The engagement.... :)

I have already had to tell this story a million times, but here it is once more so I can say to future questions, "please refer to my blog". :)

And to answer it before anyone else asks, nope, we don't have a date yet! Except for maybe February 29th. Hah. (I am totally loving all the questions though :) As my grandma said, I can be heard smiling over the phone line. )

It all started Christmas eve day. It began a little rough with a 6 am wake-up to ambulances and police at my house. My grandfather and grandmother from Florida were up visiting and my grandfather had fallen when he got up that morning. He was taken to the nearest hospital where he, my mom and grandmother spent the rest of the day. It turns out he had a small bleed in the brain/stroke called a ...(Corey, insert correct terminology here). Many of the Christmas day activities then passed to me, not to mention my last minute gift making and wrapping. I was a little stressed.

Mike and I had planned to spend a little time at my house that night then go to his mom's to have snacks, sit by the fire and open presents. When I talked to him that afternoon and told him the story, he was concerned about exchanging gifts. I told him it would cheer me up and be better to keep things the way they were.

Mike came over that evening and had a few snacks so I be there when we did the traditional Christmas eve open one gift time. We always get Pjs. Ali was getting some that would match the American girl doll that she would be getting the next morning. Then we made our way to the door to go to Mike's mom's house. I slipped on a pair of clogs, but Mike grabbed my boots and brought the along. (Hmmm..)

We got in the car and Mike told me that my gift required a scavenger hunt. This wasn't completely out of the ordinary, I had made him do such things in the past for a gift. (but still... hmmmm..) I guessed in two guesses that we'd be heading to the local park, a place that we had spent alot of time together.

We arrived and I booted up. We had a lot of snow from a storm earlier in the week, but it had been raining all day so it was a little flat and soggy, but still pretty. It was dark and the houses around the park were prettily lit. There was no one else around. We started tromping through the snow, Mike giving me seemingly random "hot" and "cold" directions. I kept looking at the ground for a gift of some sort, but there wasn't much to see except snow. Then he told me to stop and "Look over there" towards a house with a christmas tree lit up in front of it. I looked, and didn't see anything gift-like. He told me to look again. I looked, but only saw that christmas tree. Then I sensed movement behind me felt a tug on my jacket and turned around to Mike on his knee with ring box in hand!

He asked and I dropped to my knees too, kissed him and said yes! The ring is beautiful and I was never happier to have wet socks and wet knees.

Here it is :)



Now this gets to be a wedding planning blog too! Yay!

Tis the season to unleash my craftiness

Firstly, I'd like to congratulate myself and my classmates for surviving our last semester of classes, ever! Only student teaching left and I'm work bound (hopefully)!

That said, it is now time to focus on the holiday season and for me that means lots of fun, crafty projects! I've never had a lot of money for gifts, and I really want to give gifts that will be meaningful to the recipient. So often my solution is so make things! This winter I already completed gifts for my classmates and teachers, lovely little bags of homemade truffles! I even made the gift tags (getting good at paper crafts is another goal of mine). Here are some pictures of the progress.

Each person was to receive three homemade truffles. Ali was a big help with some of them, so there were a couple that I *had* to eat because they were a bit misshapen. The three kinds were chocolate truffle dunked in coconut, mocha truffle covered in white chocolate and dusted with hot chocolate powder and chocolate truffle dunked in hot chocolate powder.


I found these fun paper supplies, stamps and twine as well as some cute little gift bags at Michaels... definitely things that I can use again for crafting or classroom use!


I created some hang tags for the little gift bags :) I wanted a bit og a rustic/homemade look and I think they came out nicely! You can't really see in the picture, but in the bottom corner of each one is a punched out hand print. I thought that was a great little symbol for all of us aspiring signers! I ended up handwriting a little note on the back of each one.



The finished project! 17 gift bags of truffles :)



I have a few other crafty projects in mind, including simple fabric dolls for my cousin's daughters, and a dress for another cousin. There are a couple more, but I don't want to mention them just in case the recipient is reading...

Giving Thanks

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and was able to take some time away from the craziness of work or school to relax and enjoy life.
As is tradition in my family we spent thanksgiving in Syracuse with my Dad's side of the family. This is one of the few times a year when most of that family can be all together. It also was bitter sweet, the first holiday season without my grandpa. I also got to see my new baby cousin Molly. What a little cutie!

Then it was back home to have dinner with my brother, my sister in law, my family and Mike. That was really nice too. My brother and sister in law live down in NC, at least for now while he finishes training for the Marines. I definitely wish they were closer because I'd like to see their little family developing (Them, Toque the big goofy boxer, and two Chamelions, Chomper and Ducky... I can wait a few more years for nieces and/or nephews!).

