Color me Pink

For a while now all my baked goods have been white.

White sugars, white cupcakes,  white cakes.

Blegh.

You see,  my boyfriend and his family are allergic to artificial food dyes.  Red # 40 in particular makes his depression much worse.

So--- White cakes.

After a while I realized how bland this was and decided to make these.

As you probably realized I'm not trying to kill Josh,  the color in these cookies comes from beets rather than chemicals.

You can either boil or bake these roots to extract the color.  I personally went for baking them because that involved actually putting the vegetable into the the frosting and  I wanted to see if you could taste the beets.

Grating the beets

You couldn't.

Which, if you think about, it is actually a step up from most red food dyes.

I'm really excited to try the other colors in the spectrum,  and I'm going to throw out my food coloring.

Who needs it anyways?

The Housing Gap

Here at BYU we have this lovely little thing called "the housing gap", where your summer housing contract ends about a week before you are allowed to move into your fall home.  It becomes up to the students to decide where and how to live.

For most it's relatively easy to bunk down with a friend or relative for a few days, for others it simply makes more sense to live out of your car.

Anything goes really.

My friends at tribal lunar speak decided to spend the time living in a cardboard fort.

Here it is in all of its glory

They spent several days procuring the cardboard and building the individual pieces. Each section is  three and a half wide, three feet tall, and with a twelve foot exterior length.

Each Piece also folds up into a nice square for  easy storage and transportation*.

It was awesome.

All photos have been stolen from Facebook

The fort had eight connected tunnels with an inner courtyard for playing card games, eating, and the like.

Personally I only spent a couple nights with them since I actually a bed to sleep in,  but those nights were great fun.

So keep this in mind your next homeless period, and may the idea become even more excellent in your hands.

*easier storage and transportation anyways

Simplicity 3678

My friends Gladyce and Ryan got married this last Tuesday.

She the first of my close friends to get hitched here in college land so it was numbingly wonderful. I am truly happy for them both and I hope that the rest of their lives are as awesome as they are.

I am here to talk about my dress.

I've been sewing for quite some time, so I know my way around a sewing machine and a pattern. However, this was by far the most complex thing I have ever tried.  I found it to be both confusing and wonderfully simple.

That's what I love about sewing,  The only hard part is figuring out what the directions mean. After that it's just putting it all together.

Overall I'm quite happy with myself.  I got the dress finished in time, It looked good, and it didn't even fall apart while I was wearing it.

Some of the seams definitely could have used some improvement, but that's for the next dress.

For those of you who are interested I left of the petticoats because I wanted the skirts to be slimmer.

 I also left out of the boning the bodice and opted for straps instead,  Although that was more out of a sense of laziness then of style.

June and half of July

Last month I took on a couple of new projects that I was really excited about.

Then, out of no where, I faltered.

I didn't know how to make the type of box I wanted.

I didn't know how to sew a bag.

And there was no one on the internet to tell me how.

So instead I played through three Zelda games, and read ten books.

I bought new shoes. and a new dress.

I almost went camping, but then didn't*.

Finally, I got tired of how big my work shirts are and decided to follow this simple tutorial.

It worked, and it was even fun to do.

So now that you're caught up on the past two months of my life, it might be time to tackle that box again.


*Coed camping trips are not against the honor code. But if any such trips are reported to the 'honor code office' they will investigate you and try to prove that you did something they could act on while you were camping.  An investigation like that could have delayed my friend's wedding this August.

Fashion Post # 2

This month's exciting installment to my wardrobe consists of two items which are as awesome as they are different.

This first fun, flirty skirt originally hails from old navy but came to my closet from the local thrift store. It is featured here with one of my sister's shirts from threadless.  The bright playful color really compliments the grey of the skirt and makes for a playful ensemble.

This second piece is a spunky bright kid's hoodie that is just a little bit too short.   This feature accentuates the fact that I know how to tuck in an undershirt.

As a bonus here's what I look like in my new hobbit ears

You know, in case you were wondering.

Robot Earrings

This is a robot earring.  I have two of them

They are as awesome as they look.

