Summer!

I am finally done with year two!!!!  After I finished finals I slept 12 hours and it was fabulous!  Chris and I made up for missed sun light by enjoying a trip to the farmer's market, where we bought tons of fresh produce to try a recipe from The Chew.  After a fun morning, we loaded up the crazies and took them on their first adventure at Kickapoo State Park. It was so much fun.  I tried to snap a few pictures but getting the 4 of us in one place was harder than I thought it would be!!!    

Chris, Ally and Elsie.  As you can see we don't need a tape measure at our house...we just measure things in dog tongue lengths-we have enough!!

 

This was attempt one at getting a pic of the 4 of us. 

 

Attempt two was slightly better.   We were petty tired after all the adventures... or at least Elsie was.

After catching up on sleep and relaxing, I started work.  It's nice to work 40 hours and then be able to come home and not have anything to do!  I have learned a lot already and can't wait to finish training and answer calls!  I also can't wait for my first pay check!  This is my first weekly check since high school...hopefully its a lot more than it was back then :)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stress Relieving Crafts

With only 10 days left standing between me and summer, it is time to implement crafting as a stress reliever (also complete and total study freak out mode-but the pictures from that one are not as much fun :).  My mom's birthday is today.  I decided to put my crafting to use for someone else's house (for which my husband is very grateful!).  I made a wreath (was anyone really surprised by that?) with her house number and body scrub

 The wreath turned out amazing.  At first I was worried about finding a color that would look good with her red door.  Turns out the purple looked great and stood out really well.  Originally I wasn't planning on the white edging to the numbers, however, the purple blended quite a bit with the wooden wreath. Luckily I had the white paint pen from another project (I'm starting to feel like a real crafter since I now have all kinds of leftovers that come in handy!).  I really like the way the outline turned out!

Since it was my mom's birthday, I couldn't resist offering a little advice on how to keep calm...

 I also decided to try my hand at homemade, spa products.  This recipe used olive oil, sugar and essential oils.  I found oils online that were supposed to be in stock at the mall.  While I met a very pushy man who thought I should use some really random smell for my body wash, the vitamin shop was a bust.  Luckily, there was a random table set up in the middle of the mall selling lanterns and oils to use as fragrance.  After smelling some really weird things, I decided on sandalwood (its supposed to be relaxing) and apple cinnamon (who doesn't want to smell like apple pie???).  The body wash was easy to make. I'll have to see what my mom says on how well it works!

Since I am madly in love with the KEEP CALM sayings, I decided my husband needed to be inspired too.  The best way? Buy him a new shirt (good thing he will wear anything:)! 



Finally, I finished a craft that I had been working on for a while.  A flower made of scrapbook paper.  I love the way the colors turned out!  It was an amazing stress reliever!!