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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Vacation Pictures

This post was first featured on my now defunct blog, M&J Hooray!

See? I told you I'd put some pictures up.

These are photos from Mom's camera, but there aren't that many. Here's a sampling!


Smoking cigars - a favorite past time. Except Papaw. He just liked sitting out with them.


Uncle firing up the grill for hamburgers and hot dogs!


K and Papaw :)


Aunt gave me a crown and light up diamond ring to wear for the shower. Jarred found it hysterical!


Showing off the crown and ring. The crown kept popping off my head - it was a little small!


What an appropriate cake!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Best Gift

This post was first featured on my now defunct blog, M&J Hooray!

I didn't realize it back in December, but I think Jarred gave me the best birthday present I could ask for. No, not the engagement ring. Well... I guess that would be considered the best. But on a different level.

Ahem.

Anyway.

Jarred got me a gift card to my favorite spa in town. The gift baggie came with a brochure of all their services. I went straight for the 'manicure' page. One of my favorite things to do is get a pedicure, but I wanted to try a manicure. More specifically, I wanted to get artificial nails.

Point blank - I've always had super ugly nails. I've always been so embarrassed by them. I know so many women say that, but seriously, my nails were UGLY! I never knew exactly what was wrong with them and all the researching online did me no good. I couldn't find anything.

My problem? My nails were very curved and grew downward. The worst part was the deep horizontal ridges that would grow on my nail bed. I can't even search Google images for a good picture because nothing comes up as severe as my nails looked. I don't have any pictures myself because I was embarrassed. I never let my nails be photographed.

Anyway, I decided to get acrylics put on. I went to the salon by myself and had my favorite beautician apply the nails. I told her about my problem and she was very kind and didn't make me feel awkward. I had the nails painted a light pink color that I loved.

The nails only lasted 2 weeks, but I loved it. I loved having smooth, normal nails. They were pretty! My engagement ring looked even better with pretty painted nails.

I also had a pretty bad problem with picking at my cuticles. Sometimes I would even pick so hard they would bleed. The skin up to my first knuckle was always raw and red and bleeding from my picking habit. I couldn't stop and I didn't notice I was doing it half the time! With the artificial nails, my beautician had scrubbed my cuticles and softened them up, so there was nothing to pick at. The redness started to go down around my knuckles.

It took awhile to get all the glue off my nail bed after I took off the artificial nails. I think in those 2 short weeks, I had totally rid myself of my cuticle picking problem. My beautician had recommended a protein base coat to keep on my nails to help keep them healthy. I have religiously applied it.

I have noticed that the ugly ridges in my nails have begun to disappear. I really think that my constant picking was 'traumatizing' my nail bed and that's why I had those deep ridges. The last remnants of the ridges are there when I take off the protein base coat, but it's nothing like it used to be.

I decided to paint my nails tonight. This is the first time EVER that I have kept polish on my fingernails. I tried to paint my nails when I had the deep ridges, but I always thought it exaggerated the problem. So as quickly as I applied the polish, I would take it right off.

Jarred tells me he likes it when I wear pretty polish on my nails. Of course, he's never seen any on my before. We went out to the bookstore, out to eat, and to the mall tonight and I had my polish on and wasn't embarrassed!

So thank you Jarred! In a roundabout way, you gave me the best gift! It may seem a bit superficial, but to me, it's a huge feat to be able to wear polish on my wedding day.

Look Mom and Dad! No ridges!