Happy Holidays!!

It's been awhile since I've posted but life has finally slowed down. I hope you've had a great Holiday Season and everything went as planned. I can't believe this year is almost over. It has been a  crazy wild year for me and next year is going to be even crazier. Here's my year in review!

January - Aaron and I spent a week in Ames, IA for the American College Theater Festival. It was very fun to show off my costumes from the two plays I designed from but I didn't receive an award.

March - Aaron and I got engaged!
May - Aaron graduated college and started working full-time at Gehl in Madison. I also started my internship at Gehl in the Human Resources Department
June - Aaron and I moved into our house.
July - I had a medical scare with  blood clots in my lungs and spent five days in the hospital. Eek! That was scary so happy my family was behind me. I attended the first Klimes Staycation - very fun!
August - Aaron bought a new car. We spent several days up at Shadehill with the family.
September - I started my last year of college.
October - I became a Close To My Heart Independent Consultant. I've always enjoyed scrapbooking. This way I can get new ideas from fellow consultants and awesome product for a discount! You can check out that blog here.
November - I started my Level 3 teaching experience at the Madison High School and found out my student teaching placement is also here in town at Madison Middle School! I'm extremely excited to stay here in town, no driving, and less gas money!
December - I had a week of classes and then last week of finals! Since next semester I am student teaching I will be teaching during finals week so no more finals! I'm excited about that. I did well this semester didn't quite make the 3.0 I was about 0.04 away from it  oh well. I also found out my position was cut from Gehl so as of the 1st of the year there will no longer be a spot for me at Gehl.

That's our year in review it's been crazy hectic and a little scary but next year is going to be even more so. Aaron and I are planning a June 9, 2012 wedding. Three of our friends are also getting married next year. I will be graduating college in May and job searching after that.  

Clubs
I am going to put in a little plug for my business. I am having a big sale for the holiday so check that out on my blog. Also, I'm looking to start a few clubs. The following are some of the clubs I have been looking at.
Hostess Club - This club would meet once a month and each month 1 person would be responsible for treats during the meeting and would then receive Hostess Rewards for that month. During our meeting we could learn new techniques, go through Workshops-on-the-Go, or just pull creativity off other people for scrapbooking and card making. Minimum order of $15.00 a month.
How-to Club - This club would meet once a month. Each member would be required to purchase a "How-to" book and each month we would get together and create a layout or two from the book. Minimum purchase of $21.99.
Crop Club - This club would meet one weekend out of the month, or one day depending people's availability. This would be time to catch up on old scrapbooking, ask questions, learn new techniques, meet new people, etc. There would be a small fee depending on location.
Budget Club - This club has no commitment. Each person who signs up for this club will have their name added to the bottom of the hostess list. The name at the top of the list is the hostess and receives the rewards that month. In order for you to move up the list, you must simply place a $25 minimum order. If you do not submit a $25+ order that month, then your name drops to the bottom of the list. Each month you submit your $25+ minimum order your name moves up the list and soon you'll be the hostess reaping the rewards.

Let me know if you are interested in any of the above clubs. The Hostess Club, How-to Club, and Crop Club all a maximum of 10 spots open, so let me know before all the spots are taken!

Finals, Finals, alas more Finals!!

Well it's the dreaded finals week. I can't believe this semester is already over. I have met some great people and had some great experiences. Level III Experience went very well and I learned a lot from my cooperating teacher. He runs his classroom very well and receives a lot of respect from them. So I spent two weeks in a high school classroom with him and his students. I taught two lessons that were watched by my college adviser and I also taught several on my own.

This week is finals and I have been working constantly to get all of my online homework and finals done so I can have time to work on my on-campus classes. I also received my placement for student teacher next semester. I will be student teaching in the Madison Middle School! (YAY!!) I'm very grateful I was able to be placed here in town because now I don't have to worry about driving or the roads being bad.

I have put my scrapbooking and cardmaking on hold for now even though I have all these ideas. I really wish we had more room but that's not possible in this house. We have looked at a larger house. We both love the house and are just patiently waiting for the owner to get back to us. She is an older lady who recently had her daughter pass away; she is trying to sell or rent the house so she can move down to Arizona to take care of her grandkids. Hopefully we hear back from her soon because this little house is driving me insane!!

