Earings for Girls

Prom night is just around the corner. You want to look your best and amaze your date and friends with a stunning prom dress. You’ve made the appointment with the hair stylist and make-up artist. You’ve planned every aspect of your special night. But wait! Don’t forget one of the most important things – accessorize your prom dress to make it dazzle!

Prom dresses can look plain without at least a few accessories. Even a gorgeous, long prom dress by Jovani can be spruced up with a sparkling necklace and matching earrings. Stunning evening wear by Niteline wouldn’t be complete without a few accents. No matter what style prom dress you choose, accessories will make it dazzle even more! Here are some great prom tips to get your wheels turning.

Prom Dresses with No Straps or Spaghetti Straps

The neckline can look bare when wearing a prom dress that has no straps or spaghetti straps. A plain neckline can easily be brightened with a beautiful, sparkly necklace and matching earrings.

The type of necklace you choose should blend well with your dress colors and fabric. With a prom dress that has lots of lace or sequence, a plain gold or silver necklace will do. Or, maybe even a simple strand of pearls. With a simple satin dress, wear a necklace that sparkles with unique design. Add a charming slide as a bonus.

Gloves and Shawls

Strapless prom dresses also look great with satin or lace gloves a shawl. The gloves and shawl should match the color(s) of your prom dress for a simple, but elegant look! Shawls can be worn around the neck or loosely held around the upper arms.

Half-Jackets

If shawls aren’t your style, try a half-jacket instead. These typically come in satin finish to match the color of your prom dress, or in a lacy see-through style. There are even jackets that tie in the front mid-section to cover the tummy! Pick the jacket that looks best with your body type. Try one on with your prom dress to be sure it offers the look you want.

Prom Dress Length and Prom Shoes

Choose your hosiery and prom shoes according to the prom dress length. With long prom dresses, you might choose hose for comfort, not style, since no one will see them anyway. For high-and-low prom dresses or short prom dresses, choose prom shoes and hose that will complement your legs and feet.

Open-toe prom shoes with nude or light-colored hose will look great with slender legs. If your legs are muscular or large in the calves, and you want to de-emphasize the bottom part of your legs, choose closed-toe prom shoes with dark- colored hose if possible. Or, a longer prom dress will do the trick.

Handbags

Carrying a handbag to the prom? Choose one that matches your prom dress. There are handbags of all colors and styles that are designed specifically for prom night. You can find handbags of satin, beads or lace to complement your prom dress. With a prom handbag, you can carry your personal belongings and still be in style!

Other prom dress accessories include hairpieces, anklets, bracelets, rings, belt bags, hats, clutches, pendants, and broaches. When shopping online, you can find thousands of unique accessories as well as many styles of prom dresses such as cocktail style, high-and-low, evening wear, pageant dresses, sheath style, and many others.

Remember – dress for fun! You only get one chance to make this year’s prom dress shine

Prom night is just around the corner. You want to look your best and amaze your date and friends with a stunning prom dress. You’ve made the appointment with the hair stylist and make-up artist. You’ve planned every aspect of your special night. But wait! Don’t forget one of the most important things – accessorize your prom dress to make it dazzle!

Prom dresses can look plain without at least a few accessories. Even a gorgeous, long prom dress by Jovani can be spruced up with a sparkling necklace and matching earrings. Stunning evening wear by Niteline wouldn’t be complete without a few accents. No matter what style prom dress you choose, accessories will make it dazzle even more! Here are some great prom tips to get your wheels turning.

Prom Dresses with No Straps or Spaghetti Straps

The neckline can look bare when wearing a prom dress that has no straps or spaghetti straps. A plain neckline can easily be brightened with a beautiful, sparkly necklace and matching earrings.

The type of necklace you choose should blend well with your dress colors and fabric. With a prom dress that has lots of lace or sequence, a plain gold or silver necklace will do. Or, maybe even a simple strand of pearls. With a simple satin dress, wear a necklace that sparkles with unique design. Add a charming slide as a bonus.

Gloves and Shawls

Strapless prom dresses also look great with satin or lace gloves a shawl. The gloves and shawl should match the color(s) of your prom dress for a simple, but elegant look! Shawls can be worn around the neck or loosely held around the upper arms.

Half-Jackets

If shawls aren’t your style, try a half-jacket instead. These typically come in satin finish to match the color of your prom dress, or in a lacy see-through style. There are even jackets that tie in the front mid-section to cover the tummy! Pick the jacket that looks best with your body type. Try one on with your prom dress to be sure it offers the look you want.

Prom Dress Length and Prom Shoes

Choose your hosiery and prom shoes according to the prom dress length. With long prom dresses, you might choose hose for comfort, not style, since no one will see them anyway. For high-and-low prom dresses or short prom dresses, choose prom shoes and hose that will complement your legs and feet.

Open-toe prom shoes with nude or light-colored hose will look great with slender legs. If your legs are muscular or large in the calves, and you want to de-emphasize the bottom part of your legs, choose closed-toe prom shoes with dark- colored hose if possible. Or, a longer prom dress will do the trick.

Handbags

Carrying a handbag to the prom? Choose one that matches your prom dress. There are handbags of all colors and styles that are designed specifically for prom night. You can find handbags of satin, beads or lace to complement your prom dress. With a prom handbag, you can carry your personal belongings and still be in style!

Other prom dress accessories include hairpieces, anklets, bracelets, rings, belt bags, hats, clutches, pendants, and broaches. When shopping online, you can find thousands of unique accessories as well as many styles of prom dresses such as cocktail style, high-and-low, evening wear, pageant dresses, sheath style, and many others.

Remember – dress for fun! You only get one chance to make this year’s prom dress shine

 

When you look back over your life, is there a block of years that you would like to forget but you just can’t? Mine were my preteen years beginning about age ten through age twelve. I think many of you would agree that those were horrible years. If you had a worse block of years it had to have been the teen years themselves, otherwise there had to be death, long sickness, jail time, or a bad marriage/divorce involved.

