I finished The Hunger Games last night. WOW. I mean, I knew that I loved those books, but DANG! I forgot how much I LOVED THOSE BOOKS! It was JUST SO GOOD. I know I've said this approx. a gagillion times, but dudes. READ. THEM. NOW.
Today I took a bit of a rest from reading* and got some other things done. I watched Bones, I went to work where I caught up on Twitter, and I finished my secret project for my mom. Since my mom reads this blog, here's a non-spoilery picture:
Mysterious Envelope of Awesome
This is the mysterious envelope of awesome that I will be mailing to my mom. That's right, it fits in an envelope. :)
I'll tell you guys all about it when she gets it, but for now that's one more sewing project completed! :D And don't worry, telling you it's a sewing project gives away NOTHING. (Muahahahaha!)
Anyway, I think I might keep it short and sweet tonight. I still need to begin consuming Catching Fire tonight.
OM NOM NOM
(Hmm, looks like I already started...)
Tomorrow I'm having a Yay-Training-Is-Over Dinner for my new staffmates, so I'll fill you in on all the yummy details. Maybe I'll share some pictures of my delicious homemade peach cobbler. We shall see!
So until then, best wishes!
*Sometimes I need a break after reading one book before moving onto the next. Even if they're in the same series. Vicki thinks I'm crazy, but I think I'll be able to better appreciate Catching Fire now that my brain has had some time to simmer.
Days until school: 9
BEDA posts:21
Sewing projects complete: 9 (yay!)
I watched more Bones today. I'm almost done with season one, and I LOVE it. I've seen random episodes on TV and stuff before, but I prefer watching a show from episode one and getting the whole story. So far, the story is AWESOME. And I <3 David Boreanaz more than I can explain in mere words...
I also had my first shift at the Community Development Center (CDC*) this evening. It's basically a resource for all the Resident Assistants (RAs) on campus to get supplies for their bulletin boards (BBs), door decorations (door decs or DDs), or fliers for programs (no abbreviation**). We have tons of butcher paper, two die-cut machines, drawers full of regular-size colored paper, glue, scissors, balloons, a helium tank, a laminating machine, a button press, and much more. It's like a craft-maker's dream room. And I get to work there ten hours a week :) The other part of my job will be planning the campus-wide events, and that should be starting pretty soon. Luckily our first event, the Black and White Dance, is already pretty much planned, so we just have to set up and be there, I guess. That will be nice. I'm excited for the event-planning, though! I love stuff like that. Ask my mom. I used to plan EPIC birthday parties.
Before my shift, though, I made two more headbands, as seen below. I can't stop making these! I really need to get that etsy shop set up...
Two more headbands!
I realized that I have no brown thread. I need to get some. Luckily I had other colors that worked okay with these particular headbands.
I couldn't watch Bones while sewing because my sewing machine faces the other way and it's too hard to hear the show while sewing, so I decided to listen to music. There was lots of different stuff I wanted to listen to, though, so I decided to make a playlist (which eventually became a full-fledged mix CD) of wizard rock and artists from DFTBA Records***. This took longer than you might expect. See, I like my playlists/CDs to FLOW. I don't want just random songs thrown together. So I spent like an hour arranging the songs so that each one led well into the next and no artist had two songs in a row. It was kinda fun. And I ended up calling it DFTBA, Wrock****. Get it? (If not, then you're probably not a Nerdfighter. That's okay. You should be, though.)
One of the main reasons I wanted to listen to that music was because I wanted to listen to some Mike Lombardo. Mike Lombardo (or MiLo) is a musician on YouTube who was (kinda) recently signed to DFTBA Records. He is AWESOME. He plays the piano, which is like the coolest thing ever, and he writes rock music! With the piano! I don't think I can explain how AWESOME that is. Anyway, here's one of my favorite songs of his (called "Abby Never") and the official music video that he filmed and put up a few days ago. You should give him a listen:
Anyway, yeah, it wasn't a productive day in the conventional sense, but I got stuff done! Tomorrow I think I'm going to work on a little secret project for my mom that I can't talk about because she reads this. And maybe I'll make the nursing cover for my aunt that I promised her.
So, until then, best wishes!
