Happy Mardi Gras & No Carbs for Lent

Happy Mardi Gras, y’all! We’ve had a house full of guests for the last several days and have been running around like crazy showing people around this city, visiting parades, catching beads, etc. It has been a fun Mardi Gras but I’m exhausted from all the busyness!

Today is the last day before Lent starts. I’m not Catholic, so I didn’t grow up giving things up for Lent, but this year Drew and I decided to give up eating carbs for Lent. That means as of tomorrow, no more rice, pasta, grains, cereals, potatoes, baked goods, etc for the next 40 days. My dad has been on a special cancer diet for the last several years that doesn’t allow him to eat carbs, so if he can give them up for life, then we can surely give them up for 40 days. Not that it will be easy. I love me some mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, homemade tortillas, cookies, and pretty much every other carbohydrate-rich food. However, these foods aren’t very good for us, so I’m excited to embark on this healthy journey. (and see if I can do it!)

I’m also still going to my Pilates class twice a week for an hour and I really feel so much better than I did when I started. I am building strength in my abs! I also want to start going to the gym on another day as well to work on more cardio and higher-paced exercises. Last month, Drew also got a gym membership to Tulane’s gym, so he has been going with me when I go to Pilates and he has been forming his own exercise routine.

I’m excited that we are taking more steps to become much more healthy people! Any of you all giving anything up for Lent? Starting a new exercise routine? Working on making your diet healthier? Please share any tips you have! 🙂

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Comparison is the thief of Joy

Consider this a letter to myself of sorts. I’m writing it on here in case there is anyone else out there that struggles with this problem (and I would say we all do to an extent) and to remind myself to remember this: comparison is the thief of joy.

I follow and read a lot of blogs. I am constantly pinning pretty things that people have made and decorated or whatever on Pinterest. I am an art student and I’m constantly surrounded by people in the art building with amazing art skills. This list could go on and on. Anyway, I think these things are great and can provide lots of great ideas and inspiration. Pinterest and blogs are great places for decor ideas, finding great recipes, tips and tricks for DIY stuff, etc… I find myself constantly inspired by things that I see and read.

However, they can also work in the wrong direction if you aren’t careful. Reading blogs of people that have beautiful houses with time and money to decorate them nicely, have lots of amazing friends that they can invite over for dinner parties, my favorite fabric designers and their amazing new fabric collections, and all the other million great things that people out there are doing. It can make you start to get a little bit jealous of things or talents that other people have.

I would love to have a pretty farmhouse out in the country with the time and money to renovate and decorate it. I would love to have land to garden, grow vegetables, have chickens and other animals, to be able to compost and live off the land. I would love to have time to do all kinds of great DIY projects, to paint beautiful paintings and sew lots of beautiful things. I would love to design amazing fabric collections and make patterns and use my love of interior design to create beautiful quilt market booths to show off my latest designs. I wish I had a big group of close friends that I could invite over for movies, or game nights, to be able to cook for and have dinner parties. Again, these things could go on and on and on.

I find myself sometimes falling past the point of inspiration and end up in the realm of comparison. Which is a really dangerous place to be. Comparing myself too closely to other people makes it super easy to overlook all the great talents and blessings that I have in my life. It robs me of joy. Instead of being happy with my life, my talents, the things I have, the place I’m at in life, I end up finding myself unhappy and ready to be in a different place. Which isn’t a good thing.

When I really step back and forget about all the other people out there that might cook better than me, paint better than me, decorate, blog, sew, craft or whatever else better than me and just focus on myself, I can actually see that I have a lot of great qualities. I might not be the most amazing chef, but I can budget for food, shop for what I need within that budget, and still cook delicious and healthy meals for me and Drew that sustain and nourish our bodies. I might not have an unlimited budget or the time to constantly be shopping for home decor items for my house, but our little home and the things in it make me smile when I come home. I might not be the most amazing artist, seamstress, or designer at this point in my life, but if I stop to think about the people that do those things that I look up to, they are generally quite a bit older than me and have a whole lot more experience! I may not have a ton of friends to invite over for dinner parties at my house in New Orleans, but I have close friends spread out all over the world and one really best friend that I have the amazing opportunity to come home to and have dinner parties with every night, whom I also get to marry in just 4 short months.

