Choir Tour in Hawaii

    Can you believe that it's already July! It seems like it was New Years just a couple of days ago. So much has happened in the last six months and yet I can't remember half of it. (Sad commentary on my memory ;)..) 
    I can remember the big stuff though. My brother got married, and now they are expecting their first baby! I graduated! I got a dog! My high school Church choir went to Hawaii for choir tour!
    All of these were pretty big things. I won't ever go back to high school. I will have Rori for many, many years. But Hawaii was probably one of the most amazing things I will have done this year. I had heard a plethora of different opinions on Hawaii, both good and bad. I had seen an abundance of pictures, mostly of blue waters, flowers, and palm trees, but nothing could have prepared me for just how beautiful it was. 
    I live in Texas, and I lived in Missouri before. They both have their pros and cons, and Hawaii has it's pros and cons as well. However the moment we got off that plane we were assaulted by the most magnificent fragrance I have ever smelled in my life! and it just got better from there. 

   This was where we were staying. We held a sports camp and VBS here for three days of our trip. We also had a community outreach, a homeless ministry, and a mission project. 

   

This was the view from the church we had our first worship service at. 

   We went the the Polynesian Cultural Center. It was amazing! 

   We got to go to a traditional Luau. 

   They had these really delicious smoothies in hollowed out pineapples.

   

   We also got to the the Pearl Harbor Memorial.  That was one of the most emotional things I have ever been to. A lot of those boys weren't much older than I am.

  

  We have something on Choir Tour called Senior Night, where the seniors get to go with our choir director and do something none of the others get to do. We went on a Navitek Dinner Cruise. We then tried to convince everyone that we had actually gone to a goat farm.  It would have worked but one of the sponsors spoiled our fun by telling everyone what we really did.

   We also got to make our own leas.

   Here are some more beautiful pictures from Oahu. 

The Past Six Weeks

It has been very busy here for the past six weeks and yet I haven't seemed to get much done! Most of my obligations have been social obligations like prom and a fundraiser. I also got a new puppy which put a stop to everything else for a while. Her name is aurora, but everyone just calls her Rori. She is very sweet and I love her dearly, but the first couple of weeks were slightly taxing! The first week or so she got up around 2-4 times a night. Luckily no she has started sleeping through the night. 

This was the first night I brought her home! She was only five weeks old. She was so small and fluffy!

We went and got her some toys and a collar a couple of days after we brought her home.

Sleeping is one of her favorite past times. 

Rori isn't the only addition to our family full of animals though. We have also started a fowl yard in our backyard. We have both ducks and chickens.

These are the newest set of ducks. We have two full grown ducks as well.

Here are the two big ducks and some of the chickens. They didn't like it when we were building their yard.

Although Rori takes up quite a bit of my time, I have managed to get a few things done craft wise. I have resently started making bookmarks and I have gotten a new pair of baby booties done. I have also started a pottery class! 

I found the pattern for the baby booties on Pinterest. The pattern is by Lenore English. It was a very easy pattern to follow, and that is coming from someone who hates (and hate is not to strong a word) following patterns. (I did tweak it a bit... 😋)

This is the first pot I ever threw. I am quite pleased with it. Although I wish I had glazed it differently then I did because it got a little ruff where I had to hold it with my fingered during glazing. Pictures of the finished product next week.

This is a cup I finished trimming on Thursday. It is so far my favorite! It should have gone to the first firing on Friday and it will be ready to glaze next Thursday!

This is the oatmeal bowl I finished with the cup above. 

These are the two pots I threw on Thursday.

Also for the fundraiser I was a part of I painted one of those boards that you find at the pumpkin patch and things like that for taking pictures. 

He is still missing his shoes here but I seem to not have a picture of him completely done yet. We were using him so we could throw pies at doctors. We thought it was only fitting at a children's hospital!

All in all I suppose it hasn't been a completely unproductive past 6 weeks. 

Garden Project and More!

After all the cold weather of this winter, last weekend was quite delightful! It was so delightful that my mother and I decided to forgo the Gym in favor of doing some things that needed to be done around the yard.  So after I was over the majority of side effects from being in the hospital at the beginning of the week we decided to built a raised bed for our leafy greens! 

This is the raised bed mom and I built last Friday. We hauled somewhere around 180 bricks from one side of our driveway about 25 yards to where we built the beds. 

One of my brothers then came and built the second one.

We already have some little sprouting Collard plants...

And Lettuce plants!

Of course while we were at the farm store to get new work gloves we had to see if they had any baby hatchlings. They had just gotten new baby ducks and chickens! So mother got 6 baby chickens and I got 2 baby ducklings!

They were quite fond of the shadow my brother cast! We are fairly certain that one is a boy and one is a girl so I named them Persephone and Hermes.

They are so adorable! They don't go anywhere without each other and if Hermes can't see Persephone for more than a few second we starts to freak out just a bit.

(Sorry I didn't get any pictures of the chicks right after we got them.)

Even after just a week they have grown quite a bit! You can't tell with the ducks in pictures just yet, but if I had gotten pictures of the chicks the first day you would be able to tell how much they have grown.

I also finished this choker this week. As I was looking for new snowflake patterns I found one that I ended up repurposing into a choker pattern. I then threaded velvet ribbon through it and I think it turned out quite well. 

(Sorry about the bad picture quality.. )

Tatted Necklace

I have also recently started making tatted jewelry! I wasn't sure how I felt about tatted jewelry when I first started tatting, but now that I have actually made a necklace I really like it!

I found this pattern on pieknits.com. I had to make it a few repeats bigger than she did, but over all I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!

Winter Crafts

Goodness has it been a cold winter! I'm definitely ready for it to be over. Although it is nice in the sense that you get to stay inside and eat soup, and it offers you lots of time to craft. It also means that there is school to be done.

So during these cold winter days I have made the most of my time making snowflakes and other things.  I won't bore you with more pictures of ornaments and snowflakes. here are a few of the other things i have been making!

This is going to be the collar of a christening gown. I'm working on the lace for the skirt now. I hope to make matching booties and a bonnet as well.

This is a snood I made for my sister. I thought she just wanted a bun cover but it turned out she wanted something more. So this is what I came up with.  

I know this isn't tatting like I normally put on here, but I have been working on this for a while now. I find crazy quilting to be fun because you don't really know what it is going to look like! It isn't very big right now but it will get there. I'm going to put a big rectangle (the above shown) in the center and then I'm going to put more smaller ones around the edge. I'm also going to embroider and bead it heavily. 

That is what I have been doing of late! I hope you enjoyed!