-Chris Isaak, Wicked Game

The first time I saw my fiance I was immediately physically attracted to him. I wasn’t concerned with having a relationship but only with immediate gratification, if you catch my drift. I had just gotten out of a series of stupid, retarded, horrible, and devasting relationships and I just wanted to party with my friends and keep away from guys and their bullshit. But the second night I hung out with Matt, he told me that he loved me. He will, of course, deny this to the end but he did and deep down he knows he did. I got a little freaked out by that but now, in retrospect, I really think he meant it. I had never meant a person so genuine before.

Now, almost three years later, we are a month away from getting married. We’ve had many fights and many good times but all in all, I think this is it. I don’t believe in soul mates or anything like that but I also do not believe there is anyone out there for me that would fit as well as Matt and I fit.. if that made sense. I didn’t want this–not when I got it. But now its the only thing I want and I couldn’t be happier.

Life is funny, isn’t it?

Here’s what I wish, though. In life, I wish that people would seriously just treat other people the way that they want to be treated. I feel like I try and do that as much as I can but sometimes when people are bossy and pushy and don’t get the hint… it’s hard. But that’s what I wish: for people to realize everything isn’t always about them and that there is more to life than being the focus of attention all the time!

Certain people (names we will not mention, even though no one knows about this blog) are forgetting how bossy and pushy they were at their own wedding! They are calling me and telling me that the wedding is getting expensive and that the wedding is for “everyone” and not just Matt and I. OH REALLY? It is for everyone? I seem to remember a certain someone telling us that we would “ruin” (exact word used) their wedding if Matt and I tried to sit together at dinner. Interesting how quickly people forget how they treated other people and then they want to boss the shit out of you, telling you all the stuff that you could NEVER have said to them during their wedding. Especially that things are getting costly… well guess what? I didn’t ask any of you to fly to Las Vegas and stay in a nice hotel. YOU did that on your own. Everyone in my family is driving and they don’t have a problem with it.. Flying is not your only option so please don’t tell me how “expensive” things are getting. And this is THE ONLY TIME when Matt and I can have a few days where EVERYTHING is about us.. I certainly remember SOMEONE’s wedding being ONLY about them… but now that it is our turn, we should just let people choose what they want just to avoid fighting? I am so sick of people being hypocritical. This has all made my stomach TURN and this is the kind of stuff I wanted to avoid. And of course I have to write it here and never speak a word of it for fear of people getting their feelings hurt. Oh but my feelings? Apparently they don’t matter. Everyone say how they really feel except for me because I am not officially part of the family.

AND.. if you (a different person now) are saying “I didn’t even have to do this I just wanted to!” then DONT DO IT. I never asked for it! And now I am being made out to be the bad guy for saying NO I DON’T WANT THIS when asked if I want it? What the heck?

Frustrations.

Seven months ago when we had started date-hunting I told myself that by July I would be at my perfect weight, just maintaining until the wedding. Well, seven months ago I didn’t realize how stressful life would be in seven months. In the last 3 months alone we: moved from a downstairs condominium (roommates) to an upstairs apartment (no roommates), adopted a dog, ended a big semester, started summer school, Matt started working full time, started making wedding favors and invitations, bought a washer and dryer, changed all household accounts, got another car (borrowed but much needed), and many other things. You see, I am a stress eater more than anything. While I’m not overweight by any means, I definitely would feel much more beautiful and like myself if I were about 10 pounds lighter. I even had a gym class over the summer where I worked out 5 days a week for one month but.. I was stressed about getting everything else done around the house while having to babysit the (dumb) dog that I ate more, basically canceling out my hard work at the gym. And now that the gym class is over, I’m not working out and I’m still eating like shit. SO needless to say, I need to start doing something before I turn into a potato before my wedding and can’t fit in my gown (which, BTW, fits like a glove). I DO want to be looking my best for my wedding but I’m having trouble finding inspiration to work-out when its 100 degrees plus outside. Stupid excuse, I know. Enough of that.

My wedding is in Las Vegas and I realize that’s far from here (in California, 7 hours away from LV). Much of my family isn’t going to be attending the wedding, which really irks me. Hey, I’ve been a broke ass college students for a few years too many and I realize going to Las Vegas can be expensive.. but I feel as if some family members are using the cost of going to Las Vegas as a way to get out of coming to my wedding. Paranoid? Perhaps. But, if you knew some of the selfish people in my family then you may be a little skeptical, too.

