Craft Party RSVP?

I've been thinking it would be fun to have a crafting party. I'm not sure if you are on Pinterest or not, if not, I'll send you an invite :D. Anyways...I was thinking it would be so fun to have a big pinterest craft party!! (Or ANY craft party). I know December is SUPER busy for lots of people but maybe there would be one night open to anyone who wanted to participate.

I was trying to decide how it could happen, I was thinking several different options here they are:

#1- Everyone bring one craft to share. You provide all the supplies for the craft you want everyone to make and everyone will go away with several (depending on # of people) different crafts/gifts. Only cost is supplies for your craft for everyone

#2- Everyone just brings random crafts they want to work on and we all just work on whatever crafts/gifts we want to work on. No pressure to bring lots of supplies for others' projects- No cost

#3- I could come up with several craft/gift ideas and buy all the supplies and each person could sign up for each craft they wanted to make. Each craft would have a price attached to it just for the cost of supplies

Hmmm #3 might be a lot of work for me but if anyone (tap tap anyone even there?!) would be interested in this, let me know. I think it would be really fun.

Here are some screen shots of parts of my pinterest boards:

There are SO many ideas on these boards.

If you (and a friend?) would be interested let me know either with a comment or email!! Also let me know which option # would work best for you. I guess if anyone actually signs up, majority would win in terms of which option we do--although anyone would be invited regardless, just bring your own crafts to work on!!

I'm thinking candy cane punch would be a must as well as cinnamon sugared almonds (or pecans).

I know I don't 'need' anymore sweets but everyone could also bring a favorite holiday treat to share...or not!!

It would take a little planning and we'd need to have an accurate number of guests to make sure everyone has enough supplies/room so let me know soon!! Let's say by December 5th. If there are enough people, we'll do it. Otherwise I'll just drown my 'sorrows' in egg nog and roasted garbanzo beans :). KIDDDDDING!!

Thankful Day 4

Today I am thankful for friends and family. My good friend Michelle just came up for Thanksgiving and came over for a little bit today. It's fun to see friends you haven't seen in forever. The Wednesday night before Thanksgiving we've ALWAYS gotten together with the families we have Thanksgiving with and we have dinner, usually at Round Table pizza. Since people have moved/grown up, our group is shrinking but it's still fun to hang out with them. They have a really good salad bar there too  :). I'm also thankful that my family puts up with my weirdness and how they try to hide their eye rolling from me.

Today I've made the turkey brine (which the turkey will be going into shortly...as soon as someone gets here to remove the crap from the inside of it, gag) and some ham rolls and cucumber boats for tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm cooking most of our thanksgiving meal again this year so I've been trying to get the prep work out of the way. The only things I refuse to make- stuffing (EEWWW) and sweet potato junk with marshmallows, grosssss. So since I've gone on about it, I guess I'm thankful for fooooood too :).

No progress made on either of my goals today. I got off work at 6am, took shelley to the bus at 9:30, grocery shopped right after then hung out with Michelle so I have some good excuses.

Thankful day 3

This is just easier. I figure since its thanksgiving week I'll just finish off the week writing my thankful posts here then I'll start in my personal journal.

Today I am thankful for many things (as always) but particularly heaters and my coworkers and bosses. I'm thankful for the warmth I have access too. I complain a lot about how cold I am but that's just because I'm always cold but I know it could be a lot worse.
I'm thankful for my job, coworkers, and bosses. I work at a pretty cool place and although it can be pretty stressful and intense at times, it really is a great place to work. I feel like I'm actually doing something good and necessary when I go to work.

I was customer service for the mall for years and never once did I feel like I was really making a difference or truly helping someone. Sure I gave people directions to Macy's and trader joes all the time, I wrapped the gifts they were too lazy...I mean busy to wrap themselves, I was the central person in terms of communicating with security and the mall office. But I never did good. I never felt happy there.

At this job where I work in a home as a caretaker for developmentally disabled adults, I feel needed and I feel like I have the power the help people. It's also a lot of fun most of the time, we have some big personalities here and it's fun learning about them and spending time doing the things they like to do. I also have pretty great bosses, I've known them my whole life and when they took over running the GH they asked me to work for them. They are so nice and generous all the time. They can and will do anything for our clients and they always make sure everyone is happy and healthy (both employees and residents). They go above and beyond and provide a wonderful work environment.


So for my goals, last night I restarted working on my personal progress for YW since I'm in the presidency I get the chance to go through the program again. Im actually really excited to get another medallion, they've changed since the last time I got one :). No progress on the organization front, I slept a total of one broken up hour last night due to raging winds and lots of GH windows so I didn't accomplish much today...