My life really is blessed. I have a lot of creativity and talents that I’m very thankful for. I have an amazing family and friends in many different places. I’ve had many great opportunities so far and I’ve got more time to do other things in life, but for now I’m here in this incredibly unique city going to a great university, which is an opportunity that not everyone gets to have. I might not have my own pretty house in the country, but at this point in my life, that would be too much for me to handle. I love our charming little apartment and it fits our lives right now perfectly. In all honestly, I love where my life is now. Living here, learning new things in school everyday, planning our wedding, figuring our lives out together, etc. I’m very blessed and when I forget about all those other comparisons, I find joy.

image from here. 

 

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Crocheted Blanket Finished!

When I shared my crocheted blanket with you a couple weeks ago, it looked like this:

It was 8×12 squares and about 3×5 feet. Now, it looks like this:

It is now 12×14 squares and roughly 5 1/2 x 6 feet. I’m so happy to have it finished and have all the little threads woven in. (That part took forever!) The final blanket is really big actually. It fits all the way across our three cushioned couch. Drew and I can easily sit at different ends of the couch and still both cover up with it.

I really love the addition of the border! It makes it so much prettier! It also helped to align and pull the squares more evenly and straighten them out. The border also adds a nice ripple/lace effect. My mom and I used the same soft white color as I had used around the colored circles on the row of double crochets in the border, then switched to a cream color for the row of single crochets in the border, then went back to the soft white for the chain stitch loops on the edge of the border. I love the slight variation in the colors there.

So pretty! Now I need to get some different pillows and artwork for our living room to balance out this beautiful pop of color! 🙂

I love having pieces in our home that have so much love woven into them! This blanket is not only pretty, but sentimental as well, considering my mom and I both worked on it so hard for weeks over break, watching movies and television shows in front of the fireplace in my childhood home. I’m happy it now gets to live in my New Orleans home and remind me of those memories.

For more information on how I made this blanket, check out the original post with directions, here. 🙂

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Happy 2012!! :)

I love the refreshed feeling every new year brings. It is always the perfect time for reflection on the past year and hopes and dreams for all to come in the new year.

The past year has been great for me! I’ve expanded this blog, gotten my first real apartment, spent time decorating, crafting and DIYing things for my home, continued to be better about being healthy (making sure to take my vitamins every day, going to Pilates classes every week, eating fresher and more organic, spending more time outside in the fresh air, getting in a better sleep schedule, spending time daily in prayer and bible study, trying to manage stress better, etc…), been planning my wedding, and lots of other great things. Last January, I started my 20 Before Twenty list and it is nice to look back and see that I addressed everything on my list, completing almost all of the things, and modifying others.

I don’t have a specific list of things that I want to accomplish in 2012, mostly because big things are already going to happen in 2012. Drew and I are getting married this year! The wedding is now only a few months away! It is so exciting and kind-of still unbelievable at the same time! I’m sure I’ll be crazy busy the next few months with school and wedding planning! Drew also graduates this year as well! (just a couple weeks before the wedding!) This semester he only has two remaining classes to take and he will be working full time as well. With my credits at school, I’m already listed as a senior as well, so that means graduation for me is not too far off either! I’m excited for his graduation, our wedding, honeymoon and getting to grow in our relationship through marriage. I’m so happy to be building a life and home together with my soon-to-be husband!

My goals for 2012 are simple really. I have to get all my wedding planning done, and I hope to do so as stress-free as possible. I really want to enjoy every step of this process! I want to enjoy picking out things and enjoy this as part of life and not just as a to-do step for the wedding. It is a lot more stressful to plan a wedding while I’m still in school, so I hope to continue to develop a good balance between school and life. I want to work on building up a successful and happy marriage and hope to work out all the extra things in life that a marriage brings in a stress-free way. (being financially independent, paying extra bills like home, car and health insurance, etc…) Mostly I just want to work on remembering to enjoy life. It is easy to get wrapped up in school and see this time as just a stepping stone to get to a career or another part of life. I want to really remember to live each day and try not to worry and stress out so much about what the future might bring. I want to simply live life and enjoy every moment of it. 🙂

These are the first pictures of me taken in 2012, spending a lovely evening on a double date with my soon-to-be husband and my best friend and her soon-to-be husband, enjoying life:

Happy 2012! 🙂

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Crocheted Blanket

I hope you all had wonderful holidays! I definitely have been busy the past few weeks! Visiting with family, taking my nieces to get pictures taken with Santa, shopping with my sisters for Christmas presents, baking cookies with my mom (these are my favorite holiday cookies!), celebrating Hanukkah and remembering our Savior’s Jewish roots, celebrating Christmas and remembering the night of our dear Savior’s birth, giving gifts, relaxing and wedding planning as well!

