artifact uprising

Hi, everyone! Happy Wednesday 🙂 It’s been awhile since I posted twice in one week! This post won’t be very lengthy but I wanted to share something really great with all of you.

A couple of months ago I posted about an old window DIY project that I completed after buying a pretty white painted old window at Picks, a local resale store. I retrofitted it with some office supply clips in order to display photos. For the last couple of months I have had my Christmas cards hanging up there and I have loved seeing all of them hanging in one place. This weekend I finally got around to taking down all of my Christmas decorations….oops….(I know it’s late February but I just couldn’t bear to take my pretty tree down!!!)….which meant taking down the Christmas cards too.

A week or two ago I saw an ad on Instagram (they’ll always get ya!) for a company called Artifact Uprising who sells all types of photos products – prints, photo books, canvas prints, and much more. I loved the style they were showing on Instagram and since I knew I wanted to order some more recent prints to put back up in the window I decided to order last week and give it a try. I ordered two different sets of 10 prints, one set in 5″x 5″ and one set in 4″ x 4″. I chose a mix of photos of myself and my friends, my family, Luna, and some fun landscape shots I’ve taken over the last year.

The prints arrived yesterday and I couldn’t be happier with them. They came in such cute packaging and I was so excited to open them up and take a closer look.

 

I chose to have “exposed borders” instead of the image bleeding all the way to the edge and I love the raw/polaroid style look they have with the border around them. Below is an up close shot of all of the prints I ordered – the first shot is the 4″ x 4″ set and the second is the 5″ x 5″.

4″ x 4″ Square Print set 

5″ x 5″ Square Print set 

Once I got the photos unpackaged I laid them all out together and started to piece and lay them together based on what looked good from a layout perspective – I made sure to mix the larger and smaller sizes together as well as mix some of the photos with people along with some of the landscape photos so it was well balanced. I hung a 5″ x  5″ photo on each of the 8 main clips in the 8 panes. Then I hung additional photos off the bottom and sides of those main 8 with additional clips. I have a set of fairy string lights from Target woven through the panes and like turning the lights on at night to add some soft glow.

A couple of weekends ago when I was shopping at Hobby Lobby the wooden decor was all 50% off and I found this thankful sign in the perfect off white cream finish that matches the window. I envisioned it and thought it would look great over the frame and I’m really happy with how it adds to the display in a simple way. It also of course does a great job of describing how I feel when I think about all of the wonderful friends, family, I have and all of the experiences I have had the opportunity to have over the last year. Lots of great memories that I’m happy to see and reflect on every day.

If you’re looking for any updated photo products such as prints or photo books I definitely encourage you to order from Artifact Uprising – – you can go to their website and check out their products by following this link! I had an excellent experience and can’t wait to utilize them again down the road for other projects. The price was reasonable at $1 per print for these sets of 10 so I also felt like I didn’t spend more than I wanted to.

I hope you all are having a wonderful week!

#sugarspiceandstylethatsnice #artifactuprising

xoxo Jen

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recognizing emotional pain

Each week at work I spend time on different sites that present content on human elements and human capital in the workplace. These articles help me to explore new or less familiar human resources related topics that help me to perform better at my job and to understand new things in my field that I can expect to encounter.

A couple of the resources that I visit are the SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) website and blog, the Thrive Global daily newsletter that comes to my email inbox, and my favorite: the TedX ideas website. I am assuming many of you are familiar with or have watch/attended/been inspired by Ted talks throughout the last few years. The organization and its influence have spread like wildfire and we even host a local TedX event in Grand Forks.

The Ted ideas website has excellent content sorted by a number of categories: Tech, Business, Arts & Design, Science, and We Humans. You can get to the website but following this link! Earlier this week when I hopped on there to review what was new I found a brand new article in my favorite section (especially as a HR careerist), We Humans, and was immediately drawn to reading it. The title of the article is “Why we need to take emotional pain as seriously as physical pain” and you can read it by following this link.

After I read the article I felt like I needed to take a break for reflection because it brought about so many thoughts and things that I wanted to think through for myself. I read the article on Tuesday the 13th of February and as the week progressed I found its content becoming even more and more relevant for me on a personal level and even more relevant on a national level as we experienced another devastating mass school shooting on Wednesday the 14th.

