Coffee & Yarn & Unicorns, OH MY!

Another night in Books-a-Million.

Trying out the Cinnamon Dulce Latte at BAM... ehh... I'll just have my Chai, thank you.

I'm not complaining because it's really easy to concentrate in here.  I mean I've gotten more work done on the tam for my neighbor in a few hours here than I have in a few nights at home.  It's almost done (hurray!).  There's been lots of frogging tho, but I guess that's to be expected when creating an original pattern ^.^

from my instagram @nadiratani

Today, work was a drag, lots of editing student-entered data on the computer.  But I was able to steal away a few minutes to read 'Happier at Home'.  It's shaping up to be just as inspirating (WTF does inspirating mean Caleisha?!?!  Sheesh, that's what happens when you start singing along with music while writing...) inspiring, I mean, as 'The Happiness Project.'  Let see, I've learned a few new words and I'm just getting into the first chapter. ^.^

1. Lassitude- a condition of indolent indifference; languor or lack of energy
2. Beleaguer- to surround or beset, as with troubles
3. Jackdaw- a bird of the crow family that is noted for stealing shiny things
4. Tableaux- a picturesque grouping of persons or objects, a striking scene
5. Gimcracks- a showy, useless trifle
6. Gewgaw- something gaudy or useless, trinket
7. Prescience- having knowledge of things or events before they exist or happen
8. Sitzfleisch- the power to endure or to persevere in an activity, stamina

And I'm only on page 38!  Woot for Gretchen Rubin's awesome vocab!!

In other news, I went thrifting yesterday and snagged some crafty bits (insert devious grin here).  I will write about them later when I have projects to show. I'm rather excited about my new additions, but I simply dont know where I'm going to make time for them... what with Handmade Holidays and this neighbor hat order.  But just the over-abundance of crafty ideas in my head makes me giddy happy. I just want to make things all day...

This is how I feel when I'm coming up with new crafty designs/ideas:

And YES, I googled 'unicorn rainbow out the butt'... no shame.

Ok... too much?? Oh well *shrug*

Well back to this hat. I hope you had a wonderful Tuesday and if you have Halloween plans, be safe!
~Peace

Painting the Town Pink!

Instagram/Twitter hashtag #pinkyarnbombs

Hey there! Last night we (Alina, Christelle, Dee, Doran, Roommate, and myself) went on a Breast Cancer Awareness yarn bombing spree!  And let me tell you it was SO much FUN!! We had a bag full of pink goodies all ready to be installed all over downtown.  Each piece got a hang-tag with nice things to do for women written on it and the instagram/twitter hashtag on the back.  I hope they make someone smile today.

Tags made by roommate.

Working on finishing touches

Tags laminated (just in case it rains) and tied to the crochet breast cancer ribbons.

Pink party snacks =)  Brownies with pink icing, pink honey pound cake, pink lemonade! Yum!!

After all the finishing touches were done. We gathered everything, got super bundled up (it was REALLY cold last night o.O), and piled into the car to head downtown.  The first stop was a group of statues near the children's museum.

Alina and her awesome hat!

 Alina made the hat in the picture above and the puff stitch scarf in the picture below. I told her that they are so nice, they'll surely be walking home with someone.

Christelle putting a scarf on little creepy girl statue in the corner of the garden.

Me and Alina prettying up a roadwork sign.

Sorry about the ill flash glare -_-

Dee and Christelle

Bomber feet!

Semi-syncronized heel clicking.

 After finishing most of our big pieces, the random shenanigans began, lol... Below is Roommate thinking she's Gabby Douglas... ::rolls eyes::

Shoe Bomb!

The Pink Yarn Bombers!

 We got a nice stranger to take a group picture of us since we were clearly struggling with that "myspace self portrait angle".  All the pretty smiles ^.^

So... excited...

And of course we couldn't help playing in the leaves... Children at heart.

...weird jumping picture...

So that was our night in a nutshell.  I high-fived a stranger, saw WAY too many girls dressed a prostitutes for Halloween, saw a guy dressed as... I HAVE NO IDEA (he literally had on black daisy duke spandex shorts and a pair of shoes), we model walked down the street, and froze our little fingers off.  It was a great night. 

We should make this a regular thing. ^.^

Oh yeah...

We bombed Kiva, too.

Pink Honey Pound Cake: A How I'm Feeling Post

On the way home from work today I was blindsided by the illest heavy sad feeling.  I mean this joker was like a sumo wrestler made of blues that decided that my chest was the best seat in the house...

