Dedicated to the One Who Gave Me Birth

Mama, performed by Il Divo

Mama thank you for who I am, thank you for all the things I'm not
Forgive me for the words unsaid, for the times I forgot
Mama remember all my life you showed me love, you sacrificed
Think of those young and early days, how I've changed along the way
(Along the way)

And I know you believed and I know you had dreams
And I'm sorry it took all this time to see
That I am where I am because of your truth
And I miss you, yeah I miss you

Mama forgive the times you cried, forgive me for not making right
All the storms I may have caused and I've been wrong, dry your eyes
Dry your eyes

'Cause I know you believed and I know you had dreams
And I'm sorry it tok all this time to see
That I am where I am because of your truth
And I miss you, I miss you

Mama I hope this makes you smile, I hope you're happy with my life
At peace with every choice I made, how I've changed along the way
'Cause I know you believed in all of my dreams
and I owe it all to you, Mama

Becoming a Crafty Woman

I have this amazing friend, Michael Ann, who can just about take whatever she has lying around the house and make something amazingly awesome out of it. I do not have that talent. Which is why Michael's blog project for the month of May on becoming a confident crafter made me a little excited. If anyone can take the uncraftiness that is me and turn me into something somewhat resembling a crafter, it's Michael Ann. 

So the deal is, during the month of May, Michael will be posting different tips/tutorials about what you need to become a confident crafter, and then there will be a "homework assignment" at the end of each week for you to work on the following week. This week Michael talked about creating a space for crafting. Since I don't really have the space or the money to create one (and let's be honest, I'm just going to end up on the living room floor no matter what), I decided to jump right into the crafts!

Last year for Valentine's Day, Michael made this really cute banner (since this includes all instructions, I won't include them in my post). I thought that it looked so simple, even I could make it! (Famous last words, as you will see.) Instead of a Valentine's banner, I decided to make a banner that could hang in the living room I don't have in the house I don't own. Planning ahead and all that. (Can I just say I kind of like this whole decorating a nonexistent home thing; I can decorate however I want because money doesn't matter!)

So, I gathered my supplies and "created" my "space" (ie, my mom's living room floor. She loved that, especially since she had just picked it up. :) ).

Materials: Gingher fabric scissors, embroidery box (including thread and foldable sewing scissors), paper scissors, paper, pen, cup (for circles), felt (2 colors), fabric (2), and yarn

And here is my first beginner's mistake. I had no idea that you could buy less than a yard of fabric. Truly. They price it by the yard (probably on purpose to make unsuspecting beginners like me spend more money), so you must have to buy at least a yard, right? Well, I came home with TONS of felt. Then my mom told me I could have just bought a half, or a third, or whatever, of a yard. So, if anyone wants to make something, I have a lot of blue and yellow felt!

I have a vague memory of learning about some tribe, or people, somewhere who would purposely make mistakes in their handicrafts in order to praise God. If that's true, I've been praising God a lot this weekend! The sewing of the fabric onto the felt went alright, though my stitches aren't very even, and on a couple the fabric puckers a bit. For the record, I used four strands of embroidery thread.

Then came the felt letters. I asked Michael how she did her letters, and she just free handed hers. I decided to use a font as a pattern. I chose "andrea karime". It was the tracing and cutting of the letters that was really tedious to me and I almost wanted to give up, but I have a box full of unfinished crafts and I was determined to finish this one.

I finally got the letters cut out and hot glued on. (I did not do this on the living room floor. After the Rubber Cement Incident in the sixth grade, I know that glue and carpet do not go well together.) Then the yarn, which I had when I decided I wanted to make a Harry Potter scarf about a gajillion years ago (a scarf which is still unfinished). Then came something I feel really stupid about:

Arg!

Notice anything wrong here? I could either hang it up opposite a mirror, or take it off the yarn and glue it on again. Le sigh. I thought I was finished, but not so much. 

So, three days later I tried again. They came out backwards. For the second time. Le sigh again.

And this reminded me why I don't like doing crafts: 1) It seems like everyone else can do a craft perfectly the first time, while I invariably always mess up. 2) Once I mess up, it's hard to want to continue on, especially this close to the end.

Anyway, in frustration, I attempted to do it again. This time my mom helped me figure out which way the letters had to go to end up right side up, but my two previous attempts at hot gluing (which I hate doing. You always burn yourself and there are those little glue strings that get everywhere) had made it so I could no longer attach the glue at the top of the letter, so instead I did it in the middle of the circle. I have no idea if this will work when hung on the wall (I'm picturing floppy letters falling forward, thereby being rendered unreadable), but I don't care at this point anymore. 

