Stubborn

stub·born  

/ˈstəbərn/

Adjective

1. Having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, esp. in spite of good arguments or reasons...
2. Difficult to move, remove, or cure.

That's what I am. I freely admit it. When I get an idea in my mind, it is the best idea and I don't rest until it is done....or something like that.... :D

Well last Wednesday I was madly organizing my room, trying to get it cleaned up before Ty and his fiancee Jessica came up to visit. When I realized that my closet is awful. It's tiny and crammed with junk/clothes/shoes/everythingthatdoesnthaveahome. So I grabbed my handy dandy yellow notepad (love those mini ones!) and started drawing out what my new closet would look like. I measured and re-measured and drew out the plans. It was going to be awesome!
(after this chicken scratch I made it official by typing it all up and even breaking down how much all the wood would cost, I was $4 off!)

I obviously didn't get it done that day, I didn't even buy the materials that day. Ty and Jessica arrived reallllly late Wednesday night/Thursday morning. They just left Sunday afternoon but it was really fun to have them here and we got to meet Jessica which was cool. So we did lots of family stuff those days, no time to work on my new closet. Which is fine.

Saturday I did have a little bit of time so I cut all of my boards to size.

 First I measured and marked each board so I would know the exact pieces that board would make. That was very handy.
Cutting all the boards didn't take a whole lot of time, maybe about two hours (that includes digging for the correct tools-the tool section of the garage is next on my list).

A couple days later (today) I had a few hours between work and going back to work. The above is a ^^photo of my closet BEFORE ^^

Yaaaa....can you see why I need some help? Ridiculous.

There are 35 pack boxes of those thin velvet hangers at costco right now, seriously the best things I have bought in a long time! My mom bought me a box, then I went back and bought 2 more ($10 each!). So what I have a lot of clothes! I do have one whole box leftover for future use though.

These things are awesome clothes don't slip from them and they take up half the size of a regular hangers. Serious space saver.

   I have this $4 ikea clothes rack that I used to house all of my hanging clothes until the closet it finished. My room is literally an obstacle course right now.

Today I managed to get my 'shoe rack' done! Hurray. I cut little dividers for each of those shelves to split them in half, but I actually like it better without them, plus i have more room. Which I obviously need because I still have several pairs of shoes that don't fit.... (donation time!)

everyone scoffed at me and told me to get a pre-packaged closet kit. Glad I saved myself hundreds of dollars and proved them wrong!

 Tomorrow perhaps if I have some time I will finish up. The only parts I have left to do are cut 3 hanger rods and screw in 2-3 more shelves on the sides. To the left of the shoes will be a skinny rod to hang my long dresses. There will be a short shelf below those dresses for additional storage (remember we don't waste space). 

To the right of the shoes at the top will be another hanging rod for all my 'tops', sweaters, shirts, etc....Below that I am going to put another shelf and rod for all my skirts. That way, each type of clothing is sectioned out and much easier to sift through. The side shelves will be gone through and cleaned out, they are a mess right now.

Hopefully it will all be done soon so I can have my room back! 

My fingernail polish organization corner now! :) I obviously love the stuff.

Maybe this should be a 2nd post but I'm including it here....

We also worked hard and fast to get our craft room done. It was a disaster but between the garage, the laundry room, re-doing food storage, organizing closets, painting, etc....it got done finally.

 Walking in to the room this is what you see (Nicole, do you notice no more pink/white wall?:))

 The back 'kitchen' corner

 This is a craft cutting table I made for my mom for her birthday (2 months later....). I bought two of those expedite 4 cube bookcases for the base. Then got REALLLLY lucky at the re-store and found this heavy duty solid table top for $10. It was ugly and brown but I painted it and it works perfectly! There is a rounded spot at one end for all of the cutting supplies and the table fits our huge cutting mat exactly....literally exactly.

 The other side of the room has more of those expedite bookcases and desks for my mom and I to work at. Lots of storage.

