Mental Health

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What you missed

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Or should I say what I missed.

I’ve been gone over a year and a lot has happened in that time! Where do I start?

Chronologically I suppose. So I started my own business. Quit my job to focus on my business. Got new flooring throughout the house.

Went to universal (again, see my first trip here).

We lost one of our fur babies, The Little made it to the ripe old age of 18.

We then got a new addition to the family, another little black terror named Sabbath. He was only 8weeks old in this picture and already about the size of Little when she was fully grown

I got a new job (still in the beauty industry). Hurricane Irma ran off with our roof so that got replaced. I closed up shop on my business after a year (no one ever tells you working from home means there’s no such thing as time off). Oh and I chopped off all my hair and decided to dye it funky colors… cause when you turn 30 you stop caring what people think

And in between all that I managed to repaint or redo my office, the library, the dining room, and the master bath! So I haven’t really been idol I’ve just neglected posting anything about it. So let’s see if I can get this started back up!!!

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Hiccups

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Or is it Hiccoughs I never know. Last week I posted about the struggles I was having with my anxiety and depression which I thought were compounded by the medications they had me on for my cystic acne. 
 We had a birthday party to go to this week, there was a bouncy house that I indulged in. 


Run for your lives little children

There was also silly string. My husband decided when we got home to attack me with it. We have sword fights and nerf wars and silly string battles on a regular basis but that night after spending a day with people I didn’t know well and being very on edge It threw me into a full blown (hyperventilating, sobbing, convulsing, deer in the headlights) panic attack. It’s hilarious in retrospect, it was confusing and frustrating at the time and all I could think of were those stupid “triggered” memes.
Surprizingly after that night I was feeling upbeat enough to work on a project over Memorial Day but… it didn’t cooperate. It’s the tiny rocking chair I got while in Michigan. One of the screw heads broke off while disassembling it. It was rusted through and needed to be replaced anyway unfortunately, now we get to dig a broken screw out of the leg. It isn’t a huge deal but it put the breaks on that. 


It’s going to take some more finagling.

But it’s not all bad 

First look at this face!!! My skin has never looked better. It feels really raw and dry but it looks amazing. 


Ummm #nofilter? And no makeup and if I’m going to toot my own horn the library is looking pretty good too. 

 Secondly  my dermatologist confirmed that either the accutane OR (given that aunt flo decided to visit in the middle of my cycle despite the little pills telling her there’s no room at the inn) the birth control  are compounding my mental health issues and that it’s definitely time to stop. 

And the angels sang

Last I’ve decided to take a huge leap of faith in myself. I’ll have more about that mystery in later posts but I’m already incredibly excited about what is to come. 
Oh… Okay… maybe just a little hint 

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Not worth it

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In the last few weeks I’ve started and discarded about four blogs. Every time I start one I decide it’s not worth it. My excuse? Accutane.

In case you didn’t know I’ve been on accutane since April of this year to sort out some incredibly painful cystic acne.

How is it going? Great as far as my skin is concerned, everything else? Not so much

Accutane has been known to exacerbate anxiety and depression, both of which I have,  both of which I am unmedicated for. I have absolutely no objections to medication. I have had counseling and have slowly learned to live (cautiously) with my anxiety and recognize my depression and (let’s say) work away from it. 

Unfortunately I’ve been finding that harder and harder to do. Panic attacks are getting more and more frequent. I barely want to leave the house let alone get out of bed and the fear that it’s not just the medicine exacerbating it is overwhealming. 

