T-T-T-Tye Dye Dayyyyyyy!!

Oh holy hippy gods of Oregon!  We honor thee by creating Tye Dye goodness in your name!  OK, okay to much?  I cannot deny my roots, I am a true Oregonian borne and raised in this amazing state.  If you live here, or have been here you know it has a beauty all it's own, and Portland is one of my favorite places!  I love the city life of Portland, I love that in 30 minuets I can be hiking in the woods, or take the boat to the river.  Want to go camping?  Load everything in the boat and we're off!  It's a lifestyle all it's own, and we are very comfortable here.  I believe that you cannot be a true Oregonian unless you accept the Hippie factor that is all so fluent in society.  One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday morning, is to drive downtown and go to the Saturday Market.  The diversity is astounding, and amazing.  The food cannot be beat no matter what your craving, the booth's are filled with beautiful handmade jewelry and pipe and bong sellers.  Beautiful handwoven dresses sitting next to the palm reading mistress.  And there's the Tye-dye!  It's everywhere, and it's beautiful!

This was another one of our Bucket Lists for the summer, and the kids had been waiting to do it.  I have had a lot of personal stresses this month, and have not been the attentive mother that my children are use to.  I have realized this and I am trying to correct it, this seemed like the perfect project to get back on track! 

We used two different styles, one for the boys and one for the girls.  For the boys we laid the shirts flat on the counter and rolled upwards beginning at the bottom of the shirt.  Once completely rolled we placed the rubber bands around to make sections.  For the girls, again laying flat on the counter.  I picked them up from the center and twisted them together, placing the rubber bands in sections as I moved downwards. 

The kids really did have a great time decorating, the shirts.  Alex took pictures with my iPhone as I helped, so there aren't pictures of him.  But he sure did take some good pictures!  I think it's time to break out the old camera for him. 

The kit that I purchased said we were to wait 24 hours until rinsing them.  So we decided to go to the mall the next day and do some school clothes shopping.

Finally it was time to see what we had created!  Please excuse my horrible fence in this picture.  We have not gotten to replace that side yet.  Our home is constantly a work in progress, but we sure love it that way <3

For the girls I knew I wanted to do something special.  The shirts were "to big" on them and they didn't like they way they fit.  I ran over to JoAnne Fabric's and purchased one of those big boxes of beads and decided to fringe the heck out of them and add fabulous beading!  Then I knew they would like them!

That was a lot of cutting!  Finally we had cut the shirt in a thin fringe all along the bottom of the shirt, and the sleeves, there was some extra cutting I found necessary on the sleeves, but that was something you just have to get in there and do. 

Make sure to cut the hem off the bottom of the shirt to string the beads on, tie that off with a double knot and there ya go! 

 

For the sleeves, I could have gone with the same beaded fringe as I did on the bottom of the shirt, but I decided to go with this, it made the sleeves a little shorter, and I think a little more feminine.  I just tied the strands together, around three times, and called it good. 

The girls are completely in love with their shirts!  I'm decided to make one of these for my niece as well, and send it down to her for a going off to school gift. 

Ruby Summer Soiree

Ruby Summer Soiree 2012 was a huge success!  If you follow my Facebook page than you are by know totally aware of how absolutely awesome my company is!  We are setting the bar across the US and really doing wonderful things for small businesses.  We are a company of (mostly) women, working hard every day, giving everything we have to make other peoples day easier, caring for each other and making valuable connections daily. 

We have 2 annual parties, our Summer Bash and our Holiday Party.  This summer we tried something new, and went to a winery.  We ladies love to get together and visit, we love when we can bring our significant other's to enjoy it with us, but honestly we Ruby's LOVE to party!  I am part of the event planning committee, and truly enjoy my role in that.  So I knew before we got there, that this was going to be amazing! 

As I was getting ready, I was not the most organized person.  This previous week has been extremely strenuous on me, and I'm trying to push through.  I did not have any clue what I was going to do with my hair, what accessories I was going to wear, I didn't even have my shoes until the day of the party!  So in the morning I decided to lay everything out and then figure out my hair and make up when I got to it. 

I am in love with this dress!  Everything about my attire was last minuet, except this dress.  I saw it, and knew it would be perfect for the party, plus it was at Forever21 for a STEAL!

I always make sure that I clean out my purse and have it fully stocked for the night.  You always want to make sure that you have the essentials, like keys, wallet, and sunglasses.  I've found that you should always bring deodorant, because let's face it dancing is a workout!  You are close to a lot of people, and you do NOT want to be the one with the stinky pits (no matter how drunk everyone is, they always seem to remember you at your worst).  I like to keep a Ziploc baggie with my makeup for the night, eyelash glue, lipstick and liner, eyeliner, and a compress I usually throw bobby pins in there to, and one or two oil sheets.  I always bring a roll of scotch tape with me, because......ya never know!

