Weekly Projects and Simple Pleasures

Well, it has been a while since I last blogged about anything, so let me give you all an accounting of my life over the past bit.

I rediscovered my love for crafting. After the stress of getting married/moving/starting a new job/trying to figure out the ins and outs of a new city, subsided... I suddenly became aware of a great void in my life. The void normally filled by making silly things using silly materials and giving them to silly people: Crafts. I should note that this void was recognized primarily due to General Conference. Mom, Caitlyn, and I always have "Conference Projects" to distract us while we are supposed to be listening to the prophet. So, this year I started crocheting a weird little shoulder bag that turned out to be a disaster. (Turned out it needed to be felted and I had used acrylic yarn, which, of course, doesn't felt... so after hours and hours of crocheting and putting the whole bag together I realized that it wasn't going to work, and now have a ginormous bag lying around the house, reminding me of my failure. Sad day in crafting). Well, I picked myself and my craft ego back up and decided to make some silly things for silly Caitlyn on her silly birthday. Here are some picks and links to the free patterns online, should any of you be feeling the need to do some silly crafting, too.

Patterns: Slippers, Bracelet

When I finished making those silly things, and cleaned up the mess, (Mike complained about the innumerable shards of purple fabric and string everywhere... I even think there were some comments about JoAnn (of JoAnn's) vomiting all over our apartment -- ask Caitlyn for the exact reference), I moved on to knitting. I never learned how to knit, and I decided that it was high time I learned!!! Here are some of the early attempts: (on the first one, I couldn't stop accidentally adding stitches and it just kept growing and growing... by the second attempt I had things a little more under control)

Well, while the knitting frenzy was going on, Mike started to get a little antsy about decorating our walls. Honestly, I think (though he won't admit it) that he was getting jealous, and wanted to participate in some of the silliness himself. We have this huge, blank, white wall, and we have so far been totally unsuccessful in trying to decorate it. It's just too big! Whatever we put on it just looks stupid and small and makes us feel stupid and small for putting it there. Then we sigh and get discouraged and go eat ice cream.

Then a few weeks ago, we started considering a wall collage, after seeing some interesting pictures of them online. But we didn't really have a clear idea at all about how to arrange them without putting three hundred "trial and error" holes in the wall. We decided to use some construction paper, scotch tape, and a paper cutter (Yay!!! Mike bought me my very own paper cutter!!!) to help us decide on a layout. Then Mike just nailed right through the paper to hang the pictures. Some of our frames are still empty, and some of our prints still don't have frames... but we're on our way...

Now, what do we do with this plant?? It is just so in the way. But we love it. Here is a current picture of our wall: Other than that, let me tell you about a couple things that made me happy today:

Caitlyn started her own blog!! Check it out at caitlynface.blogspot.com

Also, NPR (which is dreamy, isn't it?) informed me that today is the worlds largest ever earthquake drill. Five million people in California have confirmed that they will drop out of bed onto the floor, hide underneath something sturdy, and hold on to it for some fixed amount of time, pretending that there is a huge earthquake going on. I know that this is a very serious and responsible thing to do, and I hope all those geology experts don't hate me, but the idea of that many people acting shaky and hiding under tables at the same time makes me giggle.

Today it was pouring rain here in Winchester. You know the kind, that forces you to do your most clumsy and ridiculous leap to try to avoid landing in 6 inches of standing water on your way to your car... gr.... Anywho, Mike and I own only one umbrella, and my classes started earlier than his today -- so guess who sneakily made off with the umbrella? Poor Mikey...

Hopefully Mike will get a little down time from studying soon, so we can get another Song of the Week Post. I, for one, am waiting with bated breath to find out what this weeks picks are from everyone.