Tag Archives: personal

Slow, but steady start

Posted in Craft, Personal by

So I don’t know if it’s just the introvert in me, the fact that I’m talking to people 10+ hours a day or that I haven’t had it in forever, but I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying my “alone time.” And before we go any further, please get your head out of the gutter because I’m referring to my quiet, humble abode.

Because Saturday's are now for homemade breakfast and "New Girl" marathons.

Because Saturday’s are now for homemade breakfast and “New Girl” marathons.

Working in a hospital and having over half of my job include calling people, I am absolutely people-drained by the time I set foot onto the metro home. By the time I hit the threshold of my apartment, the shoes come off, I jump into some comfy clothes and I take a deep breath… because entering that door is entering serenity and I embrace that quiet like no other.

Also, given that Washington D.C. is a big swampland, it holds that humidity like crazy and I usually spend the first five minutes hanging out by the air conditioning; trying to cool-down after hanging out on a train with a bunch of strangers and no air conditioning what-so-ever. It’s a glorious smell if you know what I’m talking about and by glorious I mean horrendous. But again, I’m not complaining because my commuting time has been cut by two-thirds, it’s just a mere–and accurate–observation.

I haven’t gotten used to the extra time either: What do I do with myself? Do I do laundry? Do I work out? Do I do some unpacking? Or maybe just sit here and watch 10 episodes of “New Girl” because I can and no one can tell me not to? It’s a complicated game in the evenings.

The mornings have been amazing though. I’m still in shock and awe of having time to COOK breakfast in the morning and sit with a cup of coffee, or in the case of hot, summer days, a nice glass of ice-cold energy juice. I’ve even had time to curl my hair. I don’t even know you guys, it’s crazy.

Decorating was quick in the beginning and has since slowed. I’ve been sketching out what I want to do and then come back and go “Eh, no.” It’s rough. Instead of thinking so much about it, I’ve just been going for it: today I put up a bulletin board in my kitchen along with a housewarming gift from my brother and his girlfriend… because wine is everything and no one can tell me any different.

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I love my new calendar printables that I found from Love vs Design (the jewel 2014 calendar) and my monthly calendar from Elli. Definitely check them out! Love vs Design has so many other templates for the year-long calendar, but this one just called out to me and the month design reminded me of my current blog layout. I knew I had to have it!

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Despite my uncertainty with the decor, I do have some wall art ideas for the horizon and I can’t wait to share those with you!

Till next time lovebugs,

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Apartment, sweet apartment

Posted in Important Moments, Personal by

It’s amazing how quickly life can get away from you. For me, it’s been a tornadic series of events that started out the beginning of this year and continued on to the present. While nothing bad has happened—actually it’s been nothing but good things—it’s still been exhausting.

January brought us to the end of our work contract and February the beginning of the new one. In the same breath, we began preparing for the biggest month of our year, which, brought more exhaustion… again, in a good way. It wasn’t until April and May that things got super crazy and quite exciting! I was offered a new position and found my niche at work: outreach and patient education. It’s given me a lot to think about in terms of what I want to do in the future and has shown me that plans can change as quickly as a blink of an eye. Originally, I was planning to go to London to pursue my Masters in Clinical Psychology. While it probably seems a little crazy to give that up for the new job offer, I decided it was the right thing to do given the health of my family in the last year. It was important to me to stay close for a while, though I haven’t given up my dream of living overseas. There’s always my doctorate…*wink*.

This past two months of commuting to my new job has finally kicked me in the booty to settle closer to work, giving up three years of over 80 miles a day and over three hours of commuting time. I’ve moved and now am learning that decorating is not as easy as Pinterest makes it seem, mostly because of how indecisive I am and how I want everything “perfect”. You’d think I’d have learned by now that that is a far-fetched reality, but this is finally something I can call mine and I want to surround myself with things that make me happy. Learning that particular feat in the past few years has been a growing process, but I have to say, it was worth the turmoil to get to where I am today: truly and honestly happy.

My new little humble abode has given me a new motivation to get back into the game: crafting and working out. Clearly, my most recent idea of sharing my favorite workouts with you fizzled quickly, but I’ll redirect you to my tornadic life these past few months. With a lot more space for those kinds of activities and a lovely gym downstairs, I’m really excited to get back into it and share with you all of my new adventures.

