Hello Friends,
I hope you had a safe and happy Christmas full of family, friends, good food, a special gift or two, and time to reflect and worship Jesus.
It's been 6 months since I've written, and I feel like I have a lot to catch up on.
After our only functioning computer finally bit the dust, I decided that keeping a blog up to date with no internet and no computer was just too much to do. So I took a break. But thanks to new news item #5 and being allowed to use my in-laws' internet, I'm now writing again! So here's what's been happening in my life in the past 6 months:
#1- WE BOUGHT A HOUSE! After casually house-shopping for a few months, then really house shopping for a few months, and making offers on 3 different houses, we bought one. And we love it. It's old, built in the 1920's, and it's a charmer. It's full of sweet quirks, thick wood trim, a claw-foot tub, plaster walls, and love. Lots of love. I'll write about it more soon, with pictures and news on the updates we're doing.
#2- We became Uncle Dan and Aunt Karyn. We welcomed our nephew Max to the world this summer and he's a fat, sweet, smiley, and much-loved addition to our family.
#3- We're expecting another little niece or nephew in April. True to my sister's excitment-loving personality, she and her husband are not going to find out whether their sweet baby is going to be a sweet baby boy or a sweet baby girl. I've been telling her that the baby is a little red-headed girl and her name will be Karyn, but she doesn't seem so sure.
#4- 2 dear friends have gotten married since I last wrote, and 2 more have gotten engaged. I love being able to help with wedding planning. A summer wedding in Ohio, a fall wedding in Tennessee, a spring wedding in Ohio, and a summer wedding in Tennessee. And all these weddings are a constant reminder of how beautiful my friends are- sweet, beautiful, godly women marrying handsome, kind, godly men.
#5- I have a computer! Wohoooo! Do you hear me screaming in my excitement? For Christmas, the hubs and my wonderful in-laws joined forces to buy me a used (but runs-like-it's-brand-new) MacBook Pro. I can now write, listen to music, edit pictures, and feel cool from my very own home. In a month or two, we'll get internet at home so we can catch up with the rest of the western world. Or at least the rest of our little Cleveland suburb.
Well, in the words of Porky the Pig, abeeb-apupa-beea-ba-that's-all-folks.
I'm glad to be back.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Headless
Hello folks,
It's been a while. Life just took me away on a whirlwind adventure of busy-ness, but I'm fighting my way back to sanity. And blogging. And half-way through writing this post, our computer had a breakdown and is currently refusing to stay on for more than about 43 seconds. But here I am, publishing this post that's taken two and a half weeks to write. Yikes. I hope you enjoy it.
In my very first post, I said that I wanted to share with you the process of making our headboard. Well, today is the day. No more dilly-dallying.
First, let me tell you about my love affair with my bed: I love my bed. I'm pretty sure it's the comfiest bed in the whole wide world. If my bed could understand it, I would present it with a #1 BED trophy. Or dedicate a day to celebrate it. Or write a sonnet. Or something. I love crawling into it after a long day and curling up in between the fluffiness of the pillow topper and the down blanket.
But for many years (okay, a year and a half) our bed had a problem. Don't get me wrong, I was still in love with it, but there was a big issue. It had no head. (board.) There was nothing to stop pillows from being lost in the deep dark abyss between the bed and the walls. Nothing to stop us from hitting our heads on the window sill when we were sitting up in bed reading. And nothing to make our bed look as wonderful as it felt.
Here's how it originally looked. Dark. And lifeless. And Dark.
With a guitar and a cute puppy.
Then I got sick of how dark it was and bought us some beautiful light soft linen bedding for my birthday. And it's wonderful. But it made our room look very very VERY vanilla:
But that's all changed now. When my parents were visiting a couple months ago, we put them to work. Warning: If you come to visit us, there will be no site-seeing or relaxing. Just hard work. But we'll feed you well. No worries. And ok, maybe you can relax a little. My parents were willing subjects. They said that they wanted to help us out with "a project around the house" but since we don't own the house, that limits what projects we can do. So we decided to build the headboard that had been floating around in my brain for months. My plan was a hybrid of Ana White's knock-off Mason headboard and my imagination. It was part genius, part insanity, part miscalculation, and part do-able. Here's my initial drawing:
Beautiful, isn't it? Can't imagine how I ever could have messed that up... (please pick up on the sarcasm that was written with.) But we jumped right in and got to work.