Well that is all I have for now. I hope everyone is doing well. Happy Holidays!!

Life keeps going..continued

Well once again I'm pretty bad at keeping up to date with this blog. I've been doing really well with CTMH. I haven't quite gotten the clientele that I would like but that comes with time. Class, homework, and work have begun extremely overwhelming but that won't last long. Finals are the week after next and them I'm done for the year! I can't wait for this semester to be over. There hasn't been a whole long going on in my live for the wedding. I'm currently waiting for my maid of honor to get the invitations done so I cant start putting together all of the invitations, I hate not being in control, but I know if I were in control I'd be going crazy! So I've taken my craziness and putting them into crafts. I have been scrapbooking more often now with all my scrapbooking  supplies from CTMH and also I have been crocheting more and more! I am currently in the process of making a bunch of granny squares to make an afghan and then last night I started a HUGE afghan with just one big granny square. I'll post pictures later. I hope this finds everyone well and excited for the holidays!

Life keeps going

It's been a few weeks since I've posted. I've been keeping busy with work, classes, and homework. It's hard to believe the midterm is already here and finals will be coming before I know it. My Level 2 and Level 3 experiences will be coming up here as soon as Thanksgiving break is over. I will spend around 40 hours in the classroom. I'm not sure of where I will be observing at but hopefully in the next week or two I will find out. Then next semester is student teaching. I've requested that I teach at one of the Madison schools, and the person that works on this says she will try her hardest to keep me here.

About 10 days ago I signed up to become an independent consultant for Close To My Heart. CTMH is company that sells scrapbooking and cardmaking supplies. I haven't bought a lot of supplies from other places but it seems to me that they are priced reasonably and the quality is very good! I'm excited for this new journey and can't wait to get started. The problem is that school and work and consuming a lot of my time and I haven't been able to do much yet. I do have several books out there and should get an order together in the next couple of days.

Update!

Oh it has been a long time since I've blogged...too long probably. So much has happened since May and I wish now that I would've kept up with my blogging so I could remember it all. Let's see here I'll go by month.

May - Aaron graduated from college. I went dress shopping and found my perfect dress. I started a new job at the Gehl Company, they are actually owned by Manitou Group based out of France. Aaron traveled to West Bend, Wisconsin for a week for training for his new job.

June - Aaron and I moved into our house. We spent Father's Day in Sioux Falls and then traveled up to Bowdle for my hometown Quasi (125 years). Met up with some classmates but not all of them. The weekend was rough for me as I was having issues with my leg. Every time I walked or put pressure on it I had a lot of pain, but I went to the doctor and they said it was nothing to worry about, so I just waited for it to heal, which it eventually did, or so I thought.

July - 4th of July was spent in George with Aaron's family. The rest of the month was pretty uneventful until July 13th. Aaron and I started the Insanity workout so we could get into shape for our wedding. Wednesday was rough and come Thursday my leg started hurting again. Friday morning I walked into work and before I got to my office I fainted. I was taken to the nurses room and waited until she got there. When she got there we decided that I would go up to the clinic to see why I fainted. On my way out to her car I ended up getting light headed and sat down at a picnic table but as soon as I sat down I passed out again. By the time I came to the nurse had called the ambulance. I spent 4 hours in the ER in Madison before they transferred me to Sioux Falls, where I spent another 4 hours. The doctors did an EKG, MRI, CAT scan, spinal tap, chest x-rays, and countless blood tests before finding out I had several blood clots in my lungs (pulmonary embolism). SCARY!! I was in the hospital for 4 days before they decided to put an inferior vena cava filter (IVC filter) in. I was released the next day. I went home and stayed home for the next two days and returned to work on July 25th (my birthday!!). Aaron and I then had his family stay-cation July 29-30.

