Looking Back On My Nose Job

This is a post that I've been meaning to write for a very long time. I first wrote about my planned nose surgery in August of 2011 and here we are in February of 2015! It's just crazy how time flies by. I had every intention of following up with that post shortly after my surgery but life really got in the way and I stopped blogging all together. Better late than never I suppose.

First off, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who read that blog post and supported my decision both in the comments and through the kind emails I received. Wanting plastic surgery is a scary thing to talk about because there's still a stigma attached to it so knowing there were other people dealing with similar issues was very reassuring.

Now, on to what people actually care about. The before and afters! I actually cried the first time I saw myself in the mirror after surgery. I was still a bruised mess when the brace came off but I finally had MY nose!

Although the metal brace was taken off my face at 7 days, these photos were taken 14 days after the surgery to allow a bit of the swelling to go down. 

BUT, that's not the end of the story, obviously! It turns out your nose doesn't stay exactly how it looks right after surgery. It's still very swollen and it can take up to 18 months for everything to finally settle. I thought that was an exaggeration but NOPE, it's only been within the last year that I can say with certainty that this is how my nose will look forever. 

Which I am more than ok with.

I am over the moon with the results of the surgery but there are definitely some things I've learned after having gone through this process:

1. Having surgery to fix something will not fix you internally! I naively believed that it was only my nose causing the insecurities I had about my looks. How untrue that turned out to be. I still find myself nit-picking how I look but I'm really working on being nicer to myself. I suppose it's a life long struggle that most women have to deal with. 

2. I find myself still making goofy faces in pictures and trying to hide my nose! YIKES! I had conditioned  myself for 12 years to take pictures from only certain angles or make silly faces that it has truly become ingrained in me. Most of the pictures I take are still dorky and I have a hard time allowing myself to just smile. 

Sometimes I pull out the goofy face while still smiling. 

If anything, this blog is making it sound like the surgery has made my insecurities worse. That is not true at all! I'm so much happier every day and when I look in the mirror I'm generally at peace with how I look. I spent a really long time scrutinizing my face that it's tough to overcome that in a just a few short years. 

Would I recommend surgery to those thinking about it? Absolutely! While I don't believe we should be placing so much emphasis on our looks, if a part of you if making you desperately unhappy and you have the opportunity and means to fix it, go for it! Just make sure to do your research and maintain realistic expectations. A nose job isn't going to suddenly turn you into Natalie Portman (no matter how hard I wished it to happen).

The best thing that has happened to me since getting the surgery was seeing an old friend shortly after. I hadn't told him about it and when we saw each other he said to me, "you look really good. Different though. Did you change your hair?" I can't tell you how happy that made me feel. I'm still myself after all this, just a better version. 

Oh, and I even let people take pictures of me without makeup now. Crazy, right? 

If you have any further questions or comments about this journey I've gone on feel free to email me any time. I promise to respond as soon as possible.

-Torri 

Valentine's Day

This sounds so cliche but I adore Valentine's Day! There's just something so appealing about a day filled with pink and hearts! Although I am happily single I really enjoy spreading some love to those I care about. Most years I pick up a pack of silly kids valentines and just fill them out but this year I decided to create something a little more personal.

I bought a few packages of American Crafts blank cards on clearance at HomeSense after Christmas and thought the cute patterns would make for the perfect backgrounds to my cards.

Soon I was busting out the acrylic paints and googling silly puns!

I really wanted to keep the cutesy aesthetic of the blank cards so I purposely went with non-complicated artwork. I painted the characters with basic acrylic paint then did the lines and lettering with a regular Sharpie marker.

Sure, they don't look super professional but each one in personalized and made with love. Isn't that what the holiday is all about anyway? 

I really enjoyed making these and how they turned out! Family and friends be warned, expect silly cards like this for every birthday and holiday going forward! 

-Torri

Autumn Weekends

I've finally finished all of my midterms and feel like I can breathe at last. Rather than get involved in all of the festivities of Halloween this year, I decided to spend the weekend relaxing after all the stress of school.

