date night

Lately I have been feeling a bit off. I guess the word that would be most fitting is "stressed". Work has been very frustrating. There is family stuff going on that fills my head with worries and more stress. There just aren't enough hours in the day and I am having trouble sleeping. Oh. And my eye has started twitching. For reals. Like a cartoon character or silly movie. My left eye has developed this ridiculous spasm. It used to only happen when I was at work but seems to be more and more common. Gah. I am a mess. Do you ever have such a long list of things to do that it seems impossible so you just feel like saying "screw it, I'll just sit on my butt and watch tv"? That has been me for the last couple of weeks. My husband is also very busy and has his fair share of stress. Somehow, he found time to take me out for a much needed date night just yesterday. Normally on Tuesdays I make dinner to share with him and some of his classmates. This week, however, is their Spring Break. For most people Spring Break is a time to relax, party, and whatever else the kids are up to these days. When you're a design student Spring Break is that special gift from God that gives you a whole week without a new assignment being given and a little time to get caught up. Blake decided that his poor, stressed out wife could use some quality time out on the town. Boy was he right!

  

So we drove 15 minutes down the road to Seal Beach's main street. We had originally intended to take advantage of Beachwood BBQ's happy hour. But showing up 30 minutes before the end of happy hour was what everyone else had planned on doing also.

No problem! A short walk down the street brought us to the pier. And at the end of said pier sits Ruby's! Yum.

Shooby Dooby Down To Ruby's!

It was a gorgeous early evening. I love how it stays bright out so long this time of year. I feel like I can get so much more done.

The view was excellent as was the food and company. 

 

 I love my husband a lot.

so creative!

I just had to share this. This very moment. What a fun, creative treasury!



Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings..
Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings..
Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes
Silver white winters that melt into spring
These are a few of my favorite things!

Thank you krismisscrochets for including me! You can find her blog here ---> http://kristencreates.blogspot.com/

haikuesday 9

Where did my keys go?

Not in my purse or pocket

Oh, they're in my hand.

The day is final

ly over. It has been long.

Can I get a beer?

naturesheavenlyart

Majestic tree's speak
branches stretching towards the sky
with the wind they flow

InMetalJewelry

 

 

azure rolling waves
  wear this and remember them
  beauty of the sea

bigbrownhouse

 

 

 

Tiny bits of felt

jennasaurusfun

Too bright and sweet to let go

Crafter's OCD

 

 

 

 

 

Cupcakes are for taste.

Headbands are for cute making.

Why can't we have both?

 

i haven't forgotten

 I haven't forgotten my plan to create a unique headband each month that is inspired by one of the 50 nifty United States... Life has just gotten unexpectedly busy. But here is some proof that my brain has not completely unloaded. Not completely. I'm going with the whole "Golden State" theme and sticking to yellows, oranges and golds. The applique will be the California State flower, the Golden Poppy. These have always been a favorite of mine. When I was little I gave my grandpa the name "Poppie" (a name that was adopted by all of the grand kids) and whenever I see one I think of him and all of the fun that we used to have.

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I dare you to NOT love her

Girl crush confession...

This is currently (and has been for a LONG time) what I LOVE to listen to. My husband and I discovered April Smith and the Great Picture Show while listening to A Prairie Home Companion's battle of the bands. We were instant fans and were threatening to give up listening to Garrison Keillor and all of his amazingness if they didn't win. Thank goodness everyone had enough sense to name her the clear winner of it all. You should really check out her stuff. I love listening to her while I am trying to get things done. There is so much energy in the songs that I somehow feel like I have energy as well. Magical. It is also usually included in any little road trip that me and the mister take.

brains

 I had a request for a zombie hat. Hmm. A zombie, huh? The undead. Welp, here is what I've got so far. A bunch of bits that need to be joined. I hope it'll look okay once all of the puzzle pieces have been put in their places. I started to make this yesterday. My husband and I hunkered down at our favorite Long Beach coffee shop, Viento y Agua. Truth be told, I started making the hat base first and think that the colors together are really quite beautiful.

 

It sure is fun to try something new and requests are a great way to be stretched and forced into creativity!

 

mmm cupcakes

 

Cupcakes. I think that pretty much everyone can get behind them. They are delicious. They are just the right size. They are pretty easy to bake. I got pretty excited when I found a blog dedicated to baking cupcakes. Holly's 101 Cuppycake Challenge is a great resource for amazing recipes and photos that will inspire you to put your apron on and make something delicious! As the title suggests, Holly is on a  mission to try out 101 different cupcake recipes and will, hopefully, culminate in her creating her very own cupcake creation.

My husband has a love for lemony cakes so I decided to browse the history of recipes completed so far and found this: #37 lemon blueberry cupcakes and decided to give it a try. Truth be told, I am not super into blueberries. So I modified the recipe's topping and just bought some vanilla frosting and added a bunch of lemon juice to it (pretty tasty!).

I had some girls over the night after I made these tasty treats for an exciting evening of games. We had a lovely time playing Settlers of Catan and snacking on the yummy cupcakes and refreshing lemonade I made with the leftover lemon juice! Thanks for the inspiration, Holly!

 My love for cupcakes has not only inspired a day of baking, but also a new headband! So here it it, my latest headband and newest listing!

I hope you find this headband as darling as cupcakes are delicious!

Cupcake Headband on Etsy!

the library

  

 This evening, just like every other Thursday, my husband and I met with our lovely community group from our church to discuss the week's sermon and life. We got there early so that I could crochet for a bit and so Blake could do some sketching for school and let's not forget dinner Yum.

The Thursday night group used to be hosted at our apartment but recently have been meeting at a local coffee shop. A nice way to potentially reach nonbelievers in the community. It is kinda neat being out in public discussing our faith and praying for each other.

