To Master or Not to Master...That is the Question

This week marks the 5th Anniversary of me working as a Legal Assistant at Penney & Associates. Five long, hard, good years. Wow. As I type that I feel old, and like a baby. I don't feel old enough to have a "Career" or to have worked at the same place for 5 years.

Anyway. I didn't plan to work in Law, in fact, I had never even considered it. How it fell into my lap is a whole other story, but it did. And I think I like it. :) I never thought I'd say that!

So now since I've only ever worked as a Workers' Compensation Legal Assistant, I want to learn other things, to make me a more valuable employee and member of society.

I feel like I need a new challenge. I want to learn something new. Expand my horizons...all that cliche mumbo jumbo.

It also doesn't help that I have a friend that got her Juris Doctorate (ie: graduated from Law School!) a few months ago. She's inspired me. :)

I have figured out that I definitely do not want to go to Law School. Yikes! I've heard terrible horror stories. I saw what it does to people first hand, and No, Thank you! But maybe, I could get my masters.

A Masters of Science in Legal Studies. (hey, at least it's still a "science", right?)

Megan McGrath, M.L.S.

That's kind of awesome.

So now I am debating on getting a Master's Degree, something I've never really planned to do, in a field that I definitely never anticipated working in.

Certainly food for thought.

And it's only about $23,000. Yeah, that is why I haven't signed up yet.

So now I have to think about it. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them. 

Why My Mom Moved to Idaho

Tonight while I was looking at some pictures from Erin's wedding party (it wasn't a reception) and I think I figured out why my mom moved away from her kids. 

She can't take us anywhere. 

Unfortunately (maybe fortunately?) I happen to have the pictures to prove it....Yeah. The first one was probably the most "presentable."

Yeah. I have NO idea what Cait is doing...

 

Lys trying to reign us in and keep Rachel from crying.

Yeah, Rachel burst into tears after that.

 

Yeah, that was a lot of pictures just illustrating how ridiculous we are. 

And that is why Mom moved away. It was more like getting away, I think. Yeah....probably.

:)

Flower Girl Baskets

My roommate is getting married next month and so has been planning her wedding. It's been so fun to have her bounce ideas around and get feedback. Her colors are a dark eggplant purple, black, white and touches of zebra print. So fun!

This weekend she asked me to make her the flower girl baskets. She had already bought the materials, she just needed someone to put them together and make them cute. Well I put them together. Hopefully they're cute. And hopefully she doesn't look to close. :)

But here is what I did and how I put them together.

I started with these white flower girl baskets and then ripped off the bow part so the sides would be smooth (yep, it was a bit violent).

After some discussion with my roommate, she decided that it would be cute to put little bows on the sides of the basket at the bottom of the handle. So I made little bows out of ribbon. I just made loops, glued down the edges, and then used thread to cinch down the middles of each one.

 
Then I took the zebra print ribbon and carefully glued it along the handle to cover the white fabric. The basket part was covered with a piece of dark purple lining that my roommate had found. I didn't measure it out, but it was enough to cover all the sides.  I hot glued the wider sides down first and then folded the ends carefully like a present. It got a little funky at the handle, so I glued the bows to cover it up. Then to add a little bling, I glued a large rhinestone left over from the wedding invitations.

There are three flower girls and so I made two purple baskets and one zebra print basket. The Zebra print one is my favorite. :)

I think they turned out pretty cute! Hopefully my roommate likes them. :)

Halloween Design Team Double Page Layout

This month's theme for the Design Team at my local scrapbook store was Halloween using Echo Park's Chillingsworth Collection. I loved the paper and accent pieces. I don't have a lot of Halloween pictures, but I realized that I haven't scrapped my pictures from when I was Cleadus...a character that is still infamous in my  ward. So I scrapped them. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. :)

Sorry for the blurry photos. I'm having a hard time getting my camera to focus right. Maybe it's time that I get a real one... hm...

Anywho. So those are this month's pages. It was a small kit, and since I don't have a lot of halloween photos, this what I came up with. The journaling on the right is just some funny quotes that "Cleadus" said at the party (a la: "I'll be your white rabbit" to Alice in Wonderland). The other on the left is how the costume came together, along with the terribly awkward flirty personality. :) It also talks about how I won the best costume at the party. Such awkwardness should not be encouraged like that. hahaha. :)

I thought the black sparkily flourishes look pretty cool on the black paper. And there is a cool crackle medium on the orange chevrons that gave it some fun texture. The Cleadus title is actually silver foil letters that I sanded a bit and then put on two different shades of green ink to change it up a bit. The green stripe behind the orange chevron was really bright green so I spritzed some darker green sparkily glimmermist onto it to tone down the brightness. There was lots of different inks used on this page (I think there 9 or 10 different colors)--I think I might be obsessed. :)

Thanks for looking! :)

Paying it Forward

On a fun blog I follow, Tonia at the Gunny Sack posted about paying it forward and sending little gifts to blog readers. I thought it would be fun to play along. I mean, who doesn't love getting gifts?! :) And I LOVE giving gifts!

