I'm a convert...

...to Harry Potter, that is.

When did this happen?

11 days ago, when I started reading the books.

And I finished them 9 days later.  (It would have been seven if that pesky last few days of school hadn't gotten in the way.  ;)

And then we watched all the movies.

And, finally, we did this last night for FHE to celebrate:

We got this Chapter Game from GoodWill for like a dollar...it didn't have instructions, but between the internet and our own intellect we made up rules that are probably WAY better and more fun/complicated than the original game was, anyway.  :)  We also ate dirt-, grass-, black pepper-, and soap-flavored jellybeans.  (And some good flavors, too, of course.)

I also made "butter beer," which turned out basically just a rich, butterscotch-flavored drink with the SLIGHTEST fizz...heating it up and making the cold whipped cream topping is a MUST.  :)  Recipe found HERE.  It's good the next day, too, although there is NO fizz then...but still tasty!

I'm not crazy or obsessed or anything, but I'm definitely now a fan.  I'm finding reading other, less (literally) epic tales in preparation for the school year is just not as satisfying.  :)  I found out that Universal Studios has its own Harry Potter theme park, and since we're headed to Orlando next summer for my sister-in-law's graduation fun anyway, we are going to try to extend our stay a couple more days and hit up Universal as well as Disney.  I'm SO excited!

Also, I thought this was funny.  :)

True 'nuff.

Book Page Bracelets!

Are you ready for possibly the EASIEST jewelry-making tutorial in the WORLD?  :)  Perfect for any lover of reading, writing, or words, CHEAP as all-get-out, FAST to make (I make 3 of them in an hour), and adorable to boot?

Book Page Bracelets!

Here's HOW:

1. Go to your local craft store, in the jewelry section, and find something that looks like this:

Something about a bracelet made of bezels, in any color and shape you want--at our local Hobby Lobby they were between $3 and $5/bracelet depending on the color/material/shape/size.

2. Grab pages from an thrift store book (Paul had bought one he didn't like so he gave it to me for crafting--score!) and tear out a few.  Find fun words on the pages and trace the bezel shape around them, allowing for a 2-millimeter "frame" since the tracing will be larger than the cut.

3. Cut out the words (cut INSIDE your line a little so it'll fit) and glue one into each bezel--I liked the round ones instead of the square because my thumbnail fit perfectly inside it, giving me a great way to smooth out the edges.  I just used plain ol' tacky glue for this part.

4.  Paint over each bezel with Mod Podge, thin but well-covered.  This will seal/protect the book pages from water, etc.

Wear it with pride!

You can even take the bezels apart and use them as beads for earrings, necklaces, etc...if you so desire.  :)

See?  I told you that was easy.  In fact, it's SO easy and cheap and fun that I make several at a time and keep them handy to give away for those last-minute or I-forgot-all-about-you gifts.  :)  AND, I will be giving one away in my New Year's Day Giveaway, so be looking for that soon!  :)

Book Clock!

For our anniversary, I wanted to make my book-loving hubby a book clock for our bedroom.  I'm sure you've seen them around the internet, but here is my version.  That I love.  :)

Turns out, it's not too hard, and it's as cheap or cheaper than buying a nice clock from WalMart (the whole project cost me $11...if you have to go out and buy paint and stuff it might be a little more expensive for you, but not much!).

SO.  Here's what you need to make it happen.