*Not to be confused with the Center for Disease Control
**Residence Life (ResLife) does like it's abbreviations
***Record label of artists from YouTube, run by Alan Lastufka and Hank Green
****DFTBA stand for "Don't Forget To Be Awesome" and Wrock stands for Wizard Rock, which is music based on Harry Potter
Days until school: 16
BEDA posts: 14
Sewing projects completed: 8 (I LOVE it when this number goes up! I actually WAITED to blog today until I finished my projects so that it COULD increase. Because I'm cool like that.)
First off, I want to show you the two pictures that I was missing yesterday.
The hat:
Sun hat
And, of course, the APRON:
Only the best apron EVARRR.
And JUST IN CASE you didn't notice the fabric on there, here's a close-up:
SKULLS!
Flowers and SKULLS! Yes, that's right, SKULLS! This is my proudest piece yet. SO AWESOME :)
Anyway, now for today. This morning was kinda meh at first because I was SUPPOSED to be somewhere at 9:00 to set up some projectors for RA training, but ACTUALLY I was supposed to have everything DONE by 9:00. My boss realized this morning that we had the times mixed up, so she called me and my new friend Katie, who is one of the other PAs*, at 7:30 to let us know that we needed to get going. So I grudgingly got up, went to her office to pick up an extra laptop (the projectors need laptops with them, and we didn't have enough down on south campus where training was happening), did some AWESOME parallel parking**, and then picked up Katie and went down to south campus to set things up. It wasn't hard or anything, and the good news was that we were just in time to have breakfast after we finished setting up. So it all worked out okay.
Then we had a good deal of time before we had to be back for OUR training (we only have to go to a few of the training sessions because we're not actually RAs), so I decided to... (wait for it...) sew!
I turned on my Eclipse audiobook that I had been listening to in Utah and I started looking through fabric. I had a friend tell me yesterday that she would actually buy a headband from me (hi, Lori!), and that was super encouraging, so I decided to make another headband. It's actually the same fabric as the hat that I made for my mom, and I think it's super cute!
The new headband:
I really love this pink plaid fabric <3
So I think what I'll do is take all the smaller scrap pieces from my big projects and make headbands with them... that way I'm using ALL the fabric up instead of wasting a bunch. I'll keep you posted about the whole selling-things thing (that sounds weird, I know) and send you a link when I start up my Etsy shop.
Anyway, after training and dinner I wanted to do some MORE sewing, so I looked through my projects-to-accomplish, and I noticed that I STILL hadn't tried out my ruffler foot! The bad news: It's the wrong kind, so it doesn't fit my machine. The good news: The seller I bought it from has a 30-day-guarantee on all their items, so I'll be able to get my money back. ALSO, they have the RIGHT kind for my machine (I think... this time I'll ask, though, don't worry), so maybe I'll just be able to do an exchange or something. *sigh* Just one of those learning experiences, I guess. At least now I know for sure that my machine is a LOW SHANK and not a SLANT SHANK. Which are quite different.
Sooo... I just spent like an hour figuring out how to sync my phone with my computer via Bluetooth. But I DID it! And I am now trying to figure out how to cut my songs into shorter bits and upload them to my phone as ringtones. We'll see how that works. Anyway, I did all this so I could share with you the picture of my unparalleled parallel parking.
And with that, I think it's time to be done with this post. So, until tomorrow, best wishes!
*PA= Programming Assistant (not to be confused with RA, which is Resident Assistant). This is my awesome new job where I get to plan school-wide events and be a resource to all the RAs for THEIR events. FUN! :D
**See?
I can haz license?
Days until school: 18
BEDA posts: 12
Sewing projects completed: 6 (yay!)
Okay, I've been promising some pictures, so tonight I will DELIVER! Hopefully this will live up to all the hype :)
Let's start with the sewing projects.
My apron!
This is my apron! It's the first thing I ever made, and I LOVE it! Though I haven't actually used it to cook yet. But do not fret! Soon we will have a hall bake-off and I will make home made peach cobbler and WEAR THIS APRON! :D
My headband!
