Finally! A Post!

I was helping my mom with her blog the other day and I realized that I haven't blogged here in almost a year. When I started this blog, it was a way to connect with my family and friends who lived so far away. A way to share everyday happenings with them. Now that I'm closer to family, this blog has taken a back seat. Time to rectify that!

Anyway, a lot has happened in the past year. I'm still on the never-ending, or at least it feels this way, quest for a teaching position in elementary education. I have my feelers out for this upcoming school year, but haven't heard back from anybody yet. In the mean time, I obtained a position as an Independent Study Teacher for a local high school. I really love this job, I mean A LOT! I think I could be happy doing this job for the rest of my life actually. I'm excited about this because I don't think I've ever felt this way about a job - at least not in a long time. I'm not sure what's going to happen next year as the Independent Study curriculum is going to be online, but I'm so looking forward to the challenge. :)

I also obtained a position in an elementary school as a Kindergarten Teacher Tutor. This position was fun! I got to work with two Kinder classes and pretty much got paid to play! We went on two field trips, went to the park next to the school, painted, colored, counted, added, subtracted, read, played, ate lunch, told stories, learned sight words, and just had a ball! I am hoping to continue this position next year, but these positions are filled in some interesting way that's based on funding and school politics that I'm not all together sure of. We'll see. If this position doesn't pan out, I'm already planning to substitute again. I also love to substitute, so it's a win-win for me!

I started an urban garden this year! I have many pots and containers out on my balcony. I'm hoping to get tomatoes, bell peppers, mariachi peppers, chocolate mint, lemon balm, rosemary, basil and oregano from my garden this season. I also have plans to grow celery, carrots, lettuce and radishes. Inside, I am growing sprouts in this nifty container I got at a local nursery. I've always been afraid of gardening. I just thought it was too hard to maintain. With containers, though, all I've had to do is plant the plants, remember to water them and then just wait. So far the bell pepper plant is growing two little bell peppers, the tomato plant has flowered and is getting ready to grow tomatoes, the potatoes are growing and the herbs are doing great! With container gardening, there isn't any issue with weeds either. Easy!

For some reason, maybe it's living next to the ocean again, but my craftiness has returned. I've been sewing, and crafting up a storm! The penny ball you see in the garden picture above is illustrated in the picture below. (Speaking of pictures, I've jumped on the Instagram bandwagon! :)

I glued pennies on a bowling ball I found at a thrift store for $3. Then I put it outside. Some of the pennies have come off, but most of them are staying strong. Also, the pennies are no longer shiny and have a worn patina, but that doesn't matter to me. If you recreate this project, and want the pennies to stay shiny, seal it with some kind of top coat to prevent the patina.

Have you heard of Meetup.com?! I joined this year and have never looked back. I LOVE it! I belong to a few meetups, including a craft one. I've even met some really great people and made friends that have lasted outside the meetups. I made the pendant on the left for my mom for Mother's Day at the craft meetup. This took two meetups - one to form the pendent out of polymer clay and the other to do the wire work. The heart, tiled brick I also made at the craft meetup. Eventually this will go out in the garden, but I have it sitting on the windowsill in my sewing room where I can look at it while I sew.

I made this cute teacher gift for one of the teachers I worked with this year. I just printed out the tree and the words on a regular sheet of paper. I then had the kids make thumbprint butterflies. Lastly, I wrote their names really small next to their butterfly. The teacher loved this gift! I thought it came out pretty cute, if I do say so myself! :)

I've started up my wire working again. So far, I've just made this tree of life and some other wire wrapped jewelry that I'm planning on selling at my quilt guild's fundraising boutique this year.

Oh yes! The quilt guild! I also rejoined the SLO Quilters Guild and became their librarian! This is a fun job as I get to play with books. However, the previous librarians left me and my cohort with a tiny mess on our hands with regards to inventory. Some books are in the book boxes, but not on the inventory list, some are gone but on the list, and some are just floating around in the cart with no home. We have two months until the next guild meeting. During this time, I'm going to redo ALL the library cards so they are all uniform. Right now, some of the cards are index cards, some are just card stock, where some are proper library cards. I love organizing and doing things like this, so I really don't mind. I've made a few quilt tops this year too. I don't have all the pictures, but here are a few. The one on the left is called "Birds on a Fence." The one on the right is a wall hanging I completed at a mystery quilt along.

