IGNITED - An Update (Patreon)

FRIENDS!!!

Wowwee wow wow. New Mexico was awesome! I slept somewhere around 20 hours total between the 5 nights I was there, and yet, I felt pretty damn great and inspired the whole trip. 

I drove in Tuesday, stayed with my girl, Des, that night, and she did my hair on Wednesday. (She owns + works at Lavish Hair Lounge and literally does a better job on both cuts and colors than ANYONE else who has worked on me.) After getting the hairs did, I drove up to the Las Vegas (NM, not NV!) area and checked into the cute little Airbnb I rented to get some me time and shoot content. I was BLOWN AWAY by how perfect it was.

And despite my knowing there was not food close to it and packing a bag of food, I left the bag at Des' house and the farm eggs and other things they had in the fridge and freezer saved me the next morning for breakie. 

I ate, got myself ready finally around noon 😆, then shot these photosets along with video for each!

Thursday evening my friend, Amanda, arrived to stay a couple nights, and Friday we went antiquing in Las Vegas. It's a bigger town that we expected, but sadly the first two shops were quite pricey (I assume because of people coming in from Santa Fe and they were located in the town square), so we didn't buy anything at those. But they did have fun things to look at. 

We clearly saved the best for last, even with prices aside! Rough Riders Antiques was full of great things, with great prices, and two great ladies working there who were very friendly. 

Once we wrapped up there, we headed back to the Airbnb (which was about 25 minutes away) and took turns photographing each other. I always enjoy shooting  Amanda since she's pretty comfy with her body and has great ink, and she does a FAB job of shooting me! I adjust the camera settings and then she goes to town and damn, is she great with angles!

Saturday morning I woke up at 4, got ready, found out our coffee date with a friend fell through, decided to shoot an extra set at the house with the extra time, then took off to Albuquerque for the photography workshop we set up. It went swimmingly, and I POSED MY ASS OFF plus did makeup and hair changes for them along with each wardrobe change. My friend, Alan, came as a surprise from Amarillo, so that made for an extra lovely time!

From there, around 1:30 pm, I went to pick up all my bins at my friends' house to set up at  Ignite (the event my friend Des and her hubby, Bedo/Gallo Negro Tattoo put on for the community). For those of you who don't know, I also sell vintage/secondhand goods, and love vending in person. I was quite honored to be asked to be there! I finished setting up just as the event started and had an awesome time. There were so many rad people - all friendly, and many with wild hair and lots of tattoos and crazy outfits. I felt so at home.<3  

We finally got into bed around 2:30 am, maybe 3. And I was up at 7:15 am to get ready to shoot with my friend, Peter Gonzales. 

And that was it! I went and loaded up all my bins and hit the road home. :)

I'm finally getting back into a nice groove of things here, and it's feeling great. As much as I love to travel, I also really love to be home where I don't have to lug stuff around all the time. 

My biggest takeaway from this trip is that work doesn't feel so much like work when you're with friends and people you enjoy. It's not like I didn't know or I forgot, but maybe I hadn't experienced it quite to this degree in a while. 

Running on happy heart fuel right now!