Recent Happenings

Well, I have felt really busy lately.  I'm not as busy as a lot of people, but I'm still just having a hard time adjusting to all of the changes we've gone through since the move. 

Last week, I planted flowers in my mother-in-law's planters.  I was pretty excited because I bought most of the plants on clearance, and for the most part, they're perking up pretty well!  We've had quite a bit of rain lately, so they're certainly not thirsty!  These photos are from just a few days after planting, and they're even starting to look better!  Yay!

I've also had my first Smoothie King since moving back, and man was it de-li-cious!!!  Raspberry Sunrise, I love you!

Thomas and I have gone on a couple country drives so far, and I can honestly say that those are the times when I'm truly happy we're here.  The hills and valleys, the winding roads, the sunshine and shade.  Country drives are amazing.

I also went kayaking with my mom over the weekend.  It was so incredibly peaceful and relaxing.  I got a mondo sunburn from it, but it was totally worth it!

I am really loving my new job too!  The people I work with are so easy-going and fun, and I look forward to getting to go to work!  In case you're curious, I'm working for a wedding videography and photography studio.  (Of course I have no talent for filming or editing, but I get to do all of the scheduling and office work.)  I sort of really love working with artists, because I totally understand the creative side of things, but I get to be the organized calm in the middle of the creative chaos.  It's super fun!

I've been making a few changes to my fitness program, trying to find a new rhythm.  I'm getting a bike for my birthday (hopefully before my birthday), so until then, the bike riding is on hold.  I also don't have a place to swim on a regular basis, and that's the part that's making me the most nervous.  I'm fair at swimming, but I was just getting the hang of the form and breathing of lap swimming before we moved.  So, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with that.  But the running is still going well.  I've changed Wednesdays to speed days where I run a 5k and try to beat last week's time every week, so that's what I did this morning.  Mondays and Saturdays are the longer runs now.  But that's enough about my fitness routine...

Oh!  I almost forgot that I started a new scarf this weekend!  If you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen a preview of that.  But now I've got the loom all warped up, and I wove the first few rows the other night, so here's a sneak peek!  (The dark blue is the warp; the white is just filler.)

That's about all I've got going right now.  I did bake a batch of the Gooey Funfetti Cake Bars for everyone to take with their lunches this week, and boy are they good!  If you haven't tried them yet, you should!  (Ha!  That kind of rhymed.)

Last Week in Photos {Lundi Little Lovelies}

I know I was a little absent from the blog at the end of last week.  Though, if you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen a few updates.  So here is quite a bit of last week in photos.

Thursday, I made my first ever batch of croutons.  I know, right?!  I'm such a foodie, so it's crazy that I've never made them before.  Honestly, I'd just never really thought about it.  I didn't really use a recipe.  I just cut up some bread I'd made earlier in the week, added some butter, olive oil, and seasonings, and stuck them in the oven.  And they turned out pretty awesome!

Also on Thursday, I made a half batch of my yummy and healthy Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Muffins.  I had the egg white to use up from the Single Serving Peanut Butter Cookies I made eariler in the week, so these muffins were the perfect thing!  I left out the raisins this time but added some crushed almonds.  Woowee!  The little bit of crunch from the almonds was delish!  I had the last one this morning with some peanut butter slathered on top.  (I may have forgotten to mention that I am absolutely obsessed with Jif Natural Peanut Butter right now.  I swear.  I'm eating it on EVERYTHING!  I truly think the natural tastes like nine million times better than the regular kind.  Maybe I'm crazy though.)

And another thing from Thursday (apparently I was pretty productive that day): I started on a new scarf!  Here is the progression it went through on Thursday and Friday.

I started out knowing I wanted to use the variegated "film reel" yarn in the left-middle, but I had no idea what I wanted to use with it.

Here are the final five.  I used these to warp the loom randomly as shown below.

Here's the warp getting ready to be wound on the loom.

