Hey... is this thing on?

In case you haven't noticed, I took another brief break from blogging - say that five times fast. In any case, I'll put the long and short of what I've been up to below, and then return to my regularly scheduled blogging in full force - I hope.

Throughout the past month or so, I have...

• Dyed my hair bright, candy apple red.
• Seen one of my best work friends get married.
• Brought my laptop back from the dead (again).
• Taken back my job as a part-time bar trivia host.
• Finished or worked on a lot of knitting projects.
• Drank a lot of beer.
• Had one of my favorite people visit me in Milwaukee with her husband.
• Fallen in love with music all over again.
• Had my favorite weekend of the year - the Milwaukee tattoo convention.
• Attempted crafts I never have before.
• Rented a Kindle from the Milwaukee Public Library in an attempt to thwart my hatred of e-reading.

And tons of other stuff! I'll see what I can do to cover all of it in short order, so everyone can go back to reading my blog with this look on their faces:

Get Pretty! - Version 2.0

This week, I wore makeup - eep! - TWICE. In one week! I was surprised at myself. So here's two separate looks, one with a product list and one without.

I wore this to host a trivia show last minute - for nearly a year I've been a part-time trivia host in the Milwaukee area, and I was called on Thursday evening a couple hours before the show was supposed to start (and about four beers into my drinking for the evening) and wound up having to throw something together pretty quickly. The photo sucks, I know.

This weekend - hold your breath - I was asked on a first date! And you know what? It went well, and he actually spoke to me the next day! Perhaps there's hope for me after all! So this weekend I've been taking extra care of myself and actually taking time out for me each day. This was today's look!

I opted to get white trashy with it - that, and I really wanted to rock out my Free the WM3 shirt for one of the last times - unless I craft a revision to it, which I haven't thought too far into.

• Foundation: Cover Girl Clean Oil Control/MAC Studio Fix
• Brows: Dark half of the Clinique Coffee Shop eyeshadow duo
• Eyeshadow Base: LASplash Splashproof Sealer
• Outside Corner: Kat Von D shadow in Prague
• Middle: Kat Von D shadow in Long Distance
• Inner Corner: Kat Von D shadow in Sugar Skull
• Highlight: Kat Von D shadow in Sugar Skull
• Liquid Liner: Kat Von D Autograph Liner in Turbo Lover (currently on sale for $5 at sephora.com!)
• Lashes: Prestige My Biggest Lashes in Very Black
• Loose Powder: Cover Girl Professional Loose Powder

One thing I know I forgot to mention in my last Get Pretty post was how I set my makeup - and this may be strange and do it at your own risk - but I use Aqua Net. Just close my eyes, spray my face, and go. Works as well as anything else. Chap Stick also makes a good eyeshadow base in a bind.

It was also time for new nails, and once again, because I'm addicted, I went for the Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Polish Strips, this time in "Wild Child". They're fun! If I felt like having a real zoo on my nails, I'd have paired them with what I have left of the leopard print, but I decided that would be too much. 

That's all I have for this one! Until next time!

Book Club Mondays: "Professional Idiot"

I have always been totally and completely enamored by the stories of others (as I've said). Though it seems like every celebrity and their mother, father, sister in law, and third cousin twice removed are putting out memoirs these days, I decided to try Steve O's Professional Idiot on for size a couple weeks back.

Unsure of what I was expecting, I was a bit surprised by the content. Not by ridiculous stories of getting drunk, high, huffing nitrous and jumping off of stuff, but finding out that the funnyman was born overseas and was a bit of a brat growing up. Brat more meaning that he moved around a lot (his father worked for Pepsi), not that he was basically ADD and got in trouble for fun (which was also true). I loved reading the story of how he found Doc McGhee's hotel room when he was 13 and got to meet Motley Crue, as well as other stories of his youth.

While I was entertained by the brunt of the book, a portion just made me sad. Addiction changes people, never for the better. It is blatantly obvious after reading Professional Idiot that Steve realizes that. I can imagine that writing the book was part of his healing process.

