So some of you may or may not know, my full time “day job” is beauty. I’m a working hairstylist in a full service salon in the LA area and so naturally, I spend a lot of time trying new products and investing in products to make my skin and hair the best it could be. Another maybe not so little mown fact about me, I’m obsessed with samples. Which leads me to the next thing and possibly one of the best things ever, influenster. You review products and occasionally fill out surveys and they’ll send you a voxbox once in a while. They’re filled with goodies and totally free. I’m addicted.

The first voxbox I received contained the aveeno positively radiant intensive night cream.

Now normally I don’t really care for aveeno. It feels weird and seems kind of cheap, but I committed to using this stuff for six weeks and I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised. It’s not greasy. It has a nice texture. Smells like lotion, but I guess that’s exactly what it is. This best part though, is that in the morning,I wake up and my skin tone is even and soft. I’m not oily. No new breakouts.

Anyway, this stuff is pretty good. I give it 4/5. Inexpensive. Feels nice. Makes skin nice. I just hate that lotion smell.

I shot a wedding last year with my dear friend, Matt Grashaw. It was the first jewish wedding I had done and the first science wedding I had done so I was pretty excited to be there. Well, apparently my excitement showed through the pictures because that wedding got published on StyleMePretty.com. I can’t even tell you how stoked I am, but click through the screenshot to see the article. You can view Zach and Morgan’s gallery HERE.

So I posted the first half of Tim and Rayna’s wedding a few weeks ago and normally I don’t split my weddings into parts, but this was a special case. What I didn’t mention on the last post was that 3 hours before the ceremony, Rayna had to go to the emergency room for what we now know was a gallbladder attack. Worry not! For Rayna had surgery on Monday and is well on her way to recovery, already feeling much better than before her surgery. However, on the wedding day, the doctors didn’t know what was wrong and gave her medication to make her comfortable, but this also made the whole wedding run very late. Timing on the wedding day is crucial. If the wedding runs off schedule, usually something gets cut out of photos or skipped all together. This was definitely the case for Rayna and Tim, but since the circumstances were out of control of the two getting married, I opted to shoot pictures of just the two of them on another day so they didn’t miss out on anything else in their wedding. I wish I got to do this with more couples, honestly. It’s such a different environment doing the photos on a different day. There’s no stress, no worries; it’s just about having fun. And fun is what we had.

I met Rayna and Tim when I was in cosmetology school through Emma, Tim’s sister and Rayna’s best friend. Truly one of the most amazing couple’s I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, these two are silly and fun, Apple nuts and employees (I noticed apple kept popping up throughout their wedding too), and extremely adorable together. I feel like everyone usually gets so wrapped up in the wedding that they don’t really act like themselves until after everything is said and done, but that wasn’t the case with them. They were such a breath of fresh air, real people. It made me feel good to be around them. I’ve been the go-to girl for them several times when they’ve needed pictures and I’m really crossing my fingers that they’re lifers because I don’t want to see them go.

location: Westlake Village, CA

I remember getting ready for school when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. My whole family was watching the news as I went about my daily routine. My step-mom and my dad sitting in my step-mom’s mother’s room, on the sofa, just still and quiet. My dad tried to tell me that we were watching history, but it didn’t register with me. I was young. I remember so vividly watching the second plane hit. Damn. I never thought I would see a plane crash. I was in the 9th grade.

I went to school and everyone was talking about it in every one of my classes. The teachers were asking us how we felt, if we were okay, what we were doing when it happened. They told us this was history happening. There they went again, those adults with the history speech.

I’m not a very emotional person, but I grieve for those who grieve. The feeling of loss is so awful and something I identify with so well, my heart broke in two when I finally understood what had happened. I will always think of the families that lost someone ten years ago today.

I was 14 years old and I was getting ready for school when the first plane hit. Where were you and what were you doing September 11, 2001?

The ever fabulous Chanelle Laurence of the super cool Penelope’s Vintage.