It’s so hot here.  Sometimes, I don’t even want to turn on the blow drier because it’s pretty much what it feels like outside, so I either decide I’m not going to wash my hair.  Air drying my hair doesn’t work very well, it just turns out flat.  So, I love tying a headscarf around and then braiding it into my hair so it covers my greasy head and then looks cute in my hair.

I also love the ballerina bun – opposed to the sock bun. I never picked up on the sock in my hair trend, it just didn’t sit well with me having a sock in my hair so I always used the chignons sponge things.  The ballerina wrap is so much easier to do too, this is how I learned it – if you don’t need extensions to clip in and your hair is Rapunzel like mine, you can start around the 5 minute mark:

I also like to wear a lot of eyelet tops since there’s holes in it.  Yeah, if I were back living in LA I’d be back to wearing nothing but a bikini all day with a coverup – I’d be waking up in one, taking naps in it, and going to bed in it.  Looking forward to all my trips back to Cali to see friends and family!

Diana Elizabeth also loves watching LuxyHair on YouTube as well for fun hair ideas.

It was a long time coming when I finally met Piper face to face as we’ve been email, Twitter and Instagram buddies throughout the year.   Last weekend we finally had our session at The Arizona Biltmore, her favorite place in the Valley to stay and one of my most favorite places to shoot.

Congratulations on a fantastic year representing Arizona, Piper.  Watching you over the year has been so much fun, and I know the future is full of incredible surprises for you!  Have fun in Europe after you give up your title, and Bear Down!  Thank you for all you have done for our state. You are such a beauty!  xx

Thank you so much to the Arizona Biltmore for their hospitality and supporting my business.

Diana Elizabeth has many good friends she’s made from doing pageants many years ago or friends of other friends who have done pageants.  She liked it when Piper said she felt like she had an incredible internship experience.  If you’re between the ages of 17 and 24 and you’re interested in becoming the next Miss Arizona, click here.  The new Miss Arizona is crowned this Saturday, June 22. 

Now as you head into Granite Bay about 3o minutes northeast of Sacramento, this is really what you see.  This is where I’m from.  I miss Nor Cal so much, the greenery, the oak trees, the lake, oh man.

There’s this little town called Auburn which is just darling and the town next door.  I’ve already in my mind nestled in there. But Mr. Wonderful says he’d have to make way more money for us to ever move back.  But isn’t that strange?  I swore I would never want to live back home but there are moments when I really do miss it and I wouldn’t mind moving home.

Sometimes though, I can’t imagine living anywhere else because of my friends who are like family, but I do often say out of the blue, “I miss my mom and dad,” much more often than ever.  Is this a thing that happens with age?  Cause I never missed them in college.  Funny how times change, right?

$40 papercut by ant design

$15 print poster by AmandaCatherineDes

That pretty sums up how much I miss them.

Diana Elizabeth will be going home for a week soon, she can’t wait!  Walks to Folsom Lake with Paris and seeing old friends and enjoying the beautiful weather!  And of course, spending lots of time with mom and dad.

I was hoping that finding furniture for my office would be the same way.

I was searching online like crazy for the new look I want, I added items to my carts, then removed them, then let them sit in my cart only to expire (dang you timed shopping cart websites, what is this?  A timed shopping spree?!) and then I had to readd them again.  All that time coming and going didn’t help with the decision making thing, I felt bipolar.

I finally found the new seating for my office after two whole days of searching online.  You’re not seeing double, they came in a pair for $279 on One Kings Lane.

Aren’t they the cutest things ever?  I just did a cartwheel.  In my mind.  This girl hasn’t stretched yet.

Also got this…

Found this adorable lamp from the Land of Nod, $59. I am very aware that store is for children, and I do not care.

When it comes to prints, I LOVE architecture.  See the two prints on top of one another in our living room:

Well those are 2 of the set of 4  I found at Scottsdale Marketplace and nearly cried out of happiness when I scored them from a seller who just so happened to be there in her booth and gave me a deal.  The best investment, ever. Those two are staying where they are, but one is going from the bedroom and into my office now.

Oh, and while I was surfing for office stuff I also found a perfect granite colored tufted side chair that will go where those stools are, much comfier and fill that space.

And these beautiful fine art reproduction prints, the pair for $99 will compliment the newly moved architecture print:

I firmly believe that if you invest in beautiful artwork you’ll always find a way to keep them displayed in your home forever, no matter how you change your rooms.  That’s the beauty of sticking to your true style, most things you should be able to move amongst rooms – not all, but most.  And, I do think these would just look darling in a little girl’s room one day too.

I said would.  If one day we decided to give up our lives and have children.  Would and if are not terms used for predicting the future, they are terms used to soften possible momentary lapses in judgement.

Diana Elizabeth like she said, takes a long time to think about something, so yes she is thinking long and hard about the children thing, so you will know when she’s ready, and right now, not so.  

Or like this:

Or hi-yah, like this!

Back in the day when I first started in photography, I resized every image for my blog posts on a .psd template.  Horrific.  There were actions I made to help, but when I wanted to do verticals, it was so not fun.

Then, a friend introduced me to Storyboard by Code & Hustle which works in Photoshop as a script. Very easy to use.

Amazeballs.  For $80 it’s so worth getting your life back and it’ll make you actually want to blog more – which we all know is very important for business!

