William & Kate

Yes, I have been one of those people who has been

watching every special edition on tv about William and Kate. 

It's really hard not wanting to know what's going to happen next. 

And no matter how many times I hear the same information or

see the same pictures and videos of the couple, it still feels like

I'm watching it for the first time.  It's possible that I could be slightly

"obsessed" with William and Kate, but to me, they're just so fascinating.

They are global, royal icons and we're drawn into their lives,

however glorious or however normal they want them to be. 

Plus, Kate's dress was impeccable.

I mean. Just look at it.

Simply gorgeous.

Watching all the action in London brings back fond memories of Europe.

So many times I caught myself saying, "I've been there before!"

And London was definitely one of my favorite places.

Towering buildings.

Courteous and polite civilians.

Great entertainment district.

Fashion forward boutiques.

Tea and biscuits.

Museums. Museums. Museums.

Clean subways (or as they call it, "The Tube").

And British accents. (Love them)

Oh London. How I miss you!

Book Wreath Tutorial

When I saw this book wreath on one of the DIY blogs I follow,

I knew that I had to try it out for myself.

Ever since I graduated with an English degree and

have pursued a different vocational field than English,

I've been wondering what to do with all my books from college.

Especially all the anthologies from Brit Lit, American Lit, World Lit,

and all the other ginormous books that look important but will never use again.

There's a few options I've considered about the future of these books:

1. Throw them away. But that just seems wasteful.

2. Sell them. But who would buy these books?

3. Repurpose them.  Make book wreaths!!!

So, I obviously chose option #3 and I am very pleased with the outcome.

Here's my tutorial on how to make a book wreath.

1. FIND A BOOK (or two).

I rummaged through several boxes to find a book that I would no

longer use and that would be great for making a book wreath. 

I found a book and as I began to assemble my book wreath,

realized that my book was only going to cover half of the wreath. 

So, it's best to have a backup incase you need extra sheets of paper to make this wreath.  

2. PAINT THE EDGES.

You can choose whatever color of paint you want

to grace the edges of your book pages. 

As you can see, I chose brown. 

I watered down the paint and then took a paper towel

and rubbed the paint on the edges of the book.

The paint will dry in about 30 minutes.

3. RIP OUT THE PAGES. 

This was the fun part, but a little depressing at the same time.

It almost felt like a crime for me to rip out pages of English

Literature from great writers like William Blake and Lord Byron.

But I feel that creating a book wreath out of their writings pays better

homage to them then letting them collect dust on the bookshelf or box. 

So, I eventually allowed myself to rip out all the pages. 

4. FOLD AND STAPLE.

This next step is a bit time consuming, but if you do all this work beforehand,

then gluing the pages onto the wreath won't take so long. 

You want to fold your paper on the edge that has been ripped from the

book.  The ripped side of the paper will be glued to the wreath, so that the

crisp and clean edges can be showcased on the wreath. 

You will fold the ripped edge in an acordian style, folding back and forth every

inch or so.  You can also make larger folds to add some more volume. 

Please note that you just want to fold at the ripped edge.

Don't press down on these folds because the other end will have straight

linesrather than curvy lines.  The pictures will show you what I mean.

After you've folded your paper, you will want to staple the end of paper to

keep all of the folds in place.

5. GLUE TO WREATH.

Once you have all these fan-like pages stapled, you can then glue

then to the wreath.  I left the plastic wrapping on the straw wreath just

because I knew that I would have straw everywhere. 

There's more than one way to glue the fans onto the wreath, but

as you start doing it, you will quickly learn what works for you. 

The started from the back and glue the fans in front of each other. 

I did not complete a full circle with the fans because it was unnecessary

and you're going to want the back to be somehwhat flat so that you can

hang this on the wall without it sticking out several inches. 

This thing is huge and I'm still deciding where I should put it. 

I've also been thinking of more ideas on how to repurpose

the books I will never use again.

I'll do a little experimenting between now and then!

Faith Like a Child

This morning was truly a celebration of Christ's Resurrection at church.

Our numbers soared with all the visitors and families

and I found it difficult to know where to sit.

The most beautiful thing I saw this morning was the faith of a child.

This five-year-old brings much joy to everyone he meets.

As the congregation sang songs together,

I could hear his off-key voice above the rest. 

As the congregation sang songs together,

he raised his hands and I found my heart swell.

With tears in my eyes I will still able to see a glimpse of heaven

through a boy's simple act of worship. 

And though my heart rejoices for all of this,

I desperately want people to see beyond Easter,

to see beyond the cross and understand

that we not only celebrate his death

but his LIFE and the LIFE we can live in Him.

He is no longer on the cross.

He is no longer in the grave.