 And looking towards the back.
It's nice to have it all organized and put away. Let's hope it lasts longer than a week :)

Sweet Retreat

I'm a little (a lot) late posting this than I meant to, but such is life. I guess blogging about putting mayonnaise in your hair and bee keeping was more interesting at the time.

At the beginning of the month, I went on a 4 day scrapbooking retreat with my mom and some friends. We've been going to these for 4 or 5 years now and they are so fun!! Our friends Donna and Nicole along with a couple of their friends put these retreats on and they are amazing at it!! They come up with a theme then they stick to that theme. This year was Sweet Retreat. The first day Nicole made each of us a little luffa ice cream sundae. She got the little ice cream dishes, put a luffa in it then topped it with a red pompom and a straw. So cute.

The next night we all got one of those sleeping eye masks on our bed, seriously I love those things and mine had just broken so it was perfect, I've used it almost every night since.

One lady also does this really neat little spa type treatment every year. She bakes washcloths after she soaks them in water and a little essential oil then passes the warm (hot :)) washcloths around to everyone, it's very refreshing and gives everyone a nice evening boost.

They also hold an amazing raffle. I'm not much of a gambler for various reasons, one of them being I'm cheap cheap cheaperson. But I do like to support the raffle so I bought 5 dollars worth of tickets= 5 tickets. I put them all into this super cute vintage suitcase that was filled with cute scrapbooking paper, striped straws, stamps, candy, etc....I wanted that thing SO bad. When we did the auction, that was the first one they did. Everyone had put A LOT of tickets in it. But I WON IT!! I literally screamed a little, blew out an ear drum or two and squealed all while my face turned bright red :).


There were 2 other items up for auction. Then at the end, the raffle off the money to be used for your payment for the next retreat. Once again, they called my number....wooops. I only had 4 tickets in that bowl along with 134ish other tickets. That means I got $134 to put towards our next retreat. I felt so bad for winning half of the prizes but then I was so glad I had bought those 5 little tickets. Afterwards I felt like joining the lottery or whatever you do for the lottery, but I didn't. Read=Cheap.

That was a fun way to end the weekend for sure.

Along with winning some wonderful prizes, I also got A LOT done. I made over 80 cards, painted several wooden figurines (missionaries, captain amercia, among others), watched several episodes of Arrested Development, and caught up on missed sleep from girls camp. It was glorious even though the room my mom and I shared was boiling hot due to the sun that baked our room all day.

This is always a fun weekend with a lot of neat people, it's fun to see what others are working on and get inspiration from them. Nicole and I might have kept trading cards so we could copy each other ;).

Here are some pictures. I forgot I had my camera until the last day so there aren't very many.

 my desk never stays clean for long. We each get a 6 ft. table to use all weekend and my mom and I shared a middle table for extra supplies and it still was SO messsssy. I work better in a little chaos though, unfortunately. This was after I had cleaned my desk off a bit...:/

 a few of my 'guys'. My hands we SO shaky for some reason so they aren't great and the lines aren't straight but that's what I get for freehanding with a shaky hand. Oh well.

 Hi Nicole!! Speaking of tables, hers is always super clean and organized. I want to be like that when I grow up.

here are a few of the cards I made. I tried to use up lots of scraps which I did!! Yay me. I also used up 4 small 6x6 paper packs which I was very proud of. These are just some of the styles I made, I tried to make several of the same card just to make it easier. I have a lot more where that came from though. Gray was my color of choice for the weekend I guess, I just realized gray is on almost card I made.

It was a fun weekend and I can't wait for next year!! My ADD has issues and I usually become a recluse during these weekends. I do like to be social sometimes but there are times I just need to block everything out and do my own thing for a few hours, so I tried to balance that this year. My headphones hurt my ears really bad though so when I got home I bought the most comfy pair I've ever owned, and they are noise cancelling which was great for my trip to Rexburg this last weekend.

Day #4 and other stuff

Phew I forgot we had one last day at camp. It was a crazy weekend at my scrapbooking retreat and I didn't have a great connection so I never got around to blogging about our last day at girls camp!!