Step #1 (not on the drawing, in real life.) was buying materials.
We headed out to buy some fabric, some foam, some wood, and a few other miscellaneous items. After spending an hour in Joanns discussing what fabric to get with the Hubs, we decided on something I never would have chosen on my own (my tastes lean towards the plain, almost boring stuff), a beautiful green fabric with brown stitched flowers. We wanted our headboard to have some comfy depth to it, so our plan was to go above and beyond batting and put some 2" foam underneath the fabric. When we went to grab the foam, the price stopped us in our tracks. After tossing around ideas, we saw that next to all the fancy foam were those egg-crate shaped foam mattress toppers. We did the math and liked the price of those WAY better than the normal foam (less than half the price for the yardage we needed), so we snatched it up like popsicles at a pool party.
We then went to Home Depot (I'm usually a Lowe's girl, but Home Depot was right next to Joann's) to buy everything else we needed. We had them cut everything for us right there in the store.
Step #2 was covering our plywood with the foam and the fabric.
This step took us all of about 15 minutes. First I ironed our fabric (on a very low setting) to get any wrinkles out. Then we cut our foam to size, laid it bumpy-side-down on the plywood and stapled it around the edge in a couple places. If you're going to do this, you won't want to staple the foam anywhere other than the edges unless you want the fabric to look all dimpled. This stapling is just meant to hold the foam in place until the fabric is in place.
Once the foam was in place, we laid the fabric right side down, then laid the ply wood with the foam centered on top of that. Then we simply drew the fabric tight and stapled it in place. Here's what it looked like when we were done with that step:
At this point, we could have slapped some legs on the sucker or mounted it right to the wall and been done, but i had a much more complicated vision of a pretty wood frame around it, so we kept going.
Step #3 was preparing the boards.
That means sanding. And sanding some more. And sanding just a liiiiiiittle bit more.
Then we had to stop and watch and take pictures of the guys chopping down our neighbor's tree. Feel free to include this step as needed.
Cool, huh?
Once the boards were sanded, cleaned, and stained and the tree was down next door, it was assembly time. Here they are ready-to-go on our floor, photographed with my wonderful, high-quality iPhone in our wonderful highly-lit living room:
(again, please tell me you got the sarcasm)
We used all 1x3's except for the 2x4 crown.
For the assembly, we followed Ana White's plans, just substituting her horizontal slats for our plywood, foam, and fabric.
Yay teamwork!
It's been a while. Life just took me away on a whirlwind adventure of busy-ness, but I'm fighting my way back to sanity. And blogging. And half-way through writing this post, our computer had a breakdown and is currently refusing to stay on for more than about 43 seconds. But here I am, publishing this post that's taken two and a half weeks to write. Yikes. I hope you enjoy it.
In my very first post, I said that I wanted to share with you the process of making our headboard. Well, today is the day. No more dilly-dallying.
First, let me tell you about my love affair with my bed: I love my bed. I'm pretty sure it's the comfiest bed in the whole wide world. If my bed could understand it, I would present it with a #1 BED trophy. Or dedicate a day to celebrate it. Or write a sonnet. Or something. I love crawling into it after a long day and curling up in between the fluffiness of the pillow topper and the down blanket.
But for many years (okay, a year and a half) our bed had a problem. Don't get me wrong, I was still in love with it, but there was a big issue. It had no head. (board.) There was nothing to stop pillows from being lost in the deep dark abyss between the bed and the walls. Nothing to stop us from hitting our heads on the window sill when we were sitting up in bed reading. And nothing to make our bed look as wonderful as it felt.
Here's how it originally looked. Dark. And lifeless. And Dark.
With a guitar and a cute puppy.
Then I got sick of how dark it was and bought us some beautiful light soft linen bedding for my birthday. And it's wonderful. But it made our room look very very VERY vanilla:
Vanilla bedding. Vanilla walls. Vanilla floors. Vanilla lampshades. Cute hubby. Random red pillow.
