Officially into the 9th month of the year (in case you missed my 60-second August wrap, you can watch it here), and my Christmas senses are tingling, people. The lights want to be hung! The lists want to be made!!
But summer isn’t quite over yet, and I’m making the most of the last days of it.
(Christmas lights will be being hung within the next month)
hangin out with some beautiful girls 🥺❤
It was soon after I bought the Painted Lady caterpillars (mentioned briefly in my recent post) that I went down to the spring plant sale at the farm and had the tiny baby Eastern Black Swallowtail caterpillars pointed out to me on the dill plants for sale.
I’ll admit that as much as I love dill, the reason I got the dill plants was to try raising these butterfly babies.
The only butterflies that I’d ever raised up until that point had been Painted Ladies, so I was psyched to have another species to watch grow. I will say that at the end of this particular journey, I was very relieved to set them free, because it was a bit of a roller coaster. But I’ll also say that I think I learned a couple things, and I’d probably try it again if I find some more babies next year!
(you can watch the YouTube short that I made about raising them here!)
cutest lil face munchin on his dill leaves 🥺
A new addition has been added to my…skull wall. Which yes, sounds like a strange thing to have in a bedroom that has pink walls, and white furniture trimmed with gold.
But you know what? I’m pretty sure I pull this vibe off perfectly.
Because floral skulls, y’all.
With gold teeth.
The vibes are impeccable.
As I briefly mentioned in my recent post: I pinned my first butterfly.
This, of course, quickly turned into me pinning my second butterfly. And my third butterfly. And then I moved on to pinning plenty of moths and other interesting insects…but I’ll save that for another post (because my current collection deserves a whole post of its own).
And just in case y’all don’t know me already, I’ll start this post with a clear disclaimer: I only pin bugs that have already died naturally; I never kill bugs to pin, and I don’t approve of such strange activities ☝🏼🤓
Spicebush Swallowtail (left) and Red-Spotted Purple (right)
I’ve been in the process of cleaning my coyote skull since I posted this beautifully witchy photoshoot last autumn. And by “in the process,” I mean mainly letting mother nature do her reliable work, because I stay away from these things until they’re clean enough to not make me wanna gag while in close proximity to them (I’m just a girl with a weird hobby, I’m not a girl with a stomach of steel).
Well, the time finally came last month, after the long, cold winter began to thaw off, and I retrieved this perfect specimen from my…um…specimen bucket.
Yeah, okay, I hear it. And I know how it sounds.
But listen, this was a donation from my grampa who found a dead coyote. So really, I’m just doing the respectable work of appreciating the good lawd’s creatures, even after their death.
the gold accents are truly the chef’s kiss ✨
February was a really happy and fun month for me.
There was a ton of creativity, inspiration, exciting news, and talking to good people.
Although the winter blues have definitely been a problem for me in the past, I’ve thoroughly and completely enjoyed these cold months this year. I don’t think I’m ready for the world to get loud and active again as the weather warms up, but the first little snowdrop greens poking out of the frozen ground have definitely made me excited 🤍
(top left) February 10th, the nearly-full moon; (top right) February 28th, many evenings have been spent sewing and watching old episodes of Sex and The City; (bottom) February 25th, a juvenile hawk hung out in our yard for a while, Riley Mae identified it as a red-shouldered, and also got some photos of her own
Technically I started making this quilt when I started on the fam’s quilts…last spring.
I just finished it a couple weeks ago.
But to be fair, I have definitely not been steadily working on it. In fact the butterfly squares sat antennae-less in a drawer for many months completely untouched (but not forgotten), just waiting for me to pull them out again.
Typically I do a themed photoshoot for Valentine’s Day; like for Valentine’s Day 2023 (my bangs era), when I had a gorgeous vanilla/strawberry cake as my prop (shoutout to beet juice for dying the frosting pink).
Or Valentine’s Day 2024, when I went 100% in by cutting out paper hearts and sticking them to my wall, and gluing red confetti onto my cheeks (I did panic for a split second when I took the confetti off and saw that the glue had made them bleed heart-shaped red spots onto my face, but thankfully it washed off…although not before it seeped into my bloodstream and poisoned me, I’m quite certain).
This year I just wasn’t ✨inspired✨ to do a photoshoot, but I was inspired to do a little something different. I celebrated an entire Valentine’s Day Week™ on my YouTube Shorts page by posting a [mostly thrifted] Valentine’s Day outfit every day of the week.
Here are the looks, and the links to each video!
Last year I was given a pile of old gardening magazines; I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do with them, but I held onto them because I just had a feeling that they’d come in handy at some point.
It took a while, but I was right.
believe it or not, these millions of scraps of paper were somewhat organized
If you’ve found yourself on any girls’ social media pages lately, chances are that you’ve seen someone trying the heatless sock curls — and I finally tried them too.
I’ve seen a million different products being advertised for heatless curls, but I’m not willing to spend money on something that’s such a gamble. (and that looks to be kinda complicated to do by yourself)
I’ve tried my fair share of curling methods over the years; all heatless, of course, because I refuse to kill my hair again after I bleached it to death with hydrogen peroxide when I was 14. My hair was fried, broken, and stretchy when wet (a very weird experience) for a couple of years until I grew it out and cut it off.
Ever since then I’ve been scared to do anything that will cause damage to it. That means no straighteners, curling irons, or curling products.
ft. my support local street cats t-shirt from GOODVIBEQUOTESSHOP on Etsy
art by jordan rae 