Essential Oil Scalp Mask

I said a long time ago that I was trying something new by jumping in to the world of essential oils.  Well, long story short, I am in love with my Young Living oils.  My stash is growing, I'm integrating oils into my daily routine, and I'm noticing big changes in my wellness.

Any reader of this blog knows how much I love crafting, making, and DIY.  Essential oils, along with some products from a local health food store or Amazon, can replace a lot of store-bought products.  It's often cheaper to DIY these products, and you also remove a ton of the toxins and questionable ingredients found in store-bought products from your home.

One of the first places I started integrating essential oils was in my haircare.  My hair is an important part of my identity, and it's not always in the best shape because I color it.  Coloring my hair also limits the products I can use, because some ingredients will strip color.  I've struggled over the years with an unhealthy scalp, but now I have my homemade Scalp Mask.

There are only six ingredients in this recipe!  Three of them are essential oils, and three are carrier oils.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when shopping for products:

-With carrier oils, it is important to look for expeller- or cold- pressed oils.  This means that no chemicals were added to pull the oils from the nut or seed

-Make sure your carrier oils are hexane-free.  Again, it means chemicals were part of the extraction process.

-Do a little research on your carrier oil brand and be sure you feel comfortable with them.  All of the carrier oils I used here are NOW brand because it's what my local health food store carries, but it's not neccessarily my favorite brand or one that I'd say is significantly better than others.

-For essential oils, I only use the Young Living brand.  Their Seed to Seal promise makes me certain I'm getting pure, potent, unaltered oils made from plants not treated with toxins.  Young Living oils are grown with therapuetic properties in mind and are tested to ensure those properties are intact.

-There are many store-bought brands of essential oils, but they are often diluted with fillers or made from plants that wouldn't pass Seed to Seal testing.  I've compared other brands side by side with Young Living - I don't buy store brand oils.

Essential Oil Scalp Mask

In a two-ounce bottle combine the following:

1/2 ounce argan oil

1/2 vegetable glycerin

1 ounce almond oil (also known as sweet almond oil)

30 drops each of Cedarwood, Tea Tree (Melaleuca alternifolia), and Rosemary essential oils

Shake well before each use.  Apply directly to the scalp all over or wherever needed and let sit for 1-2 minutes before shampooing.  If oil remains, shampoo a second time before conditioning. 

This recipe has been a God-send for me.  I use it each time I shampoo to nourish my scalp.  I'm no longer scratching or dealing with an embarrassing scalp!  And as a bonus, Cedarwood can help promote strong hair growth. 

My hair is thick and a little on the drier side, so these carrier oils working great for me.  I also only wash my hair once every few days.  If you find that this particular combination of carrier oils leaves your hair feeling oily, there are lots of other carrier oils that you can swap in until you find the right balance for you - not all carrier oils are the same!

Budget Basics

The summer I finished college, I quickly got a part-time job.  Don't misunderstand, though, this was not the kind of part-time job that helped me squeak by - the first few months, as I worked my way into more hours, I was making $300-400 a month.  Talk about being broke.

By the time the winter came, I was more in the realm of $600-800 - enough to keep my car rolling and make the minimum student loan payments when they kicked in while my parents covered everything else in my life.

The next spring, I got a promotion, and started making enough to put me above the poverty line.  I knew it was time to make a budget.

There are a million people and blogs out there that will tell you how to set a budget, and I did a lot of research before making my first budget.  Two years later, my budget has changed to reflect a growing income and changing student loan payments, but the main tenets have remained the same.  A budget is personal, so my budget theory is personal.  I believe a good budget should:

• Focus first on paying for necessities: rent, groceries, utilities, transportation
• Focus second on paying off debt.  NOT minimum payments, but aggressively paying it off.
• Be envelope-based.  This means that you intentionally set aside a certain amount to spend in each category (groceries, gas, clothes, enterntainment, etc) and when you run out of money in that category, you stop spending for the month.
• Think long-term.  If you're paying insurance every six months, calculate the monthly amount and include it in your budget so you aren't spending money you'll need soon.
• Reflect your priorities.  It's more important to me to build up a "romance fund" so I can see my long-distance guy than to buy new clothes, and the amounts I put in each category reflect that.
• Be zero-sum.  The total of your spending categories should equal your income.  Every dollar should go to a category, with no extra.  If you plan out each category and have extra, recalculate.  Give yourself a little breathing room in tight categories, add to your debt pay-down plan, or put the money in your savings every month.
• Hurt a little.  If your budget doesn't pinch a little and make you think twice about purchases, then it is probably not getting you toward your long-term goals (yes, you should have long-term financial goals).

If it's your first time making a budget, it can seem kind of impossible to figure out what categories to create and how much to put in them.  To help get started, I really like Dave Ramsey's Monthly Cash Flow Plan.  It lists more than 50 categories you should think about, and it offers "optimal" percentages to help you see what's reasonable or not.  Again, my percentages don't always line up because some categories are more important than others - I don't always agree with Dave Ramsey - but it helps me be more conscious of where I might be spending too much.

