I always ask everyone for the truth.
I demand it.
My need for the truth about things is stronger than the pull of gravity some days.
If anyone ever asks me what I want from them, I always answer "the truth".



But my friends, be careful what you wish for.

the truth might eat you alive.

the things I love blog:

I get many a question about the things I love. I decided to make a list for you:

#1-SKIN. I am a whore for skin products. takes me 15 minutes to wash my face. best advice is to always wash your face before sleep+always wear sunscreen.

-Boots glycolic acid toner.

-Kiehls spf 15 tinted lotion . I hate foundation, my skin reacts bad to foundation, boys wish you didn't wear foundation. I was shown this by an amazing makeup artist friend and have never stopped using it! its the best!


-Olay regenerate eye cream. EVERYday. promise?

-I cannot stress how bad the sun is for your skin. Really, I promise that if you spend a ton of time in the sun you will love old way before you are old. I haven't spent any time in the sun without at least spf 15 on my face in over 5 years. People usually guess my age at 24. Please take care of your skin. AND...if you HAVE to be tanned, I love a good old spraytan, yes it smells bad, but totally worth it. I love the brand mystic tan over the California tan because the color is way more natural.

#2-MAKEUP. I actually hate makeup. I just love looking gorg so I have to use it.

-MAC Iridescent powder in golden bronze.

-MAC lipglass in PURRRRR

-Josie Maran cream blush. Its the best.













#3- LASHES. Maybe it is my love for the stage but I feel naked with out my lashes on. I was NOT born with a great set so I get eyelash extension's. Every month a great woman named toni glues on these great single lashes, I never wear mascara, I never look nakedface. If you have the money, the time and the love of lashes then this is a worth while investment. I get mine done at the natural face place in LA.

#4-WORKOUT. Pilates. I cannot stress this enough. Pilates is the single best workout on the planet, a reformer machine will change your life. I have been into pilates for years. Pilates gives you results SOOO fast, in just one or two classes I am already standing up taller, looking thinner and feeling better. IF you want to change you body pilates twice a week will do it.

















#5-SHOP. I actually hate to shop. Nothing ever fits me the way I want it to. I have a really long torso and am pretty much totally flat chested, but I have a big butt. Jean shopping is a nightmare. I do love buying things online and then getting to try them with the rest of my closet.

www.nastygal.com (i love their new stuff)
www.shopbop.com
www.forever21.com (who doesn't love a 12.00 dress!)

I also cannot stress how awesome it is to have your clothes tailored once you buy them. I ALWAYS take my clothes to my neighbourhood tailor and make adjustments so they fit just right, i hem, take in the bust, shorten the sleeves all the time. There are not many things I wear that haven't been altered in some way to fit me perfectly. It is the only way I feel really great in my clothes.

#6-BOOKS. I love to read, I love my kindle. I also love bluerectangle.com, it is a great site where you can sell your old books for money, check it out.

#7-NAILS. Short nails are in. If you are still wearing fake nails or acrylic sets 1996 called and they want them all back. I love to get my nails cut as short as possible and then paint them weirdo colors.

I use the sally hanson blue bottle of nail regrowth serum everyday in my car. One of my rockette friends showed me this years ago and it really works to get your nails nice and strong.

#8-EYEBROW THREADING. Girls. your eyebrows are the frame to your beautiful face. Try not to fuck them up. Too thin or overplucked brows are yucky. This is why I LOVE eyebrow threading. Way better than a wax and the awesome indian women who do it tend to love a full eyebrow too. If you eyebrows wont grow in use RAPIDLASH (you can buy it on amazon) for the full 6 weeks, you will see results.

#9-MUSIC. I love music. love it. right now I am dying over atomictom, angus and julia stone, matt nathanson, wakey wakey, honeyhoney + an horse. Check them out!


#10-JEWELS! I love the one of a kind jewelry from MYOWNLITTLEUNIVERSE. Katie is the bomb and makes the coolest things from old vintage pieces she finds. Christina and I have both been rocking her stuff all over the place. She actually made me a really cool one of a kind necklace that says INFINITE. i love it. Check her out http://www.etsy.com/shop/myownlittleuniverse



enjoy!

So last night I had a dream. It was one of those dreams that takes all night to dream. It started with what's happening my real life, that each and every time I let my old lover into my world he finds a way to twist and turn my insides. His intentions are always selfish. I suppose this is the bonus of cutting someone out of your life. They cannot affect you any longer. But I do not have hate inside my heart and as always I have been hoping that eventually we could all get to a place where it was peaceful, undramatic and kind. So, I always respond. I shouldn't do that.

Anyways, I had a dream where me + him were away in the desert with no one around us. I said all the things I wish I had the balls to say in my real life, and he told me all the words that he hides behind his "happiness". The happiness he shows the world, and likes to tell me isn't the truth. There are so many versions of his truths that I stopped believing any of it a very long time ago. But in this dream, it was the most honest we had ever been, and even inside my dream I knew it was wrong. I knew that these words and thoughts and mid guided feeling would take me back to a place I hate to spend time in. He kissed me in my dream and I felt sad for myself. I felt sad that I have no idea how to be happy. I felt sad that I would spend so long clinging to what in all honestly was a shamble of a real relationship. I felt sad that I would risk losing someone so precious by taking this giant step back. In my dream world I was confused.