Thankful Day 2

I really don't plan on using this as my regular form of documenting my goal and what I'm thankful for but right now, it's working. I have no energy to find my journal. I do have a small book that I was going to write in but that's ALL the way downstairs...soooo.

Today I am thankful for technology. This is a very broad category so it's kind of cheating but I like being able to communicate with family in another state (not to mention play scrabble with cousins/uncle in UT ;))
I'm thankful that I'm able to listen to music/books and 'veg' after a loooong day at work.
I'm thankful for whoever told me about Spotify. It's life changing for my music listening.
Dramatic.
I'm thankful for email and how I get to write to my brother who's in Chile for two years and I get to hear from him once a week via email.
I'm thankful for skype and the fact that we get to SEE and talk to my 'Chilean' brother on Christmas day. I'm thankful for my iPad which allows me to do so much especially when I'm working at night. I can plan my lessons/email/watch movies/read books/pinterest :)
I'm thankful for my camera and how it allows me to take a thousand pictures with very little effort
I'm thankful for my phone that let's me text far away friends


My goal from yesterday was to be more organized...today I haven't done much to work towards that goal but I am going to clear my desk off after I'm done blogging so that will be progress. Maybe I'll get a bug in me to clean my room. That's a really hard one for me lately. I usually like to clean my room at night after everyone else is in bed and I can just throw on headphones and go to town but I'm rarely home at night now so my room is getting out of control! This is how I'm justifying it right now:

So far, it's not working for that purpose either but I do have to do some acrobatics to get to my closet...which is weird because all the clothes that should be in my closet are what's preventing me from getting to my closet easily...oh gosh. it's a vicious cycle.

Thankful Day 1

Today our YW presidency was challenged to write in our journal everyday something we are thankful for and a goal we want to make or a goal we are working on. So since this is a journal of sorts I thought I'd start off with a bang on my blog...cuz I'm too lazy to get my real journal ;)

So today I am thankful for Chapstick. It might seem simple and silly but with the cold and dry weather my lips have been in bad need of moisture...my favorite, green apple Chapstick brand. Mmmm I could eat it. But I won't.

A goal I want to work on is being more organized with my stuff and my time. Phew that's a lofty goal but it's doable...maybe I guess time will tell.

Deseret Book

So it's kind of a funny story...the other night at work, I had a weird shift because the lady I usually work with was sick so I didn't have my small "break" between my evening and night shifts. No biggie but I had planned on using that break to work on my lesson for YW on Sunday. 

So once everyone was down for the evening I went back to my little room, got on my yoga pants and brushed my teeth. While I was brushing, for some reason I left the bathroom (I thought I heard something in the GH) but anyways I ended up over by one of the large book shelves that are in the room I sleep. All the books belong to the couple that live above the GH (ANYWAYS haha) they are all church books and I glanced up and saw one that was called, The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W Kimball. Well, my lesson is on forgiveness this Sunday, so I started flipping through it (after I finished brushing) and it was such an excellent book, I was furiously writing down quotes and scriptures I could use. 

Then I decided to get on my iPad and just order the book because I liked it so much. After looking for a copy, I ended up at Deseret Book's site. They had the best price but I didn't want to order it from my iPad so I was going to order it the next day. Well I happened to glance over to the side next to the book and they were advertising a free DB app...so I downloaded it. And guess what? The free app comes with several free books and one of them was the very book I wanted to use for my lesson!! WOOOHOOO. I read several pages and I love it. I don't think we understand just how hard it is to forgive ourselves but this book is written so plainly and it's actually a pretty fun book to read...if a book about something serious can be fun...? He's just a really good author/speaker/person. 

I've already started marking my favorite parts of it using the app's highlighter/bookmark options. check it out:

It also comes with the standard works and several other books, it's so worth it if you have an apple product or an android, pretty sure you can download it to a computer too...?!

I just love when that kind of stuff works out. I was obviously meant to have access to this book..hint hint? probably. Just while I was sitting here blogging, I looked up at the shelf above me and found another book called, Standing for Something by Gordon B. Hinckley and I got it down because that's our Young Women in Excellence theme this year and found more written about the virtue of forgiveness and it's twin, mercy.

Guess I have lots of reading/planning to do. My list is just piling up!!

Funk

I'm in a blogging (and let's be honest, life) funk.

It seems every year around this time I get really stressed out and scatterbrained. I've had like 14 photo shoots in the last few weeks so A LOT of my time has been spent editing on the computer.

I also got a 'new' calling at church. Really I've been in the YW for 4+ years but have gone through 3 presidencies but they always keep me :) I'm just lucky I guess. I love being in the YW. Now my official title is YW Specialist. My friend Nicole and I are now in charge of Wednesday activities and extra activities we have for the girls. It still feels pretty much like the same calling though. Just busier because we've had several meetings to get ourselves organized and whatnot.