My younger brother gave to me for Christmas this last year and I simply adore wearing them. They're cute, spunky, and mine compliments for me every time.

The only problem being that they are a little on the large side, and hurt my ears if I wear them for too long.  This has sparked the following internal debate;

        I could make these into a couple of cool necklaces,  and then I could wear them more often. But-  but robot earrings... 

As this battle continues to rage inside of me I've decided to go ahead and make a necklace.  One that will go with the earrings rather than translating them

I knew that I wanted the colors to be muted like the earrings, and for there to be some red in it.   This means that I bought some nice dark silver chain and a grayish wire.  The red came in the form of a bright flat-backed crystal. 

For the central focus of the necklace I was going to utilize a Norwegian coin my friend had given me.  But when I put it with the chain the color didn't quite mesh.  

Instead I made a quite wreathe out of the dark wire and stuck a couple of the jewels to it. 

 I had managed to forget the o-rings so I maid similar tiny wreathes to connect the clumps of chain.

For the curious the first two groups have three chains each, the third clump has two chains.  For me this adds a degree of visual interest to the piece.

The final touch was to hot glue the crystals to both sides of the smaller wire wreathes.

I'm extremely happy with the result, and I intend to add this necklace to my etsy page.  

First I will have to figure out how to make a version that isn't held together by glue and wire. I definitely don't want to hand out a sub-par product.

The Writer's Block; A Book Review

My youngest brother got me  this little book for Christmas, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on it for your pure enjoyment.

This book is a nearly perfect cube* and contains a huge number of writing prompts meant to jump start your imagination when you get stuck on that novel of yours.

These prompts come in three forms; challenges, spark words, and writing topics.

Spark words are just words, usually accompanied by a picture. They are meant to get your imagination rolling as you consider all the possibilities or memories associated with the duo.

Challenges are your more typical writing prompts,  stuff  that ranges from "Write about your first artistic expression" to "Write about an incident that could be used against you if you ever ran for office".

The Writing Topics are my personal favorite.  They usually deal with advice and exercises from extremely published authors out in the real world.  They are always interesting, but I find they make a better tool for procrastination.

Overall I really like this book.  It's extremely helpful when I find that I need to just be creative for a second.

My one small complaint has to do with the way the book is bound.  See, because of it's blocky shape the pages have to be rather stiff, meaning that they clump together.  This isn't really a problem, except that if you just flip the book open randomly you land on certain pages more often than others.

Despite this nit-picky complaint I would still give the book five out of five stars.  If you have a writer in your life this would definitely make a great gift.

Don't Do This, Guys. Ever.

My friends and I were making a nice dinner together when I had to head home for a forgotten ingredient.

Jade decided to come with me for company.

On our way a tallish guy with bright orange-ish hair approached us to asked directions to a building on Campus.

He started off by telling us his name, and that he lived over in a certain apartment number.  Which is fine I guess, if he was feeling a strong desire to establish himself as having a reason to talk to us.

But then after a minimal amount of small talk he proceeded to ask me and Jade where we lived.

Jade just smiled and said that she lived in another apartment complex.  She had the easy out.

Then he turned to me and asked again, "where do you live?"

"oh- in the Riviera."

"What apartment number?"

"In this General area"

The hint wasn't subtle, so he went away.

We waited until he had turned the corner before we went down the steps to my door.

I thought that was the end of it.

Except that two days ago my roommate told me some guy had come by and gave her this message for me.  "challenge accepted,  I've found you"

And he came again today.

I don't think I have to actually tell anyone not to do this.  It's idiotic, creepy, and it wont make any girl want to go out with you.

I don't even have a punchline for this.  This weirdo just needs to get a clue.

Red Wax

I love making three dimensional art.  There's just something so vibrant about it, and it makes me smile while I attempt to bring a piece to life from the fuzzy ideas inside my head.

This time the idea had to do with how candles also happen to be made of wax.

Then about how it would be fun to do a more visually interesting background to see how it would mesh with the automatically vibrant foreground.

This is what I ended up with.

