My mini main man.

These were taken a few weeks ago. Me with my youngest brother Pete. We are the best face makers you've ever seen, and no mistake.

Have you ever noticed?

I just realized something.

I like Subway quite a bit. It is just about the only restaurant they have in the town I'm staying at the moment. And I really do think that Subway is pretty good to have for the only restaurant in town. Instead of, say, McDonalds? ... Yep.

Anyways, what I wanted to say was:

Subway smells.

It's so strange. It is kind of a sharp smell. Not exactly a bad smell ... not exactly ... just very distinctive. And any amount of time spent in Subway means I come out smelling like Subway. Which I'd rather not.

Thats me, looking paranoid about smelling like Subway. (Please excuse the chewed up bottom lip ...)

Me lately.

Today I am at the exact middle of this clinical. One month from today, on March 9th to be exact, I'll be finished. Finished I tell you.

Are you feeling the excitement up there? You should be. A lot of it. I suppose I should use exclamation points to get my feelings across better, but ... I just feel like using periods.

I don't get myself lately. The only two things that I want to do are: 1) eat; and 2) sleep. I'm hungry all the time, and at meal times it gets pretty much unbearable. The cafeteria food at the hospital looks like divine food for immortals. I think I've put on 5 or 6 pounds in the month I've stayed so far. That puts me at 133ish, which is so much better than my weight around this time last year (117).

I try to work out every day to kind of counteract all the eating. Goodness. I feel like such a pig, but 5 hours later, I'm just ravenous again.

And then the sleeping thing. Yesterday, I got back to the house at 3:15. I changed. Changing is ALWAYS the first thing I do when I get home. Then I laid down on my bed for a second, and fell asleep. I woke up a couple hours later, groggy and disoriented and convinced I was late for work because it was bright daylight out, but then I looked at the clock and realized what was up. Then I fell asleep again and didn't wake up till 4 am.

Boy was I hungry.

Loved and missed.

3 years ago today, 2/1/09, my friend Alaina died. She was wonderful and red haired and beautiful and sparkly. And she loved God and her husband.

The top picture was on her wedding day, 11/1/08. The bottom picture is of her husband's truck, taken just days before she died.



I think of her, I love her, and I miss her. It is still a hard thing to comprehend sometimes. But I know God knows what He's doing.

And, if I have a daughter, I'm going to name her Alaina. 

Baby names ... everyone does it ...

That title is self explanatory, huh?

Growing up, my sister Laura and I were plain crazy about babies and kids. We played we had big, huge, giNORMous families. We made lists of names that we liked, and our rule was, we couldn't use a name if it was on the other's list. We put names that we didn't even like on our lists, in case we wrote a story or something and needed to name someone who didn't matter very much.

These pictures were taken a few years before the name craze, but that's OK.

There were disagreements. If the same name got onto both lists somehow, we had to haggle and trade till both had names of equal value. I was the oldest, so I took liberties with the rules :P I still have my name list saved somewhere. It got accidentally crumpled up and thrown away at least twice, so its pretty sad looking. I distinctly remember that I had the name "Moon" for a girl on there, on the back towards the top.

Thank gracious, my taste in names has changed, but I still dream every so often, pairing names and trying them out loud, for my future little babies.

I know for sure that I want to name my first girl Alaina, for a friend, and call her Lainie. Havent picked a good middle name. I also like Drue, Hayden, Winter and Corinthia. I think I want my first boy to be Zeb (no special reason except I like it) ... I like one syllable boys names like Zane, Cam, Tate, and Garth.

How bout you guys?? :)

Freezing.

It is cold in this here library.

Saturday morning gloriousness, my friends! No makeup, static-y hair, huddled up in an old rocking chair in an old library, flannel pants and socks and slide-ons and coat and all. Finished my first practice exam for the real thing (licensure exam ... heaven help me) in April. 

Today I am happy because I got to sleep in. Why are you happy?

This and that.

(This.) As promised, I give you the names for all the kitties where I'm staying. I hope I remember them all.

The Queen

Percy

Bullseye

Cyclops

Eurybates

Talthybius

Toots

I think there might have been another one ... but it evades me at the moment.

Also, Percy the cat is a girl. Don't ask questions.