1. Cardboard book (that opens up).  I got mine at Hobby Lobby for $4.  I wanted to buy twenty of them.
2. Two other ACTUAL books of your choosing--we used books that we had bought at GoodWill and not really liked that much.  Make sure they look good, size-wise, on either side of your cardboard book.  I went with something rather uniformed (black with silver/gold lettering), because that's how Paul likes things, but you could easily do an eclectic mix of different colors and prints.  :)
3. Clock movement/kit--this is all the actual clock parts.  :)  Got mine at Hobby Lobby for $6.  NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT SIZE!  I got a 3/4" kit when I should have gotten the 1/2", and it made things difficult.  I'm still tinkering with it.
4. Paint/sealer/modpodge/possibly stickers (depending on what you want).  I used gold stickers and just wanted the 12 and 6 for my clock, but other versions out there cover the books with fabric or paint and paint on the spine.  Do what you like here.  :)  But the sheet of gold stickers cost me $1, and I had black paint/mod podge/sealer already on hand.
5. GLUE.  Here I used some of my E-6000 glue, but you could easily do hot glue, too.  You want something strong that dries relatively fast.
6. EITHER a drill with fancy bits or, if you're poor, a hammer and nails and some willpower.  :)

HERE'S HOW YOU MAKE IT:

1. Drill an appropriately-sized hole in your cardboard book--make sure it goes ALL the way through both layers.  (Look at clock movement instructions if you're not sure how wide it should be.)  We don't have a fancy schmancy drill, so I used a hammer, poked a nail through, and wiggled it around until it was wide enough.  That's how I roll.

 2.  Use your mad-awesome painting skills to paint your cardboard book.  I LOVED the way my pages turned out--I put a little brown in my white and only partly mixed it up, then painted long strokes with a 1/2" wide brush over and over again. It looks so realistic!  :)

 3.  If you're adhering any stickers, do it now.  You could PROBABLY just stick them right on (like with vinyl), but I wanted to be sure they didn't go anywhere so I Mod-Podged the crap out of that sucker.

 4.  While your *everything* is drying, take some cute pictures of your dog, who has just found a new "hiding" place (I didn't have the heart to tell her I could see her, but I think she got the hint when I snapped this photo...). 

 5.  Seal anything and everything with your clear spray paint/acrylic sealer.  This really is optional, but I like the "safe" feeling I get when I do this.  It's nice to know a sneeze or a humidifier won't mess up the paint job.

 6. Admire how awesome it all looks...you're almost done!

 7. Follow the directions on the back of the clock movement package to install your clock pieces!  (If you struggle with this, enlist help.  And eat some chocolate.  I'm sure those of you who are more mechanically-minded will have an easier time of this step than I did...)

And voila!  You have an awesome book clock that is TRULY all your own!  You could put it on a shelf to blend in, but since our bookshelf is already crammed in the ugliest way with books from GoodWill and Freecycle filled to the brim with quality literature, we put it on our bedroom dresser.  For now.  We'll see where it ends up.

6-Word Memoirs and BOOK GIVEAWAY!

So, last week I read this book called Not Quite What I Was Planning.  It's a really cool project from like half a decade ago that I just recently found out about, and it's fascinating to me--as an amateur writer (though I haven't visited that love in YEARS), a teacher, and a person.  Basically, the idea was for people to submit their life stories in exactly six words--no more, no less.  And someone compiled it all into a book.  There are famous contributers, like Dr. Jane Goodall, and there are mostly ordinary, everyday people like you and me.  As the introduction states, "it's a thousand little windows into humanity," which I find very worth the read.  Even when some are stupid.  :)

In real life I'm a quiet person.  Sometimes shy, but mostly just quiet.  I'm a listener.  I'm a thinker.  I mostly like that about me.  But when I start writing, I find I have a lot to say.  Being concise is NOT my thing.  So writing a 6-word memoir would be a challenge for me.  But even MORE challenging is the idea of committing to one.  As someone in the introduction pointed out, "Whole lifetimes happen in people's lives every day."  Things change so quickly inside and all around us, and I can't imagine that what I write today will be the same as what I would write tomorrow. 

The person that shared this book with me mentioned that her family read it together (they're all older, of course), and in their discussions her father said his memoir would be, "I said my prayers every day."  I thought that was sweet.  I don't know if it's completely true of me, at least enough to define my life...but how cool!

