Wedding

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Adventure Time

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We’ve been doing some more running around the great state of Michigan so I though I would share those adventures before my phone gets too full of pictures. Click over to this weeks earlier post if you missed it to check out our previous adventures. 

First off we headed to the little town of Battle Creek to visit some family and of, course hunt down some Pokemon (it’s a healthy addiction right?)


They have a beautiful little river side park called friendship park, and of course another brewery. This one called Arcadia, they make an excellent cherry cider. 

We also hit up a few shops in southern Michigan including this wonderful little art gallery  and shop in Marshall called EastEnd Studio


And our all time favorite coffee shop


On Friday we had the privilege of attending a beautiful wedding at the Fredrick Meijer gardens in Grand Rapids.



 If you ever have a chance to visit here you must do so. 


We headed to the venu early so we could have the chance to look around the gardens. 


Not only is it an amazing botanical collection they also have one of  the most amazing and extensive modern sculptural collections in the United States. 



Primarily we wanted to check out the Japanese gardens. 


It’s the newest and biggest section and it is absolutely stunning. 


 I think I may finally have inspiration on how to landscape our back yard this fall.


 Though I don’t think I’m skilled enough for bonsai on this level… Or any level… The plastic level maybe. 


Today is a very welcomed rainy lazy day then tomorrow we head for the dunes at Lake Michigan. I’m looking forward to sharing that with you next week. 

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Rings and Things

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I’m taking a little down time while remodeling the bathroom… But it turns out I’m really bad at down time. I feel like I need to be doing something “productive”. Luckily this morning I had a little inspiration brewing. It all started with this little mouse that a friend got me as an engagement present after I had forgotten to take off my ring while we were working on a project at her house.

Then another friend who is going through a KonMari (I had to google it and it turns out I’ve been doing this technique for years) purge mentioned “aspirational clutter”. You know, all that stuff you have laying around that you go “well, I might need it… One day”. I generally hate stuff like that, but I do have a few odds and ends that have managed to hang around for no reason other than aspirational ones. So today I decided to use some of that crap.

(Admittedly the above is not Aspiration Clutter, most of it has actually already been used… It was just the only cluttered picture I had)

Enter Pinterest where I discovered this blog post (you can follow me on pinterest at TinyBows, as a warning lots of wedding stuff of late)

Then I remembered the tiny sad picture frame I had hanging around because “I swear I’ll find something to do with it”.

As you might have noticed most of its rhinestones are gone, so let’s just make all of them disappear, and break out my trusty decorating friend nail polish.

 

Much improved

On to the backing which I’ll be doing with some scraps of fleece and wide lace ribbon. The fleece is another aspirational hang around, it’s just scrap from a Finn the human hat I made for my boyfriend two halloweens ago.

I just cut circles of the lace and fleece the size of the glass that used to go in the frame then did consecutively smaller circles of the fleece to act as stuffing

Now just one last thing, a straight pin with the head painted with the same nail polish to match. It’s mint candy apple by Essie if you were wondering.

I’m pretty sure I now need to do a big one of these to stick my myriad of broaches in.

And now I have a nice pretty ring holder to sit in the bedroom and a nice pretty (but also durable and unfazed by water) one to go in the kitchen or bathroom.

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Horseshoes and Hand Grenades

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I almost managed to get a post up this weekend. Then my crazy week spilled over. I tend not to post much about my personal life on my blog but after being asked by project patrol (who was asked by Emilyannlou) to list five controversial things about myself I might as well put some of the reasons why my blog has been lacking in … frivolity… lately as well. Tomorrow i will be going on my third make that fourth job interview in a week with a third company. I love my current job so i’m not really looking to switch but trying to save for a house on a retail income isnt the easiest thing. Also this happened this week.

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Not the nails though two people now have been distracted by them when i showed them my snazzy new engagement ring. As a side note my Jamberry party that i posted about a while ago went swimmingly and i decided to become a consultant so if you want to browse the catalog feel free. Now i just have to learn that i cannot, sand, strip furniture, paint, varnish and or  play with caustic chemicals, without taking my ring off… luckily I have a lovely dancing baby Groot who appears to be made just for holding rings.

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All hail king Groot

Luckily thanks to a dear friend of mine things should be back on track for my blog here shortly. I’m back on mostly day shifts (hooooray, i’m such a morning person those night shifts were seriously screwing with me) and I’ve got some projects with my friend lined up as she redecorates and refinishes some furniture in her house.

So on to those “controversial” things that project patrol passed on to me. I thought the Liebster was hard. First off let me start by saying I’m a super boring person. Secondly without trying to be all righteous, I’m just not a very judgmental person. So I don’t find a lot of things “controversial”…. But here it is I’ve wracked my brain… All of the controversy…

1. Let’s start with a big one… If anything is “controversial” about me it’s this.

I live in the Bible Belt. I was raised in an … (Let’s call it) unreligious house. In high school I attended (by my own choice) a Unitarian Universalist youth group program called Religious Exploration. We learned not only about Unitarianism (within Christianity the unity as opposed to trinity of God) and universalism (universal salvation)

A friend of mine who is still very active in the church explained Unitarian Universalism very well recently

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we also learned about Christianity’s roots, Catholicism, the various sects of Christianity,  Judaism and its various sects, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism… You name it we learned it. I had the chance to speak to imams and rabbis, priests and reverends. What did I learn from all of this? I really don’t like organized religion.

