LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics

I just made my first purchase from LUSH. I've heard so much about their products that I just had to go take a look for myself. Everything is completely all natural, including some vegan products. There is a wide variety of all sorts of things for every skin type, which, to me, is awesome! I have combination skin and it's very acne prone so finding any product that fully works for my skin has never happened. NEVER. I've tried everything out there to help my skin out and nothing seems to work. So I'm giving LUSH a chance. I only just got a couple items to try out, including:

Fresh Farmacy cleanser. 

 

T-Tree Toner Tab

I should be receiving these products within the next week or so, and I will definitely be doing a products review on them. I read a ton of customer reviews on the site and they were all positive. All product have at least 4 stars, too. Hopefully it works with my skin.



There was a lot of other products I would like to try as well, like moisturizers and color supplements but the two I purchased are a good start.
They've also got a line of hair dyes made from henna, coffee, and cocoa butter. They have four different shades,  Rouge, Brun, Noir, and Marron. I'll be trying out the Marron in due time. I've heard only great things about the henna hair dyes and I'm so excited to try them!


Have you tried any LUSH products?

Food Blog

Hello friends!

I've made another blog, a food blog. I'll be using it to upload photos from my mobile phone of my meals and snacks throughout the day.


You can find it here: http://thefrenchpassion.blogspot.com/



* I've also put together a new layout, I needed something a little brighter. Hope you like it!
I'll try to add some more content to this blog in the next few days. :]

Sewing!

For the longest time now I've really been wanting to sit down and teach myself to sew. I've done a few small critters in the past made from felt, all hand sewn. I've never worked with a sewing machine. I bought one for myself about two and a half years ago and haven't used it until today. It was a lot harder than I ever thought it could be, and now I wish that when I was choosing a machine I went with the simplest of designs. It's going to take a lot of practice to get use to using this machine, but I'm ambitious.


For my first project, I went with what I thought would be easiest: a pillow.

Honestly, it took me a few hours just to complete it. I had to start over a couple times too, and after getting it all together before stuffing it I though I did a pretty great job.  Then I had to stuff it, I used stuffing from an old couch pillow that was filled with holes. The hardest part of this was closing the small hole I left myself for the stuffing, and I have no idea how other people do this, but I ended up hand sewing it shut after attempting to use the machine to do it. Next time I will definitely be using a zipper!

For a first project, it came out just fine. It's cute and silly and I had fun making it. It was definitely a learning experiment and I'm looking forward to making all sorts of other things. If anyone has any good beginner project idea I'd love to hear them!


What was the first thing you've ever sewn and how did it come out?

BabyCakes!

As a Christmas gift I received this BabyCakes cupcake maker.

I've just finally gotten a chance to use it last night. It's great! You just make the cupcake batter as you normally would, put it in each of the individual chambers, and close the lid!

The cupcakes bake in just about six minutes.

The only thing is, while going through all of the instructions in the manual it said that the paper backings aren't needed as they are in conventional oven. The surface is non-stick and the cupcakes should pop right out. Now you can use the paper backing if you'd prefer, and I would absolutely recommend it. I chose not to use them, and I did have some trouble getting the cupcakes out of the chambers. They came out just fine and they were cooked perfectly, but the bottoms of the cakes were a little broken and crumbly because I hadn't used the paper. Oh well, they were delicious! And for next time I know to use paper.

BabyCakes cupcake maker also come with a small recipe book with a bunch of cupcake recipes, frosting recipes, and is also good for making pie and tarts. I will definitely being using this baby often, and I will be trying out the recipes they offer. The above cupcakes are a bit sloppy, and I had never used an icing bag before. It comes with the bag and four tips for decorating, I plan on practicing different techniques each time I use the machine. Overall, it's great.

Holiday Cards

http://twitter.com/#!/TheDaintySquid

Wow! I totally forgot about making Valentines! This must be done this year. I remember handing out cards in elementary school and how fun it was. It's such a sweet idea to keep up even now. I did mail out Christmas cards for this past holiday season, most of which went out to Tumblr friends. They were all hand made and I really liked how they came out. So I'm definitely going to be doing it again for Valentine's Day!


Thanks Kaylah for the reminder!

These cookies are so adorable!

(source)

If anyone wants a handmade Valentine, shoot me your address at: thekiddnapping@gmail.com!

Weekend Recap!

This weekend was great!

First I got called out of work Friday night so I got to take the time to clean out the closet in the bedroom and start reorganizing everything. And boy, was it a LOT more than I thought! It definitely needed to be done a lot time ago, but I'm so glad I finally did it. It's not completely done, but I've gone through most everything and decided what we're throwing out, what we're keeping, and what we're donating.

Saturday was a very late McDonald's Christmas party, Wes is a manager there, so we headed out to Rutland, VT. The drive out wasn't too bad, a little over two hours. We checked into our room, then went to see if anyone we knew had showed up yet. We started off with some drinks, had a surprisingly delicious dinner, they did awards, and then we danced out butts off all night. My body is still pretty sore from all the dancing! I guess that makes up for all the high school dances I never went to.

Just a couple photos from the drive out.

 Sunday before we left Rutland we went to Denny's for breakfast with a couple friends. The whole trip was much more fun than I had anticipated. For a McDonald's Christmas party, they did a pretty great job. I got to see a bunch of people I haven't seen in what feels like forever. It was totally worth it, and I'm glad we went and had a great time. We got back home around one and just relaxed the whole day.

Now it's Monday, and I'm back to work tonight. It was a fantastic three day weekend though. I wish I had taken more photos, but I was having too much fun to go back for the camera.

<3 Katie

Introducing!

Salutations and welcome!

As with most new blogs, introductions are an easy way to start off.

I'm Katie. I'm 21 and I reside in the beautiful Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Now, instead of getting into too much detail with this first post, I'll try to keep this simple and just tell you what my plans are for this blog.



Prepare to see a LOT of kitty posts. I have two cats, Twig and Zero. They're my babies.

This is my lovely fiancé, Westly. We've been together since May of 2008, and we got engaged on August 11, 2010. I'll be posting a lot about wedding plans. We're pretty silly most of the time.

I'll also be posting photos here and there from my 365 photo project for 2011. I'm a little behind as of right now because I haven't had a battery charger for my camera, but that will change soon. You can find my photos on my Flickr account.


Other random things will be posted as times goes on. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Happy blogging!


And to finish this first post off, I'll leave you with a my profile picture for this blog.

<3 Katie





[A special thanks to elycia for the kind words of advice in starting this new blog.]