I won’t recap the article in a large amount of detail here because if you are interested in the topic I would really encourage you to give the article a read yourself after you finish reading my post. It isn’t a crazy lengthy read and it also has a video of the content expert at the end talking on the same subject to get more in-depth. This is the format of all of the articles on the ideas.ted.com website and I think it’s a great platform that allows you to dig in further on subject and articles that you find helpful, intriguing, and are curious to learn more about.

As you could probably tell from the title of the article it went into depth explaining the differences in our modern society in how physical pain is treated and recognized versus how emotional pain is treated and recognized. I’m sure that without even reading you can guess that as a society it is much easier for us to treat and recognize physical pain because it often has very visible cues and faces. Physical ailments and injuries are (and of course I’m not a doctor!) in my experience fairly easy to see with our eyes and possibly diagnose right away – oh no, looks like you gave your ankle a bad sprain during that soccer practice – someone quick run and get the nurse, it looks like Jen broke her nose during the basketball game and needs medical attention now….

On the flip side of the coin we have emotional pain. Something that often doesn’t surface or show itself in a recognizable or obvious physical way because it is something that we are experiencing internally and the type of emotional pain we’re experiencing or why it came about isn’t apparent to anyone looking at or observing us. That is not to say that emotional pain can’t manifest itself in a physical way (crying, blank looks, anger, visible tiredness, etc) but we aren’t able to understand why someone is experiencing emotional pain unless we ask them.

The author of the article, Guy Winch, describes some of his own experiences through sessions he has had with patients over his years of experience as a psychologist. It was tough to read about the accounts he heard from teenagers who experienced heartbreak or tough emotional situations and then suffered greatly at school because of their inability to focus after being in a difficult emotional scenario. His main story in the article describes an openly gay teenager who worked up the courage to ask another gay kid at his school to hang out after having a crush on him for a long time. When his crush openly declined his invitation and embarassed him in front of other classmates the student had to try to take a test the next period but could barely focus from the emotional distress. When he brought the information forward to his teacher and said he struggled during the exam his teacher told him he was “making excuses”.

As a society (myself included) we don’t often acknowledge or ask others when they seem down if they are in pain of if we can do anything to help. They might not be in outward pain but I have certainly been through my own heartbreak and know that even though you don’t look hurt anywhere physically you are torn and in pain inside. Sometimes emotional pain can last a long time, sometimes it’s gone quickly. Sometimes it comes and goes in waves; when we have reminders of our pain it can come rushing back without a moments notice. As fellow humans I think we could all work harder at showing our compassion for people when they’re in emotional pain. This kind of pain can effect us similarly and it might make it tough to do the normal things that are expected of us at work, school, and in relationships and friendships.

The other aspect of this reflection for me was that often times I don’t acknowledge my own emotional pain that I might be experiencing when I am going through tough situations. This article was a reminder to me that it’s OK if I don’t always feel on top of my game when I’m going through challenges in my work and personal life. I am going to work to be better about keeping my emotional health and awareness at the forefront and not feeling embarrassed by emotionally tough situations.

I wanted to share this with all of you in the hopes that it sparks some reflection for you as well. It’s good to challenge ourselves to step outside of our norm and I am going to challenge myself to be more aware of others: my coworkers, friends, family members and remember to ask them if they’re OK if I get any signs that they might be in pain. Offer to help or just acknowledge that you’re there for them if they need anything. Just having that conversation with someone might make all the difference in the world for them. Having someone acknowledge the pain they’re feeling will be a welcome change and can help them to realize it’s OK if they aren’t feeling 100% like themselves and might need some time to get back to normal.

As always, thanks so much for reading! It was fun to go a little bit different of a direction this week. Look forward to sharing something new with all of you next week 🙂 Have a great one.

#sugarspiceandstylethatsnice

xoxo Jen

 

beauty product rundown

Happy Monday, everyone! This week I wanted to share some of my staple beauty products with all of you. I have a pretty simplistic beauty and makeup routine but in the last couple of years after college I have found the importance in a skincare regimen to keep my skin as healthy as possible, especially in our climate that can be so cold and dry in the winter. I’m also going to discuss some other products from my routine including hair care, makeup, and perfume.

