MIxing Business and Pleasure! --OOTD--

     Ok, so I love a good craft. I mean what's not to love, turning boring ol' things into fun pieces of art to display/wear?! Well I've been making felt flowers for years. When I got married, all of the bridesmaids bouquets were made out of felt flowers and buttons (4 bouquets). After the wedding I went on felt strike and wanted nothing to to with felt or flowers or even crafting for that matter. Within the past couple of months I have started doing more and more projects and now with all this extra time on my hands (the doctors have me off work until Jan. 15th) I having been crafting my little heart out. I've been making felt bobbles, adorned with hand sewn beads. I'm loving the whole process of making them and beading all of the colorful felt accessories. I've been making hair doo-hickeys and rings, but plan on branching out and making all kinds of things once I can figure out what customers will like. An amazing friend and I are starting an etsy store. (I know, everyone and their mom has an etsy store, but this is my chance to make my little slice of the Internet that much fuller and well rounded... like me!) When we have the site fully set up I will make sure to share the link with everyone. 

     I went back to the doctor on Wednesday. It was as usual a guessing game. This time though the doctor seemed pretty certain that we are on the right path. Apparently the bone in my ear is grown into my ear drum and my inner ear is no longer vibrating. This could be something I was born with or some sort of trauma caused. If it was caused by trauma that could be what is causing my headaches and dizziness. The specialist (ear, nose and throat specialist) will be able to determine this and then tell me were to go. The boy and I have been researching this and it's called surfer's ear, and the treatment is surgery were they cut off your ear and chisel the bone away and then re-attach the ear. I'm hoping that it's an easy fix and  not surgery, but in all honesty I just want to know what's going on and for life to go back to normal-ish. 

     Other then my ongoing broken-ness and crafting, I've been baking alot. Miss kaelah beauregarde at little chief honeybee. has an awesome recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Pie! Also I found an awesome recipe for Cheese Cake Squares, it's like a mixture between lemon bars and cheese cake. I will be doing a tutorial on those tomorrow! They are so good and pretty easy. I will say the hardest part is mixing the cream cheese because my mixer broke (hint hint x-mas!), so I have an old school mixer that you hand crank, not electric at all. I'm getting pretty buff from this baking stuff though!

Navy flower with beads and vintage button

unedited- purple felt flower with opal beads and pink vintage button

OOTD-

Dress- Kohl's

Sweater and leggings- Target 

Boots- New Look

OUTTAKE!!!!!

     Ok Jim is getting restless and wants dinner so I'm off to make homemade mac'n'cheese and meatloaf burgers. Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. Till tomorrow, fancy shmansy... tootels!

DIY t-shirt scarf! Super easy and fun

With winter sneaking in and temperatures quickly dropping, keeping warm is a must. Layers, chunky sweaters, fun scarves and tall boots are my favorite winter staples. Paying full price and looking like everyone else is never a problem when you have a hot glue gun and a few extra minutes.  Thanks to Mr. Kate and the awesome Threadbanger, you can learn how to turn an old tee into a new scarf.  This project is easy enough for beginners but fun for even the most advanced of crafters. 

Things you will need...

T-Shirt

(mens sizes, larger the longer your scarf)

Scissors

Glue Gun

Optional

leather (pleather)

old jewelry

beads

 I have a bunch of old jewelry that is either broken or in a giant knot, so I used that to decorate my scarf but you can use lots of things.

I used a large mens shirt, my shirt had a pocket on it but it came off quiet easy. Lay your shirt flat and cut straight across from armpit to armpit.

Also cut the bottom seem off.

Cut vertical strips from 1/2 to 1 inch strips, stopping and inch from the top

take each strip and and stretch it out, once that is done I chose to use 3 of the strips to make a braid.

Use the section that is not cut to gather and secure your new scarf! 

Now the fun part! Take your assortment of "doohickies" and figure out how you would like to decorate your scarf. I chose to use 2 colors of suede rope to cover the section that isn't cut. I also wrapped a distressed silver chain around the braid that I made. I used more of the chain and a broken feather earring to finish off the look. 

I'm super happy with the way the scarf turned out.  I'll make sure to do an Outfit of the day with it. If you have any questions or if you make one too, please leave me a comment!

Hurry up and catch up! OOTD too.

Ok, so I'm a super slacker when it comes to how long it's taken me to update! With good reason though, let me explain.... I've been doing nothing but going to doctors visits, getting electrocuted, throughing up tacos out of my nose, and other slightly embarrassing yet entertaining medical mishaps. I'll start off by saying that my caffeine headaches turned out to have nothing to do with caffeine. We (as in me and my medical staff) still don't know what it is. I went and had a CT scan (in case you have never had one, they stick you in this machine that looks like a large donut, shake you back and forth and, may I advice you wear a sports bra to minimize the jiggling that will occur, and then take pictures of your brain). This resulted in my doctor, Mr Hooper (which if you did not know hooping is a slang turn for sticking drugs up your butt) to decide that a scar on my head from a previous and embarrassing injury may be pinching nerves on my scalp causing these headaches. Well how do we fix that.... OH. I KNOW LETS ELECTROCUTE IT! Yes, they stuck an electrode to my scar on my head and zapped it 4 or 5 times to loosen it from my scalp. Now I was terrified when they told me this was going to happen, but in all honesty it wasn't that bad. There was pressure and I could feel a zappy, tingly sensation, but no tears and no fried hair.  From here I'm not sure what they are going to do but they ordered a bunch more tests and I promise to keep this thing more updated with what is going on.