And here we have my two options for the weft.  (I did have a third, the hot pink-ish color, but I already ruled that one out.)  After a few days of letting it sit and walking past it a hundred times looking at it, Thomas and I are both leaning towards the top, darker silver.  I like the funkiness of the bottom black/silver, but the top yarn is a little calmer and much, much softer.  So, I will probably get those samples un-woven today and start weaving for real!

Friday, I got a haircut.  It's not a huge difference, just cutting the split ends off and putting some layers back into it, but I like it.

Saturday, I made this baby for our Easter get together at some friends'.  Boston Cream Poke Cake.  Oh yum!  This is one of my favorite cakes, and it's so incredibly easy to make!  Just bake a yellow cake, poke a ton of holes into it, pour on vanilla pudding and then cover with chocolate ganache!  So, so, so good!  Except for the fact that we brought way too much back home with us!  Now I'm going to have to get fat or find someone to help us eat it!

And lastly, I did some idle shopping on Saturday afternoon and came up with a great project to add some more coral to the bedroom!  The best part: for this project, I spent a total of $6!!!  Sunday, I put it all together, and voila cute bedroom wall art!

It all started as I was strolling through Michael's with no intention whatsoever except to take up some time.  I happened upon the scrapbook papers and found some adorable sheets that matched my coral pillow exactly!  (And how did I know they matched exactly?  I now carry a swatch of that fabric in my wallet so that I can pull it out anywhere, anytime if I find something coral.)  The 12x12 sheets were only $.59 a piece!  So, I continued strolling through the store while I let the ideas formulate in my head.  I ended up with two corals and two grays.  Then I headed across to the dollar store to grab some $1 8x10 frames.  Print and cut out some letters, put it all together, and here's what I got!

I just L-O-V-E it!  Haha!  And I loved the $6 price tag even more!

Well, that about brings you up to speed on my life!  I did start a new running program today, but I'm not quite ready to share it with anybody because I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail miserably at it.  (It looks really hard.)  But, I will maybe share it in a few weeks if it hasn't killed me by then!

I hope you find a few little lovelies in your own life to get you through Monday!

New Purple Scarf

This week has been rough for me.  Nothing big.  Just a week full of small tough moments.  

And it all culminated this morning with the discovery that if you mess up my breakfast, you have messed up my entire day.  Yep.  I've been craving waffles all week.  And the plan was to make them for breakfast this morning so that Thomas could help me eat them (I try not to fix them just for myself because that would cause severe over-eating for me).  Well, too bad I tried a healthier recipe.  I ended up with a completely unusable waffle maker filled with inedible waffle-ish-ness.  

So, of course, I dejectedly grabbed a bagel from the freezer and popped it into the toaster instead.  ONLY to have the bagel burn to a crisp because the toaster decided not to pop up like it's supposed to!  While I had decided to give up on the world and go hide in a hole for the rest of the day, Thomas promptly grabbed another bagel and popped it into the toaster for a second go round.  

Nothing disastrous happened for the rest of breakfast, but I did have to spend the next 45 minutes cleaning out a waffle maker that is so stupidly designed that you can't take it apart to clean it.  So 45 minutes, some sore fingers, and about a million paper towels later, I shoved the (mostly) clean waffle maker back in its cabinet before I lost control and threw it in the trash instead.

So yeah, there's a peek at my day.  Moral of the story: Don't EVER mess with my breakfast!  Mer.

Anyway, I just meant to explain that I've been a little absent on the blog because I've had a bad week.  It's a lot harder to write upbeat posts when I'm feeling melancholy.

But I was reminded yesterday (just in time too), that God does not want his children to feel defeated and beat down.  Yes, He allows us to go through hard times, but the illusion of defeat comes straight from the enemy, not from God.  So, I am praying a lot and trying to keep my head up instead of succumbing to the feelings of failure.

Moving on... This post is really supposed to be about the scarf I recently finished, but I obviously got sidetracked.  (Thus explaining why I don't like to blog when I'm having a bad day/week.)

This is the scarf that's been on my loom since just before Christmas.  I started weaving with a light pink weft (sideways) yarn, got about halfway done, and then didn't touch it for about three months.  I stopped working on it because I really wasn't liking the color scheme.