There are reasons for these being the dark years. The major reason is hormones begin to drown out the brain cells that regulate reasonable and acceptable behavior. The primary villains appear to be testosterone in the young male would be human and estrogen in the females of the young beasts. These hormones are just beginning to change the lovable children into problems on two feet. The changes are subtle and slow and usually do not reach the raging beast stage until teen years. I will address the teen years in a later article but for now lets just concentrate on the home and school life of the preteen.

Since this is about my own experiences the setting for this narrative is my hometown of Oxford, Alabama in the years from 1953 until 1956. As I am sure you are aware, there were a few differences in the children of today and us in those days. The kids of today are much more communications and data literate and are tied into being in touch with each other on the internet. It is disconcerting to me, however, that with all the information on any subject in the world instantly available kids of today most do not appear to be as educated as we were at that age . One of my older grandsons, a full blown teenager, was at the house a couple of weeks ago discussing some homework over the phone with his girlfriend. He looked at me and asked if Columbus sailed to America across the Pacific Ocean. I asked him in turn did he think Columbus was Chinese or Japanese. Of course, I doubt seriously if either of them had any idea where China or Japan might be located.

I do think preteen children of today are far ahead of what we were in social interactions. They are so closely connected and participate in more social activities than at least me and my friends ever did. The closest thing to real social activities before and just after reaching age ten was Friday night wrestling. One of my friends, actually my best friend since the first grade, lived with his mother who was divorced as was mine. She loved wrestling and was a regular enough attendee at the Anniston Alabama (bordering city limits with Oxford) civic center that she had gotten to know some of the wrestlers. She always took her son and me with her, and we enjoyed the matches almost as much as getting autographs.

Sometimes one of the male wrestlers that had gotten to know my friend’s mother would come over to the bleachers and talk to us. Occasionally, his mother would have a date that would go with us to the matches and often we would stop at one of the local hamburger drive-ins of the day and get a burger to eat in the car. I remember on one of these occasions my buddy and I were out roaming around of the parking lot, (bare footed of course) when he stepped on a piece of glass and cut his foot. That trip ended up at the emergency room where he got a number of stitches and a shot. Lovely evening. The only good part was that it was him and not me.

Since those days I have seen some of these wrestlers on a couple of T.V. documentaries. The last one I saw the lady wrestlers were in their eighties, but I still recognized them from the pictures in my old autograph book. I especially remember Gorgeous George who was always booed because he acted gay. With his yellow blond curly hair he would prance around the ring and throw gold colored bobby pins to the audience. I still have one of those securely taped in my autograph book.

I guess the next phase of socializing came in the fifth grade when my best buddy decided to join the band. I was always following his lead so, of course, I decided that I also wanted to join the band. After a couple of meetings along with all the other “want to be’ s” with the band director in the band room it was somehow decided that I should play a trombone. So I went home and started the begging and pleading ritual for a trombone. In those days even a used instrument was expensive to our family. Finally my mom gave in and after threatening my life if I quit, bought me a trombone. Turns out after a while I realized I had no ear for playing music, no talent and actually hated the thing and the practice that came with it. I suffered through the fifth and well into the sixth grade before my mother found out I was not attending band practice. Unpleasantness rained hard on my head for a couple of weeks. I think my buddy stayed with it until the seventh grade.

My other jump into social activities also came about age ten, when my best buddy again had a vision from the heavens and decided that we should take dancing lessons. He and a few of our buddies were beginning to see the possibility that girls might be worth something after all. They figured out that lots of girls could be found in a dance studio and that this was a setting in which you could get close enough to touch them. I was a bit slow to pick up on wanting to date, go steady, fall in love or whatever boys and girls were supposed to do at that age. But if my buddy wanted to dance, by damn so did I. Surprisingly my mother thought this was a good idea, go figure. So once a week for a period of about three years we danced our little legs off at Zynaobia King Hill’s School of Dance. It was ballroom dancing and for the most part I had a good time. I took to dancing well and the girls became less frightening to be around though I always felt a little awkward talking with them. We even made a couple of stage appearances in the yearly dance recital.

Well come seventh grade and age twelve my buddy again pulled his head out of it’s dark crevasse and decided we should go out for football. Of course it seemed like a good idea to me – at the time. Many curses did I place on him over the next few years, as I was crawling across the football field wondering which appendage was most likely broken. The way my body usually felt during football season, they all could have been broken.

First day on the practice field, while standing there with a practice uniform made of scraps and leftover equipment (none of which fit) one of the veteran linemen decided to use me as a blocking dummy. It felt like a car had blindsided me. That was my introduction to Oxford football. I still relate that hit to the Beetle Bailey cartoon strips that show Beetle after Serge has beaten him to a pulp. Over the next six years there would be lots more bruising , sprains, scrapes, blood letting and scarring. All in all, though I didn’t know it at the time, football was one of the best decisions I ever made. It was one of those five or six decisions in one’s life that defines what direction your life will go. The development of skills in self confidence, motivation, teamwork, perseverance, positive attitude, group social skills, and endurance of physical and mental stress, have served me well in life.

Other than my lack of self confidence, especially around girls, and motivation/direction shortcomings. there was my dismal school performance. I think the closest I have ever come to seeing a miracle, actually three years in a row, was seeing my end of the year report cards with the word “Passed” stamped on them. There was hardly a subject in which I did not make some D’s and F’s. Thank goodness that back then academics did not determine if you played ball or not. If your grades were bad enough the teacher might talk to the coach who in turn would ride you about the bad grades and strongly suggest you bring them up. The bad grades caused a lot of friction on the home front and of course, like every kid in the world, I hated and detested homework. Like with every kid I have ever known it was a real fight to make me do school work at home. There was just something not right or downright evil about that.

Looking back through the murky vastness of time with only a fragile memory network it is as difficult now as it was then to get a grasp on the me of then. Some of the memories are good while others not so good. There was always this feeling of inadequacy, not belonging, fear of rejection or criticism, trying to fit in and attract attention.

