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....

The Dark Side of eReaders

So welcome to the Dark Side of the eReader world.

I was initially VERY skeptical of the whole eReader concept. I thought I'd never give up my beloved books. And then I was gifted a Kindle for Christmas a couple years ago and I fell quickly and deeply in love. I could buy all the books I wanted. RIGHT NOW. I didn't have to wait until the store opened, or even be bothered with putting on clothes, finding shoes and dragging me and the kiddo down to the store in the vain hopes they had the title I wanted for a price I was willing to pay!

AND even better it solved my storage issue. Because I am a voracious reader when I get on a kick and I like buying books because I have issues with libraries and return dates (and even bigger issues with waiting lists to get the titles I want), and if I buy too many more books I'm going to have to buy a bigger house in order to have room to store all of the books. With the Kindle and the Cloud I could buy all the books I wanted and not have to worry about where to keep them. Miracle!

Then after almost a year of happy use, our Kindle died.

It was a dark moment. Adam pulled it out of his bag and the screen was all messed up. It looked like it had been shattered or something - not physically just the e-ink display had funky lines all across it and only part of it responded when you turned it on and off or even did a hard reset. Hard to read a book when you can only see the bottom left corner of the page.

So I called Amazon and mercifully it was still under warranty so they replaced it no questions asked. I was very pleased and we continued on our merry way.... until May 2nd.

May 2nd my Kindle worked perfectly for my first flight. I charged up during my layover. It worked great. I got on the plane, pulled out my Kindle to read while I waited for the rest of the folks to board and to my horror my screen was all screwed up. It was an exact repeat of the problem we'd had before. And my Kindle had been in the padded sleeve with my lap top that is unharmed.

Now I admit I was very grateful for Amazon's Cloud because I was able to whip out my Android smart phone and VERY quickly download a couple books for my flight so I wasn't completely with out entertainment but I admit I almost panicked at the thought of a 9 hour flight and nothing to do. 


But then I got home and called Amazon and learned I had a problem. My warranty is up. They won't replace my Kindle, even tho its died of the exact same mystery illness that claimed my first one for no good reason.

Oh but they'll offer me another Kindle for a discounted price. They want me to shell out another 80 bucks to buy something that has already died for no apparent reason... TWICE.

So I'm like well screw this noise I'll take me and my money over to Nook and see how we like them apples. I'd love a tablet like an iPad but my budget can barely handle a base line e-Ink reader atm so we'll go with it.

Thats when we discover the problem: all those nice books I bought on Kindle? Yeah the Nook can't read them. In fact if you don't have a Kindle the only thing capable of reading a Kindle Book is an Android or iOS tablet,  smart phone or a computer. Suck. (For the record Nook is the same way. If you buy it on Nook the Kindle can't read it. Only Android and Apple can read it besides Nook).

Now I've got a smart phone and a lap top, but the smart phone is really small and the battery isn't that great. And the lap top is just plain large (and the battery life is a joke).

I miss my eReader.

So here's the rock: Pay $80 every year for a new Kindle,  assuming that I were to buy a replacement at the discounted price and it dies after a year or so and they offer me the discount AGAIN on the next one. That doesn't sound like a lot but consider what I'm paying for books too and add to that fact that I'm already too cheap to pay for cable and thats A LOT of money.

And here's the hard place: Buy a tablet. A basic Android tablet will run you $250 easy and an iPad starts at $499. Ouch.

My options suck.

Do Me a Favor

I would just like to ask every body that I have to interact with to please do me one favor: Before you judge me, before you assume that the reason I do or do not do something that you think I should do or not do, and decide I'm just a horrible person because I don't operate the same way you do... maybe just maybe ask me why.

Cuz I might have a reason. It might be a stupid reason according to your way of thinking, but see the thing is that feelings are real, even if they're not the most logical and since they are real they have to be dealt with. And maybe I haven't gotten to where I can deal with those yet.