Triumphant Return

I've neglected this blog much too long. 

I could blame it all on being busy at work, but that's not honest.  The fact is, I've been pretty darn lazy over the last ten months, and when I'm not being lazy it's because I'm overwhelmed.  Or in some cases, dealing with emotions that I can't take captive.

Starting my new job last July was a whirlwind.  Being in event management full-time is exactly what I wanted, and I am so pleased to be back in the non-profit world.  Non-profit work, by definition, is mission-driven.  I am always emotionally connected to my work, no matter where I am. I need something to believe in that is more than the numbers  on my paycheck.

I'm now working at an RELC.  Don't know what that is?  Trust me, no one does.  RELC stands for Residential Environmental Learning Center.  In short, schools arrange to bring a group of students to our site.  They stay overnight (typically 3-day, 2-night trips), and we teach the students about a host of different subjects - everything from macroinvertebrates and sustainable energy to historical Ojibwe culture and teambuilding.  We also work with community colleges, universities, and private events like staff retreats and weddings.

My job is to schedule all of that.  After almost a year there, I can understand why my position was created; there used to be two people that were me, one who handled educational groups and one to handle private events.  Now I'm there doing both, and while I think it's going more smoothly (based on horror stories I've heard), it also means I have zero downtime.  While my ed department colleagues have a season from September to June (the school year), I have the ed season and all its busyness, followed by the absolute busiest season for private events.  So it goes.

There are struggles in my job, like any.  We've sadly lost staff members this year - one abandoned her contract for a new job, one was diagnosed with a rapidly progressing cancer, and another also fell ill.  We also had to wait ten months to fill a full-time position (we're still working on that one) and we turned over our entire kitchen staff.  Despite them, we've worked with over 1,000 K-12 students this year, and we have the thank you cards to prove they had fun and learned with us.  I'm not sure there is anything more satisfying than watching kids learn.

When the days get hard, I can take a break to check out views like this:



Like all things in life, there is so much beauty and joy inside of and despite the struggles.

Moving, Again

When I was a kid, we weren't one of those families that moved.  I never, ever had to change schools.  My family moved once, from a trailer house into a house, when I was a toddler, and that was all it ever was.  We swapped bedrooms a few times, rearranged furniture regularly, remodeled and remodeled and remodeled, even had our address change when the county installed rural street names, but my house was always my house.

From 2009-2013, I moved every three to nine months (thanks, college).  Honestly, I got to be a pro at it.  I could fit everything, including a tv, mini fridge, and microwave, in my Buick sedan.  It became a cycle of knowing when to unpack, what to leave behind, and when to start bringing things back home to make those last days of school less cluttered.

After graduation, I stayed with my parents for eleven months.  Then I moved again, into my new apartment onsite at my job, with no firm idea how long I would be there or where I would go after.

It's time to move again.  Almost 15 months later, I look around my apartment, and my thoughts are all about how to pack and which items can leave first.  It doesn't feel like I've been here so long, and yet every day I've been here also feels like a week.  So many things have accumulated in my apartment.  As my first time living alone, I supplied everything in this room, no more college roommates to split half of the household items with, and an entire space to hold whatever craft supplies and books and papers my heart desires.

With just a couple days left, I'm at the juncture of needing to pack and having zero desire to pack.  I've already taken home several boxes, and a few more are all ready to go, but I hate committing to what I won't need in the next couple of days.  Knowing how little time I will have to do any packing on move day is just making me that much more boxes in by the entire process.

The only good thing about packing and moving is purging.  I have already taken my garbage out three times this week.  Things that had gotten shoved on a shelf or mixed in with a stack of "keepers" are now exposed and on their way out.  Old catalogs? Recycled.  Dried up pens?  Tossed. Out with the old really does usher in the new - and I am so, so ready for the new.

But I still hesitate before I throw some things away, even some obvious things.  I know that I can be a bit of a hoarder, that I don't always let things go when I should, and I have those moments about the move and job as well.  This is where I'm comfortable, this is where I'm safe, and this is where I know my place.  It takes courage to change; I've never considered myself particularly brave.  But here we are.

"...If he fails, at least fails daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat."        --Theodore Roosevelt

Sometimes You Quit; Or, When Your Boss Cries

I have never quit a job.

Me leaving a job (with the exception of one time I was let go - the story behind which would be an entire blog) has always been inevitable because I was moving to college or home from college, a predetermined going away point that just tick-tocked closer and closer.

That changed this week.

Now, I have known my boss almost my entire life.  My brother and I went to school with her two kids.  She gave me my first job in high school.  She handed me my diploma when I walked across the stage at my high school commencement.  And while she's not exactly a friend, she has played a huge role in my life.  I appreciate the many, many things she has done to help me, especially in the last ten years, despite the fact that we often don't see things the same way.

