First stop, Kansas City!

So Brett and i started the adventure on Saturday! Our first stop was Kansas City. That's Kansas City Mo and KS. We were in MO half of the time and Kansas the other half because it's right on the border. How this works: We are in each city for two days. The first day Brett speaks to a group of photographers that meet up once a month, he has a presentation and demonstrates his off camera flash. And sometimes i have to be the "model" which i don't usually care for haha.. Maybe if was better at it.. Well by the end of this i may be really good!

The place that the group met was an amazing studio. They had stations set up all along the walls with different backgrounds and fancy couches and all sorts of outfits! Here are some of the setups...

So the next day Brett hosts the Flashfire workshop. This is a hands on, off camera flash, workshop. Photographers then sign up and pay to learn in depth off camera flash techniques. Since the students have to take pictures they have to have someone to take pictures of so my job is to do hair and makeup for the models.

In Kansas city i just had one to do but here she is:

That one was taken by brett, my pictures aren't that good... But of course i HAD to put feathers in her hair! Here she's doing her thing....

We met some great people while in Kansas city and i'm very anxious to continue the tour and meet more great people!

Last but not least we are taking along our garden Gnome.. yes the roaming gnome so here is his debut in Kansas City!

A Big Adventure

So I have a big adventure ahead of me in August. Brett has the opportunity to teach photography in 10 different cities over 6 weeks. All the cities are within driving distance. We will be on the road hopping from city to city for 6 weeks! When this opportunity was presented to Brett he said he wouldn't go if i wasn't going to be a part of it with him. My job will be doing hair and makeup for the models they have at the shoots. Since I have an amazing boss I am able to take off from work . She is encouraging constantly and it's so nice to have your boss' blessing. Since i'm putting my hair business on hold for 6 weeks Brett bought me an airbrush makeup system as a thank you for going along with him. I'm super excited to be able to up my makeup career and get some experience in high fashion hair and makeup. I've been researching makeup techniques and high fashion up-dos. I'm excited but i'm also nervous to leave my clients for this long. I've tried to get ahold of my regulars and people i know who will need hair done before school starts, i just hope i also have my clients blessing! even if they have to have brittany or maggie do their hair while i'm gone they are in good hands. My PLAN is to blog about our adventure as we move from city to city and post pictures of the models i've done. If this whole thing goes well with the teaching and hair and makeup Brett and I will go further, to the east coast, and west coast, etc. I never thought when going into Cosmetology that i would be traveling around the country with my husband working together. I think things like this remind me how God has a plan for each and every one of us and it's refreshing to see him working in our lives.

Hair feathers and Prayers

I actually got off work at 5 today and Brett had a session so i've been working outside. I just set up a bird bath that i got for $5 at an auction this weekend and watered my flowers. It's been nice to have enough energy left at the end of the day to do things like that. But more importantly we need to pray hard tonight for miss Ollie Faith Reid

She goes in tomorrow for her pre op. She has to have open heart surgery and she's not even four months old yet! I pray that God is with every person in the hospital tomorrow blessing every doctors hand that comes into contact with her. She is precious. She's a baby. It's unreal to me that someone can perform such a big surgery on such a tiny body. But the doctor is good at what he does and the family is confident that he will do the job and i know he will. God will be there with them.



Also, Something exciting came in the mail yesterday.... HAIR FEATHERS!! I have wanted to get these ever since i saw them in steven tylers hair!

They are fabulous! I really wanted them right before the wedding but things were hectic but we have them at the salon now! All three of us girls put them in each others hair today.

Brittany with Magenta hair feathers

Maggie with Natural hair feathers

Me with black and white hair feathers

They can be washed, dried, curled and straightened. You can call 774-3264 to make an appointment!

So make sure to say your prayers for ollie and make an appointment to get some hair feathers!!

The wedding projects

So this is the phase one of the wedding projects. As some of you know i wanted to make things for my wedding, not to save money perhaps but just to add that handmade touch and so all of my friends could help in the decoration process. So i knew that the main project needed to get started first because it was a big one...

Like this big!



We have referred to this as a ruffle ball. I got the inspiration from a picture i had seen in a magazine my grandma had. They had used a styrofoam ball to attache tea stained coffee filters to. So i tried one at home. Looked good but i needed it bigger. The chautauqua building is a big place so you can't just put a 6 inch ball in the center and call it good. So we started brain storming how to make it bigger because styrofoam balls don't come in that size! So through a calibration of brainstorming we came up with paper mâchéing a three foot ballon. That would give us the hard covering we needed to attach the coffee filters to. So that was a project in itself. We had to borrow an air compressor just to get the darn things blown up! We had to mix up the goop in a small trash can and rip up strips of newspaper. Then when we went to paper mache them it took three people and a dining room table to get started. One person to hold the balloon, one person to dip the newspaper in the goop and another person to slap it on there!

This is what it looked like dry.



