• As you may have already read, I went to California at the beginning of the month to visit my mommy! I posted some pics from my visit already – specifically our trip to Forestiere Underground Gardens and some stuff around my grandparents’ house, and I also did an outfit post while I was there. I still have a bunch of pics from the zoo to post later on.
• Put a bird on it! I noticed this when I was going through my luggage to find something to wear. A dress on the left, a blouse on the right. I seem to be drawn to the same things over and over again…
• TEEN GIRL SQUAD! I rewatched most of the old episodes of TGS this past week after quoting it a whole bunch with my best friend and then being frustrated because I couldn’t remember more. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a pretty hilarious (at least I think so) web cartoon and you should probably watch it.
• I actually started making a birthday wish list this year because every year I have at least a couple friends or family members ask me what I want for my birthday and my answer is invariably “UHHHHHHHHH…” Making lists is fun, even though I probably won’t get anything on it. Here is one I started making at ModCloth. I could pretty much put everything on their site on my wishlist.
• Started re-reading the first book of the Lucifer comic series (a spinoff from the Sandman Series of what Lucifer has been up to since he quit as ruler of hell and decided to open a nightclub here on Earth). I really ought to just concentrate on one series at a time and get through it instead of trying to read thirty-million different books at once. Oh well. This is one of my favorite quotes from this book so far because I quite enjoy silent time, myself.
• “I’m only interested in hypothetical people.” – This quote from Louis C.K. pretty much sums it up. (Aurora feels like she should get credit every time I mention Louis C.K. on my TILT lists because she is the one who introduced me to his comedy stylings. There you go… all hail Rora.)
• Started learning some XHTML and CSS! I already know some HTML since I have been making websites since the mid 90s, but it’s come a long way since then, and I haven’t. And aside from tweaking some preexisting stuff here and there, I haven’t worked in CSS before. This week I made a layout for my salon from scratch and wrote up all of the HTML and the CSS stylesheet for it (yay me!). Now I just need to learn to make a WordPress theme from scratch and I’ll be golden! As a side note, I feel completely biopolar when I am doing any sort of code. I get really, insanely happy when I figure out how to do something, and then 30 seconds later I want to kill everyone when I accidentally break something, and then REALLY HAPPY again when I fix it. It’s an emotional rollercoaster… worse than PMS.
• On that note… actually it’s probably not worse than PMS. I was having especially awful PMS last week. I think I actually get PMDD because I was REALLY depressed for about a week this time. It doesn’t happen every month, but too many. (Is this TMI? Or maybe TMA – Too Many Acronyms? Well it’s too late now… TLN…because you’ve already read it.) Anyway, this is on my TILT (sorry, last one!) because the past few days I have finally stopped feeling insane and hormonal and life feels livable! Hooray for not being crazy!
• And saving the best for last… only one week until my boyfriend is here on leave!!!!!!!!! Actually, I’m writing this post on Wednesday, but it won’t go up until tomorrow. So at the time this is published, ONLY SIX DAYS UNTIL HE’S HERE. This is the best thing ever. The past 10 months since I have seen him seemed to drag on forever, but these last seven days are taking geological ages to pass. Hurry up and be next week already!

Thanks for bearing with me through that. Hope you’re all having an awesome week! Fair warning: I may or may not be online much next week, since le boyfriend will be in town.

I took a few pictures around my grandparents’ house (where my mom is currently staying since they passed away) and also at the zoo and Forestiere Underground Gardens, and I thought I’d share them with you! I actually took a LOT at the zoo, so I am going to give them their own separate post later on, but here are some of my photos from vacation. Since this is a photo heavy post, I’m putting most of it behind a cut.

But first, the obligatory kitty cat photos!

This is Tux. He was originally my cat, but he stayed with my mom and the rest of our pets when I moved. He’s getting to be an old man and drools all over you when he lays on you but he’s still pretty handsome.

This is my Twiggy! She was also my kitty and I have always just adored her. She’s the smallest full grown cat that I’ve ever seen – about the size of an average teenage cat. She was a stray as a kitten, so I assumed maybe she stayed small because she was malnourished when we got her. She’s tiny but she’s PACKED with personality!

