The Day We Got To Play Photographer

I've been mulling over the idea of taking engagement pictures for a while now. What photographer to use, figuring out an awesome location, outfits, etc. After lots of pinning my heart away on Pintrest the fiance and I decided to try our hand at taking them ourselves. Luckily the Mr. has become a bit of a photography fanatic within the last 2 years so this seemed like as good of an opportunity as any to put his big ol camera and multiple lenses to good use. After finally settling on the idea of taking the pictures ourselves we had to find a location. I wanted something full of nature, which is ironic considering I'm not a fan of the bugs that come along with nature. Again the Mr. came to the rescue with a fabulous place that he remembered fishing at. I decided to keep the outfits simple because it just seemed best to go along with our nature themed pics and because I'm really just a simple girl. Black skinny jeans with a denim top and chunky brown ankle booties did the trick. I glammed up the look a bit with pearl stud earrings and a gorgeous pearl statement necklace. For outfit changes I only switched shirts and shoes. After scheduling my hair appointment and frantically checking the weather it was clear that God was on our side! We couldn't have had more beautiful weather for our pictures! Although we googled tons of 'engagement poses' we really just went with whatever came to mind. It was a ton of fun and work! Here's a sneak peak of our engagement photoshoot. I'm already envisioning having these pictures printed on canvases and hanging them up in our home! 

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The Lessons My Scale Taught Me



Source: CocoaReport.com

 I woke up this morning so nervous....mulling over and over in my head if the numbers would move and how I would feel if they didn't. Finally I worked up enough courage to crawl out of bed and get it over with. After a week of hard work I just knew my scale was going to be good to me. After inhaling deeply a few times I looked down with one eye closed...blinked and looked again. The scale had not budged from last week's weigh in. This must be a fluke so of course I logically stepped off of the scale and stepped back on. Nope. It wasn't a fluke...I had not lost a thing since last week. Overwhelmed with frustration I immediately started feeling like all of my hard work meant nothing. After letting a few frustrated tears fall I went about my morning, but my scale kept pulling at my thoughts. I kept wondering 'What could I have done better?' 'Will next week's weight in be the same?' 'What if I can't lose any more than what I've lost?' 'Why do I have to work so hard to lose weight?' 'I wish I was just naturally skinny and could eat whatever I want.' You see part of why I was so frustrated is because I thought I had this weight loss thing all figured out. I'd lose about 2 lbs per week and since I only have about 6.5 lbs left to go I should only have to do this for 1 more month then I could go into maintenance status.

Finally after I finished throwing myself a pity party it dawned on me that 1. I know better and 2. This is a journey. I've lost weight before so this isn't new to me. Any journey has it's ups and it's downs, but if you keep pushing you will get to where you want to be. So today I'm choosing to keep pushing forward, to make adjustments where needed, and to enjoy this process. Somehow my scale managed to teach me a lesson that couldn't have been learned if this week had gone exactly the way I wanted it to.


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Life In Transition....Finally Growing's Rebranding

As most of you know I just recently finished part 1 of a 2 part moving process, which caused me to seemingly drop off the face of the blogosphere for a few weeks. While I was away I thought about how much my life has and is changing since I first started Finally Growing. Healthy hair care became the topic of choice and at the time that worked best. However fast forward two years and I have so much going on (upcoming wedding, beauty, home decor, life lessons) that I want to share with you. During my hiatus I realized that while hair is still and will always be a passion of mine, it's not my only passion and I want to be able to share as much of my life (as I see fit) with you guys. In order to do that I realized that I needed to completely overhaul my blog and do a rebranding, which is part of why Finally Growing has gotten a complete makeover. I worked tirelessly for hours (I'm a bit of a perfectionist) to get the perfect look for the revamped Finally Growing! From now on this blog will not only share the ups and downs of my hair care journey, but so much more. It is such a freeing experience to know that this rebranding will allow me to give so much more of myself to each of my readers. To all of my fabulous Healthy Hair Divas don't worry my healthy hair posts aren't going anywhere! Finally Growing is just growing, expandning, and turning into a space where I can talk about life as I know it! 

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Wash Day Post/Hair Update

Hi lovies! So I know I kinda disappeared for a few weeks, but I have a really great excuse....MOVING! I forgot how much I hate moving. All of the time and energy it takes not to mention all of the accumulated stuff that seem to have. Yeah...needless to say it kind of took over my life for a few weeks, but now I'm back! Since I've been gone for a bit I thought I would do a wash day post and hair update rolled into one.

Here's What I did:

• Briefly detangled (I went to the salon last week therefore detangling was a lot easier).
• Shampooed with the Keracare Hydrating detangling shampoo
• Deep conditioned with the Keracare Humecto conditioner for about 20 minutes.
• Rinsed and towel dried my hair
• Applied my leave ins using the LCO method (L-Chi Keratin Mist, C-Kimmaytube Leave In, O-Chi Silk Infusion).
• Blow dried my hair using the cool setting
• Moisturized and sealed using Giovanni Direct Leave In and Coconut Oil.

Style: At first I rocked a bang, but on a whim this weekend I decided to french braid (very messy braids because I'm not that great at braiding!)

 

my hair into 2 pig tails. I pinned them up and pin curled my bangs just to jazz up the style. I think I'm going to redo this style every 2 days and rock my hair this way for the rest of the week. It's starting to get a bit cooler outside so I want to protect my ends as much as possible.

Update: I'm currently 6 weeks post and have quite a bit of new growth, which I believe is due to these new Gummy vitamins especially formulated for women, which a lot more biotin *SCORE!*. My old multivitamin on had 10 mg of biotin versus the 300mg I'm getting on a daily basis now. My hair definitely seems to appreciate it :) Other than that I honestly haven't been doing too much to my hair. NO length check updates or anything. I think I'll do an official length check update around February. I'm thinking of possibly trying my first sew in this winter, but we shall see. I'd like to get a feel for how sew ins work since this is how I'm hoping to style my hair for my wedding. I think that's about it for now!

How was your wash day?


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