Yet so many times we keep him there.

And so many times we only bring him out on this day.

Easter is not about filling church pews out of religious obligation.

For why is Jesus more special on this day?

Is he not still alive every day of the year?

I would hope that people's celebration of Easter

would extend beyond the commercialization of it.

He deserves our full worship and should not

compete with marshmallow peeps and jelly beans.

Chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs.

I hope that we can celebrate the life that He is living

and not just the life that He lived.

May we have faith like a child and not care

if we sing off key or raise our hands in public.

For that's the kind of faith I want to have

every

single

day.

Friday's Goodness

This afternoon I took four lovely 4th grade girls out for ice cream. 

We also went to Lakeside Park in Mac and attempted to feed the ducks.

Wow. So much fun. Especially with these girls. 

We all were very silly and used our British accents as much as possible!

People did give us weird looks,

but that only encouraged our odd behavior all the more!

I wore this outfit yesterday. And from pictures that I've taken in the past,

I realized that I wear this outfit a lot. 

I have other flannel shirts in my closet, so I should probably rotate those in. 

And the necklace I'm wearing was actually part of a shirt at one time. 

I decided to cut the shirt for a necklace and use this weaved design as a necklace too. 

And today I wore one of my favorite shirts. 

This is my peacock shirt because I think it looks like peacock feathers. 

Hmm..I should try my hand at making some sort of peacock necklace.

I'll have to see what I can come up with.

Last night I started and finished my first book wreath.

Pictures and tutorial will come soon.

If there's one thing I have to say about it: it's huge!

And I think it's pretty awesome.

Rico Suave

Today at church we got a new color printer because our

current one will let us print in every color except black. 

This is very annoying. 

The brand of our new printer is a Ricoh.

I wasn't sure how to correctly say it,

so I decided to name the printer Rico Sauve.

I'm sure that this will be in many jokes around the office.

The weather was very dull here in Kansas,

but I managed to be very productive today.

And I needed to be.

Plus, tomorrow night is a huge night for me and

for the future of Children's Ministry at my church.

I've been rehearsing my presentation like crazy. 

Skinny jeans: Target, Grey Shirt: Target,

Blue/White Checkered Shirt: Old Navy

Necklace: Target

And for my closing thoughts:

RICO

SUAVE!

(snap fingers)

(repeat as many times as desired)

Poufs Tutorial

There's a NASCAR race on right now,

so unless I want to involuntarily fall asleep because of

repetitive sound of the car engines, I need to do something to

keep me preoccupied!  

What better way than a tutorial on how to make poufs! 

I made these several weeks ago and have worn them a couple of times.

In my attempt to use several different prints and fabrics to make the poufs,

I have discovered that a light fabric, like chiffon, works the best.

I rummaged through my closet and through my facebook albums to see

if I had a picture of the shirt I was going to use. 

So, here's a picture of maybe the only time I wore this shirt. 

This was taken at our pre-graduation party behind the Wholgy. 

There's a lot of great colors in this shirt: pink, green, blue, and black.

Basically the colors that I wear all the time. 

So I knew that I would be able to wear these poufs with many outfits.

Without futher ado...

1. CUT CIRCLES/OVALS.

I cut out a circle that was about 2 inches in diameter.

I placed several layers of fabric underneath the circle

so that the cutting process wouldn't take as long.

 

2. FOLD CIRCLES

Fold one circle at a time.  Fold in half, then in half again. 

It will look like part of a flower petal.

 

3. SEW PETALS TOGETHER

Get out your needle and thread. 

Thread the needle through the fabric at the bottom where the fabric

has been folded ino the shape of a triangle. 

Continue sewing the rest of your petals onto each other. 

 

The only advice that I can give to you is to experiment with

the placement of all these petals. 

The number of petals I used for each pouf differed. 

On some I used more and on some I used less just because

of the way I arranged and placed the petals around each other.

But on average, I used anywhere from 12-16 petals for one pouf. 

 

4. PREPARE THE BACK

I used my hot glue gun to glue a circle of black felt on the back of the pouf.

Then I glued an alligator hair clip to the back so that I could attach

the pouf to my clothes or to even put in my hair.  

 

And there you have it!

Outlawed

Days like today should be outlawed.

This type of weather should know that it's not welcomed.

But to break up the monotony of the day,

I checked out some new blogs. 

gardenofedendesigns.blogspot.com

seekatesew.blogspot.com

myfriendjules.blogspot.com

I've definitely seen some DIY crafts that I must try! 

Especially the one tutorial where you take pages from an old book,

fold them accordian style, and then glue them to a straw wreath!

It almost looks like marigold!

Hmm...I might just have found myself a little project for this evening. 