A while ago, I stumbled across this picture on the internet and decided that I wanted to start crocheting a blanket like this one over my Christmas break:

My friend, Tonya, and I used to knit and crochet all the time in middle school. We made tons of scarves and baby blankets, but I hadn’t ever made a large blanket like this. Luckily, my mom is super crafty and knows how to do all kinds of sewing things, so she refreshed my memory on my crochet stitches and read the pattern for me and showed me how to do it. It is really easy once you get the hang of it!

I ended up going to Walmart the day before Christmas Eve and bought 18 colors of yarn to work with. I seriously left the store with three huge bags full of yarn. ($50 worth!) I ended up wrapping them up for a Christmas present to me from my parents (they usually have us pick out things we want, wrap them and open them on Christmas) and then on Christmas Eve when we opened gifts, I looked like this:

My mom and I both started working on it that night and have been crocheting constantly for the past few days and have a pretty much finished blanket already!

We made lots and lots of circles before we started connecting them together.

We also tried to make sure that no two circles were alike so we spent a lot of time comparing the ones we were working on with the ones already done. We tried to make sure that we made the same number of centers out of each color and the same with the middle rows and outsides so that all colors would be well represented in the end.

It was harder than you would think to try to determine what circles to put next to each other to balance out the blanket!

We aren’t completely done, I still want to add a few more rows to make it a little bigger, and I have to go back in and thread in the tails of yarn, but so far we have this: (it is roughly 3×5 feet)

I think this blanket would also be really pretty made a little smaller for a baby blanket. It would also be pretty in a different color scheme as well.

I love the way the colors look together and I love the shapes. They look like little flowers. I also love the little star design that is made in the connecting corners between the colors (in the white part).

These are the colors of yarn that I used. The large white one on top is the connecting color. As you can see, the blanket is in the background, so this is how much yarn I had leftover after making a blanket this big. I still plan on making it bigger, so in the end I’ll use more of each kind than shown here, but you could easily make more than one blanket out of the yarn  bought for this project. I bought two of the super jumbo white one on top and we used all of one and a little bit of the one pictured here.

To make it, I used these directions, with a size H crochet needle. That blog also shows pictures that might be helpful if you haven’t crocheted much before. To sum up her words, this is pretty much how you do it:

ch = chain, st = stitch, ss = slip stitch, dc = double crochet.

Start: make 5 ch, join with ss into a ring.

1st round: 4ch (=1dc,1ch), 1dc + 1ch 11 times. Join with ss in 3rd ch. 12 dc.

2nd round: Start in one of the ch spaces. 3 ch (= 1dc), 1dc, 1ch, *2dc, 1ch* in the remaining ch spaces. Join with ss in 3rd ch. 12 groups of 2 dc.

3rd round: Start in one of the ch spaces. 3 ch (= 1dc), 2dc in ch space, 1ch, *3dc, 1ch* in the remaining ch spaces. Join with ss in 3rd ch. 12 groups of 3 dc.

4th round: Start in one of the ch spaces. 4ch (= 1 tr), 1tr, 3ch, 2tr, (=1st corner), *1ch, (2dc,1ch,2dc) in next ch space, 1ch, (2dc,1ch,2dc) in next ch space, 1ch, (2tr, 3ch, 2tr) (=2nd corner)**, repeat * to ** 2 times, 1ch, (2dc, 1ch, 2dc) inthe next two ch spaces, 1ch. Join with ss to 4th ch.

I used the assembly line method so I made a lot of circles before I started the 4th round and then joined them like this:

Start in a corner. Crochet 2tr, 1ch,next ch through the corner of the other square, 1ch, 2tr. (The first corner is done). Side: 1ch,(2dc, 1ch through 1ch on other square, 2dc), 1ch (2dc, 1ch through 1ch on other square, 2dc), 1ch. Next corner (where you will join square to the square to the right and the one above): 2tr, 1ch, 1ch through corner of square to the right, 1 ch through corner of the square above, 2 tr. Do the next side as the first. In the next corner you crochet 1 ch through the corner of the square above. Finish the round as in pattern.

Final Border:  One row of dc first. On dc in every dc and one dc in every ch space. 5 dc in the corners. One row of sc in every dc of last round. make one extra sc in the corners. One row of loops: Start with one sc, chain 4, skip two sc on last round – all the way round.