But that's all changed now. When my parents were visiting a couple months ago, we put them to work. Warning: If you come to visit us, there will be no site-seeing or relaxing. Just hard work. But we'll feed you well. No worries. And ok, maybe you can relax a little. My parents were willing subjects. They said that they wanted to help us out with "a project around the house" but since we don't own the house, that limits what projects we can do. So we decided to build the headboard that had been floating around in my brain for months. My plan was a hybrid of Ana White's knock-off Mason headboard and my imagination. It was part genius, part insanity, part miscalculation, and part do-able. Here's my initial drawing:
Beautiful, isn't it? Can't imagine how I ever could have messed that up... (please pick up on the sarcasm that was written with.) But we jumped right in and got to work.
Step #1 (not on the drawing, in real life.) was buying materials.
We headed out to buy some fabric, some foam, some wood, and a few other miscellaneous items. After spending an hour in Joanns discussing what fabric to get with the Hubs, we decided on something I never would have chosen on my own (my tastes lean towards the plain, almost boring stuff), a beautiful green fabric with brown stitched flowers. We wanted our headboard to have some comfy depth to it, so our plan was to go above and beyond batting and put some 2" foam underneath the fabric. When we went to grab the foam, the price stopped us in our tracks. After tossing around ideas, we saw that next to all the fancy foam were those egg-crate shaped foam mattress toppers. We did the math and liked the price of those WAY better than the normal foam (less than half the price for the yardage we needed), so we snatched it up like popsicles at a pool party.
We then went to Home Depot (I'm usually a Lowe's girl, but Home Depot was right next to Joann's) to buy everything else we needed. We had them cut everything for us right there in the store.
Step #2 was covering our plywood with the foam and the fabric.
This step took us all of about 15 minutes. First I ironed our fabric (on a very low setting) to get any wrinkles out. Then we cut our foam to size, laid it bumpy-side-down on the plywood and stapled it around the edge in a couple places. If you're going to do this, you won't want to staple the foam anywhere other than the edges unless you want the fabric to look all dimpled. This stapling is just meant to hold the foam in place until the fabric is in place.
Once the foam was in place, we laid the fabric right side down, then laid the ply wood with the foam centered on top of that. Then we simply drew the fabric tight and stapled it in place. Here's what it looked like when we were done with that step:
At this point, we could have slapped some legs on the sucker or mounted it right to the wall and been done, but i had a much more complicated vision of a pretty wood frame around it, so we kept going.
Step #3 was preparing the boards.
That means sanding. And sanding some more. And sanding just a liiiiiiittle bit more.
Once the boards were sanded and cleaned, it was time to stain them. We chose to white wash them so they'd contrast nicely with the heavier fabric and kinda match the lighter, casual feel of our bedding.
Then we had to stop and watch and take pictures of the guys chopping down our neighbor's tree. Feel free to include this step as needed.
Cool, huh?
Once the boards were sanded, cleaned, and stained and the tree was down next door, it was assembly time. Here they are ready-to-go on our floor, photographed with my wonderful, high-quality iPhone in our wonderful highly-lit living room:
(again, please tell me you got the sarcasm)
We used all 1x3's except for the 2x4 crown.
For the assembly, we followed Ana White's plans, just substituting her horizontal slats for our plywood, foam, and fabric.
Yay teamwork!
The only other way we strayed from Ana White's plan was using good ole screws instead of a pneumatic nailer. Don't get me wrong, I would've gladly done that, we're just still gonna have to save the moo-lah for a while before we buy the air compressor. We didn't fill any of the wholes, because we were lazy because we only attached boards from the sides and back, which are well-hidden in our room.
Once the headboard was assembled, the Hubs drilled holes in the legs to line up with our bed frame, ran a couple bolts through each leg, and we were done!
Between building the headboard and finally hanging curtains (curtains from Target- $10 a panel and curtain rods from Marshall's- $15 a rod), our room went from very vanilla to SO MUCH BETTER!
And our bed is no longer headless.
Some day I'll fill the slight crack between the crowning 2x4 and the rest of the headboard (see that little bit of daylight in there?) but to be honest, it probably won't happen any time soon.