I brought the scarf back out today because it was windy and cold.

Everything else comes from Target.  Go figure :)

Real Simple

Today I got my May copy of the Real Simple magazine in the mail!

I thoroughly enjoy magazines because they are the

perfect combination of pictures and articles. 

Sometimes I find it hard to sit down and read an entire book,

especially if there's no pictures. 

So maybe there's some truth to why I have so

many kids' picture books on my desk at work. 

For anyone who has not paged through a Real Simple magazine, do it!

I promise that it's worth the $24 a year subscription because

most of the issues they produce are 1/2 inch thick.  No joke.

However, the issues are chalk full of advertisements.

I'm not sure the ratio of content and advertisements is,

but I usually rip out the double-sided advertisements on my first

run through of the magazine just so that in future page-throughs,

it won't take me so long to get to where I want to go. 

Overall, Real Simple is a well-rounded composition of fashion trends,

new uses for old things, advice columns, speed-cleaning tips, life lessons

articles, beauty tips, decorating tips, health advice, money tips, and recipes. 

Many times, it just makes life real simple. 

Tornado Alley

This morning I went to the Cosmosphere in Hutch to see the TIV

(Tornado Intercept Vehicle) and to watch Sean Casey's film, Tornado Alley. 

It was a pretty fabulous experience!

And I'm glad I took the time to go do something very out of the ordinary.

P.S. I can't wait until the next season of Storm Chasers comes on!

The TIV is definitely not pretty or graceful or delicate.

But it's a beast.  And it's seen its fair share of tornadoes!

I wish I could remember some of the facts about the TIV,

but at this moment they have all escaped my mind.

Changing the subject...

I also need to catch up on uploading pictures

of outfits I've worn in the past two days.

Here's today:

White pants: Target, Striped tank top: Old Navy, Purple cardigan: Forever 21.

I wore this outfit to church yesterday.

Blue pants: Target, Purple cami: Target, Floral cardigan: Target.

Hey! Another Target outfit! 

At least the shoes (which aren't pictured) are from Payless. 

Most Days...

Most days I feel like a bizarre case study.

Most days I try to diagnose my abnormal behaviors.

Most days I think I've figured myself out.

And then I prove my own theories wrong.

At my worst, I'm

stubborn &

rebellious &

abrasive.

At my best, I'm

selfless &

courteous &

thoughtful.

And most days, I'm both.

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Yesterday was refreshing to spend my time at a coffee shop.

I wish most days could be like this.

Most days I wake up with crazy hair.

Today was no different.

And most days I plan my outfits around what shoes I will wear.

Most days.

Wednesday Wit

I liked today.

Today was good.

Why?

I wore a summery canvas shirt that I just love.

I ate lunch with a 3rd grade girl that I adore. 

I went to the city pasture to relax and feel the wind in my hair. 

Our meal at Awanas tonight was chicken nuggets,

mashed potatoes with white gravy, and green beans.

I'll take that any night!

I had the chance to hug kids and put smiles on their face.

I have plans to take a 4th grade girl out for ice cream

because she's been helping me clean up after Awanas.

I watched American Idol.

The hyacinth and daffodils are blooming!

I get to sleep in tomorrow.

I will be working from a cozy and quiet coffee shop tomorrow.

Life is full.  And life is good. 

New Necklace

Last night, while watching the men's NCAA basketball game,

(wish Butler's shots could have gone in)

I jazzed up one of my black necklaces by adding some antique

gold beads to the ribbons. 

I still really love the adjustable factor of the beads. 

It makes it much easier to create the look that I want. 

New Use for Mirrors

I figured out a new use for one of my mirrors on accident.

I believe that I was rearranging some things in my room,

and sat some items on top of the mirror,

and discovered a really sleek new use for my mirror.

I bought the tall, dark purple glass vase for 25 cents at a garage sale

and the Eiffel Tower glass vase was a birthday gift.

The purple vase and marbles are from the flower shop I used to work at

and I made the flower arrangement in the tea cup at work too! 

And these simple, yet sleek decorations sit atop my green dresser/cabinet. 

Love it. Love it. Love it!

Weekend Threads and Ribbons

Yesterday I took advantage of half price beads at Hobby Lobby.

I bought a variety of different colored wood beads to add onto my necklaces.

I like how they turned out. 

 The thing I love most about the beads is that they are movable. 

That way, depending on the look you want, you can adjust it however. 

And I really like the outfit I wore yesterday.

Flannel shirts are a staple during these transitioning times,

especially with Kansas weather being as tempermental as it is.

And I took my skinny jeans and rolled them up into capris. 

Then I topped it up with my every comfy TOMS.