First, go and read about The Most Epic Brand Meltdown on Facebook ever. Within that link you will see a restaurant run by a hostile couple who has gone through over 100 employees in a short amount of time, bullies customers for asking for simple things (like their food), takes the tips from the waitstaff, and just..wow.

I have now watched this episode and there is nothing that I can say that hasn’t already been said. On a personal level it reminds me about why I blog about Haunted Attractions. it’s because of incidents where I had read fake reviews created by businesses who are terrible like this. After getting ripped off a few times, I decided that I was going to go to every haunt that I could, constructively tell it like it is, and hopefully offer an impartial eye to those hoping to improve their attractions. Still, things like this allegedly happen in this scene, which is a pile of ballhocky.

And that is precisely why I do what I do. It’s hilarious how Amy’s Baking Company regards bloggers as bullies as they proceed to bully their own staff. This personality type is unfortunate. Any blogger worth anything is constructive and helpful.

Oh well. I can’t fix stupid.

Notice that I said making things come together because nothing comes together on it’s own unless you kick it a few times.

I recently learned how to make handmade cards with paper punches and stamps you can get at the craft store. I think what has always set me apart from every other artist is my attention to detail and the fact that I tend to go above and beyond. I’m always learning things, too. Most recently these cards are an example of another way that I figured I’d be able to reach out to clients and sponsors of my convention with a “Thank You”.

It’s kind of awesome because I make them to order and do them differently. This way there is little risk of someone getting the same card twice like if I had ordered some logo cards to be printed. Some cards have bits of my art in them, others are simple like this one which will be sent to Harknell’s Mom for Mother’s Day.

I had been not very good at sending cards in the past. My family never sent them. I never really was exposed to them. Now that most people send cards digitally I figured it was a great time to learn how to do them physically. That way people know that I mean it.

I’m getting Intervention Angry Owl stamps made and return address stamps made, too. It ends up being more personal and also more cost effective in the long run.

GUYS! GUYS! HEY GUYS! I’m BACK from Disney World!

This was me in the Magic Kingdom on the last day of my vacation:

So basically I am recovering from my vacation now. We got to see Gatorland and all of the Disney Parks (including the 2 waterparks). We also got to visit Tampa a couple of times.

The weather was pretty bad actually. See how dark?

It was rainy almost the entire time and on our last day it felt like New Jersey in late September cold. I didn’t even get to see the blue Florida sky until I was leaving on my last day. But – IT WAS STILL AWESOME!

We saw these guys:

We did this! HAHAHA:

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I got an awesome ear hat:

Harknell celebrated his birthday:

Actually both Harknell and Xyloart celebrated their birthdays:

We learned that Shutters at the Caribbean Beach Resort had a makeover and is now one of our favorites! I discovered baked grouper and they gave us a free birthday dessert!

I LOVE CARAMEL CHOCOLATE MICKEY HEAD APPLES!

This was our crew – Pier, Xyloart, Me, and Harknell!

We managed to find a couple of warm days (or rather a couple of hours during certain days that was warm) enough to go to the waterparks. We learned that if it’s too cold it might warm up by 2PM.

Actually I learned a lot on this trip. You’d think I’d have figured out to bring both hot weather AND cold and rainy weather clothing by now, but I hadn’t. Next time I’ll be packing exercise leggings and short dresses plus my (awesome but sadly discontinued) Merrel Tetra Waterproof boots.

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I’m packing up my art supplies and then I’m off to check out Divine Decadence in New Jersey this weekend!

The bag is a LeSportsac Molly from the Disney It’s a Small World Collection. the Cthulhu was a gift from one of our InterventionCon staff, Janice!

I’ve been so busy making art lately! I’m glad because usually I get pretty depressed this time of year. I do not like the northeastern winters – or at the very least my body doesn’t. Chronic pain sucks! I’m getting ready to cover the Flower and Garden fest in Epcot plus some secret surprises. I am looking forward to Haunt Season this year already!

Every get to the point that you are so excited about something that you just wanna start kicking random things like a crazed cat? LIKE YEAH YEAHHH!!!!

KICK A BOX!

KICK A TABLE!

KICK A MEDIUM-SIZED ORANGE CRATE!

KICK ALLL THE THINGS!

KICK MORE OF THE THINGS!!

EXCITEMENT!!!!

YEAH WE ARE READY FOR THEME PARK SEASON!!! :D HA! We have Halloween Horror Nights, Busch Gardens Howl O Scream, and the Magic Kingdom represented in this pic. (We are silly.)

LOL why does Harknell look mad? HAHAHAHAH! :D

Brace yourself for a salon horror story of epic proportion.

As you know, I have been having a terrible time finding a good salon in Central Jersey. I’ve been to the gauntlet of poor service and unskilled stylists since I moved here. The best salon I have ever been to is an hour north of me in North Jersey. Sadly it is not always possible to drive an hour away for a salon service, so I was hoping to get a second salon near me for those in between days. Boy was I mistaken.

