Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Guest Post at About Proximity


Today I'm writing a guest post on my friend Lisa's blog, About Proximity.  Lisa and I met in Michigan and she's seriously one of the warmest and kindest people I've ever met.  Because of her openness to share about her faith and life, I felt that her blog was the perfect place to share about my decision to quit my PhD program.

Click here to read my guest post.


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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Bottled smiles and laughter

If I could, I would bottle up all of Baby Chuck's smiles and laughter and keep them in my pocket.  Then, whenever I met someone who was sad or going through tough times, I'd hand them the bottle and have them take the goodness in.  


Monday, December 10, 2012

Hand and feet salt dough ornaments

(Warning:  If your name is Nana, Pops, Gong-gong, Puo-puo, or Tita Tina- STOP!  Please do not read this post.  Please do not look at the photos.  Baby Chuck wants you to be surprised by the gifts he made you.)


Are they gone?  Good.  Now, for the rest of you-
This Christmas season I find myself crafting, and crafting, and crafting some more.  It's like someone opened up my blocked crafty gates.  My mind keeps churning and my hands making.  Mind you, not everything turns out the way it's supposed to (like the time I boiled cashmere for hours to felt it... big mistake... we just ended up a horribly smelly sweater), but it's just fun to make stuff.

Since Christmas (or as I now dub it "Craft-mas" get it?  Tee hee...) is just a couple of weeks away, I'm crafting more holiday items.  First I made the fortune cookie advent calendar and the geometric straw ornaments.  This week we tried our hand at making salt dough ornaments.  Patty from Make it Cozee posted such clear directions and cute photos that it was easy to get super cute results.  (Thanks, Patty!)

We painted the hand prints gold and we had a whole bunch of dough left so we made some tinier ornaments too.

  

Hopefully we can make this a yearly tradition.  Then we can see Baby Chuck growing.. and growing.. and growing... (Hmm... does this mean we need plate sized ornaments?  Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we  get there.)

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Landfill Orchestra

I don't usually post on the weekends, but I had to load this video up.  It's beautiful and hopeful and inspiring.

Landfill Harmonic film teaser from Landfill Harmonic on Vimeo.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Crapty DIY geometric straw ornament

To my highschool geometry teacher:
You were right.
Triangles are really cool.
This crapt is for you.

I think geometric forms are beautiful.  Using the directions I found here and here, this week I tried to diy my own geometric ornament out of straws.

Materials:
- stirrers <-- crapt!
- scissors
- ruler
- string
- Elmer's glue

Directions:
(1) Cut your stirrers into 12 two-inch segments.
(2) Cut yourself a piece of string that's two arm lengths long.
(3) String four segments onto the string.
(4) Push the segments to the end of the string. Create a square with the straws and tie a double knot to hold the straws in place.  (Note:  Don't tie the straws too tightly together, otherwise your straws will split under the pressure. I saw this happen with my first attempt.)


(5) String two straws onto your string and then tie those straws down across from your previous knot.


(6)  String two more straws and then tie them across from your previous knot.   (At this point you should be tying a knot over the first knot you made in step 3.)

We're going to now tie more straws onto the figure, but this time we'll tie them in the middle of the figure, between each of the pairs of straws.  So, you'll have to cut your string.

I made a small loop to hang the ornament from at this point. But you could create the loop elsewhere too.



(7)  Tie a double knot in the between two straws in the middle of your figure.

(8) String a straw and then make a knot between another set of two straws.

(Note: The most difficult part about making this ornament was making sure I tied the knot in the right place.  I found it helped if I mostly tied the knot over a straw and then slid the knot into place between the straws.)



(9) Repeat step 8 with with three other straws.  Double knot at the end and cut string.  Add a drop of Elmer's glue if you're worried about the final knot coming undone.  If you don't like the colors of your stirrers, you can also spray paint the ornaments whatever color you want.

Voila!  Enjoy your ornament and make your math teachers proud.