(That.) I get the biggest kick out of the word verification when I comment on some peoples blogs. The words that pop up are sometimes hilarious. It might just be me. I started writing some of the (to me) funniest ones down. Here are a few. If you don't laugh, I won't blame you, I just thought I'd share. :) I'm a good kid like that.

patubta

alobotoe

squesse

usnom

I think usnom made me laugh cause it sounds like maybe a toddler asking to eat. :P

I want to hear the coolest pet names you know, and if I'm the only one who laughs when they fill out word verification?

The dark side.

There is this charming book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity, and it was written by Jane Brocket, of Yarnstorm fame. Jane Brocket is fabulous. We are kindred spirits. Her book is charming and peaceful and inspiring, and makes me want to knit.

But this post isnt about knitting, its about the dark side.

In her book Jane Brocket loves color, and talking about color, and experimenting and decorating and taking pictures of color everywhere. And I instantly knew what she meant when she wrote:

"... There are times when dark is interesting in the domestic arts. Like dark chocolate, it adds a spicy, bitter contrast to a richer, sweeter diet. I am drawn to the drama of deep colors with evocative names like jet, pewter, coffee, raven, midnight, mahogany and pitch. I am fascinated by the way pools of these colors absorb all the colors in light and, in doing so, draw you into their depths."

I hadn't ever thought about it long enough to put into words, but ... I LOVE that.

Sometimes there is such a fascination with 'dark' things. Dark things can be good. Dark chocolate is good. Sometimes an event or a movie or an outfit is so serious or deep or impressive or mysterious that it has a dark feeling about it. (BBC's Bleak House does.) Things like these need words like midnight, and raven, and pitch,  to describe them.

I thought of a few more. Ebony. Onyx. Obsidian. Brunet. Charcoal. Leaden. Sable. Dusk.

What are some awesome dark colors that get your imagination going? Or even just any color name you love, if it isn't 'dark'. :)

The light at the end of the tunnel.

I can see it.

Its getting brighter and brighter :)

Mmkay, so Tuesday I drove out here to another small hospital in a small Nebraska town, this time for 10 weeks, to finish my last clinical rotation. I'm happy and excited, and not a little bit nervous. When it comes time to actually treat patients by myself, I feel scared, and forget everything I know. Its pathetic. But this is okay, they tell me. I hope so. Sometimes I do wish I was totally the know it all type that never runs out of confidence :D

I get up at 5:30 in the morning, and work 6:30-3. Want to know something? ... So far, it isnt awful. And the whole tiny town thing? No problemo. I've lived in them, like, all my life. This one has a Dollar General of surpassing awesomeness, and a library with a never ending used book sale in the basement, and the worlds largest porch swing. And the house where I stay has many friendly kitties who run to meet my car like dogs when I pull up.

See the kitty tail curving under my face? She was purring, loudly, and walking on my lap, and waving her tail around.

 Then she rubbed her kitty face on mine.

Snuggly kitty. With pretty eyes.

The kitties are all outside kitties. I thank goodness for that. Eight of them in the house would be a bit ridiculous. I'm working on naming them, and of course I'll make sure and blog about them again, so you can know alllll their awesome names. You cant wait, I know it.

The house where I stay also has owls in it!! Not real ones ... just statues ... some little, some big.

Have I ever said, how much I love owls? <3 I even brought a little one of my own, to put on my dresser while I'm here. To come, and find owls everywhere, was just ... I loved it. So much.

But yes, here I am for 10 weeks. I may not blog much. But what I do, will be well worth reading, I assure you.

And when I am done, in March, then it will be mere days until I GRADUATE. Woo!

Can someone tell me?

Cause I really can't figure it out.

Everyone ... and when I say 'everyone', I mean almost EVERYONE who is 'someone' in the blogging world, which isn't to say every blogger isn't 'someone', of course ... cause after all, the blogging world isnt nearly as important as the real world, right? But anyway ...

ALMOST EVERYONE excuse me. Why does almost everyone have: a white blog?

You see it everywhere. There might be headers of amazing artistry, colors galore in the sidebar ... but ... all the backgrounds are white. And very bright. And sometimes ... well sometimes peoples eyes want to look at softer colors.

Or maybe its just my eyes. Hence the reason mine is gray. Gray is my very favorite neutral :)

But seriously, maybe someone with a white blog can tell me. Does everyone just really like white that much, and I'm missing out on the worldwide white crush?

I got an awesome blog award!