One day, I decided that I didn't want to finish another scarf that I knew I wouldn't like, so I un-wove the entire thing and started again with a purple weft.  And I love the colors so much better.  Even though it was a pain to un-weave so much of a project, it was definitely worth it!  Here's the finished result!

I haven't started on a new project yet, but I'm sure I will soon!

A Few DIY Projects with a Yard of Fabric

So, Thomas and I bought a new bed in January of last year.  Our old bed was worn out because we didn't have the money to buy a good one when we got married.  So, we saved up a little extra money so that we could upgrade to a king-size bed.  Awesome!

Of course, changing the size of the bed meant that we had to change the comforter, etc.  So this was my chance to redo all of the colors in our bedroom.  I was ecstatic!  I love decorating and picking out colors and painting (even though we're not painting the apartment we live in now).

I decided that I wanted to go with a neutral bedding set (black, gray, white) and then add in accents of coral.  I thought that this would be a cool idea so that I could pretty cheaply give our room a face lift by changing the accent color in the future without having to splurge to buy an all new comforter set, sheets, etc.

Here's where the problem comes in... I picked coral.  In fact, I became married to the idea that I wanted coral accents.  And well, I'm a little picky about my color of coral.  It can't be too orange or too pastel.  And the other colors in the fabric must be gray, white, or black.  And as you might know, that's a pretty tall order to fill.  But I had pretty much the perfect color of coral in my bridesmaid dresses for my wedding, so I knew exactly what I wanted!

So for the past year and few months, we've had no coral accents in our room.  It's true that I have found several coral things that I liked, but I'm just not willing to pay $60 for a stinkin' decorative pillow.  Really, my budget has been quite minimal, so my mom inspired me to get my craft on.

While she was here, we spent the last day of her visit shopping.  We'd been looking for something coral just about everywhere we went with no luck.  But, our last stop was Hobby Lobby (I love that store!), and we (my mom) happened to spot some perfect coral and white fabric!!!

So, with her ideas flowing, we snatched it up and grabbed a couple of bags of "fiber-fill".  Add in some cute black buttons and a little bit of adorable ribbon, and here's the result.  (I still have quite a bit of fabric left, but I'm not quite sure what I want to do with it yet.)

The plan was to make a cute little decorative pillow for the bed, and here it is.  A couple of seams on the outside, some stuffing, and the final closing stitches, and I was done.  For a little extra something, I grabbed the cute black buttons on sale at JoAnn's.

We had only bought a yard of fabric, but I still had so much left, so I decided to use an old picture frame to make a little bulletin board.  I just cut the fabric to the right size, wrapped it around the picture frame and used a regular old stapler to staple it on the back.  Finally, I snazzed it up with some absolutely adorable ribbon (also from JoAnn's).

It makes the perfect little photo board.

Woohoo for DIY!  I made both of these items (with fabric and pillow filling to spare) for less than $20!  Just imagine the possibilities when you decide to try something out for yourself!

Nail Polish Reviews

So, since I didn't post the Lundi Little Lovelies post yesterday, I'm just going to pretend that today is still Monday and post it anyway.

My most exciting news is that my mom and one of her sisters is coming to visit very soon!  I can't wait!  I haven't seen my parents since June (if you don't count the facetime conversation on Christmas).  That's why I've started working on my tan.  Of course, they're going to want to go to the beach as much as we can handle, so I want to make sure I've got a base tan to prevent me from getting super crispy.  The last time my mom was here was two years ago, so I'm excited to take her out to all of the favorite places we've developed and everything.  She's my best girlfriend, so I can't wait to spend every moment I can with her!

In other news, yesterday I started working on a weaving project I've been ignoring for a while.  I'd like to finish it so I can move on to a new project.  That's my only problem with weaving.  When I start a project and decide I'm not in love with it, I have trouble finding the will to finish it.  So, I've started working on it again, and I'd like to have it finished this week or next week.

A while back, I mentioned here that I bought a sample pack of OPI's clear polishes.  Since then, I've used each of these a few times, and I thought I'd go ahead and review them for anyone who's interested!  Just click on the name of each polish for a link to check out more details and purchase them on Ulta.com.