Our family has a cabin on a lake about two hours south of the city. Although there are other homes in the area, I love going out there because it everything is always so quite and seemingly isolated. This made it the perfect place to get away to, if even for just a few days. 

The cabin backs on to a forested area and for as long as I can remember I've enjoyed walking through the underbrush and climbing trees. It was crisp and sunny which made for a perfect time to plug in the old iPod and see where the path in the woods might take me.

Other kids must have played in the forest like my sister and I did because there used to be tree forts and lean-tos all over the place. I trudged around for a while looking for a few of our old haunts but the years have not been kind and most have become rotten and destroyed. The one I used to play in the most is nothing but a few boards nailed to some trees. 

From there I followed a stream that cut through the forest down to the lake. While the stream may only be six inches at its deepest, I love the "adventure" of traversing rotten logs and jumping stones to avoid getting wet.

If exploring your own private Fern Gully isn't calming, I don't know what is! I've embedded a Spotify playlist to help you get in the mood for your own nature walk.

Oh, and just because I skipped the parties doesn't mean I didn't dress up. It just means that my costume was a little less elaborate. I went as the poster on Nelson Muntzs' wall.

Nuke the Whales Shirt - GnomEnterprises (Etsy)

"Gotta Nuke Something!" What can I say? I'm a devoted Simpsons fan and appreciate even the most obscure references!

-Torri 

Garbology, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Dig Through Trash

Well, this has been an eventful weekend!

If, six months ago, someone would have told me that digging through a garbage bin is an archaeological study I would have thought they were crazy. Now? Not so much! It all comes down to a little something called Garbology! Started in 1973 by an amazing man named William Rathje, digging through refuse has now become an academic discipline in some areas.

So, with that information in mind some fellow students and I took on the task of jumping in a dumpster and sorting through some trash for a study we'll be working on over the next few months.

This weekend we set up shop in the communal garbage bin at the condo complex of one of our team members. He lives in an urban area so we were expecting some great finds and it definitely did not disappoint.

I'll save you the gross details and not recount exactly what we found in every bag but needless to say the results were a little bit shocking! It turns out (in the particular complex) that people really take recycling seriously. We found comparatively very little paper or recyclable material in the dumpster. On the flip side, it looks as though nobody was cooking the week before we got to the bin! There were tons of takeout contains but not a lot of organic (food) material.

I'm sure some people are wondering, "What's the point"? That's a good question! We're hoping to go through the garbage in different areas of the city to compare and contrast samples of different population segments to see what the waste can tell us. It's generally pretty easy to infer age, gender, and income level just based on a few bags of trash. Of course, these are just inferences and we could be totally wrong, but that's the fun of archaeology! Everything is a puzzle and it's up to you to try and solve it!

Our garbage really tells a lot about the person who threw the stuff out. What would your garbage say about you?

*We did obtain consent from all the residents of the complex before beginning our study.

-Torri

Hey everyone (and by everyone I mean my mom), welcome to my new space! My name is Torri and you may remember me from such previous blogs as Digital Confections.

I've recently started a major new chapter in my life and decided to embark upon this journey of blogging again. I went back to university a year and a half ago as a student in my late 20's and have learned so many things outside of the classroom that I'd love to share!

My major is in anthropology with a focus in archaeology while my minor is in human anatomy. This means I spend a lot of time doing weird things with the skeletons of both humans and animals. But don't let that scare you away! I'm still a girls girl and love clothes, beauty products, and shiny objects. I'm also prone to flights of fancy and making dumb faces in photos!

I'm the mother to one absolutely hilarious dog child named Rosy. She's an 11 year old shih tzu cross who's bad to the bone but utterly adorable. 

I don't own a fancy DSLR camera so I'm sorry in advance for the iphone photos. I promise I'll try not to make them completely terrible. 

So, what say we go on an adventure or two?

-Torri