There's a level of stilted-ness that comes about when you know your boss is trying to sell the business and that your job might not necessarily exist when that happens.  You have to watch what you say, because if the business doesn't sell, you still have to work for her, but at the same time, there are serious questions that need to be addressed.  Knowing if anyone has looked or mad an offer completely changes your timeline.  At the same time, though, you then become responsible for what you tell those below you - you need them to keep working and keep the business running, but you don't want to blindside them with a complete loss of income either.  It's a tightrope.

The tightrope is made thinner by the fact that I don't enjoy my job.  And not just because it doesn't challenge me or I don't enjoy the work, but because I have some fundamental struggles with decisions that are being made at the top and I am burned out from being on call 24 hours a day.

It is time for me to move on.  I know that, and I've felt it for a while, but I had a strange little plan of sticking out another nine months or so before really starting to look elsewhere.  Then a job opened up - not necessarily my Dream Job, but at least a dreamy one - in my desired field, with a raise and benefits.  It was a long road, but I got it.

And suddenly I had to tell my boss that I got a new job, when I hadn't even told her I was applying for one.  As I was telling her, all she could say was, "Ah, Sarah," in this keening way that reminded me of the way my dog whimpers when someone leaves without her.  "What are we going to do without you?"

I replied tongue-in-cheek and excused myself.  Only later that evening did I hear that after I left, her husband found her sitting at the desk, teary-eyed over my abandonment.  I can't say I'm surprised by this, but I wonder if maybe it isn't even more of a sign that I need to go somewhere else, that I allowed myself to become indispensable in a place where I had no desire to remain.

While she was crying, I was just happy for this chapter of my life to close.

Rejection, Acceptance, and Faith

I live on site at my job.  It's 26 feet from my apartment to my office.  This sometimes leads to awkward, strange mornings - me sitting at the desk taking a reservation when my boss unlocks the door on my day off, running for the phone still in a towel after my shower, or a renter knocking on my door having locked himself out.

Or, as it was about a month ago, a realtor trying to open my bedroom door.

Luckily, I lock the doors at night, otherwise the poor realtor, potential buyers (a high school friend of mine and her mom - seriously, small towns can get so damn awkward), and my boss would have had quite the sight.

The day the realtor woke me up was the same day I submitted a job application in a nervous, hopeful fog.  I had applied for this job once before, senior year of college when I still had a full semester of class ahead.  I never heard a peep.  A lot changed in two years, and I held my breath as I prayed over the process, sure that God's timing was so obvious here.

Three hours later, I had an interview.
The interview ended with them saying I had "an awesome set of skills."  They told me the decision would be three days.
Three days later, they told me three more days.
Three days later, the opportunity was gone.

They were very complimentary.  Basically, it had come down to me and someone else, and the someone edged me out.  If another opportunity came up, they would love to have me.

A nice rejection doesn't make you feel any less rejected.

I sat in the bottom of my closet and cried as I called my SO and my mom.  I ate an absurd amount of calories.  I bought some vodka.  I argued with friends, because sometimes they just don't say the right things and sometimes you just don't care enough to be nice about it.  And mostly, I felt crummy and boxed in and just not good enough.

7 days later, everything changed.

I was checking my email during a particularly slow moment at work.  The woman who would have been my boss made an appearance.  In essence, the someone else had backed out, and they wanted me - was I still interested?

Um, yes.


So now here I sit, filling my last two weeks before moving into The New, The Different, and The Unknown.  I spent those seven days resigning myself to staying where I was, to believing that the right thing would come, that there was a reason I wasn't "there" yet.  And now it's all changed again.  The world is so topsy-turvy sometimes, so hard to reckon with.  But I believe those seven days were good for me, if only to serve as a reminder that I need to accept myself and accept that I won't always be the best, the brightest, and the winner.

A Divided Heart

I'm going to dinner with a friend tomorrow night.  Actually, I'm taking her out to dinner.  To celebrate.  Her engagement.

Even just thinking about it makes me a little tired.  Don't get me wrong, she's a good friend, and I love spending an evening with her whenever I can get a chance.  But tomorrow night is going to be an endless game I play with myself and my divided heart.

I love her.
I am so happy for her.
I want to be her.

None of us are strangers to jealousy.  If you say you've never felt that deep stomach twinge, you're a liar.  Even the kindest, most humble people have had those moments of "Why me?"  
It's natural.  But it's so dark.

I miss the man I love.  He's been away for a long time, and each day seems a little harder to swallow when I stop to think of it.  I hate each and every mile between us, I hate the circumstances that keep him away, I hate the knowledge that even if he were here, there would still be struggles to overcome and difficulties to face.

