2014 Birthday Theme

VISION

1. The act or power of anticipating that which will or may come to be.

2. Something that you imagine; a picture that you see in your mind.

3. The ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom.

4. A mental image of what the future will or could be like.

My year of adventure officially came to a close on Friday. Saturday, being my birthday, means the start of a new yearly theme. This year I've chosen to focus on just one word. Vision.

I have an idea of how I want my life to be. I know what I want to do and where I want to go. I know the type of person that I want to be. 

The problem is, I sleep in later than I want to, rush to get to work late, roll my eyes 7.5 out of 8 hours at my job, go out to lunch and eat whatever I want with coworkers, come home exhausted, and proceed to watch television the rest of the night. 

This would be awesome if I wanted to be an unhappy, unhealthy grump, but alas I don't feel that is my life mission.

So this year I'm going to focus on my time. I'm going to live mindfully and progress with purpose. My aim is to spend my time wisely, accomplish the goals I set, and bring my ideas into reality. And I have some pretty awesome ideas. Hope you're ready.

#yearofvision26

Holiday Traditions

Summer is the celestial season. I'm convinced that heaven consists of an endless summer with the occasional summer rainstorm, plenty of fresh fruit, beaches, hammocks, and pina coladas.

Meanwhile back on earth, summer always seems to end (at least here in Utah it does. Las Vegas has that endless summer concept down). The only bright side to summer ending, that I can see, is the upcoming holiday season.

Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. 

Then comes 4 months of pointless snow that makes no sense to me. 

Growing up in Vegas, we didn't have many Fall traditions. Mainly because Fall doesn't exist there, remember?

So the husband and I are starting our new traditions. First, I had to Google (a.k.a. search on Pinterest), "Fall Traditions" and "Fall Bucket List".

Apparently, apple picking is a Fall activity. Who knew?

So last weekend, I put on my boots, grabbed the husband, and drove to Farnesworth Farms.

We LOVED these apples! Perfectly sweet and crispy.

The husband happens to be an expert at apple picking since Oregon acknowledges the existence of Fall. I was grateful to have him along for my first time. We were also able to snag some delicious peaches which I ate long before I realized they would've been even more delicious in a pie. 

We'll definitely be heading back to this place. We were able to get our apples and peaches for just over $2! Such a deal.

Also on our Fall Bucket List this year:

Moonlight Lift Ride at Sundance

Haunted Tour of Provo River

PumpkinLand

What are your favorite Fall traditions? How do you embrace the holiday season? 

A Little Cleaning Each Day

I've never understood how a house with 2 people living in it can get dirty. Really, how do the dishes pile up and why are there 8 pairs of shoes strewn about the living room? How come I spend every Saturday doing the same chores instead of eating banana pancakes in my pajamas? It doesn't make sense.

Then I thought, if I do a little cleaning each day, I bet I can spend more quality time with pancakes on Saturdays.

I must be slow because the idea seriously never dawned on me. I browsed through Pinterest, looking at various chore lists then put together my own with the chores that we need. Because we only have 2 people living in my house, my list is simple but the basic outline will work for most families. Also, having young ones around just adds to the number of helpers right? (That's the idealist who doesn't have children coming out.)

A Rusty Blanket

You know your favorite blanket? The one that's super soft and makes you want to fall asleep the second you touch it. The one that you almost didn't want to use when you first got it because you were scared it would lose it's magic sleeping touch. Well my dog discovered the magic power in mine and that's starting to make me nervous.

This weekend I decided to make Rusty a blanket of his own. I've used this tutorial to make baby blankets before so a dog blanket can't be too different right?

What you'll need:

1 yard cotton fabric of your choosing 

1 yard fleece

scissors

sewing supplies

I measured my fabric out to 90 cm x 105 cm. He's a small pup so this was a good size but you can make yours whatever size you need.

Once that was cut, I laid out the fleece, right side up. You want to make sure the fleece is larger than your cotton piece. [Also don't forget to watch a cheesy high school show, like Pretty Little Liars, while doing this project. Not even embarrassed.]

Place the cotton fabric (right side down) on top of the fleece. These fabrics stick together something fierce so I rolled my cotton piece up and then unfolded it onto the fleece to make sure everything laid flat and was straight. 

Pin the two pieces of fabric together.

These fabrics slide a bit during sewing so take the time to get the pinning done well. This was the most time consuming part of the blanket. Mine still didn't end up perfect but it was worth the extra effort.

Once pinned, trim the fleece so that it's the same size as the cotton piece.

 

You're ready to sew!

 

Sew around the whole blanket but leave a small opening on one of the sides so that you can slip the blanket. I did a 5/8" seam .

Flip the blanket so that the right sides are facing out. You may want to clip the corners so that they lie flat when the blanket is right side out. I didn't want to at first but ended up going back and clipping them. Press the blanket (especially the edges and the small opening).

[insert pictures that I forgot to take because I was on a roll with the sewing here]

Once flipped and pressed, sew around the entire blanket. I did a 3/8" seam for this section to be sure everything was secure. Be sure that you close up the small opening here. The smaller seam will help make sure it closes up nicely.

Now just trim off hanging threads and you've got yourself a blanket!

It's only been a few hours but I think Rusty is warming up to his new blanket quite nicely.

Thank goodness. 

Enjoy Your Space

We moved into our apartment in December. 

Yesterday, I finally unpacked our office/craft room. 

I'm very on top of things.

When we moved here, I was so excited about having a space to do my projects. It was such a process to pull out the sewing machine or my paints at our old place. 

Since, moving I've done a couple projects here and there but never set up my space. 

In every apartment/room I've ever lived in, I've done the same type of collage on the wall. They vary according to what pictures I have at the time but here is what I came up with for now.

As you can see, I have some organizing to do beneath the desk (it's roughly organized right now but not attractive in the least bit). That's a project for another day though. 

For now I'm just happy to have my creative space.

Scripture Journal

Hi, My name is Alex. And I'm a journal hoarder.

For a while now I've been eyeing some scripture journals at Deseret Book. I like the format of several of them but it's so hard to justify paying $20 when I know I can make one that's similar. 

So that's exactly what I did.

I scoured through as many journals as I could find and then pulled the best pieces to form my ultimate scripture journal. Here's how it turned out.

I opted for a binder format. This will allow me to add or take out pages as necessary. I like the versatility of it; I plan on using this for years so it'll be nice to know I can write as much as I want to and not have to worry about running out of space. 

This journal is specifically for the Book of Mormon but you could also do it by topic or other books of scripture. I divided everything by Book so that I could easily find each chapter if I want to go back and add quotes, references, etc.

Each chapter has a Study page and Lesson page. The Study page includes specific items such as people in the chapter, principles, other related scriptures, and definitions. There is also a section for personal reflections; a place to write promptings, ideas, or things to pray about. 

At the end I did a couple pages to write my Testimony. This could be used to write your testimony as you go, or to write before and after; however you want to use it.

I've only done a couple chapters so far but it has been such a great experience. A tool like this will come in handy once the husband and I have children of our own. A good scripture journal can become the ultimate teaching tool.

*If you're interested in using these templates, email me at homehappyhealth@gmail.com*