is very important to take care of your body, and I realize that I haven’t been doing so these past couple of weeks. I’m choosing to focus on doing some prevention exercises such as these so I can prevent getting carpel tunnel. A little massage doesn’t hurt, either.
Hope these things can help inspire what you’ll be doing this week. You choose what you focus on, so make some good choices. Stay smart, you smarty femme!
As promised in my previous blog post, I made an easy DIY Face Mask Tutorial on my YouTube channel. You can subscribe to my channel here to get notified of my future videos.
I made the face mask from my husband’s old jacket and it took me only 20 minutes to make. Plus, you don’t need a sewing machine.
Hope you find the DIY Face Mask tutorial useful!
Feel free to share it with your friends and family. Stay safe, you smarty femme.
Making your life better, one useful thing at a time
3-5 min read
I’ve collected quite a few things that I think you’ll find useful. Honestly, I purchased some of these items on a whim and was pleasantly surprised at how much I like them. What other unexpectedly useful things do you have?
1. Jade Roller
Trust me, I was initially skeptical of the jade roller. I thought it was a gimmick, since it seemed like it was a rolling pin for your face. But after I’ve used it for a couple of months, the jade roller has been a consistent part of my skincare routine.
I like to pop it in the fridge overnight and use it first thing in the morning. Or, I use it as an afternoon pick-me-up. It definitely helps to de-puff my face! I’ll make another blog post to show you how I use it, so stay tuned. To stay in the loop, you can enter your email address on the bottom right-hand side, if you’re on mobile (after you click Close and Accept), or on the top right-hand side (desktop).
2. Wick Trimmer
I love lighting a candle a couple times a week. Not only do I like the fragrance, but I also appreciate that it zaps up any lingering smells after a major cooking sesh. I love my Volupsa candles, but I have been lighting these candles (in the photo above) that my husband and I made together at a candle-making workshop. It was a fun date activity, where we customized the scents!
I noticed that when I light a candle, the wick can get really wild. It looks like that it can cause a potential fire hazard if anything gets accidentally caught in the flame. I used to cut my wicks with scissors, but it would nick the candle and leave dents. Over time, it was not a pretty sight. By using the wick trimmer, those nicks are minimized. You also don’t have to touch the wick that you just cut, since the wick trimmer catches them (how convenient). If you’re a regular candle user, I really recommend getting it!
3. Easy Grip Jar Opener
I’ve had so many jars that I’ve struggled to open (pasta sauce jars, canned jars, and jars that I closed while hot and won’t open when cold). When I lived by myself, I had a jar of peanut butter that I left in the fridge for 3 months since I couldn’t open it! Recently, I’ve discovered that I can make my life so much easier by getting an easy grip jar opener.
I purchased the easy grip jar opener (shown in the picture above) and my parents have this one. My jar opener can fit different sizes since it’s more of a grip cloth. My parents’ jar opener is sturdier, and fits most, but not all, sizes. It is so much easier to open jars now. I wished I had this years ago!
4. Cable and Cord Case Organizer
I have way too many cords, cables, memory cards, and USBs. Previously, I had it all organized in a drawer, but I quickly realized that it was still difficult to find certain cables. In the process of trying to find one cable, other cables would get tangled together in the process.
I bought this cord case organizer from Amazon and it was such a great purchase! It helps save me time and effort to find the cables that I need, when I need it. Every cable and cord has its own spot and there are no more tangled cords. Hooray, no more headaches!
5. Lodge Cast Iron Scraper
I love my cast iron skillet, but cleaning it can be quite challenging. I like using the cast-iron skillet to cook meats and I use it at least once a week, so having the right tools to clean the skillet is a must. I have been using these, where I purchased them at my local Target. I was surprised at how well they work to scrape off all the gunk out. And for $3, they’re a steal.
Hope you enjoy these useful things, you smarty femme! Let me know which of these things you’d like to try.
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Below is a special Mother’s Day edition of The Smarty Femme. Enjoy!
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An Open Letter to My Mom on Mother’s Day:
Dear Mom,
Happy Mother’s Day. I’m sorry that I won’t be able to see you in person since we’re quarantining in two separate places. This is the first time we haven’t seen each other for Mother’s Day since I got married, and it makes my heart slightly ache inside. But, we’ve never really celebrated Mother’s Day anyways. To you, every day was Mother’s Day, since you constantly felt the love from those who care and love you, including me. Unlike most people, you didn’t need fancy flowers delivered to the front of your doorstep or a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day. I know you’re not a gift person.
I long for the day where I can give you a hug since it’s been way too long. Times are changing, Mom. When Yeye passed away a few years ago, I realized how short life can be and how things can change so swiftly. We need to cherish our time we have with each other. When I danced with Opa during my wedding, I sobbed, with tears streaming down on my face. I wondered if this was going to be the last time I’d see him before he and Oma left to go back home, oceans away from us.
When I started working in San Francisco, I grappled with whether it was selfish of me to live away from you and Dad, out here in the city. I know that a lot of people tend to move out at the ripe age of 18 for college. But,I had the luxury of attending a university that was close to home, where I could still see you and Dad every day.
Not everyone had that, and while I took it for granted at that time, I can now see its meaningfulness.
