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Curling Iron = 1, Kelly = 1
The other day I decided to try and curl my hair. It was getting kind of late and I put minimal effort into it. I’d done my homework, watching numerous Youtube videos, and thought I could do it. Several really bad burns later I ditched my effort with only about half my hair done. It didn’t look great and my finger was hurting pretty bad.
About 10 mins after my failed attempt I looked down and noticed I had a nice blister forming on my finger. BOOO! 🙁
I was kind of bummed over my failed attempt but decided to give it another go on Saturday. Matt and I didn’t have any plans so I figured if it flopped it was no big deal. Much to my surprise, it actually turned out pretty well! AND I managed to not burn the hell out of my hand this time. After the first try I really thought about what I was doing and realized I should be holding my curling iron differently. You see, I’m using my curling iron as a curling wand since I think it’s ridiculous to buy a wand when my curling iron will do basically the same thing. I figured out that for the right side of my head I should hold the iron/wand with my left hand and wrap the hair around with my right hand and vice versa for the other side. YAY! (Sometimes I can be smart!)
Curly hair, don’t care! 
This is my burn a few days later. Hello scar! ~k
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Too much of a good thing?
A few months ago my skin was super dry. I’d seen a few Youtubers raving about L’oreal Lumi foundation but at the time I’d just spent $45.00 on some Stila foundation. I knew Matt would not be happy about me wanting to try something else. I was chatting with my mom one day and she mentioned she had some Lumi that she’d bought and only used a few times. The next time I saw her she gave me the Lumi to try. I immediately fell in love but the color she had was a little dark so I had to buy more in the correct shade. Now that summer is here I’m back to the darker shade mom gave me.
Anyway, the problem now is that my skin is back to it’s old oily self. Add foundation that has tons of hydration and well, yeah. I bought some Rimmel Stay Matte powder but that didn’t help. Next I decided to try some stay matte primer. I’d heard about the Rimmel Stay Matte primer on Youtube and for $5.00 decided to give it a go. Um, needless to say, it did NOT work, like at all. I tried it first on Saturday over my regular moisturizer and I still was pretty oily in a matter of a few hours. I figured I didn’t really give it a good shot so on Sunday I skipped the moisturizer and used it alone. A few hours later I was back to oily. The problem is that I LOVE my Lumi! I love the finish, and I love the coverage. Overall, I’m a fan!
This morning I mixed in some of my Clinique BB cream and I decided to use some of my Dewy Finish Setting Spray by NYX. My face doesn’t currently feel like an oil slick and I’m going on a few hours of wear. I must admit that I have already lightly blotted my face but it wasn’t terrible. The look on Matt’s face when I sprayed my newly applied makeup was pretty priceless. He was like “WTH are you doing?” HAHA! Boys!
I feel like the last few months have been one continuous foundation hunt after another. If my skin isn’t dry, it’s oily or vice versa. Maybe one day I’ll find a happy medium.
~k
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Meet baby G!
It’s been about a month since my cousin K had her baby. Baby G was born on Father’s Day. Mom went to stay with K and her husband for about a week right after G was born. I decided to go see G while mom was there. I figured I could give her and K a break, and possibly a nap, while I was there. G was only 3 days old when I went to visit and he was adorable. It actually worked out well because I had a dentist appointment that had been scheduled for a while so I went to that and then headed to Greensboro for the day.
I got there in time to pack everyone in the car so we could take G to his first doctor’s appointment. He did wonderful, of course! We grabbed some lunch and Starbucks on our way home. When we got back G nursed for a little while and once he was good and sleepy we put him in his bouncy chair so I could take some pics. I set up in the foyer and snapped away. I had hoped to get some naked baby pics but he was being so good we left him how he was.
So yeah, it’s been like a month and in true slacker fashion, I just NOW edited his pics. They actually turned out better than I had hoped. In all fairness, my personal laptop is such a huge PITA that I HATE doing anything on it. Had I been able to edit them on my work laptop they would have been done 3 weeks ago. Anyway, it’s a pain and I hate using my laptop so it takes forever when I need to do stuff like this. One day maybe I’ll convince Matt to either let me start using his Mac or I’ll just buy a small, cheap laptop that I can use for editing only. We’ll see I guess.
Here are a few of my faves. I’ve been trying to upload them to my photography website all morning but keep running into time out issues. I’ll post the link but currently there are only a few pics up.
http://www.kellysuzannephotography.com/?gallery=gavin
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HACKED!!!
OMG guys! My blog got hacked yesterday! Like who does that and why? Anyway, Matt was able to get it up and working again! YAY!
~k
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It’s beginning!