From Left to Right:

1. Original Nail Envy - This is a nail strengthener, and the one I have is the original formula.  My nails have been pretty weak and brittle lately, so I've tried this out both as a base coat before a colored polish and as a stand alone clear polish.  I like it best as just a clear polish for when I don't feel like putting a color on my nails.  I'm not sure how well it works because I haven't seen a ton of improvement in my nails, but I also haven't been wearing this polish non-stop.
2. Chip Skip - I really, really like this as a base coat for my color polishes.  It basically gets any gunk off of your nails to make sure that the polish sticks to them.  I've used this several times as a base coat and I've found that it really prolongs the life of my nail polish.  My nail color seems a lot less likely to chip, and the polish lasts several days longer than normal.
3. OPI Top Coat - This, as far as I can tell, is OPI's standard top coat.  There's nothing incredibly special about it, but I do like it.  It goes on smooth and clear.  It's shiny, and I like the way it finishes off a color polish.
4. RapiDry Top Coat - This is the only one of the four polishes that I don't like.  It did not smooth out on my nails at all, so they looked really streak-y.  It does dry really quickly, but I would much rather have a polish that takes a little longer to dry and actually looks good.  I disliked the way my finished nails looked so much that I almost took everything off and started from scratch.  

So there you have it.  I really liked three of these four polishes, so this little sample pack was definitely a great purchase!  Now I know what full-size purchases I would make in the future!  I would definitely call that a little lovely!

Another Maxi Skirt

I mentioned a while ago that I had some new fabric to make another maxi skirt with, and this week, I finally got around to making it!  I also mentioned that I am a very impatient seamstress.  Meaning that I will skip steps if I don't see them as absolutely necessary, and I will go off pattern if the pattern makes it look harder than I think I could make it on my own.

All this combined with the fact that the fabric I chose was a knit (in general harder to sew than woven fabrics), it had stripes (more things to match up and make straight), and I wasn't following a pattern to begin with, I was a little worried about how the skirt would turn out.  I have made some things in the past that, once they're finished, disappear into the back of the closet and never get worn until I finally throw them out.  That's what comes from not being willing to follow directions.

But, surprisingly, the skirt turned out pretty well!  Meaning, I will actually wear it!  Woohoo!  It's a very similar design to the aqua one I just made, but I tweaked a few things to work better for this fabric, etc.

So I finished it up this morning and snapped some pictures!  Though the colors may not show super accurately here, it's coral and black striped!

The 6 Month Project {Wednesday Wins}

Well, I'll tell you what, it can get really frustrating when a project that should only take a week or two ends up becoming a six month, painstakingly slow project.  But that's just life, isn't it?!  Especially with changes we're looking forward to or lessons we're learning.  For example, I'm pretty sure God's teaching me a lesson in faith right now.  With quitting my job and not being sure what is around the corner, I am really learning that I have to have faith that if I seek Him and His will, God will not let me fall.  And sometimes I feel like God is waiting for me to lean fully on Him trust Him completely before He tells me what's next.  Now, I know that I cannot fully understand His motives and His ways, so this may not be the case.  But I find myself thinking, hurry up already and have some faith!  This is taking for-ev-er!  But, sometimes, we and other things get in our way, and things just don't happen on our wishful time schedule.

Such was the case with this scarf!  I got this project started on the loom in JANUARY, and I just finished it and pulled it off the first week of June!  Yikes!  I surely wish this had not sat in the corner gathering dust for six months... but it did.  Life just gets in the way.  Things get busy.  Hobbies aren't always on the top of the ever-growing to-do list.  However, since summer started, this scarf became a priority!  And FINALLY, after hours and hours of sitting at the loom (in front of movies, of course), it is finished!  Yay!  So, here are a few pics of the new accessory!

Also, one more photo of my adorable kitten.  I had jeans on for part of the day and just laid them across the bed when I changed, and here's the result.  A sweet kitty zonked out on them.  She's so adorable!