Here is the picture of all of the products I’ll describe and discuss briefly. I’ll share where I got all of them and almost all can be found at your local Target (surprise, surprise!!)

SKINCARE

Moisturizer – for the longest time I always used a basic moisturizer for both the morning and the evening that had an SPF base since I have such fair skin. This past year I read an article about the importance between evening and morning moisturizer and how it doesn’t make sense to use an SPF base moisturizer in the evening because you need something more focused on hydration than sun protection. A few months ago I changed to using two different products: an AM and a PM moisturizer. Both are CeraVe brand and I have LOVED them. I used this brand previously and it is really simplistic and doesn’t contain any fragrance or ascent which is always key for me. They are both from Target and range about $10 – $12 a bottle.

Hydrating face mask – as I am sure all of you have seen “face masks” have exploded this past year in popularity and now you can find them everywhere. It can be overwhelming because there are so many different options/types of masks. I have tried a fair number of different types of mask and really have landed on this “Hydrate” mask as my favorite. It is “miss spa” brand and can also be purchased at Target. They are between $2 and $3 per mask and it’s a sheet mask so you remove it from the backing and press onto your face and leave on for 20 minutes. I tend to use a mask about 2 nights per week and love the relaxing feeling of laying and closing my eyes while I wear it. I always use it right before I go to sleep because then after I peel it off I can let the excess soak in and work while I’m sleeping.

Under eye masks – these masks were a part of my winter FabFitFun subscription box and they are UNREAL. They are small half moon shaped masks that you place right below your eyes for 20-30 minutes. They help to re-energize the skin underneath your eyes and reduce the appearance of tired eyes. The brand name is Grace & Stella and they are $16 for a pack of 8 pairs of masks.

HAIRCARE

Dry shampoo  – I typically only wash my hair every 2nd day at most, but sometimes only every third day. A great dry shampoo is key to keep my hair looking clean after multiple days. Not Your Mothers is my favorite brand I’ve tried and I like the Beach Babe version because it has a nice coconut fresh scent to it and helps with the wavy/curly texture of my natural hair. This is also a Target item!

Hair oil – just like my skin, in the winter my hair tends to get quite dry instead of oily after a day or two without washing it. In order to add some oil and health back in to it I work Moroccan argan oil through it while it’s still damp after the shower and then add as needed in the days following to keep it from drying out. A little goes a long way with the oil and it adds a healthy shine to your hair. This is one version of the oil but you can also buy a version that is more like a spray. The brand is OGX and I also buy it at Target.

MAKEUP

Mascara – I have tried dozens of mascaras over the years and about 2 years ago I found this one and have never looked back. I have really long eyelashes but they are so light blonde that I need to find something with the right kind of brush to get them to look natural and not too dark black. I use Maybelline Lash sensational (in NON waterproof – I’ve never been a waterproof mascara fan) in brown-ish black so it doesn’t have as dark of a coloring. I’m always crossing my fingers that they never discontinue this mascara because I don’t know what I’d do!!

Eyeshadow – I also use Maybelline brand for my eyeshadow: Color Tattoo 24-hour. This is a cream based eye shadow in a bronze gold shade. I like that it’s neutral but dressy so I wear it almost every day. I find that cream based shadow stays on all day and doesn’t build up in the creases liked powdered eye shadow tends to do for me.

Lip color  – for Christmas I received a set of small sized lip glosses from Bare Minerals. I really like this neutral shade of brown-ish pink that goes with everything at this time of year. Bare Minerals is sold at Sephora and stand alone stores as well!

MISCELLANEOUS

Charcoal tooth whitener – This Molr coconut and charcoal based teeth whitening powder was also in one of my FabFitFun seasonal subscription boxes. It’s an interesting thing to use but once you get used to it it feels normal! Its just a black powder that you dip a special toothbrush in and then gently brush your teeth with for about 2-3 minutes. I use it about 3-4 times per week and it really has made a difference!

Perfume – Just this past week I purchased a new perfume from the new fragrance line at Target. The brand is called Good Chemistry and I purchased it in the roller ball because it’s easier to apply and has a longer lasting power than body spray in my opinion. I chose the “Daydreamer” scent and am really liking it after the first few days of using it. It was really affordable at $12.

