Ami Meets The False Eye Lashes

So I was chatting with a friend of mine today who FREAKED OUT when she found out I hadn't tried false eyelashes. And I've kinda been wanting to try them and I had to go to the pharmacy anyways SO... I grabbed me a pair of these while I was there:

My girlfriend told me to get this brand but with strings attached for easy application and unfortunately they only had one pair with the strings on them and they were HUGE. WAYYYY more massive than these guys so we went with the harder to apply double pack to start the newbie off with something a smidgen less.... dramatic. 

So we're gonna go on a little adventure and I'm going to do something I probably will regret doing later and post photos of myself through out the make up application process so you can see the "Before" and "After" shots for comparison. 

Thats right I'm going to post completely un-retouched, absolutely no make up on close ups of myself. Online. No I'm not under duress (yet). (No I'm not making the before picture larger right now). 

Wow scary I know. I haven't even washed my face AND my eyebrows need a touch up. Love the red nose. Just MAKES the look. We're not discussing under eye circles, m'kay? 

So this is me with my face washed, moisturizer applied, and about an inch of concealer, primer on my eye lids and MAC mineral make up on my face. Much better, but kinda colorless.

So lets add some color shall we? Just b/c I always like the difference between with and WITH OUT mascara I'll show you this one with all my color done. I used bronzer for blush and did my eye shadow.

Please also note that we're performing this little experiment during the commercial breaks of "So You Think You Can Dance" so quite a bit of time passes as I do this, which is why my make up gets decidedly less fresh as things go on. 

And THIS one with mascara, eye liner and my eye brows done. If you don't think the hair on your face makes a difference these two shots (the ones directly above and below these lines) should convert you. LOOK I have EYE LASHES MA!! Oh! And eye brows!! They look super dark, but guess what, NOW they match my hair! And my husband wonders why I'm in love with my mascara...

 (and why yes I do have my mother's chin lol). 

And just so you can see what it looks like with the lids closed for comparison. 

And now we got to the REALLY hard part - putting on the fake eye lashes. Yes according to the wisdom of the ages (Google) I applied ALL my make up FIRST so I wouldn't funk up my eye lashes after. I mostly think this was the correct choice.

It started off pretty promising... kinda. Or rather it made me feel good about myself that instead of having to trim down the lashes to fit my eyes, they're actually a bit small for me. How cool is that?? I always thought my eyes were on the small side but these were BIG lashes and they don't make it but like almost 3/4s of the way across my lid with my eyes open. Sweet!

That was the high point.

Can I just say WOW that was more difficult than I was expecting it to be after watching all those YouTube videos of women confidently making this look so DANG EASY!! My first attempt to put them on I glued all my natural lashes on my right eye together. THAT took some undoing.

But eventually we got there. If I had taken video it probably would be a comedy... And MAN do these things feel weird. I've had them on a couple hours now and they're starting to not feel so odd but at first it was way funky. And the Hub was totally weirded out by them so by the time I got to taking pictures this is about how I felt about the experience:

Or maybe this one sums it up better: 

So lets do this. From a distance I don't think they look too bad. Definitely more noticeable than my natural ones: 

And here's lids closed... and why yes I fixed my eye liner on my right eye and forgot to fix my eye liner on my left. Nice of you to notice... You couldn't see my eyeliner like at all once I was done gluing and I had to use my pencil instead of my liquid liner b/c I couldn't get the liquid around the GIANT eye lashes. They look small in these photos but seriously - I look up now and my eye lashes touch my eyebrows!!

And a couple of terrifying close ups for the people who want to see every last pore lash. I had to crop my nose out of these shots b/c with the camera *this*close* to my face it looked crazy large and it was bothering me and we're discussing my lashes anyway okay so just get over it. No giant nose shots for you!

For the most part I really like the way they look. I'm debating if it looks weird to have them end before I run out of lid, but gluing the insides in the right place was WAY harder than the outsides b/c I have like no natural lashes there to stick them to so it was an adventure. Also I don't like how you can kinda see the little dotted lines on the insides where the lashes stick to their strip...

And here I teach you a valueable lesson about the importance of fixing your eyeliner after you put your lashes on so you don't wind up with one eye looking good and the other eye sporting really obvious fakes.

You're welcome.

Really my charity knows no bounds:

And so because thats a CRAZY amount of scrolling we'll give you some nice big fat before and afters right here at the end. You're welcome, again. 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

 If you say you can't tell a difference please feel free to choke to death on a Tribble. 

Ode to Spray On Sunblock

Me + Spray On Sunblock = FAIL

So yesterday I tried this spray on sunblock thing before the kid and I went swimming. And apparently I got it right with the kid b/c he is fine (mercifully) but I instead got this narly, patchy, time delayed sun burn. It sucks.

I got home from the pool at like 11:30-ish and in the mirror I was just barely light pink. "Close call" was my thought. *head desk*

Then its like 7pm and we're watching tv and I start to notice that I hurt and my tshirt feels unreasonably hot but only in certain areas (its summer in Phoenix so the fact it didn't feel that way ALL OVER was my clue something was up). So I wander into the bathroom and take a look in the mirror. Right shoulder is light pink in places but not too bad. Then I see the left shoulder. HOLY CRAP that is RED.