I'm still thinking about mine.  But here are a few from the beginning of the book that resonate with me, for whatever reason:

"Made a mess.  Cleaned it up."  ~Amy Anderson
"Taking a lifetime to grow up."  ~Miron Iliescu
"Danced in Fields of Infinite Possibilities." ~Deepak Chopra
"I am trying, in every regard." ~Lionel Shriver
"I thought I was someone else."  ~Tysa Goodrich
"I was born some assembly required."  ~Eric Jordan
"Blogging is easy.  Writing is hard."  ~Jennifer Shreve
"Memory was my drug of choice."  ~Pea Hicks
"Can my words have footnotes, please?"  ~Amy Harbottle
"I colored outside of the lines."  ~Jacob Thomas

I won't share too many of these with you, BECAUSE I'M GOING TO SHARE THE WHOLE BOOK INSTEAD!

I don't do giveaways often on my blog because, frankly, I don't see the need much.  I do this blog for ME, and think it's just a lovely bonus that someone else might find me inspiring or interesting enough to follow.  But I don't see how I can share this with you and NOT offer to send one of you this book!  SO...all you have to do is leave a comment with YOUR 6-word memoir by May 15 (my anniversary!).  You're welcome to leave as many as you'd like, but each person will only be entered once, so you might as well take the time to make it your BEST...unless you're indecisive like me and need several.  :)  Every person who comments will get entered into a drawing and on the 15th I will literally pick a name out of one of my many awesome hats to find a winner!  The winner will receive not one, but TWO books: Not Quite What I Was Planning, AND It All Changed in an Instant, the sequel!  :)  I will also commit to a 6-word-memoir of my own then and share it with all of you. 

Ready?  Set?  WRITE!

Rainbows, Hunger Games, and More

So, one of my birthday gifts was tickets to see Hunger Games in IMAX last night.

We had quite the adventure.

First of all, the sky looked like this as we departed:

 Which turned into a crazy thunderstorm that was on-and-off all night long.  BUT, because of the rain and the sunshine, we saw a double rainbow!  These pictures do NOT do the colors justice--it was SOOOOO bright.

 AND we saw the whole arc...here's the other end!

 Here is me, pumped about the Hunger Games experience I was about to have.

 Little did we know it would be so difficult.  We bought our tickets online thru Fandango, which never sent us a confirmation email.  And, because we'd paid with PayPal, our card didn't register as having anything on it (even though our bank WAS charged).  So we went all the way to Indy and had no tickets.  We decided we were hungry and wanted to see the movie no matter what, so we broke down and bought two more tickets in NOT-IMAX.  Which turned out to be a blessing, because the shaky cinematography would've probably made us sick in IMAX...and all the people coming out of the theater had guest passes in their hands, which makes me think something happened and they didn't get to enjoy the movie completely.  So maybe it worked out for the best.

ANYWHO, we had over an hour 'til the next available showing, so we went to Macaroni Grill for dinner.  YUM!

 And this is us FINALLY getting to see the most-anticipated movie in our household in three years!  (Can you guess what the last movie was?  Hint: May of 2009...a week before our wedding.)

 P.S. The movie was as good as the book--no joke!  Of course they had to skip over a few things or change LITTLE things here and there to make it into a movie, but mostly it kept to the book and we loved it enough to talk about it for the entire hour-long ride home. 



Caida meets Bear...and other Caida goodness

Today I introduced Caida to Happy Birthday, Moon! and our tradition that goes with it.  Her birthday isn't for a few months yet, but she found the hat and it just sort of all happened.  She's a cutie when she's reading, making up the stories as she goes along.  :)

I also took her out to McDonald's for lunch (gotta enjoy the last of summer break while we can, right? :) and she gave herself a nice ice cream mustache.