The last day was pretty boring in terms of what we did. We woke up (late again) and sent the girls to breakfast where they ate pretty quickly. Then we had some time to start packing up camp. Let me just say this, we had A LOT of stuff. It took awhile to pack all up. Nicole and I pretty much stayed at camp the entire morning packing and organizing I mean throwing stuff into whatever container it would fit in :). We had grandeous plans of having the girls put stuff into the correct tote that was labeled with a laminated list of what goes in what tote. That didn't happen. Nicole and I pretty much packed up all our camp stuff while the girls were off getting their certification certificates and having the last devotional and packing themselves. We had to have our YW President come stay with us the night before to help us drive girls home and it was a good thing we did because we accumulated a lot more stuff it seemed like.

I don't really remember anything spectacular happening this day. It was sad to leave camp in a, I'm sad I won't see the girls everyday and make fun memories with them, but I'm REALLY glad to go take a real shower and sleep in a real bed way. I'm fairly certain I came home with walking pneumonia or at least a NASTY cold that rocked me to the core it felt like. Every cough was just so painful and took a lot out of me. It took me a good 4 days to recover from camp. Luckily I was able to find someone to cover my shift at work Monday so I was able to sleep some of it off.

4 days after I got home, I packed up my crafting supplies and left to go to Monroe for the weekend. It was SO fun. It was loud, and productive, and yummy, and relaxing, and tiring, and weight gaining, and fun. I will blog more about this maybe later. I'm so busy I want to scream!! I'm at work right now while I'm kind of working on the 12 hours of continuing education I just found out TODAY that I have to complete before next Monday (my birthday!!). It's for my job with Shelley, it's ridiculous. I already do this for my other job so why do I need to do it for both?! UGHHHRRREEJJJHHH. That's my mad 'voice'

I also decided I wanted to learn Japanese. It's hard. I started last night and didn't have time to do today's lesson so all I've learned to say so far is, Hello, do you speak English? Hi, No, Yes, A little, excuse me etc....I can't really remember it all. The nice thing is, for the most part when you look at the word you can pronounce it like it's written, except for a few letters like U and you have to shorter certain sounds and whatnot. It will be fun to see if it actually works. Each day for 10 days I have a 30 minute lesson. So I'll probably start over tomorrow or whenever I have time, maybe after I complete my 12 hours. So far I managed to get 4- 1 hr classes in today (some aren't really 1 full hour but still count for the hour thank goodness!!

Ok perhaps I'll blog tomorrow in between all my classes I GET to take :) Right now I'm learning about good nutrition which isn't so bad.

Study Journal

Today I thought I'd post about my new study journal I started last week. So far it's been something that I've really enjoyed doing. I'm not very good at sitting down and reading my scriptures just to read them, so I found a solution for myself. I got inspiration from an LDS blog. They had these study journals for sale but I decided I could make my own and it could be more customizable for what I want to do with it. 

Here is my usual setup while working on my journal:

1. My ipad is there for scripture references (SO handy to just search keywords), conference talks, magazine articles, access to LDS.org, etc....
2. I have a regular spiral notebook where I quickly write down references and short quotes that I want to include in my journal. It's just a jumble and all disorganized so that's why I paraphrase in that then do my 'final draft'.
3. Highlighter, permanent marker, nice writing pen (sharpie pens are great), scripture crayons (any colored pencil or crayon work)
4. My strength of youth book with journaling pages
5. True to the Faith book
6. The latest conference Ensign

* not pictured, dry white out and double sided tape

Usually I just start out with the spiral notebook, True to the Faith book, and my iPad.
First I choose a 'topic'. The topics are either church doctrine or a church principle.
Then I define the topic and find scripture references that teach it.
Next I read those scripture and write what they teach, or what I got from them.
Next I find quotes or talk references relating to my topic

All that goes on the front side of my pre-made journal page
The next side is just lined for journaling where I jot down my personal thoughts on the topic, personal experiences, goals, etc.
Some topics have lots of overflow, stuff that didn't fit anywhere else so I often have 1-4 additional pages where I write more quotes, references, etc....
Here are some page examples:

 My first page. I have a list of Topics I want to work on, on the left. I decided to do 2 per week because they can get a little involved and I spend a few hours on each topic. Last week I did 5 topics though :) Still have to finish up 1.5 of them. On the right is my first 'title page' that introduces the topic.

