Hair Show - SULTRA

Last Saturday I was in a hair show. It was a huge Armstrong McCall Sales Meeting and different vendors were there trying to sell their stuff. I was with Sultra. I loved the people and the products. I managed to get away with a sweet straightening iron, and would loved to add to my Sultra collection some day! The company's Artisitic Director is Omar Lopez. He works on a lot of celebrities (Cameron Diaz, Maile Cyrus, Kat Von D), so it was fun to talk to him and have him work on my hair. My hair was styled with The Seductress, an iron that can straighten, wave and curl your hair. It was awesome. He didn't expect my hair to curl so much and at one point said, "I made you look 12 years old!" But it was great. The curls stayed and the next day I fixed them up bit. Here are some pics after three presentations, and much playing. In the last pic he had just combed my hair out and my eyes are bloodshot, but that's the only pic with Omar.

Fetish Friday

I found an article on the top 10 most expensive shoes in the world. Six of them were designed by Stewart Weitzman. He teamed up with jeweler Le Vian to make this pair.
They have 185 carats of tanzanite and 28 carats of diamonds. At the time the article was written, no one had worn them yet.
The best part is that they would totally match that replica of the The Heart of the Ocean you bought in 1997.

Price tag: $2,000,000

Cute Cook

How cute is this apron?
It beats my manly Central Market Grilling apron by a mile. There are a couple problems, though: It might be hard to cook in red heels, and something this cute requires cute shoes or at least a nice pedicure. Second, it's so cute, I might be afraid to cook in it.
$42 at Cupcake Swirl.

Wood Block Art

A coworker of Ben's was selling wood blocks for a fundraiser for his old design school. The blocks were to be decorated, given back, and sold to the highest bidder. Ben bought a couple blocks. We decorated them using mod podge and various papers from Ben's paper sample drawer (and there is some Argentine money in there too). We had a fun time together and were quite happy with our finished products.
Can you guess whose is whose?

Done guessing? The butterfly belongs to Ben and the tree was mine. Ben's was much more tedious than mine, but we both spent several hours for a few nights. We don't know how much Ben's sold for. Mine sold for $60 after a bidding war between two people. Pretty good for a $10 block of wood, huh?

So long...

...to my lovely golden locks of yesterday. I ended up getting selected for a hair show this weekend. I went to the model call Friday night for Wella and made plans to get Beckhamed on Saturday morning. I was also planning on a "halo effect" for my color - blond at the roots, fading to brown, then to red. Interesting, but worth the cash, right?

Saturday morning the "artist" informed me that he wanted to accentuate my blue eyes more - aka go platinum blond. The cut wasn't as short as we had planned, but I was kind of excited to be Posh Spice. THEN he informed me that there would be traces of pink in my hair also, but it would wash out over 6-8 weeks. I reluctantly agreed as all the hair people assured me that I could totally pull off being a blond. They showed me the picture and I wasn't too impressed so I tried to talk them into another 'do, which kind of worked, but I still got stuck with the bangs.

My day began with the cut... about 6 or 7 inches. Then the bleaching, which took forEVER, then the dying, to get the yellow out. The colorist, Cecelia, was from El Paso and she was awesome. I'm so glad she was there to get everything right! She even convinced my "artist" to go with other blond colors instead of the pink, so that was great!

Today I woke up after another semi-sleepless night, cried a little about my crazy hair, and then made blueberry muffins to eat with the boys. When I got to the convention center they put the new colors in my hair and it looked much better. I wore a cool BCBG dress along with too much makeup, and did a good job at the show. Basically you stand on a stage with the hair dresser and they tell the audience what they did with your hair, all the while convincing the people to buy the product. It was pretty fun.

By the way, I really do like the Wella products - my hair is not fried or dry like straw. Their bleaching product was great - no singing eyes or skin like normal. And the other dyes (that go dark) aren't bad for your hair at all.

Here are the pictures:

Before

After Day 1


after the show w/more colors and disgusting makeup

after a long day, side-swept bangs.

I still don't know what I think. It will be fun to be blond for a while. People at the show really liked it, but I'm just not this cool. The cut is so trendy and the bangs are extreme. I think I will try to do the side-swept thing as they grow more. Then, when I start getting roots, I will do some dark lowlights and eventually get back to my brown self. And no, Ben is not a fan, but he's not being a jerk about it.