This is exciting! I got the coveted Liebster blog award from the fabulous Danielle at Taking Notes ... Coast to Coast. She is super sweet, and her blog names rhymes ... sort of. Thanks for thinking of me Danielle :)

I get to pass on the coveted Liebster award to 5 more people, and I'm picking:

• Olivia at unceasing exploration, who is the only fellow blogger I know who loves Rosemary Sutcliff like I do.
• Allison at Allie Dean Photographie, who is as sweet as she looks in real life, and takes pictures that are lovely.
• Hollie at Mommy Daze, whom I know well, and who is supermommy to 4 crazy boys.
• Rachel at The Amber Gatherer, whose blog makes me ENVIOUS. That is all.
• Liz at Little did she know ..., who went to South Africa this year and did everything like a boss.

Read them all! You will be happy you did. 

And, a bonus for ya, one blog I reeeeally very badly wanted to share with everyone, was Abbey at LIFE TREASURED. She has identical triplet baby girls :) I figured I could still share even though she has more than 200 followers already and I can't give her the coveted Liebster award. :P

If you have been awarded the coveted Liebster award, here’s what’s next:

• Choose five up and coming blogs with less than 200 followers to award. Make sure and notify them by comment or e-mail that you did so.
• Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them. If you’re not already a follower of their blog, that might be a great way to show appreciation for the award. :)
• Post the award on your blog, and be sure to link back to the 5 blogs you awarded, so that others can visit them.

(If you're wondering what the hey 'liebster' is, I googled it. Its German for 'dearest'. You're welcome.)

I wasn't a flower person.

But now I have warmed up to them. You know, all the flowers that have been everywhere the last year or so? Fabric and silk flowers, on headbands, clothes, everything? I wasn't the biggest fan. I mean ... I like flowers. But I can't grow them. I don't know much about them. I like looking at them ... if they're wild ... and grow in grassy fields ... and you can stick them in mason jars to decorate with ... if you think of it. And its fun to get flowers once in a while, a corsage or bouquet. But, like I said, never was much of a flower fanatic. No flower power and daisies for me thanks.

I was looking for ways to wrap my presents nicely this year. Thats another thing you should know about me. I like to decorate and be fluffy and creative, probably as much as the next girl. But sometimes its hard for me to put a lot of effort into things that are just going to be ripped apart. Like cake decorating. Think about it. Isn't cake decorating about the most pointless thing imaginable? If you really look at it practically? ... Well gift wrapping kinda fell into the same category for me. :D

But this year I really wanted to take more effort, and not only that, but to spend no extra money. Poor college student thing ya know. So ... I had a nice book for the girls in my family, and a nice book for the guys in my family, and a house full of random items to wrap them with.

I have a bag of scrap fabric in my room, mostly ivory jersey from my bedspread project, but some other off-white fabrics too from a dress my mom made me. I dug through it, and found something perfect. The drawstring bag that the sheet set came in! It was just the right size to fit the girls present. I turned it inside out (cause there was a tag on the right side, and inside out looked awesomer anyway), wrapped the book in another piece of jersey cloth (cause it was kinda see-through), and decided to fancy it up a little.

Pinterest provided a tutorial for making fabric flowers. I made a big one and a little one, they didn't turn out perfect but they were pretty :) I used all the off white fabric I had including a little crinkly tulle. Then I fabric-glued them to the cut-off elastic from the fitted sheet (getting lots of wear out of those sheets!) and tied it around the present. The tag was a piece of cardboard that I folded and glued a piece of the tulle over.

I liked how it looked!

The guys present was wrapped in newspaper. I figured they wouldnt be nearly as appreciative of fabric and flowers and tulle. So what manlier thing to wrap with, than car ads, right? I thought about the sports section but it was a little distracting. I used some burgundy ribbon I found to make it a little more gift-ish.

I liked how it looked, too.

What do you think?

Christmas Adam!

Long ago, my family was going through the daily 'how many days is it NOW till Christmas?' And someone, adding it all up, said it was Christmas Eve Eve.

Legend has forgotten which of us it was, but one of us pertly remarked, 'That means its Christmas Adam, because Adam came before Eve.' Everyone laughed at the little squirt, but, admittedly, it has a fun ring to it.

Now its usually written in by one of the kids on the calendar, every year, on the 23rd. It has become a family joke, but also an officially observed family holiday. I pass the story on so that you too can begin celebrating the special day of Christmas Adam.

Anthropologie knockoff.

A very long time ago, I posted about this bedding, which I wanted very very badly.