Here's a close-up of one of the corners. I like white-washing better than painting, because you still get to see some of the wood grain and all the knotty little imperfections.
My advice for you if you're taking on this project?
-buy the best lumber you can- check it for warping by laying it flat on the floor of whatever store you're buying it from. Our laziness in this step caused us to have some great lumber and some horribly warped lumber.
-take your time in the sanding/staining/finishing process- it makes a huge impact on the finished product.
-be careful of sanding the ends of boards too much, as this can throw off your measurements.
-thank your helpers a lot. food, hugs, cards, money, and kisses are usually acceptable forms of thanks.
-keep the dog off the bed while you're taking pictures or they'll look like this:
Overall, this project took 2 days and around $200. Totally worth it to me. The room is still a work in progress but walking into it now makes me smile instead of putting me in a beige-induced coma.
I think it was well worth it.
Can't wait for Mom and Dad to come visit again!
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Introduction: Mama
In honor of Mother's Day, I'd like to introduce my mama.
Everyone, meet my mama.
Isn't she cute?
Things you should know about my mom:
-She's little
-She sings like an angel
-She's an organizing and planning master
-She's quite the talented photographer
-She loves Jesus
-She lives WAY too far away from me
-She has beautiful hands (Is that weird? I love her hands. They're little and soft and ever-so-graceful. I always wanted hands like hers.)
-She is a gardening genius
-She teaches music to elementary students
-She gives great hugs
-She makes me laugh...a lot
-She's one of those crafty artsy-fartsy types
This is one of my favorite pictures of the two of us.
Yes, it's dark.
Yes, it's out of focus.
No, I didn't get more than 5ish hours of sleep the night before.
But I love this picture so much.
This was taken at my big brother's wedding reception. I was a little frazzled. My mother was beaming and gorgeous.
This was taken at my big brother's wedding reception. I was a little frazzled. My mother was beaming and gorgeous.
I am becoming more and more like her every day. And I'm ok with that honored to follow in her footsteps.
I love you, mama.
Happy Mother's Day.
-
Monday, April 25, 2011
Confetti Cannons and Jesus
I hope all of you had a wonderful Easter!
My Easter Sunday started early(ish). At 6:52am to be exact. Not sure why I set my alarm for that time. Apparently 7:00 wasn't good enough. didn't measure up. made too much sense. meant that I couldn't press snooze. But the snooze button didn't even matter. I was too excited to start the day to waste 8 minutes tossing and turning in an in-between-dream-and-awake state. By 8:15 I was pulling in to the church parking lot and by 9:00 I had music and jelly beans awaiting my worship team kiddos at their practice.
The first Easter par-tay ("service" doesn't seem to do the celebration justice. It was an all-out par-tay. And yes, it's cooler to pronounce it "tay" than "tea." Right?) started at 9:30 and the celebration and sugar rushes and confetti cannons just continued from there. It was amazing. To see a hundred kids jumping up and down and singing about how their best friend and Savior Jesus is alive was a blessing that I'll never forget. And the yummy cake was pretty good too.
After 2 services, I was about dead on my feet. Normal exhaustion + post-sugar-rush crashing = no bueno. But my sweet Hubs made me lunch (even though he woke up earlier than I did and he had worked at 3 services that morning!) and we got to relax a bit.
Later in the evening, we went out with some family for dinner, then came back to our abode for some pie and coffee. mmm...french silk pie and fresh strawberry pie... 2 of my favs. I love them so much that I can't even spell out f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e-s. It's just favs. They're that yummy.
So we all crowded in to our miniature-sized home (or at least it feels that small with 8 people in it) and I got to listen the The Hubs' wonderful, hilarious, loud Irish family talk and talk and talk. They make me smile. The topics ranged from condo-warming parties to pork chops to booze from the 70's. Laughter and pie were had by all.
It was a wonderful day. But ultimately, it wasn't the kids or the confetti cannons or the pie or even the family that made it so wonderful (although that all certainly helped!). It was what Easter means. And not just in a historical-factual-earth changing way. It's what Easter means in my life that made it such a wonderful day for me.
On Easter I celebrate that Jesus died. He was innocent of any crimes, and yet He died willingly. Why? For you. For me.