     A plus to this whole debacle is that I will get to spend thanksgiving with my family. That hasn't happened in a couple of years because of my crazy work schedule. This year I will go down a couple days before thanksgiving and get to visit with my Sister and her kids, then my extended friends/family, and then on thanksgiving spend it with my moms side of the family, which is always filled with lots of food (we are Italian), booze, my crazy cousin, and memories to last a lifetime. 

     Speaking of being thankful, I have to thank my wonderful husband, Jim. He has taken care of me through this so well, even when I'm being sad and pathetic. I'm so grateful to have him in my life and I can't imagine one day without him. He puts up with all my crap, is my model for all of my sewing projects, rubs lotion on my feet when they hurt from walking all night (on the streets, mainly the corner, ha ha), combs my hair even though he hates it and it's my favorite thing ever!, and he takes the dogs out in the morning while I still lay in the warm cozy bed! I've got it made! and I know it, and just wanted to take a minute to thank him for all the nice and sweet things he does for me.  I know he's my biggest fan, and I hope he knows I'm his! :)

     With my extra time off now, I've been trying to keep busy around the house so I've been sewing alot. I found this skirt on Modcloth dot com that I loved but was not willing to pay loads of money for so I set out to make it myself. I'll include some pictures of the project.  I'll also include some pictures of an outfit I wore the other day when I was running errands. 

http://www.modcloth.com/shop/skirts/a-chance-of-showers-skirt      , $89 you are killing me modcloth!

I loved this fabric, Clarence!

cutting the fabric

My sexy Model

sewing the hem

adding the waist band

just needs a big bow!

Close to finished

  Here is the outfit I wore the other day....

Dress- Target

Sweater- Ross

Leggings and Boots-Target

My Beautiful Boys :)

 One last thing.... I need to thank my friend Marchelle, for being so amazing and a great friend through this whole feeling poopy thing. It means so much to me that she remembers when my doctor appt. are and checks up on me to see how they went. She comes and hangs out when I don't feel good and even makes us dinner. Thank you so much Marchelle for being an awesome friend and I hope you know how much it truly means. 

Thinking healthy and OOTD

     I am a fat girl. I always have been and I always will be. With that being said... I'm on a diet (a lifestyle change). Let me start off by saying that this is not because I want to be a model. First of all I lost my gallbladder in May (R.I.P. G dog, you were always my organ homie) and I'm tired of having constant diarrhea. Second, I have not been feeling very healthy. I know that it's a problem when I get winded tieing my shoes! Now, I'm happy with me in general and am one confident fat chick! I have always been able to find things I like about myself, but at the same time I've started noticing things that make me feel not so great and I would like to improve myself a little to be the best me there is. Part of me being me is my size and the attitude and confidence that I have with that size. Loosing weight is not the goal here, its being healthy and conscious of what is going in my body and what I'm doing to it. If I do loose weight that is fine and I won't mind that either, my point is that I don't have a goal weight and I won't be devastated if I don't loose every week. I won't lie, I know that being fat puts a target on you for health problems and I just want to make sure that I'm not one of those statistics, plus I'm pretty sure that it would be hard to accessorize one of those sleep apnea masks! 

     So I joined Weight Watchers and I'm pretty happy with it. I will say that the hardest part for me is not having soda. You can have soda on WW but I know that if I have one, I will want five more and that's just not good and what got me huffing and puffing over my shoe laces! Diet soda is not the same and the after taste that lingers all day, I just can't do it, so I opted for no soda. I have been drinking juice and that helps curb the cravings. With that being said the caffeine with drawls were the worst part. I've been getting random migraines and they won't go away! Once I can get past this then I'll be in the clear, but this is by far the hardest part of the diet change.  As far as food goes the boy and I have been eating well and stayed within our point ranges. We bought a magic bullet and have fruit smoothies for breakfast in the morning. I had my first weigh in yesterday and I was down 4 lbs. That kinda made it worth all the soda crap. 

     I had to go to a training at work today so I figured I'd take a few pictures before I left for an OOTD. The boy got in on the action too. I threw in a couple bloopers for you too. Hope you like.

 Leggings and cardigan - Ross

Tank tops- Target

Skirt- Kohl's

Flats- Payless

I hope everyone is doing well and is having a good week. Feel free to drop me line and let me know how I'm doing at the log thing. I'm really enjoying it! I like sharing my little slice of life. Have a good weekend yall!!!!

     
    

Rainy days and fancy nails.

The weather here has been gloomy and rainy the past couple days. I had planned on doing an outfit blog post but with the weather all poopy, I decided to stay in instead. I still wanted to do something fun and creative though so what better then a nail tutorial! 

