Can't Stop The Rock! Go Gators!

This is the sign I made for Nathan's graduation.  Gave me something to do on my forever long flight, with an hour long delay, while they fixed a broken wing.  I love sitting in a non moving plane for an hour while parents try extra hard to entertain their unhappy toddlers.  And by love I mean loath. 

And I'm really glad that I decided to make a banner!  He had been unable to reach me for over a week and had no idea what my status was, what day I would be flying out or anything.  So during the airman's run, he had no idea if I was there yet, or even his his parents were there.  I saw him immediately, but he didn't see me.  Lucky, other people in his flight saw my banner and were able to let him know that someone was there to see him!

Can't Stop The Rock!  So proud of my Airman Sinex!

Word of The Year

Back in January, I was stalking one of my favorite blogs, The Lettered Cottage, and read about her "word of the year."  It is apparently the new New Years Resolution.  You pick a word to create inspiration and give you focus for the year.  I love words, so I thought I'd pick a word that could inspire me this year.  I thought and I thought and nothing seemed to fit.  I decided that I was trying too hard felt that it might be better to let the word find me.  The word that eventually came to me was a little strange, IMPERFECTION.

Every so often a person feels like they need to reinvent themselves, and this year, knowing that graduation from college was just around the corner and I'd be entering the real world, it seemed like a good time to create a new me.  I wanted to be more bold, to accept all my imperfections, to have style, and fly by the seat of my pants into this new adventure in the real world.  I knew that I would be making a lot of new adjustments this year and that I would need to be my strongest self to survive all those changes.  It may seem strange to focus on Imperfection when I want to build myself up, but I knew that I would have to accept all my imperfections to be able to be my strongest.

I remember sitting on my parents bed where my mom and I had many heart to heart conversations and complaining to her about my lack of grace.  I did not like that being a klutz came so easily to me and I tried ever so hard to cover up that imperfection around my friends.  She told me, "Oh honey, you're going to have to learn how to embrace that.  You can not escape it; being a ditz is in your blood."  She taught me so much about just being yourself and I don't think the weight of her words had really sunk in until recently.

I think I have even done a fairly good job accepting Imperfection in my life.  This term in school I decided to take a ballroom latin technique class.  I love this class and feel like I severely lack the grace or passion to correctly perform the rhumba or paso doble, but I love it.  We have a small set of bleachers in the gym where we have class that everyone puts their backpacks on and it's where we all sit on to put on our dance shoes.  Being the genius that I am, I sit at the top of them because it's a little crowded with all the smart people at the bottom.  I strap on my shoes and begin my decent down the bleachers as I realize that I am in heals and my center of balance has been completely thrown off and I am beginning to topple forward.  I try to catch myself on the next step and right myself, to only falter again on the step after that and repeat the cycle till I reach the bottom and I stagger on the floor trying not to run over people in my path.  The whole room is looking at me like I must be my first day walking upright and I can feel the blush that is spreading across my face as I try to stand up straight and look like a normal person.  I was so embarrassed, but I took a little bow to let them know I was alright and then proceeded to talk to my friends like what I did was totally normal.  And well, honestly, for me that was normal.  I'm a mess and I'm totally okay with it, people know that I am not perfect and that's how it should be.

Layla, over at The Lettered Cottage, recommended doing a craft each month to help bring you that focus each month on your word.  I decided that I couldn't do one every month, but I could do something to help remind me of this word.  I decided that since I love to doodle and I can squeeze in time to do that here and there while waiting for a class to start, or while on hold on the phone that I would just do a little art project.  I slowly decorated the cover of my day planner so that I would see my word every day and be reminded of my goal to accept my Imperfections.  I recently ran out of white space, so now it's time to share it and start a new project.

Paper Flower

I love to craft.  I love to craft and I love to blog stalk.  These two things lead to me seeing tons of fun things I want to try and having a folder on my desktop that is filled with craft and art inspiration... well, not as much as there used to be because my computer crashed a while back and I didn't think to back up those things... but that's another story. I saw this on one of the many blogs I read and right away decided I had to make it...  this is partly because it was so cute, but also cuz I had a really bad book that I didn't know what to do with.  Honestly, it was bad.  So bad I'm going to provide you with that link to the amazon review.  Just read the first one, it be funny.  Here's how I did it.

You will need:
A book that can have the pages torn out
a piece of cardboard (I used a cereal box)
coffee or tea
and an exacto knife
craft glue

First, make up the tea or coffee (to age the pages) and let it cool ( I used a tea I wont drink cuz it tastes nasty)
Then, trace down the middle of the book with the exacto knife to remove the pages

Get a good stack of em

Then dip the pages into the tea

Then place on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven at 350F

I also sprinkled a little hot cocoa on some of them to distress them a little more....
Pull the pages out of the oven once they are completely dry

See how the pages look like they are from a really good, well used book, instead of the one my husband got for free, walking into the college library one day, that he read the first few pages of and then left to rot on our bookshelf.  On top of that I felt like I couldn't give it to Goodwill, because they have a whole book shelf with this book on it in Corvallis.  It was not a hit with the college students, we love free stuff, but some free stuff is just not lovable.

Anyway.  Roll the paper and glue to that piece of cardboard you were inspired to cut a hole in because I forgot to tell you to do that.
NOTE: You will want to make the hole bigger then your fist, mine wasn't very big and that caused a little bit if a problem when putting the pieces together.
ANOTHER NOTE: Layer the rolled tubes like they are dancers that have to have a window to look through.  I dunno how else to say that.  It will help it to look fuller and lay better if you can understand what I meant by that.

Then allow it to dry and, tada! you're done!  Then you can hang it on your wall!