26 Projects – Coasters

I’ve wanted coasters to use here for awhile, but I wanted to do something interesting for them. When I found these wooden stars in the craft shop about a year and a half ago, I figured they’d be perfect! This was another project that sadly ended up rather neglected, and didn’t take all that much time to do (unless you include all the drying time between coats of paint!)

Originally I was going to paint them all gold, but I decided a mix of gold and silver would be better, since I can then used coloured ones to suit my mood and my decor at the time, which suits me fine! And I love how cute and whimsy these are, just how I wanted them to be!

These were easy to make, too. I pulled off the sales label on each, then sanded them all back to smooth some of the sharp edged in place, then held six together at a time so that I could spray the edges, then spread them out on an old towel and sprayed 2 coats of paint on the top and bottom of each. Once completely dry, I coated in a couple of coats of varnish for protection. Nice and easy

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This is project 16 of 26 in my attempt to make 26 crafty projects before turning 27 on 19th June, 2013. The 26 projects idea was inspired by Elise Blaha

See project 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15 or all projects on Pinterest

Project Life 2013: Week 12

Although I’m still quite a bit behind on Project Life, I have another spread to share tonight. This is my week 12 spread, and I quite like how it turned out, especially the right hand page.

This week documents a few work related things, a new blog I’ve discovered, excitement over getting our house colour pack, a night out with Michael and the girls, and a morning sunrise date at the beach.

I had a lot of photos to choose from this week, but most of them were from Sexpo and our Sunday trip to the beach, so I used a couple of photo collages. This meant that I managed to fit 17 photos on my spread, and I love that I managed to use so many! I’m still loving using photos in the 3×4 slots, instead of filler cards. Most weeks when I plan my pages, I leave one or 2 of these spots as fillers on the planning sheet, but they almost always end up with random photos that I love from the week but don’t necessarily have a story to go with them.

I’m also loving Cathy Zielski’s new Daily Cards. The opaque journalling spot is awesome, and I used the opaque spot on a few of my photos this week for extra journalling. On the topic of journalling, I’m even getting better at cutting it down after realising how much I love the photos in there!

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Supplies used: Design A digital template, Seafoam full digital kit (with some elements recoloured), Photoshop quick shapes (the arrow), one of Cathy’s Daily Cards, and this Harmony Day graphic (converted to a 3×4 on my spread). Fonts are Bebas and Travelling Typewriter, which are both free downloads.

To find out more about Project Life, you can check out Becky Higgins blog here, which has lots of photo ideas and inspiration. You can see all of my Project Life posts here. 

Taking a few Recovery Days

I’ve had the flu for the last week or so and I’m pretty run down, so I’m taking a few days off to recover. I’ll be back once I’m feeling a little better and not sleeping as much.

While I’m off sick, I’m spending plenty of time enjoying the roses Michael sent me to cheer me up. I have the sweetest guy ever!

What’s on Your…

Here’s what’s on my…

VANITY | I don’t have a vanity, but my bathroom counter has a liquid soap dispenser and a cup with our toothbrushes, toothpaste and Michael’s razor. There is also currently shaving cream, deodorant and my moisturiser, but I try to keep these cleared off the counter most of the time

PERENNIAL TO DO LIST | Finding some house plants I want to try growing, organising our lounge room storage area, repairing out bed frame (this has been put off for about 2 years now!), organising all of my photos on my computer and setting up a backup system

REFRIGERATOR SHELVES | Pizza for my work lunch, milk, olives, eggs, alcohol, and a few other bits and pieces, but not really enough to make a full meal

ITINERARY | Hopefully a trip to America at Christmas time. If we can’t make it, then we don’t have anything on our itinerary :-(

FANTASY ITINERARY | Another longer trip around Europe, staying longer in Paris, making it to Spain, heading back to Switzerland, and wherever else the mood takes us. Second choice would be traveling South America for an extended period of time

PLAYLIST | I have been sadly lacking music lately, only listening while in the car, or when Michael has it up loud. I am instead watching plenty of Criminal Minds episodes and I’m up to season 4

NIGHTSTAND | A lamp, a box of tissues, and the 4th Game of Thrones book that Michael is reading. We only have one bedside table, since my side of the bed is against the wall

WORKOUT PLAN | Walking to and from work, sleeping every chance I get while I recover

IPHONE | Instagram, Hootsuite, Facebok, email, lots of website browsing, Pinterest, and Bloons TD. Also many other apps that don’t get used very often.

TOP 5 LIST | Michael, new experiences such as Color Run and sky diving in a few weeks, crafty projects and trying new meals

BUCKET LIST | About a million and one different things! I’m not sure I’ll ever really get through it, since as soon as something comes off the list, about a dozen more things take it’s place!

