Feeling Crafty and Other Happenings

Football camp has officially started for Leslie which means he's working from 6am- at least 10pm Monday-Saturday. This leaves me a bit lonely and very bored until work starts for me (which thankfully is next Thursday). Even once work starts, I'll have some time to sit around the house, so I'm very glad that my sewing skills seem to have improved! In middle school I attempted to make a stuffed dog that the BFF affectionately named roadkill... My sewing skills really couldn't go anywhere but up :)

So my two favorite projects so far involved button up shirts from Goodwill! I got the idea for both on pinterest (surprise surprise)! My first shirt of choice was a very manly shirt that I found for $3.99.

All you really had to do was cut off the top part, measure and piece together a waistband, pin it so it was a bit ruffly and was the same length, and sew! I skipped the cutesy little tie that was in the tutorial I used, and I ended up using a button instead of elastic because I didn't leave room for my waistband to stretch- oops!

Waistband and the bottom part of the shirt for the skirt part!

My skirt!  

I realized yesterday that all of my cutesy little bags to take to my books to class in had been left in Texas. Sure, I have a perfectly fine backpack, but that's not the point here. So I decided I had to find a bag on pinterest that I could make! I quickly came across a bag that was made from a button up shirt, and although there was no tutorial, I had such good luck with my last button up that I decided to try it!

I forgot to take a picture of the original shirt, but this one was thankfully found in the ladies' section :). When I got home and cut up the shirt I decided it was a bit too thin to carry my books around in, so I lined it with some white material I had laying around. Then I just sewed around the edges and added some handles and made a cutesy little flower, and ta-da! Bag!

Here are the links I used for my crafty fun:

Skirt from a men's shirt: http://www.craftstylish.com/item/44969/how-to-make-a-belted-skirt-from-a-mens-dress-shirt

Surprisingly easy little flowers: http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-2010-fabric-flower

In other news, I was able to go back to Tuscaloosa last weekend to graduate! Our graduation was postponed because of the tornado that hit on April 27th.

April 27th was a Wednesday, and the tornado hit around 5:00 that evening. My roommates and I were very blessed to be some of the only remaining people in Tuscaloosa with power, but we were without cable and internet, so we were shocked to hear from others just how much had been destroyed. We found out several days later that finals had been canceled. School was over- graduation postponed. We were done with college. And that was it. Most of us stayed in Ttown to volunteer however we could, and we were very blessed that our church family at Calvary found lots of places to put us to work. In the evenings, we all got together at our college minister's house for dinner, fellowship, and prayer. It was a strange time, and it seemed as if everything normal had stopped and everyone was doing what they could to help. We had tons of people coming into town to help clean up, to donate blood, or to donate items and food. There were people from other states who brought truckloads or who decided that they would come to stay for as long as they needed to because they felt the Lord calling them to help. When I went home, my heart still wanted to be in Tuscaloosa. I felt like I should be going back again to finish school- but it was over.

I'm so glad that I was able to go back to graduate and that a lot of my family was able to be there :) It was a very nice ceremony and the families of the 6 students who died in the tornado were there to accept their diplomas. It was all certainly an experience that I will never forget!

Feeling Crafty- My First Project

Now that Leslie has gone back to work, I've had plenty of time to be bored. I don't do sitting around the house well, and now that I'm addicted to Pinterest, I couldn't help but feel crafty! There are just too many cute projects not to try any of them. After lots of browsing and thinking "I'll do this eventually" and "If only I had a sewing machine" (or knew how to use one) I finally found a project I could (and really needed to) do! So project number one was re-covering my Toms:

I was really lucky and found this pair of Toms at TJ Maxx for much cheaper than they're normally sold AND in my size! The only problem was that the only color they had was tan and that the soles were a bit messed up so they couldn't be washed. This led to some icky looking Toms pretty quickly!

