Today Is Our 3 Year Anniversary!

8 years ago, I met a guy down my dorm hallway..

Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary!

I love you hun!

Before you..I wasn't sure if I believed in marriage & I didn't know if I ever wanted to have kids. Shortly after I met you that all changed. I knew that I wanted to be your wife & have a big family. You have make me so happy & I can't wait to start a family! 

Love ya,

Zandria

Rummage/Craft Sale FAIL & Knitting

Good Evening,For awhile now, I have been looking forward to a craft/rummage sale that was at a high school very close to my house. I have been to sales like that at other places before & found a lot of nice things (like Christmas Decorations, craft ideas, crystal candy dishes & plates, etc) so I had high hopes for today. Let me tell you, this sale actually had all JUNK.. and there wasn't much junk at that. All the other craft/rummage sales that I have been to used 2-3 large rooms for their sales. This was all inside of one gym! I almost thought that I found an awesome chandlier. The box was in perfect condition & it looked like it had been never opened. When I opened it, it turns out to be a few glass globes of a total different design, no chandelier, & one of them was even broken! Fail! I know that many of the crafters I follow would say that one person's junk is another person's treasure..but unless you wanted a stuffed animal, you would have been out of luck.

Two things that I learned from today:

-The economy can affect how much people are willing to put in a rummage sale or what they consider junk (at least that is my deduction of the sale)

-The other thing is..don't assume that you are always going to find a gem when you are "rummaging", it may be strictly someone else's junk!

The benefit of going, however, was that I got to see two people from church that I haven't seen for awhile :) So it wasn't a total loss.

On another note, I am knitting a scarf. A day or two after I took the picture of my practice knitting project, I decided that I had enough practice & wanted to actually make something. I switch to size 8 knitting needles & a thicker multi-color ocean-esque thread. I will post pictures of it when I am done! I don't want to jinx myself. I will say that the scarf looks much better then my first practice project :)

Until later,

Alex

From Scratch

In the last two years I have realized how much I HATE wasting money. Two years ago, the problem that I was most often running into was throwing away food that we didn't eat in time. Well in the last 6 months, my husband & I spend at least $100 less a month on groceries because we 1. cut out some snacks (we were buying too much) and 2. we buy less so that we don't have to throw out food. Keeping those changes in mind, I still have thrown out a handful of bananas. In the back of my mind, I always thought "I could make banana bread with those" but I was always too nervous to bake banana bread from scratch.

I am AWESOME at baking something from a box, but from scratch...well I have very little confidence & very little experience. I tried making an apple pie last year and that was OKAY. But today I believe that my banana bread was pure SUCCESS!

This is the recipe that I used, which is not my own. I did everything that she recommended other than adding walnuts-we didn't have any...but we did have all of the other ingredients. Click Here  to view the recipe.

Here are some pics:

I was going to attempt to use my bread maker for the first time, but I couldn't make sense of the directions, so I used the oven!

This is what the mixture looked like before I put it in the oven. It may be darker than normal because I used non-bleached wheat flour.

I thought that I did not but too much of the mixture in the pan (considering that I followed a recipe), but it turned out that the bread started to overflow a tad when it was in the oven & I had to put a baking sheet underneath it. Moral of the story, put less of the mixture in your pan than I did!

I Can KNIT

So...it has been a goal of mine to know how to knit or crochet for the last few years. I have had three women try to show me how to crochet: a roommate, my aunt, & my husband's grandma. I never followed up with those people after I learned & I don't remember going home feeling that I could do it on my own.

This summer I decided, enough is enough! I am going to learn to knit or crochet & be able to do it by the end of the summer, darnit! Why?? Because I want to be more self-sufficient. I want to be a blend of the modern woman & the quintessential 50s woman. I want to be able to make my house look beautiful, my husband & kids feel special, yet still make a lot of decisions around the house! I love the fact of being able to personalize things too. If I want a neon green & hot pink scarf & I can't find it in the store..I can make it!

So anywho, I recently found out that there was a crocheting circle in my family. Well, I thought it was a crocheting circle, then I re-read a fb post about it & the woman that invited me said "knitting circle". I ran out to Hobby Lobby an hour before the circle meeting & bought some knitting needles. I showed up at the meeting to find out that they do both (crocheting & knitting). So since I have given crocheting a try 3 times, I decided to try knitting for a first time. Here is what I have accomplished since yesterday:

 

 Well it may not be the best knitting work in the world & I may feel like an gorilla with two knitting needles...but its almost a day later & I still remember how to do it. So far, I am going to say that I find learning how to crochet easier than knitting. Grant it, I did try to learn how to crochet when I was younger...so I'm not sure if that made a difference. 

My revised craft goal of the summer: feel comfortable with knitting by the end of the summer & learn how to crochet by the end of the summer. I want to learn it all!

I will be a part of the knitting circle as long as my schedule permits it! It was a great time, by the way!

Tata until later!

-Alex

Magnetic Words

This is my second post on making something for the fridge, but hey its a giant surface that you stick all kinds of things to, as long as they are magnetic. For a while I have wanted to make my own words on magnets for our fridge. Why? 1) Its cheaper to make them then to by an already made kit 2) if you make it yourself it is tailored to your own personality AND 3) I love making things. I made some magnetic words for our house but I will also be making another set tonight for someone else tonight.

This pdf was helpful to get my set started  How to....  and here.

Here's what you need:
-A computer, printer, & a word program (unless you want to write them out with pen or perm. marker)
-A magnetic sheet (I used Adhes-A-Mag Magnetic Adhesive Sheet which is 12 x 24 in.). I got it from Michael's because I already had a gift card there. If I didn't have the gift card, I would have bought 8 x 11 sheets on the oriental trading post website
-Computer paper
-Scissors
-An imagination

The Steps....

1) Open a Word document (or whatever program you choose to use) and change the settings. I changed the page margins to .4 & the page setup as landscape. After each word I hit the space bar 4 times before typing another word to leave enough space to cut. I also made the spacing between each line 1.5 (its normally 1).
2) Add you words. This is completely up to you as to what words you use, which is why it is fun! Go to the link that I provided above. You at least need to make sure that you get a mix of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, exclamations, and articles. I also added things such as our names, our nicknames, our pets names, some of my favorite words (awesome, sweet, etc), some of my husband's favorite words (and some of them I left out because I want our fridge to be at a NC-17 level :) To make things fun for my hubby, I also looked up some lingo for his favorite movies. To do that, I just went to google & typed "Harry Potter lingo","Star Wars Lingo" etc. I also added a few things from Jersey Shore such as "blast in a glass", "walking holiday", and "situation". I included words from recent pop culture, thanks to Charlie Sheen that have regained popularity "troll", "warlock", and "tigerblood" to make it fun for our guests.

 

3) After looking over your document, print out your words. I only used one page to fit all of my magnet words, by the way. Then, peel off the paper on the adhesive magnet, carfully place your computer paper on the sticky side of the magnet, smooth out, and cut out your words. 

 

 4) Put your words on your fridge! I used the top door so that they were at eye level. 

 

5) Express yourself!

My hope is that my hubby & I, as well as our guests will have fun creating messages on the fridge while we happen to be in the kitchen. Our kitchen seems to be a popular place, so it is fitting to be a message center as well!

*My little disclaimer Here's the deal: There may be some grammatical errors in my post today, but I honestly feel too lazy to go through & look for them today!

Enjoy!

-Alex