Okay, on to the touristy stuff! The Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno were something that I’ve wanted to see for years. I remember watching a special about it on a travel show or History Channel or something. Basically, this guy named Baldassare Forestiere decided to dig out a house to live in underground, and kept expanding with tunnels, planting lots of citrus trees underground along the way. It was really a labor of love, because he worked a full time job doing manual labor and then came back to his land and worked on it. He didn’t document any of it, so they don’t even know how far the tunnels expand, but he worked at it, completely on his own for 40 years. Like my mom said, after you see what he was able to accomplish, you will never again feel justified in saying that you don’t have enough time in the day to do something. If you want to know more about it, they have lots of information on their website.

Looking up at the grapevines growing over the walkway outside of the underground area.

Fruit trees and roses growing in the gardens outside. The flowers are a newer addition; Forestiere didn’t grow anything that wasn’t edible.

I thought this tree was really interesting. Forestiere had experimented with grafting trees, and this one grew grapefruit, oranges and kumquats, all off of the same tree!

Check out the rest of the pictures after the break here! There’s some pretty neat underground stuff and also a few pics from my grandparents’ house.

Looking up from an underground area. Forestiere excavated all of the tunnels and rooms with out any machinery and laid everything by hand!

Peeking out of a tunnel into a subterranean courtyard where a fruit tree is growing.

Looking from one tunnel, through the courtyard into another tunnel. Some areas were wired for electricity in the 30′s, and some are lit by daylight. but a lot of tunnels are still pretty dark.

Forestiere’s private courtyard where he took his baths. He kept water aboveground to warm up in the sunlight and then would pipe it down to his bathtub. This is his actual bathtub and I just love the way it’s set up. It’s so chic it looks like it could have stepped out of Anthropologie.

One of the bedrooms. There was a fireplace off to the side but it was hard to get into the photo because I was peeking through a little window.

One of the kitchens. This picture came out kind of blurry because it was actually fairly dim in this area other than where the sunlight was coming in from the window in the background.

His water well- one of the first things he dug out.

A fruit tree growing up from a deeper underground level. He could walk along the upper levels or aboveground to pick the fruit… very clever!

My great-grandpa was an amazing photographer. Here are a few of the awards that he won for his photographic slides.

Another shot of his awards. He also had some trophies, but I didn’t get to see those.

Roses from my grandma’s garden.

More of grandma’s roses :)

We found these when we were going through a box of things that belonged to my great-grandparents. There is a pair of spats that are in really excellent condition, though we don’t know in the family who they belonged to. They’re sitting on top of a bunch of WWII paperwork including some war bonds and sugar rationed and tire rations.

And this is a really awesome old photo album that I think belonged to my great-grandma. I always saw it in my grandparents’ house when I was growing up and I never knew what it was, I just thought it was really fancy and gorgeous.

There we go. Like I said I’ll do another post later on with my pictures from the zoo, I got some pretty good ones! Now I’m back in Seattle and it’s almost strange feeling how cool it still is here compared to the weather in central California. I think it’s in the 60′s here and it was definitely climbing into the 90′s while I was there, which is actually a bit too hot for me. We’ll get that weather here, but not for a couple more months!

I sometimes miss having my blonde and pink hair when I look back at pictures of myself. I really liked having blonde around my face, and the pink was my signature color for 10 years. I do really like my natural color too though, and I definitely don’t miss how haggard my hair always felt, so I’ll just continue to enjoy it on other people :)

(I tried to find the original sources for these pictures from Pinterest, but like many photos they lead to links through tumblr, flickr, weheartit, google and the like. If anyone knows the ORIGINAL source, of any of these, please let me know so I can link them.)

This is one of my faaaaaavorite dresses! I got it during an awesome sale at Dorothy Perkins along with one other that I haven’t worn yet because I need to take it in a teensy bit at the waist. Dorothy Perkins is always having great sales and I have to stop myself from spending all my money there…

I love these green trimmed sunglasses; I’ve been wearing them a lot so far this spring. I got them at a little boutique called Shoe Gypsy in Oklahoma City when I was visiting my friend Rachael. I wish I had a better shot of the pin on my collar! It’s a Triceratops (rawr!) and it’s vintage. I was going to put it in my etsy shop, Trash Treasury Vintage but I couldn’t bear to part with the little guy.

