Welcome – and an Introduction!

Howdy! My name is Abby and welcome to my blog! 

I sure am glad you’re here, because that means I’ve done something right!

My goal with this blog is to share my passion for cruelty-free and ethical living. Everything you see here will be 100% vegan. 

I’ve been posting to Instagram and YouTube for many years now. I’m kicking it up a notch and keeping them going alongside this fancy-schmancy new blog. 

A little background.

Here’s some background information into how I ended up here, writing this blog for you to read. My Life Story, if you will.

You can find a bit more about my journey into makeup specifically over here.

I grew up in Eastern Kentucky. We lived up a “holler” sandwiched between two mountains and a creek in your standard double-wide trailer. A Tiny House, before they were cool. We were right next to my grandparents, so I never went to a babysitter or daycare. I was a pretty self sufficient and chill kid, if I do say so myself.

I learned to read before kindergarten, went to reading class with the first graders, and was asked to skip second grade entirely – and I did. This could be a separate blog post entirely (writing it down now), but the short version is that this really bolstered a false sense of confidence, that I was somehow freakishly smart – when I was, in fact, average. 

My parents moved to Northern Kentucky for work when I was in 7th grade (circa 2006). Northern and Eastern Kentucky might as well be two different states. Vastly different way-of-life and education system. I was smart back home – but here, I wasn’t. I had never studied before, I just kinda knew everything? And I was finding myself having to work harder to keep up. So that was fun. 

I am grateful for the new school, though, because I felt more than prepared for college, and can say with certainty that I would not have been as prepared if we had stayed back home. I mean, I didn’t finish my bachelor’s degree and skipped out with 2 associate’s degrees (and less debt), but it still helped!

Oh, to pick a career.

One common theme is that I have never stuck with a career path for more than a few years. From wanting to be an astronaut until I saw a TV show about the Challenger explosion, wanting to be a paleontologist until I found out that they don’t just always find dinosaur bones, to wanting to be a doctor until I found out they can’t get a day off, or wanting to be a hair stylist until I found out that you have to talk to people – I haven’t exactly found an exciting profession. 

My bachelor’s degree would have been for pre-med. I looked into hair school and FX makeup school. No avail. Heck I even took a couple college classes on accounting. At least I tried that one before I decided it most definitely wasn’t for me. 

It wasn’t until very recently that I discovered I (may) have ADHD. Surprise, eh? It runs in my family and the symptoms fit to a T. I never considered it because I’ve never been “hyper.” But boy, if I can ever remember anything, it’s a miracle. 

Where are we now?

Since 2017, I had been running my Etsy shop. I started it as a place to sell my crochet creations. Those bombed HARD. Maybe because I didn’t know how to market myself, or maybe because nobody was interested in them. But, I had an idea to start making my own reusable cotton rounds. So I bought a serger (a type of sewing machine) and started making them. I listed them on Etsy, then made more stuff like cloth wipes and reusable gift bags. I had a fair amount of sales but nothing groundbreaking. 

Backing up a bit (sorry), it was around this time that re-met my fiance, Thien. This is also another long story, I briefly talked about it in this video. We met up again at the end of August 2019, and have been together ever since. He joined the military and left for basic training at the end of March 2020. I know, literally the worst time, everything was delayed and changed around. He is still in training as I’m writing this, actually (August 2020). 

We are planning to get married whenever he gets to come home, and I’m going with him to his duty station. Still no clue where that will be. A year from now, we could be still in Kentucky, or we could be somewhere far away like Korea or Germany.

Quitting my day job.

But, that leads me to March. So I knew that we would be moving most likely by the end of the year, and that we would have no clue where. I put in my 2-week notice at my retail job in the middle of February 2020, and it ended on… March 6th, 2020. Yep. THAT March 6th. The day the U.S. started shutting down. My plan was to work on my business full time and have it be sustainable for me by the time he got back, since I was living with my parents and didn’t have many bills at all. Seemed like a solid plan, right?

Well, millions of people lost their jobs, unemployment filing was a joke and a half, nobody except hand sanitizer and mask companies had money, so I thought my business was doomed along with thousands of other small businesses.

At first I had a surge of orders for cloth wipes due to the toilet paper fiasco. Then, someone asked if I could make face masks. Bingo. It took a while to nail down a pattern and the right materials, it was mostly trial and error for a lot of people making them. 

Face masks have been keeping me afloat for a while, I’ve made record sales for several weeks. However, I was faced with a dilemma. If we end up moving across the country, or to an entirely different country, how am I going to move all this fabric and supplies?

The short answer is that I can’t. Especially overseas, it would cost more than the products are worth to ship them. Once I realized this, I started changing gears real quick. So I am still self-employed, but am working on other projects that will allow me to be location-independent. One of those is what you are looking at right now – this blog! 

At this point in time, since we don’t know if we will be stateside or overseas, I will continue as normal until we get official word on where he is going. Don’t want to count my proverbial chickens before they hatch.

Why a blog?

I feel like a blog will tick all the boxes for me – location-independent, fast-paced, totally customisable, easy to change, etc. 

This will also be a centralized location for my content – my little hub.

I’m taking you all on this adventure (if you’ll stick around!) and we can learn together! I’ll be sharing what I find along the way and giving you my usual content that is all about ethical and cruelty-free living! 

One day soon I’ll be writing to you and filming videos from my own house next to the love of my life. 

But, a little about me and not just my circumstances, I suppose.

Vegan, cruelty-free, and sustainable journey.

I have been vegan for around 6 years. I honestly for the life of me have no idea when my “veganiversary” is exactly. I guess that it was in 2014, but I am the WORST with remembering dates and do not have much of a concept of time. Is that also a symptom of ADHD? Could be. 

I started my YouTube channel and old blog (doesn’t exist anymore, sorry) around 2015, and soon switched to only cruelty-free beauty products. 

For a while, I accumulated and accumulated and collected makeup, like entire shade ranges of lipsticks, blushes, etc. I had the IKEA Alex drawers and they were not quite stuffed, but quickly getting there. The “makeup addiction” was a whole other story, I could do another post about it. 

Being 20 with a decent paying job and neither bills nor self control can quickly get out of hand. At least I was buying makeup and not drugs or something, right?

Then, I discovered the Project Panning community. Basically the Panning community is about using the makeup you already have before you buy more. What a concept! I’ve been back and forth with project pans since then. Again, the attention span is not conducive to using the same thing day-in and day-out. But, I do appreciate that it has taught me to be more mindful of the makeup that I purchase. 

Along with veganism, I’ve started doing more research into sustainability and being eco-friendly. I am NOT zero-waste by ANY means, but I try to opt for more eco-friendly options whenever possible and try to fix and reuse things before throwing them away. 

I’ve also been shifting my clothing purchases, I am watching the slow-fashion movement and am going to avoid buying new fast-fashion clothes and only buy either thrifted or sustainably and ethically made clothing whenever possible. Again, I’m not perfect and am not pretending to know everything about it. 

If we all do the best we can, it’s better than just one or two of us doing it perfectly. 

So what now?

What can you expect from this blog? 

Definitely cruelty-free and vegan makeup, with the occasional eco-conscious fashion and home content as well. 

As I said at the beginning of this post, everything featured or mentioned on this blog will be 100% vegan and cruelty-free at the time of posting. As I discussed in this post, things are constantly changing.

I am not currently planning on running my own brand list, as I think there are a lot of amazing lists out there. The one I trust the most and have relied on for years and years is Logical Harmony. 

Thanks for reading this far! Leave me a comment and let me know how you found my site! 

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