I love my friend.  I feel blessed to have her living near me for the time being, that I can be a part of stories she will tell to loved ones in years to come.  But I want to cry and rage and stamp my feet and scream that no one can be happy until I can be happy.

The dark and the light, they live in two places in my heart.  The light is for everyone.  The light is what shines when you run into acquaintances in the gym or when the cashier asks how you're doing today.  The darkness isn't for everyone or every time or everywhere.  The darkness isn't even always for those who would normally take it.  I've shared my dark heart with my friend before, spilling out sadness and anger and doubt about my love, my job, my home.  But I won't lay my darkness about her marriage at her feet.  Does she know?  Oh, I'm sure she knows.  I'm sure she can get 4 from 2 + 2 and knows that my loneliness and yearning make it hard to hold a smile, but I won't tell her that.  She doesn't deserve my darkness in her light.

I'll tell you, though.  I'll tell other dear friends, and I'll even tell myself.  I won't let the darkness fester in dark corners alone, I'll bring it out into my consciousness, out into the world, where light and love can shine and make it a little less dark when I tuck it away again to celebrate with her.

Night Sky Wedding Quilt

I don't even want to admit how long ago I intended to post this blog - let's just say it's been quite a while!  I would have gotten around to it much sooner if I'd been able to access the photos that were meant for this post - it's always something, right?

I first talked about this project in this post.  The Night Sky Quilt was a wedding gift for a friend I have known for almost 18 years, and I designed the pattern myself.  I didn't want to share pictures of it until after she and her husband opened it, just in case they got back to her, so here they finally are!

As you can see, I'm still working on finding an easy place to hang quilts for picture-taking.  I'm on my tiptoes on a chair behind this queen-size, and you're still missing out on some of the edges!

I have a friend in my fabulous long-arm quilter Lyn.  She has done all of the long-arm for my mom and I, and she really truly lets the fabrics speak to her.  If you're in East Central MN and looking for a quilter, let me put you in touch with her!

Night Sky is really a simple pattern - with the exception of the stars, it's all squares!  I think the hardest part of this pattern was laying it out and then keeping it straight while my dog and nephew were busy trying to get in the way!  As you can see here, it has a scrap quilt look to it, but I used mostly fat quarters to give it that feel.  This quilt reminded me of a very important lesson - fat quarters do not cut in the same dimensions as a quarter-yard!  A few of the fabrics came up a few squares short of what I had so meticulously planned for them.  As always in quilting, adapt and overcome!

I hope you love Night Sky!  If you have any questions about my design process, measurements, the finished product, or anything, leave me a comment.

Numb

I started my morning off with a cruise through Facebook, like I usually do.  I stopped on a specific post, a longer one, because I knew whatever was said by this person would catch in my heart.

"I think when there is no end in sight or no date to return God puts a sort of numbness on me so I don't feel the entire pain of missing him."

I certainly understand that.

The author of the post was talking about the child she hopes to adopt, who is on another continent, and though I'm not adopting, I know that kind of numbness.

I haven't seen my SO in almost two years.  I know most people think that's crazy and ridiculous, and I'm not here to justify my relationship to the world.  He and I have lives that don't give much right now, and so we struggle to find time to be in the same timezone.

People always say long distance relationships don't work.  Sometimes that's true.  I've said before, distance is tough.  I think one of the hardest things about being away from your loved one is not having all of the little daily reminders of why you love them.  He's not there to stop and grab flowers before a date, or pick up your favorite orange juice before you spend the night, or help you rearrange the furniture without complaining.  Your love, in a way, has to perpetuate itself.

Being lonely for someone gnaws at you.  But when that person is gone every day, it can't gnaw all the time.  You can't spend every waking moment pining.  You have to have fun, to enjoy days without him, and to be content without him sometimes.  It's healthy.

Those moments, though, are when I think people start to question their LDR.  "If I'm fine without him, why are we together?"

That question is a liar.

You have to be fine without him.  Even if you were married and together every day, you'd have to be okay being separated.  If you weren't, that would certainly be a sign of an unhealthy dependence.  Surviving and thriving while separated doesn't mean you don't love your partner, it means you love yourself and your relationship enough to be strong, to build toward better things, to work to build a life where you can be together.

Two days ago was my love's birthday.  Because of his job, I didn't even get to call him on his birthday.  It sucked.  I thought all day of how I would celebrate him if we were together.  At the same time, I went to work, made dinner for one, and never let myself cry because the last thing I wanted to do on his birthday was bring him down by piling my sadness on top of his.

Being numb is sometimes the only way to cope.

Trying New Things

Trying new things is generally not my style.

This year, though, I'm trying to focus on a quote from the TV show Blue Bloods:

I have a secure base.  It doesn't get much more secure than living in your hometown and working for the company that gave you your first job.  Whoever said "you can't go home again" really missed the mark.  You can go home again - you just go home changed.

So though I'll admit that what I've been up to lately doesn't really qualify as daring, it is a new year and I'm making some new choices.