For the canvas I was first trying to get an interesting texture from paint, ink, and a sponge.  Of course It wasn't quite getting the effect I wanted so I switched over to Elmer's glue.

Which somehow worked like a charm.

Once that was all dry I hot glued tea candles  and a couple stubby round red candles, to the top of the canvas. Then I lit them up

That burn session was a definite learning experience.

First, tea lights aren't the best if you wants a good flow, but are manageable if you cut a slit in the side.

Second, my work friend Jade is a bit of a pyromaniac.

When I went to bed that night I figured that I would be adding another layer of wax in the morning, but it has really grown on me.

I just love the simplicity of it.  And I think that the more complex background works.

Not sure how long these will last though

Upcycled Headband

If you're like me and you have to hem your pants more than a couple inches then you end up with a lot of scrap pieces of fabric.

Normally I just throw that stuff away, but yesterday I thought of a neat little trick to turn the scraps into a passably cute headband.

I started with my cast-off hem and sliced along one seam so that it was just a strip of fabric.  If your seams are particularly obtrusive you might want to experiment with cutting at different points so that the lines fall more aesthetically on the finished product.

Using the original hem as a guide I folded over the raw edge of the fabric and pinned it into place.  Then I used this stitch to sew the two sides together.

At this point all that was left was to find tassels so that I could tie the headband at the back of my head.  I ended up using some scraps from a previously cannibalized vest, but the other discarded hem could come into play as well.

*blurry pictures will be replaced later today.

Work Clothes

Since I'm at the summit of my second real week at Nellie's Diner I thought it was about time to alter my work clothes until they fit me a little bit better.

The shirt is a small, but it absolutely swamps me.  To fix this I wet it down with hot water and then ran over to the apartment complex's laundromat and stuck it in the drier.  The reasoning behind this was basically that laundry is super expensive here at the Riviera and I didn't want to drop another buck twenty five.

The pants were a pretty lucky find at the local thrift store.*  They were only six bucks and fit me pretty well except for being too long.   This was a really easy fix with a sewing machine and a pair of scissors.

approximately no change.

The pants turned out perfectly if I do say so myself, but the shirts shrank a disappointingly small amount.  Maybe I'll just give up and sew it up, or maybe I'll give the drier another go.

*although apparently my friend didn't realize that they needed to be in the first shot.

Breakfast Cereal

Last weekend I spent all Saturday with my friends over at Tribal Lunar Speak in the making of another video.

I don't have any funny stories to go along with it, although I was suppose to  be in a shot that didn't work out.

Still,  ten hours of my life went into this.*  So I feel like sharing it here.

*And by that I mean I bummed around until someone needed me to run get something. Yay, gaffe work.

Tortillas From Scratch

Source

There's just something about tortillas that screams store bought to me. They come in a bag of twelve and they look like this.

But the other day my dear friend Gladys showed me this recipe online and I just had to try it out for myself.

So how do they compare?

Right off the bat they taste fresher, and the consistency is pleasingly chewy.

I like them a lot, and I think that the flavor is really good.  They don't fade into the background when you add other ingredients into the mix.  I've only made a quesadilla out of one of them so far but the homemade tortilla added to the meal rather than merely being the vehicle for it.

It's also a bonus that the ingredients are things that I have on hand.

The only slight drawback for me was that these are inherently thicker than the brand I usually frequent. But all things considered that didn't necessarily take away from this recipe.

Overall I would make them again.

How to Curl a Synthetic Wig

So,  hypothetically you have a wig that looks like this.

And you need it to look like this

source

Now, I doubt that my method was the best method.   Or even among the most effective. It was really easy to pull off and it didn't require a huge commitment  of resources on my part.*

Because the synthetic hairs are plastic you can't use traditional methods to curl them. If you do then the plastic would melt and you would no longer have a wig. 

What you would have is a lump of sadness.

First, start off by braiding the hair as tightly as possible. While I did this I noticed that there was sort of a pattern to the locks of the wig so I did my best to follow that guide as much as possible

Then, boil some water and placed the wig and mannikin head into the bathtub.