So maybe I don't do something I should do. Something you consider basic and only common courtesy. But maybe I don't because doing that hurts for reasons that really have nothing to do with the action itself. It hurts and every time I do it, I hate the entire experience. I loathe it. I don't like it when other people do it because it reminds me of the thing that hurts.

And because I'm a human being and we are wired to avoid pain I don't deal with the thing that hurts because to be honest I have no idea how and I'm not sure its even possible to fix in this life so I avoid those things that remind me of it.

So think me to be a horrible person. Think I lack common courtesy and basic decency.

But maybe think before you slam me yet again behind my back - to ask me WHY.

French Peasant Soup

I got the recipe from Rachael Ray's cookbook 365 No Repeats. She said this is her version of a soup she had on vacation in Bordeaux, France. Its super duper easy and a 30 min meal.

2 T EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
1 small ham steak, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 celery rib with its greens, chopped
1 leek, cleaned and sliced into half moons
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 large shallot, finely chopped
1 small head of cabbage, cut into large pieces
1 tsp sugar
kosher salt
4 cups chicken stock or broth (I used broth)
1 15-ounce can cannelloni beans
Coarse black pepper
Crusty Bread
(And she recommends having it with a bottle of Bordeaux wine but we skipped that step)

Head a soup pot over medium-high heat with the EVOO. Add the ingredients to the pot as you chop them: ham, carrots, onions, celery, leeks, garlic and shallots. Add the cabbage to the pot and sprinkle with salt and sugar, add 2 cups of water and cover pot and allow cabbage to steam for 15 mins.

Uncover pot, add the stock and the beans. Crank the heat up to boil, reduce to simmer and adjust salt and pepper to taste. Serve with crusty bread (and I added a big salad on the side).

Super tasty and very easy. Uses TONS of fresh veggies. She says it serves 4 but in my world that serves more like 8!

UPDATE: This recipe is 3 points plus per serving (assuming you claim the recipe makes 8 servings instead of 4).

Whats Taking So Long?!

So for those of you who are wondering if I'm EVER going to post "after" pics of my little book case project part of the dining room remodel I've got some progress shots to explain what the frick is taking so long....

See I got them all painted, AND all the shelves painted, which took forever b/c I had to do it in batches b/c of limited work space. Then I got them in place - the two on the right I painted, the two on the left I bought. I think I did a dang good job of color matching them if I say so myself. Please ignore all the clutter. Its a work in progress (thats my story and I'm stickin' to it).

I was ALL excited b/c it took FOREVER and many, many coats of paint and primer and finally the day had arrived and things had cured the proper time and I was going to put the shelves INTO the bookcase. *drum roll please*......

And then THIS happened putting JUST THE FIRST SHELF IN PLACE: 

Yes those are big fat narly scratches in my nice white paint. LOVELY. On both sides: 

See, even left chunks on the shelf below. 

I was SO not happy. I tried waiting a week to see if it needed more cure time before putting the next one in place. Didn't fix it. 

So now I need to fix my scratches, and then try putting a couple coats of varnish on there and see if that fixes it. I'm wondering if my deglosser is not as good as the deglosser used and recommended by John and Sherry of YoungHouseLove. I tried to find theirs but I couldn't find it anywhere down here (they're in VA). If the varnish isn't enough then I'm going to have to strip them down, sand them, degloss them again, then re-prime, re-paint and re-varnish. Its a birch veneer on those bookcases. Its wood so it *should* stick. 

But um, right now I'm so epically irked I really want to just take an axe to the whole project so for its safety I've been working on decluttering the rest of the house and enjoying working in the yard while the beautiful weather lasts. I'm gonna wait on touching them again until its safe for both of us. 

Did I mention that 3rd bookcases I was gonna repaint and didn't have room to do is gonna get sold and I'll use whatever money I can get from that to put towards buying a new already-white bookcase. I've decided my sanity is worth the cash. Next time I do something like this - I'll do ONE bookcase to test it and THEN decided to paint vs sell the others b/c now I've ruined these perfectly good brown-black bookcases so I can't sell them. I have to find a way to refinish them. 

And thats why we're STILL not done yet in there. *deep breaths*