I’m going to be posting my pictures of my wedding on this blog once I get them. When I tried to search for other couples that had been married at The Wynn in Las Vegas, I only found ONE set of pictures on Flickr of ONE couple. Weird, huh? But I am looking forward to having a vacation… Matt and I certainly need it. We don’t see much of eachother and when we are both home, we nitpick eachother and try to pass of the responsibility of the dog. Sad, isn’t it? Not the situation… it’s sad that we do that to each other. It’s just all built up stress. The move was stressful and it seems like, a month later, I am still moving shit every weekend and unpacking stuff. And Matt is finishing his last 2 classes for his degree and so he is burnt out from working full time AND doing summer school.. when he comes home he plays Team Fortress all night. And quite honestly, it’s close to 11pm by the time he comes home so I’m usually winding down for the night watching a movie or something. We just need to learn how to make time for eachother better.. and how to utilize that time that we do have, you know? (I say ‘you know’ like I am talking to someone in particular when, in reality, no one reads this blog! Everyone who comes here just looks at my photoshop posts!)

Well… I think I am going to go take a bubble bath. I’m tired and I need to get out of this apartment.. I have NOTHING to do here. I can’t even blog properly because I’m inbetween computers and this blog DESPERATELY needs a whole new theme/layout. See you guys whenever I blog again… Hopefully soon.

XOXO

First, open your photograph of choice. Pictures that are high resolution are easiest and best to work with because it allows a lot of room to edit small details. I’ve selected this close-up picture, taken specially for photoshop purposes. Once you’ve opened it, get ready for step 2!

In this step, we will remove any blemishes and dark spots from our face that we don’t like. For this, I use the healing brush tool, which has a bandaid icon on the tools menu. Alt + Click on an area free of blemishes to establish a base for the corrections, and begin removing blemishes with just one click per area. You can even remove lines and stray hairs. It is good to use a small size brush when doing this so you can get detailed!

So this is my finished product of step 2. I used the healing brush to eliminate visible pores, lines under my eyes, and other blemishes. (NOTE: If you want to get rid of unruly eyebrows or facial hair, this tool can only be used for VERY SMALL portions or else it will turn dark. To get rid of big portions of hair on your hair, or other big blemishes, I recommend using the clone stamp tool!)

Now that we’ve eliminated marks, we can whiten our teeth or the whites of your eyes, if you wish. If you already have perfectly white teeth, skip this step! If you’re like me and you drink coffee every single day.. then this step is for you, too! Using the polygonal lasso tool (or magnetic lasso if you’re not into fine tuning the details), make a selection around the areas you wish to whiten. For me, it will be my chompers.  You can see what your final selection should look like by viewing my selection here. (TIP: If you hate looking at the dotted selection lines, you can hit Ctrl + H and it will hide the selection lines. And remember, once you are done working on a certain selected area, hit Ctrl + D for deselect.)

Now, using your short cuts on your keyboards (because they save so much time, seriously) hit Ctrl + U to bring up your Hue/Saturation menu. Adjust the saturation and lightness of your selection to get your ideal whiteness. For me, I desaturated my teeth to -16 and lightened them by +5. I didn’t mess with the hue; I don’t want funky colored teeth! Once you have done this, click OK and don’t forget to deselect or else your other tools won’t work on the rest of your face! (EDIT: If you didn’t make a perfect selection and the lines are visible, use a small brush and the blur tool and smooth the edges of your teeth. You can see that here.)

Now this next step is also optional but a must for me! Select Filter from the drop-down menu’s and select liquify. In this part of photoshop, we can give ourselves bigger boobs, smaller stomachs and thighs, plumper lips, longer hair.. just about anything! I will be using this part of photoshop to thin out my face and give myself a smaller nose. Check it out below.

On the left hand side, select the pucker tool and adjust the size of the brush according to the size of the object you are applying the tool too. In this case, I am changing the size of my nose so I will be making the brush exactly the same size as the tip of my nose, as shown in this screen shot. After I have resized my nose, I will make the brush considerably smaller and thin my face, as show in this screen shot. After you’re done with all of your “puckering” or “bloating”, you can click OK and see your results. Now, let’s move on to the next step.

Now, using the Clone Stamp tool (I mentioned it earlier), fix any surface blemishes that you couldn’t fix with your healing brush tool. For me, I will fix the stray hairs in my eyebrows and a few wisps of hair that are in my face. Other than that, I will only use that tool once. Remember, this tool is used the same way as the healing brush tool; Alt + Click to retain a base area to use for fixing the other areas. Our next step is giving our faces that “airbrushed” look that you see in magazines.

