Vacation Jar Memento: Jamaica

Whenever we visit a beach somewhere, we like to take a little bit of it with us when we go. Not just with photos, but with physical objects, too - like postcards, souvenirs, and of course, shells. I always spend some time walking around on the beach looking for those perfect shells. Living in landlocked Illinois, it's always cool when we get to see a huge lake or ocean and have the chance to experience the beach.

Over the past few years, I've been putting together little vacation jars to commemorate each beach we visit. I fill them with sand, shells, or other beachy things I collect while we're there.

Here I am on the beaches of Corpus Christi and Jamaica, looking for shells!

I've shared a little about my vacation jars in the past. In 2012, we went on a vacation to the East coast. The first jar I made was full of shells from that vacation. In 2013, we visited Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and I made this jar as a memento. Then in 2014, we went to Texas, and I made a jar of shells I collected in Corpus Christi.

This year I finally got around to making a jar with shells from our honeymoon in Jamaica. I used the same kind of jar I used for my Corpus Christi shells. It was $1 from the Dollar Spot at Target a while back. I had picked up two of them, for this purpose. I just peeled off the label it came with and filled it with my shells.

After getting the entire original label off (I had to really scrub it with soap and water), I filled it with my shells from our Jamaica honeymoon, and stuck on a new sticky chalkboard label I wrote on with a chalk paint pen.  I couldn't find anymore of the brown labels, so I figured a chalkboard one would have to do. :)

And voila! Simple as that.

It now joins the rest of the crew, but I need to find a new place for them now that the new couch is here. There just isn't enough room in the living room for them anymore! I'm sure I'll find a place sooner or later...

Now, let's see if we visit a beach again this year. Only time will tell!

Obligatory Christmas Tree Post of the Week

Like the title? ;) It seems like every few days I've been posting new photos of our Christmas tree, but I can't get enough Christmas tree photos this time of year. So I'm gonna do it anyway. It's pretty much a requirement this month.

It's just so purdyy! All of the twinkly lights...and check out the bazillion gifts we have under there this year! Overflowing with presents.

I also wanted to share this adorable ornament that came in the mail this week...

Isn't it awesome? It's from our photographer, Sarah Sunstrom. Love her. She's given us the most amazing gifts! She is so thoughtful and creative. Can't wait for her to shoot our wedding next summer!

It seems like we've added so many new, cute and sentimental ornaments to our tree this year. Besides this one, there was my new owl ornament, our photo frame ornament, and my handmade rustic ornaments. By now our little tree is looking pretty full! But I love it.

Christmas will be here soon..it's a short work week for me next week, and then a longgg weekend! Looking forward to it!

Engagement Photos Are Printed!

I am excited to share that the prints I ordered of our engagement photos have arrived! Just in time for Christmas and gift giving. They look even more great printed. I chose some of our favorites and got them done at MPIX.com. I could not be more happy with them. 

I got a couple of 8x10's and several 5x7's to give as gifts for relatives this Christmas (along with some for our home as well). I picked up some frames and just stuck them in for Christmas gifts.

I also had a photo frame ornament that I got as a gift one year, so I got some wallet-sized photos and stuck one in there for the tree.

There are plenty more prints I can't wait to hang and display in the house!

For now, I've hung our little ornament up on the tree.

It makes our holiday decor just a little bit more sentimental and personalized...and I kind of like it. :)

Corpus Christi Shell Project

This summer we took an awesome little vacation to Texas, where we visited some pretty awesome cities, like Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. But perhaps the most memorable spot we visited was Corpus Christi. Why was this so memorable? Because it's where we got engaged. Besides photos to remember and preserve our time here, I also collected small shells from the beaches in the Corpus Christi/North Padre area. Up until now, they've been in a plastic ziploc baggy. Sad, I know. All summer I meant to wash them off and do something with them! But I finally got around to it.

I took one of the little $1 glass bottles I picked up from the Dollar Spot at Target (I had gotten two of them this past spring with the intent of putting shells or sand from our vacation inside)...and I put all of the little shells that could fit inside of it:

What I don't understand is why they would put a sticky label all the way around a glass jar that's meant for crafting??

