Welcome to the Dark Side...

The ladies at work have been wanting to try their hand at a craft while we are still on night shift and have some down time.  After quite a bit of internal debate I decided that cross stitch was probably our best bet.  I demonstrated the process and walked them through the basics and they ran with it!   I'm really impressed with the quality of even their first projects!  They have both gone on to do several more...I think they might be ringers because these two "non-crafty girls" rocked this! 

Married!

“We are all a little weird and life is a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”  

~ Dr. Seuss

 

                                                                                                         

   

 

This Man...

Four days from now I'll be marrying my incredible man!  Both of us have been down this road before and while I would be terrified to try again with any other person...I'm not at all scared to tie the knot with Dan!  He quite simply is THE perfect man for me.  He's smart, interesting, romantic, thoughtful, and absolutely hilarious!  I honestly don't think that there has been a single day since I met him that we haven't laughed together!  

He cares for me in every way...He tries to make sure that I get rest in spite of my crazy work schedule, he makes sure that I'm safe on the roads by putting new tires on my vehicle and checking and changing oil when it's needed.  He makes me delicious dinners and let me tell you the man is a god when it comes to grilling and smoking food! 

He surprises me with beautiful flowers, sets my coffee up for me and leaves me sweet and sexy coffee notes... He takes an interest in my hobbies and doesn't allow his eyes to glaze over when I geek out about compost and permaculture practices...  He loves me. He shows me in a million countless ways... and I can't wait to be his wife! 

 

Sooo....

I'm getting married!   We decided to stop putting it off and just do it so that's what we're going to do!

My friend and coworker Jessica thoughtfully threw me a bridal party at work.  A great time was had by all and I got some really cool gifts!

 

I have worked at my agency for 8 years.  There have been so many times that I thought I would completely lose my shit if I had to be there just one more day, hour, minute... It's not a feel good job and working 12 hour shifts in a windowless bunker can definitely cause some cabin fever-esque symptoms... 

 

But it's times like this when I take a minute and reflect on what I have here... I have a very necessary job where I get to have an impact on people's lives. A job that allowed me to have a respectable income at a time in my life when it was crucial that I have financial independence.

 

But more than anything, this place has given me a group of people that care about my wellbeing. They have seen me through countless traumatic work situations, personal issues, the deaths of family members, a very painful divorce, many drunken girl's nights, more than a few hangovers, poor dating decisions, new love, post traumatic stress, burnout, a scary health issue, and oh so many other things...  And now that I'm moving onto the next chapter and marrying this incredible man (that this job also gave to me!) I have these great coworkers to celebrate that with me.   I'm very moved, and very, very thankful.

Planting...

Everything is in the ground!!!  

 I'm hopeful that the weather cooperates this year!  I was happy to see that almost all of the medicinal herbs that I planted last year are still thriving :-)

Metal Tape is AWESOME!

A while back I saw this totally badass tutorial on how to use metal foil tape in mixed media projects. It worked on my mind for a while and finally I just had to try it.  I am SO glad that I did!  I have a love for boxes and tins so I decided to start there rather than a card.  This is how it turned out:

 Freakin cool, right!?!
 

I enjoyed the process so much that I can’t seem to stop making things using this technique!   I was really wanting to do an aviation themed box for our living room since we have a really cool plane picture and a full sized propeller on the wall. 

I used the Silhouette Cameo to  make the layers of this propeller:

 

I added some metal embellishments...

 

I made the plane on the Silhouette as well.  Do you see that copper dome in the corner?  That's a penny that I shaped in the doming block that I got as a Christmas gift.

 

 
The end results:

 

My friend Meg sells amazing clothes by LuLaRoe.  She often donates a percentage of her sales to a local charitable interest and she treats her customers with a special gift each month...So yeah, she's fantastic!  Because she was at THIS babyshower , and enjoyed the body scrub/moisturizer party favor, she ordered several of them to give as her customer appreciation gifts.

I wanted them to be somewhat special so I made these custom cardstock boxes to package them in.