Once the water reached a rolling boil take the pot and pour it slowly over the wig, being careful to get the entire thing wet.


Let the wig mostly dry then undo the braids and comb out the hair.

Unfortunately we didn't take pictures, but at this point the wig isn't so much curly as it is crimped,  this is because the braids were so small and because we wanted the end product to have a sort of wild, unkempt look to it.


Now locate some curlers** and do them up in the hair, only this time remember to actually take pictures.

in curlers

Wet

 

mostly dry

undone

 

combed out

The wig was more or less curled,  although it did require a few finishing touches by wonderful ladies who were in charge of makeup.


Voila!

*I don't know,  it could be.  I didn't actually do the research myself.

*We just got some "Magnetic" ones from Walmart, which were made entirely of plastic 

What the Bamboo stitch looks like in the Round

I finally got around to trying out the Bamboo stitch featured in this Laughing Willow post here,  and I just wanted to show you what the stitch looks like so far.

It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, mostly just because I didn't take time to actually process the fact that this stitch does look like bamboo stalks.

Crochet is generally that straightforward, so I'm not sure why I thought.

Overall I  do like the stitch.  It works up a little stiff in my default Simply Soft yarn, but the fabric still feels nice.

I'm also extremely fond of the thick stripes on front.

I have been on a stripey kick lately.

I recommend trying it, if you are so inclined.

For  those new to the double ended hook like me, these are the two video resources that I used to figure out how this stitch works in the round.

Good luck!

How to Make Caramelized Syrup

I promised quite a while ago that I would do a tutorial the next time I made myself some of my favorite syrup.
 Not that it took this long for the last batch to run out,  just that this is is the approximate amount of time it takes for me to get off of my butt.

Here is what you will need for the recipe

4 cups of sugar (divided)
2 cups of water
3/4 cups of corn syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 pinch of salt

This recipe is actually really easy once you know what you're doing.  The only real commitment here is time, and the worst thing that could happen is a slightly blackened pan. So after you read this I highly suggest you try it.

Start off by putting two of the four cups of sugar into a heavy-bottomed pan,  mine is aluminum but the recipe itself calls for iron.   I don't  actually think it matters.

At this point I also suggest setting aside the rest of the ingredients so that you have them ready.  If you don't then the rush will kill your syrup near at the end.

Turn the sugar onto a medium high heat, and start stirring with some manner of heatproof spatula.

For a bit you wont see anything happening but then the bottom of the pan will begin to glisten ad your sugar will slowly start to clump up.

This is called caramelization boys and girls and it is a magical, tasty thing.

Keep stirring the sugar until all of the granules are melted. It's important to make sure that you continuously scrap the bottom of the pan so that none of it burns.

Once all of the sugar melts add the water, sugar, and corn syrup.

Here's a video demonstration for the inclined.

The important bit is that you should step back when you pour the water in and to stir it as quickly as possible.  This way the solidified clumps don't stick to the bottom of the pan.*

Once upon a time I let the clumps stick to the bottom of my pan, then I thought it would be a good idea to try to pry them off with my spatula, and then slowly a butter knife. 

It was a very bad idea.

Turn down the heat to a medium warm and continue to stir until all the sugar dissolves.

Add the vanilla and salt,  and this syrup is ready to drizzle over your favorite breakfast good.

It tastes like Ambrosia guys, promise.

I'll have to think of some clever way to decorate the bottle.  Any Idea?

*Come to think of it you probably didn't need to see the rest of it, I'm not sure why we left it running for so long. For your entertainment? 

Why I Stayed

In the long and arduous search for a place to live this summer I looked around my current apartment and thought- "meh- this is good enough"

 None of that silly packing stuff.

None of that silly unpacking stuff either.

However, I did reorganize my own things into more advantageous positions around the apartment.

My dishes?

Bam!  In the cupboard I can actually reach without climbing onto the counter!

My silverware?

You can't tell, but I even reorganized it in a way that makes sense

IN the drawer directly underneath that cupboard

But wait that's not all!  I also took advantage of the hall closet I didn't even realize was there the last time I moved in.