I also didn’t get any close ups of my bracelets. One is polished chunks of Tiger’s Eye and I got it at Blue Seven in Oklahoma City. The light blue one is actually made of guitar strings and it’s from Uncommon Goods. I’m going to get better shots of that one along with a couple other items that Uncommon Goods sent to me to review soon. The purse is probably my favorite purse that I own. It’s Melie Bianco and I got it second hand at Bad Granny’s Bazaar in Oklahoma City. My tights are from JCPenny and ballet flats by American Eagle.

It’s so nice to be visiting my mom. I haven’t had the chance in over a year, so I’m really enjoying this week. I’ll try to keep blog posts coming throughout my vacation, but you probably still won’t see much of me elsewhere until I’m back on Wednesday the 9th. Hope you’re all having a great week too!

Outfit details: Peter Pan Collar Dress from Dorothy Perkins (similar)(similar)/ Triceratops Pin from Trash Treasury Vintage / Tiger’s Eye Bracelet from Blue Seven (similar)/ Guitar String Bracelet from Uncommon Goods / Purse by Melie Bianco / Tights from JCPenny (similar)/ Ballet Flats by American Eagle (similar)

♥ It’s been so sunshiney lately! Still a little cool and windy some days, but SUNSHINE!

♥ I finished the Hunger Games Trilogy. I think I am having fewer nightmares now as a result too, haha. I started reading Water for Elephants, which is great as well. My mom read it a long time ago and recommended it to me; last year when I went to visit her we went to see the movie and I really liked it so I figured why not read the book? It took me long enough, but I’m almost half way through now and thoroughly enjoying it.

♥ Got my tattoo worked on! It’s all itchy and peely right now but when it’s done healing, I’ll take pics. In this session, we did all of the color on that top band- you can see her starting to add the blue here. It took about 4 hours. If you live in the greater Puget Sound area, Savannah at Mordor Tattoo is rad. I’ve known her for 10 years and she has blossomed into an amazing artist.

♥ The Space Needle had it’s 50th birthday and got a fresh new paint job to replicate it’s original look at the World’s Fair in 1962. The roof is once again “Glactic Gold”, which looks more like orange to me. I couldn’t get far enough away to get a good shot, but you can see a teeny bit of the color peeking up at the top.

♥ And as many times as I have been to the gum wall in Post Alley, I’ve never actually put gum on it until last week. It’s just a boring white piece, but it’s what I had in my purse. Mmm germy.

♥ The wait is over and I am finally in California, visiting my mom! I haven’t been to visit her in over a year, I hope it won’t be that long until I can visit again!

♥ And only 20 days until my boyfriend comes home on leave! I haven’t seen him (in person) since the beginning of last August… 10 months, yikes! Just a couple more weeks of Skyping and he’ll be here!!!

♥ Oh yeah, other stuff I did downtown? Posed with a cardboard standee of Jim Parsons at the comic book store. I <3 Sheldon 4-eva!

♥ In case you didn’t know, April 25th was Hairstylist Appreciation Day… I hope you all appreciated your hairstylists!

♥ My friends bands Skablins and Nigel Mustafa played on Saturday night. I drank more than I intended to and only sort of remember dancing to the second band, and may or may not have let my friend Soleil draw a sharpie mustache on me. It was a lot of fun despite the wicked hangover the next day.

♥ One of my favorite musicians/artists, Amanda Palmer launched a Kickstarter for her new album with The Grand Theft Orchestra. I wish I wasn’t flat broke right now or I would have donated more, but I’d like to share the link in case any of you Dresden Dolls/Amanda Palmer fans missed it!

♥ We went and saw the documentary Chimpanzee for my roommate’s birthday. It was really cute! Since we went in the opening week, a portion of the ticket price went to the Jane Goodall foundation which is awesome. I recommend seeing the movie if you get a chance!

♥ And check out all of my lovely new sponsors and friends in the sidebar!

Hope you are all having a great week, and sorry if I am a little bit M.I.A. from Twitter, Facebook, etc. but I want to spend lots of quality time with my mom!

I’ve been doing this for YEARS and I’ve tried a lot of different brands of makeup remover/face cleansing wipes in that time. These are by far my favorite.

