Author: Amber Olsen

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Best Gifts for D&D Lovers

So – you have someone in your life who just looooooves the world’s greatest roleplaying game. Maybe that makes sense to you. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, I’ve curated some pretty cool stuff for the roleplaying gamer in your life, perfect for Christmas, birthdays, or anytime you want brownie points. (Kiss up to the DM, maybe?)

This post may contain affiliate links. (Spoiler alert: it does.) For the legal jargon (and my personal stance on recommendations) click here. 

1. Party Mug

Trust me, any D&D player will definitely appreciate the humor in this amazing mug.  Label it as a “measuring mug for healing potions” for critical effect!

2. Player’s Travel Bag 

Any prepared player has several things they take with them: a handbook, characters sheets, dice, spell sheets, a notebook, dice, writing utensils, mini figures, and have I mentioned dice? (More on dice later!) This bag looks small, but it really does fit two standard books inside, three if you squeeze. It really let’s you keep all the necessities in one, easily portable bag for going to your friend’s place to play.

3. Awesome Dice Bag 

Since playing DnD, I caught something, a bug, a virus. It worms its way down into the very fiber of your soul. Like tapeworms, I guess. But instead of craving food, you must. Have. DICE. ALL THE DICE. And every DnD player I have met has a respectable fear of this disease or infestation. It can become a real problem. Oh, and in case I’m not clear, I don’t mean hoarding all of the dice is a problem; I meant storing and transporting them can be a real pain.  This dice bag not only holds up to 300 dice, it has POCKETS to SORT your various and sundry dice, and it comes in eight different colors. Go take a gander yerself here. 

4. 100-side Die

You don’t get to roll a 100-sided die (called a D100) very often, but trust me: it is way more satisfying to be able to whip out one of these polyhedral giants and let ‘er rip versus pressing a button on your app.  Imagine it: pressing a button and instantly having some randomizer algorithm provide with any number between 1 and 100, or watching the fate of your character, your entire party, and ultimately the entire game universe literally roll across the table in front you! Get the die.

5. A Fuzzy Blanket

I was recently gifted this exact blanket, and let me tell you, it is FUZZY.  In fact, I have had it with me for four constant days. I rue the day I will have to wash it, but at this rate, I fear it is coming soon.  I know it isn’t available online, but I can’t help but sing it’s praises. Everyone needs an awesome blanket like this. It is the perfect accompaniment to playing and pretending it’s the skin of a soft, fuzzy beast. Since it isn’t going to be available everywhere, here are some pretty great options, too! 

6. More Dice

Duh! You should have expected this to be on the list. I mean, I sort of listed a single die above, but that doesn’t count. My favorite dice are from Kraken, which you can find at www.krakendice.com. If you can’t find the perfect fit there, Chessex makes my second favorite dice! Of course, this little things only matter to dice connoisseurs. For someone who doesn’t have a robust collection, these are actually really great!  They are even good for the seasoned player who likes to have extras on hand for newcomers (because who wants to let someone else use up all the luck in your dice?) or DMs.

7. Character Notebook

This has got to be the coolest and most fun way to keep track of character inventory. Any RPGer would be happy to have this in their arsenal. And you are supporting an individual artist who can keep making more awesome things like this! Snag this here!

8. Dice Earrings

Yes, all of your geeky jewelry dreams have come true. Who DOESN’T want a dodecahedron hanging from their earlobes?! And yes, I promise that’s a real word. Enter jewelry Valhalla here.

9. Erasable Gel Pens 

Roleplayers do a lot of writing, which comes with its fair share of erasing. Pencils are great, and easy to come by. But an erasable gel pen? This stuff is gold, and it blows peoples minds whenever I bring it to a session and they see it do its magic for the first time. It just brings something to the table when you can write with the finality of pen, the smoothness of gel, and any color you want – but still have the confidence to know you can erase it, just in case.

BONUS ITEM!

10. This Awesome Shirt

This shirt is super comfy, unisex, and available in ten colors and in sizes XS – 4X so that anyone can flaunt their love of the dice. (It is also designed by yours truly!)

So there you have it! Ten awesome things I think any RPGer would love to have gifted to them, no matter the occasion. My favorite holiday is DM Appreciation Day, colloquially known as “thanks for not killing my character” day. Word of advice: celebrate often.

Cheers!