I woke up this morning to swoon standing over my bed. I have no idea how he got inside my room. He was wearing a green shirt. He was on his way to work and had driven across town to come and kiss me on the lips. He kissed me and walked out of my room. It was like he knew I was having heartmares. It was a if something in the universe told him that when I woke up I needed to know the answer. The answer is him.

The universe has proved to me that whatever doubts, fears and ugly little traces of him that might live deep in subconscious, those ugly little bastard thoughts that try to sneak out every once and a while, are absolutely no match for my real life. I am moving forward, letting the good guy win, and trying my very best to accept the love that I know I deserve and yet most of the time cannot comprehend. These ghosts-of boyfriends past love to try to haunt me on a daily basis. The make me fear my heart, my own thoughts and most of all love. You shouldn't have to fear love. The Beatles said it was all I needed.

I wish is was not such a struggle to be happy.
Please universe, do not let me ruin this.

Matt Nathanson Monday.

So, It is a big, giant, exciting, shivering in my booties kind of day for me today...it's matt nathanson day. Tonight, Matt has agreed to be interviewed live on air for my radio show...

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/highkicksandhighhopes

Yesterday I got to chat with Matt and sort of lay out what we wanted to chat about in the interview. Matt said "I feel like we have been friends for years" and I wanted to say "well duh matt! we are obviously soul mates"...

What is so weird about my relationship with Matt is that, we have never met and yet, I am completely insanely madly in love with this fellow. Matt was my best friend during the events inside my heart in the last few years. There have been weeks where I only listened to his two records on repeat inside my house. Matt's voice was my cheerleader, my confidant, and my salvation for a really long time. That sounds so creepy, but I know we all have this musician in our lives. What I love about Matt's music is that he just get's it...he has the perfect tune for falling in love and the perfect tune for falling out of love.

I have been spending my free time thinking up amazing questions to ask Matt, so today on this here blog, if you have something you think I should ask...make sure to leave it in the comments

#1- do the people who direct your music videos not feel that you are a total babeface because they always have you singing in dim light or from behind or just half your face? this is not okay, get into the light matt!

#2- are you writing any song for your new record that involves an amazing cooler than cool dancer chick who might have happened to stalk you via twitter? and if so, is it a love song?

#3- what did you write little victories about?

#4- what is your phone number? can I have it?

#5- "all that I want to be in the minute that you hold me in" - this is epic. not a question.

...okay, that's all I have right now...make sure to tune in tonight at 7Pm el lay time to here me giggle, scream and be a total fangirl for my favorite artist!

sleeping is good, try it.

"but pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you cannot have. Looking for self worth in the mirror. Laying work on top of work and still wondering why you weren't satisfied- before working some more. I know. I had done all of that. There was a stretch where I could not have worked more hours in the day without eliminating sleep all together. I piled on accomplishments. I made money. I earned accolades. And the longer I went at it- the emptier I began to feel."

-Mitch Albom

The thing about fearless fighters is that we rarely know when to stop fighting. As I grow up I am finally starting to learn that just because you love something, or someone- doesn't always mean that if you fight for it, you will win.

I have more battlescars that I care to admit. I am slowly learning to sleep at night. I am slowly learning to keep my own soul full. I am slowly learning that just because I do not accomplish 490 million things each day, I am not a failure.

i met a new one and he looks just like you...

You were a hard scar to heal, my love. That was some war your fought to stay under my skin.

"i miss you" still affects me. I guess that is just the long-flowing aftermath of love. You watch the ones who promised to love you forever love someone else. Maybe they miss you. Maybe they are just selfish. Maybe they are just as happy as they are pretending. Maybe they are secretly unhappy and wish things were different. Who knows?


Love doesn't end. Love just floats around in between all the messy stuff life throws at us: people, places, situations and ego. The realization that you weren't validated by someone capable of seeing your true greatness can be hard on your heart.


I say, revel at the unfourtunate limit of their vision.

Poor them, they couldn't see just how bright of a light you were in their life and now you are busy shining for someone else.

Yay you!!! you are a total babeface with a hot career and a pair of killer legs! (or insert your three nice things about yourself...)who is SOOO cool infact that mr. matt nathanson has agreed to come onto your radio show on monday night!

I said I would love you forever. I meant I would love you until I loved someone else.





THAT'S RIGHT. MONDAY NIGHT. ME + MATT NATHANSON. BLOGTALK RADIO. GET INTO IT.

I am in love with hope.

I realized something so important. I am neither better or smarter than anyone else, I am just luckier. Shame on me for feeling like I knew everything about life, dance and love. You can know everyone, know the whole world and still not know your way home at night, and not know what direction you are facing. The secret thing we don't get to see when the camera turn off is that people rarely show us the whole truth about how they feel. If everyone was as happy as they are pretending to be the world would be a different place. Everyone hurts, everyone cries, everyone is unsure.