The first three people to comment on this post will receive a gift from me! It may be something that I long for and wish to share with others, something to wear or maybe just something I love! Whatever it is, it will get special thought and care just for you! And chances are it will be something craftily awesome! :)

The fine print:

• Within a year (it'll be sooner than later), I’ll create something unique to share with the first three people to comment on this post.
• But, in order to receive your present you have to play along. Spread the love on your own blog promising to send a little special something to the first three people who comment on your post.
• You get 72 hours to re-post, or I’ll have to move on to the next person.

Ok. So these are the rules set forth by somebody somewhere back in the links of links of links. And make sure to leave a way for me to contact you so I can send you some goodness! :)

Seems fun right?! I'm excited to send out some packages!

 

 

Abigail's Dress: A Bridesmaid's Dress Recycled

Once upon a time a dear friend, Lisa, got married in May, 2006. She asked me to be her bridesmaid, along with another one of our roommates, Natasha.

We (and when I say "we," I mean "Natasha") made our beautiful bridesmaids dresses. To add a little something fun to the bodice and the skirt, I hand sewed (because that's all I'm good for) a beaded flower pattern on to them.

Yes, they were hot pink crepe-back satin. And they had a small train on the skirts. And they were gorgeous. And we loved them.

Now, imagine two girls in hot pink running around Temple Square. Yep. Everyone saw us and noticed us. I mean, hot pink satin is not standard fare around there. :)

With a picture, I guess it's not hard to imagine. :) This is Natasha and I in our dresses waiting for Lisa and Adam to come out of the sealing.

So I've had this beautiful dress that I absolutely love because it is beautiful (yes, I really do love the color of the fabric) and because it is very sentimental to me.

But I knew I would never wear it again.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when I was in Chicago visiting Lisa, Adam, and Matthew. Lisa is pregnant and found out while I was there that she's having a girl! YAY! I knew I wanted to do something special for her. I decided that Lisa's little girl (whom they are naming Abigail--love!) NEEDED a dress made out of my bridesmaid dress. It was funny because the morning I left, Lisa's mother-in-law, Marta, suggested the same thing!

So I came home and started plotting. I knew I needed someone to sew the dress because I can't and didn't want to risk learning and then ruining my beautiful dress.

It's a good thing that I have a sister that loves me, knows how to sew, lives close, and is willing to entertain my crazy ideas. (Erin, move home soon so I can say the same thing about you too! ;) hahaha.)

We (and when I say "we," I definitely mean "Cait") embarked on this adventure of converting the bodice of my dress into a baby dress. Fortunately, Cait has a great mother-in-law that took the time to figure out how to make it work, because apparently it was a bit tricky.

And I'll be honest, literally all I did was act as cheerleader. I did none of the machine sewing and all of the purchasing the miscellaneous notions that were required (which weren't many since the dress was already lined and I had tulle from my skirt, YAY!).

This was the first time Cait had every made clothes. (She did great!) It took awhile to do, but she does have a baby so I didn't mind.

As the dress came near to completion, there was lots of extra fabric, so Cait decided that she wanted to make other things....

like a ruffily diaper cover. Who doesn't love a ruffily hot pink diaper bum?

and an adorable baby wipes case, matching hair bow, and a pacifier holder thingy.

Cait got real crazy with it. :) And I loved it all!!

And the dress is done! :)

Here is the overall look, modeled by my freakin' adorable niece, Rachel.

It's official, hot pink is a good color for her. :)

I picked up some cute little shoes to go with it too--which were on clearance at Target! I was looking for cream ones to break up the hot pink and match the ribbon, but these were what I found. They are perfect!

I'm so excited for Lisa to get it! Agh. It's killing me! :)

Butterfly Quote Wall

Over the weekend I worked on tons of projects, including this one. Actually this is one of the few I actually finished. Ha ha ha

Awhile ago, Lys re-did her bedroom and decided that she wanted a vinyl quote on her wall, like the one I had done downstairs. The quote she picked out was "If nothing changed, there would be no butterflies" by Walt Disney.

I loved the quote and thought it was perfect. Things kept coming up and so the project kept getting delayed. Well this weekend while she and her family were out of town, I surprised her with the quote. 

I used my amazingly awesome Cameo and cut the letters out with vinyl after much consternation and decision making about the font and size of the letters. I also found a fun butterfly graphic on the Silhouette graphic site (so awesome!) and cut it out too.

I taped up all the letters to see about the spacing and to see how they lined up.

Once I liked it, I started sticking them to the wall, very carefully. And then rubbed them onto the wall with my finger. I was using the stick the vinyl comes with, but I was pressing too hard and didn't want to break the stick so I just my finger, which was better.

Then once all the letters were done, I was trying to figure out how to do the butterfly and I realized that the end was the same size as the end of the "s", so I just attached it there.

Here is the project when it was all done.

Here is the message I got on facebook when Lys got home from vacation and found it:

"hey, it's totally late [um, it was 10:18pm when she posted this] so i'll text ya in to morning, but THANK YOU SOO MUCH FOR DOING MY WALL! IT LOOKS SOOO AMAZING!! LOVE IT! YOU'RE SO THE BEST EVER :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D"

I think she liked it. :) It was a fun little surprise and I liked how it turned out. :)