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FREE Instagram Training – Top 15 Tips for Growth

Do you want to grow your instagram community? Have you struggled with gaining traction or knowing what to post or when? Then you are in the right place! In the post, I will share my top 15 tips for growing your influence on instagram. And if you want to dig deeper with direct mentorship, post prompts, photography tips, and more, then be sure to join my Facebook group to take advantage of my FREE training course! No email list sign up, no gimmicks or hidden fees, just me showing you what I do!

Top 15 Instagram Tips – Part 1

One: Be consistent
Whatever this means for you (once a week, once a day, morning, noon, and night), keep it consistent. Consistent content is going to improve your ability to be seen within Instagram’s algorithms.  While I won’t get into teaching the algorithms in this post (that will be in my upcoming free training ), I will recommend you post at least once a day!

Two: Utilize all your hashtag realty
If you were to pay for an ad in printed media, you would be granted so many words. A wise advertiser would work his thoughts into concise, action-oriented directions and use every single word available. So why not use all of your advertising space in hashtags? Not using all of your hashtags is like stopping at offering your name in an introduction.  You get THIRTY hashtags! You should use as much of those as you possibly can, and no less than twenty every post. Need ideas for helpful hashtags? Feel free to follow me (instagram.com/ambertheblog) and steal my hashtags, join my group for the free training, or study some of your favorite “grammers” for inspiration. You get free advertising. Be sure to use those hashtags!

Not using all of your hashtags is like stopping at offering your name in an introduction.

Three: Post your hashtags with your image
You’ve probably seen two types of grammers (that’s the term for people who use the gram, aka instagram). There are those who post their content and hashtags together, and those who post their hashtags in a comment. You can do it either way, but the most effective way to be at the top of the hashtag feed (which is how others will find your content) is to post your tags along with your image. The delay between adding the tags in the comments can be the difference between someone seeing your content or seeing what others have posted!

 

Four: Offer value
The number one mistake people can make is to use instagram as a marketing tool.  Instagram c an be and is a very powerful marketing platform, but it is not by actively marketing that you build a community. Consumers look for products. Communities look for service. A product is the same whether you get it on Amazon, in Wal-mart, or Target. Where do you buy it? What drives your loyalty? The service. The dictionary defines service as the following:

1. the action of helping or doing work for someone.
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand;

Wow! That is definitely different than simply marketing a product. What do you offer your community? Position your service, not your products.

Consumers look for products. Communities look for service.

Five: Practice your photography
There’s no getting around it – instagram is a visual community! If you want to get attention, you need to up your photography game. As a retired wedding photographer, I can definitely write way too much on the subject! While I plan on getting more involved and doing a photography workshop during my instagram training, I will keep this portion here brief.

Remember the phrase “shoot in the shade.” Direct lighting is going to be the harshest to view and hardest to correct. Look for shade and indirect lighting or shoot on an overcast day. This is going to get you the softest shadows and the most flattering lighting for just about everything!

Utilize your camera’s brain. Unless you’ve done training on using a camera in manual mode, learning what auto settings are available are going to be your best tool. I specifically purchased my Samsung Note 8 because I liked the options it had as a camera. Get to know everything about your camera and you will inherently learn how to take better photos!

Use apps to improve your photos before uploading. I suggest Facetune, Pixlr Express, Handy Photo, and PicsArt. I’ll show you how to use them in detail in my training! Facetune is great for polishing up portraits, while I use Pixlr for cropping, adding text, and basic color correction. I use Handy Photo for the amazing magic crop feature, as well as making my backgrounds have that studio feel. Seriously, this app has so much power! It’s like Photoshop on my phone. Try them out!

Six: Eliminate ghost followers
While it might really stink to intentionally make your follower count go down, it is actually imperative to building an engaged, organic community. Plants need pruning to grow to their best potential. Your community is the same way. Spam account, ghost followers, or automated accounts that never engage with you are actually harmful to your engagement percentages, which ultimately tells instagram that your content isn’t that interesting to your followers. And then it decides that it won’t be that interesting to new people, too! Yikes! Culling disengaged followers is an imperative step to keeping your community to members who enjoy in what you have to offer.

That’s it for part one of my Fifteen Tips for Instragram Growth! Be sure to subscribe for part two and three, and join my facebook group for the free intensive training to make your instagram rock!

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20-Day Mental Wellness Challenge

It’s coming.

You know what I mean.