See how it works:

Take back your life!  And make sure you blog!

Diana Elizabeth showed it to her attendees for the 2-on-1 wedding workshop and they were blown away at how easy it was.  Come on, you think she spends that much time in front of her computer blogging?  Nah! 

Sweet baby Jesus, yessss!  That’s what I said when I instagramed these beauties.

I don’t think you can call me a shoe person – I’m more of a boot person, flat boots that is.  I don’t spend an insane amount of money on shoes (unless they are boots), including my wedding shoes which were Badgley Mischka but I used a ton of Zappos gift cards I had from when I worked in the corporate world (they gave us Christmas bonuses in amazing gift cards, $100 per year we worked, so if you worked 4 years, you got $400 in gift cards! So yes, every year it got bigger!) anyway, the total was $70 at the end. I was determined to never spend any amount on my wedding day that would be comparable to how much I was spending on my wedding photographer.  Priorities, people.

Anyway, these made me jump for joy and I wanted to hug them.   Isn’t it funny how silly little things like that can do that to us girls?  Oh, how I love being a girl.

Shoes are from Zara, free shipping.  They are available only in black online right now.  They run true to size.  Here is something similar that is cute too.

Diana Elizabeth loves pointy shoes.

So, I’ve come across some pretty hilarious commercials, including Kmart’s #shipmypants commercial which I laughed even though it was slightly inappropriate but I couldn’t help myself.

But the absolute best was  seeing the Italian Zesty guy and I began texting friends the link and we were howling with laughter.  I’ll never look at Italian dressing the same again.

Yeah you’re welcome.  Makes Monday a lot better now doesn’t it?

Diana Elizabeth says funny always wins.

Sometimes the soul just needs refreshing and that’s exactly what last weekend was for me at our women’s church retreat.  This was my first time going to a women’s retreat and I’m not sure why it took so long.  Perhaps because instead of camping away in the middle of Arizona, we were at the Fairmont Princess, a comfortable place – I’m just being honest. I can’t center my soul when I’m too worried about a spider jumping at me when I’m at the camping toilet.

I was looking over my notes from the two-day retreat and came across this:  Be a woman of peace, not chaos since God is a God of peace and not of confusion.  

Isn’t that something? I always liked the saying, Peace isn’t the absence of turmoil  but God’s presence in the midst of it.  

And another thing I learned were how words are so powerful.  We can heal and uplift just as much as we can cut and hurt with our words.  As women we are especially bad with this, I blame it on the hormones.

 I figured it’d be a good idea to share the things we should ponder before opening our mouth:

1. Is it true?
2. Is it helpful?
3. Is it inflammatory (will it just create drama)?
4. Is it necessary?
5. Is it kind?

And I’d like to say that should include those passive agressive social media updates.  There’s something to be said about a woman who uses fewer words.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, I also added to the right hand sidebar of the blog my blogging schedule of Monday through Friday and how each day will have a particular theme.  Structure is so good for me.  If you’re reading it in an RSS feed, here it is:

Diana Elizabeth says if any of you are reading this from 10-12 pm PST, watch her LIVE here.

Large Weatherproof Plant Markers, s/25 for $14.95 used with Marking Pen

Note to self, when first waking up, let finger muscles remember what they are supposed to do, to avoid horrible penmanship.  I tried to follow the Melany Lane font I love so much.

And now displayed in the garden (see I did get the bird netting, tomatoes are now safe!)…

Some of our favorite citrus got fancy labels!  Found these tall chalkboards for $4.99 at Save on Crafts.  I went with their full name, uh-hm, botanical names.  I used a Uni Paint white marker and this was done at a different time, at the end of the day – hence the A+ in penmanship.

So, this is embarrassing.  I had checked on my little garden looking to see how things were growing – instead of how things were going, get it?  Let’s say some did not flourish, in fact, they disappeared.  Wilted, if you may. Or maybe the birds got them when they were little sprouts so they didn’t have a chance.

I may have planted a winter crop for summer.  While most would last in other “normal” areas across the country, the little dudes have no chance in the 100+ degree heat.  RIP lettuce.

I didn’t say I was a pro at this.

In other news, look at our gorgeous pink lemon tree – and yes, they do exist, it’s pretty funny no one really thought they did.  Was I the only one?  I just didn’t know the fruit was this pretty.

I’ll slice one up for you and show you the inside soon.

Diana Elizabeth will be hosting Mark Wallace’s Snap Factory’s first LIVE show on YouTube tomorrow at 10am PST.  YouTube now does LIVE shows, how cool is that?  Please tune in to learn and see a LIVE shot from beginning to end.  Click here for more information, it’s FREE!

I was happy to hear from Mark earlier this week asking me to be the chat host for his LIVE workshop on YouTube (yes, YouTube recently added LIVE streaming videos!). So it is similar to CreativeLIVE where it’s FREE to watch!  Tune in this Friday from 10 am to 12 pm PST on the Snap Factory’s website.

Here’s a preview of The Shot and what it actually will be going over:

Remember this link:  www.snapfactory.com/live.   You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/snapfactory where you will be logging in to watch.

Log into the YouTube chat room so you can ask questions.  I’ll be funneling them to Mark as he teaches you how to get The Shot.

Diana Elizabeth needs to figure out what to wear.  Only solids and no black or white or stripes?  Lord help her!