So once those dried we had to have enough coffee filters to cover the monsters! I felt like i tea stained coffee filters for months! We made regular tea stained coffee filters and light pink coffee filters. It took hours to attach the coffee filters to the balloons. My friend Katy and i spent the ENTIRE super bowl attaching coffee filters to one balloon! I estimated we used around 1,000 coffee filters on each big balloon...



Not to mention we made small ones too. We probably had 11 or 12 small ones. All in all i estimated that we used 7,000 coffee filters. And.. i never want to see another coffee filter in my life! haha.





It took a couple months off and on to finish this project. We had sunday wedding craft day and the girls would come over and we'd work on these. Some like them more than others haha. Here is a finished pink one!




To put these up in the Chautauqua was quite a headache too... That story is for another time but i wanted to show you how they got up there and then how they looked as a finished project. This is Brett perfecting them. The three big ruffle balls hung in the center of the Chautauqua building.




We hung the smaller ones one the stage her is a little glimpse :)




i hope you enjoyed these ruffled balls! They were hard work but man was it worth it!

Back to blogging?

So i think i'm back.... BUT i can't promise. I was just looking back at my blog posts and i just love it. It's like a keeping of most of the highlights in my life. Even though i've only blogged like 20 some times. So i'd like to get back into it so that someday i can go back and look at the pictures and read about how i was feeling at the time. It's a great thing and i encourage you to have a blog too, even if you think no one will read it. It's like your own diary but with pictures!

So my "excuse" for not blogging is that Brett and i have been so busy that the last few months have just been a blur! So i'm going to try to take some time to start blogging again and to go back over the last few months to show you the wedding projects and eventually the finished project! I'd say wish me luck but no one reads my non existent blog anymore so i'll wish myself luck! haha!

5 years and counting!

Brett and I have just celebrated our 5 year anniversary!! I have become such a wiser and more compassionate person since i've met Brett. I learn something from him everyday. He is one of the smartest people i know and i couldn't imagine being with anyone else. When i was in seventh grade i decided i wanted to go into forensic science. When i was a sophomore in high school i realized that this was an unrealistic goal if i wanted to continue to live in shelbyville. When i was a junior i started to get scared because i had no idea what i wanted to do with my life so i began to pray. Every day, every night, every time i got discouraged i prayed. I just wanted God to lead me in the right direction because i had no idea. It's amazing what can happen when you genuinely put everything in God's hands. My friend Maggie was going to hair school and i was always coloring my mom's hair and other friend's hair and i always enjoyed it. Especially when one of them wanted to get creative and do multiple colors... So things started falling in to place and Brett came along and swept me off my feet. I went to cosmetology school and he was at lake land and already taking pictures and making a living doing it! We finished school at the same time and we've been inseparable since.

To celebrate we decided to have a weekend in st. louis. We got a "top secret" room from travelocity and had a perfect view of the arch. when we arrived we went to the mall and yes i spent $5 on two chocolate covered strawberries at Godiva. They were de-lish! Then we went to the casino....



Never again. I really don't care if we ever go again. I lost $90. I could have bought ONE shirt at anthropologie! uh.... haha! So the next day we decided to go to the ZOO. It was such a beautiful day! It was overcast and about 75 degrees out. All of the animals were out and about it was wonderful!




These gorillas were so funny! I don't think i've ever been this close to the gorillas while they are outside. This one that Brett is knelt down by actually snagged a bee out of the air and ate it! then he stuck his lip out and it was stinging him! He kept petting his lip and trying to look at it! haha. Then on to the orangutans! (looks like a spelling error but i googled it. haha) We walked around the corner and.....



They give them blankets in the zoo but they said in the wild they would use huge leaves as blankets. He was so cute! I don't usually take zoo pictures because everyone does that but we were so close to them!






Then we went and walked through the penguin house. It was freezing in there! The penguins were cute as usual and they were swimming so close to the glass i wanted to touch one on the back so bad but there were people watching :( but when we got to the puffins they were getting fed so they were jumping of the ledges and diving into the water! Brett and i were getting splashed by them! When we got back outside there was a woman feeding the ones outside!



I'd say it was a successful day at the zoo! In april Brett and i will have to start our count back at one! Brett is so good to me! We are taking off to go to Mexico! you can read all about that here: http://www.brettjarnagin.com

Teeny Tiny Princess

WOW! Two blogs in a row! this might be a record! I have been helping Brett a lot with weddings and this last weekend we had to go to Alto Pass. It's just a little south of Carbondale. I got home from the long weekend and Lea was very happy to see me. This morning we were playing and I was just so lucky to capture her new "thing". Instead of explaining i'll just show you....








She makes this face if she is surprised or when you do it to her she will do it back. She is 15 months old now and can practically run everywhere. She hardly ever crawls unless she wants to get underneath something. I can't even remember what i ever did without her. She's so funny and beyond adorable! Her hair is super wild because she had a ponytail in it when her hair was wet. Haha!



Yes she has zebra leggings on with her teeny tiny princess shirt haha!