I'm in the process of making two others, one for my husband and one for my mother-in-law. I've also got one more in mind that I hope to start on this summer.

Another thing that changed this year is the way we eat. We've cut out all dairy, a lot of processed foods, and all fast food. We have also been going to the Rutiz Family Farm and getting their Harvest Box of organic fruits and veggies every week. 

Doing this has increased the number of vegetables and fruit we consume as well as forces us to be more creative in the kitchen! We don't get a choice of what is in the box week to week, which is what I love about the box. We've only had a few things spoil on us, but that was when P was away for a week. I just couldn't eat everything by myself before it went bad.

The kitties are doing great. They are thirteen now, and still going strong! They have found the garden on the balcony and love to sniff the plants and relax in the sun. Quixote has succeeded in killing one plant by chewing the leaves off. He also figured out how to get on the railing, which scares me! So now they aren't allowed on the balcony without supervision. I think they are really loving being back in California. They just seem happier and healthier. They are shedding a lot less too!

Anywho, this blog is getting pretty long so I'm going to end it here, with the cute pictures of the boys. :) My summer list includes blogging more, so there will be more updates. I hope everyone is happy and healthy!

Look What I Made Monday!

For Christmas this year, I made pillows or pillow related things.  I made 8 pillowcases for various people and they all loved them.  :)  They are so easy to make so I decided to put an easy tutorial here so everyone can make their own pillowcases!  This is my first tutorial, so be kind.  Just to be clear, this is not my idea.  :)

This pillowcase is called the "Magic Pillowcase" which just means that when you are done, all the seam allowances - or raw edges - are hidden.

What you will need:

27" fabric for the body of the fabric (WOF - width of fabric)
11" fabric for the sashing (WOF)
4" for the border (WOF)
Pins
Iron
Scissors
Sewing machine
Thread

For this tutorial, I decided to use the same fabric for the body and the sashing, since the pattern is so busy, and a coordinating fabric for the border.  You can use three different fabrics, or even piece fabric together to form the sashing if you like.  First, iron the border fabric in half lengthwise.  Then, take the sashing fabric and lay it out RIGHT side up on your sewing table or cutting table.  If you are using a directional fabric, make sure when you lay out this sashing fabric that the pattern is UPSIDE DOWN:

Lay your border fabric on top of your sashing fabric with raw edges along the top of the sashing fabric:

Place the body fabric on the top of the sashing and border fabric WRONG side up, matching the salvage edge to the salvage edge of the sashing fabric.  This is an important step since if your fabric is directional, it will insure that the sashing and the body fabric is going in the same direction:

Now here's where we get fancy and stuff!  Pick up the body fabric and roll it to about half way up the sashing fabric:

Fold up the sashing fabric and pin all layers into place.  If you are using a flannel like this one, pin the HECK out of it or it will stretch on you.

Take this pinned and rolled up pillowcase to the sewing machine and sew all of it together with a 1/4" seam allowance creating a pocket of fabric with the body fabric INSIDE the sashing fabric:

Once sewn, turn the tub right side out by gently pulling the body fabric out of the sashing fabric.  Iron the seam of the sashing on the back:

And the front:

Now, at this time I noticed that my border fabric was not as long as my body and sashing fabric so I trimmed it up as best I could:

Before you go any farther, you'll notice that the border fabric is only sewn on one side and loose on the folded side.  At this time I would recommend sewing down the border fabric or you will have to iron it down after washing:

Next, I cut the salvage edges off the pillowcase, only because the salvages were SO wide and I was afraid that they would show after I sewed the pillowcase together.  This is an optional step:

Now we are going to sew the pillowcase together with a French seam!  :)  First, fold your pillowcase in half lengthwise, matching up salvage edges - or where the salvage edges would have been.  At this time, we are folding the WRONG sides together - trust me, it will work out - and sew up the side and bottom with either a 1/4" or 1/2" seam allowances:

Trim up the seam allowances to about 1/8" or less to make the seams less bulky.