Also, I caught her practicing the song we learned at FHE.  This is the best she's known just about any song, ever.  :)

We All Must Do Our Part

This is the children's book I "published" as part of a graduate student's research on the impact of literature on science education in elementary classrooms in Provo.  I got lucky to be picked as an "author," as the whole thing was a lottery.  The whole process was really cool--I had to pick a science content/standard that the other 10 people weren't covering in THEIR books (I wound up with recycling), research and include at least 5 facts and at least 2 teaching applications, get my research approved by a faculty member, write and sketch the concept of the book (I'm still not sure where my other teaching application ended up...it's not in the file), then get paired up with an illustrator from the art department.  Going through the process and seeing the final result kinda reminds me of the time I recorded an original song in a recording studio--it's not that the final product is all great or anything, but I still feel blessed to have had that experience, because it's just something that not everyone gets to do.  I know a little more now about writing for someone other than myself, and even though my tastes AND understanding of how children think and learn have changed tremendously since then (this was Fall of 2003!), I'm still proud of it.  I'm even prouder because of the 10 or 15 people who went through this, mine was the one that the grad student chose to present at her presentations.  I must have done SOMETHING right.  ;)  Anywho, here it is, and feel free to use it!  (If you want the pdf files, just email me at pcfernandez515@yahoo.com and I can get the larger files to you.)

Rapunzel Wig

Even before I had any idea that the movie "Tangled" existed, I really wanted to make my niece a Rapunzel wig for Christmas.  Hearing that she saw the movie only made it that much more timely!  I just made it this morning and wanted to show it off because I'm super proud of it:

The wig from behind...I probably should have made it longer, but hey, she's only 6, right?

The front--I decided to weave the hair into the top of a headband I crocheted, and this gave her bangs, too...pretty smart, if I do say so myself!  I probably should've made the headband a little bigger, though, to accomodate for all that yarn hair!

Tangled up in "Tangled"...I love it!

 It should be noted here that my all-time favorite gifts are books I love, and for kids, some sort of prop or toy that goes along with it.  Like this wig.  Or the time I got my brothers a book about pirates and hid little treasure chests full of chocolate gold coins in their house, and hid a treasure map inside the book that they had to follow to find their candy.  I L.O.V.E. making books come alive for kids.  Seriously.  It was one of my favorite things about being a teacher, too!  I think for my kids' birthdays each year I'm going to buy them a new book and have some sort of dress-up item or toy that goes along with it, and save them after they're grown up for when they get older and have kids of their own.  Side note: while this wig DID take a lot of time to make, it only cost me a few bucks! 

A few other things:

Fleece scarves (I made 3 of these as gifts/stocking stuffers for the men who probably don't want flowery things. :)  Still have to find some Bears fleece, though...)

Felt pencil toppers...I started sewing some for Caida, and decided to hot glue them instead because then I could make enough for EVERYONE!  :)

Purely selfish--I'd wanted to make this all season long as decor for our home, and now I have it!  I love the contrasting textures.  This is sitting up in the corner of our coffee table/TV set.

A stocking stuffer for my sister.  I honestly don't know why the red looks so orangey here, but it's really quite Christmas-y in person and I love it!

Remember this?  I'd already painted one gerbera puzzle, but I'm in the middle of painting 2 more for stocking stuffers, too...

Each one makes 6 pastel gerberas!

And I didn't have to make these since I had a TON laying around from before, but I'm giving the girls each a flower doll (or, in Caida's case, like 7 of them) because I like them soooooooo much!

*Whew!* ALMOST THERE!  I only have a few gifts and things left to make, and a house to clean by Thursday, and then *MAYBE* I can enjoy the holidays in a more relaxed way.  :)  On another side note, I just found out that due to all sorts of scheduling craziness, we aren't having our family Christmas until New Year's Day (or maybe even the day after)...so that gives me more time (and another paycheck) to buy candy and all those little things!  YAY!  And we'll still be up in Chicago for Paul's family Christmas.  Now that I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm much less stressed out.  AND, Emilie comes home in 5 days!!!  I can't wait to see her face!