[Everyone’s got a morning after story and we wanna hear yours! Send it over to us and we’ll post it – anonymously, of course – right here!]

Going into my senior year of college I promised myself one thing: that I would get all of my “college kinks” out of my system.  And by college kinks I mean never saying “no” to a night out on the town, doing a pedal-pub (Editor’s Note: how did I not know about this!?), and mixing hot apple cider and Goldschlager for at least one football game. I know, I’ve got priorities and clearly the utmost class. One thing I did not include on this Senior Bucket List, however, was making out with a freshman.  I thought I was better than that. I would not sink that low, and if I did I most definitely would not enjoy it.

But, I was wrong. So, so wrong.

The night began innocently enough. Actually, way innocently. We were at a house party dancing to J-Beebs ‘One Time’ and sipping on keg beer. What a night, right? Then, before I knew it, I found this adorable looking gentleman who knew every word and decided to sing it to me. Then, his arm was around me and I admitted something I should be ashamed of: my future Justin Bieber concert attendance (this is what happens when college boys belt out “Me plus you, I’ma tell you one time”).

Needless to say, we fell in love. He hugged me and asked me to marry him. We talked about Justin Bieber’s new album…

“You call him J-Beebs too?! I need to marry you, can we get married?!”
“Yes, I do! I do!” Read More »

This Week’s Ingredient: Cranberries!

They’re sweet. They’re tart. They’re harvested from bogs. And they’re a deep, beautiful, fire-engine hue. If your only exposure to cranberries is in combination with their fermented partner, vodka, then you’re totally missing out (not to mention that the “cranberry juice” served in bars is basically just sugar water). Long celebrated for their ability to prevent urinary tract infections, cranberries are also thought to enhance digestive health and prevent kidney stones. It’s not customary to eat raw cranberries as they are far too tart to snack on alone. Hence the popularity of dried cranberries and juice–but beware that both contain added sugar to temper their tang.

Easy Meals

1. Add dried cranberries to a romaine salad with crumbled feta for a simple and healthy plate of different textures and flavors.
2. Any combo of cranberries and oatmeal (for breakfast, in cookies) adds a twist to the classic oatmeal & raisin duo.
3. Place cranberry juice in an ice cube tray with popsicle sticks inserted in each divet for homemade pops. Read More »

Ahhh summer! Time for margaritas, BBQs, shirtless boys…heat and humidity. While summer’s one of the best times of the year for everything else, it’s not so great for your hair and makeup! But don’t worry, you can beat the heat!

I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve to help make the heat and humidity more manageable. I can’t guarantee that your hair won’t frizz, but I can guarantee that it will take a little longer to do so!

[Everyone’s got a vice, a bad habit, something they know they need to change. Unfortunately, everyone also has a million excuses why they just can’t do it. Not anymore. Every month we will be following a different CollegeCandy writer as she takes on a personal challenge. Last month it was Samantha and her valiant attempt at going man-free. This month, we're hanging out with Jill as she faces her greatest fears head on.]

When I thought about what I wanted to do for my one-month challenge, so many things came to mind: I could go on a social media diet, I could go on a vegan diet, a debt diet… and on and on it went until I decided I wanted to do something out of the box (and not including the word diet). My birthday is coming up this month (ten days! Woop!) and for the past year, I realized not much has changed. I’m sort of in a rut; in a routine of sorts. I wake up with the intention of working out but hit snooze, go to work, work out, watch bad reality TV, spend too much time on Facebook, go to bed, repeat. It’s boring, yes, but it’s comfortable. And like that sweatshirt I have from freshman year that I still won’t part with, comfortable is sometimes a lot easier and more convenient than the other option.

So to shake things up a bit, I decided this month would be all about living outside my box, confronting my fears and living outside of my comfort zone. I have a list a mile long of things I want to be bold and daring enough to do – some big and some not so big – and I’m sure as the month goes on, things will just pop up forcing me to be uncomfortable for a bit but happier in the long run. I’m hoping facing my fears will get me out of this sticky spot I’m in and force me to embrace the world with some new gusto.