 These are my next pages that go along with this topic, on the left is my journaling and on the right is qualities of someone who has charity and someone who is prideful. It's kind of sad when you fit into both categories pretty equally, but that's why I have that journaling page to write goals down ;)

 These are my extra pages for the topic of Repentance (which is what my lesson is about on Sunday, so I'll be able to use this as a good reference point). On the left I wrote a big quote in the middle that I made a goal from. Then I surrounded it with additional quotes that I liked. On the right is just random thoughts on Repentance (note I spelled it wrong on my page, I'm too lazy to fix it though). I listed the steps of repentance, more quotes, references, a list of how you feel when you repent and when you don't, and qualities of someone who repents.

 Another title page. This topic was Spiritual and Physical Preparedness.

 I used the parable of the Ten Virgins a lot since it explains this concept pretty well. On the left I drew a large oil lamp then wrote the things I want my lamp to be filled with. Around the lamp is one huge quote that I liked. On the other side I cut out a picture of the parable from the gospel art kit, the other side of that I printed the story and attached it to it. I also added an addition page where I wrote down how we should be physically prepared:

 

On my preparedness journaling page I wrote my thoughts and I drew a picture of a dove since that was the symbol to the people on Noah's ark that there was land. 

Phew that's a lot of writing and pictures. Today I'm going to work on planning my repentance lesson then maybe get another journal topic started since this is a crazzazzay weekend and I won't have time.

Speaking of my lesson, here is the handout I stayed up until 12:30 last night cutting out :)

It's a large pencil that I cut out of different patterned papers then glued together on white paper then cut out again. I attached a quote that talks about how God has an eraser and will erase our sins if we truly repent.

A closeup of the pencil. Just don't look too closely. I was watching Mansfield Park while making them and I probably got a little distracted by the movie as I worked. 

Anywhooooo. This weekend is packed full of fun stuff so I hope everyone enjoys their weekends too!! Hopefully the sun that's out right now will stick around.

Another card

We had a card making day at DIS today. This was one of my cards for the card swap thing we did. It was much funkier than all the other cards but whatever.

Haven't Done this for Awhile.

Last week some friends got together to make some cards. It sure was fun by golly gee. I actually accomplished a lot that night, which is really weird for me. Tomorrow we are having a card swap thing so I got all my pieces prepared for that as well. Hip Hip Hooray!! I don't have to stay up until 2am doing that tonight. 

Anywhoooo here are some cards I made. The pictures will just stay sideways because my computer is being a complete spaz right now. I thought if you spent a certain amount on a computer it was exempt from being a spaz....

I actually made this one after our card party because I ordered another butterfly and a texture plate from here. If you like your bank account, do not click on that link.

 I tried to get close to show you the texture of the paper but my P&S camera can't do that, so I settled for a blurry close up.

 I'm not a huge fan of this card but I wanted to try making a 3-D element so I just went with it.

 you can see the 3 layers of hearts. I glued the first one down completely then just put a thin line of aqua mono glue on the 'spine' of the other two hears then fluffed them up.

 This is one of the cards I made for the card swap. This picture just shows the size and orientation of the card.

 A random baby shower card, we always need these but never have them. So I made ONE.

 

I just thought I'd leave you with this cute picture of shelley eating with chopsticks. She's funny. After I took her picture she kept eating with the chopsticks even though she had a fork, she just stabbed her meat with one then ate rice one grain at a time :). She loved it.

Maybe next time I'll post about my new favorite food (be excited) and my new journal-ing ways. I'm a journaling fool these days. That post might come later today if I get my to-do list all done.

p.s. no switching to typepad, I could not figure that site out for the life of me. Slash I spent about 4 minutes trying to figure it out then canceled my account.