First, a new craft.  My mom bought me a sock loom (I adore socks) for Christmas 2013, and I am finally giving it a try.

You're looking at the better part of six hours of work.

I had to start over at one point, and I'm doing this at work, but still.  Slow going.

This isn't my first experience with loom knitting, but knitting socks is very different.  The yarn is extremely fine (I'm currently using a 2 yarn, but most of the patterns call for a 1 weight), so it has a different texture and the finished product grows very slowly.

The yarn I'm using, in Grapes.

Second, a new beverage.  I have had tea once in my lifetime, about ten years ago.  I can't tell you what kind of tea it was - a coffee shop gave it to me because they were out of what I actually wanted - but I hated it.  My friends, on the other hand, are tea lovers, and one of them is hosting a party for a company called Steeped Tea.  I love to support a direct sales business person!  I'm getting one rooibos tea and one green tea, so we'll see how it goes.

http://www.steepedtea.com/

And last, a new supplement.  Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely an advocate of modern medicine, vaccines, and the power of medical science.  I do not approve of turning our backs on the power of medicine - the recent measles outbreak is proof enough that medicine is an important part of quality of life.  The rise of superbugs and antibiotic resistance is proof enought, though, that sometimes it's better to not have a pill and potion for everything.

So, I'm trying out essential oils.  Several acquaintances have been using oils with good results, and I'm willing to see if I can get any relief from my upset stomach and and sinus congestion.  My first trial run will be with peppermint, cedarwood, and lemon.  We'll see how it goes!

Photo credit

Apps I Love: Envelopes 2

The biggest part of the last year and a half for me, since I finished college, has been getting my financial situation under control.  I put myself through private school, so I walked the stage with quite a bit of debt - almost double what the average Minnesota grad has.

Since I also finally got myself a smart phone, I decided to try out budgeting apps.  And I tried out a lot of them.  I had a general idea of what I wanted, but it was hard to get a firm idea of the important features without trial and error.  Plus I had the added difficulty of trying to figure out what features the app actually had - sometimes the descriptions in the App Store are pretty useless.

After trying a half-dozen or so budget apps, I've finally found one that I have stuck with and would recommend called Envelopes 2 by Emdentec Ltd.  As far as I know, Envelopes 2 is only available for iOS.

My basic criteria for a budget apps were:

1. Defining my own categories - I live in a small town, so I shop at Walmart a lot.  I didn't want the kind of app that automatically drops certain stores into certain categories; sometimes I get groceries at Walmart, other times I get socks.
2. The ability to "roll-over" unused funds/overspending from month to month - for big expenses, I save a little every month, and I wanted the app to reflect that.
3. No need to connect my bank accounts!
4. A free app.

The two biggest obstacles I ran into looking for my budget app were related to my third and fourth criteria.  Everyone knows that free apps are generally not full-feature.  Several free apps I tried only held so many transactions before you needed to upgrade to the paid version. (I know $0.99 or $1.99 isn't a lot of money, but I am being as frugal as possible to knock down my 50k+ debt.  Why should I pay for an app if I can find a free one or I can just do it the old school way?)  Other free apps only worked if I connected my banking info, and I'm sorry, but that's just shady to me.

In homage to the "old school way," one of the apps I tried to use for my budget was Apple's Numbers app, which is just a spreadsheet app that happens to have a budget template.  Personally, I found Numbers to be clunky and difficult to work with on my iPhone.  I think I used it for one month before I gave up.

I have lots of reasons for loving Envelopes 2:
You can have as many envelopes (categories) as you want, and they can be color-coded.
After you set up your envelopes with the specific amount per day, per week, per month, it is only two taps to fill your envelopes.
There are no passwords needed.
You can add a note right to the front of an envelope, which comes in handy if you owe someone money, and add notes to each transaction.

It rolls over the balance from month to month, as long as you don't clear the transactions.
You can empty the transactions from each envelope and start from scratch at the beginning of a new year with just a couple of taps.
Since you can personalize everything, the app is great for people who want to follow the Dave Ramsey system but would rather use a debit card than carry bunches of cash.

If you're considering trying Envelopes 2, here are two things to remember:

1. Because there are no passwords/log-ins with this app, it's pretty much centralized to your phone.  You and a spouse can't both access the same envelopes on your separate phones.
2. This app requires you to manually add transactions.  If you can't bring yourself to do that, you probably want to go find one of the apps that you have to connect to your bank accounts.

Envelopes 2 works great for me.  If you try it, let me know what you think!

Surviving Long Distance

Pinterest is one of my favorite places, certainly.  For someone like me, who loves to bake and craft and frequently needs to surf endless funny pictures on my phone in order to fall asleep, Pinterest can be such an interesting place of discovery.  And it is a great place for bloggers.  You can link your articles there, and with the right keywords, people from across the world may find themselves in your writings.