The advertisements, the holiday parties, the pressure. The glitz and glam and delicious food are all really fun aspects of the upcoming season, but man, holidays can wear you out sometimes, right? So this year, I’ve decided to bulk up beforehand. And no, not physically. I stumbled upon a 20-Day Mental Health  Challenge on pinterest. I thought, “Well, gosh, that sounds like a great idea!” Except . . . a lot of the suggestions did not really apply to me or my situation. I tweaked it to my needs and I will be sharing it with you, too. You are 10000000% invited. I even made it Facebook official, see?

Trying to do something new is always easier when you have others doing it with you. So come join the community! I’ll be posting facts and thoughts for the day along with the daily challenge. From things like taking a walk to journaling your gratitude, these twenty days are bound to include something that will give your mind some additional peace. I can’t wait to see you there!

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How to Hit Your Goals

A fellow military spouse asked a question about goal setting in our facebook group, and I got so excited, my reply turned into nearly a novel! (Sorry, fellow milspo!) So instead of giving everyone a novella reply,  I kept it to the bullet points and decided to share the rest here! (P.S. If you want a supportive place of fun, positivity, and pretty things, come join us!)

1.) Know your goals!

 
If you have nothing as your goal, you’ll hit it every time! Good goals are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound.
 
  • Be specific. This works for fitness, work, house cleaning, ANYTHING! For example: If you want to hurt less and have more energy, be specific, ex: “I want to be able to play with my children without losing a breath. I want to be able to lay down to sleep without needing painkillers.” Are you in the blogging world? Trying to make a break into social media influence? What about, “I want to create an organic community/following of 1,000.”
 
  • Make them measurable! Something that you can track. Start easy. I’m always running gung-ho into things, and end up hurting more than helping myself. So take it easy!
 
  • Make it relevant. Use what matters to YOU, not to anyone else. If you want to lose a pant size or two, that’s great, but why? Why do you want 1000 followers? Make your goal matter.
 
  • Give yourself a time limit. “I want to be able to lay down to sleep without needing painkillers in two months,” or, “I want a community of 1000 organic followers by December 31st.”
 
2.) Try something new. If you’ve been avoiding working out because its, well, boring (guilty!) then ask about something new to switch it up. Don’t be afraid to ask. Everyone there wants you to succeed! Feel stuck in a writing rut? Try writing a genre you’ve never done before. Give yourself a wacky makeover. Try learning a new makeup technique from YouTube. 
 
3.) Get a battle buddy. Going to the gym is always more fun if you have a buddy, plus, you have built in accountability. This is one of the essential facets of being successful. In the blogging industry? Get yourself a blogging partner who can keep you accountable! When you can learn together and share ideas of what works and what doesn’t, you can build each other up – and helping people succeed is extremely energizing and inspiring for yourself! Give it a try! (If you need help finding someone that shares similar goals as you, you can search Facebook for interests groups! And feel free to join ours – you are welcome!) 
 
4.) Keep track of what you do. Write in a workout journal what you do each time you go to the gym, find something that works in your blog, facebook group, etc. For working out, I record my reps, weight, and sets. Since I started almost six months ago seriously, I’ve maxed out one of the machines! When it comes to blogging or social media, there are helpful apps and tools that can show you what you’ve done and what’s working. However you document your progress, be sure to check it regularly. It is so cool to see where I started, and it gives you motivation. When you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere, it’s so cool to look and see that, yes, you CAN jog most of that ten minutes without blowing your heart rate through the roof, and YES, you consistently lift 10lbs more than when you started, and you actually DID make progress on your follower goal – GO YOU!

Psst! If something seems too daunting to start, break it down in smaller chunks. Don’t be afraid to give yourself “room to grow.” Give yourself permission to not be perfect and hit your goal all of the time. Calculate human error. Whatever you want to call it, leave room in your schedule for not doing anything. If you miss a goal, you have built in room to catch up! And if you don’t need to use the day, you can choose to use it to get ahead or take it easy and rest to reward your hard work. It’s up to you! 

 
5.) Most importantly, HAVE FUN! When it comes right down to it, we never do anything we don’t really want to. So work with your brain and your emotions and find something that seems fun. Do that dance workout. Share what really matters to you. Find what you want and pursue it.

What goals do you have your heart set on? 

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Natural Brow Formula – Quick and Easy!

Have you wanted to sculpt a brow that is right for your face? If you are just starting into brow territory, it can be an intimidating task. But do not fear! Amber the makeup geek is here to save the day with a handy-dandy video tutorial that is fool proof to getting brows that perfectly suit your unique features.

