i think i love my cat too much...

I've thought for a long time about what my first tattoo would be. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine what I actually got haha! 

Tim is very much anti popular tattoos-SO many people have the same tattoo, or at least a variation of one. For example: eternity symbols, skulls, hummingbirds, semicolons,...etc. He really encouraged me to get something that is meaningful to me. Something I will never regret getting. Well, I may never regret what I got; however, I do get annoyed now that I have to explain why I got what I did haha :)

Background: Every morning after I shower and am blow-drying my hair, my cat comes in the bathroom and sits and stares at me, just waiting. As soon as I'm done blow-drying my hair, she immediately whines and falls over, and I have to rub her down with the dryer. Never fails. Every time. It may seem like such a silly thing for someone who doesn't have a cat, but it's a favorite moment of my day. 

yes, that is one antique toilet haha

Fast forward to me thinking up a tattoo: Hmmm....what's meaningful and unique to me that absolutely no one else in the world would have...hmmmmmm, we have a cat (aka our spoiled, only child)-what the heck kind of tattoo would I get that has a cat on it??? Ahh, my kitty looking up at my blow dryer. 

This was the picture I gave of my blowdryer,

and this is the inspiration of the cat.

We did a lot of research in finding the perfect tattoo artist for both of us. Tim's getting two full-sleeve tattoos done, so obviously we needed to really trust the artist. Collective Ink in Traverse City was the place, and Jeremiah was our guy. 

He had me send him pictures of our cat, so the cat in the tattoo is our cat, not my inspiration picture.

Here's me in the beginning with the stencil on, smiling and excited. That smile didn't last for long haha-this tattoo was so painful in certain areas, especially where that blowdryer is. It really felt like he was scraping my skin. I mean, he was. It was definitely not pleasant, so it was really nice when he was done! It took about two hours, and he only charged $100! I was surprised; for something that size, I was thinking around $200.

Can you see my freckle in the blow dryer plug-in? :) I had actually asked for the flowers in the cat to be purple because I don't care for roses, especially red ones, but Jeremiah misread what I wrote. I didn't have him change it to purple though purely because I didn't want him to have to redo it! I wasn't 100% sure I liked it, but it's kinda grown on me.

This is what my tattoo looked like four days after it was done-SO INSANELY itchy and peeling.

I made the mistake of using too much Neosporin on my tattoo-I didn't even know it was possible! I started getting these red lookin' pimples where I used the most Neosporin, and they were very itchy. Thankfully, Jeremiah had seen it before and told me to stop and only apply it once a day with a light amount.

I would say it was fully healed after about 3 weeks.

She's my little girl. Always watching me, doing what I do. And destroying my yoga mat...

I'm okay with people thinking it's stupid. I didn't get it for anyone else. Just me, and I love it :) I may feel slightly stupid when I tell people what my tattoo is of (you should see the first two seconds of a person's face when I say what it's of haha), but it's okay. 

I will say I didn't think at all what my tattoo would look like whenever I get pregnant-that's going to be one fat cat hahahahahahahahahaha!!!

My something old and blue

My grandmother passed away in 2005. It was the weekend of my birthday. I remember because I spent my birthday alone that year; my parents went to see my grandma a lot that week at the nursing home, and I went later that night. Now don't feel sorry for me, I was fine. A friend that went to Romania with me mailed me a pan of homemade brownies :) I had rented movies and ate a bunch of junk food besides the brownies, and I think I stayed up super late watching a scary movie. By myself.  That was dumb. Anyway, going TOTALLY off topic :). The summer after she died, one of her kids brought a bunch of her belongings to our yearly family reunion, and everyone was able to choose something to remember her by. 

This was before I was engaged. I think Tim and I had only been dating for a few months. But when I saw this brooch, I immediately knew that I wanted to somehow wear this in my hair at my future wedding. It was going to be my something old. My something blue. 

I turned her brooch into a barrette. It was so easy. I just bought some jewelry glue, a plain flat barrette, and glued the barrette onto the pin. Bada-bing! Bada-boom!

I loved having something in memory of her at our wedding. I'm sure my mom thought about her at the wedding, missing her. I wanted to make sure my mom knew I didn't forget about her.