I went off the medication both when we went to Orlando and for most of the time we were in Michigan but being with close friends or family I tend not to worry about my anxiety as much which in turn makes my anxiety better (if that made sense to you, you might have anxiety) 

So I went off it for a few days this week as well just to see what it’s like at home not surrounded by friends. Actually I primarily did it because I had the worst headache I’ve ever had in my life (that’s saying something) brought on by dehydration which was in turn brought on in part due to the medication. Luckily my husband got me rehydrated relatively quickly and within 12 hours I was feeling quite well again. Within two days of not taking the medicine I was back to rummaging around in my craft room looking for something to do. On day three I had made plans for longer term projects. Something I haven’t done in a while. I’m only retrospectively realizing that it may be due to exacerbated anxiety and depression that I’ve not started any major projects (ok to be fair I took two days off when I did the bathroom too) or finished any small ones (and that bathroom mirror still isn’t hung) even regular household chores which I normally find comfort in the routine of have fallen by and become utterly neglected. 

Unfortunately on the night of day three I dutifully took my dose of medicine. I have yet to be told by my dermatologist when my end date will be. Every time I ask she just avoids direct answers. I cannot go another month on this let alone three. My skin has been wonderful with it but eventually the side effects are simply too much. At this point I don’t care if the cysts come back worse than before, I miss myself more than I like my new skin. 

Here is a cat to cheer you up.

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M.I.A.

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Once again it’s been a while since a post. It’s been a crazy month for Mr. Smith and me. Luckily that crazyness has involved visits from family and (for me) fun makeup and lots of work with it.

  

Oh, on that note  thank you to everyone who has pinned and passed on my white rabbit look on Pinterest. Yes you can follow TinyBows on Pinterest and it would be greatly appreciated.

Visit TinyBows’s profile on Pinterest here. //assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js

The white rabbit has gone a wee bit viral, at least by the standards of little old me. You can also find me on Facebook if you’re interested.

Anyway I apologize for being a little lax in projects. Or at least documenting projects

I went wreath crazy last week, but failed to take any pictures of the process. Just the results.

   
    
 I’ve also done at least three Halloween makeup looks since the white rabbit, one of which involved making a headpiece… I also failed to take pictures for that.

  
I’m being a pretty terrible blogger and it bugs me, so im going to attempt to do better in the coming months. Though the holidays are a terrible time for resolutions. At least in the new year I’m going  to rock this.

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Coloring The Town

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I missed a post last week. Been working on some personal things. Also been working out some stress.

I’m a bit late to the boat but I just discovered coloring books for adults. They looked super pretty, this one in particular 

  
I thought if nothing else it would be cheap artwork to fill gaps in a gallery wall. 

Turns out it’s pretty relaxing too. 

My first try was with markers, not too great but still relaxing.

  
Then I moved on to colored pencils, nothing fancy just crayolas. 

  
But much better results and still just as relaxing.

  
Turns out coloring inside the lines can still be relatively creative 

  

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Zombie Clowns

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Mr. Smith and I have been on a little mini hiatus for the last few days. I had hoped to get a post up before leaving for said break from the real world but I wasn’t really sure what to write about. 

  
At first I was reluctant to pick up blogging and my hobbies again. To be fair I was reluctant to do anything. I couldn’t even eat. Now I’m finding I relish the little things; in particular the hobbies that bring me and especially others joy. So of course I’ll be doing a blog about how my hobbies are helping me through everything. I guess every blog I do is about a hobby or project, I just have a new love for them. 

  
But of course now I have a mini vacation to blog about . For Mr. Smith’s birthday  we spent some time with his aunt and her family down in Florida. As I’ve said my family has been amazingly helpful with getting through this so I’m incredibly grateful Mr. Smith has some family relatively close by.

  
They live in an area that I’m quite familiar with because my grandparents used to live there. We had the opportunity to go to Legoland one day… 

This is going to sound like an

  
Type of thing, but I actually went to Legoland before it was Legoland. On a side note I had been to Legoland once it was Legoland as well, I was just excited to see how Mr. Smith would like it since this was his first trip. 

  
Legoland is built around a place called Cyprus Gardens which I had been to several times in my youth and your admission to the park includes admission to the old gardens. Don’t get me wrong Legoland is cool, (more about it later) but if you don’t bother going to Cyprus Gardens while you’re there you are missing out. 