Speaking of which, I am proud to say that I flew (and survived) my first plane-ride in over 14 years, by myself, and didn’t have a complete meltdown. Actually, this occurred twice, both trips to Boston! Probably the most exciting portion was getting to catch up with a friend of mine from college!

All in all, hurray for baby steps! Or in this case, giant leaps and bounds! And welcome to the new and exciting chapter in my life! Can’t wait to show you the decor and crafty idea’s I have down the pike!

Thank’s for sticking around through my hiatus!

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Birthday shenanigans: Sip & Paint

Posted in Craft, Craft and Wine Night, Personal by

If you can remember back a year, I pondered the conversation I would’ve had with my younger self in the essence of turning a quarter of a century. A month ago I turned the big 2-6.

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My painting throne; seemed fitting, no? #superwholocked

Last year’s birthday was really hard for me for a number of reasons I’ve already discussed. But I have heard from numerous people that they too had a hard time turning 25. It’s kind of that “defining” moment of your young adult life: the one where you are out of college, trying to figure out what you’re doing with your life and trying not to break down in the process.

25 was an interesting year for me, but overall, it was pretty damn fantastic. I can gladly count the bad times on one hand and that’s pretty much it. But it takes many more hands to count my blessings and great things that happened to me. To name a few: I did my first 5k, sewed a full cosplay gown, made and solidified some great friends, got to go to the Pentagon for a work event, really came into my own and built my confidence 10 fold, started to make future plans, took and trumped the GRE, lost 50 lbs, embraced my nerdiness, got to watch one of my great friends marry the love of her life and got to see my favorite childhood boy band in concert… I mean honestly, it was bloody brilliant.

Wino heaven.

Wino heaven.

I started 26 with the only way I know how: getting crafty! If you’ve been following me (lack of posts and all) you know how hard it has been for me recently to find time to breathe, let alone let out my crafty side. It’s definitely something I feel I’m missing in my life right now and my sister came along in the nick of time to save the day! She got us reservations to a “Sip and Paint” in our hometown!

I’ve been dying to do one if these! I have my own canvases that I’ve gotten to do little with as of late (except for this Mother’s Day gift) and was excited to get creative! It was actually the head honchos in my work life that told me I need to follow along and document the progress as we progressed in our bottle of wine… so let’s see how we progressed!

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Step in painting: 1
Wine consumed: ~2 sips

Drawing the basics: hill and sun (although, I like to think of mine more as a moon, you’ll see why later). Then we had to do a quick white base around the moon and sky.

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Step in painting: 2
Wine consumed: ~half a glass

My sky was less swirly than most people’s…

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Michelle’s turned out really cool… here she is mid-painting!

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Step in painting: 3 & 4
Wine consumed: Full glass

My painting is already feeling the alcohol, clearly. Step 3 involved painting over the moon and then doing the hills, complete with shading. That was a little more difficult thanks to the wine. 😉 I had to break out a protein bar after realizing I hadn’t really eaten anything!

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Step in painting: 5
Wine consumed: Working on my second glass

Probably not the best idea to try and do such intricate work after drinking, but luckily they had a template for this one. I started with the template and realized it was not working so well, so I just eye-balled it and hoped for the best… and then kicked back another glass in my “Heather don’t care” attitude. 😉

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Step in painting: 6 & 7
Wine consumed: Finishing the bottle

So to close out our whimsical paintings, we added some swirls and dots (which I liked to think were fairies – or maybe that’s just me watching so much “Once Upon a Time”).

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And so completed our paintings 🙂

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Michelle and I with our finished products!

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The top was what the painting was supposed to look like; the bottom was mine with an unexpected second piece of plate art. 😛

This was one of the neatest things to do! We had such a blast creating our masterpieces and seeing how everyone’s paintings differed in the end.

I highly recommend this activity for girls night or even date night! We saw a few couples who had fun creating some masterpieces.

Have you done a “Sip and Paint” sort of night? What kind of painting did you do?

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Holy crap, I just sewed a gown!

Posted in Craft, Current Obsession, Important Moments, Personal by

*knock, knock, knock* “Heather?”

