well. me me me.

for my birthday, my lovely friend margit gave me a gift certificate to the make up store for a consultation and to purchase some cosmetics. i had such a great time! since i don't wear make up during the day, i asked for a dramatic evening look and that's exactly what i got. i fell in love with their teal eye-liner, it's devine. they spent an hour with me and we talked and laughed the whole time. only one little snag... the 4pm commute was not prepared for my dramatic look... i got a few stares on the tram home.

in other news... it seems like spring may actually be coming which means that i'm much happier. i've been working for the past month on a series of necklaces. each one references an occupying force in estonia. i've completed three so far... nazi germany, soviet russia, and estonian independence. now i'm looking for images that recall danish and swedish occupation, which is proving to be quite difficult because they occurred so long ago. in the meantime i've begun a new project that i'm pretty excited about though it doesn't seem to have much, if anything, to do with estonia. oh well.

i'm also getting ready for a road trip. yay! i love driving and exploring so road trips are really my idea of a good time. estonia is such a small country that, as andrew and i have mapped out our trip, we should be able to see most of the country in only eight days. score. basically we'll be driving around the perimeter visiting waterfalls, lakes, bogs, castles, ruins, villages, and a few islands. the most important part of the trip will be setumaa in south-eastern estonia. before coming, i researched an indigenous group known as the setus and their jewelry. small communities of setus still live in setumaa and we will be visiting them! unfortunately this region was halved by the current estonia/russia border which means that some villages can only be visited with a visa. what a pain and not really an option for this trip but we'll make do.

one funny thing about our trip so far... we've managed to get a great deal on our rental car. the catch is that this agency places taxi style billboards on each rental! ha. this should make for some interesting looks from the small town folks.