So I laid down and went to sleep.  Normally a few hours of shut-eye will kick sadness' butt, but not so much today... I slept for like 5 hours and when I woke up, I couldn't come up with a good enough reason to get out of the bed... I felt that blues sumo wrestler sitting on my chest and the most I could manage was to roll over and put my face in the pillow... After a while Lamar called me for some bank info and I had to drag myself off the bed to get it.  I thought 'finally I'm up!' But no, my bed was like a sand trap and sucked me right back in.  Lamar asked me what was wrong and unfortunately it was one of those things that just happens.  Nothing was wrong.  I was just sad.  Just out of it.  He tried so hard to cheer me up by listing things that I have to be happy about (I really do love that man) but nothing was shaking the blues.

Eventually, I all but threw myself on the floor and dragged myself to the living room where I finished watching 'Waitress' and felt like I was literally melting into my chair.  So I pulled myself up again and went to clean up the kitchen so I could bake.

I made a pink honey pound cake for the Breast Cancer Awareness yarn bombing tomorrow... It felt good to make something. I suppose my anti-depressant is keeping busy.  Is anyone else like that?

Anyway, this blues has been tagging along with me since I got out of bed.  Even here at Books-a-Million I'm trying to drown it out with music and keep these threatening tears under control. Sheesh! I'm kind of a train wreck this evening...

Hopefully, tomorrow I'll feel much better.  I'm thinking about drinking some tension tamer tea when I get home and crocheting.  Or maybe I'll read some of Happier at Home.

(I'll post a picture of my pink honey pound cake later.  Do you ice pound cakes?? Somebody help...)

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EDIT

 

I decided to use the chocolate frosting in the cabinet instead of making a glaze.  It was good.  There's none left. :)

Darling Yellows

I'm sitting at work with nothing to do... So what does a lady do when there's nothing to do?

Window Shop at Modcloth! (I just had the urge to yell BAZINGA! lol)  Here are my favorite dresses of the day.  They're so sunny and happy! One day I may have you... ::looks wistfully into the distance::

All dresses from Modcloth

1. Gorgeous in Goldenrod  2. Roadside Poppy  3. Amber Champion  

4. A Dot Like Love  5. Daffodil Centerpiece  6. Zest is More

Baking up Confidence

I think it was the beginning of last year when I decided to write a list of things I wanted to do... (resolutions... if I dare).  Now, since I was never really a resolution maker, I pretty much forgot all about them.  Well mostly...

One of the points was "Increase My Kitchen Confidence."  I really wanted to be comfortable cooking and being in the kitchen. I just feel like I can't be a grown woman who is afraid of cooking... -_-  But since I'm a chicken on the inside, I kept pushing that goal aside. Saying things like, "Lamar likes cooking... I'll just wash the dishes" or "I want to cook something... nah, Burger King here I come!"

So a whole year passes and I'm no closer to my dream of kitchen confidence.  Then, one Sabbath, Lamar and I are invited to a potluck.  Being the person he is, Lamar made a big pot of rice and beans (excuse me as I meditate on the yumminess........... ok). He also suggested that we make a dessert.  We got creative and made a rainbow cake that was iced with chocolate frosting. It was the brightest thing there, lol.  Hearts were broken though, because everyone was expecting chocolate cake.

Nope. >.< mwahahahahahahaha!
 
Soon after that potluck, Lamar got his job in Florida and moved. He told me that I should keep going to the potlucks to make friends and get comfortable around the people. So I did/am.  Each potluck I make a different dessert and it's been really great.  I am SO much more at ease going into the kitchen with my chosen recipe and baking up delicious buttery, sugary, fatty-fatty, will-def-need-a-glass-of-milk, desserts.  So far, the people at the potlucks have eaten all... killed... MURKED each dish. Last week I didn't even get any of my own cake. ^.^

I'm in heaven.

I suppose I should write my stove a thank you note for working with me.  It's still an upward battle, but I'm surely seeing the increase in confidence and it's only been a month or so. ^.^  This may turn into a series of posts where I show you guys what I've been making. 

1st Solo Dessert: Death by Chocolate

2nd Solo Dessert: Buttermilk cake with Caramel Icing. My favorite so far!

3rd Solo Dessert: Chocolate Velvet Cake

And if you have any tips for a newbie Suzie Homemaker, please leave me a comment! I need all the help I can get, lol.

What's on My Hook? #17: Yarn Bombing Prep!

Hey there!

Lot's of awesomeness has been going on around here lately ^.^  Monday I met Alina from Purling Beauxs and we had SO MUCH FUN planning an upcoming event! 

Alina suggested we plan a yarn bombing for Breast Cancer Awareness month. Of course my mind starts snowballing on ideas, but the best thing about it is that Alina is the same way.  So we're both brainstorming and thinking of places to bomb and planning pre-bomb activities like games and snacks and what-not.

Scarf beginnings.  Matching tights completely unplanned!

We decided to do some scarves and hats on downtown statues, cover the arms of some benches, and make a bunch of little ribbons to hang from different places.