I was super excited and set on spending my day on this project, so I was more than a bit disappointed when I got to Wal-Mart and found out that they were re-doing their fabric section and had very slim pickings. After wandering around Wal-Mart asking strangers where I could buy fabric in town (which apparently is nowhere) I ended up with this:

I hated to cut up the cute little people clothes, but they were each less than $3 and I was needing a craft. I used this tutorial to figure out how to do it, and it turned out to be pretty simple! I will say that other fabric would've been much easier and that putting denim on the toes of my shoes made them a bit more crunched up than they were before. My Toms are not as comfortable as they were before, but I'm hoping they'll stretch out nicely! I think they would've been cuter had I used more than 3 materials and if I hadn't had to cover the backs of the shoes (that's where all my holes were), but they look much better than they did before!

Ta da!

I've convinced myself I want to try sewing, and I may be getting my mom's old sewing machine at the end of the week! After looking at some tutorials, I'm not feeling too confident about my abilities (and I remembered how much I hated pinning and measuring and cutting things) but I will hopefully have a few successful projects to help me get into it! If you have any project suggestions for beginners, I'd love to hear them!

On The Road Again

Leslie and I have done lots of traveling lately! We just got back from a great trip to the beach with my parents to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. Thankfully, Leslie and I were able to stay 5 days so we'd had plenty of time to forget the 9 hour drive there before we had to make it again! While we were there we spent lots of time relaxing on the beach (we had great weather), ate lots of good food, and even found some treasures on the beach! It was a fun trip, but I think we're both glad to be home.



Eating at one of our beach favorites- Captain Anderson's



Enjoying the sunset on the beach

Sand Dollars and Shark Teeth we found!

Dad and I have gone deep sea fishing almost every summer for a long time now. Leslie got to join us last year and usually my BFF Katie accompanies us, but she now has a big girl job and couldn't join us this trip. BUT mom got brave and decided to join us this year! She was a trooper and baited her own hook with squid guts and caught quite a few fish!

Our fish!

Our fish were much more impressive than the ones we've caught in our backyard...

But our lake is just as pretty!

Cane River/Lake

Leaving Florida (and having fun with Instagram)

Now we're at home for a while until our trek to Alabama for my graduation! Leslie has camps to work and I'm planning on keeping myself busy volunteering, finding crafty things to try on pinterest, and re-reading the Harry Potter series. I know, very productive.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Oh Happy Day!

Okay, so I'm going to make my first attempt to link up to other blogs! My friend Mallorie (whose blog I love to keep up with!) posts every Friday with what is making her life happy that week! Now it's my turn :)

This week I have so much to be happy about, it's hard to decide where to begin!

I officially (once I sign my contract) have a GA position at Northwestern State! I'll work in the Education/Human Development building 20 hours a week doing whatever they need me to do! This is fantastic news because I will actually be out of the house and working with PEOPLE! Yay!

I also came across a very exciting volunteering opportunity this week! My new friend Emily told me about the a place and I decided to stop by to see if they needed volunteers. It turns out they are a Christian organization that is completely pro-life. They have their very own ultrasound machine in their very nice facility and their hope is to show young, pregnant girls the love of God and to encourage them to choose life for their babies! Because they are a "peer counseling" service, all you need to do to become a counselor there is go through their training and go through a time of observing other counselors. I'm hoping that I can use this as an opportunity to share my adoption story with girls who need to hear it! Also, I get to learn all about caring for yourself while you're pregnant and caring for yourself and your baby afterwards WAY in advance :)

Another thing making me happy this week is that Leslie and I can fish whenever we want in our backyard! We tried out our new fishing poles earlier this week and although Leslie was the only one to catch a fish, I did prove to him that fish LOVE hot dogs!

Also, now Leslie and I have been married for almost a month! The Fourth of July was our first holiday together and we had lots of fun walking around downtown and watching fireworks!