And this week I started small. Very, very small. To you this may not sound scary or uncomfortable at all, but to me it was one large step for mankind. Well for me-kind, and I’ll take it. Read More »

Whatever your pleasure, I think all of us ladies can agree on how great it feels when you realize you need to go down a pants size when you are trying to lose weight. Over the past two years, I got to experience this phenomenon a whopping 5 times as I descended from a size 12 to a size 2. I’ve also thrown it in reverse and bumped back up to a 4. For some that might be the worst feeling, but for me, putting weight back on was necessary. And it made me feel even better.

Through my long and trying journey, I’ve come to learn that both losing weight and gaining weight can be fantastic feelings, so long as you are changing your body for yourself.

For me, it started my senior year of high school. As a graduation requirement, we were forced to watch videos released by the USDA that talked about balanced eating. It was here that I realized just how bad all of the junk food I ate was and what I had to do to fix it. A great, eye-opening experience, right? Except that I’m a perfectionist. I took my eating and exercising to the extreme.

By the summer after I graduated high school, I had become completely obsessed with losing weight. The girl who never ate a vegetable in her life was existing on romaine lettuce and fat-free yogurt. The girl who never exercised was spending 2 hours every day on the elliptical machine. By July, I had lost 80 pounds, but that wasn’t it. My hair was falling out. Despite the summer heat, I needed to wear sweaters as soon as the sun set. I lost my period month after month. Read More »

After 8 months of reading textbooks with a highlighter, when it comes time for summer I want something light. Something fun. Something that I can devour quickly on the beach or when lying in bed on a rainy day. And Escapades of Romantically Challenged Me totally delivered. Well, almost delivered. The book never did make it to the beach or to a rainy day because I read the whole thing the night I bought it.

Escapades is the story of Leilana Zane, a twenty-something girl trying to make it in L.A. After three years of waiting tables while she attempts to make her mark as a screenwriter in Hollywood, her father falls ill and she’s forced to return home. Leilana thinks it’s just a short trip to be with her dad in the hospital, but that changes when her family guilt-trips her into changing her life plan and joining the family law firm. She’s torn between chasing her dreams, accepting reality and appeasing her parents, all while dealing with some ex boyfriend issues that inevitably come up when she’s back in her small town.

So what is it about this book that kept me up all night (thus forcing me to chug 3 venti iced lattes just to make it through work the next day)? Well for one, unlike most chick lit heroines, Leilana is totally relatable. She’s not your average main character working some dream job and dating some dream men. She’s a normal girl dealing with normal (read: immature, annoying, impossible to understand) boys that any college girl can totally relate to. She’s also a major klutz who gets herself into some pretty cringe-worthy situations that make you laugh out loud as you’re reading. Plus, Leilana’s situation is similar to what many of us are dealing with right now: figuring out our futures. Do we keep going after a nearly impossible dream or do we take the safe route? Read More »

The following post is courtesy of our uber fashionable friends at CollegeFashion.net. Check ‘em out – they rock our socks off.

In Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic series, Becky explains her obsession with Denny and George scarves. They’re super luxurious, super gorgeous, and every girl aspires to own one — and correspondingly, they’re super expensive. Accessorize, on the other hand, is a generic store that sells various accessories, much cheaper than the brand-name Denny and George.

“Usually what happens is, I spend half an hour lusting after scarves in Denny and George, then go off to Accessorize and buy myself something to cheer myself up. I’ve got a whole drawerful of Denny and George substitutes.”

If you’re anything of a strategic shopper with limited funds (practically the definition of a college girl), you may have paused here, like I did, to say… but wait! Why didn’t she stop buying junk at Accessorize, and save up for the Denny & George? Probably if she held off on 10 items from Accessorize, she’d be able to get the scarf! Read More »

A lot of stuff happened this week, and thankfully, none of it involved cheating! I know, I couldn’t believe it either! But there are lots of babies on the way, so hold tight. I guess Hollywood’s finest has to procreate in order to keep this dangerous cycle of hot mess going.