Damn hormones will drive you crazy. There they were sneaking around in my blood stream making me aware of things I had never really thought about before. Take for instance, it became really important to compete with other boys and win. The rougher the competition the better. And then there was the way girls became attractive to look at and be around. For some reason the gals that I had know and played with most of my life looked and smelt a lot better. It became awkward to talk to them and I no longer felt the urge to argue with or punch them on the arm. I wanted to hold their hands or touch their hair. Little did I know that this was just the beginning of the future tortures that females would inflict on me and the other males of my species.

In retrospect, I guess that I had a normal passage through my preteens. Things could have been worse and if I had been a bit smarter they could have been a great deal better. All I know is that I would not want to go through them again. In fact, I cannot think of any phase of my life I would like to do over. What I did or didn’t do through each phase contributed in making me what I am today. Though I am old and things are on the downhill slide, I think, all things considered, I am happy with the way me and the life I have led turned out.

I may not have retained my girlish figure or be as hansom as I once was but who does into their mid sixties. Who wants to die with a pristine body that has been pampered, taken care of and never allowed to live life to its fullest. I want to come sliding into death with a body used up and holding an open bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand a lit cigar in the other and screaming “God what a ride, lets go again”.

Now that Zagat’s has announced new Dating (and Dumping) Guides for New York and LA, I’m bracing myself for some nasty stories. Zagat’s selected their dumping grounds based on the number of exits and proximity to transportation (so you can get the hell outta there), as well as the attractiveness of the clientele, so that you can immediately pick up someone else to hook up with. Nice. Is it my imagination, or does it sound like Zagat’s is catering to the Y chromosome crowd here? Sounds generally douchey to me. What kind of a guy would maximize the humiliation of being dumped? I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather get the text: .”sry u r not the 1 4 me.” 

Every girl needs a kickass toolkit for getting over a breakup. Getting dumped pretty much happens to everyone sooner or later, and usually we just sort of stumble through it, taking each horrible day as it comes and doing our best to stay sane. Well, you know I am all about strategy, about taking control of your life to get what you want. You may not be able to control being dumped, but you can certainly control your response to it. And I want to help you go through the trauma with the least possible pain, in the shortest period of time. 

Here are the basic tenets of my Kickass recovery plan: 

1. Self-pity is highly underrated. 

2. Ditto for self-indulgence. 

3. Maintaining your dignity will have a huge payoff. 

4. Getting over a guy will suck, but can be freeing, energizing, and sometimes even fun.

 5. Grieving is an aspect of love. If you love someone, and you lose them, grieving them is a loving act, even when they don’t deserve it. It’s also a way of loving yourself. 

So. He broke up with you. You just got onto a great big roller coaster, and you’re going to need to hold on tight. 

The First Stage: Shock and Awe 

 

“Shock and awe is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force to paralyze an adversary’s perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight.” (Wikipedia) 

This is what he just did to you. He mowed you down like a Panzer tank. Maybe you saw it coming, maybe not. Either way it sucks, and it’s going to suck for a while. You can’t believe it. Literally. Your mind is not capable of absorbing this news immediately. “He is wrong about this! He will come to see his mistake!” Your loving friends will tell that it makes no sense, something must be going on with him, you guys are perfect together, he’s not going to last the weekend without you, blah, blah, blah. 

Don’t believe them. He may, in fact, come back around and ask that you take him back. It happens. But guess what? I have NEVER heard of a relationship that was as good the second time around. When he Humpty Dumptied you he broke something and it is never going to be put back together the same way again. 

Still, you hope he will change his mind. In the meantime, you will be saying a variety of cheerful and helpful things to yourself: 

“This is great! Now I can hook up with new guys!” 

“Awesome! I’ve really missed hanging out with my girls!” 

“It will be great not to have to think about anyone but myself.” 

But you know the pain is coming. It is coming, and it is going to slam into you like a Kansas tornado.

The Second Stage: Tornado Alley

 

The tornado hits suddenly, and it blows you right off your foundation. Your life has literally been turned upside down. There are several things you need to do in the second stage: 

1. Respect his decision. It is his right to end the relationship. You hate it, but you can’t change it. 

2. Sever all contact. This is not an appropriate time to think about remaining friends. What is the point? You don’t want him calling to “check in” and see if you are surviving the devastating heartbreak that he inflicted. 

3. Go headlong into the pain. This is where the very important self-pitying behavior begins. Here are some activities I recommend:

 

Cry as many tears as your body can produce. Cry until your eyes are puffy and red. Cry until snot is running down your chin. It also helps to wail, if that’s feasible in your living situation. Keening would not be overdoing it.   Eat whatever you want. This is not the time to think about your weight. Personally, my go-to breakup food has always been spaghetti with a ton of melted butter. Maybe your thing is Cherry Garcia. Or chocolate. Whatever. Get in some supplies and indulge.  Get your friends to rub your back and hug you constantly. You are literally craving physical comfort in this stage and your friends can provide it.  Listen to really sappy love songs. Wallow in the unfairness of it all.  Watch sad movies about love relationships that don’t work out. I always liked Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Casablanca is a classic, of course. Titanic. You get the idea. 

 

After a little while, you will get bored of all of the above. You will be crying your eyes out in your dark room, and you will catch a glimpse of the time. You will say to yourself, “Oh, look, Lost is about to come on.” You will wander over to the TV in the PJs you have been wearing for 72 hours, and you will turn it on. And at some point in the next hour, for just a moment or two, you will forget. And the healing has begun. 