August - Tried to stay healthy and was anxious to learn why I had blood clots at such a young age but they couldn't tell me just yet. Aaron and I were car shopping a lot for a new vehicle for him and we finally found one in Watertown. We also spent four days up in Shadehill for a family camp out. Work was winding down just around the time school started, but then they decided to keep me on part-time throughout this semester! (yay for money)

September - Classes are in full swing along with work and Drama Club I was really busy. I tried proctoring, working at Gehl, and taking 17 credits and that just didn't work; so, I quit proctoring. Labor Day weekend Aaron and I went up to Minneapolis to see Jordan and Kari. We had a blast but it was nice to come home...things are just too expensive out there. September 17th we went to Darci and Justin's wedding, it was way fun and makes me even more excited for our wedding. September 22nd I had my follow-up appointment with my hematologist. He told me I have something called Factor V Leiden (it's Factor 5 Leiden for those that don't know roman numerals). It has to do with me having an abnormal chromosome and I inherited from one of my parents, most likely my dad. I will be on blood thinners for at least a year but thank goodness it's not a lifelong thing! They ruled out Antiphospholipids Syndrome (lupus anticoagulant).

October - So far October has been pretty good. We started off the month with awesome news about my health and I was able to get my Student Teaching application in 3 days before it was due! Now just to get ready for interviews in a couple of weeks.

Well that get's me caught up with everything since my last post. I will try to post more often but for now I will just leave you with our save the date!

New invitation Ideas!!

So I was bored and started playing around in photoshop. I have found some websites where you are able to print off your invitations you just pay a fee to get the copyrights to print them. Well I liked some of them but they weren't quite right so I took the same type of idea and I placed it into photoshop with a 5x7 space. This is what I came up with. Let me know what you think!

 I like this one but we have no Cherry Blossoms around here. Even if we did June is the wrong month for them to be blooming but I thought it was cute.

 The next two are hard to read.

 Once again we won't have Hawaiian Flowers but I thought it looked nice.

 I really like this purple and blue one..but purple isn't in our color pallet.

 I do really like how this one turned out.

 I like this one as well.

Hobby Lobby Shopping!!

Aaron and I went to see some friends last weekend and stopped in Sioux Falls on the way back. I got my ring cleaned and then we headed over to Hobby Lobby to see what they have for flowers. I ended up taking some pictures of some flowers and colors I liked although my phone didn't pick up the colors very well.

A lot of the green flowers look yellow and even just odd colored green but I guess that's what I get for using my phone for pictures. All the floral stems were 50% off so there wasn't a lot to choose from. It has seemed that basically ever week they have flowers 50% off so I'm unsure if this is a normal thing or just seasonal.
Also we found little candle glasses that would work perfect for our candle and polymer crystals. All that was also 50% off...how cool!! But we didn't buy anything because we don't have the money for it. Some time soon we will start buying.

Center Pieces/ Tile

So I was able to finally go home this weekend. Amazing I love being home and having mom's cooking wish I would've felt better with my tooth and all but it was still fun. Friday we got back late and Saturday I was pretty much on the couch all day but Sunday I was able to finally cut out some small designs we might use on our invitations. 

Mom and I also started playing around with the polymer crystals. I brought mine home to show her how mine looked and how after sitting for a week the middle did turn teal. Mom took a small candle glass and pushed it into the middle of the glass. She then put a tea light into the glass and we lit it and this is what we saw.

This was the type of glow I wanted and was quite impressed how it turned out. We then took out the top layer to see how it would look coming through the blue. It still turned out green since the yellow flame was going through the blue. It was decided that we would just use the green polymer and put the blue in another way.

 So this is what we came up with. Blue doily, green polymer crystals, and pearls around the for my decoration. I think this looks good and excited that one thing is pretty much done. 

Well while working with the Cricut I thought that our apartment doesn't really have a lot of decorations. So I had mom bring up an old tile she had left over from doing her counter and I started looking through quotes. Aaron and I decided on the quote "We may not have it all together but together we have it all." I took the quote and cut it out on vinyl and placed it on the tile. It's kinda crooked but it gives something else to our apartment to make it home.

Wedding Invitation Ideas

So I've always wanted to make mine own invitations 1. because it'll be cheaper 2. it'll be more personalized to me and my significant other and 3. no one else will ever have my invitations.

