halloweening about it

Last Saturday me and Pat surprised my friends from college in Portland for Colleen's Halloween Party. We drank, we danced, we ended up at Grilled Cheese Grill at the end of the night... it was like old times. Here are some pics!

[[ party at colleens place: the dude, abiding. getting ready. our costumes! group shot: tony (batman), alex (troll), pat (the dude), me (maude lebowski). guenther (the man in the yellow hat). dion (curious george). me, sam (mrs. doubtfire), and tiff (wendy peffercorn). me and alex. pat and colleen. pat and tiff. tiff, pat, me, jason (squints). laaaadies bathroom selfies. porch selfies with sam and ricky. dance party ridiculousness. the end of the night. ]]

my week in pictures 76

monday 10/27 - sunday 11/2

Last week was an awesome one! On Tuesday me and Pat went to look at yet another potential wedding venue... and guess what? We finally found a new one! (More on that in another post). Other than that, during the week I worked on out costumes, and enjoyed some crisp fall weather.

Friday night Pat decided to decorate the house, grab some candy, and hand it out to trick-or-treaters again, and then we wandered through the neighborhood a little bit to check out other people's set ups before watching some Halloween favorites.

On Saturday we slept in, packed our stuff, and then headed to Portland to surprise our friends at their party. After our foggy/rainy drive we met up with Brad, Alia, and their baby girl Henley for some dinner at Che, and then checked in to our hotel to get ready. The party itself felt like college again, and I loved surprising everyone! I have a lot more pictures which I will throw up here tomorrow.

Sunday morning we headed to Alberta to grab breakfast at Pine State Biscuits with Tony and Alex before making a quick stop at the Nike Employee store, and then heading back over the pass for home. Another super short trip (which seems like all we have time for these days), but it was well worth it.

[[ a preview of our venue. fall goodies. finishing up my costume. pretty accidental gold leaves. date night at 10 below (i always have to take these pics). red sky on halloween night. skeleton socks. our cute little decorations. the neighbors scary/awesome house. heading to portland: our side of the pass, their side of the pass. the view from our hotel room. dinner with henley. a preview of our costumes. sunday morning. brunch at pine state biscuits. nom nom nom. ]] 

turning in to bonnie

As I mentioned in my Weekend Adventures post, getting my hair to look somewhat accurate was quite the extensive process... This of course came as no surprise seeing as I have a ton of extremely unruly hair. I used this very basic tutorial from The Beauty Department which showed a few pictures with a brief write up as to how to get the look at home, so this was my basis.

(I apologize for my super awkward facial expressions in all of these pictures...)


1) I started by splitting up the bottom and top halves of my hair to eliminate some of the bulk. I then took the bottom half, split it into two, and made two little pigtail braids, which Tiffany helped me bobbi pin flat against the back of my head.

[[ before starting. braided hair. ]]

2) Next came the curling process, which definitely took the longest because you have to use a tiny curling iron no larger than a quarter inch. Keep in mind that I was only working with the top half of my hair here... but just the left side took me about an hour. I was lucky enough to already own a tiny curling iron, but I think for future endeavors I will invest in an upgraded version considering mine came from Claires about twelve years ago. Anyway, for this step I took tiny sections of my hair, wrapped them around the curling iron, holding them in place, and then used bobbi pins to pin the little curls up against my head. The instructions of my tutorial specified to angle the iron towards your face the entire time, which I found a little confusing, but I did my best to figure out. Eventually with Tiffany's help I was able to get all of my hair pinned up.

[[ all of my hair curled and pinned up. ]]

3) Ordinarily you will want to leave your hair in this state for as long as possible for the best results, but since we were on a bit of a time crunch I attempted to expedite the process by holding a hair dryer over my head for as long as I could stand it, which was somewhere in the area of fifteen minutes. At this point we started taking all of the curls down.

4) After all of the curls were let loose I had to brush them out towards my face. (Tread lightly on this part, because you only get one chance at it). The instructions said to be rough, but I took a more gentle approach, which seemed to work out fine for me. If you have thinner hair you may need to rat it a bit, but at this point I looked like a lion/clown, so I was good to go.

[[ after taking out the curls. after combing them out. ]]

5) Now for the tricky part... In order to create the bob look we had to tame my hair and sort of shape the curls in to place so that they looked more like finger waves. Next Megan and Tiffany helped me fold the bottom of my hair under and pin it to the rest of my hair to finalize the illusion. You will want to use a ton of bobbi pins to keep everything in place.

6) Finally take a bottle of hairspray and throw as much of that chemically loaded hair product as you can handle all over your hair. The nastier it feels when you are done, the better your chances of keeping the hair style in tact for a night. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I could shampoo my hair in the morning.

[[ the final product. ]]

And that was that, I pinned my beret to my head, put on my dress, threw on some eye makeup and a red lip, slipped on my vintage looking kitty heels, grabbed my handgun, and was ready for action. Surprisingly my hair turned out really awesome and even held up for the night! Thanks largely of course to the help of my laaaaadies, Tiff and Megan. Thank you ladies!

historical figures party

Here are my pictures from Colleen's Historical Figures Birthday Party from last weekend. People got really creative for this one! My friends are pretty awesome...