The thing I'm  most excited about here is the fact that I got to put my art up on the walls.   It suits me in a way that the stuff my old roommates had up didn't.

The Foam one is missing because it simply didn't mesh with the others on the wall. But I'll find someplace for it soon enough.

Cool Things

My awesome friends over at Tribal Lunar Speak have gone and made another excellent video.  This one is more in line with the type of humor that they'll be showcasing for the rest of the summer.

It's definitely weird, but certainly still hilarious.

And I'm actually in this one!

I was in the last one too, but keen eyes could actually recognize me in this latest installment.

My acting skills may not be amazing*, and my sleeve may accidentally be pushed up,  but I'm the only short cutesy girl my friends know.

And that's how I get jobs done.

(click the link for the bigger version)

*I was going for subtle, Okay?

Bread, and the Symbolism Thereof

One thing that I admire about my wonderful grandmother is how she always has homemade bread in the house. 


Yes, the store bought stuff is a wonder that revolutionized the way we see bread, but there is nothing I love more than slicing myself off a piece of that good food and drizzling it with honey-butter


Even the thought makes my mouth water. 


I think that I would like to do to that too when I grow up.  The small adventurous part of myself thinks that anyways.


Except I'm already twenty, which most people consider adulthood soooo.... right now?

I started off with this recipe here at the amazing Year of Bread Blog.  I chose this one simply because it seemed easy and I had almost all of the ingredients.


I didn't actually know that bread flour was a thing, so I simply subbed that out for regular old all purpose.  I also didn't have any honey but sugar seemed to work anyways.


It was definitely an easy put together, and I enjoyed the final product, but I think that I'm going to try to mix it up the next time around. 


One thing that I need to work on is kneading the dough.   Even with YouTube tutorials I have no idea if I'm doing it right, or even when it was finished.

I hope that this is something that can be fixed with practice.  Or perhaps with that magical sound 'Bread Flour'.


Look! I made stuff!

A Book on the Shelf

This is just a quick post I knocked out as I'm attempting to gather all the ingredients needed to make bread.*

Since the local thrift store is only about a mile away my friends and I go there quite often whenever the need arises for any hopeful but random object.

A week or so ago I was thumbing through the cookbook section when I ran across this

This is the record of a special moment between mother and son that I had somehow been given a speacial window into.

I wonder about how they both felt when he left home.

I wonder where he went, and how much use he found in this book.

I wonder why he didn't keep it,  even just for the sentimental value.

Standing there at DI I felt like I had a string of lightning in my hand, one that connected me to this Sheldon Martin, where he went on his mission, and his mother.

I put the book back on the shelf.

* you wouldn't think it would be so hard would you?

Being Silly and Dressing Up

My friends and I decided to go to the midnight showing of The Avengers together, and man, I loved it.

It was a superb action flick,  with plenty of great fight sequences, witty one liners, and cool heroes that we all had an interest in.  More amazingly, it was really funny and there was character development on part of several of the heroes.

I highly recommend seeing it in theaters if you can

Since we were  going as a large group we decided to up the ante a little bit and dress the part.

We're all poor college students so we focused on a few key elements to bring across our characters with out having to spend too much.

Josh on the left simply cashed in for the little kid's helmet and hammer* from the Avenger's toy series at Walmart.  We pinned a red towel to his shoulders to really pull the look together.

I simply borrowed a bow from Taylor's younger siblings and wore all black to pull off the movie version of night hawk. I actually wore makeup and high-heeled leather boots too, you can't see any of that, so I thought I should inform you that I put that much effort into being a girl.

Gladys also had an easy costume in Black Widow, as all she had to do was curl her hair, wear all black, and borrow some toy gun holster's from a contest commercial Josh and his roommate's shot a while ago.

Ryan** bought a helmet from the surplus army supply store up in Orem and Gladys constructed the shield from scavenged cardboard and a dollar-store hula-hoop.  The mask came from a Renaissance fair Taylor attending back in Middle School.

I'll have to load a better picture as soon as possible, but Taylor actually has a severely awesome home-made arc reactor underneath his shirt.  He also happens to have mascara on his face.