I had to slowly pull away this label, which was kind of a pain. Like pulling a really huge sticker off of something when it's been stuck to it for a long time. And trying to pull it off perfectly. Of course there were parts of the label that were tough to get off. Luckily, it was a small bottle. And I guess that's what I get when I pay $1 for something...

Painstaking labor aside, I washed away any excess stickiness that was leftover on the bottle, and stuck my own little label on it - again with just a pen, I wrote our vacation spot and the year. Just like I did in the past with my Lake Geneva jar and my East Coast vacation jar. And voila, I had myself a nice little vacation memento!

I still have a few larger shells left over from this spot that can't fit into the jar (it's pretty tiny). So who knows what I'll do with these little guys:

I'm pretty happy with this easy little project. It fits into the living room pretty well, since all of my other vacation jars live in here, and of course our vacation albums and lots of photos are all in this room, too. It gives it even more of a personal touch when you have all these mementos surrounding you in the room that you hang out in 90% of the time!

So that's my little crafty project of the month. Ha! I haven't been too crafty lately! Wedding planning has been taking more of my time I guess these days.. :)

Old Drawings

I recently dug up some of my old drawings. By that I mean that when I was in junior high and even high school, and I would get bored in the summer, I drew. We went to my grandma's and grandpa's house every day in the summer, and there wasn't too much to do but watch TV, make crafts, draw, read, hang out in the yard, and look at magazines. So, I watched a lot of TV, looked at a lot of magazines, and drew pictures.

I drew people a lot. Random people that I made up the stories of and told them on paper. But I also drew a lot of houses.



Mostly they were houses that I created in my head - usually how I imagined my house would look like when I grew up. My dream house, if you will.



Sometimes I was inspired by houses in magazines, or even my neighbors' house across the street from ours like this one:

Looking back I remember I was obsessed with tall, Arched windows. You know the ones I'm talking about, right? If not, see the drawing below. Or all of these for that matter.

I even imagined little suburban neighborhoods with cute houses and people jogging or walking their dogs outside. 

I wanted to live in a beautiful, new housing addition. But one where every house had their own unique style and personality. (And lots of windows everywhere.)

You can definitely tell which are my older drawings - they're a little less detailed, less realistic, and look a lot more "cartoon-like." --

I even drew my dream house layout. Complete with an indoor basketball court and in-ground pool. I'm guessing I was around 13 when I drew this. Yep, I was this kid:



A lot of the names and labels are hard to see in this picture, but I pretty much laid out a whole quiet little town here:

And this looks like a town straight out of the 1800's....I'm sure I was looking at pictures of those little miniature Christmas villages or something when I drew this:

All of those drawings are of house exteriors, but I definitely drew a lot of interiors too. I dreamed about being an interior designer in junior high and high school, and I used magazines for a lot of my inspiration. I constantly looked at my grandma's Good Housekeeping and Country Living magazines, and even the huge JC Penney catalogs, and drew rooms that looked like they came straight from their pages.

The funny thing is that I remember my grandma's ginormous drawer full of scratch paper, which actually came from my aunt, who was a third grade teacher. The leftover sheets of paper from her classroom went straight here for scratch paper. I drew on the back of Multiplication worksheets, coloring pages...even when I was at home I would draw on the back of church bulletins. And if you look closely at this drawing below, you can see an outline of Barney in a top hat on the other side. Classic. :)

Again with the arched windows...obsessed, I tell you.


I was also very much obsessed with candles. I swore that when I "grew up," my house would be full of candles. And of course they would be lit at all times. :)

I very much dreamed about having a deck someday to watch the sunset from, too.

Finally, I drew pictures of what I wanted to be like when I grew up and had my own house. What my house would be like, what I would be doing....

It was apparent from the start that I WOULD have a dog. That dog in the drawing above resembles Saleen a little, don't you think? Ok, maybe not. :)

Of course I would be an interior designer, or fashion designer, or some kind of glamorous, creative job. Well, I wouldn't say I'm that far off but I think I have a ways to go yet.

 

It's fun to look back at when I imagined what my "grown up" life would be like. Now it's right here in front of me and my dreams have kind of been replaced by reality. I'm here trying to fix up a century-old house into the house of my dreams, which almost seems impossible most days. It is what it is, right?