Not QUITE so long ago, I posted about beginning my project. If you remember I was gung-ho and ready to go, but, I know myself. And I knew that I would probably stall. And I did. And it was all very typical of me. At least I can predict myself after 23 years.

Well, I pulled out the bedspread again last week and got to work. When I wanted to put it away and forget it again, I sternly told myself 'no'. If I started getting ready to stop awhile, I kept going just to spite myself. There were lots of looooong seams. There was a ton (a TON) of pinning involved. It got intense. >_> I got neckaches. 


But, I finished!


I feel happy with it. It isn't just like Anthropologie's. But its enough like it to be what I was wanting, plus I like that no one else has a bedspread like mine, you know, all the original, unique and one-of-a-kind stuff and stuff. And you know, that last part made almost no sense. :D

My inspiration.

How it went was, I found a set of king size cotton jersey sheets (in ivory, my color of choice) and a plain white bedspread, both at Target. (Anyone else heart Target, majorly?) The bedspread was ideal, because it was already divided into squares (35, to be exact) so I had a kind of template in mind. Then, I made a newspaper square, the size I wanted my jersey squares to be, taking into account seams and all, and just hacked squares out of the sheets. I ended up making all the squares I needed out of just the flat sheet, so that rocked.

Then, I took all my squares, and a needle and thread, and I made a twisty knot deal in the middle of each one. Like so.

On the left is my pile of knotted/twisted squares, on the right is my pile of unfinished ones. Note my Mountain Dew pants of awesomeness.

(After I finished all the squares, is when my *cough* long break from the bedspread happened.)

The next step was to pin and then sew squares together in long strips of 5. The bedspread was 5 squares across and 7 down, so 7 rows of 5. Interestingly though I counted at least 3 times, I still ended up with 36 squares. I guess I'll make a matching pillow.

Here is the plain bedspread. Yes, my pictures are cruddy cellphone pictures, but I deal with it.

After sewing 7 strips of 5 squares, I then sewed the strips of 5 together, eventually creating a big stretchy knotty mess of squares. (Jersey is pretty forgiving for a project like this, though on the flip side, the stretch can make it a little frustrating to work with.) Then i put the knotty mess right sides together with the bedspread and sewed all the way around except for about a 12 inch space at the end. Through this space, I pulled it all through till it was right side out. Then I hand sewed the space shut. With the invisible stitch my mom taught me back when I was a nine year old starting out in 4H. 

Then, I had considered stitching 'in the ditch' to hold the squares in place, and also cuz it would look more like Anthro's version, but by then I was ready to BE DONE so I just went at the corners of each square and tacked it down by hand, just to keep the jersey top from shifting around so much. That did the trick.

There it is! In all its finished gloriousness. Is it weird that the word I'm coming up with for it is 'tasty'? ... Yes I was afraid it was. But listen to this, this is the best part: I made mine for about $30, where the Anthro spread would have cost me about $250. I can live with it.


Credit where credit is due, to KojoDesigns and their tutorial. Theirs is bigger, beautifuller, and they have better pictures. :P


Oh, and please, don't ask to see it on my bed. I have a good reason for refusing. You just need to trust me.

How Jesus is better than Santa Claus.

Santa lives at the North Pole.
Jesus is everywhere.

Santa rides in a sleigh.
Jesus rides on the wind and walks on water.

Santa comes but once a year.
Jesus is an ever present help.

Santa fills your stocking with goodies.
Jesus supplies all your needs.

Santa comes down your chimney uninvited.
Jesus stands at your door and knocks, and He enters when you open to Him.

You have to wait in line to see Santa.
Jesus is as close as the mention of His name.

Santa lets you sit on his lap.
Jesus lets you rest in His arms.

Santa doesn't know your name. All he says is "Hi little boy or little girl. What is your name?"
Jesus knew our names before we were born. He knows all our history and even what our future holds.He knows us completely. He even knows the number of hairs on our heads.

Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly.
Jesus has a heart full of love.

All Santa can offer is HO HO HO.
Jesus offers us hope, help, and happiness.

Santa says "You better not cry."
Jesus says "Cast all your cares upon Me, for I care for you."

Santa's little helpers make toys.
Jesus makes new lives and new beginnings, mends broken hearts, prepares showers of blessings, and builds heavenly mansions.

Santa may make you chuckle, but
Jesus gives you the joy that is your strength.

While Santa puts your gifts under the tree,
Jesus became our gift and died for our sins on a tree  ... the cross.