Mariah pulls of a nice Pepper pots in unseen stylish heels and an unworn red jacket. 

As a bonus here's Gladys posing with a set of severely creepy Godzilla sized chipmunks in the Birthday room of the theater. 

Look at their eyes.

LOOK AT THEM!

it looked focused on my phone, promise.

* It was way too fun to hit things with a giant foam hammer, you should try it.

** Glady's boyfriend, he's cool.

New Growth

It's not much to see yet,  but this is the latest thing that I'm overly excited about.

I got a wine glass from the local thrift store the other day and decided to stick some green onion bulbs into it.

It's been two days and already they're growing back.  I have so many ideas of how to expand upon this theme that I'm not sure what would be the best to follow through on.

My only real problem is that the closest plant nursery isn't quite  within walking distance.

New Things

I've been crocheting ever since I was a little girl, so it was something of a shock and a delight when I downloaded a pattern from Raverly and discovered that I had no idea how to pull it off.

I had never even heard of the Tunisian stitch before.

It even require a completely separate hook.


Despite my instantaneous excitement I only just got around to trying this new genre of awesome.  I  started off with a simple scarf, with an edge to add some interest.

I was planning on adding there  some unorthodox pizazz as well but the idea got away from me and turned into something stupid.

The stitch itself is really easy, and I simply adore the variation of line on the opposing sides. The fabric works up a little stiff, but it doesn't make the scarf uncomfortable.

I'm already excited to try fancier things.

For instance,  did you know that some afghan hooks come with double ends?

Changing my Style

My sister has always been the fashionable one between the two of us.

During high school She used to wake up at five every morning to put herself together for a church class that started at six.

Except that even with all that time she still wouldn't be perfect, which meant that the first thirty minutes of that class were spent in the bathroom.

She would curl and straiten her hair, apply two different kinds of mascara, and douse herself in so much hairspray that I could smell it on me for the rest of the day.

I actually resented her for it, mostly because I felt that it was a glaring misunderstanding of the word 'priorities'*, and partially because I knew that she was much prettier without all that crap in the first place.

She was the fashionable one,  but the truth is that for the first part of my life I tried to be the unfashionable one on purpose.

She was being stupid,  with all that makeup and that shaving,  so I would be the exact opposite of that and end up the truer person.  I wore  ugly, holey shirts to school**,  refused to do anything fancy with my hair,  only shaved my armpits,  didn't pierce my ears, and never ever wore makeup.

I wasn't pretty, but I wasn't putting on airs. So I was certain, in that little prideful knot of my heart,  that I was the better person.

And I never had to wake up a second sooner than was necessary.

In middle school Jordyn dealt with my demeanor by hanging out with me as little as possible. There were other reasons I'm sure, but this was definitely one of them.  Now that I look back on it I'm sure that she found me equally stupid as I found her.

Who doesn't shave their legs?  Even when their Mom gave them permission a whole two years earlier than the established age***?

By the time I got to high school my sister had wised up a little bit. She knew that I hated clothes shopping more than anything,  and she hated the way I chose to dress.  So ever slowly her clothes began to filter into mine.

I was suddenly wearing low-cut preppy tops, camisoles, and things that cinched at the waist.   I secretly felt pretty and fashionable, and she felt like she could be seen around me.

Even after she she moved out she would stop by once in a while with garbage bags full of various tops.

She gave me copious amounts of things that she had accidentally bought a couple sizes too small, or had grown tired of and had shrunk in the wash.  So it was by the time that I graduated high school I hadn't gone anything but pants shopping in over three years.

I'm not saying that this is bad, in fact, it was quite awesome.

I hate clothes shopping.

Recently, however, something of a change has begun working in my heart.  I look at my sister and realize that in my attempt to be pretty I have taken her style as gospel.

I just wore her clothes because they were there, and because she looked good in them.  But I never really liked them for myself.  Now, after all these years, I dont even know what I do like.

Makeup isn't evil, neither is doing your hair****.  Just because we want to look good doesn't make either of us shallow.