Here, is some more info on the lady’s blanket who wrote the directions above and more info on what the final border looks like. She calls her blanket, “Flowers in the Snow.”

Happy Crocheting! 🙂

P.S. My mom and I were both crocheting pretty fast the whole time, have previous experience crocheting, and we seriously worked on it all day long and late into the night almost every day over the past few days, so unless you have unlimited amounts of time to give to it all at once, I wouldn’t expect to finish yours so quickly! I thought it would take me months to do when I first decided to do it. I can’t believe we got so much done already! 🙂

*****UPDATE*****

See the blanket completely done in this post, here. 

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One Year Ago

One year ago today, I was on the beach in California, when the cutest, curly-headed boy got down on one knee in front of me and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. I can’t believe that it has been an entire year since we got engaged!

For ring pictures, the engagement story, and to see what I wrote on that day, visit last year’s post, here.

This year has seriously gone by fast! I’m sure the next 6 months will go by even faster and before I know it we will be married! It was nice today to look back on the pictures from our trip and re-live those memories. Our trip to California last December was really our first vacation together (just the two of us) and it was such a wonderful trip! We had such a great time and it was of course made all the more exciting by the ring on my finger that we couldn’t stop staring at the whole time. I never posted any pictures from our trip, so here are some never-before-seen pictures from last year’s trip to San Diego:

Such great memories! I’m so blessed!

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Looking Like Christmas

I love Christmastime! The decorations just make me feel warm and cozy and happy! I love being at home, baking cookies, listening to Christmas music and watching the sparkly glow of Christmas tree lights.

Here is what our little home is looking like lately:

Our tree is decorated in Mardi Gras beads that we caught ourselves from Mardi Gras parades our first year living in New Orleans. The ornaments are all silver and colored balls that I got at Target a couple years ago during their day after Christmas sales. We got our tree last year at Wal-Mart.

This year in the Target dollar aisle, I found packs of 8 ornaments that are the same as the ones on our tree, only slightly smaller, for $1. I bought 4 packs of them and hung them with lace crochet thread from our living room curtain rod and in our foyer windows as well.

I think they turned out so pretty! I love that they look kind-of like big, round, glittery snowflakes falling.

I also made a wreath for our front door. I used a straw wreath form and wrapped strips of linen fabric around it and then attached ribbons and Mardi Gras beads. I like that it echos the sparkly-ness of the hanging ornaments in the foyer and living room and the beads from the tree. I love when decor is all tied together somehow.

On our television table, I have my little Russian Christmas Dolls that Drew’s mom gave me a few years ago. The red snowflake throw blanket on the couch in the pictures above is from her as well.

Our coffee table is also festive, hosting a jar of candy canes and a couple tins of Christmas cookies.

I love the way our decorations look in our house! The only thing that I’m not so crazy about is that when we are sitting in the living room at night, we can barely see the lights from the tree since it is in the foyer. We put it in there because there was more room, but I sort-of wish we got to enjoy it a little more. I might do some re-arranging and move it around, but I haven’t decided where else we could put it really. We do get some reflections from it on the living room doors though:

Hope you all are enjoying the holiday time! I’ve gotten all my Christmas shopping done and only have a week left of finals before I’ll be home visiting with my family and baking more Christmas cookies, listening to lots of Christmas music, wrapping presents with them and enjoying my winter break! Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy some snow and snuggling up by the fireplace while I’m at home as well! I can’t count on those happening in New Orleans!

*****UPDATE*****

Of course after writing this, I pondered it more and decided I wanted to move the tree to enjoy it more. Our living room now looks like this:

I do still need to make a tree skirt for it. Oh well. Even though it may be a little cramped there, I love that we can enjoy the sparkly lights more from the living room. 🙂

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Thankful Tree

I hope everyone is having a wonderful time visiting family and getting prepared for Thanksgiving tomorrow!

In my family, on the day before Thanksgiving, we all get together at my parent’s house to clean and help bake pies and get all the food ready for the next day. The last several years, now that we have little kids in the family again, I’ve come up with little craft projects for us to do with them while the big kids are all cooking and baking. This year I decided to do a thankful tree. We took orange paper, printed out outlines of leaves, cut them out and had everyone write on them what they were thankful for. We punched holes in them, tied on some string and tied them to some branches from the backyard.

It turned into a cute, meaningful centerpiece for the Thanksgiving dinner table.

