Category: Just me being me

Date Night Fun: Glass Blowing

Back in December, Travis got sucked into a glass blowing competition show on Netflix called Blown Away. I know, super random. Since he was nerding out over the amazing designs, I told him that there is actually a local glass blowing studio where you can go and make your own projects. And he was ALL IN on trying it.

We initially wanted to go in December to make Christmas ornaments, but they were totally booked up. So, when I saw that they had a special pint glass session for St. Patrick’s Day, I signed us up.

Let’s start with the important information. First off, the studio is McFadden Art Glass in Baltimore, Maryland and you can find their website here: McFadden Art Glass The St. Patrick’s Day workshop cost $75 per person and ran from 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm on a Saturday. The have lots of other events too — everything from making your own bunny for Easter to creating a stemless wine glass, flower or ring holder for Mother’s Day.

Here’s Travis going through the process to make his orange and white pint glass with a handle (you can click on each photo to make it bigger):

And here I am making my dark blue/light blue ombre pint glass with no handle:

The people/artists/glass magicians who guided us through every stage of the glass making process were incredible. They were patient and great communicators and made sure we not only ended up with a gorgeous piece of art… but we didn’t get burned while working with the lava-hot molten glass.

After we made our masterpieces, we left them there for a couple days so they can safely come down to room temperature. Travis brought them home one day after work and we are both flabbergasted that we actually MADE these glasses!

It was so much fun and the glasses turned out so well. I highly recommend it as a super out-of-the-box date night!

A Little Tattoo Maintenance

Hmmm…I think this is my fourth post about tattoos on this blog. Which, I guess isn’t THAT crazy considering I’ve been blogging for almost 11 years now.

Let’s see, I first posted Tattoo back in 2014 where I talked about my first two small tattoos and my plans for a half-sleeve on my arm. Then, in New Ink: From Start to Finish from 2016 I went through the whole process of deciding on my half-sleeve and answered a bunch of questions. Finally, on More Ink: A Tattoo Update my sleeve grew a little and I added another row of flowers to bring it down closer to my elbow.

Well, looks like it’s time for another tattoo update.

I finished the main section of my sleeve about 6 years ago and then “the addition” about 5 years ago. Well, over the years all the colors have held up beautifully… except one specific purple. What started off as a beautiful, vibrant dark orchid shade had faded. It turned into a light lavender and you could see the gray shading at the base of each of the leaves.

Here’s a comparison photo:

The left image is from when I shared my initial sleeve on the blog in 2016. The right image is the one I sent to my tattoo artist to show how that one particular color didn’t like my skin.

Anyways, I wasn’t happy with it so I decided to do a little color maintenance. I made an appointment with Eric, my fabulous tattoo guy, and it took a couple months to get on his schedule.

I figured, while I was getting poked at… I might as well address another small tattoo issue. I had wimped out about having the tattoo wrap further around my arm because frankly the closer you get to the inside of your bicep the more painful it gets. I mean, the whole tattoo thing doesn’t feel great, but DANG the closer you get to the white underbelly gets really SPICY!

Anyways, since this was going to be a short session, I figured I might as well go for it. I asked my artist to bring the tattoo around a little further with leaves and shading. He’s the expert, so I just told him to do what he wanted to and let him buzz me.

With this last session taking a little over 2 hours, it brings my sleeve total hours up to right around 20 hours.

That’s right, I’ve had a tattoo gun on my arm for TWENTY HOURS. Completely worth it to me though, because I love my sleeve. Even more now with the recent additions! Also, it’s fun when young men come up to me (it’s always the 20-year-old bro’s) and ask how long my tattoo took and I tell them about 20 hours and watch their eyes bug out of their heads.

I tried super hard to get comparison photos of the before and after and I have to say it is REALLY hard to get angles of your own arm.

Here’s the front of my arm from before and then after my recent session:

And here is a better before/after of the purple mum which is now a medium pink mum with much more consistent shading:

While Eric was in there, he also did some fresh outlines and shading on the top of my arm, which you can see here:

As always when I finish a session, I tell my tattoo artist that I’m done. Completely done now. And he every single time he says, “okay, I’ll see you next time.”

So, until next time!

Tricks for Drinking More Water

One of my goals this year is to drink more water. For some people, it seems like the easiest goal ever. Fill cup. Drink. Repeat. Easy Peasy. However, I’ve never been a big liquid drinker… so it’s actually quite a challenge to keep sip sip sipping all day long.

And it’s not that I’m sipping on soda or milkshakes or vodka. I basically just drink coffee and water. But for some reason I just don’t seem to be that thirsty.

Anyways, at my last two doctor’s appointments my doctor stressed that I MUST START DRINKING MORE WATER or I’m going to get kidney stones. So, I’m trying my hardest to make it a habit.

My current tricks:

Trick #1: A super cold and fancy water cup with a straw.

I’m much more likely to drink water if it’s ice cold and through a straw, so I’ve been using my favorite Corksicle travel mugs on a daily basis. I try to keep them filled with ice and water and right next to me all day long, so I don’t even have to think about it. The cups are magical and keep my water super ice cold for hours.

Trick #2: Drink as soon as I wake up.

When my alarm goes off in the morning, I typically lay in bed and swipe through my phone a bit before I start moving. For the past couple weeks, I make sure I sip on my bedside cup of water (it still has ice in the morning because, as I said, Corksicle cups are magical) while I’m lazing around. I can usually get in 8-10 ounces before I even leave bed, which gives me a good start on the day!

Source: Water Llama (not my actual llama)

Trick #3: I’m using the Water Llama app.

I downloaded the Water Llama app. The one-time purchase price was $6.99 (you can also choose a month purchase instead, which is $3.99). I added my information and it decided I should try to drink about 70 ounces a day. It sits right on my main screen of my iphone and you can see visually exactly how much liquids I’ve had throughout the day.

It’s super easy to add coffee, water, hot chocolate and even soup to the tracker so it’s just a quick push of the button to log your drinks. Water gives you 100% hydration for each ounce you drink, but other beverages vary. For example: coffee is 60% hydration, soda is 80% hydration, milk is 130% and 3.5 ounces of tequila is -318%!

I also have a Water Llama reminder set every 2 hours if I don’t add a drink for my watch to ding and remind me to sip on something.

What doesn’t work for me: Flavored water/tabs/drop. I’m perfectly fine with the taste of water, so adding flavor doesn’t really entice me to drink any more than I already do.

Even with these tricks, it is still a struggle to get to my water drinking goal each day. I think the only days I’ve actually made it are days that I started with water, drank my normal coffee, sipped on water all day long, had soup for lunch and then an afternoon Starbucks run for a latte.

Do you have any tricks I can use to make myself drink more water? Also, if someone can tell me when I’ll stop peeing 30 times a day, I’d really appreciate it!