I hope that these products are interesting to you! I look forward to sharing more beauty regimen products with you in the future and enjoyed sharing my basics with you. Thanks so much for reading and have a wonderful week 🙂

#sugarspiceandstylethatsnice

xoxo Jen

scarf styling – 5 different ways!

 

 

Happy Monday, everyone! I delayed my post until tonight since I was enjoying the exciting SuperBowl last night and more importantly the This Is Us episode which couldn’t have been anymore emotional if they tried!!

This week I wanted to share some fun scarf styling with all of you. In recent years I feel like my accessory interests have slowly shifted from looking for fun shoes to looking for fun scarves. When I look at the scarf ladder in my room I can’t even remember where I got most of these scarves or how I ended up with so many but I LOVE using them in different ways with my outfits; and not only in the winter and fall. I have lots of brightly colored scarves that are lighter weight and fun to wear and accessorize with in the summer as well.

I find it best to organize my scarves by color. That way I can easily find one that matches the outfit I am picking out and I don’t have to sort through to find something specific. I bought this ladder at a garage sale and painted it turquoise to match with the rest of my bedroom theme. An easy and inexpensive organization tool that lots of people also use for blanket storage!

In order to take full advantage of these fun scarves I wanted to learn some new ways to style them and tie them that aren’t the typical wrap around the neck or double wrap of an infinity scarf. Last winter in the dollar spot/front section of Target I found this awesome book that had 25 different ways to tie a scarf. I loved the photos and the detailed step by step drawings so I could easily follow along. I also appreciated that they have different styling options for a variety of types of scarves (square, oblong, long and skinny, bigger blanket scarves, etc). Even though this book is long gone from Target’s dollar section I have no doubt you could find it on Amazon or another website by searching for it! Lauren Friedman is the author 🙂

I chose 5 of my favorite styles from the book to tie and share photos of with all of you. This post will be quite photo heavy since I just wanted to share pictures of the instructions with you rather than re-typing or explaining in my own words. I tried to focus the photos on the words so they are easy for you to read and try out yourself if you would like to!

Once you get through the instruction photos for each I have a photo of myself at the end with a scarf tied each way so you can see it in “real life”. I also have the illustrations from the book for each so you can get a general idea of how they are supposed to turn out!

1.  The Tie – to be used with a long oblong scarf, thinner is better here 

This is a good option for a dressier outfit at work and a fun patterned scarf. By wearing a plains solid color blouse and a fun scarf over the top this style of knot has a masculine undertone as it mimics a neck tie.

2. The Fan – this is also meant for an oblong scarf 

This is a fun style to be worn even with a thicker fabric scarf in the winter. It creates some interest and allows the scarf to cover almost your whole front.

3. The Boy Scout – you need a bandana style or square scarf for this one!

I like this style because it allows the scarf to be visible in both the front and the back. By having the fold with the pointed corner down the middle of your back it makes the scarf extend and add interest to the back of your outfit as well!

4. The Bunny Ears – this also needs an oblong scarf and the thinner the better

This is a good style to choose if you have a scarf that you really want it to stand out or be the star of the outfit. It almost turns your scarf into a statement necklace and is a good method for winter because it keeps your neck warm under a jacket! It also works well with summer scarves that are thin and light. It looks pretty with a sundress or with a jean jacket

5. The XX – this can work with any oblong scarf both thick or thin

This is one of the simplest methods in the book to do but I feel like it adds a really fun difference to the styling of an outfit. I do this often with my thick blanket style plaid scarves in the winter because it allows me to spread the scarf out over my shoulders and create more of a wrap feel but the X in the front adds some fun dimension!

Here are photos of each of the 5 styles on me and matched up with their book illustration!

The Tie

The Fan

The Bunny Ears

The Boy Scout

The XX

Clockwise from top left: The Tie, The Fan, The Bunny Ears, The Boy Scout, The XX

I hope this post gives you some new inspiration for styling your scarves as we reach the middle of winter. It’s always nice to change things up and this is an easy way to do something new with items that you already own in your closet! Have a wonderful week and as always thanks so much for reading 🙂

#sugarspiceandstylethatsnice

xoxo Jen