I know I showed you the picture of me WEARING my headband, but I wanted to show it up close just for fun. This thing is so awesome. I am TOTALLY going to make like twenty of these in all different colors. Let me know if you want one. I'm thinking of selling them for like $5 or something to make some extra money. Or if I like you I might give you a discount ;)
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the hat or my mom's (AWESOME) apron yet, but I'll ask my mom to take some pictures of them so I can post them on the blog.
Aaaand now, MY ROOM!
My ROOM!
Yaaaay! I <3 this picture. If you look at all the details, almost every part of me is represented in one way or another. And LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL SEWING TABLE!!!
Here's a better look:
My AWESOME sewing table!
Look at all that storage space! And the machine fits PERFECTLY onto the table! (Actually, it's a desk... but it was JUST the right size!) I love this thing. I can't wait to sew on it.
My pin collection!
And this is a close-up of my awesome pin collection. Again, many of my obsessions represented here :) Those two square-shaped Harry Potter ones are ACTUAL pins from an ACTUAL movie theatre! (One was mine, the other was a friend's, and he was SO NICE and GAVE his to me!)
Anyway, I think that's it for today. I'm a bit wiped because training started today and I had to be up and out the door much earlier than I usually like. I think I'll go work on some sewing projects and listen to Eclipse for a while.
Until tomorrow, best wishes!
Days until school: 19
BEDA posts: 11
Completed sewing projects: 5
Sorry, folks, I forgot to copy/paste this from my other blog last night. I swear I didn't forget to blog last night. Here's my blog over at the Maureen Johnson ning in case I forget to post it over here again.
And here's my post from last night:
So remember how I've been to JoAnn's like three times in as many days? Well, the first time I went I had two coupons, but after that I bought some more expensive things and I wished for one of those two coupons that I had already used. And guess what? After three trips to JoAnn's, I got a coupon in the mail yesterday. It expires before I'll be able to come back down to Phoenix and GO to JoAnn's. So... I think I'll go to JoAnn's one last time tomorrow and get a pattern or something. Lol.
Anyway, it's almost midnight and I have basically nothing to say right now, so I think today is going to have to be one of those short-posts-about-nothing kind of days. Sorry. I'll try to be more entertaining tomorrow.
Until then, best wishes!
Days until Flagstaff: 2
BEDA posts: 6
Completed sewing projects: 4 (hopefully this number will change tomorrow)
Sunday, August 1, 2010
So it seems that MJ is NOT doing BEDA after all... I'm still not really sure why, because I was absent from Twitter for like two months this summer, so if anyone would like to fill me in, that would be appreciated. ANYWAY, my point is, even though she isn't doing BEDA, WE MARCH ONWARD! And I fully intend to do it this August. April was kind of a hard month for me, so I am happy for this second chance in August :)
These last few weeks have been awesome for me. I've been in Sandy, UT staying with my aunt and uncle, and I LOVE it here. I've been here before, but I've never stayed for three whole weeks, and I'm going to be sad to leave on Wednesday. I will be happy to be home, though. I missed my family a LOT, especially my siblings. I'll only be home for a few days, though, and then it's back up to Flagstaff for school! Well, actually, I'll be there about three weeks early for training, which is going to be nice because campus will be pretty much deserted and I'll probably have a lot of free time on my hands to get things done.
By "get things done" I mean, of course, "finish all my sewing projects." See, I've been sewing up a storm here in Utah, and I am super excited to continue with my newfound hobby. I acquired a sewing machine about a year ago, and I knew how to sew from my Costume Construction class (I'm a Theatre minor), but I didn't know how to use that particular machine yet and I never really got into sewing. Then this summer we took the machine in for a tune-up (because it wasn't working quite right, and it turned out there was a broken piece that needed replacing) and started sewing things. I made a really cute apron while I was at home, and then up here in Utah I've made a pair of pajama pants, a hat, a headband, and I'm almost finished with another apron, this time for my mom. I can't wait to get to Flagstaff and make all the things I'm planning to make. (I imagine that will be a common theme throughout this BEDA.)
Anyway, I think that's long enough for today. Maybe tomorrow I'll post some pictures from Utah and tell you about the cool things I've seen while here.
Until then, best wishes!
Days until Flagstaff: 7
BEDA posts: 1
Completed sewing projects: 4