First scarf

This scarf will probably be around one of the leapfrog kids statue near the children's museum.  I'm making another scarf & Alina's making a hat for one of the other kids.

Ribbon assembly line.

The plan (loosely planned plan) is to do our big bombs and give a few ribbons to whoever comes to participate for them to put up.  That way everyone get's to bomb.  We've also come up with an instagram/twitter hashtag for the event: #pinkyarnbombs.  So we have a bit more work to do to insure that we have enough pieces, but I'm super excited and motivated to get moving faster. ^.^

You should join in.  I'm just sayin'... It's for a good cause :)  Tell your crafty friends!

What:  Breast Cancer Awareness Yarn Bombing

When: Saturday, October 27, 2012

Where: Wherever you are!

Tag: #pinkyarnbombs

Loving Now!!!

So this song has started playing on my Lisa Hannigan Pandora station and I LOHVE it! (BTW- if you haven't listened to Lisa Hannigan, you should check her out. She's so sweet *.*) 

Anyway, the song is Home by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros.

Ok, lemme tell you how much of a softie I am.  When he sings to her at the beginning I totally teared up!  I was like "OHHHHH the LUUUUUUVVVVV!" ::turns into a teary girly mess:: lol

Anyway, that's my favorite thing today.

He Lamarzapan, home is wherever I'm with you :~)

Take Tuesday #5: Sunrise

Theme: Sunrise

When I first saw this week's theme, I thought "Sheesh, Shakti & Nicole! Why would you guys pick that!?" Sunrise is so frickin early and all I could see in my head was me in my pajamas, standing in some random field, taking blurry pictures cuz I'm half asleep and freezing...

Luckily, this morning was nothing like that!  Even though I slept smooth through my 6am and 6:30am alarms, I did regain consciousness around 7.  (Definitely woke up confused- had no idea where I was lol)  Anywho, I rolled over to snap a picture of the sunrise through my bedroom window, but it was shatty... So I got up, put some warm clothes on (no blurry shiver pics for this girl!) and went out on the balcony.

I'm so glad I did that, because there were birds sitting on the power lines. I'm really proud of the shots I snagged this morning.  I wouldve had more, but grown-up life called and I had to go to work.

My favorite shot is the last one. The huge flock of birds flying across the sun is too perfect!

So go ahead and visit Shakti's or Nicole's blog to see what other people's sunrises were like. I'm really enjoying these Take Tuesday prompts.  If you haven't joined in, you should. Try something new :)

~Peace

Crafternoon #17: New Friends

Hello there :)

I feel like I haven't written in soo long! Anywho, I'm very excited to say that I have a new crafty friend ^.^  She's a member of the church I go to and I met her in the yarn aisle Michael's (craft store), named Susan.  After a bit of crochet "shop talk" we exchanged contact info and left with the plan to get together and share our knowledge and whatnot.

She texted me early in the week for a Sunday get together.  So this morning, I made my way over to her house and we sat and talked/crocheted for hours. (seriously, I was there for 4.5 hours!) She taught me how to do the reversed single crochet for a super simple edging and the love knot stitch.  I will definitely be working something in the love knot stitch and I'm going to go back over some of my holiday gifts and edge them with the rev single crochet.  I taught her how to crochet letters into a work.  She found it to be too time consuming with the step of creating a graph for each letter.  Hopefully, she'll do something with it. 

Susan is pretty boss at crochet.  Most of the pieces she showed me were pieces of clothing... lots of shawls, shrugs, tops, coats, vests, etc...  I want to get to that level, but every time I think about crocheting something that big/detailed I lose interest because I feel like it'll take FOREVER!  So she gave me an assignment to do this cropped shrug that's in one of my books.  I'm a bit more motivated now since I have someone else that enjoys this as much as I do.  We'll see what happens with it.

One other thing I learned about myself is that I can be terrible at describing how to do something.  The steps just dont go from my head to my mouth clearly.  *shrug*

But besides the confusion of me trying to explain something, we both really enjoyed ourselves.  So much so that she wants to have 'crochet days' at least once a month.  I'm completely down!

Yarn doodles. Learning new stitches.

Well, now I'm off to work on Handmade Holidays gifts some more. I hope you had a great Sunday (and weekend).

~Peace

Back in Action!

Hey y'all! (yes, I can be a bit southern ^.^)

Let's see, I got my computer back from the shop on wednesday and it's been sitting safely on a desk since then. I really have to take better care of my comp because the week without it was a little torturous.  Must be more careful.

Wow... I've done so much that I haven't gotten to write about... I guess I can spread everything out in scheduled posts... I always feel like a "real blogger" when I actually schedule my posts, lol. Does anyone else feel like that?