Birthday Weekend

Alright I said I was gonna post this several days ago and never did...not that anyone is really anxious about this fact but still, "I must not tell lies". My birthday was on the 16th and that weekend I happened to be in Monroe, at a scrapbooking house. The women in charge did a great job, making everyone feel welcome and comfortable. We each had a 'glamping' kit on our tables when we got there:

these girls know how to do themes (more on that soon). We also got a smore kabob (not pictured) on the last day. It was so themed and fun. I felt a little bad because I brought my computer which is a little large and I hid behind it for some of the time. I had a lot of wedding pictures to edit that HAD to be done that weekend and I was feeling very behind. So I settled into a photo editing mode and didn't surface for awhile. I'm just anti-social like that :D

Anyways back to themes...Saturday was my birthday!! holllla. Everyone knows I love love love Harry Potter and Nicole made the whole day Harry Potter themed for me!! I haven't had a fun birthday for a long time and I appreciated all the work and effort she put into it. When I woke up, this was on my table:

It's like the deluminator that Dumbledore left Ron which in the 7th book helps him find Harry and Hermione after he leaves them...anyways. Everyone got one of these keychain lights on their table.
A little while later I was sitting, editing and another lady comes up and hands me a single sock (it was way cute, pink polka dots). I had no idea why but I thanked her then read the little card which said this:

way cute right?! Well I wasn't quite sure what I'd do with one sock but I had made up a few plans for a stuffed animal (an idea I found online awhile back). Throughout the rest of Saturday people would randomly come up and give me single socks. I knew what was coming at this point but I was still confused because I had like 8 Different mismatched socks--but again I had plans-- then I started receiving their matches and I got really excited because I love socks. Actually I have an unnatural and perhaps unhealthy obsession with them? "I must not tell lies."

Here are some of the socks I had procured by the end of the day. I'm actually wearing a pair right now :) the black ones with the little polka dots right up there...see them?

That day I had decided I was going to find a movie theater to go see Harry Potter. I didn't think anyone else would want to go since it was a scrapbooking weekend and people get into a groove and don't want to be disrupted but Nicole and Tracy both wanted to go to. So we bought tickets for our 'brunch' showing of HP. Now, Monroe is basically in the middle of nowhere it seems, yet their movie theater, is the best I've ever been too, it's very similar to the Colossus in Vancouver. Stadium seating, plush, wide chairs that leaned back, a HUGE screen. Man it was a good theater to see HP in.

To document the HP day I took a photo of my ticket and it's possible I took a picture of the opening screen...is that legal? I think it is...the movie was much to short but I guess combined with the 1st half it's ok. I really loved this movie. It was my favorite and I think it's probably the best out of them all (although I do have a hidden love for movies 4 & 5). Overall I was pretty impressed and sure there are things I wish they would have kept in the movie, or left out...or lengthened (Mrs. Weasley vs. Belatrix and Fred's untimely death, I also wish they would have included Lupin and Tonks story a little more...) anyways, I digress...I could go on and on but overall I was satisfied.

The rest of that weekend was spent editing, pinning (when I had an internet connection), and working on my 365 Instagram Project!! Yahoooo. I finally came up with an idea to organize all my pictures for this year.

I bought blank 3x5 note cards, printed my explanation and the date on the bottom half of the card, then printed my pictures and glued them to random paper then attached that to the top of the card. Now I'm going to laminate all of them and either punch a hole in the corner and put them on a binder ring or find a card book to put them in. I just bought 44 dollars worth of laminating pockets...soooo ya... but I was glad to have made some progress with that, I'll have to finish them up at the next retreats :D

Overall it was a wonderful weekend, and even though I allow myself to get anxious and stressed out over dumb little things I had a great time. Thanks for everyone who participated in making the weekend super!!

Up next:
Cross stitching projects?! WHAT?! who does that?!

Finished!

I managed to complete some of these projects I had posted about earlier. That's kind of exciting. I still have lots to do between now and Christmas but hopefully it will go smoothly! 

