I made this!

Get ready for way too many pictures of the process, but I'm PROUD!! I took the class from a man here in my little town. He's an amazing artist and holds these classes occasionally. I was really excited to get a spot! He has a studio in his house-- and it was only about 5 minutes from me.

I started by picking a pattern. I went with an art deco piece-- I wanted to use lots of color, so it was perfect. After tracing the pattern on a light box, I started cutting the glass. NOT EASY!! haha.

after I cut everything, I used this grinder to make the size and shape more precise. This was surprisingly fun.

after cutting & grinding, I wrapped each piece with copper tape. It had to be exactly even on both sides-- a little bit tedious!

 The following Saturday, we met again to finish up. I learned how to use a soldering iron! 

I soldered everything together-- this was the hardest part, by far! 

here's my teacher, Don, helping another student.

  

 after the soldering, came the cleaning:

then the polishing:

 and it was finished!! All in all, about 10 hours of work-- but it was really a lot of fun!!

  here it is in the sun. It's definitely not perfect but I love it!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

I've always loved Valentine's Day-- when I was a little kid, when I was single and especially now that I'm married. We're going low key this year: Mike volunteered to cook dinner and I made cupcakes for dessert. Amazing vegan cupcakes from a new cookbook. I guarantee you wouldn't be able to tell they were vegan. Insanely good! 

 our table set, ready for Mike to cook dinner!

I got Mike a few nerdy gifts he's been wanting and I have no idea what he got me--- but he's in his office right  now wrapping it! haha! Hope everyone is having a great Valentine's Day!

Wonder Woman!

Growing up, I was a huge Wonder Woman fan. I thought she was a total bad ass. As an adult, I'm a huge MAC fan-- and was really excited when I heard they were doing a Wonder Woman collection. I stopped by my favorite MAC counter yesterday and picked up a few things.

I'm a sucker for the packaging-- so creative and cute!

 This is the Wonder Woman Mineralize Skinfinish in Golden Lariat (love the name!). It's basically a blusher, bronzer & highlighter in one compact. And it's freaking huge (because remember, Wonder Woman was an Amazon) haha! Like twice the size of my normal compacts.

 Next is the Wonder Woman Lipglass in Emancipation. I love MAC's lipglosses. 

 It's also oversized-- even the applicator is larger than normal. Love it!

Last is Wonder Woman Opulash in Victorious. 

It's a very subtle violet mascara and looks great with my green eyes.

I love my MAC and I love this collection! So much fun!

more of the same

 It's pretty difficult to blog when there is nothing going on... just lots of snow, movie watching, cooking, playing board games etc. Nothing particularly exciting but it's really been a fantastic week. Mike was able to work from home all week, which was such a blessing. The roads have been a total nightmare and I like knowing he's safe here at home... plus I'm selfish, and I'll take all the time with him that I can get! The dogs have been playing outside constantly-- I really have to force Jack Bauer to come in and warm up.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Sunday! We're supposed to get some more snow tonight and then another huge storm Tuesday/Wednesday.

Winter Wonderland

We're on snow day number two-- which means it's still fun! haha! I don't have cabin fever...yet. Mike managed to shovel the driveway today. If you've been to our house, you know this is no small feat! Our driveway has a huge slope and in bad weather it's a nightmare. The main road in our neighborhood is still packed snow and solid ice underneath. Awful!

Here are a few more pictures from yesterday:

 

 

Oh Snow You Didn't

It's a snow day here--- we've got some cuh-razy weather right now--blizzard-like conditions?! That just doesn't happen in NWA. The furbabies don't know what to think! These were taken about an hour ago-- it's really coming down now:

(I stole the title from someone's hilarious twitter hashtag.)

he makes me laugh

I opened the freezer tonight to get a bowl of ice cream (Soy ice cream!) and noticed the container felt a little bit too light when I picked it up. I opened the lid and found this:

it was empty except for a note from my dear husband. I.Love.Him.

it was bound to happen

The last time I was sick-- like go-to-the-dr.-give-me-drugs-sick-- was the August 2009. That was until this past week! I spent last weekend in Tulsa with my mom (dad was in Hawaii on a business trip) and on the drive back to Arkansas I could tell things weren't right. I woke up Monday morning unbelievably sick. :( The Dr. thought I had the flu but the test came back negative. I was diagnosed with bronchitis (102 temp!) and sent home with lots of meds. I stayed in bed, asleep-- basically until Wednesday.

 antibiotics, nose spray, inhaler, some narcotic cough syrup (AMAZING stuff), mucinex etc...

and my fever started to come down! Mike has taken such great care of me, he's an amazing nurse! I'm definitely on the mend, getting better every day. I can't wait to be over this crap.

Can't Stop Looking

this picture was released today--- it's a screenshot of a part of the honeymoon scene in Breaking Dawn. *swoon*

Vulnerability or Keeping it Real ;-)

I stumbled across a blog today that made me feel bad about myself. This feeling didn't last forever, but I did have about 15 minutes of feeling crappy. I'm usually a fairly confident/secure person... maybe this was a temporary moment of weakness? (I'm rationalizing here) ;-)

This girl lives in my area-- we probably shop at the same grocery store and our husbands most likely work at the same enormous company (that's not much of a stretch since we live in the land of W@lMart). She stays at home like I do and is around my age. But this girl has perfect hair, and flawless makeup. And her blog is full of pictures of her and her million girlfriends, all dressed impeccably and all having SO MUCH FUN.  Her house is perfection. All superficial bullshit stuff right? I know.

But my hair isn't perfect, my makeup (when I wear it!) is far from flawless and sometimes I wear sweats and pajamas all.day.long. And my friends (my good close friends) live all over the country, and there definitely aren't a million of them- our photo-ops are a rare occurrence. And my house? not even close. So yeah, I felt like shit for about 15 minutes until I gave my self a pep talk and got over it. My moments of self-doubt (self-pity?) aren't frequent but when they happen they SUCK.

My Newest Obsession

I.Am.Obsessed. 

Mike and I each got a Kindle for Christmas and I cannot believe how much I've been using mine!

It's teeny tiny, so light and the battery lasts forever. 

I always thought I'd prefer books-- the smell, the way it feels in your hands... but I'm a convert. I've been reading so much more now that I have the Kindle-- I've finished three books since Christmas! I'm going to attempt to sew a cute cover for mine... I've got my fingers crossed that it doesn't look like a 2nd grader's craft project. ;-)

*edited to add a list of the books I've read*

1.  Eat, Pray, Love
2. Decoded
3. Little Kids, Big City

Currently reading-- Water For Elephants & Cosmopolis!

Party like it's 2011

We decided to avoid all the going out drama--- the driving, the over priced drinks, etc and threw a small NYE party at our house. IT WAS SO FUN!! A few friends from Tulsa came up and got to meet some of our local peeps for copious amounts of food, cigars, booze and Rock Band playing:

 some pics of setting up--- we got a chocolate fountain as a wedding gift and used it for the first time ever-- so good!!

 Mike dancing before the guests even arrived. ;-)

 Amy & Mike were opening the champagne bottles and pointing them down the hall-- makes for a bizarre couple of pictures!

 This is the 3rd NYE that Amy & I have spent together-- so much fun!