Thanksgiving is about being thankful, so I wanted to briefly post a few things that I'm thankful for right now (not an all inclusive list or in any particular order)

1. It being almost the end of the last semester of college classes ever- Whee!
2. Having a family in which there is never a dull moment.
3. Getting the creative juices flowing- especially on designing stuff for Holly's wedding!
4. Having an amazing boyfriend out there in Syracuse who is working in a great real person job, taking care of a rented house that was damaged by years of old lady trying to fix things and working on his thesis at the same time! (if you're reading this- Get back to work!)
5. Having an amazing boyfriend who doesn't get too mad at me about bugging him to work on his thesis....
6. Google reader- informative and wonderful procrastination tool all at the same time! Plus great for helping me out with #3! (did i mention that I'm a teensy bit of a hypocrite when it comes to procrastination?)
7. One of the little kiddos I'm working with remembering the order of the alphabet all the way to N for two days in a row! Woo! Simple pleasures of being a teacher!
8. The count down to my Utah trip is down to less than a month! (more about this later!)

What are you thankful for?

Nostalgia

I'm nostalgic for the 30s and 40s..... a romanticized version of course. Recently, I watched Kit Kitterage, an American girl movie with my mom and sister. I wasn't sure I would be interested at first, but it ended up being a really good movie. It takes place during the depression. There were many heart wrenching moments showing the struggles people had during the depression and I was moved by those, but I have to say I was most interested in the life style. Firstly, I love the clothing that was worn. Women's clothes were very femine and flowy, yet practical. Then men were tailored and classic. The young girls clothes were pretty, but could stand playing outside. There were even some very stylish clothes made from chicken feed bags! I could totaly see myself wearing alot of the clothing that was worn, and I see my wardrobe moving in that direction. Not to mention my new love of vintage jewelery!
Here are some examples:


From the movie, aren't these girls outfits adorable! I would even wear them.




This is Kit and her Mom. I love the dresses!

Aside from the clothing, there were lots of other great things from this time period that I would love to incorporate into my life in the future: having a kitchen garden, doing lots of cooking, and sewing and crafty things inexpensively, and having genuine connections with neighbors, community and family that can be drawn upon in times of need.
Now I understand that there were a lot of awful things that happened during this time period, and this Thanksgiving I intend to ask my grandmother, who lived during the depression, to tell me about what it was really like. At this time though, I think I can say that this is my favorite American time period. What's yours?

These are a few of my favorite things....

There are a lot a great websites out there for me to stare at when I don't want to do work and don't want to go to bed yet. One favorite is Etsy. I don't remember how I first found it, probably another blog about pretty things, but there certainly is a lot there for me to drool over and be distracted by.
Etsy is a website that is all about things that are handmade. Sure, there are the expected things like art, knitted things, knick nacks, but there are some other amazing things that you wouldn't expect! For now, i've just been favortiting all the things I love, and some day, when I have the money maybe I can get some of these pretty things:)
Here are a few examples of the great stuff I've found!
Beautiful Vintage Jewelery from Sweet Vintage


Cool Vinyl decals for putting everywhere from Tasty Suite

Beautiful, PLANTABLE cards from Grace Graphics (I actually bought some of these :) )


Fun and funky pins from Button Empire (though I can't quite buy these ones yet...)




There is tons more great stuff on the website, and everything is continually changing. They also have this great feature called Alchemy where you can request something be custom made for you. You include the details and a suggested price and sellers can bid on making it for you. With such a huge community of creative and truely skilled people you can end up with something really great for a cheaper price than you might find else where. I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard of it being used for all sorts of things, from wedding dresses to toys.
Now that I've gotten the idea of putting images into my blog (yay!) I'll try to occasionally post some of the cool stuff I'm finding in my internet wanderings. Maybe I can get someone hooked on these things like others have done to me!

Yay!

I have a new baby cousin! Welcome Molly Erin Stedman, October 23 2008 :)

There's something breathing in my bathroom....

It sounds like a funny children's book or comic, like the Calvin and Hobbes book my parent's have "Something Under the Bed is Drooling...", but I kept hearing this noise every time I went into the bathroom. At first I thought it was my bathroom-mate Kelly, sleeping. It was a soft sighing/hissing noise every 3 -5 seconds sounding like the relaxed exhalations of a dreamer. Sure, I heard it at weird times, but I thought Kelly was just getting in her beauty rest. Then, I heard it when she was at class- after I watched her walk out the door. Now, the walls in this bulding are pretty thin. Given the right circumstances I can hear that conversation is taking place 2 doors down, but a sleeper's breathing isn't something that exactly carries well. Seeing as it is Halloween time and I live in an ancient hogwarts like bulding, the thought of long dead nuns or deaf kids slumbering away in my bathroom closet did cross my mind. Tonight, though, mostly because I didn't want to do homework and Eli Stone wasn't on yet, I decided to investigate. I put my ear up to many surfaces in that room, until at last I found the culprate. After one nearly scaled ear later, I found out that it was our lovely old radiator, releasing steam in its pipes every few seconds. And.. Ah ha! A dial! Can I walk away without experimenting? No! Even though its almost red hot? No! So I turned it all the way one way and it made some noise, and I turned it all the way the other way and back and forth a few times- now my curiosity is satisfied, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to fiind out if my feet will freeze off or burn off when I go to take my shower.