On Easter I celebrate that Jesus paid the price for my sins. Because I believe, when God looks at me, He doesn't see all the horrible and disgusting things that I've done, thought, or felt. When He looks at me, He sees the innocence of Jesus.
On Easter I celebrate that Jesus is alive. Like today! He's alive today! He didn't just die and He didn't just pay the price for all the horrible things I've done. He came back from the dead with the power to overcome death. His death, my death, anyone's death- anyone who believes and asks Him.
That is why Easter is so important. That's what made it such a wonderful day. The kids and the confetti cannons and the pie and the family and Jesus.
I hope that each and every one of you:
a) had a wonderful Easter
b) will be able to have some fresh strawberry pie
in the near future
-and-
c) already know or will come to know the love of
Jesus. (reading the book of Luke in the
Bible is a good place to start if you want to
learn more!)
Till next time, you beautiful people!
My Easter Sunday started early(ish). At 6:52am to be exact. Not sure why I set my alarm for that time. Apparently 7:00 wasn't good enough. didn't measure up. made too much sense. meant that I couldn't press snooze. But the snooze button didn't even matter. I was too excited to start the day to waste 8 minutes tossing and turning in an in-between-dream-and-awake state. By 8:15 I was pulling in to the church parking lot and by 9:00 I had music and jelly beans awaiting my worship team kiddos at their practice.
The first Easter par-tay ("service" doesn't seem to do the celebration justice. It was an all-out par-tay. And yes, it's cooler to pronounce it "tay" than "tea." Right?) started at 9:30 and the celebration and sugar rushes and confetti cannons just continued from there. It was amazing. To see a hundred kids jumping up and down and singing about how their best friend and Savior Jesus is alive was a blessing that I'll never forget. And the yummy cake was pretty good too.
After 2 services, I was about dead on my feet. Normal exhaustion + post-sugar-rush crashing = no bueno. But my sweet Hubs made me lunch (even though he woke up earlier than I did and he had worked at 3 services that morning!) and we got to relax a bit.
Later in the evening, we went out with some family for dinner, then came back to our abode for some pie and coffee. mmm...french silk pie and fresh strawberry pie... 2 of my favs. I love them so much that I can't even spell out f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e-s. It's just favs. They're that yummy.
So we all crowded in to our miniature-sized home (or at least it feels that small with 8 people in it) and I got to listen the The Hubs' wonderful, hilarious, loud Irish family talk and talk and talk. They make me smile. The topics ranged from condo-warming parties to pork chops to booze from the 70's. Laughter and pie were had by all.
It was a wonderful day. But ultimately, it wasn't the kids or the confetti cannons or the pie or even the family that made it so wonderful (although that all certainly helped!). It was what Easter means. And not just in a historical-factual-earth changing way. It's what Easter means in my life that made it such a wonderful day for me.
On Easter I celebrate that Jesus died. He was innocent of any crimes, and yet He died willingly. Why? For you. For me.
On Easter I celebrate that Jesus paid the price for my sins. Because I believe, when God looks at me, He doesn't see all the horrible and disgusting things that I've done, thought, or felt. When He looks at me, He sees the innocence of Jesus.
On Easter I celebrate that Jesus is alive. Like today! He's alive today! He didn't just die and He didn't just pay the price for all the horrible things I've done. He came back from the dead with the power to overcome death. His death, my death, anyone's death- anyone who believes and asks Him.
That is why Easter is so important. That's what made it such a wonderful day. The kids and the confetti cannons and the pie and the family and Jesus.
I hope that each and every one of you:
a) had a wonderful Easter
b) will be able to have some fresh strawberry pie
in the near future
-and-
c) already know or will come to know the love of
Jesus. (reading the book of Luke in the
Bible is a good place to start if you want to
learn more!)
Till next time, you beautiful people!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Introduction: The Hubs
Everybody, meet The Hubs:
Everybody, Hubs. Hubs, everybody. (That's his 'nice to meet you' smile)
The Hubs is: going to be a great dad someday.
The Hubs is: musical.
(yep. he's a rockstar)
The Hubs is: goofy.
That makes us a good pair.
