Zippered Laptop Case

Hello, hello!

This weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to do no school work, YAY! In light of my open schedule I was able to do some fun DIY projects with my good friend. I not only had a great time with my friend, but sewing was very relaxing and therapeutic. Well, except for when I had to rip out large portions of seams more times than I would have liked.

For the past few months I've been looking to buy a new laptop case because the one that I had originally bought does not fit my computer very well and is so thin that it doesn't offer much protection. However, all the cases I could find were $30+ and I couldn't justify buying one right now.

I immediately took advantage of my open weekend and decided to take on the project of making a custom fit laptop case. I was pretty nervous because my experience sewing with zippers is minimal and whenever I have taken on large sewing projects my mom was always there to help me through.

This project cost me $9.00 total for the fabric and zipper. I found the fabric at Walmart and was pleasantly surprised by the fabric selection at that store in my town. I chose a pretty grey, white, and turquoise pattern with a matching solid lining.

I followed this Zippered Laptop Sleeve pattern by STITCHED by Crystal. Her pattern was super easy to read and she provided great pictures to go along with it!

I did make a few alterations to the pattern in order to fit my needs. I added two layers of batting to protect my laptop as I walk to class in the subzero temperatures that are so common here during the winter months. I also extended the zipper farther down the sides of the case for better ease of access.

There may have been a little screaming and a few tears, but here is my finished laptop case! I am super exited about how it turned out and I can't wait to use it!

Menu & Shopping List Printable

Hello all!

Like I said in my last post I love to organize! My new family home binder is definitely coming along as I find more and more pretty printables to add to it. I'm still working on finding time to make my own templates from scratch, but I'm in the last three weeks of my summer classes and have to limit my creative endeavors right now. My latest goal has been figuring out how to plan meals and shop for food for me and my hubby. Since it is just the two of us, we don't always need a planned meal for each night, especially since I work most evenings. So I searched for a good printable that I could use. Eventually I found this free one at Just a Girl and Her Blog. It worked great but wasn't quite what I needed. Because I'm still trying to figure out what meals works for us to make and how much food we actually need to buy each week to keep the costs down, I needed more of a menu and shopping list mix. I also needed less space in the shopping part of the list since we didn't seem to need as much of certain foods and more space in the menu planning part for sides/desserts. So I used the same concepts from the previous menu and made my own that has been working a lot better for our little family.

Download the printable here!

P.S. Abby has a ton of awesome printables and DIY projects at Just A Girl and Her Blog. Check them out here! 

I ♥ Organization - Vision Printable

One thing that I absolutely love to do is organize, and with a brand new apartment and a brand new marriage (I promise there will be more on that later!) there is a lot to organize! Most recently I have been working on creating a home binder for all of our important information. Deciding that I didn't have the time to design my own from scratch, I have mostly borrowed bits and pieces from other people's binders since not one specific set has yet been able to satisfy all of my organizing needs. One piece that I wasn't able to find anywhere was a information sheet specifically for vision prescriptions. It seems like a silly informational sheet to be looking for, but I like to order my glasses and contacts online since it is usually considerably cheaper than in the store and having my full prescription is very handy. My hubby doesn't even have his prescription written down anywhere, so ordering his next box of contacts is going to take a lot more work. In response to this problem I quickly whipped up a vision prescription sheet that should have spaces for most of the important information included in this type of prescription. Hopefully this is as useful to you as it has been for me!


Download the printable here!

It's a Tuesday

Well, its on one of those days. One of those terribly grey and dreary days.

It's a Midwest, mid-February afternoon, preceding a morning that was filled with misty, windy and cold air. The sidewalks are dangerously slick with ice and walking to and from classes has become a huge challenge.

It's one of those days where curling up in the campus bagel shop, next to the huge picturesque windows with a cup of deliciously hot coffee sounds extremely tempting.

It's also one of those days where I gratefully give into that temptation. As I sit here I am given the time to do some serious metacognitive thinking on my life since the last time I had the chance to sit and think. Frankly, it has been way too long. When is the last time that I took a step away from everything, from all my to-do lists and responsibilities? If I haven't even taken the time to not be thinking about something that has to be finished, what does that say about my spiritual rest? When was the last time that I meditated on God's word without rushing through to finish before a certain time? When was the last time that I really prayed without drifting off to sleep or getting distracted?