Watch this video and ask me any questions! I would be happy to help.

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My Face of Depression

Mental health. Thankfully, you hear a lot more about it today than five or ten years ago. With blogs and facebook posts and popular hashtags highlighting this topic, what could I have to offer?

Only my own experience.

Some stories just seem to click with me more than others. My prayer is that, while reading my story, you will find some direction and empathy for where you are at on the mental health spectrum.

In my experience, and in many others who have opened up to me about their condition, people who experience suicidal thoughts or periods of prolonged depression are what you would consider generally “good” people. They are often other-focused, altruistic, and congenial. However, a burst of high-stress or an extended period of stress (such as taking care of a loved one with a disability) can physically alter the chemicals in the brain. The chemicals that stress creates are beneficial for the instant, but when those chemicals become the new normal, that is when you enter depression.

These people, altruistic as they are, will not let themselves be a burden. They are helpers by nature. Therefore, they will put on a smile and appear to just fine because they don’t want to bring anyone else down. Hurting others is the last thing they want. However, being stuck in that mindset long enough will convince you that YOU are the problem. Everyone would be better off without you.

This is not, of course, the story for every person. But in my research, personal experience, and talking with others, it is the story of many.

I appreciated being invited by my friend over for dinner, or this and that. Even if I didn’t attend, it was nice to be invited. And sometimes I did go. What made me comfortable with that was knowing I could literally be a piece of furniture in her house, like a human throw pillow on her couch, and it would not be offensive or bring her down. The space to be allowed to be this way, with no pressure to “get better” actually allowed me interaction which helped me get better.

In the photo above, my husband took me out on a date to the nearest Build-A-Bear to purchase my beloved Bulbasaur here. It was earlier in that week that I had been diagnosed with depression. My personal journey to recovery and maintenance (which I am still on) started with a dear friend of mine discussing her attempted suicide.

My friend is a wonderful woman. She posts inspiring messages on facebook, crafts the wittiest posts that tell tales of her family in the most hilarious screenplay style, goes to church, and is one of the most helpful women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. As we worked together for several years, I got the chance to know her better, watching her climb to the top 3% of her industry.

I never knew she was depressed.

As she recovered in the mental health ward and was cleared for outside conversation, she was extremely open and vulnerable in discussing with me the attempted suicide. This opened my eyes. So many of these feelings and thoughts that she had for months leading up to her attempt were so familiar. Was I depressed?

Two months later, I found myself waking up most mornings wishing that life would just be over. I wanted to get better. I started a gym membership. I went four and five times a week. The rush from the exercise helped, but only momentarily. I sought solace in my faith, music, prayer, but nothing everything seemed to just scratch the surface. Finally, recalling my friend’s story, I though, “I might be depressed.” After discussing it with my husband, we were at the doctor the same week.

I am certainly not done with my journey. I am still on medication and work to maintain a healthy mindset. I have started seeing a psychologist to help me in understanding how I function and to give me the tools I need to work within my own brain. In fact, today I was diagnosed with anxiety, bipolar disorder, and ADHD. Through this, I’ve learned a couple of things that I want those of you who are dealing with any of this to know.

You do not have to do this alone. You are allowed to ask for help.

It’s scary to talk to someone about needing help. Believe me, I know. Before going to meet my psychiatrist, I had a panic attack in the waiting room. Even during my session, the anxiety continued so badly that when I left, the chair I was sitting in had sweat marks like I’d been to the gym! It’s ok. You are not weird. You are not the only who has a hard time doing this. No one – no one – is going to think poorly of you for taking care of yourself. Not your doctor, not your counselor, and certainly not me.

I am so incredibly blessed to have friends who shared their story with me. Because of that, I decided I wasn’t the exception to the rule, and that as hard as it was, I needed to ask for help. I have a husband who supported me, and a doctor who listened. All of these things put me in an optimal place for recovery.

Sadly, not everyone is in such a place.

I speak openly about my depression because I know I might be able to help someone else who is struggling. I want neuro-typical people to understand that, throughout my numerous makeup tutorials, happy posts, and (really great) selfies, I was depressed. And the only way you are going to know is to do life next to that person. A comment or a like on Facebook aren’t going to get you to the heart of each other. It is within the safety of healthy relationships that trust blooms. You are not responsible for everyone’s mental health. But hopefully, by following along my journey as I share it, you will begin to recognize ways to help others.

Happy World Mental Health Day