My very productive non-nano weekend

This weekend I put off the Nano. Sure I could have written to 40k, but I didn't! I'm wishing I sort of had added to my word count though.

This past weekend my nieces were to come over again. Per usual every time they come over I have a project planned. This weekend had MANY projects planned.

1. I needed to finish my pillow, which is a gift for a friend. I hand embroidered, sewed and stuffed! And voila!

Because this fan has always been such a Beatles fan, it has lyrics from Blackbird on it, a song that particularly reminds me of her. I love the Gothic feeling of it. The white is not just plain white but rather a very faint floral (I had wanted a different pattern on the fabric, but just couldn't find it!). The back of the pillow (not shown) is a black on black, matte on shiny, damask type pattern. Very proud of it if I do say so myself! And that pillow sucked up a whole bag of stuffing! The pig!

After I finished the pillow, I still had hours left in my evening (not really, it was almost 10, but) we decided to continue on with projects! 

2. Home Made Epsom Bath Salts. This one is super duper easy. Basically you need jars, Epsom salt, food color (or the coloring for soap, which is what I used) and your choice of essential oils (again I used the one for soap...which could all be found at Michael's in handy little containers all in one area).

The steps are pretty easy. You measure, you mix in the coloring and the scent, then pour back into the jar.

The fun part is the decorating. Because the jars were cute on their own, not much had to be done.

I will note that I just sort of bought a ton of Epsom salts, 8 kg. 4 large mason jars only used half of one 4 kg container of Epsom salts. I had to buy 6 more jars from Walmart (the kind with the sealable pop latching lid) and that finished off 8kg, almost perfectly.

3. Tea Cup Candles.

This one I was looking forward to, but ended up taking almost an entire day to do! Usually crafts I plan take a couple hours and we're done, but not the candles. Also this one involved a lot of waiting and wasn't that great for doing with kids, as must of it the adults have to do as its dealing with hot wax.

PS: hot wax doesn't burn but it hurts like hell when you get it on you!

My sister got a giant box of candles for $5.00 at the auction, so we lucked out lots of candles to recycle. We separated candles into color. The girls would then take a hammer to a double bagged bag of one set of color, and try to break the candles off of the wicks. Then it was put them all in a pot that was sitting in another, larger, pot of boiling water (no direct heat). Then I would stir until melted and pour into the cups (which were already washed and ready) Then, while the wax is still hot and liquid, quickly put the wick in and make sure that it stands straight up.

I suggest doing the candles in layers. The first couple ones we finished turned out great, however, the more rushed I got (and the more quickly i filled the cups in) I noticed we would have them sinking in the middle. This probably has something do with the wax shrinking as it cooled, but either way it didn't look good. So do it in layers so you can fix any caving in.

4. Modge Podge! I don't think I need to give instructions for this, as almost everyone knows how to do it. The girls however had not, I instructed and found that one seemed to enjoy it, the other didn't really have an eye for the details (getting bubbles out) and was quickly moving to hang out with my husband and the video game.  I needed to change the wrapping for some decorative boxes into something less "birthday" and more "everyday". So we went about modge podging. I also found some ugly frames and changed them up a bit. One my niece did leopard print and took home, the other I absolutely loved, it had a shabby chic feeling to it with Haiku's on it from a book I found when I went thrift shopping for my tea cups!



Love this one!



Putting them all together to show off how much we had done (and so I could share with you), it looks like we certainly accomplished a lot this weekend! Plus there was a family bon fire we went to and we got to see some of our cousins again!

November - a month of deadlines

This past year I have month's of panic, and grief and happiness, of new beginnings and endings. But I have yet to have a month of deadlines, until now.

November has been here for 2 weeks now (well almost). With is came NaNoWriMo! This is my first year trying it out. I found out a month too late last year, so I'm pushing my way through it this year!

It was hard to get back into the swing of writing a novel. I haven't done it in almost a year. So it's a bit difficult finding my way again.

I usually am a write by the seat of my pants type of writer, but I decided to actually do some planning this time around. I wrote out what I wanted each chapter to accomplish, the general timeline, etc.

The problem with this is that when I write, I don't write in chapters. Sure I add scene breaks that can later be made into chapters. But generally I just keep writing till I'm done. I worry about how to separate after. There are many edits between here and having chapters ready.

So I've been writing a lot. The first week I catapulted over my 10,000 word mark the second day! It was amazing and felt so good. It has been pretty stead since then, I average 3,205 words a day - this is including days were I haven't written at all, which in the 10 days since this has started includes only 2 days. Not true, one of those days I wrote a single sentence.

My current standing is at 32,054 words. This is above the projection by almost double, but I still feel that deadline looming. I have always wanted to get things done first and be able to relax at the end for final thoughts, revisions, etc (this went for homework when I was younger too. I was a horrible over achiever..until I found out I could skip).

The other deadlines I deal with? Honeymoon in 1 month (minus 1 day). We have to save money, now we need to crunch until we can't so we wont be stressed about it on the honeymoon.

With the honeymoon we also need passports. Andrew's birth certificate is on its way, so hopefully by next week our passports will be applied for and on their way to us.

The next deadline? Christmas! It's not that far away, which may come as a surprise to many of you. Because of all the money we are saving for the honeymoon, Christmas is on an extra tight budget this year. As such that means a lot of deal searching and home made gifts.

My nieces are coming over this weekend and we've got a stack of crafts for Christmas that I have been dying to try. Tea Cup Candles is one.

Some crafts need my husband's skilled hands as it involves wood work.

Others involve only my own hand- such as the pillow I am beginning embroidery on. A surprise gift for a friend far away, that I need done sooner then later so I can ship it to her.

So November is a buys month, don't be too worried if you don't hear from me that much until the new year - I'll be writing and crafting and hoping neither cause the end of me!

How's your November turning out?