I talk all the time with women in New Jersey who are afraid of salons and I hate to hear that. Now I know why. I sit here writing to you with only a little over half of my eyebrows left. My hair has also been trashed beyond recognition thanks to Vito Mazza Salon and Spa. This all cost me over $500 over the course of about a year and they aren’t returning my phone calls or emails. I’ve been going back to the good salon to get back to looking like myself – thank god.

So in my opinion, Vito Mazza Salon and Spa has purchased over $500 of advertising from me. This blog post is part of that advertising. I hope they like it.

Last year I went to Vito Mazza for a brow wax. It was fine, but when I went back a second time they gave me to Carmen. I hadn’t gone to Carmen before. She waxed my brows uneven. I had to draw them in to not look like a freak. Thinking this was only a 1 time thing and because I am too nice I forgave it. I went to Maria at the same salon who got them back to normal over the course of months.

I paid for all of this and they never gave me a refund. This is OK (I guess) so far. I could have been more pushy about it. I guess.

Then last year I decided that for my birthday I would celebrate by trying something totally new. I got it in my head that I’d try blonde. I had never considered this before but last year to me was all about pushing me out of my normal boundaries. I saved up and because my hair is normally jet black it cost about $500 over the course of 2 visits. This was a big deal that I had saved up for for a long time. My stylist Daina was excellent. I was very happy with what she did. I have olive skin so it was a Jennifer Lopez-style blonde. Unfortunately Daina went on maternity leave and left me in the car of Kristin. I would have been better off just throwing my hard-earned money out of a car window.

Kristin is the nastiest, shittiest stylist I have ever had the misfortune of going to and she absolutely trashed me. I was in a jam – I needed to get my hair refreshed because I had a job interview the next day. She refused to do my hair because (it was obvious) she did not want to be there. The entire visit I had to listen to her complain about how much she hated her job and co-workers. It was incredibly awkward. It was a total Tabatha Takes Over salon moment.

Kristin asked me what nationality I was and then looked at me as if she had cramping gas. The entire time she appeared to be implying that I was ugly and my skin was not pale enough for her. This woman is horrendous and possibly racist. She forced me into doing dark red. Yes, I could have pushed back but because I had an interview the next day and I was going to go red in 2 months I decided fine let’s just get this done and let me get on with my life.

I didn’t know why but for some reason after this salon visit my hair was not laying right. I chalked it up to the fact that I was traveling to Florida. Maybe it was just the weather?

Nope. I went back to Vito Mazza 4 weeks later to a different stylist who thought I had had my hair done at a chop shop. She said it looked like someone intentionally burned the back of my hair and didn’t even finish the cut. She told me it would take at least 3 months to get my hair back to normal. The manager wasn’t there so I sent them a polite email to their Customer Service over a week before Hurricane Sandy that was ignored. When I phoned a few weeks after they tried to guilt me about checking on this because “some people lost their houses in the hurricane”.

The manager here is awesome. Way to make me feel like trash for just politely asking if anyone had gotten my message.

The TL;DR is that the manager then handled it, but not in the right way. My hair was fried almost to the point of falling out and they said they’d comp me getting what I had before. Well, my hair could not physically take being processed to blonde again. I attempted to explain this to them and they said that they’d leave a gift card on file for me for whatever I decided to do.

OK, fine. I went back in a few weeks later just to get it switched back to black – thinking that I would just use that gift card after my hair recovered. Nope, they forced me into using the comp for a $120 fix.

Let me spell this out for you – I had spent over $500 on a style that one of their stylists ruined. Their solution was to comp me $120.

Writing this out I do realize that I am too nice. I switched back to the good salon for hair and I immediately saw an improvement in the quality of my hair. At the time the good salon did not have a waxer so me not knowing anywhere else to go in Central Jersey decided to go to CJ at Vito Mazza. She had done a good job on me in the past. What could possibly go wrong? I had just has an issue with 1 stylist there, right?

Well she ripped off 1/3 of my left eyebrow and totally removed almost half of my right eyebrow from the arch to the end of the tail. She totally mutilated me, let me pay her, and when I saw in my car mirror that I looked like a screwed up alien I went back into the salon to politely complain. Again. The receptionist gasped when she saw my eyebrows.

They had a makeup artist halfheartedly draw my brow back in, gave me some brow filler (but no brush to apply it with) and didn’t refund my money. They just offered me a free return visit. I was kind of in shock that my brow was almost gone so…I got home and realized I’d been duped AGAIN, so I’ve been calling and emailing them to get a refund and they keep pushing me off the phone and ignoring my emails. So I have given up. I will never go near here again.

Don’t go here. I will never be this nice again. Shame on me.

The only reason I kept going here was because I couldn’t find anywhere else in close proximity to where I live. There really isn’t that much competition here. Now I’ll just drive an hour away to the good place! :/