 

Third Stage: Making Deals with the Devil 

 

In the third stage, you concoct schemes to get him back. You’re feeling better than in Stage Two, and you feel empowered in some ways. Unfortunately, you are likely to take the ill-advised step of making a fool of yourself. This is fruitless and will cost you major dignity points. DO NOT, under any circumstances, indulge in the following activities: 

 

Drunk dialing or texting  Engaging in drive-bys or any other spying activity  Making drama in a public place  Trying to talk to him about getting back together, also known as begging  Promising to change in some way so that he will want you back  Trying to make him jealous by acting skanky with another guy  Cornering his friends for updates on what he is thinking  Succumbing to the “maybe someday” delusion 

 

You may, indeed you must, do the following: 

Get his number out of your phone. Yeah, of course you know it by heart, but the symbolism is important. And when he rings, I’ll kill you if you answer.  Defriend him on Facebook. I know, I know, exes usually don’t do that, it looks pathetic. Well guess what? More pathetic is your stalking him, reading his wall, trying to figure out which girls are now making a play for him, etc. Defriend him. Immediately.  Block him on your AIM. Block him. Don’t just take him off your buddy list. Because when he sees that you’re online and tries to IM you, 1) you don’t want to know about it and 2) he will feel the little rejection of being informed that his message is not wanted.  Pack up everything you have that reminds you of him and the relationship. DO NOT have a bonfire, you’ll regret that someday. For now, just pack it all up into a box and store it away. Tape the box shut, so that you can’t go rifling around in there when you’re wasted. 

 

If you ignored my advice and gave in to your self-destructive urges, there will come a time when you realize that all of your bargaining and desperate measures have only served to make you look like a complete psycho idiot. And then you will stop. 

 

The Fourth Stage: Boiling the Bunny 

 

Boiling the bunny is all about revenge fantasies. These are extremely helpful, and I would recommend spending some time developing a few. Lie down in a quiet place, and roll the tape in your head. Visualize it, hear it, feel it. Here are some I have found useful: 

Penis in a blender; it’s important to imagine pushing the button, whirl!  Hitting him with your car on a dark road and speeding away  He impregnates the ugly, gross girl he’s hooking up with and she decides to keep the baby  Putting something so horrendous online that for the rest of his life, potential employers who 5.  Google him will lose interest, and maybe even call the authorities  Attending his funeral and fighting the urge to do a cartwheel at the cemetery 

 

I’m sure you can come up with some good ones of your own, or feel free to use mine. Just sub in your own dickhead. 

Here’s the only real revenge worth pursuing: “Don’t get even. Get even better.” 

A word about rebounds: don’t do it. Not yet. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the guy. Wait until you are free and clear emotionally before you get involved with someone new. Right now you need to be on your own, to mend, to heal, and to generally get your shit together. 

The Fifth Stage: Seasonal Affective Disorder 

 

OK, this has been fun, but now it’s time to get back to the business of mending your broken heart. Grief is one of life’s seasons. Think of it as spending time in a climate where the sun never shines. It could last a little while. Here are some things you’ll probably be feeling at this point: 

 

You realize he’s not coming back. It’s really over.  You feel like shit.  You really, really miss him.  You focus on memories of the past.  You blame yourself and try to figure out what went wrong. 

 

I wish you could skip this stage, because it feels awful. You probably feel like you should be over it, and you’re not, and oh God, you’ll never be happy again. You will be happy again, of course you will, but not yet. There is no way around it, you must go through this.

 

For some women, this amounts to depression. I’m a big one for therapy, so go for some if you need to, keep a journal, keep your friends close. Now is not the time to wallow and be alone. You need some support during this stage, so get some. 

There are some things you can do to shorten the duration of SAD:

Make a list of his faults. I’m not kidding. It’s important to remember that the relationship wasn’t perfect. It really wasn’t. There was the way he sort of checked out other girls sometimes. And he thought it was funny to tease you about your weight, but it wasn’t funny at all, not to you. When you put your tongue in his ear it tasted like wax. He flared his nostrils sometimes, and they got HUGE. Why did he have to make that screeching sound when he sneezed? You get the idea. Write it all down.  Remind yourself every day that you deserve a guy who will love you unconditionally. And he doesn’t. Therefore…..you deserve better than him.  Make some changes. Do something new, find a new source of hope. It could be a new interest, a new friendship, a new exercise activity. Open new avenues in your life.  Reflect on the relationship, and think about what you learned. Take responsibility for your own shortcomings.  Spend time with the two chicks: Lit and Flick. Now is the time to remind yourself that happy endings do exist. And the chicks never, ever let you down.
The Sixth Stage: Turning the Corner 

 

You’re gonna be OK. You laugh at stuff again. You even crack jokes occasionally. You’re feeling a bit better. You can envision a time when you will be happy with someone else. You might not be ready right now, but there is the hope of happiness with someone new. When you feel ready, here are some things you can and should do: 

Acknowledge that you are wary of getting involved again. New love means the risk of new loss, and that’s scary. Take it slow.  Flirt. Yeah, you know you want to. It doesn’t have to be a means to an end. Flirting is fun and an ego boost, so enjoy it for its own sake.  Go out at night. Put some rocking music on, get ready for a night on the town, and get out there.  Go out during the day. Try to maximize the number of encounters that you have with other people every single day. Ride the bus, go to the library, do your food shopping, take a walk in the park, work on your laptop at Starbucks. 

 

Will you meet Prince Charming on the street? Probably not. But you certainly will not meet him in your apartment. Just get out and move. Keep moving. Make eye contact with people, be friendly. That’s it. That’s the plan. It is the sum of what I’ve learned through my own breakups, and the breakups of many young women who have been kind enough to share their stories. I wish you all the best as you journey through grief to a new beginning.

 

Now that Zagat’s has announced new Dating (and Dumping) Guides for New York and LA, I’m bracing myself for some nasty stories. Zagat’s selected their dumping grounds based on the number of exits and proximity to transportation (so you can get the hell outta there), as well as the attractiveness of the clientele, so that you can immediately pick up someone else to hook up with. Nice. Is it my imagination, or does it sound like Zagat’s is catering to the Y chromosome crowd here? Sounds generally douchey to me. What kind of a guy would maximize the humiliation of being dumped? I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather get the text: .”sry u r not the 1 4 me.” 

Every girl needs a kickass toolkit for getting over a breakup. Getting dumped pretty much happens to everyone sooner or later, and usually we just sort of stumble through it, taking each horrible day as it comes and doing our best to stay sane. Well, you know I am all about strategy, about taking control of your life to get what you want. You may not be able to control being dumped, but you can certainly control your response to it. And I want to help you go through the trauma with the least possible pain, in the shortest period of time. 