The Hubs is: ok with me needing to take pictures to commemorate any and all occasions (this picture is of the apartment we lived in together for 4 days)
The Hubs is: thick (and curly) haired
The Hubs is: cool. Just look at the way he rocks the aviators! I spend so much time just trying to be as cool as he is.
The Hubs is: tough.
The Hubs is: tattooed.
The Hubs is: oh-so-patient.
He sat still for quite some time while I snapped picture after picture of the clouds reflected in his wedding ring.
The Hubs is: smiley.
The Hubs is: one heck of a dancer.
The Hubs is: a brother.
He loves to say that his beautiful (straight-toothed) sister has a "snaggle tooth." A mere mention of the "snaggle tooth" or even the gesture seen below will start a family discussion filled with laughter.
The Hubs is: wise, a great driver, a hard worker, one of the smartest people I know, hilarious, a servant, and a talker.The Hubs is: the best person I know, my sweetheart, my partner in crime, and the only person who could put up with me as much as he does.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
How To Make Your Arms Fall Off
I have an embarrassing moment I need to confess to you all. It wasn't one of those I-tripped-in-a-skirt-and-everyone-saw-my-undies embarrassing. It was a wow-how-did-I-ever-earn-a-college-degree-with-such-a-low-IQ embarrassing.
The background of the story: I work at a church. Part of my job is leading worship for the kiddos. Right now, our worship team is practicing music for a service and we're doing one of those dinosaurs of worship music. What are those things called again? Hers? Hims? ...Oh that's right, hymns. At least that's the way my team comprised mostly of middle schoolers seemed to react when I introduced this song. They're just not a part of our normal repertoire on this team.
So where do you go to get the music for a hymn? A hymnal, of course. And seeing as we don't have our practices in the church sanctuary, I had to haul 15-20 hymnals back and forth throughout our building each week. Here is the process I would follow:
#1- Walk to the sanctuary
#2- Hope you won't be interrupting anything happening in the sanctuary
#3- Start at the pew nearest to the door
#4- Grab all the hymnals in that row
#5- Re-situate the hymnals in your arms
#6- Try not to drop the hymnals
#7- Go to next row
#8- Repeat steps 4-7 until 15-20 hymnals are stacked in your arms
#9- Make sure you can see over the mountain of hymnals in your hands
#10- Try not to trip going up the stairs to the nearest door
#11- Almost drop all hymnals trying to open the door
#12- Walk (very carefully) to rehearsal space
#13- Set down hymnals on the nearest flat surface
#14- Reattach your arms (they just fell off)
#15- Wander around in a hymnal-induced stupor asking for an arm massage
#16- Repeat the process (mostly in reverse) after practice
After a few weeks of this, it got old. I mean, it probably got old just reading it. Thanks for hangin' in there. The day after last week's rehearsal, I wandered into the work room that's right across the hall from my office, and as I reached to press a button on the copier, my aching muscles screamed at me.
Can you guess what they were yelling? Something along these lines: "Karyn! You idiot! You have a hymnal in your office. And right across the hall is a copier! Please, please, please, please, PLEASE just take a copy of the sheet so you can take 15 pieces of paper (NOT 15 hymnals) to practice next time!"
So, with a face red enough to match my hair, my dim brain apologized to my aching arms, and we all made up. And made some copies.
That is my riveting story for the day. I'm anxiously awaiting my Pulitzer for that one. And I am happy to report that the copies we used at rehearsal last night did not cause any muscle fatigue.
Any embarrassing stories to share so I don't feel so stupid?
The background of the story: I work at a church. Part of my job is leading worship for the kiddos. Right now, our worship team is practicing music for a service and we're doing one of those dinosaurs of worship music. What are those things called again? Hers? Hims? ...Oh that's right, hymns. At least that's the way my team comprised mostly of middle schoolers seemed to react when I introduced this song. They're just not a part of our normal repertoire on this team.
