April Showers + Life Updates

Hey guys! In my last post, I said I was going to be posting every Monday again.

I did the opposite--- I disappeared for a month.

I've been trying to post. Life just got busy. Honestly, it hasn't been unwelcome. I spent spring break in Colorado, and then got my driver's license. For several weekends, it's been rainy---like, torrential downpour rainy---but I'm hoping what they say is true, and that these April showers will bring me a lot of May flowers. I will take a lot more pictures then, trust me.

So anyway, my mom has been (jokingly) insisting that I'm too old for an Easter basket for weeks, but when Easter actually came, I was shocked to find a new doll waiting for me. I've been wanting AG's Moana SO badly, but I had already told myself no more dolls! My mom felt the same way about Moana. A little while back, AG put her on sale AND we had rewards points, and my mom said she couldn't pass her up for 80 bucks. Honestly, fair. I'm so excited about this girl! 

It was extremely rainy (like, we had a tornado warning a few hours before I took these pictures), and they're not that great, but I had to get some shots of my new girl. I thought I'd make this more of a chill chat thing about my life (isn't that what my photoshoots already are-) and yeah. 

This is actually pretty close to perfection. All of these pictures were taken in my backyard, and I have no idea what these flowers are, but they look very tropical. 

Isn't she just the cutest?? She's my first Corrine mold and my first doll with this curl pattern, so she stands out a lot in my collection. She's going to end up being an original character, mostly because I'm not a huge Disney fan, anddd technically speaking, it'll be the first time I completely rename an already named character. Since "Moana" means "Ocean," I kinda want to keep the name meaning. Most names with ocean meanings are some version of "Marie"/"Maria"/"Mary," as those names are derivatives of the Latin word "Mare," which means, you guessed it, "the sea." Nothing wrong with those names I listed, but this girl needs something unique. 

The names I like the best right now are "Delmar" and "Esmarie." (Yes, Esmarie is a combo of Esme and Marie. No, I did not make it up.) As I'm deciding her name, I've honestly been calling her "Mars," as in, the Roman god of war, because both names have the "mar" sound from the Latin root, AND it's objectively cool. So anyway. That's her nickname and that's what I'm calling her in this post. I'll settle on an actual name eventually. I kinda think she should be a little bit feisty if her nickname is Mars, so her personality is already popping out to me. 

I don't love this photo, but I was trying to hold Mars up and take a picture at the same time. She's super cute though.

Anyway, I'm ready for school to be done. I have, like, 4 more weeks after this and I could not be more ready. I'm trying hard not to have a negative outlook on my school right now, but yeah. 

This was the closest I got to a full-body shot. The ground was seriously soaked! My shoes may never recover from the mud, I fear. (And they were my school shoes too, yikes!)

What else can I chat about? Hmm... Oh! I've decided to write a book! It's one of my life goals to write a book (along with getting a PhD and hosting a TED Talk 😅), so I'm doing it! 

Okay, the bokeh kinda ate here. I was trying to get this honeysuckle tree in the background. It was very flooded and I had to hold Mars up. 

Omg she is literally everything I dreamed of. I love this doll. Truthfully, her skin tone is very red-ish, and that made me nervous to photograph because I have this weird aversion to working with warm tones. I love cool colors, but getting a warm hue in my pictures? Scares me. I have no clue why. I think she looks perfect, though. She photographs well. I'm starting to love the Corrine mold, just because of Miss Girl. I think it's got a lot of similarities to the Nanea mold, which is one of my favorites to photograph. I've seen some people say the Nanea mold doesn't photograph well, though? Which is weird to me because I think the opposite. 

The shadows were too much in this picture. 😭 But guys, disaster struck. 

So this is what I was standing in by the honeysuckle, right? And my family has this little pontoon boat that I stood Mars on. 

Well.

She fell face-first into the mud.

Girl!! Why! I literally had you for 6 hours!! Luckily, all the mud cleaned off easily. It didn't even stain her clothes. My photo session just ended early. Tragic.

And then this is a picture I took while walking my dog. That's a retention pond, and yes, that's a pool float in the flood water. I'm not sure if it blew out of someone's yard, or if it was put there deliberately, but I'm just imagining someone swimming in the retention pond and it's kind of hilarious. 

So that's it for now! Have an amazing week and remember to eat your veggies! Hopefully I'll be back next week! Bye! <3