So how about some Take Tuesday action?
This week's subject is Numbers... I've been looking for interesting ways to show numbers, but nothing was jumping out at me.  That is until I started looking for a recipe for this weekend's dessert. Here's my snap :)

Photo from my instagram @nadiratani

Baking is becoming my new way of building "kitchen confidence."  I have been making dessert for bi-weekly church potlucks recently.  It's been really fun. Nerve-wracking, but fun.  But I'll go in to more detail about that in another post.

Well, I'm off to post this on Shakti's blog (you can also find the Take Tuesday linkup post on Nicole Marie's blog).

I hope that you had a good week :)  Do you have any fun plans for this weekend?

Update and Whatnot

Ok... I'm currently posting this from my phone, so here's to hoping it comes out right... I'm on the phone because my computer is in the shop again. I confess, I'm a total klutz. ::rolls eyes::

Anyway, I hate the fact that I've been ghost for the past week from my happy little blogland home. I feel like I get to access so much more of me while blogging and sharing my artsy side.  Those are the aspects of me that get put aside in my daily work life. I really hate that. But bills gotta be paid and no one's paying for my crochet work. Yet. :)

So I was going to post a list of things I missed posting like, crafternoon, NSB Monday, Take Tuesday... but I think I just want to do the Take Tuesday.

The subject is 'flowers' and had I thought about it last week I would have done something different for water... Anywho, here's my flower.

It's one of my wildflowers that I planted this summer. This particular one took SOOO long to bloom I had started to think it was just a wild plant. But one day it popped up. And I think it's the prettiest of all my wildflowers ^.^

I'm going to link this up at Shakti's later on when I can snag a computer. I hope you are doing well and that fall is beautiful wherever you are.

Much love :0)

Letter to an Appliance

Dear Stove,

We both know that cooking is not my forte'... but I'm trying.  Sometimes, as crazy as this is going to sound, I feel like you're glaring at me whenever I venture into the kitchen.  Why can't cooking be simple like sewing.  Or crocheting... or even knitting...  Now that's saying alot, I knit better than I cook.  Too bad I can't eat scarves...

I want us to be friends.  The kind that spend time together in the evenings and on the weekends. But everytime I try to get better acquainted, things always come out wrong... charred... burnt.

So, Stove, if you don't mind maybe helping me out a bit with this cooking thing, I'd appreciate it.  Hopefully, it's not bad to cook everything over low heat. Because I think that's going to be what I try next.

Sincerely,

The Unsure Cook

Caleisha

Take Tuesday #3: Water

It's another Take Tuesday (on a Wednesday) hurrah!!!

The subject for this week is Water. 

These flowers are outside the building I work in and they were covered with dew this morning.  I liked how the spider webs looked on them as well. It's interesting to see the variation of delicacy that occurs in nature.

I love the color most of all... 

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If you want to join in on the photofun, go over to Shakti-Dove or Nicole Marie and linkup. It's really easy. Just take a picture that fits the subject post it on your blog and leave your link :) I saw some of the shots from yesterday & they're great!

What's on My Hook? #16: Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Ta-da!!! These babies had me up til 3 something this morning!  Talk about crochet dedication ^.^

I got tired of being cold all the time at work. I mean, why in the actual hell is it SOO cold in that office? Everybody's huddled around their individual space heaters and if you don't have one, you run the risk of getting numb toes... That makes absolutely no sense!

But since I can't do anything about the building's shoddy heating system, I decided to make a set of arm warmers.  I thought they were going to be a quick work-up, but I was watching Warehouse 13 and got sucked in so it took me like 4 hours to make them, lol.  I alternated the rows (griddle stitch on one row & half double crochets on the next). I like the texture it created. In case you're wondering, to make the griddle stitch- you repeat single crochet, double crochet, sc, dc, to the end of your row. It's a really simple stitch and looks good.

close up

They're very warm. So much so that I couldn't wear them all day like I thought I was going to have to. I'm excited to wear them with gloves in the winter. I think it'll look cool with contrasting colors and whatnot.

I'm still perfecting the sizing. These are a wee bit big around the palms of my hands.  So I started another set this afternoon & I'm going to make them about 2 rows slimmer to see if that fits better.  The new set is going to be chocolate brown and dark red stripe.  Wish me luck ^.^

Crafternoon #16: Lumos!

I am very excited about this belated Crafternoon because.... drumroll... it's my first tutorial type diy!
Hurray!!!

So be nice :)

Alrighty, originally I was going to make these 'tissue covered luminaries' (diy found here) for one of my Handmade Holidays gifts but then a bit of crafter's ADD took over and the idea morphed.

I call it the Lumos Candle Holder. So here we go ^.^
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And Ta-Da!!!

My first DIY tutorial. How was it?  How can I make future tutorials better?  I know the lighting in the photos is a bit wonky, but I'm still trying to find the light 'sweet spot' in my apartment.

I hope you had a wonderful Monday... well by the time you read this... a wonderful Tuesday ^.^