San Francisco to San Jose is only a train ride away, but we went from seeing each other every day to seeing each other at most once or twice a week, if I stayed over the weekend. But you reassured me, and said that this was the start of my future, and that this was exactly where I belong. You knew that this was all God’s plan. I know it wasn’t easy to see your only child go somewhere beyond your comfort zone. But I think that God teaches us in mysterious ways. You may feel that you’re never ready, but God knows when you are. You’ve had your fears, and I’ve had mine.
Thank you for raising me to be a strong, smart, and independent woman who loves God tremendously.
You encouraged me, challenged me, and allowed me to pursue my (many, many) passions. When you knew I didn’t like something, you sought out ways to make it better for me. That meant changing teachers, changing classes, and changing the ways I learned. Some might think that it’s too much and really inconvenient for you, but for you, it was never too much and never inconvenient since you loved me dearly so.
Thank you for homeschooling me when homeschooling wasn’t a thing 20 years ago. It was quite a foreign topic at that time, wasn’t it? Who thought that an immigrant parent, who had no background in teaching and a former (and I must add, rather famous) jewelry designer would be able to homeschool? I remember when you told me that you faced challenges along the way, but you didn’t let them faze you. From facing microaggressions to doubting eyes from other parents, you chose not to dwell on that. Instead, you chose to bravely seek out resources and materials beyond what was needed. By God’s grace, you ignored the naysayers and was able to push through – and I thank you for doing that.
You’ve taught me to control my emotions and exhibit self-control in every situation, even though it is one of the most difficult things to do. You remind me to not let things get to me, and while sometimes it does, I am still encouraged by you.
You tell me that you have to turn your lemons into lemonade, bravery over fear, and humility over pride.
Most of the time, it’s not easy. Butwith God, all things are possible.
As an adult, I look back and see all the things you’ve done for me. Every little things doesn’t go unnoticed. To mothers out there who have young children – one day, they too, will notice all that you’ve done for them. To mothers out there who are struggling – one day, your children will remember all that you’ve done for them.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you.
XO,
Your Daughter
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Today’s Friday. Give yourself a pat on the back because you made it through the week!
Honestly, I almost forgot that I took my exam this past Monday. Do you ever get that feeling when you have a lot of things going on, you forget when you did what? This week felt like one of those weeks for me. But I must say that it was a truly productive and happy week. Yay!
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Below are five things I made this week:
1. DIY Face Mask
I made a DIY face mask using my husband’s old jacket! Not the ones that you use to moisturize your face, but the ones that you use to go to the grocery store these days.
The only materials I used to create the face mask were 1) part of the old jacket, 2) thread, and 3) sewing needle. I don’t have a sewing machine, and it worked totally fine. Using a sewing machine probably could’ve sped up the process, but this little project took me 30 mins tops.
I’ll be releasing a tutorial of how I did this on my YouTube channel. If you’re interested, you can subscribe to my channel here to get notified when my video is released.
This is called martabak manis (pronounced mar-tah-BAHK MAHN-niss), a sweet (or savory) Indonesian pancake. It’s basically a glorified pancake, but even that doesn’t do it justice.
My grandparents love this stuff. My parents love this stuff. I love this stuff. My friends love this stuff. My aunt’s twice-removed cousin’s father’s niece love this stuff. This stuff is really, really good. You must try it for yourself, so here’s the recipe I used.
It doesn’t taste exactly like the authentic thing (since it’s usually drippin’ in delicious oils, cheese, peanuts, and lots of chocolate). Still, it’s pretty good.
Usually the filling is made with chocolate, cheese, and peanuts. It may sound like a weird combination, but once you’ve eaten it, you’ll be forever changed and there’s no going back.
3. Bittersweet Dark Chocolate Ice Cream (Homemade)
When I visited Las Vegas a couple years ago, my mom and I always made it a point to visit the Sprinkles location in the Strip. I love their cupcakes, but what we really enjoyed was their dark chocolate ice cream (which I always had in their red velvet cone). Sadly, Sprinkles shuttered down their Vegas location on the Strip and the Sprinkles location closest to us doesn’t sell ice cream, only cupcakes.
So, a smarty femme’s gotta do, what a smarty femme’s gotta do.
I tried to emulate the dark chocolate flavor by following this recipe from the NY Times. I incorporated some tweaks of my own, and it turned out pretty well. It satisfied my chocolate craving, but it still wasn’t quite the same as Sprinkles’ dark chocolate ice cream. Looks like I have go on a trip to LA next year, since this year is definitely out of the picture.
After trying to perfect my fried rice recipe for so long, I am finally getting it right. It just took a lot of research and a couple of creative batches.
The ingredients I used were the things I had in my fridge: rice (I used long-grain brown rice), tofu, half a red onion, eggs, and garlic. But I’m telling you, the secret is in the sauce. I used a mixture of soy sauce, hoisin sauce, and Chinese cooking wine (which I found at my local Asian grocery store).
To me, cooking feels like an art form and is a bit therapeutic for me. Some recipes may call for exact proportions, but cooking may take some trial and error. You have to experiment a little to see how it turns out. The journey is as important as the destination. Really, you only need to invest a little more time to be 100% better. Think about it.
5. Recorded videos for Mother’s Day
I actually recorded multiple videos – one by myself and another with my husband. I won’t spoil the details here, since it’s not Mother’s Day yet. I’ll have an update in a couple of days!
Have a great start to the weekend, you smarty femme! I’ll be doing a special piece this weekend, so stay tuned…
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The Smarty Femme 