Here is the final product: 

Well, it's finally done. Blog points to whomever
knows what this is referencing. Whitney points
to whomever can give specifics.

New Mommy Survival Kit

I had a friend that just had a baby a couple of weeks ago, and I really wanted to get her something, as well as something for her new baby boy. 

I'm actually a little proud of what I came up with! My noncreativeness took a holiday and I came up with the idea of a "New Mommy Survival Kit," seen here:

Included in this gift is a movie (well, actually it was one of those four in one movie things--found at Target), chocolates, lip balm, lotion, bubble bath, and votive candles. Because even new moms deserve some "me" time every once in a while--even if it's just a ten minute bath! Then I got a basket from Hobby Lobby (which took much too long to find. Why can't they label things there?!) and tied on a ribbon that I already had.

I love giving gifts when I know that the person I'm giving them to is going to love them, and this present did not disappoint! There is no feeling like giving a good gift.

Four Years

Today marks four years since I got on an airplane for the first real adventure of my life: England. Since that time, I have been measuring time from then: Four years have passed since the time of England.

So, let's review what has happened in the past four years:

. . .

Um . . .

Let me think . . .

::crickets::

Oh! I got it! I graduated from college. That's something cool, right? Maybe not on par of flying halfway around the world, seeing amazing sights, and traveling all around a foreign country, getting fat off pastry and chocolates, but, what can I say?

Speaking of chocolates, I have finally lost all the weight that I gained in the eight weeks I was over there. And it only took me four years! Not bad. :)

But, seriously, I really can't complain. My life has had a lot of good moments. Before I graduated from college, I was promoted twice at my job at the CONE, ending on the high note of Front-end Manager. I graduated from college, and in the past year alone I have had three different and wonderful opportunities in terms of internships.

The only thing is, going on the London Study Abroad didn't quench my thirst for adventure, but whet it. As much as I want to see the world, the place I want to see the most is England. The more I read and learn about the country, the more I want to see and experience. I think that going back to London would be like returning home, because I felt at home there. I think it opened my eyes to the beauty of the world, and since then I have tried to find the beauty of everything and everyone.

So, until I can return to my other homeland, I will try to remember all the great things I have, right here, in little ol' Utah.

The Great Closet Clean-out 2012

My mom used to have this rule that when we got new clothes we had to get rid of the same amount of old clothes. As I recall, this rule didn't last into high school. Well, about a month ago I was thinking about my closets and what I have in them. Here they are:

And I was thinking about two things. First, that there are a lot of clothes in my closet that I never wear. Second, I was thinking about how in my apartment when I was in school, we had three closets in our bedrooms half the size of one of those in the picture above. With two people to a room, that meant we both got a closet and a half. And there were six drawers, three for each of us. And upon thinking about those two things, the thought came to my mind that it was definitely time to clean out my closet. (Hopefully, I'll eventually clean out my dresser too.) 

I had originally planned to do this last month after my shopping trip with Melissa. But a decision was made that would make a big change in my life, so I decided to wait until this month to do it. And yesterday was the day. I emptied all my clothes from my closet:

 put on Kyle XY on hulu, and got to it. As you can see in the picture above, my clothes are in piles of "types": camis/undershirts, nice shirts, grungy/pj shirts, slacks/skirts/dresses, and outerwear. This is how my closet in organized.

The first thing I did was go through every pile and decide one of three things about each item: keep, get rid of, not sure. I had two sacks for the get rid of decision, depending on whether or not the item was in good condition or not:

After I had made those decisions I went through my "not sure" piles. I tried on every item, and decided whether or not I still liked it, if it fit, or if it was in good enough condition to keep. Those that I decided to throw away, I then wondered if there was anything I could salvage from them. For example, these shirts:

I bought these shirts in high school, so about six years ago. I loved them and took good care of them (hand washing, which is a bummer). But in six years, things get worn. These shirts in particular were stretched out of shape and thinner than they had been before, which was pretty thin. The lace was still in good condition, being heartier stuff than the thin cotton of the rest of the shirt, so I set the shirts aside to pick the lace off of later. You never know when you might want some pretty lace! I also took buttons off shirt that was too worn to be given to DI.

After I went through the "not sure piles," I went through the "keep" piles and made sure that everything still fit, was modest, and was still in conjunction with my personal style. I gave away a few more things from those (one dress sadly because it had accidentally been put in the dryer and shrunk about 1 1/2 inches. 1 1/2 inches that couldn't afford to be shrunk.), then hung everything up in my closets.