Here are the basic tenets of my Kickass recovery plan: 

1. Self-pity is highly underrated. 

2. Ditto for self-indulgence. 

3. Maintaining your dignity will have a huge payoff. 

4. Getting over a guy will suck, but can be freeing, energizing, and sometimes even fun.

 5. Grieving is an aspect of love. If you love someone, and you lose them, grieving them is a loving act, even when they don’t deserve it. It’s also a way of loving yourself. 

So. He broke up with you. You just got onto a great big roller coaster, and you’re going to need to hold on tight. 

The First Stage: Shock and Awe 

 

“Shock and awe is a military doctrine based on the use of overwhelming power, dominant battlefield awareness, dominant maneuvers, and spectacular displays of force to paralyze an adversary’s perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight.” (Wikipedia) 

This is what he just did to you. He mowed you down like a Panzer tank. Maybe you saw it coming, maybe not. Either way it sucks, and it’s going to suck for a while. You can’t believe it. Literally. Your mind is not capable of absorbing this news immediately. “He is wrong about this! He will come to see his mistake!” Your loving friends will tell that it makes no sense, something must be going on with him, you guys are perfect together, he’s not going to last the weekend without you, blah, blah, blah. 

Don’t believe them. He may, in fact, come back around and ask that you take him back. It happens. But guess what? I have NEVER heard of a relationship that was as good the second time around. When he Humpty Dumptied you he broke something and it is never going to be put back together the same way again. 

Still, you hope he will change his mind. In the meantime, you will be saying a variety of cheerful and helpful things to yourself: 

“This is great! Now I can hook up with new guys!” 

“Awesome! I’ve really missed hanging out with my girls!” 

“It will be great not to have to think about anyone but myself.” 

But you know the pain is coming. It is coming, and it is going to slam into you like a Kansas tornado.

The Second Stage: Tornado Alley

 

The tornado hits suddenly, and it blows you right off your foundation. Your life has literally been turned upside down. There are several things you need to do in the second stage: 

1. Respect his decision. It is his right to end the relationship. You hate it, but you can’t change it. 

2. Sever all contact. This is not an appropriate time to think about remaining friends. What is the point? You don’t want him calling to “check in” and see if you are surviving the devastating heartbreak that he inflicted. 

3. Go headlong into the pain. This is where the very important self-pitying behavior begins. Here are some activities I recommend:

 

Cry as many tears as your body can produce. Cry until your eyes are puffy and red. Cry until snot is running down your chin. It also helps to wail, if that’s feasible in your living situation. Keening would not be overdoing it.   Eat whatever you want. This is not the time to think about your weight. Personally, my go-to breakup food has always been spaghetti with a ton of melted butter. Maybe your thing is Cherry Garcia. Or chocolate. Whatever. Get in some supplies and indulge.  Get your friends to rub your back and hug you constantly. You are literally craving physical comfort in this stage and your friends can provide it.  Listen to really sappy love songs. Wallow in the unfairness of it all.  Watch sad movies about love relationships that don’t work out. I always liked Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. Casablanca is a classic, of course. Titanic. You get the idea. 

 

After a little while, you will get bored of all of the above. You will be crying your eyes out in your dark room, and you will catch a glimpse of the time. You will say to yourself, “Oh, look, Lost is about to come on.” You will wander over to the TV in the PJs you have been wearing for 72 hours, and you will turn it on. And at some point in the next hour, for just a moment or two, you will forget. And the healing has begun. 

 

Third Stage: Making Deals with the Devil 

 

In the third stage, you concoct schemes to get him back. You’re feeling better than in Stage Two, and you feel empowered in some ways. Unfortunately, you are likely to take the ill-advised step of making a fool of yourself. This is fruitless and will cost you major dignity points. DO NOT, under any circumstances, indulge in the following activities: 

 

Drunk dialing or texting  Engaging in drive-bys or any other spying activity  Making drama in a public place  Trying to talk to him about getting back together, also known as begging  Promising to change in some way so that he will want you back  Trying to make him jealous by acting skanky with another guy  Cornering his friends for updates on what he is thinking  Succumbing to the “maybe someday” delusion 

 

You may, indeed you must, do the following: 

Get his number out of your phone. Yeah, of course you know it by heart, but the symbolism is important. And when he rings, I’ll kill you if you answer.  Defriend him on Facebook. I know, I know, exes usually don’t do that, it looks pathetic. Well guess what? More pathetic is your stalking him, reading his wall, trying to figure out which girls are now making a play for him, etc. Defriend him. Immediately.  Block him on your AIM. Block him. Don’t just take him off your buddy list. Because when he sees that you’re online and tries to IM you, 1) you don’t want to know about it and 2) he will feel the little rejection of being informed that his message is not wanted.  Pack up everything you have that reminds you of him and the relationship. DO NOT have a bonfire, you’ll regret that someday. For now, just pack it all up into a box and store it away. Tape the box shut, so that you can’t go rifling around in there when you’re wasted. 

 

If you ignored my advice and gave in to your self-destructive urges, there will come a time when you realize that all of your bargaining and desperate measures have only served to make you look like a complete psycho idiot. And then you will stop. 

 

The Fourth Stage: Boiling the Bunny 

 

Boiling the bunny is all about revenge fantasies. These are extremely helpful, and I would recommend spending some time developing a few. Lie down in a quiet place, and roll the tape in your head. Visualize it, hear it, feel it. Here are some I have found useful: 

Penis in a blender; it’s important to imagine pushing the button, whirl!  Hitting him with your car on a dark road and speeding away  He impregnates the ugly, gross girl he’s hooking up with and she decides to keep the baby  Putting something so horrendous online that for the rest of his life, potential employers who 5.  Google him will lose interest, and maybe even call the authorities  Attending his funeral and fighting the urge to do a cartwheel at the cemetery 

 

I’m sure you can come up with some good ones of your own, or feel free to use mine. Just sub in your own dickhead. 