 The Library is not only a great coffee shop, but they also have amazing desserts and delicious eats. Next week we are planning on meeting back at our place so we can do a family dinner... Mexican food!! My favorite.

haikuesday 8

 In honor of the rain we've been getting here lately...

squish, squish double squash
earthworms cover the sidewalks
rain's main casualty.

 

 

 

 

coffycrochet

 

 

Colorful treat of

enticing beads caught in string

wrapped around my wrist

 

 

 

 

AltogetherLeather

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's almost April
Which means spring showers galore
Rain boots are needed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

lulabellcreations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Diaper cakes are great
For any new mom to be
Made with love and care

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

handmadebysansan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May your days be filled
Love, peace, adorned with sparkle

Lots of sparkle here

 

 

 

 

mommmyerica

babes, toddlers, moms
itti bitti baby boutique
it's your one stop shop
 

Manicsilver

Neo Black Surface
Glassy Reminder of night
A fearless Beauty

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had several other talented creators submit lovely haiku poems but in order to keep these little features special I don't want to make the post five miles long. So, starting next week I will only be posting 4 or 5 items each Tuesday. So If you'd like to be a part of a Haikuesday showcase please email me earlier than the day before!! Email your poem (along with a photo of your item to feature and a link to your shop) to me at jennasaurus.fun at gmail dot com with "Haikuesday" as your subject. Hurray!

the reason behind it all

I guess it is time to share the reason that I started my etsy shop! Besides the fact that I am really enjoying making so many lovely things and would do it with a shop or not (which means eventually we would run out of room in our apartment for things like me or my husband), I am saving up all of the extra pennies earned here to help pay for a wonderful adventure! My husband and I have been planning and scheming, for quite awhile now, an amazing journey including at least a couple continents and a whole bunch of countries.

Here is what we've got in mind so far...
My husband will graduate from Long Beach State in 2012. At this point we will sell most of our furniture and move back to San Diego. Blake's parents have been lovely enough to allow us to crash with them for the better part of a year while we both work and save and enjoy time with both of our families.
Then we set out! We're gonna start our trip in either New Zealand or Australia in February (when it will be THEIR summer).
From their we may visit Japan... Blake's cousin is currently in Okinawa with her husband who is in the Air Force and it would be amazing to visit them!
Then we will hit Europe and we will hit it hard! We started to make a list of the countries that we'd like to visit and the trouble is that we would like to visit them all. It is a good thing that we still have a couple years of planning left. We need to prioritize!
We are hoping to take advantage of a really neat community called CouchSurfing. Hopefully we can start hosting people from other countries in our home to get established and help others feel more comfortable about letting us into their homes.

We love adventures and were lucky enough to spend New Year's Day visit the Grand Canyon!

In the mean time we are slowly making lists of places to go and things to see and experience. In order to help us save money we aren't really going out much and instead have date nights that include researching countries, cooking dishes from the countries we hope to visit and watching films that come from the same countries. We started awhile back doing a country each month. We would look things up in travel books and online and watch Rick Steves videos when possible. And then at the end of the month, as a sort of celebration, we'd cook a meal from the country, have a bottle of wine or beer from the region and pop in a movie to watch that either came from the country or was starring someone from the country while we enjoyed the tastiness.  We kinda got out of the habit. Life got busy. But I am very motivated to start again. And I may even want to start over and redo the countries we're done in the past. Perhaps I will even share what we do and come up with here!

So this is what the dollars saved and earned through etsy will help to accomplish! I was looking up prices for flights to Australia and for my husband and I to even get over there will cost some where in the neighborhood of $2,000. Yikes! That is A LOT of headbands... After doing some seriously complicated calculations I have determined that  I would have to sell about 90 headbands to get that far. So far I've had 10 sales through etsy. I suppose that isn't a bad start. I've only been open for just over a month! I think that with Etsy and maybe a craft fair or two I can make this happen!! Woo! Well... I better go make more stuff!!

twitterpated

Spring arrives tomorrow and I tried to get a little jump start on the whole cleaning thing today. I scrubbed the kitchen and mopped and organized. It felt good. There is still plenty to do but having check some tasks off the forever long list makes the rest of it seem less daunting. And to celebrate spring I have a small collection of treasuries to share with you!







Happy Spring!!

saint patty's day

A little over three years ago my husband gave me a little something that would forever save me from St. Patty's Day pinches.

 

My favorite color happens to be green so I've had no problem completely decking myself out in green in honor of this lovely day(which is basically a requirement when you work with kids... go big or go home!). For my head I will wear a new headband that I created just for the occasion.

With the kids at work we've done a lot of talking about leprechauns. They are in awe of these little guys that run around making mischief and want nothing more than to catch one and get a pot full of gold. Yesterday we spent some time coloring and designing our very own leprechaun traps! I had to send their plans home because they would obviously be needed today, but here is my incredibly sneaky plan. I hope it works! Fingers crossed!

Our home has spent the week looking all sorts of festive with this beautiful shamrock plant that Blake and I were given by his mom. And for the evening we have TWO St. Patrick's Day pot lucks to attend. One with Blake's classmates in the industrial design studio at CSULB and then a second with our community group from church. Bring on the stew and Baileys!

on it's way

Saw this over the weekend and found it pretty funny... Hairiest guy to hold a haircut sign ever. I'm pretty sure.

In other news....

Coming soon to jennasaurusfun...

Go green with this super cute, crocheted coffee sleeves! Keep your hand whatever temperature it naturally should be and also avoid slippery condensation with your cold drinks! Fits all Starbucks cup sizes!! Small and light enough to keep in your purse or car. Nice and handy for when you stop for a quick caffeine pick-me-up! Hurray!!!