Anyway I've gotten a few ideas lately and I don't have any scrapbooking in Madison with me so I started using photoshop to get my ideas down. The dark dots would be holes that would have ribbon threaded through them.

1st Idea:

 2nd Idea:

 3rd Idea: 

(this came about after talking with my mom)

Polymer Crystals

So I have been looking for ideas for my center pieces for my wedding (eeek crazy that I'm getting married)...anyway I have been searching through photos that have been posted on The Knot.

There have been a few pictures with vases that were lit up. I really like how these look so I'm going to try to recreate it without spending the money they did. In the picture they used colored acrylic ice. They have little lights in them that you can turn on and off (about $4.00 a cube if not more).












Instead I am going to use Polymer Crystals. These are amazing things that you can do so much with.They are little crystals that expand immensely. You can use them for flower arrangements instead of water, mix them up with your soil to keep your soil moist, add perfume to them to create an air freshener, use them to make cooling packs for your neck, or forehead, the possibilities are endless!

Anyway my idea is to soak a couple in blue food coloring, and then a couple in blue food coloring and water and see which ones give the crystals more color. I am then hoping that by placing them in a class container and putting a blue glow stick in the container will give me a similar effect.

I can't wait to try this and add my pictures to show everyone what I did! I'll post more later.

Part Two/Update:
So I picked up some food coloring at the dollar store came home and did three sets of crystals.
2 sets of blue and a set of green.

The green  set I placed the crystals into the water and let them collect the water first and then added the food coloring after I drained out the excess water.They turned out pretty good.

Then I placed a green glow stick into the container and turned off the lights.  It didn't glow as much as I thought it would but it did glow just not sure if it's worth doing it for the reception when it's not as bright as I wanted.

 

So the blue sets I ended up mixing together before I took any pictures (oops). Anyway I placed the food color onto the first set of crystals and mixed them up until they were all covered in blue dye. I then added the water. These crystals were darker blue than the other set even though I used the same about of dye. The other set I put the dye into the water.

 I then added the glow stick and turned off the light like I did for the green. The crystals didn't seem to grab the light at all. I'm not sure why but this is what it looked like.

I then added the green on top of the blue and added the glow stick for the green as well.I don't like how the blue was right around the glass instead of in the crystals like the green was.

This is what the two colors look like without the glow sticks and with the lights on. This is now on our dining room table as decoration. We will see tomorrow if the colors bleed together.

What do you think? Give me your ideas...

New bags

So I finally finished my fully colored bag. This is the pattern I made. The front would be mostly blue. I had made two rows of black for the sides of the bag but ended up changing that to three rows since the two wasn't big enough for my laptop.

 

Here is the front of the bag. It is quite bright but it's fun and i really like it. 

  

Bottom of the purse is two tabs to make it thicker.

 I put two handles on it rather than one so it'd be easier to open. The handle is two tabs thick.

 Side of the purse is three tabs wide.

Also I have a bunch of pop tabs now and some small skeins of yarn so I started to make a clutch. I think the smaller purses should really have liners so they will have to wait to be finish but here's my first one! It's ten tabs high and has thirteen tabs going across. I just crocheted the bottom together instead of adding a flat bottom.

 The clutch is about 4 1/2 by 6 inches.

These are really fun to make and I'm having a blast making my own patterns!

New Project

So last night I sorted all of my colored pop tabs that I got from Jordan Hamm. I placed them in their own piles then counted them out into piles of 100 and placed them on strings to separate them out.

 

I then made my  own pattern with some slight changes in Excel. 

And then started on my own laptop bag made from pop tabs. 

I was going to do all the yarn in black but then decided last minute to do a grey-blue color.

So first tie the yarn to the first two tabs.

Fold them together so they are lying on top of each other.

Pull the yarn through and do a single crochet (sc) twice into the same hole. 

Pull them apart and lay the next ones on top or underneath depending on what type of look you want. I like it this way better because the bottom has more metal to show. 

Fold pack together with the two new tabs in the inside and continue until your row has become the height you would like your purse to be. (In between tabs you will need to chain 1 if you are using yarn. If you use nylon you won't need to do this.

This is how it will looked when it's opened again. When you turn to start the next row chain 2 and place just one tab at a time.