Using the Quick Selection tool (this tool is good when selecting large areas that don’t need a lot of attention paid to detail, like when selecting skin), select your face (or whatever you’re looking to airbrush) and make sure you deselect your eyes and mouth, so that the details in them make the photo look realistic. Additionally, you can hide your selection by using the keyboard shortcut I told you about earlier in this tutorial. Now we’re going to actually give our selected area that “airbrush” effect without actually airbrushing anything!

Now, from the Filter menu, go to Blur then select Smart Blur. From here you can play around to see how blurred you want your face to look.  (Although you can’t see, I have deselected both my eyes and my mouth, so keep the details of my face as clear and sharp as the original photograph). Here are the numbers I went with on my final blur, but don’t hesitate to increase or decrease these as you please! Now, while your skin is still selected…

Using Ctrl + U, you can make your skin lighter or darker (I like to make my skin look like it has a naturally tan glow, but you can make your face any color you want!). After you have found a good shade of tan (or whatever), click okay. One more thing… if you have a shadow on your face, you can remove it by playing around with the levels of shadow on your face by hitting Ctrl + L for the levels. I didn’t do it for my photograph, but feel free to use it. Here’s what my picture looked like after all that. Don’t be scared! Next step… 

Select your eyes and use the hue/saturation tool (Ctrl + U) to brighten them. If you want to make them a different color, you can click the colorize box in the bottom right hand corner. If not, Just play around with the hue and saturation to make your eyes as bright or as dark as you’d like. I chose to enhance my blue eyes. What do you think… do they look good?

Now,  using the menu’s shown in the screen shot above, make a new layer (it doesn’t have to be from the background). After you’ve made a new layer, select the paint brush tool and then click the color palette and choose a bright pink color. We are going to make our cheeks rosey! After you’ve selected the perfect bright color (don’t worry if it’s extreme.. we’ll tone it down), paint the pink on your cheeks and nose.. or wherever you want it! It should look a little silly..

Here’s what it should look like. I look like a clown! But, for now, that’s okay. Because we are going to change the elements in the layer to make it look normal.  From the layer drop down menu, select soft light. Then, once soft light is selection, change the opacity to anywhere from 9%-15%, depending on how bright you want your cheeks. Then flatten/merge your layers and you are finished! You have just completed your very first photoshop tutorial. How do you look? Was it that hard? Tell me what you think and check out my final product below!

1. Keeping Inner Promises: from now on, when I tell myself that I really want to do something or that I am going to do something, I’m going to do it. If I’m in the shower thinking “I’d like to paint my toe nails when I get out” then when I get out, I’m going to hold myself to that instead of getting too busy with laundry or cleaning. Other promises, the more important ones, will be kept, too. Like going to the gym (no matter how much I don’t want to do it, I will), starting my homework on Thursday night (it’s like my Friday but I’ll force myself to get busy), visiting my family more (so many reasons that get in that way but family should always come number one!), not snacking (sometimes I snack when I’m bored/stressed/upset and that HAS to stop) and others.
2. Becoming Healthier: one day, I always tell myself, I want to be somewhat of a health and fitness nut. But today just ain’t that day. Until then, I want to start working out 4-5 times a week (doing at least 45 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of weight training) and eating healthy (cutting out as many processed foods as I possibly can and eating way less red meat and more fresh veggies). I will not make myself feel bad the days that I don’t work out AND (most importantly for me) I will definitely not let myself slide back downhill when I eat one bad thing.
3. Being Confident: as stupid as it sounds, I’ve always had little confidence. I went through a period in my late teens, early twenties when I had tons of confidence (I attribute the confidence to running and roller blading everyday and eating very healthy–I was a size 2!) and I never doubted how I looked, what I was doing, how I felt, or who I was. I desperately need to get back all that confidence. I’m not looking to be conceited but it would be nice to look in the mirror after a couple of weeks of hitting the gym hard and be able to say something nice about myself! I’m tired of looking in the mirror and only seeing what needs to be fixed. More confidence= happier lifestyle!
4. Not Missing Class: although last semester I didn’t really miss much class (12 classes total the whole semester, not too shabby!) I really want to be a better student. This semester my GPA is about a 3.5 (still waiting on one grade) but, had I not missed ANY CLASS, I think I could’ve had almost a 4.0. Next semester I’m not taking any science classes so I have no excuses! I want to work my butt off, go to all my classes, and do great. I want to prove to my parents that my hard work is paying off in the form of straight A’s! And if I choose to go to the Master’s program, my GPA will be high enough.
5. Working Hard on My Sites: as of right now, I only have one major website that I make money off of. But many days I am too tired from class and the gym to really put in a good amount of work on the site. That has to change! I believe my future and career is making money online, but to make that dream a reality I’ve really got to bust my butt. This semester will be tough because I have to leave at 7:45 to get to class on time, but I will try and get up at 5am on Tuesday and Thursday (the days I go to school) and work very hard at it. And on the other days, I will try and make it my goal to have a days worth of posting done before noon.
6. Getting Outside More Often: my fiance and I aren’t exactly hermits but we don’t get out as much as we should, either. I’d like to start going to Yosemite for hikes, camping, walking the lake, going for early morning jogs, late night strolls, and walking more often. Not only is it fun and makes for good memories, but it’s exercise out of the gym (and the house)! And when it comes to getting out of the house, I think it makes he and I a lot happier to get out more often. There’s just something about the fresh air.
7. Having More Patience: I find that when I’ve had a bad day, when I’m tired, or when I feel icky, I lose about half of the patience that I normally have. This is bad because, most of the time, my fiance is the king of patience. I kind of get snappy when people ask me to repeat myself and when people do irritating things, I don’t try and hide my blatant irritation. This is something that is bad for everyone–mostly me, though, because after I’ve regained my composure and patience, I always feel badly–for myself and for the person I’ve lost my cool with. So I will definitely work on taking a few breaths and thinking about a more appropriate approach before I snap back a rude (but witty) comment to an annoying offender.