Here are the hangers of everything I got rid of:

I even organized my closet by sleeve length and color (It won't last long, but hey, it's like that now!):

I do have a bit more room in my closets now, though I still use both of them. And I probably could get rid of more clothes, but I'm going to wait a little bit and then maybe revisit and get rid of some more. After seeing what I threw away, I was overcome with this urge to go shopping again because I felt like I have no clothes (which isn't true, but I think it was that I saw how little "work" clothes I have. Most of the clothes I do have I don't wear often since I wear a dress/skirt 6 days a week.). I'm trying to hold off on it (because of $$ and the fact that I might not have a job in 2 months), but with the new City Creek center just across the street from where I work, it's going to be hard!

Sunday Special: Ripples

One of my favorite TV shows is "Joan of Arcadia," which was canceled more than 7 years ago. Every few years or so, I get on YouTube and watch the entire two seasons. The main premise is such: Joan is a typical teenage girl, until one day God decides to talk to her. Appearing in various forms, God asks her to do a variety of tasks. In the middle of the first season, the idea of "ripples" is introduced. Ripples can be either good, or bad. Joan doesn't always get to see the ripples of her actions, but they are always there. One of my favorite times of when she gets to see the ripples is God asks her to take the school bully to school, but she doesn't feel like it made a difference. God tells her it does.

I like this idea of ripples; that everything we do, every decision we make, affects more than just us. A ripple starts at one point, then it spreads, getting ever wider and encompassing more and more of the surrounding area. Our decisions may start with us, but never just end there. Good or baad, the ripples keep going on and on.

What kind of ripples are we sending out?

I really do believe that our decisions, our everyday decisions--where to get a job, what to read, who we talk to--they all will change the world. Maybe not the same way curing cancer will, but the way a butterfly flapping it's wings in China does. Somewhere down the line it could became a hurricane. Every ripple we send out changes something and someone.

We may not always understand why God asks us to do something, or inspires us to do something, but there is always a reason. It will probably benefit us, but it will send out ripples that will affect others. The first drop in the pond never sees where it's ripples go.

I hope my ripples are good.

Train Creepering, Getting Extended, Being Tested, and Other Things

I just realized that I haven't really given a big update on what's going on in my life for a while, so, here ya go.

I'm a bit of a train creeper. Not to the creeper extreme of wanting to follow people home or discover their entire life stories, but I'm a bit of a people watcher. One of my favorite things to do is look to see what people are reading. And can I just say that my dislike of Kindles has grown because unless you are sitting right next to the person, you can't tell what they are reading! Very frustrating. Anyway. Humans being the creatures of habits that we are, I tend to see the same people on the train everyday. There's this one woman who is about 45 or 50 who reads books like Elizabeth the Queen, and this one weird one about dogs. She reads really slow too. Yes, I measure her progress. One of my favorite creeper victims is an older gentleman. The first time I ever saw him, his gray hair was down to his chin, he wore ripped jeans, and had glasses that magnified his eyes--you know, the way glasses do when they are really thick and you didn't pay to have them specially made. And if he did sit on the train, he sat with his hands under his thighs, with his torso and neck pushed forward, looking around him. The first time I started feeling a camaraderie with him, he sat across from me and Reading Lady. I looked at him and he leaned forward and peaked at RL's book. I almost laughed! Someone as interested in what other people were reading as I was.

For the past couple of months I have looked forward to seeing him. The first change was that he cut his hair a little bit. Then one day he wore a really nice pea coat. Then out came my favorite accessory of his--the Sponge Bob Square Pants Lunchbox!! Hahahaha! I hadn't seen him for about a week when I saw him yesterday. He was wearing a suit!! And his hair was cut even shorter and combed nicely back. But worst of all? No Spongebob Lunchbox! It's like I didn't even know him anymore! Today he was also wearing a suit, but at least he had a really awful tie on, so I feel that his awesome personality was still coming through.

In other news, my internship got extended until June!! I've got a bit more time to find a real job.

Speaking of real jobs, I applied for my first one last night! It's working for the LDS Church, and includes benefits. Pretty nice position actually. Well, this afternoon I got a call asking me to come in for an editing test. I'm pretty sure that everyone who applies is asked to take the editing test, as a sort of weeding out thing, but it's the next step to finding a job! If I do well on the test, I'll probably get an interview. I'm not going to stop applying, but it's a pretty good start, I think.

Also, everyone should check out my friend Melissa's blog! Not only am I going to be featured on it soon, but Melissa is an awesome person who is writing an awesome blog.