Yes. I’m alive. Please know I haven’t forgotten about you little bloggy blog of mine! It has been quite some time and in between work-outs, trying to keep up with my shop, working and trying to keep my social life at least a little bit afloat, I’ve spent the remainder of my time asleep. And these hours are very few and far between. So weekends, the free moments I have, oh you better believe I am snug in my bed, blissfully napping.

Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten that days only have 24 hours in them and have had none left over to just sit. I miss sitting. And staring off into oblivion. And it’s my favorite time of year to do so… I need to find time to do that. Outside in a pair of jeans, a warm sweater, a hot cider and my thoughts. Doesn’t that sound glorious?

But I’m glad to get a chance and touch base with my blogging world. I feel like we need to sit down on a cafe terrace, sip lattes and talk about the weather, our families and Bethenny Frankle’s new talk show (God she’s hysterical, I adore her) and Tamra Judge’s wedding (GORGEOUS!).

In the meantime, let me share my biggest feat to date… or at least what feels like it to me.

I sewed a gown.

*pause for reaction*

Yes, I said gown. Remember last year’s Comic Con that I slacked and never put up pictures from like I promised? Yeah, so that happened again. But the shirt wasn’t enough this year, I had to kick it up a notch. So to Cosplay City we went. I did. I cosplayed. I wore a costume. And walked around downtown Baltimore. Like the ridiculously awesome fool I am. That happened. This is real life right here.

Join me on my sewing adventure.

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Happy Bloggiversary Give-away Winner!

Posted in Craft, Important Moments, Personal, These are the days of Holi by

Let’s talk about who’s been a bad blogger?

This girl. Aware. Got it. Apologies.

Life has been insanely crazy recently, perhaps I’ll share a bit in my next post, but I wanted to stop by and let you know who won!

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Congrats to my favorite SMASH-Booker, SuperCraftiFragilistic! Shoot me an email to heatherk06@gmail.com with your address and I’ll send the box your way! Some fun stuff in there you can use in your Smashbooks! 🙂

Thanks all who liked and commented!

If you don’t hear from me before tomorrow: Have a wonderful and safe Independence day! Don’t forget the past crafts from last years Independence Day!

 

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Broad Stripes and Bright Stars Shirt

 

 

Independence Mason Jars

 

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I died and went to spaghetti squash heaven

Posted in Important Moments, NOMS, Personal, That's an idea!, Uncategorized by

A week ago my nephew graduated high school. HIGH SCHOOL. Screw quarter life crisis, more like quarter life meltdown at this point! I was not able to attend due to each graduate getting a limited number of tickets but was definitely there in spirit as my teacher and father were sending me pictures of the days events. The week before that, my niece graduated from preschool. The reasons we’ve learned that these two amazing kids are related to me is:

  1. They’re awesome.
  2. Zoe’s plans were the following: “Zoe is going to kindergarten. And she wants to do EVERYTHING!”

Yup, sounds like moi. I’ve actually been struggling a little bit because I have no idea what I’m going to do anymore. The reason? TOO many things interest me.

Talk about first-world problems.

Seriously though, I always do feel really stupid saying stuff like that, but unfortunately, it’s true. With work contracts coming to a close, I’ve been thinking about my next move in life. The one definite I have is that I’m going to go to grad school. (HOLY CRAP!) I am set to take the GRE’s mid-August and am baffled by why it is so expensive to sit in front of a computer for 4.5 hours to take said test. Regardless, now I have to narrow down the grad school choices. Determining what I wanted to study was another problem. I would love to get into infectious disease research, but I also really enjoy health psychology. But then there is neuro which, I’ve hung around in for the past two years and thus leading to wanting to become a PA in the future…

Maybe that’s why I always wanted to be an actress growing up. That extinguishes the issue because you can be so many different things in such a short amount of time. After all, I always liked getting to be someone else for a while, someone new and different… But the reasoning of why I never divulged into the performing arena is going to take more than just a few paragraphs and will require a lot of alcohol.

What I’ve actually decided on has been Kinesiology with a concentration in Sport Health and Physiology. My goal upon trying to lose weight and get healthy the first time was then to help others the same way my trainer helped me. I often feel really bad that I let myself get back to this place and like I’ve let her down. There were a lot of situations that led to this issue, but again… more paragraphs, more time and more alcohol. I’ve been talking with my current trainer and we were talking about this idea again: becoming a personal trainer/health coach extraordinaire. See, she has been there. She lost a ton of weight, was a figure competitor for a while and now is a fairy-god-sister disguised as a personal trainer. Having done this journey once already and now again, I want to help people who have been in the same predicament and just can’t seem to get ahead of the game. Because this time it’s going to happen.