But sometimes Pinterest (and bloggers) get it wrong.

Stuff about long-distance relationships always comes up on targeted pages for me.  It's not a surprise, I've been in an LDR for about 3-1/2 years now, and I read, write, and talk about it a lot.  People blog about LDR a lot, which isn't surprising.  In the world we live in, where technology connects every corner, where the job market is what you make of it, where finances control so many decisions, a vast number of couples find themselves separated by distance for a least a little while.  And what most bloggers want you to believe is that there is some kind of recipe for surviving being apart, because that is what readers are looking for.  Couples who suddenly end up launched into the crazy mess of "how do we behave apart?" are looking for answers and methodologies and testimonials that show you exactly how to survive.

That's crap.

All of those articles are basically going to tell you the same things - don't rely on texting, Skype x number of times per month, include each other in decisions, be 100% honest, countdown to the next time you'll see each other, etc., etc.  None of these posts understand individuality, though.  None of them will tell you how awkward timezone transitions play in, how having a job that isn't M-F 9-5 can totally mess with together time, and how sometimes you just won't have a clue when you will be together again.

I haven't had a phone call from my other half in over a month.  We haven't Skyped since 2012.  I haven't seen him in about 18 months, and I couldn't even hazard a guess as to when I will see him again.  Sometimes we've both told white lies and had to apologize for them.  Sometimes we've had misunderstandings and screaming matches and angry silences and had to fight our way back from them.  Even with all that, though, we are still 3-1/2 years strong and committed to staying strong. And therein lies the secret.  The only thing that will get you through a long-distance relationship is wanting to.  It doesn't matter how "good" you are together or what your work/financial life is like or which timezones you inhabit.  If you are both committed and connected and try to be there for the other person as best you can, you will make it through to the other side.  You will be battered and bruised, yes, but you will be tougher as well.

Stay strong, all you long-distance lovers.

Quilt Designing

Like most females my age, I have an addiction to Pinterest. While I think Pinterest is fantastic with its sea salt body scrub recipes and fastest way to fit abs workout routines, one of the drawbacks of Pinterest is that your pins don't necessarily go anywhere.  This is especially true of my favorite Pinterest subject, quilting. I pin quilts because I love the picture – whether it's the colors, the pattern, or the textures that draw me in – without regard to where that picture leads. 

A couple months back, I spent an afternoon searching through my quilting board, looking for just the right pattern for a childhood friend's wedding gift. I finally found what I wanted in this Flickr picture:

photo credit

Unfortunately, that's all it was, just a photo with no link to a pattern, credit to a designer, description, or even a size.  That left me with few options, now that I was feeling like this had to be the quilt for them.

I decided to design my own pattern for a quilt inspired by the picture.  There are many upsides to making your own patterns, one being that you get the size you're looking for (my best guess would be that the quilt in the picture is twin- or full- sized, and I wanted a queen-sized).  Pattern making in quilting is easier than you might think, especially for a quilt that contains only basic shapes, in this case squares and half-square triangles.

These two items are my quilt designing must-haves: graph paper (any size you choose) and a fabric calculator.  Graph paper is essential.  At the heart, almost every single quilt is based on a series of squares and rectangles manipulated and arranged into beauty, and the graph paper helps get all those shapes into proportion without hours staring at a ruler.  I always have my FabriCalc with me during designing sessions, purely because it's faster to calculate yardage than using a pencil and regular calculator.  I highly suggest buying a fabric calculator only during sales, at a JoAnn/Michaels – my mom and I did so on Black Friday and got ours 50% off.

Other items you'll want to have handy:

• pencil (I think mechanical work best) with an eraser that won't smear
• colored pencils
• a pen to help differentiate between different areas where colors are similar
• scratch paper to write down yardages, do math, or whatever else you might need

With only those supplies and a short amount of time, you can have the pattern you want!  I finished my pattern in less than an hour – it probably wouldn't have taken that long, but I rearranged the stars a half-dozen times or so.

The final product

I will post pictures of the finished quilt in about two weeks, after my friend's wedding.  Right now, it is complete except for the binding, and I am very proud of it.  Here's hoping the happy couple loves it!

Leave any questions about my pattern making process in the comment section, and I'll be happy to answer them!

A Lesson in Patience

About two weeks ago, I packed up and took off to Montana for a week.  My best friend J was getting married, and there was obviously NOTHING that would stop me from being there.

I had prepared myself for the the emotions that were going to come with it.  You see, J's husband is in the Air Force, currently stationed in England, so a lot was about to happen.  In just a few short days, I got to see J again, met her husband for the first time, did everything in my power to help take some of the wedding chaos off her shoulders, put up with some of the more...colorful...guests, spent many many hours alone in the car with another of my close friends, and said goodbye to J before she jets off to her new home outside of London with a question mark where her return date goes.

