My Word for 25

Today is my birthday.  I’m 25, which feels very old to me.  Boyfriend insists that I’m not old though but that may or may not be because I tell him that he is old all the time (he’s six months older than me).  Anyway, 25 is going to be a big year for me—I graduate in May from law school, take the Bar in July and hopefully become a real lawyer. 

Anyway, I was inspired by this post over at less cake {more frosting}.  I took some time to come up with a word that I thought would be a really good goal for me for my 25th year.  I finally decided on: 

I’m a worrier and and perfectionist.  I like everything just so.  One of the things I need to work on is letting go of the things that I can’t do anything about.  Sometimes stuff happens and there is no point in dwelling.  I was thinking about these things as I was trying to come up with my word and I kept coming back the serenity prayer.  You know, this one:

The poem was my real inspiration.  As I was narrowing it down to one word, I started thinking about what serenity means.  It also means peace and I think that is something that I am going to be searching a lot for as I wrap up this crazy, stressful journey of law school.

So there’s my word: serenity.  The top frame is on by nightstand so it is the first thing I see when I wake up and the last thing I see when I go to bed.  I printed a few copies of the Serenity Prayer and put it in several places, including framed on my dresser (the picture above, plus in my planner, in my wallet and on the inside of my medicine cabinet.  I will constantly be reminded of my goal to have more serenity in my life.

Worldly Wednesday

Windmills in Mykonos, Greece
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places.  Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.

Love Notes

One of my 101 Things in 1001 Days is to write a love letter every month.  I think that it does really good things for our relationship for me to sit down and reflect on how much I love Boyfriend every so often and it is also good for him to hear how much I care.  I was doing really well for a while, but the problem was that I could never remember if I had written him a letter that month or not.  To solve that problem, I hopped onto Microsoft word and created myself some love letter stationary.  Its nothing fancy, just half a sheet of paper with the month and the year on it.  That way I know that if February is still sitting in the stack then I haven’t done my job for the month.  I can email it to anyone who is interested, but it would take 2 minutes to make your own.

First Birthday Outfit

I have decided that I love having friends with kids.  It’s great, because I love babies but also like to sleep.  With my friends’ kids, it’s the best of both worlds—you get to play with the babies but when they start to cry or smell, you can give them back to mom.  We got to spend some time this weekend with two couples who are some of our dearest friends, both of whom have 1 year olds.  It was so fun to have babies in our apartment for a few hours.  One of those babies is actually turning one this week and her birthday party is this coming weekend.  I volunteered to make her something cute to wear.  I am so so happy with how it has turned out and can’t wait to get her in the whole ensemble.

 

I did a hair clip that I am going to clip onto a headband because baby girl still doesn’t have enough hair for clippies.  The rest of the outfit is a onesie, tutu and leg warmers.  The only part I’m not in love with is the leg warmers.  I got the idea from Finding My Aloha but my attempts at adding ruffles today did not go well.  I may try again later in the week if I have time.

For the headband, I did cut the same tulle from the tutu into circles (sort of—I freehanded) and folded them into fourths.  I sewed them into a circle and did two layers.  I topped it with the ribbon from the tutu, corker style.  It was super simple to make.  A Girl and A Glue Gun has a good tutorial or you can just Google it.  I hot glued the ribbon to the tulle then the whole thing onto a clip that I had.   I still need to go get little miss a headband, but I’m super happy with how it turned out.

For the onesie, I ironed some Heat and Bond (I love that stuff—we used it all the time in college to make sorority shirts and pillow cases).  I printed a 1 in Curlz font then traced it onto the Heat and Bond side (make sure its not going to turn out backwards) and ironed it on the onesie.  If I wanted to make it more secure, I would have gone around the edges with a zig-zag stich, but I thinks she’ll only wear this a couple of times, so it will be okay.

My favorite part is the tutu.  I wish I could wear a tutu like this for my birthday this week, but I don’t think it will be quite as cute on me.  I wanted her to be able to grow into it, so I used ribbon instead of elastic for the waist.  It is super fluffy.  I used three colors of tulle—pink, blue and yellow.  I didn’t think it was quite fluffy enough and I had lots of blue, so on the pink and yellow layers, I doubled up with a piece of blue as well.  Then I went back and added the ribbon.  Its also short enough so that she can still crawl while wearing it (I tested it out when she came to visit).

I will be sure to post a picture of her wearing it at the party this weekend.  Yay for friends with kids!

Apron

I have been lusting after a cute apron (yes, I know I am a dork) forever, but could never bring myself to buy one.  When I got a sewing machine for Christmas, it was first thing on my list.  I had a hard time picking out fabric for it, but when I found the accent fabric, I knew it was perfect.  I followed, for the most part, the tutorial found here.  I ended up not really following the directions towards the end because I was getting confused.  I’m super happy with how it turned out though—the only thing is that I think it is too cute to get messy cooking in it.  :)

I did try to take pictures of myself wearing it, but I hated them all.I fell in love with this fabric—London yet girly!

Altered Book

This is a pre-blog project, but I wanted to share it anyway.  No step by step on this one and honestly, I can’t even remember how I did some of the pages, but it’s a good way to use up random stuff from your stash.  I started with a small book—I think it was one of those cheesy graduation books that just sit on the shelf.  Then I just went town.  Paint, paper, gel medium, glitter, paint samples, you name it, if we had it sitting around, it got used. 