If you're lucky, you'll get a helper!

Turn pillowcase inside out and iron the seams making sure to press out the seams out as much as possible:

Sew down the seams with a 1/2" seam allowance making sure to encase the previous seam allowance.  (I don't have a picture of this as I got too carried away!)  All your raw edges will be hidden and it your seams will look like this:

Turn your pillowcase right-side-out.  Put on your pillow and take a well deserved nap!

These two I made for Mom:

 This one I made for my MIL:

Here are the ones I made for my coworkers:

I decided to wrap these pillowcases up with their salvages since their salvages were so cute.  :)

I made one for my dad too, but right when I was going to snap a picture, my camera died and I had to get all the family presents boxed up to mail bright and early the next morning so I didn't have time to charge the battery.  Anyway, pillowcases are fun and easy to make and I hope you take them on too!  They don't take that long to make either.  Have fun!  :)

Finally a REAL post!

But first, I have to shamelessly plug something I found online that I feel is really awesome! I found this offer on one of the blogs I read called Sew Dang Cute Crafts.  Right now, Canvas People have a great deal of $55 off a photo canvas - just pay shipping and handling. If you choose an 8x10 canvas, it is free!  The shipping and handling is kind of pricey, but I think it's worth it.  I used a really cute picture of my wedding for my canvas.  I also emailed everyone on my email list that I think would appreciate the deal and now I am letting you, *all* my readers, know about this too.  :)  Just in time for the holidays!

Secondly, I would like to do my Wish List Wednesday, Thursday Edition!  (Thanks for my sis-in-law, Lilac Barries, for doing a Wish List Wednesday and reminding me about blogging!)  I would like a digital picture frame so I can up load the cutest pictures of my wedding and take them to work with me.  Something like this:

LOL!  I love the expression on that kid's face!  :)  With a digital photo frame, I can show off lots of pictures w/o taking up that much space - and I can change the photos out when I feel like it.  Some of these frames come with remotes, which I don't think is necessary.  The last thing I need is another remote to keep track of. The price isn't bad - the cheapest one I saw on Amazon was about $30 before shipping.  The reviews say it can only hold 10 pictures, but why would anyone want more than 10 pictures in one slide show?  I get kind of bored after that anyway.  :P  So there's my Wish List Wednesday on Thursday!

Anyway, on to the REAL blog entry!  The Wedding Night Story - keep reading!  It's rated G.  PROMISE!

As I stated before, the reason I was gone for so long was that I went off and got married.  The wedding was FANTASTIC with awesome food, amazing flowers, great cake, wonderful people and a beautiful venue.  The only thing I was kind of upset about was the flies that decided to show up during the ceremony.  But, once the sun went down, the weather was perfect and the reception went off without a hitch.  There were so people taking pictures that I felt kind of famous that night!  Well, it was my wedding after all.  :P  It all went by too fast...I wish time could have stopped, or slowed down so I could have spent more time with the people I don't get to see that often.  However, I am really glad I got to spend as much time with everyone as I did.  :)  We spent time chatting, eating, dancing with the kids and just having so much fun!  Everything was just perfect.

So, since the wedding was SO perfect, in the back of my mind, I was kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop - so to speak.  And it did.  The ceremony lasted into the night, 9 or 10pm, and we didn't get out of there until late.  We spent some time packing up my things at my parents' house then went off to the first stop of our honeymoon in San Luis Obispo.  We were going to spend our first night in a hotel there then go on up to Morro Bay for a few more days.  Well, here is where the other shoe dropped.  We arrived at the hotel very late, which didn't have an elevator by the way, checked in and went to our room.  Our room was on the second floor and poor P carried two big bags up the stairs.  We get to our room, open the door...and BAM! We were hit with a wall of cigarette smell (coming from a non-smoking room none the less!).  I reeled back and said, "We can't stay here"  and we promptly went back down stairs with the big bags and asked for another room.  There were no rooms available.  So, we asked for a refund but since we reserved the room from an online company, we had to call them to get the refund.  Since it was so late, nobody was there to issue the refund so we had to wait until the next day.  Fine...but where were we going to sleep?