And yet, weirdly, one of the most painful things to happen that week was a picture message from my mom.

About ten years ago, my dad and I built a nearly 200 sq ft flower bed for my mom, and ever since, she (with, okay, minimal help from me) has been turning it into a perennial garden, which means we spend the spring and summer waiting for everything we've already planted to pop up and bloom again.

I wait for the tulips and the lillies.  Those are "my" flowers.  This year has been a strangely soggy one for us here in Minnesota, and under the average temp too, so the growing season has been delayed.  My lillies still had not bloomed. And then a day after I arrived in Montana, they did. 

This has been a recurring theme for me, this feeling of missing out, of feeling the world's time slipping out of sync with my plan. It's a disaster. Despite my best efforts, at heart I am still a control freak. Losing my place feels like heartbreak – and getting back on track takes more than just hopping on one foot until the hitch in my ankle cures itself.

I cried about it, I did. Not just about the flowers, but about life and angst and feeling lost.  Then I got back on my feet, wiped my face, and moved on – talked to people, put together the wedding, danced the Cupid Shuffle and YMCA. Pretended I was on the right track. 

And when I got back home, I found this. 

The 52 Week Challenge Ends

This weekend has been awesome for me motivationally, because Friday was the end of the 52 Week Challenge.  After a week of hyper-emotions related to realizing it has been a year since my college graduation, getting to take the money out of my challenge box was just what I needed to feel like I'm making headway.

The Challenge is easy to start, but can be hard to stick to for one simple reason - once you get about halfway through, the amount of money going in your box (and out of your budget) every month gets pretty high, especially if you're not making a whole lot of money to start with.  My celebration on Friday when I went to the bank, though, was so worth it.  Not only am I now set for my best friend's wedding, but I added to my vacation fund AND got to write a check for six months of my student loan payments.  It is the best feeling to knock out so much debt in one fell swoop.

An Anniversary of Sorts

In less than a week, it will be one year since my college graduation. There's a part of my brain that doesn't accept this at all, insisting that twelve months have gone by in this flash of what feels like so much... Nothing. 

It seems like everything has happened to everyone else. My best friend is legally married (although the military means her wedding isn't until this summer). My other closest friend is working for AmeriCorps (I highly recommend) and has helped almost all of her students test out of needing her help. My brother and his girlfriend welcomed a stunning baby girl (and don't get me started on all the other people in my life popping out babies). Friends who don't even graduate college for another week have already accepted once-in-a-lifetime, following-my-passion jobs. 

It's hard to feel like you haven't gotten it right yet. Growing up, I was that girl that made all the right choices. When the girls in my class were out getting drunk, trying drugs, and getting pregnant, I was at home reading, studying, practicing, being bigger and better. 

It doesn't feel like it. Being back in my hometown, my tiny country town, means watching all these people I know make bad choices and still, magically, end up with all of the things I want but can't seem to get my finger on. 

And you know what? It's okay. 

Television, newspapers, bloggers, and more are slowly beginning to talk about post-college depression and how the current "real world" situation is making the transition difficult for grads. Everything from money and jobs to relationships and parents can make us feel like we're failing. 

But a lot of this we do to ourselves. We convince ourselves that where we are in the growth process isn't good enough or far enough. We tell ourselves we aren't doing enough, being enough, that we (or others) should be ashamed of what our life is right now. 

There's no shame in not finding a dream job the day after graduation. There's no shame in living with others while we sort out our finances. There's no shame in working for minimum wage. If we get up, day after day, and try – try something, anything that will make us grow, move us forward, or help us step up – even if we aren't striving for the things we planned on at 18, then we are succeeding. If you get an interview but don't get the job, you are doing better than some. If you live on Ramen while paying your loans, you have it better than some.

We cannot measure our daily lives by the big goals. We have to learn to measure  success by the daily achievements that get us infinitesimally closer to the big goals. Learn something about yourself, about work, about motivation, about others every day, and you'll get there. You will. Even if "there" changes by the time you arrive. 

CouponCabin App Review

If any proof of my less-than-hip lifestyle is needed, let it be this – I got my first smartphone about six weeks ago.

And with a brand-new iPhone comes the excitement of wading through the App Store. After downloading a game my friends got me hooked on in college and the Facebook app, my first addition was the app CouponCabin.

I was looking for an app that would help me save money on groceries and every day things, not just one that would get me a coupon code for Macy's or Sears. I searched blogs for app reviews to point me in the right direction, but the ones I found weren't very helpful. I went with CouponCabin because it has a dedicated "grocery coupon" category. 

Well, it may have a dedicated category for grocery coupon category, but that didn't mean it was simple. I ran into a long process with several problems:

1. To open the coupons, you have to email them to yourself. 

2. From the email, you have to follow a link to a website. 

3. Following the link does not take you directly to that specific coupon. You are taken to a general website where you have to search for the coupon you want. 