Last weekend, we got to go to Tuscaloosa to see some friends get married and the wedding was beautiful! (Not to mention that my hubby made quite the handsome groomsman (: ) We got to spend time with Leslie's family and with some friends from school who we haven't gotten to see recently! It was lots of fun seeing everyone, and it definitely made the 7 hour drive (each way) worth it!

Now we're having a relaxing Friday evening. We went to see the new Transformers movie and we're going to use the gift card we got from opening a new bank account to get some tasty steaks for dinner :)

I hope everyone else has had a great week, too!

Starting to settle

Leslie and I were really productive today! We got up early in hopes of getting the ever so exciting social security and license change finished by lunch, but we ended up getting it all done in less than an hour! The DMV in Natchitoches is so much better than the ones around Dallas! So now I am the proud owner of a Louisiana driver's license with my new last name on it!

We even had enough time to get all of our banking stuff taken care of, eat lunch, and get Leslie to work on time!

While Leslie was at work, I had plenty of time to do lots of unpacking, organizing, and cleaning! Our cute little guest house has now been deemed presentable enough for pictures :)

Our living room



The Cane river/lake is in our backyard

Kitchen

We're a little nerdy :)

Bedroom with my fish that have traveled all the way from Alabama to Texas to Louisiana! And we're getting a bigger bed this weekend!

Bathroom!

Once we get our bed from Alabama this weekend we should be all settled in. There are some really nice young couples in our Sunday school class, so hopefully we'll now have some sweet coupley friends :)

The Beginning

After seeing so many of my friends with cute blogs, I decided to start one so that everyone can keep up with us now that we're living in Natchitoches! Everything has been super crazy lately, but things are finally settling down.  Leslie and I are super thankful to everyone who made our wedding (and all that goes along with it) perfect. Although this is only my first post, hopefully it will be the only one that's so LONG!

We got married on June 11th at Calvary Baptist (where Leslie and I first met) in Tuscaloosa, AL.

After that, we headed on to our honeymoon! We spent the first night in Birmingham and had to stop at a rest area on the way to our hotel to get all of the birdseed off of us!

 Then we headed on to Gatlinburg, Tennessee! The cabin we stayed in was just what we had hoped it would be.

Our first day in Gatlinburg we went to Dollywood! We both went when we were younger, but neither of us had been in years.

We both got soaked on the first ride we went on, and our shoes squished a bit for the rest of the day. We were glad it was a sunny day and we both dried out nicely while we walked around the park.

One of the last things we did at Dollywood was check out the bird show. They had lots of birds that they showed off and told everyone all about. When it was time for the vulture to come out, they asked for a volunteer. Of course Leslie's hand quickly shot up and they picked him! They asked him to lay down on the ground and play dead for the vulture.



Leslie on the ground

Thankfully, they decided to just let Leslie hold the bird instead of letting it think he was road kill! He even got a pin that said "Vulture Bait" for being a good sport.



Couldn't get a good picture :(

We spent two days hiking in Gatlinburg. We chose two different waterfalls to explore. The first was Laurel Falls.

It was easy to climb down the rocks once we got to the waterfall, so we spent lots of time exploring here.

The next waterfall we hiked to was called Grotto Falls.

Thankfully, it was a much cooler day because the hike to Grotto Falls was a bit more strenuous! The path led right along the runoff from the waterfall, so it was a very pretty hike!

We had a rainy day, so we went to Ripley's aquarium in Gatlinburg. Of course it didn't rain until we got ready to leave, but the aquarium was a lot of fun!

We also did a lot of walking around downtown Gatlinburg! We saw a lot of amusing things and got some delicious fudge :)

We ate some of my favorite foods while we were there including...

And we knew we were back at home when we saw:

It was a good thing we took his truck because my poor little car wouldn't have made it!

Needless to say, we had a wonderful time on our honeymoon and made the long trek back to Louisiana. We also got to spend some time in Southlake and open LOTS of wedding presents! Now we're back at home in Natchitoches and things are starting to get to normal. I'll post pictures of our cute little guest house when it's not filled with boxes!