MIND | House thoughts. Things like kitchen and bathroom colours, decorating projects, landscaping, electrical plans tiles and much more

BLOGROLL | Ali Edwards, Elise Blaha, A Beautiful Mess, Cathy Zielske, Shimelle, The Daily Digi, Write Click Scrapbook,Becky Higgins, Katie the Scrapbook Lady, Sunny Side up. I check these ones pretty much daily, but there are many others that I follow as well

WALLS OF YOUR FAVORITE ROOM IN YOUR HOUSE | My Target clock and my silver and gold starburst painting

LIQUOR SHELF | Marshmallow vodka, a couple of bottles of moscato, and most of the time Bailey’s, but we ran out a couple of nights ago

LAST CREDIT CARD STATEMENT | Stamps from Elise Blaha and Two Peas (to take advantage of their 25-75% off sale)

SCREENSAVER | The standard AlienWare image (a higher res version of this)

TV EVERY NIGHT | We don’t own a TV, but I am currently watching through all the seasons of Criminal Minds while I knit. I’m halfway through season 4 currently, and still have plenty more ahead

Marshmallow Vodka

I decided that I wanted to try this birthday cake martini cocktail that I found online one day, but when I looked around to find the fluffed marshmallow vodka that the recipe calls for, I was rather unsuccessful, so I decided to try my hand at infusing my own!

To do this, I used an old orange juice bottle to make the infusion in. I used about a litre of vodka, and filled it with half a packet of marshmallows. I left this infusing in the fridge for about 2 weeks, shaking it a couple of times each day, since the marshmallows float on top. When you’re ready to make the cocktails, strain the marshmallows out. Easy, huh?

Well, it turned out that the birthday cake martini cocktail was a bit too strong for all of use when I made it for my sister’s birthday (this could be because white chocolate liqueur was impossible to find in Australia when I looked, so I instead used normal chocolate liqueur), so I decided to experiment and try some other ideas.

Some other ideas I’d like to try are this toasted marshmallow martini recipe, an adult version of this birthday cake milkshake recipe, and this dark-n-fluffy recipe. Maybe I’ll mess with a few variations of some of our favourites (toblerone, anyone?) I’ll share here as I come up with more ideas

Anyone have any ideas of marshmallow vodka cocktails to try? I’m gathering ideas to try once I get over being sick

10 Things May – Projects in Progress

I have quite a few different projects on the go right now, and so my 10 things for this month is a list of what I’m working on to help keep me on track!

• A black and white knitted blanket
• A Thailand photobook (10 pages done already and only 2 days into the trip!)
• Some star coasters
• Photo organisation. I’m working on spending 15 minutes a day sorting through photos on my laptop so that I can get them organised, since I have such shocking organisation of my photos!
• Finding some white napkins so that I can start a new project involving dye
• Colour and landscaping decisions for the new house, since we have both appointments on Monday
• Catching up on typing out my diary entries, since I’ve written about a months worth in dot points only, and want to record them properly in Oh Life
• More Project Life spreads. I know I am quite behind, and I’m ok with it, but I still want to work at catching up at least a little!
• Making a list of easy to grow indoor plants so I can start injecting some living things into the apartment to get in practice for the new house!
• Packing for a weekend road trip to Bathurst with Michael, Mum and Bec to see my cousin perform in a stage production of the Wizard of Oz

It’s going to be a busy and awesome few months!

Color Run Fun!

On Sunday, our team RedE 2 Run (consisting of me, Michael, Bec and Zane) dragged ourselves out of bed super early so that we could head to the Color Run in Newcastle for the morning. We arrived pretty early, which gave us time to pick up our race packs with our awesomely clean, bright white shirts, and I brought a Color Run hoodie since it was such a cold morning. We then headed to a cafe to have some coffee to warm up, since we had about an hour to fill.

As you can see, we started the day out nice and clean! All 50,000 or so people were the same, with most of us wearing our white Color Run shirts, some people in white pants as well, and quite a few people dressed up with tutus, wigs and the likes. I was happy to see people of all different ages, including lots of kids. This would have been one of the most awesome things ever to me when I was little!

The Color Run is basically a 5km fun run, with colour stations every kilometre or so. We started off passing Orange, then Blue, then yellow, and lastly Pink coming in at the 4km mark. At each of these stations, there were volunteers with sauce bottles of coloured powder, who would coat you with the stuff as you walked or ran past. So fun!