  
Mr. Smith didn’t really bother taking any pictures in Legoland but his eyes lit up and the camera snapped away when we got to the gardens as you can probably tell by all of these pictures.  If you’ve never seen a Banyan tree it is an amazing sight to behold.  Of course he had to have a creepy tree in this post. 

  
Legoland itself was toy heaven, secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) neither of us have matured in the last 20 years so we are still stuck in the 8-14 age bracket that Legos cater to… our vacation budget was spent accordingly. And that’s pretty much all we did was shop. The weather was terrible thanks to this time of year so a good amount of the rides were closed anyway. I’m extremely happy I wore my bathing suit under my clothes because I never dried out.

  
(Han definitely shot first) 
Our haul from Legoland however was epic…. Oh I mean Awesome!

  
I’m personally of the master builder disposition whereas Mr. Smith tends to follow directions. He has plans involving Kra-Gl but I’ve got a piece of resistance around here to stop him. 

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An Empty Chair

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I’m about to bring down the mood and I would like to apologize for that in advance. However I was abruptly reminded of how ones life can change in the blink of an eye recently. My fiancé and I have known one another for 8 years, we’ve been together for a cumulative 4 and in that time we’ve essentially become a part of each other’s family.

Three weeks ago my fiancé lost his mother and father in one fell swoop. One phone call completely changed our lives. It’s still early days and I’m not sure how we pick up the pieces or where we go from here. My parents have been my rock, but for my fiancé being an only child and living far away from any extended family I’m amazed at every second he manages to make me laugh and giggle.

It’s reminded me just how much we need each other in our lives and shown me how unconditionally we love one another and our families.

I do have a project this week, I was planning on sharing it last week but couldn’t bring myself to write about it. My future mother in law was one of my biggest supporters, she always shared my posts and always had encouraging things to say. When my fiancé (you know what, I’m going to call him Mr. Smith for the sake of stream lining) and I moved in together there was a chair that his parents gave to him that we though might work well with the desk I refinished last year.


It was in pretty rough shape, the varnish was peeling, the stain was uneven and it was rather scratched and marred.


I stripped and sanded it, the whole time sending update pictures to Mr. Smith’s mom. She was rather surprised the chair hadn’t ended up in the garbage after all these years but you know me and solid wood furniture, where there is sandpaper there is a way.


After sanding I did a final run down with fine steel wool. You just can’t appreciate woodwork until you’ve used steel wool on it, it’s like the butter on the bread.


Then it was on to staining I used a combination of ebony and mahogany to get a warmer finish then plain ebony. It being on maple wood vs. my desk’s mahogany it’s still much cooler toned but I knew I wouldn’t get an exact match. It was more that I actually had a chair that fit in the narrow space under the desk unlike modern desk chairs.
 I was so excited to see what her reaction to the finished blog would be its one of the many things I’ll encounter throughout the rest of my life that will remind me she isn’t here anymore. Not to mention all of the myriad of other things that we won’t get to enjoy with them. They won’t be there to help us move into a new house, and guide us through all the perils of home ownership. They won’t be witness for our little courthouse wedding, or compare new cars and try to decide who would win in a drag race (without ever actually racing lol).

Every blog I post will remind me she isn’t there cheering me on. But as Mr. Smith has reminded me that’s no reason to stop, we go on, we do the things we love and the things she loved, we remain the people she loved and we remember.

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Joyful, Joyful

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What a week!? First I got all my hair cut off (finally), there is just a 12″ ponytail hanging nonchalantly on my refrigerator waiting to be sent to wigs for kids. Then I spent a couple of days in the city to attend a conference hosted by Philosophy to check out their new product line up. And what a line up it is! So I thought I would impart some of the low down on what they have coming up with you.