By this time, it was..oh about 1am and everyone we knew in the area were hosting other people and didn't have room in their houses - or asleep and unreachable.  So, we went next door from this horrible hotel to the Courtyard by Marriott.  I know swanky...and if the story stopped here, it be awesome but it wouldn't be a story!  So, we walked in, stood there waiting for another family to check in - which felt like forever since around this time at night, and after such a long day, time seemed to slow down to annoyingly snail-like slowness.  We finally get to the receptionist and tell her our sob story about how this was our wedding night and the hotel we had smelled like smoke and how I was allergic to smoke, etc...  The receptionist was sympathetic to our situation and actually hung up on somebody who was holding for the VERY last room they had!  Amazing right?!  Well, the room was $200 JUST for that one night (even after the AAA discount she was going to give us) and she didn't tell us how much the room was until AFTER she hung up on that poor guy.  I felt bad for the guy because we could not afford that much for just one night, especially since we had just spent so much just on traveling to California from Arizona.  The receptionist was nice about us declining the last room available and didn't kick us out of the reception area when we tried to find another room.

After we declined the room at the Hyatt, we had to find another place to stay.  So, we go on the phone with this really patient guy with Hotels.com.  We tried to get another night at the Inn at Morro Bay, which was the hotel we booked in Morro Bay for our honeymoon, but the hotel was completely booked.  Since it was SOO freaking late by that time, the guy from Hotels.com had to physically call hotels instead of book them online, so he put us on hold and proceeded to call other hotels in the area.  We also gave him a price point of under $100 to remember while he was asking about rooms.

During our time on hold, I decided to thank the receptionist for hanging up on the guy and let her know that we appreciated that she didn't kick us out while we called pretty much her competitors in the area to get a cheaper room.  She was really nice about the whole thing and we got to chatting.  Come to find out, she was once a flower shop owner that my Mom used to work for back in the day.  Crazy huh?  Small world!

Anyway, around that time, P finally got back in touch with the guy from Hotels.com who had found us a room in Santa Maria at the Historic Santa Maria Inn.  Now, if you're not familiar with the central coast of California, let me educate you.  :P  Our wedding was in Arroyo Grande at the Gardens at Peacock Farms.  We went from Peacock farms north about 10 minutes to Grover Beach.  From Grover Beach, we drove north another 10, 15 minutes to San Luis Obispo where that smelly hotel is located.  Santa Maria is a little over a half an hour SOUTH of San Luis Obispo, and an hour SOUTH of Morro Bay.  And it's 1am...after one of the longest (but one of the best!) days in our lives.  But, the distance doesn't matter because this room was the ONLY room on the central coast - that was reasonably priced. So, we decide to take it out of shear desperation and start moving on out.  We thank the receptionist one more time and she gives us some free refreshments to help us with the drive that seemed like a trek across the world by this time.  She also reminds us that it's not really that far away and that now we have a story to tell (which we do!).

We get to the hotel...and it's BEAUTIFUL!  The lobby is clean, full of historic furniture, lovely wood trim and a roaring fireplace.  We check in and the receptionist gives us a late check out because it's about 1:30, 2am by the time we get there.  As we went up to our room, we encountered a drunk guy waiting for the elevator.  He reeked of alcohol and stumbled into the elevator before us.  I didn't want to join him in the elevator since he smelled so bad and I was afraid of being thrown up on, or worse, having to talk to a drunk person, so we waited.  The elevator went up a few floors and then stopped.  We waited a few more minutes and then called the elevator back down, figuring he had gotten off to stumble to his room.  When the elevator came back down, guess who was still there?  That's right, the drunk guy!  When the doors opened he was in the middle of taking a header into the wall of the elevator.  I think I shrieked a little which woke him up a bit and he pressed the button to go back up.  We waited for the elevator again, this time a little longer to ensure that he got off.  After a few more minutes we called the elevator back down...and he was still there.  This time, he was right on the other side of the doors and when they opened, he stumbled out, almost right into me.  We let him go and grabbed the elevator before he could orient himself back to the elevator.  The elevator smelled like alcohol, but luckily we were only on the 2nd floor.  We FINALLY got to our room and pretty much crashed right away.  When we finally got to sleep it was around 3am.  When we woke up in the morning, we opened our presents, ate wedding cake for breakfast and lounged around until check out.