Though most of us know him as a real 'Jackass', the book was (in my mind) a good representation of an underestimated man. While he's made a fortune doing stunts nobody would ever dream of doing and run around like a crazy person for the past ten years, Professional Idiot shows a new side of the 'Jackass' we never knew.

Sunday, Crafty Sunday: The funniest back patch EVER.

Sunday night two for one special!

Let me just preface this post by saying that I've begun to embrace my weird quirks. There are many things that make Liz... Liz. And I decided to celebrate the most important one in the only way I know how: through crafting. I've always had a way of transcending my look, so it didn't seem too out of the ordinary. A week or so ago, I had a hilarious idea right before I went to bed. Here's what came out of it:

That, my friends, is the new back patch for my well-loved black corduroy jacket. And it is much funnier in real life than it was in my head. I wanted to make a back patch that read 'Cat Lady' that looked like it belonged on a motorcycle jacket. I think this is what #winning looks like, don't you?

But no, to get serious for a second, all I needed for this project was some letters, black fabric, cat print fabric, and iron-on adhesive. I opted for the $1.89 letter buckets at Jo-Anns, and had some black fabric laying around. Half a yard of the cat fabric wound up being just enough for two back patches, in actuality - and because I'm friends with amazing people, I've already had requests for others.

Here's some photos of the assembly - featuring a cameo by my ridiculously furry and lovey feline son, Vegas.

I haven't actually gotten around to sewing it on yet - I don't own a sewing machine and that much hand sewing would have my carpal tunnel screaming - but when I do, I'll be sure to let you know! It was actually a relatively easy project, completed entirely with an iron. I am planning to sew the black onto the patch just for security, and get the patch sewn onto the jacket sometime this week.

Embrace your weird, ladies and gentlemen. My weird happens to be in the form of being the raddest cat lady you'll ever meet. Next week - I have no idea what will be here! I'm sure I'll have something to yank out of my bag of tricks!

Finally Free.

I will be the first to tell you that I'm not the type to bitch about current events. This situation, however, is much different.

As someone who has followed the injustice served to the West Memphis Three for the past five years or so, Friday afternoon's news of their release came as a shock, though it was a good one. As soon as the news came down, I checked every link I could find, reading the same lines over and over again, not even realizing as tears streamed down my face.

I was happy. I was absolutely and completely in shock, surprise, and glorified happiness. I have spent years doing what I can to tell people about the case, reading up on it myself, and knowing just how unjust what those three men went through for nearly two decades was. When I heard there was a deal on the table on Friday morning, I had goosebumps.

The connection that I felt to the case was not purely through research and understanding of the injustices done to Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley. It was because I could see myself in their shoes. As a kid, I grew up listening to punk and metal music, wearing black, writing bad poetry, and allaround being a little bit scary. If the town I grew up in had been any smaller, and if something as horrific as those murders had taken place with the same police circumstances in West Memphis, I would have been typecast as the type of person to do something like that. If you did the same, it could have been you, too. That's why I read the news and could do nothing but cry. I was absolutely certain that these men would not have been absolved of their crimes until long after Damien was put to death. Then, it would have been treated as a "whoops!", as so many mistakes in the justice system seem to be these days.

While the plea deal was not perfect, it was what it took to get these three innocent men out of prison. And really, they will never live a 'normal' life, no matter how you look at it. They will forever be typecast as 'baby killers' to some, and their innocence will forever be questioned. They still have much work to do, both to get acclimated to life in the outside world, and to clear their names forever. At least now they are safe, and can all begin the healing process.

The story is not over now that the West Memphis Three are out of prison. www.wm3.org has all of the information on the case, the Paradise Lost documentaries, and what you can still do in order to help the men clear their names. There is still much work to be done. For more information, I would personally recommend checking out Devil's Knot by Mara Leveritt, it is one of the best books on the case I've read, and boasts much information.

While the West Memphis Three walk free, they will not be truly free until their names are cleared and the true murderer of those three boys is brought to justice.