Some of the costumes: Bonnie & Clyde (me and Pat) // Coco Chanel (Tiff) // Van Gogh - based off of this painting (Ricky) // Julia Child (Megan) // Amelia Earhart - complete with plane (Colleen) // Che Guvera - but we think he looked more like Fidel Castro (Francisco) // Charlie Chaplin (Morgan) // Prefontane (Jason) // Shirley Temple (Nicole) // Korean Jesus - whatever that means... (Sam) // Steve Jobs - there were two of them // Rosie the Riviter - there ended up being three of them (Jess & Ashley) // Pochahontas // Selena(s) // Tupac // Anne Frank // Joan of Arc // Various Cowpeople // A Banana

[[ bonnie & clyde. coco & clyde. ladies. charlie chaplin. julia child. me & korean jesus. julia & her chicken. butta! being silly in the kitchen. amelia & her plane. charlie & joan of arc. bonnie & che/fidel. group shot. rosie the riveter. korean jesus getting all rambo. we found hunter! group shot struggles. party in the kitchen. ]]   

[[ some instagram pictures i scooped up of some more costumes: rosie the riveter. korean jesus. anne frank & tupac. shirley temple. charlie chaplin. rosies. che/fidel. ]]

back in time

I am still working on editing all of the pictures from Colleen's party, but in the meantime, here are two of my favorites from the evening. I love the treatment on these, especially the one of me and Pat! And not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think we looked pretty damn good as gangsters.

[[ bonnie & clyde. coco chanel, julia child, bonnie parker. ]]

weekend adventures 68

Last weekend me and Pat headed to Portland for my friend Colleen's annual costume birthday party. I had such a great weekend, even if there was a lot of commuting and I only got to see my friends for one night. It is a bummer that we don't get to see each other all the time like we did when we were in college, me especially since I live the farthest away, but every time we get back together its like old times. Love you guys.


saturday
We wanted to get a fairly early start, so we packed up in the morning, got ready, and headed over the Hood Pass towards Portland. It was a gorgeous day and the scenery was beautiful, so I didn't mind the three hour drive over. Pat had made plans to meet up with some friends, and I had some errands to run at the mall, so he dropped me off with my friend Megan and took care of his business while I took care of mine.

[[ weather changes heading over the hood pass for portland. ]]

When we were finished shopping Megan took me over to my friend Tiff's place, and we started getting ready for the party. I had to go through this pretty intense process to get my hair "short" like Bonnie Parker's hair was, and added some fingerwaves as well, which took forever. (I will dedicate an entire post to this with a how to later). The rest was easy, minimal makeup, red lips, dress, gun, good to go. Of course all Pat had to do was get dressed and he was ready, I didn't even have to buy him anything new for this costume aside from the gun!

Megan came over before we left so me, Pat, Tiff, Megan, and Jason rode over to Colleens together and partied for the rest of the night. I will post party pictures separately because as usual, I have a ton of them. There were a bunch of really good costumes! Everyone is so creative! Here are a few little teasers...

[[ historical figures party: preview group shots. ]]

sunday
I wanted to meet up with my dad while I was in town, so in the morning me and Pat packed back up and met him, my step mom, and littlest sister at The Thirsty Lion in Tigard, which has surprisingly really good food. It was good to visit with them for a few hours before heading home. The rest of the day was spent going back over the pass, and then relaxing for the rest of the night. It was a really really quick trip, but definitely worth it.

happy almost birthday colleen!

Tomorrow me and Pat are heading to Portland to celebrate my friend Colleen's 5th annual Birthday and Costume Party. Happy almost birthday Colleen!! I am excited to see you and everyones costumes tomorrow night!

Here is a little preview of our costumes from past years.

[[ year one - superheros. year two - monster mash. year three - robots. year four - spirit animals. ]]

some day, they'll go down together they'll bury them side by side...

My friend Colleen's birthday party is coming up, and as usual she is having another costume party! Me and Tiffany helped her start this tradition back in college, and this year she is going with the theme of Historical Figures.

Here is some of my inspiration...

[[ bonnie parker and clyde barrow. faye dunaway and warren beatty. ]]

Can you tell who me and Pat are going to be?

Bonnie and Clyde! I am super excited about this one! I have been wanting to do it for Halloween, but it is always so overdone... I am going off of costumes from the movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway from 1967, as well as off of actual black and white photographs of the real duo.

To prepare, I watched the movie twice while Pat was out of town, and I thought it was really interesting. I especially liked it when Bonnie recited her poem "The Story of Bonnie & Clyde" towards the end of the movie, indicating that she knew that death was eminent at this point, but did not try to flee Clyde's side. The real Bonnie Parker did in fact write this poem in 1932 when she was jailed, and it was published a year later when found at their abandoned hideout along with many pictures. The movie makes you really sympathize with the characters and think of them in an almost Robin Hood like manner for fighting the big banks, but in reality, their crimes far exceeded simple bank robberies and a few accidental murders. Either way, the unique story of these young Texas natives trying to escape their own poverty, falling in love, evading the police on many occasions, and of course the nature of their gruesome end, certainly makes them some of the most famous "gangsters" of the time, and thats why I chose them to be our historical figures.

She also wrote a poem called "The Story of Suicide Sal" before her own story with a similar feel. Check them out they are really interesting.

I also found some pretty sweet editorial inspirations while I was looking around online. Here is one by Aram Bedrossian (which is my favorite) and another by Peter Lindbergh.

new years eve

We celebrated NYE this year at The Nines Hotel in Portland with a bunch of friends and several hotel rooms. The night definitely got a little bit ridiculous, but it was a ton of fun overall! Here are some pictures from the night taken from my phone and from Tiffany's homemade photobooth set up.

[[ the view of pioneer square. no mini fridge, no problem. getting ready. me and mylanta. girls. meguenther. me and pat. my best girls. me and alena. ]]

[[ pictures from tiff's photobooth: the group. ladies. pat and tiff. ladies. strong. the back. tiff and jason. dave and hannah. ]]