Christmas 2013: T-Minus ONE WEEK

First and foremost, Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year. I love the assembling of family, even when multiple stops sometimes feels like a game of Tetris. For us, it's a non-negotiable absolute that we will get together at one point or another, because it's Christmas and regardless of how often we see each other over the other 11 months, Christmas is when we get together and celebrate as a unit, the reason for the season and what that means to us.

I opted out of the mass mayhem of Thanksgiving Day [ridiculous] and Black Friday shopping this year, and pursued the DIY route. My recent discovery of online providers like Julep, and of course Pinterest, made this one an easy vote for me.

julep surprise box for december!

^ I opt in for surprise boxes and they give me cool things like 40% off my next order. Since Julep's are usually around $14/ea for one of their polishes (& worth it, I would say), my enrollment discount + a promo 40%? NO-brainer! I made a big order last week & got a couple polishes for $3/ea. BAM!

And so I made with it on Christmas ordering ;) From there, I picked up some other small, related items for just a couple bucks and was able to put together a nifty little gift for a few girls:

for elisa (top left) & nikki (top right)

A cinch, really. Add some tissue paper, a pretty ribbon and a 'Merry Mistletoes' tag & voilà - done!

I had to save this until the girls got their mistletoes, so as to not spoil anything..

elisa (r) & nikki (l)

DIY success!

Also...... the Blums went in this year on some pretty lil' gift ideas for our clients:

express toffee boxes (:

They're so pretty! I had to snap a shot of them all arranged for delivery before they're gone.
It's really starting to feel like Christmas around here!

Tomorrow = Company Christmas "party" dinner at Zula in OTR. [[yummmm]]
Oh, and btw, Christmas itself is exactly 1 week from today. Chyeah. Wrap your head around that one.... I'm still trying. Hah.

xo | cmd

Julep & A Job Fair

So..

It's not often that I actually get suckered in to the ads on any website.
I did, however, finally cave in to the Pandora sidebanner last week that kept asking me to become a Julep Maven. For the life of me I'm sure I just signed my soul away, but I did it, didn't look back, and got this delivered to my office today:

julep maven... done. (:

Yeah, I'm excited. So what. Haha. Check out their website for yourself and tell me there isn't a nice little plethora of awesome colors there! ;)

Work was work as usual, and ended with a job fair to top it off before I stopped to pick up Sydni.

happy job fair!

Then it was home, to watch The Croods with the mini me!

pretty funny.. i recommend!

My apologies for the lack of edible substance for today.. Wednesday this week was a pretty even-keel event all the way around, and that's okay. This weekend is going to be far from tame, starting with a late evening showing of the Hunger Games tomorrow night with Kalyn, Elisa, Anna & Nikki.

C'Mooooon, weekend!

xo | cmd

Craft-O

It's almost Friday.

Today = work and then home to do some packing for the weekend. I knew it wouldn't take long to gather everything I wanted for the next few days, so that left me plenty of time to start in on some project work I've been wanting to do. Thanks, Blogspot. 

hello, beautiful mess!

^ Guys have their man cave? Well, this is the Cori Cave. Welcome to my outlet for creative nonsense. It's nothing extravagant but it certainly does the trick for me.

before & after

So, what I'm doing is simple photo transfers to canvas. I haven't done these before, but how hard can it really be? I read the tutorial, and when I do that, it's usually a successful project. Usually. I got everything done for the first phase of the transfer tonight; the next step is letting them dry overnight. I'll take them with me to IL this weekend and work on them some there when Rob's working Saturday... I'll keep you posted on how they turn out (:

Of course I couldn't let a couple of canvasses get away with being the only decorated surfaces for the night. I dug out the OPI & Essie bottles and went to work on a simple experiment. I'm not sure just yet if I'm sold on it, but that's the point of experiments, is it not?

essie & opi ... & an owl.... & an owl... ツ

Phew. Successful night of crafting, which helped me release some of the energy I have pent up waiting for tomorrow to roll around.. hah.

Tomorrow = IL = Rob + Stella & Sasha + Friends + F-U-N.

See you there ;)

xo | cmd

Ombre, Take II .. & Other Miscellaneous Things

Ok. This is a serious announcement. I decided today to make the courageous decision to address my substance abuse issue and declare an undetermined duration of sobriety from what is clearly my worst habit:

The struggle is real, people. If you ask anyone, I never really had an interest in coffee until I started working in Glen Carbon 2 years ago. It was all downhill from there. Haha. No, I am NOT a drug addict in an illegal sense of the phrase, but I have absent-mindedly turned into a dependent.