House hunting is in full swing for the new Casa de E. Matt is finally on-board with buying a new house but he is insistent we put down 20%. Ya’ll that’s A LOT of money! Lucky for us our current financial obligations aren’t terrible and we are able to save a good bit of money each month. We currently have almost 10% saved. Only 10% more to go! We talked the other day and have decided to save as much as possible over the next 6 months. This should put us pretty close to our goal when you add in what we will get for our current house. Knowing we have a plan, and a timeframe make me happy.
Along with the house hunt comes a list of items we need to upgrade or fix in our current home. A few items on the list include:
- Redoing our deck
- Replacing the back door that goes out to the deck
- Replacing the flooring in the kitchen and both upstairs bathrooms
- Painting both upstairs bathrooms
There are quite a few smaller items that need to be addressed too but these are the big ones. Over the past couple of years we have painted the house and replaced the carpet. Though I am currently very unhappy with Empire! Our carpet is barely 2 years old and we’ve already had to call them once to come and restretch several areas. I’ve been playing phone tag with a customer service rep since last week to fix the carpet again. I guess we got what we paid for because I feel like they did a pretty crappy job! I’ve never had issues with carpet until now. I will not use them again if and when we need to replace carpeting!
For now, I will continue my daily house hunt even though we aren’t quite ready yet.
~k
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Super Moon
A couple of months ago there was a Harvest Moon. I actually missed but not before I tried to take pics of it. It had happened the night before. Anyway, before I realized this I decided to try to take some pics of it. I put my camera on the tripod and went out on the deck. I got everything set up and then starting playing around with manual mode. Since I really had no idea what I was doing, I decided to google it. I found the settings I needed but it still wasn’t working. I ended up calling my dad at 11:30 to get a quick crash course on shutter speed. Turns out I hadn’t gone up far enough on the dial to get where I needed to be. So yes, I’m admitting I’ve just now figured out manual mode. Mostly because I didn’t understand the shutter speed settings on my camera. Whomp whomp.
After a few tries I actually got a few pics of the moon, not the Harvest Moon, but the moon. It was a step in the right direction because something about this task made manual mode finally click for me.
Fast forward to Saturday night. It was the first of 3 Super Moons this summer. As Matt and I left dinner, I noticed how big the moon looked. Dad had texted me to see if I was going to take some pics but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see it from the house. Once we got home, I looked out and saw I had a pretty good view of the moon. I grabbed my camera and tripod and headed outside. I got everything set up and started taking pics. Much to my surprise, they looked pretty good on the screen.
I waited till I got to work this morning before I looked at the rest of the pics. There were a few that sucked, but overall the majority were pretty good (and they turned out!). You can’t really get the full effect of how big it was because I didn’t have a good backdrop for comparison. I mean the neighbors roof wouldn’t really add much, right? But the big win here is that I FINALLY took a pic of the moon! 🙂 And I know how to do it again!
Super Moon! 
Super Moon! 
“Harvest Moon” As you can see, my moon pics drastically improved from my non-harvest Harvest Moon pics. (The one above is really the best one I got.) Plus, by the time I figured out what I was really doing, the clouds were starting to roll in. Regardless, I’m really impressed with my latest try!
~k
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Fourth of July Weekend
Due to a competition at work, I ended up with July 3rd off as well as the 4th. Matt and I both decided to also take Monday off so we could have a long weekend at the beach. As the week started, a tropical storm formed off the coast. By Wednesday it was headed for the beach but looked like it should pass by late Thursday and be out of our way for the weekend.
Thursday morning we woke up to discover the storm was ahead of schedule and it looked like we would probably end up driving through it. Ooops. We got the car packed and the kiddos in and we headed out. We hit one really rough patch of rain about an hour outside of Raleigh but it was over about as quickly as it started. By the time we got to Wilmington though, Hurricane Arthur was getting closer. We drove into the rain and a tornado warning. Thankfully the rain wasn’t too awful and we never saw the tornado. We arrived at Matt’s parent’s house around 2:30ish and sat back and watched the storm. And by watch the storm, I mean we watched the rain. It wasn’t until about 6:00pm that the winds really picked up but at this point, we were only getting the backside of Arthur. Seeing as we had driven through a hurricane to get there, I was determined to go and check out the beach. About 7:30 the winds had died down enough for us to head out. I was pretty disappointed at how calm the sea was. I mean it was rough, but not what I expected it to look like right after a hurricane.
Friday was just gross hot. Matt and his dad played golf while his mom and I went to the pool. We only stayed about 2 hours before it was just too hot to stay out anymore. Saturday and Sunday were both amazing, low 80’s and partly cloudy. Matt and I lounged on the beach most of the afternoon both days. I didn’t get quite as much sun as I had hoped for. I was a little overzealous with the SPF 30. 😉 I do at least have a bit more color though.
I managed to remember my camera this trip so I have quite a few pics to share. The first few are driving into the storm and after the storm.