Right now, those are the only resolutions I can think of. When I lay down tonight I may be able to think of more. I mean, I know there are many things I want to do and a lot of things I want to change, I just need to get my thinking/blogging cap on and capture them. If anybody would like to share their New Years Resolutions with me, feel free and comment or e-mail them to me. Hey, maybe it will spark a resolution for me that I never even thought of! I hope some of mine can do that for you!. Until then… Hope you had a Merry Christmas!

Today is Christmas Eve and I’ve done close to nothing all day. It’s been boring. There are only a couple days that I’ve actually enjoyed doing nothing and today, surprisingly, wasn’t one of them. It’s the time of year where taking drives, getting yummy coffees, walking neighborhoods, and hanging out with you family is far better than down time and relaxing. Isn’t it? This evening my fiance Matt and I are going to mosey on over to my grandparent’s house (just to visit) then head 20 minutes north to cook and serve dinner at a gospel mission. It’s a church where, above the chapel and kitchen, there are bunks for homeless people to sleep. We’ve done this before and it was kind of sad but tonight I hope it makes up happy to know these people are getting good meals and a place to sleep. I’d take pictures tonight to show everyone what I’m talking about but it’s sort of inappropriate… isn’t it? Then after we leave the gospel mission we’re going to have a quick dinner with my in-laws (soon-to-be) at a pizza place or something. I don’t like pizza but it’s the “being together” that is the special part, right? Tomorrow we are going to my Mom’s house in the morning to do a family Christmas gift-exchange and then at 11am, the rest of the family is coming over for breakfast. Then Matt and I will head to his parents house in Oakdale for a family dinner there. It should be fun. This year we aren’t doing the gift exchange on his family’s side because his uncle and grandpa got into pretty good and now they aren’t speaking.. and thus, none of the family is able to meet. It’s sad but what can you do really? Yesterday the people who live next door to Matt’s parent’s.. well, their house burned down. There’s almost nothing left. Nothing could be salvaged, really. It was so sad to see. I took the woman a basket with some stuff in it, in hopes to cheer her up a little. I think she appreciated it. When we left, they still hadn’t found their two cats. Thats worse than losing your house–losing your pets. Especially for a couple who has no children–pets are extraordinarily important. I don’t know what to do if I ever lost my cats. Cry for weeks I’m guessing.. and then never really be able to get over it. My fiance had a dog when he was younger and when the dog died, he said he was so sad that, to this day, he’s never been as sad as that. We’re animal people, totally. I can’t wait til I can get a puppy. Blah, I’ve got to go dry my hair now and switch the loads of laundry.. get ready for tonight. I hope everyone has a splendid, happy, healthy, fun holiday. Much love always!

And now, after lots of healing brush, clone stamp, hue/saturation alteration, new layers, paint, transformations, liquification and much more.. The new, post-photoshopped Ashley Tisdale, also scaled down:

What do we think, did she look better before or after? I’d have to say after and not just because I did it. I’d say after because, ironically, I think she looks more like a natural beauty. The first one is untouched, so we can see how much make-up she has on and what she is trying to cover. I almost got rid of all that dark eye-liner but I decided to leave it. I don’t think she should wear so much make-up! What do you people think?