A lot of wipes I have used leave my face feeling sticky or filmy, like I still need to rinse it afterward. Not these. With the Burt’s Bees ones, my face feels clean and fresh after I use them. Some brands won’t take off my makeup (not even my non-waterproof mascara). These take it alllll off. One kind that I used for years smelled particularly soapy and stung the bejeezus out of my eyes every time I tried to take off my eye makeup. These ones smell absolutely lovely (“natural” smelling, I guess. Not soapy, not perfumey.) and they don’t bother my skin or eyes at all. And the price point is way more awesome than some of these other brands that I’ve used – $5.99 for a pack of 30!

There are only two things I would change about these facial cleansing wipes if I could.
1) Make them more widely available. So far, I’ve only been able to find them at Target. Not that I’m not at Target all the time anyway, but it would be a lot more convenient if it was available at one of the stores closer to me. Even other places that carry Burt’s Bees products don’t seem to carry the towelettes. I use them literally every day so usually end up stocking up on them when I go to target and come home with 4 packs or so. (Note: While I was writing this post, I also found them online at Drugstore.com and Ulta.)
2) Make smaller packs as well. The 30 count is awesome for at home use, but I also like to carry them in my purse in for “emergency” situations like if I start having a makeup melt down or if I end up going out to a show and crashing at a friend’s house. I also take them when I travel because they are a lot more convenient than my also beloved bottles of Dermalogica facial cleanser. If they had a “travel size” option like 12 count, that would take up a lot less space in my perpetually full purse and would be just perfect.

But there you have it. Burt’s Bees Facial Cleansing Towelettes. One of my favorite daily use products and something that I highly recommend to others. Do you ever use facial cleansing towelettes? Have you tried these ones? What brands do you like?

1. In Flight Wing Necklace by LaurenHauptJewelry via Etsy
2. Urban Renewal Inlaid Wood Bracelet via Urban Outfitters
3. Do You Have The Timber? Watch via Modcloth
4. “Remnants From My Father’s Woodshop” Faceted Turquoise-Color Wood Ring via Endless
5. Wooden Spike Collar Necklace via TopShop USA
6. Redbud Wood Slice Pendant Necklace by hippopotamuspie via Etsy
7. Devon Leigh Tri-Tone Wood Pearl Resin And Black Acrylic Bangle via Endless

So pretty, right? I just bought some wooden plugs and spirals for my ears (I wear a 0gauge) and now I think I need to start acquiring some different wooden jewelry for the summer. What do you think?

It looks lovely on you, Catherine, thanks for sharing the photo with us!

Want to advertise your blog, etsy store or other website on Kelsi Does Hair in May? Check out my advertising page for more information about sizes, pricing (rates starting as low as $7/month), and my blog’s stats, and of course feel free to shoot me any questions that you may have!

♥ This quote from Louis C.K. “I don’t know why I’m such an asshole. I really am. I’m grumpy, I get impatient with people quickly. When people are boring, I want to KILL them and that’s not fair…” That pretty much sums it up, haha.

♥ It was Rachael’s birthday on the 6th and I gave her the gift of Bryan Adams…

♥ This tweet from Amanda Palmer: “the beauty standard is a strange strange thing. the goal is total freedom – not a new set of rules. do what you feel. do not make apologies.”

♥ This adorable swimsuit! They have a bunch of different fabric choices but these two are my favorites. I haven’t even owned a swimsuit in years (side note, I don’t know how to swim.) but I would kind of like to get this one. I like the retro cut of it, it would cover up a lot of things that I’d like covered, and I feel like it might be able to hold my boobs up semi-comfortably.

♥ Items from my Etsy shop, Trash Treasury Vintage was featured on Love Elycia and Freckled Nest! That made me sooo happy!

♥ Spent Easter at my friend Heather’s house and had lots of fun and lots of food!

♥ This ended up on my Facebook wall, courtesy of Jessica, lol. Makes me totally miss being a teenager.

♥ Got to Skype with my boyfriend a couple of times, which always makes me happier than anything else! Ugh, I miss him so much!

♥ Annnnd April feels like the longest month of my life but it’s only 12 days until I see my mom, and 34 until I see my boyfriend! When this month ends, I will be so happy! I haven’t been to visit my mom in a little over a year, and I haven’t seen my boyfriend in 8 months (by then it will be 10 months).

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