I’ve also been a busy girl working on some very lovely custom Bridal pieces. If you need a special hairpiece to wear for a spring or summer event, let’s chat!

xoxo

wait for it…

My new blog!

How to be Fancy is all about Fashion, Makeup and inspiration to kick start both. If you’d like to take a peek, you can see the first of MANY posts to come here. I’d love to hear what you think so please leave me loads of comments!

I may still post a few things here that just don’t fit into the overall focus, so if there is something you’d like to see, just let me know!!

I’ll leave you today with some goodness that has gotten me through this week, for sure – the Delightful Dozen!

#1 Batiste Dry Shampoo. When it’s cold outside, I just can’t bring myself to wash my hair daily, much less use a blowdryer on my static-filled hair.

#2 Origins Cleansing Oil. This stuff is magical on most skintypes. Don’t know how I’ve made it through a winter without this before!

#3 MAC Mega Metal Eyeshadow in Dalliance. If you haven’t seen the Peacocky collection from MAC, do yourself a favor and PLEASE purchase this color. It will instantly open your eyes, I swear!

#4 Free Audio Books Online. This is the find of the year so far for me. I’m currently “reading” Virginia Wolf while I crochet every night. FABULOUS!!

#5 Dolce Vita. I have a serious love affair with all things DV. Finally purchased my first pair (from Hautelook) and they just came this week!

#6 Keurig Coffee Maker. This little dreamboat was a Christmas gift from my parents and I have fallen head over heels. The best gift ever!

#7 Lovely Yarn. I got a whole new batch of yarn in the post to start all of my new knits. So exciting!

#8 This Video by the Noisettes. Heart!

#9 Vintage Dishes. We recently gave away all our incomplete (and now discontinued) wedding dishes in favor of an adorable hodgepodge of vintage pyrex we’ve been collecting!

#10 WARM SOCKS. My feet have been so COLD!!

#11 This little Irish Blog is absolutely wonderful! Please check it out!

#12 Finally, a big thanks to Goodwill for taking my boxes and boxes of…stuff…! And Hooray for a clutter-free house!

xoxo

Heather

ps I’ll be doing more posts like this over on HTBF, so be sure to check it out there!

Now, onto my find of the day. I’m a sucker for tools and gadgets that pull double duty by being pretty, too. So I just had to share the new line of tools from designer Cynthia Rowley. I love that there is more than just a hammer included in these sets. That staple gun? Be still my home-repair heart!

(visit Cynthia Rowley)

On top of working on a super-secret, I-can’t-wait-to-share-it surprise,  it seems like every friend I have on the planet is getting married this fall. Which means only one thing, of course. Wedding Showers! And being the crafty friend I am, my little fingers are working their prints off getting these soirees dolled up and ready to party! Here’s a peek at the first DIY shower in line. As you can see, it was all about the monogram! Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of the Bride (and groom who was there for gift opening support). I was on guest table and tissue paper folding duty!

What DIY Projects are you working on this summer?

Well, hello there! Just wanted you to have a heads up that some good things are coming this way. I’ll give you all the deets really soon!

(Image Source: Bagitarian )

To get this look:

1. Give your nails a once over coat with a gold polish (really, any color would work fine). I used O.P.I. in Golden Rules!

2. Take a toothpick or tiny paint brush and make little squiggles on your nails in black polish. The idea is to create the circular shape of a leopard spot. I don’t own a black varnish so I used Sephora by O.P.I. in Dark Room. You could also use a nail art pen.

3. Take a brownish color like You Don’t Know Jaques (O.P.I. again) and make little dots inside your squiggly circles. Tip: Use a dotting tool or toothpick to keep these from getting out of hand!

Voila! You’ve just given yourself a wild and summery manicure!

We had such a good time traveling through California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The boy even agreed to make a detour to the Grand Canyon! I’ll have a ton of pictures to show you later on but I wanted to share with you my latest obsession – a.k.a. the succulent.

By absolutely no means do I have a green thumb. I scorched an herb garden when I was 7 and that’s about the extent of my gardening skills (although I did grow a pretty mean bean sprout in kindergarten and some tasty baby carrots in junior high). I love flowers but never think to grow them. Particularly since I’ve lived in an apartment for over 10 years!

While traveling through the desert  I became somewhat captivated by all things cactus, however. And to top it off, there is so much Native pottery that it looks just stunning in. I wanted a cactus (I later realized I actually wanted a succulent, but you get my point). And then to my dismay, there wasn’t one to be found! We stopped at every trading post and souvenir shop along Route 66 seeking out the perfect little guy to no avail! I finally found one at The Big Texan in Amarillo, TX but just hated its “made in china” pot.

So here I am, sitting at home cacti-free and wishing I had one of these.

You know that girl that always has the orange base line around her jaw? Do you think she realizes that she looks like an oompa loompa? Of course not. She thinks she is hot stuff with her “tan” face! Other people that she meets recognize that she could use a lighter color foundation and maybe a lesson in blending, but again, she has been living in the monkey house with this orange face for far too long and can no longer recognize how ridiculous she looks.

What about the lady with the poufy bangs? She loved how they looked in the early 90’s so she decided to keep them. Now she has become accustomed to how they look on her, and she thinks she would look weird without them. She and her bangs are happily shacked up in the monkey house.

And then there’s the woman who has had a couple of kids and has let herself go a bit. She started off by omitting blush and eyeliner to shave some time off of her morning routine. Nowadays the morning routine has been whittled down to the use of a hair brush and maybe some powder and Chapstick. She slowly cut out one beauty product after the next until she had completely crossed over to the homely side without even knowing it. She certainly doesn’t think she looks her very best, but has an “it’ll do” attitude about her appearance. This situation is a slow fade, but in the end, she and her housewife appearance have definitely taken up residence in the monkey house.

What these hypothetical women need to realize is that sometimes you need to look somewhere other than the mirror to see how you really look. Check out what’s current by grabbing the newest People, turning on E!, or just noticing what other women are doing. This is not to conform, but simply to stay relevant to what is happening today.

Think about who stands out as beautiful in your eyes. Whose style would you like to emulate? Who has the look and the class that makes you say, “She always looks great!”? I say Jennifer Aniston is a great example. Well, do you see Jennifer Aniston wearing 3 inch acrylic nails? Nope. Maybe it’s time to lose those. Is she wearing Crocs? Well, maybe those aren’t the most fashionable style of shoe on the market. Is her lip liner 4 shades darker than her lipstick? No? Perhaps that’s because that look does not work for anyone! It’s a harsh fact of life, but if it doesn’t look good on anyone else, it probably doesn’t look good on you either.

A good rule of thumb is to never go longer than 3 years without reevaluating your look and making some updates. Whether it be changing where you shop, your hair style, or your makeup shades, if you want to look your best, change is necessary!

Pardon the cheese factor in this quote, but “If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.” – Mary Kay Ash

Image Credit:   © Lester Cohen/WireImage.com

From top left: Handbag, Melie Bianco; Vintage Dress, adVintagous, Rope Necklace, The Vamoose; Shoes, Gabriella Rocha; Lipgloss, M.A.C.

How do you stay cool in the Summer?