Crucial:

1. Celine Dion and husband Rene Angelil are expecting twins! The couple already has a son together, Rene-Charles, and have been trying for some time to get pregnant again. Celine reportedly went through multiple failed in vitro attempts and a miscarriage, so having twins is a blessing. Congrats!

2. Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon may be expecting. While pregnancy rumors with these two have been flying around for months, they might actually be true this time! Mariah’s been sporting a bump recently, and hubby Nick tweeted this week, “If & when my wife is ready to make ANY announcements about private matters she will do it personally. Thanks for being respectful GodBless.” If true, get ready for a new child star!

3. Glee’s own Sue Sylvester, Jane Lynch in real life, got married to partner Dr. Laura Embry this week in Massachusetts! The two live in California where gay marriage has not been legalized so they had a small, intimate ceremony in MA. Awesome! Read More »

Summer in the city has officially arrived. If the massive crowds of people vying for towel space at the beach isn’t enough to lead you to that conclusion, the impressively well organized apartment crawls occurring on the north side of Chicago are a surefire sign. (For all you warm climate readers, apartment crawls aren’t as popular in the winter because no one wants to go meandering from apartment to apartment while their limbs slowly freeze off).

With the renewed party scene, all kinds of new friendships are being made among the few students left on campus for the summer. And by “friendships” I mean “that weird gray area that falls somewhere between more than a hook-up and not quite a relationship.”

Sure, these relationships pop up all year round, but there’s something about summer (the whole idea of being free? Of summer flings? The hot weather putting us all in heat?) that makes the not-so-serious relationship more prevalent than ever. On the one hand, it’s nice; why can’t we all indulge in a fun, no drama, low key “relationship” now and then? On the other, though, these sorta-relationships can make a girl (or guy!) go crazy. We all know this – we’ve all been there.

I’m there right now, dealing with an “in-betweener.” Read More »

Bethenny Frankel from The Real Housewives of New York City has recently received a lot of flack for losing 29 of her 35 pounds baby weight in just less than three weeks. She gave birth to her premature daughter, who was born at just about 4 pounds, on May 8th, and has since reverted back to her original pre-baby 122 pounds body. To be honest, when I first read this about Bethenny (I had no idea who she was) I was shocked to find out that she lost more than 3/4 of her weight in less than 3 weeks. I understand that she was already pretty small (a size 4) before she got pregnant and she had been healthily monitoring her weight while she was pregnant….but her baby, Bren, was only four pounds when she was born! What does that say about her ‘actual’ eating habits when Bethenny was carrying this baby?

The problem with ‘celebrities’ (the term used very loosely) shedding the majority of their baby weight rapidly right after they give birth is that they give an extremely unrealistic perception of baby weight loss to the general public and to the women who emulate to look like these women. Given their status and fame, ‘celebrities’ are guaranteed the opportunity and time to work with a personal trainer, have chefs cook their foods, consult with a nutritionist and happily maintain the facade that they really didn’t do anything but “eat healthy” and “exercise” to lose weight after their pregnancies. While that is partly true, we often forget that these ways of weight loss are not meant to be completed in a span of three weeks but rather a longer and more tedious time frame where it’s not merely losing the baby weight but also trying to maintain the healthy fluids that are meant to be beneficial for the babies.

I do understand that the pressures of the industry do provoke even D-List celebrities like Bethenny to look fit, but it’s one thing to be fit and in shape just for yourself, but another thing to possibly endanger the life of your baby for the sake of looking skinny. Bethenny herself has clearly stated from the past that she’s struggled with healthy weight loss and nutrition since she was a kid and even has written bestseller books chronicling how to maintain a svelte figure. I do admire Bethenny’s endurance in keeping up with her weight (she says she lost almost 25 pounds of her baby weight just via C-Section), but when ‘celebrities’ send out these type of messages, they must stress the importance of healthy weight loss and eating right.

We often forget that while we look up to celebrities for their physical attributes, most of the times, they have many more resources than us in looking good. Yes, do stay slim and in shape, but maintain it in a healthy manner.