     I try to keep my nails painted on a regular basis. I used to go and get them done by an amazing nail lady (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nailz-by-Amanda/141293629214312, if you are in the Sonora area you should totally check her out. With the economy and lack of funds I have had to stop getting them done, but I would totally recommend her to anyone!  Anyway, I still like to have my nails looking decent since alot of people look at my hands at work. I also have an awful habit of biting my nails so this helps curb that too.

     We'll start off with water marbling. Its a fairly simple to do but it's a little time consuming. I started off putting on a nail primer and letting it dry for a minute. I have been using Sally Hansen Continuous treatment base and top coat. I like it a lot and its works really well as a base coat.Then I put a base coat of white on my nails. The white will help your design to stand out. I've tried different colors as a base before doing the marbling, but the white seems to work best. After the white paint dries for a minute cover around the nail with tape (I used scotch tape), this will help with the clean up part of things. Because you are dipping your finger in the water the nail polish sticks to whatever it touches, if you skip the tape step you will have polish all the way to your knuckle! It may seem annoying and time consuming it really will save you time in the long run.

You will need a cup or in my case a Tupperware, filled at least half way with water, some tooth picks, paper towels and nail polish. I chose three colors, but you can do anywhere from two colors to as many as you would like. I chose a bright blue color, a hot pink color and a grey color. I thought they looked good together but options are endless. 

Start with the color of your choosing and make sure that you have a decent amount of polish on the brush. Hold the polish brush above the water and let the ball of polish that forms on the brush drop into the water, once it hits the water it should disperse, and form into a larger circle, take the next color of choosing and do the same thing with the brush, letting the paint drop into the middle of the first paint circle. Repeat this for the next color and repeat then again until you have the desired amount of rings that you like. I did each color 3 times.  It may take a few times to get this right and you have to do this fairly quickly of else you will not be able to pull the colors (the next step). Don't get discouraged, this took me a few attempts before I was happy with the results. Also a good tip is to use warm water, the cool water will make it dry quicker.   Once you have the desired number of rings, take your tooth pick and drag from one side of the circle to the opposite side of the circle. Keep doing this until you get the desired design you are going for. I think I dragged it through 3 or 4 times.

Once you have dragged the toothpick through the polish and you have the design you like, pick the spot that looks the best to you and dip your finger in the water over the spot of your choosing. Make sure you dip your finger all the way in the water. While your finger is in the water, take the toothpick and swirl it around your finger picking up the paint you did not use. Pull your finger out of the water and then start the steps all over again. This is the part that is time consuming, but the the effect is well worth it. I've tried it a couple times and been able to use the same circle multiple times, other times the paint has dried and you can only do one finger at a time. It all depends on a number of things (temp, time lapse, if your dogs are barking :) ) My advice would be to just try it and see what happens. When you have done all fingers you will notice that there is paint everywhere!!!!! That's were the tape comes in. 

Remove the tape and clean up any extra that went over the tape. When you are done use a clear coat to seal them. I like using a top coat that dries instantly. 

I'm not perfect at doing nails by any means, there are defiantly a few spots that came out funky. I am happy for the most part with how they came out and I hope this inspires you to try water marbling or some other fancy nail technique. 

Ok so I also did splatter nails. Splatters nails are super fun and I've had alot of compliments on them. I started off with a coat of primer and then also a base coat of the same grey color from the last tutorial. Choose a few colors that will pop. I chose a lime green, white and the pink from the last tutorial. I also choose yellow but didn't end up using it. 

take the first color you choose, in my case the green. put a decent drop on a spot on your nail, take a toothpick and pull out the edges of the drop making it look like a splatter. take a few small drops from the thick dot on your nail and make small drip marks all over you nails.

Repeat this step with the other colors you have chosen, I only used the three colors because I have short nails, if you have longer nails you may be able to fit more colors on your nails.  When you have finished all your nails with the splatters cover the whole nail with a clear coat to seal. I have been using Sally Hansen insta-dri anti chip top coat. I like it and it dries very quickly, but if you put a thick coat on it will form bubbles under the surface. I loved the ways these turned out and will totally do this again. I hope this inspires you to try splatter nails or any other fun nail technique. Both of these techniques I found through watching youtube videos. I learn everything from youtube! Good luck and please let me know how it goes!

P.S. I thought you guys might like to see an out take from this set of photos! Don't mind my lack of makeup.

Lomo Camera... SWOON

So one of the inspiring ladies in the big blog-o-sphere (http://honeybeeinthecity.blogspot.com/) is having an awesome giveaway! I'm swooning over the idea of having all three of these Lomo cameras! The husband is a lover of photography as am I (I'm not nearly as gifted in the photography skills as he) and this would be an awesome addition to the collection we already have. I made my own pin-hole camera and have experimented with that! It's kind of a guessing game if you get a good picture or not though. We have the DSLR, and the man has a collection of antique cameras that are displayed in the living room! I hope you go check out MS. Honeybee and I'm sure you should enter the giveaway too (Cora!)