In Psalms 46:10, God commands that we be still and know that he is God. In this verse, the word still comes from the Hebrew word raphah  which means to sink down, drop, relax, refrain from, and be quiet. What does relaxing or sinking down have to do with knowing that God is who he says he is? Can we really truly appreciate who God is when we are constantly distracted by other things? Will I listen to his voice if all I hear are the busy naggings of what I have to do? I'm not saying that being busy is bad. I just think that there may be times when we need to just sit in quiet stillness before God. Times when we need to get away from the noise of life and listen to the voice of our Creator. Times when we need to just take a step back and stand in awe of our all-mighty and all-powerful Father.

Today was one of those days. But instead of filling my extra time with more things, I was still in the presence of God.

I wish I had more Tuesdays. 

Coffee Blessings

At this moment I am sitting in an artsy little coffee shop, attempting to finish my homework as I sit across from a dear friend of mine. We laugh together, share embarrassing secrets and have meaningful heart-to-heart conversations. This girl means so much to me and I am so blessed to have this friendship. A year ago I moved to a college 3 hours away from my hometown and the amount of people I knew I could count on one hand. At that time I would have never imagined that today I would be sitting here with such a close friendship with the girl across from me. Honestly, I just realized how much God has blessed me in this past year and I am so thankful for everything that he has done in my life. I'm thankful that even though he is the God of the entire universe, he cares that I have solid, loving, Christian friends at college too.

It's a happy heart kind of day.

Life is Good.

Well, its been a really long time since the last time I wrote (not that I was very consistent to begin with) and a lot of things have happened in the time being.

The first is that I started another year of college. Whoo hoo! I think? I'm back to my crazy friends, time consuming school work and Friday night crochet and movie-thons. What could be better, right? For some strange reason I decided to overload myself and take 18 credits this semester. Part of the reason is because I agreed to help one of my professors as a research assistant in their lab. I get to run participants and crunch data, but the whole experience has actually been much more fun that I originally expected it to be. Other than the tight schedule, the transition back into the school life has been not so bad.

The second (and much more exciting) thing that has happened was my recent engagement to my boyfriend of three years. Yay! It was a beautiful day and K and I were visiting my family that live in the area. We decided to go out shopping (just the two of us) and then had a late lunch at Olive Garden. After we ate K insisted that we visit a three-tier waterfall that interrupted a large river that ran through downtown. I agreed to we spent the next hour walking around the gorgeous site. After we had seen most everything in the area, K took me to a quiet spot farther down the river and we sat on the river bank and talked. Throughout the summer he had asked me what my favorite part was although I was never able to give him an answer. He asked me again but this time he had me close my eyes and then open them when I had an answer. I thought about it for a little while and once I mustered up a good enough answer I opened my eyes and to my surprise he was kneeling in the sand with the ring in his hand. I can honestly say that my favorite part of the summer changed instantly to that moment. It was absolutely perfect and I am beyond excited for what it now means for us!

We plan to get married this coming June and I absolutely can not wait! We have finished planning the major wedding decisions and now are just slowly working on the more minor details. It really has been going so smoothly and with very little stress. Hopefully it stays that way until the wedding! :)
(Though I do understand that isn't very likely.)

Thats all for now!

Finding Rest

Even though it is only just the middle of August, my summer is sadly coming to an end. I have had an amazing time working as a counselor for the past 10 weeks and my heart breaks knowing that I have finished my time serving at this beautiful place. Its no surprise that I am coming out of these few months changed; I have new experiences under my belt and many new life lessons learned.

One of the biggest and most life-changing things I have learned this summer has been how to find rest in God despite the circumstances that I am in or the expectations that I have for my life. I can't count the number of times that I found myself in situations where I had absolutely no idea what to do or how I was ever going to have the strength to keep going. Counseling is hard. Each week I had eight new girls to lead, guide, entertain, teach, and care for. I heard story after heart-breaking story from their lives at home and had to accept the fact that I couldn't change anything about it. I created my own expectations for how I thought the week should go, only to find out that I couldn't be farther from reality. I set limitations for what I thought God could do in the camp and in my own heart. At times I became discouraged, frustrated, empty, and hopeless. There were many days when I even wondered how I was ever going to make it to the end of the week.