I painted the cover and glue the ribbon on to keep it shut.  Since I added so much to the book, it got quite a bit bigger.  The safety pins have beads on them that spell out “friends” since the book is full of my JYA friends.

I grouped several pages together to make one page to make it sturdier.  The pictures are all printed on regular paper to make them more alterable.  You can see some spots where the pages stuck together—if I were to do another one, I would probably seal the pages with a clear spray sealant.

I cut a page diagonally to make this pocket then mounted the picture on paint chips.  The pages are painted.  It has some fine glitter on it too.

These pages are fun.  I coated them in modge podge then dumped glitter on them.  I went back and glued some rhinestones on because it just didn’t have enough bling.  :)

Worldly Wednesday

Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places.  Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.

101 Things

Back at the beginning of last summer I got into blogging not because of crafts but because I had seen people making lists of 101 things they would do in 1001 days.  I wanted to join in so I made a list and a blog and all that jazz.  Then I started this blog and have finally realized that there's no way I can keep both of them up, so I moved my 101 Things over to this blog in the hopes that I will keep that up too.  And guess what else.  I don't have school this week, so there will be lots of crafting going on.  And lots of taking pictures of crafts I have already done to share with you.  Yay!

Worldly Wednesday

Great Hall at Homerton College, Cambridge, England aka the cafeteria for my school over there
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places.  Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.

Always & Forever

I really love giving gifts.  Don’t get me wrong, I like getting too, but I love giving.  I tend to get really excited and want to give right away.  Like tonight when I finished Boyfriend’s Valentine’s Day gifts and I made him open them.  I figure who really wants to wait anyway.  Not me.  Here’s one of his gifts.

I started with an 8x10 frame.  I ordered mine in a set from Walmart.com because I have a few other projects in mind as well.  Then I cut the amersand out of contact paper with my Circuit.  I prefer contact paper to vinyl for etching because it is cheaper.

Slather on a good layer of etching cream and let it sit for however long the bottle says.  I usually let it sit for a bit longer just for good measure.  Then I cut the words out of vinyl using my Circuit again.  I love my Sure Cuts A Lot software because I can use whatever font I want.  Make sure you flip it before you cut it because we want to adhere the vinyl to the back of the glass.  Voila, you’re done!  You can put in a picture or a piece of paper.  Plus you can change it out for different looks.  Boyfriend loved it and I do too.

Placemat Pillows

One of the traits I inherited from my father is cheapness financial responsibility.  It’s not really a bad thing because since Boyfriend and I are both in school, we are living on a pretty tight budget.  This makes redecorating our bedroom (which I have decided to do), a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, the world of blogging has taught me a lot about transforming inexpensive things.  When Boyfriend and I were at Target last week, I spotted some cute, clearance placemats.  I remembered that I had this tutorial bookmarked and decided to get them to use in the living room.  When I got them home I realized that they matched out bedspread almost perfectly, which also came from Target.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t match on purpose, unless Target was planning on me making them into pillows.  Seems a bit unlikely, but you never know.  :)

All I did was rip a little bit of the seam out of the edge, fill with polyfill and hand sew it shut.  It hardly took anytime at all.  Each placemat was around $2 and I used a bag and a half of polyfill.  Just make sure you get placemats that are sewn together so you can rip out part of the seam to get inside.

          

Edit: I linked this post up to the CSI Project!

Quite Unique

Does anyone love Groupon as much as I do?  I get daily emails from Groupon, Livingsocial, Spreesy, and Muncharoo.  Now there's a new group deal site starting--Quite Unique.  According to their website, "Quite Unique provides you with original products at a great value. They sell one product per day and each item comes from a small producer who utilizes unusual materials or techniques, or who has an interesting back-story to their company."  They're launching soon, so if you want to make sure you don't miss out, use this link.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I get $10 for each person I refer.  If you sign up you can get the same deal).

Another Snow Day

Well, it stopped snowing here, but after spending nearly an hour getting Boyfriend's car out of the parking lot, it was clear that there was no way mine was going anywhere.  The funny thing is that I was looking forward to going to work so I could get out of the apartment for a while.  Instead, I'm home again today and I have my Cricut set up in the living room and sewing machine in the office.  :)

Worldly Wednesday

Gondolas in Venice, Italy
I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places.  Every Wednesday I’m planning on featuring one picture of the places I’ve been.

Mancakes

Here in KC we are in the middle of snowpocalypse or snowmageddon if you will so I am home from school and Boyfriend is hacking up a lung so he stayed home from work today.  I took decided to make him breakfast after seeing this post at Be Different Act Normal which linked to this recipe.  Since it is already snowing like crazy, I had to improvise a little.  We both decided we liked them but next time would either do half these and half regular or use half beer and half milk because they were a little intense.  I served them to Boyfriend in his beer mug (since all of his buddies got one for Christmas he decided he needed one too—lucky for him, I’m a nice person).  The pancakes were right of the griddle when I put them in the mug, so we ended up with some condensation.

Mancakes 
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups beer (I used Bud Light)
2 Tbsp melted butter or margarine
2 eggs
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.  Wisk wet ingredients in a separate bowl.  Add wet ingredients to dry, mixing until just combined.  They cook just like regular pancakes—the only difference is they smell like beer.  You can make them regular size or mug sized.  Boyfriend had syrup on his but I just used a bit of butter.