I loved my church as a learning tool it taught me the difference between agnostic and atheist… Or agnostic atheist as the case may be, and in the UU church being just that is absolutely fine.

2. I do not now have, nor do I have plans to have any children. I’m pushing 30 and in a long term, stable relationship. Yes I have time to change my mind. No I’m not going to.

3. I’m a college drop out. Not just a college drop out, a drop out with about 16 credit hours left… It’s a long story I’m not going to go into it.

4. I’ve mentioned it before but i’ll do it again for the sake of new readers. I work in the cosmetics industry. I love my job. I love the products, I love the people, I love gathering information and testing things out…. You know what I hate. Urban Decay eye shadow. I know how could I? They have cute (read: contrived)  names, they have amazing pigmentation, they have colors you cant find anywhere else (and have to buy a whole $60 pallet just to get that one color). They also have the worst fallout in the industry. I understand there is a trade off. High pigmentation means a good bit of fallout. But UD is next-level, so-much-graffiti-on-your-cheeks, you look like that chick from guardians of the galaxy fall out (that was a throw back color, do they even make graffiti anymore? god I’m old). Yes they make primer, and they sell a lot of it because of this, and yes it helps… sort of… but eye shadow should stand on its own and even with primer you get stupid amounts of fallout. sooooo…… just go buy some MAC or Stila… except kitten it has just as much fallout (but it’s so damned pretty it’s worth it)… ok my product rant  is done… i apologize.

Regular programming should resume shortly

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Night of the living Wed

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Halloween!!!

So I’ve been avoiding doing any posts about skin care or makeup. Yes I do this stuff for a living, that doesn’t mean I’m confident in my abilities.

But… It’s Halloween, It’s my favorite time of year and an excuse to be someone different for a change. So I thought I would show off what I’ve been doing lately.

Last year I had a couple of different costumes.

My social costume was Marceline the Vampire Queen. Although technically I wore the clothing pertaining to Marshall Lee because a little boy’s black and red plaid shirt was far easier to find and implement. Not to mention something I’m likely to wear again.

Marceline and Marshall Lee in case you’re not hip to the kids.

And my work costume was a Tiger. Never underestimate a pair of cheap costume ears as inspiration for a costume

Oddly I have a collection of costume ears. It all started with a pair of bunny ears to hold my hair out of my face while I washed it or did my makeup … It’s gotten a bit out of hand since then.

Luckily this makes for a great party game that I had the privilege of playing this weekend at a Halloween themed bridal shower. Think “Who Am I” only with animal ears on your head. The devil horns made for a bit of a puzzler. “Do I have wings?”….That wasn’t really a yes or no question, we had to think about how to answer that for a moment.

I also had the privilege of being involved in a Halloween themed wedding this weekend. The ceremony was relatively normal and exceptionally gorgeous, until the zombies showed up. No seriously, there were zombies. Then the reception was costumes encouraged. Being the crazy person that I am I took fifteen minutes and dashed to the bathroom to transform from a lovely bridesmaid to the living dead. I’ll link to the video tutorial the groom sent me that inspired my quick change here.

These are pictures from my preliminary run through to figure out if I could actually do it in 10minutes. Turns out I could.

I was enjoying myself too much at the reception to bother with pictures.

All this being said I think the way to break my fear of posting makeup blogs is to just do costume makeup. I could work around a pair of ears and do a costume related post every month. It might also help me not run out of blog posts, which is super exciting as I am running out of projects or rather time to do them having just started a new job. I love doing costume makeup despite the fact that I don’t actually own any “costume makeup”. I’ve always just used makeup I already have. Things like bronzer (a.k.a. Tiger orange) and black khol liners and lipstick (blood more blood) and lots of eyeshadow.

I actually Have yet to figure out what I’m being this Halloween. It was suggested that I just do the zombie, but that is definitely not work appropriate. And I’ve tried out a couple of other looks the last month or so. Without loving them unfortunately.

I have the most marvelous devil horns, but this look just wasn’t… dramatic? .. enough for me.

And this look though really fun and surprisingly easy… I just don’t know what it is. Though a friend did point out that I look a bit like the captain from Treasure Planet

Photo bombing the photo bomber.

At any rate it’s something I’m new at so criticism or critiquing is certainly welcome and appreciated because I’m learning and love to do so. Also my amazon wish list just got super weird having decided to do this with things like liquid latex and rigid collodion and … yeah its super odd.
I’ll have a post up later about what I actually ended up doing for Halloween.