Here’s the only real revenge worth pursuing: “Don’t get even. Get even better.” 

A word about rebounds: don’t do it. Not yet. It’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to the guy. Wait until you are free and clear emotionally before you get involved with someone new. Right now you need to be on your own, to mend, to heal, and to generally get your shit together. 

The Fifth Stage: Seasonal Affective Disorder 

 

OK, this has been fun, but now it’s time to get back to the business of mending your broken heart. Grief is one of life’s seasons. Think of it as spending time in a climate where the sun never shines. It could last a little while. Here are some things you’ll probably be feeling at this point: 

 

You realize he’s not coming back. It’s really over.  You feel like shit.  You really, really miss him.  You focus on memories of the past.  You blame yourself and try to figure out what went wrong. 

 

I wish you could skip this stage, because it feels awful. You probably feel like you should be over it, and you’re not, and oh God, you’ll never be happy again. You will be happy again, of course you will, but not yet. There is no way around it, you must go through this.

 

For some women, this amounts to depression. I’m a big one for therapy, so go for some if you need to, keep a journal, keep your friends close. Now is not the time to wallow and be alone. You need some support during this stage, so get some. 

There are some things you can do to shorten the duration of SAD:

Make a list of his faults. I’m not kidding. It’s important to remember that the relationship wasn’t perfect. It really wasn’t. There was the way he sort of checked out other girls sometimes. And he thought it was funny to tease you about your weight, but it wasn’t funny at all, not to you. When you put your tongue in his ear it tasted like wax. He flared his nostrils sometimes, and they got HUGE. Why did he have to make that screeching sound when he sneezed? You get the idea. Write it all down.  Remind yourself every day that you deserve a guy who will love you unconditionally. And he doesn’t. Therefore…..you deserve better than him.  Make some changes. Do something new, find a new source of hope. It could be a new interest, a new friendship, a new exercise activity. Open new avenues in your life.  Reflect on the relationship, and think about what you learned. Take responsibility for your own shortcomings.  Spend time with the two chicks: Lit and Flick. Now is the time to remind yourself that happy endings do exist. And the chicks never, ever let you down.
The Sixth Stage: Turning the Corner 

 

You’re gonna be OK. You laugh at stuff again. You even crack jokes occasionally. You’re feeling a bit better. You can envision a time when you will be happy with someone else. You might not be ready right now, but there is the hope of happiness with someone new. When you feel ready, here are some things you can and should do: 

Acknowledge that you are wary of getting involved again. New love means the risk of new loss, and that’s scary. Take it slow.  Flirt. Yeah, you know you want to. It doesn’t have to be a means to an end. Flirting is fun and an ego boost, so enjoy it for its own sake.  Go out at night. Put some rocking music on, get ready for a night on the town, and get out there.  Go out during the day. Try to maximize the number of encounters that you have with other people every single day. Ride the bus, go to the library, do your food shopping, take a walk in the park, work on your laptop at Starbucks. 

 

Will you meet Prince Charming on the street? Probably not. But you certainly will not meet him in your apartment. Just get out and move. Keep moving. Make eye contact with people, be friendly. That’s it. That’s the plan. It is the sum of what I’ve learned through my own breakups, and the breakups of many young women who have been kind enough to share their stories. I wish you all the best as you journey through grief to a new beginning.

 

Age brings confidence to women, making decisions easier as she knows what she wants and can draw from a lifetime of experience which has developed into a set of her own values. Today women over 50 are flaunting their stuff more than ever, fully realising their beauty and inner strength in celebration.

Nowhere is this more observed than on magazine covers and on the red carpet at award shows and premieres. Timeless beauty is exemplified by these women and much can be learned from their style choices and how these have changed over their careers.

Everyone knows that celebrities get a lot of help these days from personalised teams of stylists, beauticians, PR advisors who are all aspiring for fashion victory. These days it’s not just the outfits that are important but accessories too, which have been given the spotlight in recent years. The stars are asked whose jewellery designs they are wearing as well as who has designed their frock. Although most cannot shell out the cash for the diamond drop earrings and huge carrot weight rings, those over 50 can take cues from those fabulous over 50 celebrities on how to choose the right jewellery for their personality, style and budget.

Luckily most jewellery styles can be made from different materials which can result in a huge price difference. The platinum in diamond earrings for example can be substituted for white gold resulting in the same look for a fraction of the cost. Many diamond jewellery pieces are in fact quite affordable and if chosen in a simple elegant style will prove to be a timeless ever-wearable investment.

All women like to update their looks but that does not necessarily mean they should go out and buy the latest trend. Many of the youngest celebrities in recent years have been decking themselves out in oversized costume jewellery; it might look fun and funky on an 18 year old but the clunky pieces don’t bring out the best in a woman over 50. Women of a certain age do not need to buy into any trends; the classics always work for them as many celebrities like the ever fashionable Kim Cattrall, Dame Judi Dench and Helen Mirren know. They stick to what works best for them, taking into account what they are wearing, how formal they want to be, their skin tone and face shape.

Jewellery is a great way to indulge, especially if looking for an alternative to fancy chocolates; and don’t forget, a necklace with matching earrings lasts a lot longer than the average item of clothing! Jewellery says a lot about a woman and can help them feel confident and sexy, so why not use it to update your look and bring out your mature beauty.

 

Many people think a girl has to be drop-dead gorgeous to be really successful at flirting with a guy. Actually, anybody can do it. What you need to do is to learn how to flirt with a guy correctly in order to impress the guy you like and also show the guy that you like him, and you may be get surprised when you find out that he likes you too.