The challenge for all of us is to keep looking up throughout all of it. You can tell when someone walks into a room and the "biz" has got them down. You can put on your combat boots and either stomp on top of other people who are also trying to get to the top or you can grab their hand and stomp along beside them.

after all we all want the same things: love. comfort. the stars.



I love you.

I believe in you.

Make me proud.

this place was radioactive with memories.

Nothing you do in your life really even matters- dust to dust- you can't take it with you. If that makes you feel small, good. It should. That is exactly what you are. I've been carrying around this ego of mine calling it things acceptable: Hard work, determination, courage...

When really I am just trying to matter in a vast complicated universe where nothing really ever does. Nothing stays. I stood on this island, with no light and no power and could not see anything except black on the horizon and a million stars. If the ocean had swallowed me up right then, the only thing that I would have left behind that really matters is the love I gave to others. People would box up resumes, photos, files and accolades and throw them into the trash. A life I obsessed over would be gone in a flash. You would forget me. The people closest to me would forgive all the mistakes I made. They would talk about all the ways they will remember me, and then eventually, life would get in the way and they would forget me too.

First I wanted to dance.

Then I wanted to dance great.

Then I wanted to be great.

Then I wanted to be greater than "them" (insert: everyone who ever said no to me, every director who cut me from an audition, every boy who broke my heart, every girl said boy loved after me, every kid who was cruel to me in school, every person who called me talentless)

Then I wanted to matter.

Then I realized that so very few things actually do.

I realized on this trip that my favorite version of myself is the one that does what I love for no other reason that it being what I love. It is so easy to touch everything and actually be connected to nothing.

be grateful.
be satisfied.
be humble.

I am going away tonight for 9 days. I won't be blogging. Checking FB. Tweeting. Calling. I will be silent. I will read, write and swim. Wake up when the sun comes up and go to sleep when the moon comes out. No electricity. No Tv's. No anything.

The idea actually scared the crap out of me. I've been pacing all day. I do not "unplug" well. So, reason #526 this trip is so important.

I want to leave you with this thought

If they took away your money, your house, your clothes, your computer, your television, your cellphone, your tickets to that concert...would you still be happy?

We are a society surrounded by "stuff". This stuff is supposed to make us happy.

We are a society addicted to sharing. We tweet, blog, blast each and everything we do. Nothing happens to me anymore without a handful of strangers commenting on it through various social media. I care what those people say, I don't know them. It's all very strange.

My quest for this week is, if I see something beautiful, do something epic, think something profound and no one is around for me to tell about my seeing, doing and thinking... will it mean less?

or perhaps more?

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices."

-into the wild



I met a five year old girl today who told me that "dance was in her soul". Reminded me of me. Reminded me why I love this art. Why I love movement. Why I am obsessed with everything dance. Why I dream in 8 counts and why I want to wear tu-tu's daily. Reminded me of the me I set out to be, and not the me who set out to prove everyone wrong.

I got so caught up with being faster, stronger, and more important than I really am, that I seemed to forget why I do what I do. I do this for you. I write this for you. I do this to inspire you to chase your dreams. Mine already have all come true, and the new one's I've been working on don't fill my soul like 45 minute warm-ups + grand plies in the center.

There are large parts of me that try to be great so that I would feel worthy of all this attention, but my goal was never the attention, my goal was to be great.

I'm back. I missed you.


Ps. sneak peak of the new S+B fall Photoshoot! My grand pleasure to welcome Stacey Tookey from So You Think You Can Dance to the Sugar and Bruno family!

it took so long just to feel alright...

May this be the last time my heart ever breaks for the thought of you.

courage. passion. hard work.

Sometimes, before things can be built up they have to be knocked down. Sometimes, too, a lot of hard dirty work has to happen before something delightful can emerge. It is sometimes though mistakes that we learn something useful.

It is scary to move into a new phase of your future, away from your established routine and old messy habits. Sometimes, for me, it feels like life is full of changes that I am not ready for.

I guess we all have to understand that all the fear, rejection, "what if's" and sleepless nights are worth putting up with because of where they will lead.

Trust that.

The things you work for, will be yours.
The ones who hurt you, will one day get hurt.
Everything you put out into the universe will come back to you.
It might seem like a ton of work now, but trust me all those ballet classes will pay off.

Courage. Passion. Hard Work.

...because sometimes, the bad parts, are sort of the most beautiful. I like a little struggle. I like some blood, sweat and tears. I feel more alive when I am dying, just a little inside. Like Odette-she's on her deathbed and still the most epic beautiful thing I have seen.

Jar of Hearts (and awesome!) Christina Perri + me.

the backstory to this piece: he's broke her heart, and just in the minute she's collected the pieces, he comes back. (sigh)



No matter what your dream is please remember this: good things happen to good people. There will be a day for you that you will start out singing jason mraz in the car with your best friend and end the day the #1 most google searched thing on the planet. I have been around all kinds of music-people while their dreams were coming true. I have never witnessed something so special, real, raw and heartfelt. Life has dragged this girl through the mud...and she came out shining...and so can you... just please

-surround yourself with good people
-believe in your talent
-get the fuck out of your own way
-give good hugs

Thank you for supporting Chris and making her song top #20 on itunes! We were infinite last night.