Social Media Fast - How I stopped comparing and started CREATING

Anyone who follows me on Pinterest or is friends with me on Facebook will surely have noticed a lack of interaction over the past month. This is because I have been on a fast.

It all started with me complaining to my dear Hubby about the lack of time I had to do things that I wanted to do and that were fulfilling. Such as, sewing, crafting, decorating, baking, blogging, etc... Hubby challenged me to give up my "time wasters." He speculated that I was spending way more time than I realized gathering inspiration on Pinterest or catching up *cough*stalking*cough* with friends on Facebook.

I put off the challenge for a while (like months). I really didn't want to give up my addictions. I love looking at all the decorating, food and crafts people make and post on Pinterest. I also like feeling included and in the loop which I get from Facebook.

Truthfully I was doing a lot of "I'm feeling unfulfilled" complaining to my loving Hubs and he kept telling me that I needed to stop complaining and be proactive. I think I had gotten into a rut and was treading water right next to the dock, hoping someone would come along to rescue me when all along all I had to do was reach out to the ladder and pull myself out.

The hubby was pretty insistent that I should take a serious look at my time. He had read about a study on how social media can make people feel left out or like everyone is living awesome and fulfilling lives while we are living in our day to day boring existence. We see everyone's glamorous and fabulous lives and we forget that what we are seeing and reading is edited and Photoshopped. Not to say that our friends are lying to us over Facebook, but who is going to post something that makes them look boring and conventional.

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” 

~Steve Furtick

Turns out the Hubs was right. Like really right. Like really REALLY right. Ugh! Hate it when that happens.

I was spending so much time "being inspired" by things that other people were doing that I didn't have time to create anything of my own. My time was literately being sucked away from me without me even noticing.

One of the stipulations I put in place for myself during this 30 days was that I would be very intentional with my time. I have a limited amount of focused time. That is, time that I am able to actually be working on something without being pulled on, cried at, or just generally distracted. Nap time is pretty much my only time without distractions. That's when I'm not focusing on my kids and can focus on myself for a short hour or two.

I knew that I wanted to used the time, that I was used to wasting, to do the things that I was feeling jipped of. So I made it a goal to be intentional with that nap time. Sometimes that was intentionally taking a nap myself, and sometimes that was blogging or working on a project. It truly is amazing how much better I felt about my life. Whatever it was that I chose to do with that hour or two was fine as long as it was what I was choosing to do. It was my time and I was going to choose  to do with it what I wanted. Making a choice was very important because it made me the owner of my time. I wasn't a slave to it, it was mine to do with as I chose.

I very quickly started getting more done. I get some sewing in. I got art up on the walls. I played with my kids more. My house was cleaner. I was inspired by everything around me. My kids watched less TV. I went to the gym more often. I did more thrifting. I finished a book. I wrote snail mail letters to friends. I was blogging more often. I even did some serious dreaming and soul searching. In essence I found my creativity and soul again. I can't even tell you how liberating this month was for me. I felt so alive! It was an incredible experience.

There have been so many times that I want to scream: "I WAS CREATIVE BEFORE PINTEREST!" and this fast helped me prove to myself the truth of that statement. I am a creative person. I have been given gifts of creativity and I don't want to waist them. I also don't want to compare my creativity or my life to other peoples', I am who I am and I am living the life I chose. I will be free and fulfilled in that life.

I would like to challenge anyone who is feeling like their creativity has been stripped, or is stuck in the mindset that everyone is living a cooler life that you, take some time off. Its just 30 days and you will be so invigorated and feel so alive!

If you take this fast on, I would love to hear about hoe it goes for you. I know it has made a huge difference in my life and I know it could do the same for you.

Xoxo,
Coco


If you need more inspiration:
The Innovation of Loneliness (a video)
Melissa Joy - Stop Comparing Your Behind the Scenes with Everyone Else's Highlight Reel (a great blog post)
The New Rules of Resolutions Part 4  (a sermon by Pastor Steven Furtick)

Paintbrush Roll-Up (tutorial) - DIY Easy Sewing Project

My sister, Annie, is way cooler than me. She is four years younger and ever since she was able to be awesome she was as awesome as awesome is. I mean she had three Halloween costumes this year: Frida Kahlo, Max from Where the Wild Things Are, and Davis Bowie. I mean if thats not awesome, I don't know what is!

 

Annie is an amazing artist. She is an art major and one of her favorite mediums is painting. I have been meaning to make her some art supplies totes and cases. I want to make her a pencil case, a bag, a sketch book cover, a colored pencil roll-up, and so many other things! At the rate I'm going she will be graduated and on to living her awesome life before I get any of it made.

For Christmas I made her this awesome Paintbrush Roll-Up. Its really easy, a perfect beginning sewing project. It doesn't take a lot of fabric and can be put together in an afternoon.

Confession: Every once in a while (read: more often than I would like to admit), when I make up my own patterns, I have moments of sheer stupidity. With this project it was that I totally forgot to cut two pieces for the main body of the roll-up. It was a moment of "OMG! Corey, what were you thinking?" Thankfully, this was not a big oops, easy to fix, just cut one more piece of fabric. The only fabric I had that matched the other fabrics was a scrap from another project, so I stitched up the scrap and went with it. The only problem I had with this scrappy fabric was that it had a slight stretch. I would not suggest using anything with stretch.