By the time we hit the finish line, we were all pretty colourful! The fun didn’t stop there though… We were all given a packet of colour powder, and headed to the colour party, where we could dance and mingle, then every 15 minutes, everyone would complete a colour through, where we threw the powder into the air. These colours were even more vivid, with greens, yellows, pinks, blues, oranges, purples and reds. The colour cloud looked amazing, too!

The whole day was a fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish foundation (I didn’t actually find this out until after we got back home). It’s so awesome to get to have such a fun day out, while supporting a worthwhile cause!

To check out some of the fun, you can view a video of the day here, and some of the official photos here.

The Color Run was so worth the long trip to Newcastle, and we will so be going to the one in Sydney on 25th August! We’re more prepared for next time, and are planning on dressing up, and customising our shirts a bit. It’s going to be another awesome day, and hopefully we’ll have a bigger team next time! If you get a chance, I highly recommend this to everyone!

 

April Instagrams

One of my goals for April was to share a photo a day on Instagram. I’m happy to say that I did really well with this, and I’m pretty sure I only missed one day, which is ok, since I took extra photos on other days. I’m super excited about reaching this goal, and I wanted to share my pictures.

Some tips that I have from using Instagram so much:

• Take the photo on your phone camera, then open in instagram. That way, if you want to use the original photo for something, you still have the higher quality, unedited image
• When taking the photo, if you tap a spot on the screen, you iPhone camera will focus on that point, and expose the photo for the light at that point, which will mean the part of the photo you want in focus will be more likely to be in focus and exposed properly
• Experiment with the composition of your photo, because what looks good as a rectangle photo can be different to what looks good as a square photo. Keep in mind that you’ll be changing the look of the photo as soon as you crop it to square
• Try all the different filters for a photo. While I have definite favourites that I go back to, I still test the others on each photo to see if one of the other’s suits the photos better

I have also discovered that you can set up iCloud on a PC, which has been an awesome discovery! I’ve always been terrible at taking photos off my phone, but now they automatically transfer to my laptop… So much easier to use in my Project Life spreads!

One feature I do hope that Instagram introduces at some stage is an option to choose any frame to go with any filter… I don’t like some of the frames on some of the filters I use, and other filters have frames I don’t like, so I’d love if eventually you’re able to mix and match frames and filters! Instagram gods if you can hear me, here’s a little idea for you to introduce!!

If you wish to follow me on Instagram, you can find me here.

Happy Birthday, Samantha!

Dear Samantha,

Happy birthday, Little Sister! 20 years ago, we welcomed you into the world, and now I can’t believe you’re no longer a teen anymore… Unless I follow your logic of twenteen being an age, that is!

You were such a shy little kid growing up, and it has been awesome to see how far you have come over the last couple of years. You’re growing into an amazing young woman, albeit a bit of a party animal, but then again, you did spend your teenage years living with Bec, so I wouldn’t expect any different! Although you guys argue lots, you are very close.

The year ahead is going to be so amazing for you, with your first solo overseas trip, and the fact that you’ll be living and working in America for at least a few months. Even though you’re officially an adult, I hope you never lose that ability to set your own path, and do crazy exciting things like this! I’m betting you’ll learn so much, and come back planning where your next going to head! Just remember, you get to choose where you want to go in life and what you want to be now that you’re all grown up!

Have an amazing birthday, Samantha, and an even better year ahead!

Love Jessica

I Choose – May

I only completed 3 of my April goals this time through, which isn’t as bad as in March, but still not that great, either. I’ve noticed with everything we have on with work and house plans and busy weekends, it’s been hard to stick to goals too well. This month, I’m going to keep them simple, and start making less goals until I’m at a stage where we aren’t out and about every weekend. With how stressful everything is, I’m going to keep them fun!

• Knit another 30 stripes for my black and white blanket
• Continue sharing on instagram each day
• Try 2 new-to-us meals that we’ve never cooked
• Make a photo book for Thailand and get it printed
• Spend as much time of crafty projects as possible so that I can share more projects towards my 26 Projects challenge, which ends next month
• Complete the Color Run on the 5th May
• Celebrate my sister’s birthday and a friend’s birthday
• Drink marshmallow vodka cocktails
• Find some white cloth napkins to experiment with dying them
• Share some more Project Life spreads

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My One Little Word for the year is Choose. Each month this year, I’m making a list of things I choose to do throughout the month. These will generally be fun things to prioritize, rather than a set to do list. You can see my “Choose” posts here.

If you don’t know what One Little Word is, you can read more about it in this post from Ali Edwards. I will be undertaking Ali’s One Little Word class again this year, and creating an album about my word and the changes it’s manifesting in my life.