I would highly recommend the Historic Santa Maria in to anyone!  The beds were very comfortable and the bathroom was clean with a nice hot shower.  The only thing that was kind of disorientating, especially that late at night and being so tired, was that the building was old and the floors were slanted.

Kind of an amazing and funny story huh?  Aren't you glad you kept reading?

And that was our Wedding Night Story...and yes, I have made people blush when I tell the story and start off with that title - which just adds to the awesomeness of it all!  :)

A realization while filing

I hate to share this with the interwebs, and while I'm AT work...

(Excuse me while I answer the phone.)

(It wasn't even for me!  Don't you know I'm busy here?!  :P )

Okay, I'm back - what I want to share is that I realized that have no idea what I'm doing while I'm working.  I am pretty much running on autopilot while doing this job.  I guess it's a good thing because I can really leave work at work.  Honestly, I don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking about work like some of my other coworkers - and I don't understand why they do.  So, I am pretty much faking this job.  I do what I'm told and do it well - but it doesn't take up that many resources in my brain.  Maybe that's it.  I really don't have to think about doing this job anymore.  I'll admit while I was just starting out, it was confusing.  And, when I finally got into a grove, more duties were dumped on me.  Then there were those few weeks when my coworker acted like she hated me because I am now doing her job but she still had to teach me...yeah that was fun.

Anyway, all-in-all, this is a pretty sweet job.  I have an office, windows, access to the Internet, air-conditioning, a boss that lets me work how I want to work as long as I get the job done, benefits, and friendly (usually) coworkers.

Even though this job is pretty good, I still dream of teaching or working with children.  I have ideas for lessons in the middle of the night instead of thoughts about work.  I love back to school time and can't walk past the school supply isle without sighing.  I have boxes of classroom supplies in our storage-type room just waiting to be used.  I kept all my books that had great ideas from my credential classes...

Anyway, I could go on and on...but it's time to go home...Thanks for listening/reading!

It's Monday

Today is Monday.  I had a conference to go to today which was in a city 2 hours away from the city I normally work in and it was nice to sleep in a bit and get paid to be someplace other than my office.  However, I guess some lines of communication were crossed with my boss and her boss.  I was told by my boss to leave for the conference from my house and go by myself.  My boss's boss was under the assumption that she and I were going to go together and I was supposed to meet her at work.  My boss was going to tell her boss that she wanted me to go on my own but that never happened.  So now I'm kind of confused at what's going to happen tomorrow at work.  Was I supposed to go to work at my normal time and then leave in time for to get to the conference on time?  There was already 8 hours of professional leave on my time sheet for today.  If I did go into work on time and leave in time for the conference, that would have given me 2.5 extra hours to play with.  I could have gone home early a couple of days, but it might have screwed a lot of stuff up.  Work these days has not been slow and I have found myself working up until the very last minute when my Outlook tells me to go home.  Also, what would have happened to those 8 hours they had me scheduled for if I had clocked in this morning then clocked out around 10ish?  *shanking head*  I guess if I did something wrong, I can claim naivety. I'm new and was just doing what I was told.


On another note, the drive there was nice.  I passed a lot of fields of these bright orange flowers.  There didn't seem to be a safe place to pull over and take a picture of the actual field of flowers so I give you this picture that is kind of like it.  This is a random picture from a Buddhist Monastery somewhere.  Add more pine trees in the field and it would look like the flowers I passed.  I also got to eat at one of my favorite places called Wildflower Bread Company.  Everything I have eaten there there has been wonderful! Today I had a fantastic ham and swiss sandwich and a lemonade.

The conference itself?  Eh...I could have lived without it.  But, I did learn some stuff and was even able to answer some questions.  But, I am glad to be home.  And, I received the postcards I ordered two weeks ago.  I was so excited to get them!  But there is a problem.  I ordered the Wanderlust USA Postcard Box but received the Wanderlust: 30 Postcards for Insatiable Travelers. I contacted the seller about this, so we will wait and see what happens.  I'll keep you all updated.  :)