As we all know, quarantine can be mind numbingly boring. It gives us the free-time we all thought we needed. Now that I have all this free time I can’t seem to think of anything to do. All I can think of is how much I miss my friends and all the fun things I would have been doing right now. My screen time has reached an all time high in the last couple of weeks as I re-watch my favorite shows, pick my way through my instagram feed and scroll idly through tik tok after tik tok. As I’ve been spending more and more time on tik tok I noticed so many trends and DIYs that I just had to try. 

    At the very beginning of quarantine whipped coffee was all the rage. Although I’m not a huge coffee drinker, I decided to try the easy recipe: equal parts instant coffee, water, and sugar. I put the fluffy whipped mixture on top of vanilla almond milk with a little bit of creamer and it was bomb. Be sure to mix the milk and the coffee part well though because the fluff is super strong and bitter. Trust me I made that mistake. 

    A couple of weeks ago I saw some videos of people embroidering flowers and patterns onto jeans and jean shorts. I have never embroidered anything in my life but it seemed like more fun than online homework so I grabbed an old pair of jean shorts, some embroidery floss and a needle and got to work. Following a couple of videos, I settled on the “lazy daisy pattern” and sewed bright pink and yellow flowers alongside the edge of my pockets. It was surprisingly not too hard to get the hang of and I think the shorts will be a cute addition to my summer clothes.

    Other trends TikTok has brought to my attention lately is tie-dye and bleach trends. For a while, scrolling through the For You page meant seeing girls showing off their matching tie dye sweatpants and crewnecks or self cropped and bleached t-shirts. One of the most popular trends is the bleached jeans trend. Using a sponge and some bleach, you can easily lighten one side of your jeans and get a cute mismatched look. I’ve even seen a couple of videos of girls bleaching star patterns into darker jeans. Personally, I’ve only cropped a couple of shirts and sweatshirts because I haven’t had the right supplies to tie dye and bleach but I love these looks and think they are super cute. I have so many of these videos saved for when I can finally get to the store.

   In the last couple of days, beaded braids and hair wraps have flooded my TikTok. With my tight curls, I honestly didn’t think the beaded braids would look all that great and that the braids would look longer than my tight curls. I did end up trying this though and after getting my hair wet, it was pretty easy to slide the beads into braids and it resulted in a cute beachy/vacation look.

    In the end, quarantine has brought out the creative side for so many. I love following the trends and trying them out for myself.