Happy Halloween

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 30, 2019 | Life

It’s been a while and I guess I’ll get into that another time but I thought it would be nice to come back on Halloween because I don’t know… we had a Halloween party and I felt more like myself again?

So as you know, James loves Halloween. He loves Halloween possibly more than he loves me >_> which is fine. >_>

Every year he tries to do something more elaborate and now that we have our own proper apartment to decorate, he’s even more into it.

Growing up in Australia, we never celebrated because it was more of an American holiday. But people seem to be getting into it a lot more these days so it’s easier to find decorations and whatnot!

This was our finished spread!

Of course, I don’t actually like parties so Celina and Toby just came over and we ate a lot of food and watched the Addams Family. Perfect afternoon!

We decided to go with the Addams family because we both really loved them growing up. I was always more into Wednesday but as an adult I think Gomez and Morticias relationship is goals. I also hate that I used the word goals that way.

And of course Lottie needed a costume too but dogs shockingly don’t like to wear hats so this was her only photo.

James bought a jacket from a thrift shop and I added the stripes with masking tape. I thought it was funny that he and Toby ended up looking like opposites. We had a bit of a struggle to try to find a suit that looked the part and wasn’t super expensive so we settled on something that actually fit over the idea of something that had the wide pinstripes.

I bought my dress from a thrift shop too and altered it to make the bottom tighter. I used the left overs to make some sleeves. Tbh I kind of wish I had enough to make longer more flowy sleeves but I think it still ended up being quite decent!

Originally I bought a $5 wig from Big W to go with it but it was so bad that I couldn’t make it work. I gave styling it a go but just ended up melting it hahaha!

In the end I bought some temporary black hair colour spray and ignored the warnings of “do not use on blonde hair”. It worked shockingly well!!

Of course I ran out with one blonde spot left and after a brush through, it looked pretty grey. Celina ended up having to stop on her way over and pick up some more so I could finish it  *_*

In the end I think everything turned out really well!

For food we had mummy sausages, witch hat calzones, spider bread, spider choc dip, zombie brain cheese dip, slime cake, eye truffles and a heap of other thing. The ideas were either found on Pinterest or from our old recipes.

 I have new uncomfortable diet restrictions from finally having my allergies diagnosed which have been really hard to work around but I was able to eat about half of this stuff which was really great. I really miss eating interesting and fun foods.

We had a bit of a snafu the night beforehand when James burned his hand very badly while dealing with molten fudge. While he was set up on the couch with his hand in water I finished off the fudge and took direction on making the second half of the cake.

Luckily James’ hand healed a bit over night and he was able to finish up everything he had planned the next day.

By the end of the party the hair spray had lived up to its $4-ness and rubbed off on everything it touched including my entire back XD

I was terrified of it not washing out properly.  After 4 washes I ended up back to a slightly dirty blonde…

Another round of washes and I was back to blonde. Worth it for $4!

So I don’t quite know how to finish this off… how did I used to finish blog posts? While the lead up was a bit stressful the outcome was fun and hanging out with friends eating cute food is basically my favourite thing.

Wedding Rings!

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 9, 2018 | Life

Ok I’m finally in a better place to talk about this so let’s talk wedding rings!

James proposed to me with a lovely ring he bought of Etsy as a placeholder. He agonised over it for literal YEARS until he settled on one and had to get Tobias to order it for him so he could keep it a surprise.

He was fully intending on me just wearing it for a while until we could shop together for something nice but I fell in love with it, it was the completely perfect design for me. So rather than finding something different, I designed the wedding band around it and then had the engagement ring remade in better quality materials. Unfortunately the original seller couldn’t remake it in solid rose gold (they only did plating) so we had to find someone new.

Here’s an awkwardly angled photo of the end result:

I did a lot of research on materials and got a LOT of quotes before we settled on Emi from PopRing. She used to have an Etsy shop which is where I ordered from but has since moved to her own website.

I knew I wanted a moissanite for the main stone and I really didn’t care about the others. It ended up being cheapest to go with diamonds for everything in the crown and white sapphire for the leaves of the engagement ring.

My ring philosophy was: who cares so long as it’s pretty. I’m not a purist, I only cared that it was durable, pretty and not so expensive that I’ll feel guilty if I eventually lose it or damage it.

The quotes I got from a variety of online and offline sellers varied wildly from $500-$10,000+. I chose Emi because she was quick to reply to my emails, offered helpful suggestions and the price was great.

This was my original first sketch:

This was what that that evolved into:

This was the first sketch that Emi sent back:

And after refining it more this is what we settled on:

Here’s a photo from the first cast we did. I wasn’t 100% happy with it because I thought it looked like it would be way too tall for my finger.

So we went back and forth with crappy photoshopping to decide on a more delicate design.

The second casting was perfect and a few days later it arrived at my door.

I am really not good at jewellery photos but it looks a million times better in person!

I’m glad I went with moissanite because it sparkles like a rainbow unicorn from outer space.

Here is a comparison to the original engagement ring (new bottom, old top).

The only difference is that the newer one is shorter so it fits with the crown well.

The crown fits on top perfectly:

We designed the crown part so that (assuming I don’t lose it first!) many years from now, if I want something more subtle I can remove the top curls and have them turned into scallops.

Of course, I’m not exactly interested in subtle right now.

The great irony is that after looking forward to wearing it for months, I broke my finger a week after the wedding while we were on honeymoon and my fingers were so swollen that I couldn’t wear it on the correct hand for about 3 months!

And I’ve been wearing it for a year now and it still looks brand new!

While the process of getting it made and researching and buying something so expensive (the most expensive part of the wedding!) was quite stressful, now I’m able to look at it and be happy that I got exactly the perfect ring for me.