*Ugh*

And so right now I'm extremely grateful that my kid is just barely 3 years old and not to the point of freaking out over nudity b/c I have so been running around the house topless b/c clothes HURT. But my little party is about to end b/c my friend is going to drop by here in another hour and I'm going to have to put a shirt on which is going to STINK and she's just going to have to deal w/ the fact that my house is a mess and I'm not wearing a bra b/c right now my idea of a good time is holding as still as possible while sitting on the sofa and if I put bra straps on this monster there will be screaming which would probably impair our ability to have a conversation. Just sayin.

And I NEVER get sunburns, at least not in the last few years, had a couple of accidental burns when I first moved to Phoenix and had to readjust to life in the sun, but I digress. Point is I try my hardest NOT to get sunburns b/c my mother is a skin cancer survivor and I don't want that crap and I'm fricking glow in the dark white and I don't tan. I just get BRIGHT red, peel and go back to white. It sucks.

If anything I just get more freckles and dangit if freckles don't make me nervous now. I keep staring at them and trying to judge if they've changed and going over the ABC's of skin cancer (Asymmetry, Border, Color, Diameter) to see if I need to run screaming to a doc for a biopsy or not.

*screaming cussing many bad words more cussing*

*grumble grumble*

I wish that life were planable. Plannable? I dunno its not a word so I'm making it up. I want to be able to properly plan everything in my life and I want those plans to actually work. That way I could see clearly the path before me and know how it was going to go down and how it was all going to work out. Right now I see several different things that all need to happen in the near future.

The problem is that I think some of those things may be mutually exclusive things and so I just have no idea how its all going to happen and work out and fit together. Not with other things existing as they currently are. And just for bonus points, most of the major elements depends on my husband and not me to accomplish them and therefore that limits the amount of control I have over the situation, him not being a robot I can control (yes I've tried).

And so this elevates my stress and I'm trying really hard to not freak out and say eat a whole pan of brownies and have a panic attack. And so instead I find my self some what paralyzed. My ability to be productive in any form has just gone right down the tubes and all I really want to do is sleep b/c if I'm awake then I start worrying again and then I want to eat and eating is bad. I'm doing Weight Watchers and if I don't want to put right back on all the weight I've lost then I've got to find an alternate something to do but instead of say,"running a marathon" or "hiking a mountain" to relax, my anxiety level just makes me want to curl up in the fetal position.

Right now I'm filing that under "better than brownies but not good".

We take what we can get right?

Ya know I read a blog post by a friend about depression and thought, "Wow I'm actually doing really good. I haven't been that bad in a long, long time" and then I write this post and kinda go "Yeah..... but I'm not sure 'good' is the word I'd use to describe what I am right now given the whole need for the fetal position bit." *sigh* One step forward, two steps back. Something like that right?

I need to go make dinner b/c the missionaries are coming over which is something I usually thoroughly enjoy except all my pleasure at it is gone right now b/c I swear my ability to feed the missionaries in this ward with out incident is just cursed. There was the time I made dinner and they never showed up b/c apparently they didn't get their meal calendar. There was the time I made dinner and Adam was late coming home from work so I just hauled the table out in the court yard in front of our apartment and fed them al fresco (they can't come in if theres not another adult male in the house with me.... b/c three on one makes sense but whatever. Chaperones are goofy things). And then there was the time I somehow managed to lose my mind and sign up to feed them ON my anniversary when I actually had a babysitter and was going to get to go out on an actual date with my husband. I was so flustered I just threw cash at them and told them to take themselves out to eat.

Seriously. Any sane person would just NOT sign up anymore. I mean we have managed this successfully once or twice but the big problem we KEEP having is that I serve dinner at 6 pm. This is because my husband doesn't get home from work until 5:45 pm usually. Well apparently every other person on the planet eats dinner at 5 pm and so they always want to come earlier and I can't have them come earlier because I don't have a penis and my husbands penis won't be home for another hour and Caleb's isn't old enough to count. And they keep scheduling appointments for 6 pm. And while I commend them for their diligence in teaching the gospel its really the frick annoying. And if I didn't have a major soft spot for the missionaries, former missionary that I am, I would totally just give up.

So guess what happened today. I even specified on the calendar when I signed up a week ago that dinner would need to be at 6 pm. Guess what. They didn't GET the calendar until TODAY. So guess what they have scheduled at 6 pm? (Hint: Its NOT a dinner with me). And thats a problem b/c its 110 degrees outside and I'm not making them sit out there to eat a nice hot meal. Mercifully my husbands boss is feeling nice and he'll hopefully get home at more like 5:15 pm and that just gets to be enough time for them to eat cuz thats as good as its getting' folks.

*grumbles*

Now if I can make myself go prep dinner instead of sit here and whine or escape into reading or try to sleep more....