Anyways, back to the story… since I had the house to myself last Tuesday, I decided to make up the spaghetti squash I had sitting on the table for a week. Spaghetti squash is fantastic, but sometimes takes some getting used to! You’re expecting a mushier texture, like pasta, since that’s what everyone compares it to but it is a little crunchier. I was super lazy so instead of dishing it out of the rinds, I decided to use them as bowls!

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The perks of eating it right out of the rind is that you don’t have to worry about extra dishes! I decided it was a good idea when I discovered we obtained more paper plates and I was too lazy to dish out the “noodles” from the squash rinds.

Spaghetti squash is so easy to cook:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Cut each squash in half and then clear out the seeds (note: you can keep the seeds and cook them like you would pumpkin seeds!).
  3. I like to sprinkle some safflower or olive oil on top and then sprinkle some spices: salt, pepper, sometimes garlic, old bay, or even greek seasoning.
  4. Cover in aluminum foil pretty tight and put in for a half hour.
  5. After a half hour, check with a fork and see if you can easily peel the squash away in little strips, usually it takes an hour or an hour and a half.
  6. If not, put back in for another half hour and check again.

Now here is where the fun part comes in…

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Spinach and Crab with Cheese

Mix in a bowl 1/3 cooked crab meat, a sprinkle of old bay seasoning, a handful of shredded baby spinach, about 1/8 cup of cheddar cheese and a little alfredo sauce. After shredding the squash, pour the mixture into the “bowl” and then top with mozzarella cheese.

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Chicken Parm

Add a mixture of cooked chicken pieces, tomato sauce (I used tomato and basil), and some sprinkled parmesan cheese to the “bowl” of shredded squash. Top with mozzarella cheese.

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I didn’t have any meat left over, so I stuffed the remaining two with just sauces and cheese!

Stick under the broiler for about 5-10 minutes (don’t forget to leave the door open a crack!) but keep an eye on it. It’s done when the top of the cheese is cooked.

DIG IN!

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I topped it off with a little extra old bay and DIVULGED. So good you guys!

How do you like your spaghetti squash?!

And don’t forget about the giveaway!

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River Song Appreciation Day!

Posted in Craft, These are the days of Holi by

HAPPY RIVER SONG DAY!

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Ok, I’m about three days late for posting this and be prepared, it’s about to get a tad nerdy up in this joint.

River Song is a character played by Alex Kingston on “Doctor Who”. Again, if you have never seen “Doctor Who” and are into the nerdy, space travel, british comedies then WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!? Seriously, you need to GET ON THAT. Those of you who know of River Song and know me, know that I adore the hell out of that character/woman and is pretty much one of my goals in life to be as badass as she.

dcwhoomgFriday was the 5th Anniversary of River’s first appearance in “Silence in the Library”, an episode from season 4 with David Tennant and Catherine Tate as his “I’ll dish your sassiness right back to you” companion, Donna Noble (another favorite of mine!). Please be prepared if you watch this episode and it’s companion (ha, see what I did there?) because there are a lot of emotions. Seriously. Good luck with that.

Also, can we talk about the season finale?! Let’s talk about how I cried rivers of tears (ha, bah-dum-dum-psh!)… let’s talk about how I walked out into my living room and the conversation went like the following:

Dad: So, how was Doctor-

Me: OMG! *bursts into tears* RIVER! MY FEELS! RIVER AND THE DOCTOR! I JUST… I CAN’T! RIVER! NOOOOO! MY FEELS!

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Anywho, I decided that since I couldn’t cosplay to work (even though it was casual Friday) and it would probably be highly inappropriate to walk around calling everyone “Sweetie”, or trying to use my sonic screwdriver when my stupid computer wouldn’t work (I actually have two: River and the 10th’s) and saying “Spoilers” anytime anyone asked me where one of my reports were (Seriously, I saw a very pink psychic paper in my future if I ever tried to pull this kind of shenanigan)… all of these under consideration, I decided to marathon River’s episodes and make a lovely decor piece in honor of our favorite woman with the funny name and the fantastic space hair.

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