not enough to kill me… but I’m feeling it now, and I feel anxious…

July 17: In celebration of my workmate's birthday I made her a Camembert Cake... Every Friday Rebecca and I have our own little morning tea together and, because we're both cheese fiends, we usually have cheese and crackers. Thus a Camembert Cake.

July 16: My masterpiece is (finally) complete!

Here are photos from my third and last tattoo session. It was a small session, only an hour, for touch-ups and the last bit of shading. Unfortunately said last bit of shading was up near my armpit and hurt like needles and knives! Not to worry, it's all done now and I LOVE IT!

Thank you to our tattooist, Tim of All Star Tattoo. Tim, it was so funny every time you giggled when I was squirming in pain. Not ;-)

July 15: Zanne's boss resigned on the same day as her - what are the chances?! Wednesday was T-Bomb's last day. Here are some photos taken at her farewell at Cloudland.

We were well on our way home before the debauchery began... Apparently T-Bomb vomited out of her nose the next day - tequila shots argh!!

PS. T-Bomb is the one with the long, dark hair

Shan

...and happily ever after

June 28: Our awesome, thoughtful, sweet friends threw us a champagne breakfast to celebrate our engagement. A delicious menu, beautiful place settings and great company made for a wonderful morning - thank you to Gem for being the perfect hostess!

We were also lucky enough to receive an engagement photo session from our friend Kristen - I've been on the internet looking for inspiration for our photo shoot ever since ha!

(We don't have pics of everyone here - sorry!)

June 27: Here I am with Tim from All Star Tattoo during my second session for my half sleeve tattoo. I love the pic on the top left - I believe this is the moment that Tim shared his Mount Everest adventure with us. He just casually mentioned it, because that's the kinda guy that he is, and I was like "wait, what??". People climb Mount Everest for reals, who knew? Anyways, even though this tattoo is proving to be quite painful, I had a good session today. I think being distracted by conversation with Tim actually helped the time (and pain) pass faster. I only have one more small session to go and it will be all over red rover - woot!

Isn't my tattoo pretty? I (luckily) think it's beautiful.

June 26: We attended Zanne's sister's (Sally, top left) baby shower - we will have a niece in a few short weeks!

I love the photo of Zanne's Nan here, she's laughing during the diaper-filled-with-chocolate game. I've already asked Zanne to put a booties-bonnet-and-cardigan order in with her Nan for our future babies - Nan is a knitting rockstar!

Shan

Flowers and masks

We did it! We have our new ink! We took lots of piccies so I'll let them tell most of the story.

Since my tattoo was only going to take about 40 minutes, I went first.

That's Tim, our tattooist at All Star Tattoo. Some could perceive that look on my face as apprehension, but it's not, it's toughness and strength.

Here is my finished product later that night. I chose to have part of a painting by Audrey Kawasaki, her paintings are amazing. At the time I saw it I felt like this part of the painting really signified a time in my life when I was really discovering who I was and letting myself be that person without reservation - taking off all the masks and letting them fall away. I love it.

Shan was really nervous. When I asked if she was nervous about the hours upon hours of pain, she said no - she was scared it wouldn't look good. Here, Tim places the outline. He got it right first time on both of us.

The outline of the flowers is complete here, this is about half an hour after they started.

This was the 'ouchy' spot. Shan was reading a magazine through most of her tattoo, except for this spot when she was squeezing my hand like a mo-fo.

About an hour after starting, the outline is done and Shan takes her first break.

Tim shades all of the flowers. The colours look really amazing on Shan's pale skin.

The back of her arm seemed to hurt a little bit.

Done for the day. After 4 and a half hours, she was ready to go home.

The semi-finished product. It looks totally awesome.

As much as I hated seeing Shan in pain, I love that she loves her new tattoo. And she does, it's everything she wanted. But now I think she's kinda hesitant to get it finished. We'll have to wait a month or so til the memory of the pain subsides a little before we go back to have the shading on the inside of her arm done. I won't judge her if she cries during that part. She won't though, I would, but she's way tougher than me.

You can check out all the videos I took of Shanny getting her tattoo here.