Well I still think she was shallow back then,  but she probably isn't now.

The point is that I'm going to start buying my own clothes.  Things that make me feel pretty for who I am.

And things that don't let anyone taller than me see down my shirt, which evidently is something of a problem I have.

I donated half of my shirts to the DI here in provo, and I got three shirts of my own to wear.  From now on I'm going to set aside ten dollars every month to replace my wardrobe.

There are simply too many shiny things in the world to spend anymore than that on clothes.

ed: Let me be a bit clearer. I love my sister, she is simply awesome and she has dealt with a lot in her life. The events and feelings I discuss here are simply one facet of my feelings towards her at several small points in my life.  I loved getting clothes from her, they were an important bridge in our relationship and in the woman I have become. 

I'm simply ready to become my own person.


Besides, this post was suppose to me make me look at least as bad as it made her,  I hope that came across.

Okay, back to the originally scheduled program!

I really like this one because of the way it hangs on my body.  It's loose and comfortable but shows off my curves really well.   I also happen to love the way that touch of pink pops perfectly. I've gotten compliments every time I've worn it.

Everyone loves unedited photos! Right?

I actually bought this one because my friends told me that it looked awesome on me, now that I've worn it a couple times I tend to agree with him.   It's pretty, artsy, and just the right amount of girly. I can't help but smile every time I put it on.

... Guys?

This shirt is unfortunately a little see-through so I have to dawn an undershirt every time I put it on.  This dims my waistline a little but I adore the simplicity of the design.  No bright colors here, no tricks,  just something pretty to look at.

*we had thirty minutes in-between seminary and high school,  so why did she have to miss the first part of class, hmm?


**in grade school I used to chew my sleeves, the same shirts still fit me in middle school so...


*** I'm one of the hairiest girls I know


**** I shave now okay, have for a while. 

A Mobile

I've been hankering to make something cute and girly for a while now.  I see granny-esque cross-stitch patterns and tutorials on how to make lace and suddenly my sense of decorating style suddenly goes out the window.

I ran across a tutorial online on how to do this cutesy baby mobile from one of my favorite blogs.

I have a friend who is having a baby.

Coincidence?  I think yes!

Instead of just copying the lovely Jen I decided to flex my girly muscles and try something of my own design.*

So this is what I came up with.


It was actually remarkably easy to make** and only took Josh and I an hour or so to knock out.

As far a supplies go I picked up one of those foam wreath things, a bunch of flowers, a lock of those white bobbly things in the pic,  a white ribbon, some red/pink beads, birds from the wedding section, stretchy cord, and some crimp beads.

I went with a wide white satin ribbon and pink flowers because those things are elegant?

Obviously.

We cut the flowers and the bobbles into short chunks and started gluing them around the foam ring.

Figuring out how to  secure the birds with the stretchy cord was a bit a conundrum until I remembered that I know how to do a total of two knots. One of those is a lark's head, which is how you secure the kite strings to the kite itself,  it also happens to look like a miniature harness.

Even with this stroke of genius the birds hung lopsided, but that was easy to fix with a small dab of hot glue on the middle of their backs.

We used also used  crimp beads just to be safe, and then cut the excess string off with my singular pair of crappy scissors.

After that we decided how far we wanted the bird to hang down from the mobile and strung beads along the length.  We didn't bother using hot glue or crimp beads here, because the weight of the birds provided enough friction to keep them in place.

We tied (crimp beads again) the birds the the foam ring and then I held the mobile while Josh wrapped the satin ribbon carefully around our flowery creation.

After that it was only a matter of tying on something to hang to mobile by and voila!

Il est fini!

This will also available at my etsy store here,  I'll post it there as soon as I get better pics. Although the original has obviously already gone to my friend.  At that point I'll also update the pictures here  so you that you can actually get an idea of the thing.

*This decision only had very little to do with the fact that my Jo-Ann's didn't have any of the necessary supplies.


**It was honestly harder to photograph this thing, and I never did get a really good, non-blurry picture. ***

*** which I'm sure comes as an absolute shock to you.  

Have a terrible picture of my friend, :-)