These flirting tips for girls, teen girls and ladies in all walks of life is just some guide for you to go out and find that special someone, in case, you have your own style, just incorporate some of the tips here and I guarantee, you’ll be irresistible! So, here are the 5 tips on how to flirt with a guy:

1. Be conscious of your appearance

If you want to flirt with guys, the first thing that you need to pay attention is your physical appearance. It is not always necessary to dress provocatively, but you should wear something that looks elegant, clean looking, comfortable, and at the same time makes you feel confident. Remeber, you don’t need to have millions of expensive clothes to look beautiful because some simple fashions never go out of style. Try sporting dark, slimming jeans, a simple solid colored tank or cami, some chunky bead necklaces, or a cute sun dress.

Be sure that you shower and clean yourself regularly. You should also wear deodorant, shave frequently, clean your ears, brush your teeth and hair, and you could try to paint your nails. Also, try to wear your hair in a style that makes you feel pretty and use a perfume that smells sweet, but is not too overpowering.

2. Ensure That You Are Alone

Don’t stay in a group. A guy may find it a little uncomfortable to approach you if you are in a large group of people. No man can bear a rejection in front of a herd. Also, he may feel that he can’t approach you because of your friends.

So, ensure that you are sitting or standing alone for atleast some time, so that he can approach you easily. Also, try to minimize the distance between the two of you. For example, you can sit at the chair ortable next to him.

3. Act Right

There are multiple ways to act flirty, here are some of the best suggestions:

Compliments

Be sure to compliment them on things that are true. Sometimes people will make up compliments just to talk to someone, but that is the total wrong thing to do. You really should compliment on things you really like, so you sound more sincere naturally.

Eyes contact

The eyes can be your most effective tool for flirting. It’s possible to make a guy’s heart skip a beat by giving him a playful, lusty, or lingering stare. Here is how to do:

If you’re walking by someone you’ve got the hots for, give him a 2-3 second stare and then slowly glance away (slow is important). Smile just as you start to look away. He’ll get the message.

Additionally, when you’re talking to a guy you like, take a second to momentarily break away from his eyes and pause on his upper body or chest. Let 2 seconds pass. Then slowly move your eyes back up and make eye contact again. This will give him chills of excitement. He’ll realize that you were checking him out…and he’ll love it.

Hair Flip and Twirl

If you want to catch a guys attention, flip your hair casually over your shoulder, twist it and then untwist it, tuck it behind your ears, or run your hands through it.

Soft Giggle and Smile

According to polls, a laugh and a smile are the sexiest things a female can wear. If you perfect your smile and laugh to be seductive and sweet, you will find some great results. Practice forcing a natural smile and laugh, it can help through awkward situations.

Magic Touch

You can learn to brush a guy in such a way that you send tingles up and down his spine. Casually tap him while laughing, rest your head on his shoulder if you’re tired and hold his hand when you’re nervous; it will give him a sense of manliness and you a touch sweetie-pie, no pun intended.

4. Move Closer to Him and Start The Conversation

Approach him and start a light conversation to get things going, but don’t make it too obvious that you like him. If he approaches you, look him in the eyes as a sign of affection and confidence. The best opening line is saying hello. Talk about what you have in common, talk about your surroundings, ask a question, ask for help, state an opinion.

5. Get To Know Him

After he has come up to you and both of you have started talking, just try to find out whether he is your type or not. Is he one of the pushy ones or will stop at the line you draw. If you feel comfortable with him, carry on with the evening. Incase he is not your type, just excuse yourself politely from his company. However, remember that you are the one who led him on. Now if you don’t feel upto it, don’t get outrightly rude.

Lastly, if he’s intrested in you, dont just go immediatly to be “best friends” or “boyfriend.” Just start hanging out with him, and become friends, slowly become best friends, until it becomes even more! You want to make sure it is the right guy for you, and you know what he likes! Good Luck, Girls !

 

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You’ll also discover how to attract a man that you’ve always wanted, what the secret to a man staying committed for the long-run is, and how to get your relationship back on track. Just Go To Catch Him And Keep Him to learn the SECRET PSYCHOLOGY TO GETTING A MAN!

Hair Bows are really cute and if done properly, they give a cool style to your kid and also complement her hair style. From a classic bow to a fancy round-a-bow, you can make many hair bows that reflect your child’s true style. Although these hair bows are simple to make, some require sewing or using a hot glue gun. So you may want to create them yourself or supervise your child when she makes them.

Making a shoelace bow with front braids is as easy as tying your shoes and the effect can be magnified many times when you combine materials to make it more intricate. Adding them on these side braids brings a new twist to an old hairstyle. In this article you’ll learn how to make one of the very popular hair bows i.e. Shoelace Bow with Front Braids. So let’s get started.

Items you will require -

* 18 inches of strung sequins

* Three 18-inch ribbons, 1/8 inch wide

* 1-1/2 inch barrette

The pattern on this ribbon gives you a shoelace bow which looks very good and almost unbelievable. To get that pinched look at the ends of the tails, trim each end so that it comes to a point at the center, then fold the two sides back and glue them together before you add the stars.

For cutting the strung sequins to the proper length, put glue on the ends of the string to keep the sequins on. Then hold the sequins and ribbons together about 4-1/2 inches from the ends. Form a loop about 2-1/2 inches long. Wrap the materials loosely around the base of the loop to form a small circle around it and then feed the materials through the circle to form a second loop, just as if you were tying a shoelace. Pull the two loops in opposite directions to secure the bow, just as if you were tying a shoelace. Adjust the loops and the tails so the two sides are symmetrical. Then stick the barrette to the back-side of the brow.

Add a personal touch to your hair bow with a photo of your pet, your best friend, some hunky guy, or even a picture you’ve drawn yourself. Just glue the picture to a piece of colored cardboard and slap it on the bow. When gluing novelties to the bows, think about what direction the barrette is in. If you’re putting on a picture or a message, make sure it will be right side up when the barrette is in your hair.