If I had planned it out better, I would have gotten several different fall colored papers, but we only had orange at home, so I had to improvise. We did color the backs of some of the leaves red and also hung a few real leaves to add some additional color.

Such a cute project to do with kids to help remind them of what the real meaning of Thanksgiving is and to help them “give thanks.” Evie had fun with it. She wrote on almost all the leaves before anyone else really had the chance to.

Here is the template that I found online and used for the leaves. I just printed it right out from there and the leaves were the perfect size! Have fun giving thanks!

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Painting for my Office

After being so inspired by these abstract paintings and our TNASA (Tulane Newcomb Art Student Association) painting workshop, I finally decided it was time I quit telling myself that I didn’t have the time to paint and just get out my paints and get to it. I already had a canvas that I had ready for a painting for my office, so I didn’t have to do any prep work. I just sat down and started painting. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do and the final product went in almost a totally different direction, but I really like the way it turned out. Here is what my office looks like now with the addition of my painting:

I figured this was also a good time to share more updates about my office. I think the last time I shared anything about it was when I shared staining my desk, here. It has definitely changed since then! I love this room and it is such a great place for me to be able to work in. I still love my desk. It is the perfect size to spread out my papers and books on to study, to clear off and be able to work on drawings or art projects for school, and it functions wonderfully as a sewing table as well. I love the way it looks and I haven’t had any problems with it or complaints. I would definitely recommend it if you are looking for a great (and inexpensive) desk. You can find it at IKEA, here.

I love, love, love my tufted linen office chair. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and knew it would one day be mine. Unfortunately, World Market happened to be out of stock with them all across this half of the country and I had to wait over 3 months for them to get any more in. I stalked them rather frequently just to see if maybe more had arrived. They did finally come in and I brought mine home (with some discounts too for using a coupon that they had e-mailed out). I absolutely love the look of it, the fabric, the tufting, everything. It is also so much more comfortable than my old wooden office chair as well. You can find it online, here. (Although online you can only buy them in sets of two, in the store you can buy them individually)

Last, but not least, I am really pleased with my white shelving unit from IKEA as well. It was inexpensive, easy to put together, and is well made and looks really nice. It is the perfect size for what I needed and it is great for holding all my office supplies and other crafty stuff. I originally wanted some kind of a wooden dresser for storage in here, but I am so happy with this instead. I love that it is lightweight and will be so much more practical to move out of this second story apartment whenever we move. A big wooden dresser would not be so much fun to move. Plus with a wooden desk, I’m happy with the white shelves. You can find it at IKEA, here. The baskets are from Target and I really like that they carry over the wood tones from my desk and I love that they came with linen fabric liners already in them.

We also put up some wall shelves on the other wall for additional storage, although you can’t see them in the pictures above. We also added a longer curtain rod. It bothers me that the curtains I have in here are too short, they were from my dorm room, but they work for now. We added the shelves to the closet in here, and we also put up a towel rod on the back of the door for me to hang my scarves on. We’ve still got a few more things to do, but so far I love this space! 🙂

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Cheesy Chicken Lasagna

One of my favorite things about Fall is warm and delicious comfort food. It hasn’t even gotten very cool in New Orleans yet, but we’ve already made chicken pot pies, chicken and dumplings, and many other yummy dishes. Tonight we tried a new recipe — Cheesy Chicken Lasagna. It was delicious! We will definitely be making it again! Recipe from here, originally from here.

Here is the recipe:

Cheesy Chicken Lasagna

2 cans (12 oz) evaporated milk (not fat-free)
1 (1 oz) pkg. dry Ranch dressing mix
3 C. cubed, cooked, chicken
1/8 tsp pepper
1 (12oz) lasagna noodles, cooked
1 1/2 C cheddar cheese, grated
1 1/2 C mozzarella cheese, grated

Cook the chicken and noodles first at the same time. Once noodles are done–rinse in cold water and set aside (it keeps them from sticking together). Combine evaporated milk (don’t use fat-free version) and Ranch dressing in a 3 quart heavy saucepan. Heat over low heat, stirring frequently until dry ingredients are dissolved. Stir in chicken and pepper. Simmer, uncovered, 25 minutes (don’t do any less), stirring frequently. Layer half of lasagna noodles, poultry sauce, and cheese in well-buttered 9×13 pan. Repeat layers again.  Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Let rest 10 minutes before serving.

For extra cheesiness, increase both cheeses by 1/2 cup.

Enjoy! 🙂

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