Things I learned:
*It's bad to shower in hot water - makes your hair and skin dry. From now on I have to wash my hair in cold water.
*Don't let your stylist put you under the dryer when they color your hair - it makes it work faster, but damages your hair. My hair took all day and would have cost about $350 in a salon due to the time/technique.
*Your hair dresser is supposed to be weighing the products they use to dye your hair so they get the right ratio. Most just eyeball it.
*Hair is in bad shape after three years and needs to be cut - the reason some people's long hair looks so drab and yucky. After it gets cut it will grow faster because it won't break off all the time.
*If you're going to model for a hair show, be ready for anything.

Treats

We had a Senior Social last week for a youth activity at church. It wasn't seniors in high school, it was seniors in citizenship. The kids sat at tables with the seniors and we all shared stories and talents.
I made some sugar cookies to have for party favors. I wanted to play around with the frosting I used for the hippo cake. It was a pain in the butt, but after three hours of frosting, they ended up looking really cute. I think the more fattening fluffy frosting tastes better, but wouldn't have been nearly as cute.
I made 41 cookies total, using two different recipes. Ben really wanted a cookie and was whining and whining. Finally I made him his own very "special" cookie using scraps. In the end I left him one in his car with a nice note. He ate it on the way to work. Here is a shot of the trail of cookies as well as the finished party favor.

I was also in charge of flowers. I wanted to do something with underwater flowers that I had seen online. It was kind of a pain and I was working with limited materials. I ended up with this:

Orchids would have looked really cool, but I didn't have the budget for orchids, plus Costco doesn't carry orchids.

Fetish Friday

I try to squeeze every last bit of fun out of summer while I can, which is why I chose this very summery shoe today (school starts next week in Austin). This is Breeze by Bettye Muller. She's on sale from $395 to $150, which is always exciting. If you have a hot little red party dress, this shoe would love to accompany you to your next function. You could put a red flower in your hair to make the look complete. Ahhh.... Summer.

Trash the Dress

When I got home last night from my trip, the CD with the rest of the pictures taken at Memory Lane were in my mail box. If you feel like ruining your wedding dress or taking some other fun pictures, call Val and Bryan from Lightwave Foto.

*LINK TO DRESS PICTURES*

chocolate takes the cake!

My mom and I made two really good cakes last week. I'll look extra shapely in my swimsuit next weekend because of them...

The first was a chocolate cake with mint filling and ganache frosting. I wanted to make it for my nephew, Aaron, who thought my chocolate mint brownies were the "best he's ever had!" He said this cake could be his birthday cake this year.

We wanted to play around with the ganache again, so for our next cake we got a bit fancier. We were going to just do chocolate cake, raspberry jam filling, and ganache frosting.

Instead, for the filling I put layers of rasberry jam, ganache, whipped cream, then whole raspberries.

The outside of the cake was inspired by Jenna Bush's wedding cake. I put a thin layer of ganache on, then stripes of thicker ganache. For the top we poured the ganache over the cake so it would drip over the stripes.

It was wonderful and tasted like something from a bakery. It was an expensive cake, but a keeper for sure!

You aren't really supposed to refrigerate ganache - it doesn't look as pretty and it gets harder, but this cake had to stay in the refrigerator due to the whipped cream. I think next time we would wait to pour the top ganache on until about 30 minutes before serving, then it would stay shiney and gooey.

Fetish Friday

I wanted to go a little out of the box for my shoe today. This is "Michelle" by Betsey Johnson. We all know Betsey Johnson has crazy stuff - most is too crazy for me, but honestly, this shoe is pretty dang cute. If you had a special event and a really cute dress, Michelle could be the cherry to your outfit sundae. She also comes in green and pink, which is even more wild, but could be even more cute! Seriously imagine the green/pink shoes with a pink flirty, flowy dress.
You can buy Michelle at Nordstrom for $190.

Fetish Friday... a little late

Dang, we looked good! Joanna (left) scored a sweet pair of $325 shoes on sale at Dillards for 75% off and I got my Nine West shoes just in time for the wedding.
The bride looked good, too, of course.

The Other Woman

Ben's worked a lot this week so last night I took Lucas downtown for a visitation dinner with his daddy. When we got there Ben was working hard crafting a sample of gift card packaging for Lost Pines resort. It's amazing what Ben can do with cool paper and sticky stuff - seriously!
Lucas and I occupied ourselves for about an hour on the stairs around the office, but when I made if over to Ben's cubicle I saw the real reason Ben's been working so late. She was beautiful. I mean, really beautiful. Even I, just a regular girl, was attracted to her.
She was Ben's new iMac. Take a look for yourself. If you got to work with her, you would never want to leave either!
That's all there is to her. The computer is in the monitor. And it's FLAT. Seriously amazing, people. I stared at her for a few minutes and I was suddenly aware of every single one of my flaws wondering if I could ever match up to such a beauty...