 

I have SUPER-short hair, it's a short bob, that almost looks like a grown out pixie.  At the moment, I am in desperate need of a trim, but decided to hold off until after the shin-dig.  I really like the way the beachy waves look in the ladies with the long hair, but I wasn't sure it would work with short hair the same way.  But decided to give it a shot.  I'm really happy with how it turned out!  I used a really skinny curling iron and grabbed random pieces of hair and wrapped them around the closed curling iron for just a few seconds, enough to give it some curl with out being a tight spiral.  I did not curl all the pieces.  I have a couple of feather extensions in my hair and they are natural so I can curl them too!  I have a long leather necklace with feathers, so I wrapped that around my head to create a headband-head wrap style and secured it with bobby-pins.

 

 

 

We had an amazing DJ, the winery was amazingly accommodating.  We even had this company come and make flip books for us as opposed to traditional photo booth's.  Everything was a HUGE success! 

 

 

 

It was such a fun night, and I had an amazing time with some truly amazing ladies!  I could not be happier to go to work every day, and have found it an amazing escape from my reality at times.  I don't know a lot of people, especially in this economy who can say they enjoy being at work.  I love each and every one of my co-workers like they are family.  I feel truly blessed to have found this extraordinary company.  

Turquoise Nails!

Turquoise Nails!  Not long ago I made a vow to myself that I would spend a little more time on myself.  One of the ways I do that home Mani's.  It's nice to take the time to do it myself.  I don't have to worry about the nail tech cutting my cuticles to short, or digging the file into my finger. 

I start by removing my nail polish.  Personally I use non acetone remover, and I think it's just personal preference.  I use a homemade hand scrub that I will share with you later.  I use my four sided file to buff and shape my nails.  I always have one that gets chipped through the week.  I'm horribly careless with my nails, and tend to use them as tools.  I give them a quick rinse under warm water and pat dry.  ON TO THE FUN PART!

I love natural stones!  All of my favorite pieces are natural stones.  As a child, my father wore two rings, his wedding ring, and this sterling silver ring in the shape of a horse shoe, with a large turquoise stone in it.  I would sit on his lap and run my fingers over the silver and the soft coolness of the stone.  As I grew up, my mother loved diamonds, and I remember going into her jewelry box (sneaking I should say).  I would open up her maroon snakeskin jewelry box, where she kept her rings, and they were always diamonds.  As an adult, I keep the diamond for my wedding ring (even though we are considering changing that as well) and fill my other's with some of my favorites.  My large turquoise knuckle ring is what inspired this weeks nail makeover!

I always start with a base coat.  I really like Sally Hansen's Clear for Take Off.  It leaves a really adhesive base coat for further layers.  Then I put on my base coat, I used Wet N' Wild's I need a refresh-MINT.

 

 

 

 

 

After I finished laying the base coat, I allowed it to dry and applied a clear topcoat.  I like Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails.  Once completely dry I laid out a piece of wax paper, and gathered several pieces of plastic wrap.  I rolled up the plastic wrap in balls, and applied a layer of Forever21's Emerald Green.  I dabbed the excess on the wax paper before stamping it over my nails. 

 

 



 

 

 

 

After that layer was completely dry, I used the same technique only using Finger Paints Cerulean Seascape.

 

 

 

 

I finally dabbed a q-tip into nail polish remover, removing as much of the polish from my skin as possible.  I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails and called it good! 

 

 

 

 

I'm really happy with how these turned out, and was excited to share!  My nails have taken a serious beating because of all the home renovation we have been doing. I've been considering trying out a shellac at the local salon, but truthfully don't seem to have the time to do that.

 

What do you think?

Glow Stick Swim!

At the beginning of Summer the kids and I created our "Summer Bucket List 2012" and I have to say, this summer has been filled with fun moments, and amazing memories.  And because of my (semi)-commitment to blogging I have been forced to document it.  I say forced, because some times I don't want to worry about taking pictures, but then again who am I kidding?  Have you seen my instragram feed?!? 

The glow stick swim was one of the activities that I was super excited for!  We had to wait, for what seemed like forever to get a day that was hot enough to do this when it was dark.  Finally this weekend was a scorcher!  It was over 100 on Saturday (that's like walking on the sun for us Oregonians)!  I made a mad dash to the dollar store while daddy pretended to put the munchkins to bed.  Then we quickly scurried out to the pool and activated the glow sticks and threw them in!  Just as we were walking back in the house to get them, the girls came out complaining that they were hot.  PERFECT TIMING!  They were so excited to be swimming in the dark, and then to get to search for glow sticks was just icing on the cake! 

We found that the big ones float way better than the smaller ones, so the girls were able to snag the larger ones while the boys that don't have floaties had to do the real work.  Once they had collected them all we would throw them back and do it all over again. 

 

The kids were all cooled off from a late night dip, and took the glow sticks to bed with them staying up extra late and playing with them.  Well, as late as they could from being so excited with a glow stick swim.  They crashed by 11pm.

The thing I love about this activity, is that I don't think it could get old.  I would totally use this for a grown up pool party, or an teen-party!  I can see this one becoming a tradition!