4. After finding the coupon, you have to print it, but printing requires you to download a driver (after following so many links through places I was entirely familiar, for computer and personal safety, I did not download the driver or try to print any coupons). 

Apart from the grocery coupons, I did have success using the "in-store coupons" at Jo-Ann Fabric, but it wasn't complete success.  When you search for coupons using CouponCabin, you end up with a page like this

Notice how they have the expiration date conveniently listed? Take it from me, they aren't always accurate. I opened one coupon for Jo-Anne that was supposed to be valid until December but actually expired in March, a week before I was going to use it. 

At the end of the day I wouldn't recommend CouponCabin – but I'm not going to delete it until I find something better. For now, I'll just search for in store coupons while I'm waiting in line for bigger purchases. 

If you have a coupon app you love, leave me a comment!

Challenge Check-In

So as I said earlier, I've been working my way through the 52 Week Challenge.  If you have already started the challenge, or if you're still mulling it over, I hope you let this little check-in serve as an inspiration, motivation, or whatever it is you need to take the next step with it.

I have to say, I really love the feeling of saving this way.  Typically, I "save" by depositing a portion of my check directly into my savings account, and I never see the money, which is probably what the majority of people do.  We are not the generation of hiding money under the mattress or burying it in cans in the backyard, but for the Challenge, my "challenge buddy" Ellie and I both decided to keep the money in secret places in our homes - there is something so satisfying about being able to pull out that wad of cash and count it!

I am just past the 40-week mark, and that's stretching my budget tight.  Through a series of unfortunate events, I'm still working part-time at minimum-wage.  The chunk of my check the Challenge takes up can be daunting, especially when I am staring down needing to replace my laptop, get new tires on my car, and just subsist.  At just about three months to go, I'm finding inspiration in what the Challenge will accomplish for me.

When I'm done, I'm breaking my $1,378 into three equal parts:

1. $459.33 to pay for being in, traveling to, and gifts for my best friend's wedding this summer (with coupons, sales, and ride-sharing, this should pretty much cover everything I need for the wedding).
2. $459.33 into my "love fund" for the next time my long-distance guy and I are in the same zip code (more than enough to cover a hotel).
3. $459.33 to use as a bonus loan payment, which will get me about six months ahead on one of my loans (because I'll use it as a lump sum rather than breaking it up among my loans).

Just stick with it!  The Challenge is going to take so many burdens off my mind, and I hope it does the same for you.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle DIY Notepads

If you read my first blog post nearly a year ago, you know that I have an obsession with notepads.  I also have a Pinterest-aided craze for DIY and crafting (within reason - I know my limits, however I do have quite a bit of experience with power tools, so my limits are typically a bit higher than most).  I've only tried three or four Pinterest things thus far because, well, there are a lot of other things to get done, but this is one I'm obsessed with.

Make your own notepads.
(You can find the pin here)

Now the original pin uses scrapbooking paper to make pretty notepads, but that's not what I'm talking about.  I use paper that has already been printed on one side - whether it's old assignment sheets, directions, junk mail, anything.  To get the sheet of paper down to size, I fold and tear it into six pieces.

If you really need your notepads to be perfect, you can use a paper cutter.

I find the eyeballing and tearing method works just fine.

After you get a good stack of the notepad-size papers torn, stack them up, making sure that the blank sides are all facing the same way.  I try to make sure that the factory edges of the shorter sides are all at the top, because it makes the gluing easier.

Next, grab two binder clips and separate out enough paper to pretty much fill the clips.  This will be one notepad, so the thicker you want your notepad, the bigger size binder clips you need.

Place the binder clips on either side of the papers close to the top.  It's important to use the binder clips or another kind of clasp to hold them together, or the glue will seep down and the papers won't attach to each other well.

This is my setup for applying the glue.  It's actually called "notepad padding compound," and it's available on Amazon and Etsy and Ebay.  The bottle here is the first one I've purchased and pretty small, but a little goes a long way.  I just use a cheap little paintbrush, but there are fancy bookbinding brushes you can by.

All you have to do is brush a thin layer of the padding compound across the side you want to hold the papers together.  I always do the short side because the binder clips hold better that way, but it's up to you!

I use a third binder clip to rest the notepad on while the padding compound dries, so that it doesn't stick to the paper towel.  I generally put on two coats of compound, and it dries within a couple minutes.  I like to wait until you have a lot of paper to work with and can make several notepads at once and keep them on hand.

Once the padding compound dries thoroughly (I always give it a good hour to dry after the final coat, just to make sure it sets up really well) you have an upcycled notepad with tear off pages!  This size is great for grocery lists, long or constantly growing to-do lists, or even leaving notes for roommates and family members.  There's also the added benefit of getting the most out of that piece of paper and not having to buy paper products just for lists!

What are your favorite green craft projects?  Leave me a comment and maybe I'll try them out!