I say this because I haven't had coffee since Friday and my head feels like it's about to implode. Or explode. One of the two, it doesn't really matter, but the pathetic truth is that I've dealt with this exact same thing, with the exact same timing, for the past three weekends in a row.


.. i can't help it :(

So yeah. To busy myself today, I had Sydni's expert assistance in tackling some laundry [she is quite the great supplier of "lost" clothespins; it's like the missing just materialize when she's finally been asked of their whereabouts...], checking the PO Box, pulling the vines off the gate where they were starting to creep, and cleaning some of the house. Basic chores, but nonetheless needed to divert my attention from the onset of any caffeine-deprived migraines.

Oh, and I took a second stab at the ombre nails, too, remembering some of the things that didn't work the first time I tried. They're still not perfect, and certainly a little chipped due to my impatience during the drying process, but they'll do.

ombre's are back!

That's really all I have to report for today: my public vow to take a full week off coffee and see how I feel by this time next weekend, and an account of all the menial chores we did today.

As reward for all our hard work today, I'll leave us all with this.... this is real time... & it's movie time. So long for now (:  .... 

quality relaxation with mini = my favorite.

xo | cmd

Nails | Nancy's Birthday | MVP's

Welp,... we only saw Nancy for a fleeting moment this morning but sure enough, the birthday surprises were a success! Elisa picked up some flowers, a balloon and a bag of chocolate, and we were ready by the time Nancy arrived this morning. I.. love.. birthdays (:

happy birthday, nancy!! (:

[Winning!]

Oh, and on that DIY note...
...... Thanks a lot, Instagram.
I swear, if it's not Pinterest shelling out new experiment ideas, it's Instagram. Haha. I should've known better than to browse around on some DIY pages a few days back, but I've been wanting to throw some polish on the nails and haven't really been motivated enough to do it... yet.

And then I found ombre [gradient] nails. This is definitely a rough sketch of what these could look like if I really put my mind to them, but I don't think they came out half bad (:

getting ready (:

Sponge + colors + way too much time on my hands....

base coat... prime color...

Sponge feeding the second color... It's not a pro job but then again, I'm no pro. I did find a few ways that I'll remember for the next time [assuming there is one] that I decide to spend this much time painting my nails.. ehh.

ta... da.

Yeaauuup. Probably not my favorite project, but worth at least one try and maybe another one down the road once I've forgotten how annoying this actually got after about 20 minutes. We'll see.

Lastly, to piggyback off of yesterday's dote on my friend Ladd, I figured I'd try and actually see him sometime before his next birthday rolls around... so yeah.... MVP's it was, to rendezvous with Ladd, Jason & Keith.. and eventually Kelly, too [*sidenote, Melissa .. feel 100% better, soooon!].

Good to see them, even if Ladd is still trying to be an honorary Asian. Jury's out, buster; I'll have to consult Nader & Nalom to see if your membership renewal is negotiable.. haha.

mvp's | silverton, oh

I'm home. It's late. I'm tired.
It's gonna be a loooong day tomorrow, I think... but worth it, since I'm supposed to see KALYN [*squeaaaaaaaal] tomorrow evening.

Adios, amigos.

xo | cmd

Essie Brings Even the Lil' Girls to the Yard ;)

Say hello to my little grown up....

essie girl!

Today was my first night back with Sydni in a little while, and naturally, I left the evening's agenda up to her. She voted for first changing into her new Hello Kitty shirt [never would've imagined myself as a San Rio fan], and then painting her nails. Purple was the color of choice, so that's what we did!

.... And then she painted the wall.
....... It came off, but still. Welcome to the wonderland world of toddlerhood.

We're off to a blazing start. Haha. No worries; life goes on. The great thing is, she's here and I.... am... just flat out happy.

xo | cmd

ESSIE

I'm having a first world problem:

WHAT COLOR?!?!

It's so unlike me to sit and ponder over stuff like this [because for me to even want nail polish in the first place is pretty rare in itself]. My temporary hangup now is which color to utilize for this wedding coming up on Friday. The way I've got it figured, if I'm gonna use nail polish and be girlyishesque-like, I'm gonna do it right. Haha. I'm thinking the dark purple, but any of these will suffice.


i love essie :)

I'll keep you posted on the final verdict later.
Oh, and I saw this gem driving in front of me on my way to work this morning: I'm not quite sure where the inspiration came from, but I liked it and I thought I'd share. Yay, homemade vehicle mods.

hired guns. ooookay?

Adios, ya'll.

xo | cmd