So where do you go to get the music for a hymn? A hymnal, of course. And seeing as we don't have our practices in the church sanctuary, I had to haul 15-20 hymnals back and forth throughout our building each week. Here is the process I would follow:
#1- Walk to the sanctuary
#2- Hope you won't be interrupting anything happening in the sanctuary
#3- Start at the pew nearest to the door
#4- Grab all the hymnals in that row
#5- Re-situate the hymnals in your arms
#6- Try not to drop the hymnals
#7- Go to next row
#8- Repeat steps 4-7 until 15-20 hymnals are stacked in your arms
#9- Make sure you can see over the mountain of hymnals in your hands
#10- Try not to trip going up the stairs to the nearest door
#11- Almost drop all hymnals trying to open the door
#12- Walk (very carefully) to rehearsal space
#13- Set down hymnals on the nearest flat surface
#14- Reattach your arms (they just fell off)
#15- Wander around in a hymnal-induced stupor asking for an arm massage
#16- Repeat the process (mostly in reverse) after practice
After a few weeks of this, it got old. I mean, it probably got old just reading it. Thanks for hangin' in there. The day after last week's rehearsal, I wandered into the work room that's right across the hall from my office, and as I reached to press a button on the copier, my aching muscles screamed at me.
Can you guess what they were yelling? Something along these lines: "Karyn! You idiot! You have a hymnal in your office. And right across the hall is a copier! Please, please, please, please, PLEASE just take a copy of the sheet so you can take 15 pieces of paper (NOT 15 hymnals) to practice next time!"
So, with a face red enough to match my hair, my dim brain apologized to my aching arms, and we all made up. And made some copies.
That is my riveting story for the day. I'm anxiously awaiting my Pulitzer for that one. And I am happy to report that the copies we used at rehearsal last night did not cause any muscle fatigue.
Any embarrassing stories to share so I don't feel so stupid?
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Making this up as I go.
I've always loved to create- whether that be sewing, painting, cooking, taking pictures, acting, or writing- and I've wanted to start a blog for a while now. Over-analyzing things is a special strength of mine (surely that's not a weakness, is it?) so for a long time, I've agonized over a blog title. What would it say about me? About the blog? What did I want to write about, anyway?
I would have stayed in this analysis paralysis (oh man, am i funny or what?) if not for the help of my mom. She listened to me and asked the right mom-ish questions that lead you down the path of answering your own questions. It's almost magical the way moms do that, isn't it? (Thanks mom!) I want to write about everything anything that inspires me. And there are a lot of things that inspire me. And the things that inspire me usually send me into a daydream. And do you know what another word for "daydream" is? Of course you do, you're brilliant, and therefore you know that a reverie is "a state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing." (thanks, dictionary.com) Isn't "reverie" such a lovely word?
So here are some of the things that inspire me, that induce a state of "fanciful musing" (some of the things I'll be writing about):
-Decorating- Someday I'll have a house of my own. Until then, I'll do what I can in a rental.
-Jesus Christ, faith, and religion in general. My faith is the core of who I am. To not write about it would be to ignore a central piece of my heart.
-Cooking- following a recipe is boring.
-The hubs- isn't he handsome!?
-Reading- I love books. And magazines. And blogs. Pretty much anything I can read.
-Blowing bubbles
-My puppy- the CUTEST BESTEST dog in the whole wide world: Sawyer
-Music- in just about any form.
-Photography- I know you probably can't tell from these poor, unfocused pictures, but I love taking pictures. Please be patient with the sometimes-sad quality. All I have is my iphone and my little point and shoot camera. A DSLR will come into my life someday...
-Creating- There'll probably be a whole post dedicated to this headboard project.
-Movies- We have a problem. Too many DVD's and yet we can't stop buying them. At least they're alphabetized.
-Papa John's pepperoni and pineapple pizza- oh the wonders of garlic butter sauce!
-Crafting- Making something usable (and hopefully attractive) out of previously unused objects, love it!
-The smell of clean laundry
-Anything DIY
-Flowers. Oh how I love flowers. Flower print fabrics, flowers in a garden, flowers in a vase, flower jewelry, flower pictures. Any time. Any way. Any where.
So that's what I'm planning for this blog. But I have a feeling it'll take on a life of its own and become whatever it wants to be. If you're reading this first little blog post, (1) thank you, and (2) I apologize for all the rookie mistakes I'm sure that I'm making.
Stay tuned as I continue to make this up as I go.
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