So remember that big pile of paper? This is what I made with it:

a paper wreath. it didn't turn out quite how I had imagined but oh well. All togther the project cost me $3 bucks. I got the book for free, I already had the ribbon, the only thing that cost money was the foam wreath form. Kind of different? My fingers are burned a little bit though from the hot glue gun. There were several times when I thought I'd just toss the whole project but I'm glad I didn't.

 

a closer up photo.

last night we got a BUNCH of Christmas mail, which is always my favorite thing to look at. My parents couldn't decide what to do with them so I just cut some ribbon and hung it up and used mini clothes pins to hang them up. Looks like we'll need another one though it's a little small. It's fun to get all these cards and realize that most of the photos look familiar...hmmm maybe because I took most of them ;). haha

my lame tea-cup candles. the wicks i bought were too short for my cuter tea cups so I ended up using the smaller, not as cute cups. I just melted down some partially used candlesticks, took out the used wicks and poured it into the cups. easy. i did buy vanilla scenting stuff.

speaking of candles. I had also bought all these candles and I decided I didn't like the labels so I made my own. (Sorry for the terrible photo, I have no patience right now after that wreath).

a little closer look. i just used bits and pieces of scrap paper, book pages (hmm!), scrapes of fabric and cardboard that I crimped. easy, good way to use a bunch of scrap stuff.

UGH Now I guess I'd better clean up my MESS, order santa photos from our ward party last week, make little tags for our nursery gift we are making, finish our gift to the young women in our ward and maybe take a shower and eat eventually too. Oh also order our tickets to go see the Wutcracker! Should be fun.

A homemade Christmas?

This year I tried to make it a goal to make some of my Christmas gifts...however...something is all funky with my hands and whenever I try to knit/crochet shooting pains go up my arms, therefore...only a few handmade items made the cut. Then I realized that I don't have to knit or crochet for my gifts to be homemade (DUH!) so let me take you on a photo journey of my piles of projects!

 

What to do with a stack of crumbled distressed old book pages? This project is in progress and might require one quick trip to the craft store if I can't find what I need soon! 

 This is a little wreath I made yesterday an hour before I had to go to work. I just cut out a bunch of stars with my CRICUT, scored them and folded them to be 3-D and glued them on to a piece of cardboard I had cut out to look like a wreath.

I used some old fabric scraps and braided them with some polka dot ribbon to make the hanging thing.

Here are some of the stars not attached to anything. They are super easy. If anyone wants to know how I made them just leave a comment and I'll put a post up about them. They are way fun and simple. I think they would make cute decorations for a tree too if you just put some ribbon on the back.

Here's one of the crocheted projects I managed to do. It's a blanket for my dad. It's not quite done but that's the beauty of crochet, I can wrap it up and give it to him and still work on it after he opens it. I want to add just a few more rows but I'm not gonna have time to finish between now and next Saturday!

This is a "homemade" gift for my aunt. I chose her name this year for our Christmas gift exchange. So while I was in Utah this summer my sly uncle took my brother and I to Manti so I could take photos of my favorite temple. Then I decided since that's where they got married I would make her a personalized picture. Now I just have to send it before it's too late ;).

 

This is another work in progress. Just a tea cup I found at an antique shop in Lynden a few weeks ago. I'll be filling it with some candle-ing goodness to make a teacup candle. I just have to find some wicks at the store and maybe a few clearance candles to melt down and re-purpose. 

Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen to me this last week was I purchased an early Christmas gift to myself! It's the 27in iMac. It's large, it's in charge and it completely befuddles me. I also purchased photoshop for it but am having troubles getting the licensing stuff to work so I haven't even used it for my photography yet which is really sad. I like it so far, it's hard because I've never used a mac (except for elementary school when we had those green dinosaurs) so it's a different platform that what I'm used to and it's taking awhile to get comfortable with it.

This is definitely NOT homemade...hahaha. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it eventually and do great things with it!

More photos of projects after they get completed....I mean IF they get completed. Busy busy busy.