A lot of my evenings are spent at work now too. Since I started doing sleepover I have lots of evenings where I can't really get stuff done, but I can read or knit or practice my karate skills on death moths that divebomb me (true story) So far, I've defeated a HUGE spider, two HUGE moths and this morning there was a dead mouse in the closet...so that's totally gross haha. Ewwww I just grossed myself out thinking about it. Good thing I'm there to defeat those vile creatures.

Anywho I just haven't felt like blogging or doing anything really. I've been really super tired lately, all I want to do is sleep but that doesn't happen as much as I'd like.

I think I have 2 more photo shoots scheduled for Christmas parties so I'm probably not scheduling anymore for awhile. It's way cold out (supposed to snow this week..yikes) and all the fall colors are fading so it's not a great time for pics anyways and I could use the break!!

I have some strange patch of skin on my eyelid that I get when I'm stressed/tired and it's baaaack. I think the weather doesn't help it either. I just want to hibernate until April, pretty please?

Oh well, here are a few pics from a few random photo shoots:

Several Seniors-

 Several Families-

There's a lot more where that came from but I should get ready for work now =)

p.s. watch this trailer, sooooooo good. Cannnnot wait until March!!!! Then read the book, The Hunger Games if you haven't already, that is all.

Stocking

It's almost Christmas. I know there's still almost two full months before but it always goes by super quick. With my brother being in Chile serving a mission, we have to get his Christmas package sent off WAY early too, we should probably send it next week so it gets there on time, last year it was a New Years package instead of a Christmas package :(.

I told him last year that instead of buying and sending him gifts for birthday's and Christmas I would just save the money that I would have spent and buy him an ipod when he gets home because the stuff I was sending was dumb little things and he won't have room to bring it all home anyways. Plus his baby ipod broke so he would be coming home to no music. Well for Christmas I decided to make him a few things. I bought fabric to make him a pillowcase (see last post :)) and tonight I made this stocking for him:

Last year my creative friend Taylor (I'd link her blog but it's private) posted pictures of two similar stockings she made for her brothers, one was getting ready to leave and one had one Christmas left before coming home. I loved them and I started thinking about them again the other day. After begging her for the 'recipe' she very nicely wrote me up a pattern and emailed it to me. Only problem is my printer won't print black ink right now...hmmmm. Well I just happened to find a stocking on my table downstairs so I traced it onto black canvas-like fabric and used a too small button down shirt for the top. I just made it up as I went and it ended up working for the most part. The top is a little crooked but he's a boy :D. I also used the skinny side of a real tie that was too short for anyone here. Then I found a gold button to sew on for the tie tack. And of course no missionary is complete without his/her tag.

It only took about 20 minutes and was fairly simple! Hopefully he'll like it!!

Also today, I took some senior pics for my friend:

Ya she's basically a pro. And a special thanks to the Chapins for letting us use their awesome green chair...that I pretended to loose so I could keep it, but I'm too honest for that :).

Pillowcase Fever

Pillowcases are sewwww magnificent! If everyone gets a pillowcase from me for Christmas you can blame....well I don't know who or what you can blame. I love to sew but I'm not great at it. I taught myself how to sew when I was in middle school so I never learned how to sew 'correctly'. I say if it stay together after you're finished it's a success!! I've made lots of random sewed items, some have failed but that's how you learn. I made a toddler dress in High School for my Home EC project. That was my favorite class, pretty sure I got over 100% (hollla).

ANYWHO. Last Wednesday for activity we made pillowcases. I spent 45 minutes picking out fabric that I thought the girls would like and we were ready. I found some directions from the internet and though there were some new terms and techniques in there we went ahead anyways. I recruited a few good sewers from our ward to come help. I'm SO glad I did because even though I do know how to sew, I'm terrrrrible at cutting fabric so it was nice to learn and to have someone help do that part. Other than cutting (for me) it's a very simple pattern. Here's a link if you want to try it out. This blog I found after getting my original directions is much better at explaining and there's even a video if you need a visual.

Here are some pictures of the pillowcases I've made. I made two just now and one last week. We had 2 girls who didn't come to activity so I made them each one.

 I made this one for myself because nobody picked this fabric haha. I like it though.

 This one is bright and colorful. We have a new girl in our ward and I don't really know her style so hopefully she'll like it!

I made this one for a girl who loves purple. It makes me a little dizzy looking at it but it's a cute pattern.

This could be bad for my pocketbook. Do people even say things like that anymore? It'll be bad for my ATM card.