Braiding is a difficult technique to master. Don’t be discouraged if you have trouble the first time you try it. Keep trying even if you fail multiple times; your fingers will eventually get the hang of it. To create front braids, follow these instructions:

Fully part the hair beside the center of the head, brushing each side into a ponytail just behind the ear. Fasten each ponytail with a coated band. Place a ponytail styler behind the coated band of the ponytail on right side, loop end up. Draw the ponytail up through the loop. Softly holding the ponytail, pull the ponytail styler down so that the ponytail is pulled through behind the covered band. Hair flips over and drops down. Cross-section the ponytail into three equal-size strands. Cross the right strand under the center strand and draw the center strand to the right. Cross the left strand under the center section so that these two strands exchange positions. Keep working in this way and crossing sections to the end of the ponytail. Secure with a coated band. Repeat on the ponytail on the left side
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Inevitably during my day to day e-mail perusings at MoissaniteMaven.com I will come across the following question: “I can afford to buy a diamond ring, so why buy moissanite? Diamonds are a girl’s best friend!” Well, it’s not always asked exactly like that, but you get the point. In response I will tell them that by all means, if buying a diamond wedding ring specifically is that important to you then don’t let me get in your way. Before you do however, there are a few things you might not have considered…

Why is it so important for you to buy a diamond wedding ring? Quality, durability, beauty, and many other reasons come to mind. All of these traits and many more are symbolic of what a marriage should be. This is why most people shy away from buying synthetics and alternatives because they don’t want to think of the symbolic representation of their marriage as a sham, or to believe that stinginess was the overriding factor to their purchase. All of these sentiments can be understood in regards to an alternative like cubic zirconia, which is quite inferior to a diamond in look, feel, quality, beauty, and value. However just because in comparison to the prices of diamonds you can buy moissanite much more cheaply, this does not mean that the quality of the product itself is cheap.

The prices of diamonds have essentially been inflated by a diamond mining monopoly which greatly benefits from their perceived value being much greater than their actual value. Diamonds are certainly a valuable commodity due to their many positive traits mentioned above, but their true value is nowhere near what their cost is in the marketplace. In fact, a truer representation of the value of a diamond would be to discover the price of an equivalently sized moissanite gem. Not only that, but there are issues globally with the diamond mining industry that may concern you, and regardless of what sort of guarantees you receive about the origins of the diamond you purchased, you inevitably cannot sleep as well as you can if you’ve purchased a moissanite ring instead.

Though most moissanite today is created synthetically, it occurs naturally in rare circumstances on meteorites and below the Earth’s crust as silicon carbide. Moissanite is a gemstone with a durability and hardness nearly the same as that of a diamond, and its brilliance, fire, sparkle, and luster ratings are even higher than that of a diamond. So in fact, regardless of the price, depending upon what your own personal standards of value and taste are, you can be confident in the fact that you purchased a high quality piece of jewelry when buying a moissanite wedding ring. This is the point in the e-mail when I suggest to them that maybe it’s time for girls to have a new best friend.

If you are a girl, a tattoo newbie or both, butterfly. heart, and star tattoos are great designs to start with. Since tattoos are permanent so a simple way to test whether you can live with it or not is to begin with these cute and small ink styles that are attractive and beautiful as well.

Small tattoos like heart, butterfly and stars are usually found tattooed on the foot,wrist, ankle, lower back, back of neck or ear. Considering the fact that they are tattooed on a smaller scale, cleaner and a simpler look typically works best as it will leave enough space for everything to be seen clearly. Intricate and detailed might not be appropriate for small tattoos like these.

Heart, butterfly and star tattoos look wonderful and are universally cool symbols. They can be very feminine both in their appearance and the symbolical meaning attached to them. The heart is a symbol of the females that is often used as an expression of romantic love. Butterfly represents change or transformation and rebirth while star is considered a symbol of truth, of the spirit and of hope.

Another advantage about small tattoos is the fact that the are inexpensive to get done especially those who are on a tight budget. Make sure that you go to a reputable tattoo studio so you will go through the proper tattooing process. There are lots of health risks involved such as infections so you do your research of a good tattoo artist before you decide on committing to one.

For a parent of a teenage girl the choice of what to buy her for Christmas will probably be a straightforward one. After all, she is your daughter and you will have a good idea of her taste, interests and style. But for a relative, perhaps an uncle, aunt or grandparent it may not be so simple?

The main problem is that there are so many different music styles, fashions and celebrity types that teenagers are interested in. It is no longer a simple matter of assuming whatever music is in the charts then all teenagers will like it. The same goes for fashion or just about anything that a teenager will be interested in. There are just too many options and, alas, too many possibilities of getting it entirely wrong. Unless you know the teenager very well then these areas are best avoided.

Gift ideas which are fairly safe will include beauty accessories, electronics, gift vouchers or simple jewellery.

Beauty Accessories

Teenagers are very conscious of their appearance and girls especially will spend a lot of time experimenting with different looks. Although cosmetics in general will be an entirely personal choice there are various accessories which are always top of the most wanted list. Hair straighteners, nail care kits, hair-dryers, compact mirrors and make-up bags are always good ideas.

Electronics

No longer the preserve of young males, electronic goods such as MP3 players, mobile phones and cameras are popular. Netbook computers and laptops are also fashionable, if your budget will allow, and the colour pink is a favoured option.

Jewellery

Although there are many styles of jewellery which will suit various fashions there are, also, classic pieces which are especially suitable as gifts. Silver necklaces with a cross or locket, charm bracelets, simple stud earrings and wrist watches are often a safe bet and can often be personalised with engraved initials or a short message. If you really are stuck then a classic jewellery box might also be a good idea?

Gift Vouchers

If all else fails then you can always fall back on the old gift voucher fail-safe option. Just about every retailer offers gift vouchers and there are also specialist gift companies who offer special experience days which are redeemable with a voucher.

Gift vouchers are also useful for last minute gifts – as many can now be bought online with a simple email being sent to the recipient, which is ideal if you really have left it until Christmas day itself.

Whatever your choice of gift, remember to take some time in the presentation and try to find some nice wrapping paper or a gift box. Many gifts can be bought on-line with gift wrapping including, which is great for saving time and ensuring a professional finish.

Also, don’t forget that buying and presenting a gift should be a pleasurable experience so take your time and have a great Christmas.