I am a bit of a fragrance junkie… only a bit, I’ve seen it much worse than me. I’ve also always loved Philosophy’s fragrances. So when I found out they were going to have a new fragrance launch I was excited. If you are familiar with Philosophy you have likely heard of Amazing Grace or maybe even one of the other scents in the “Grace” line of fragrances they have. They also have a line of “Love” fragrances, now headlined by the lovely (haha) citrus and soft floral scent of Loveswept. Now they are getting ready to launch a “Live” line of fragrances. First on the roster is Live Joyously coming this February. I got a sneak peak and sniff of it this week and though I’m taking my time falling in love with the scent I am wild about the concept.

Philosophy’s fragrances have always been a whisper, this is a shout. First off, it is an Eau de perfume as opposed to an Eau de toilette. EDP’s have a higher concentration of fragrance oils in them as well as (usually) having higher quality source ingredients. For example in an EDT you may have ylang-ylang which comes from a farm in the Philippines but in the EDP you will still have ylang-ylang but, it will come from the wilds of Indonesia. The different environment gives the flowers and therefore the fragrance a different scent profile. Just like oranges from California taste different than oranges from Florida. Same species, different environment.

Philosophy has also upped the ante when it comes to the feel and look of their EDP. The box is made out of a stiff matte cardstock with a Philosophy style message just for the recipient on the inside flap of the packaging. Gone is the plain silver cap that adorned the top of all of their fragrances (making it hard to distinguish one from the other) to be replaced with a classic surlyn cap. Also gone is the stick on label, instead replaced with screen printed graphics on a beautiful ombre from pink to purple colored glass bottle.

This shift to a higher quality feel is going to start with the new Live Joyously EDP but continue as Loveswept will get the EDP treatment as well. It currently only comes in EDT but look out for it in EDP soon.

Ok, enough about the packaging… I know, I’m a visual girl so I was enamored by it.

A special message under the lid

The fragrance itself… Is… actually growing on me… I’m one of those people that can’t immediately fall in love with a fragrance, despite loving all things that smell good (lush is the bane of my existence). After giving this one three days I’m actually starting to really like it. Three days is actually doing pretty good, it took me a month to like Romance and now it’s one of my go to. It helps that my first experience with Live Joyously was at a wonderful conference meeting amazing and interesting new people. Our olfactory sense is closely linked to memory so the smell of it brings me back to this week’s excitement, not to mention the most wonderful hotel bed I have ever had the pleasure of sleeping in.

They will also have a special travel set coming out with Live Joyously, Amazing Grace, and LoveSwept. Definitely going on my wish list… But that may have more to do with the bow than anything else.

I’ll be honest I’m not that fond of its initial top notes. They are a bit too bold for me, I happen to like the whisper of philosophy’s usual fragrances. After giving it a good half hour of dry down the soft (almost powdery) peony heart notes and the warm (but not overly musky) patchouli of the base come forward and settle it into a very sophisticated yet carefree scent that (though it lasts all day) is not at all overpowering. Though it feels very feminine to me it’s classified as a chypre and after turning over a good bit of research (I mean google) it turns out that is the most alluring fragrance classification to men. Soooo… this is where the hint, hint, wink, wink is supposed to go.

I feel I am falling laughably flat in describing this scent but it will definitely go in my winter rotation, and I think you will love it if you like: Ms. Dior EDT, CoCo Mademoiselle EDP, or Chanel Chance (original or Eau Tendre).

Keep an eye out for their summer scent as well, this time in their “Love” tier of fragrances. Great if you like Light Blue or Aquatic fragrances.

This obviously isn’t the only thing I got a hands on with at the conference but like I said I do love things that smell good, and you’ll have a chance to try it out very soon if it hasn’t already hit your local Philosophy counter. One of the other things we did spend a lot of time on is Philosophy’s amazing Hope&Grace Initiative.

You can find out more about it here, but just so you get an overview; 1% of all Philosophy product sales (online, in store, on qvc, etc. etc. any point of sale!) go towards community based mental health organizations for women. If you’re active in the blogosphere than your have likely come across the 31 days of BPD that many brave bloggers are doing out there, if you haven’t go check it out. I’m very proud to support a company who is helping to provide community based assistance to the 1 in 8 women who will develop clinical depression during their lifetime.