Paintbrush Roll-Up
What You Will Need:

• two pieces of fabric cut to 22" x 19"
• one piece of fabric cut to 22" x 2.5"
• two pieces of fabric cut to 18" x 2.5"

Fold each 18" x 2.5" (the long skinny pieces) in half right sides together. Stitch up the long sides using a 1/4" seam allowance. Hook a safety pin in one end of one of the tubes, feed the safety pin back through the tube until it comes out the other end. Keep pulling the tube thought itself so that its all right-side-out.

Fold one end of the tubes inside and stitch it up. 

Pin the 22" x 2.5" piece along the right 22" side of the main piece, right sides together. It should be 1" from the edge. Stitch along the right side edge of the 22" x 2.5" piece. Fold and press the 22" x 2.5" over so that the right side of the fabric is on the right side.

Layer the two large pieces of fabric on top of each other with right sides together. Pin the tie strips, with the unfinished ends stitching sticking out and the strips on the inside of the sandwich. Make sure you leave a hole for turning, I make this with thee pins as I did in the picture. Using a 1/2" seal allowance stitch around the outside edge of the sandwich, leaving that hole for turning. Trim the corners. 

Pull the sandwich through itself so its right sides out. Press. Fold the raw edge that was left for turning to the inside and pin. Fold up the bottom (the 18") edge 5", pin in place. This is what will create the pocket for the paintbrushes. Top stitch around the edge of the whole roll-up, using the edge of the presser foot lined up with the edge of the fabric as a seam allowance.

Using chalk or a washable fabric marker marker the stitch lines for the pockets. These lines should run the full length of the roll-up. The lines can be the same width or various. I made the pockets varied from 3/4" to 2" wide. Stitch along these lines from top to bottom. Make sure you don't catch the ties in the process. Brush off the chalk or use a damp cloth to gently rub it off. 

Add paintbrushes (or pens, pencils and markers) and fold over the top edge (should be about 4").  Roll up the case and tie  it off. There you have it! Good to go to art class!

I just LOVE the way this turned out! I can't wait to give it to my sister. She will have many more paintbrushes than I do to fill it with. I am sure she will love this as much as I do. Yay for easy sewing projects that turn out so wonderfully!

Here are some more photos to show how great this project is.

 

P.S. This is perfect for pencils, colored pencils, markers, a highlighter collection, pens, crochet hooks, short knitting needles, etc...

Holiday Crafts - Deck Your Arms!

For some reason our Mac (aka, my everyday computer) won't let me upload my photos so I can post them on here. We have a laptop, but my husband has taken it to work and forgot to bring it home for the weekend. Hence the reason I haven't posted any of my own DIY projects. So until my husband brings home the laptop I am going to share two projects from my friend Camille's blog: life in mod. 

Camille, the beautiful mother/model friend of mine from high school, has a great blog all about being a stylish mama and how not to fall into the "mom jean" trap. I love reading her styling tips, and daily life tid bits, but her DIY projects are so fun! They are creative and totally doable durring nap-time.  

Here are two of her holiday projects:

Painted Wood Bangles

Glitter Jeweled Envelope Clutch

I really want to make both of these projects! Leave a comment and let me know how yours turns out!

XOXO,

Coco

Doughnut Coffee Cozy (Tutorial and Pattern)

Who doesn't like a good jimmy (or a sprinkle depending on where you're from)? 

Especially when it is on top of a fried piece of dough covered in frosting? 

And what better complement to a lovely doughnut than a big cup of steaming hot coffee?

This is one of those tutorials that I started out taking pictures for, and for one reason or another (usually my camera's batter needed to be charged and I didn't want to wait) I only got a few process pics. Good thing this isn't a hard pattern to follow. Pretty much, after you get the sprinkles stitched on the rest of the cozy goes together rather quickly. 

I suggest popping in a good (or cheesy) Christmas movie and making up one of these cute cozies as a great stocking stuffer. Or add it to a coffee lovers gift basket (toss in some chocolate covered espresso beans, a travel mug, and a gift card to their fave coffee joint).

Doughnut Coffee Cozy

What you will need:

• tan felt (one sheet, 9”x12” OR ⅛ yard)
• light pink felt (one sheet, 9”x12” OR ⅛ yard) (You could use brown felt for chocolate frosting or even blue for blueberry, get creative!)
• light blue felt (one sheet, 9”x12” OR ⅛ yard)
• thin quilting batting (a small amount
• tan embroidery floss
• light pink embroidery floss
• sprinkle-color embroidery floss (aqua, lime green, white, yellow, purple, and pink)
• thin white elastic cording (about 4" of 2mm)
• One ¾” button
• Matching thread (light blue)
• The usual stuff (sewing machine, hand sewing needle, fabric scissors, paper scissors, straight pins, pencil, paper, tape, etc...)

Cut out two pieces of light blue felt according to the pattern. Fold one sheet of light blue felt in half long ways and pin the pattern in place. Using very sharp fabric scissors cut around the pattern. Cut out the doughnut pattern from the tan felt, you will need two doughnut pieces. Cut out the batting and the frosting using the appropriate pattern pieces.

Pin the frosting in place on one piece of the tan doughnut. Using a backstitch embroidery stitch (check out this video), stitch around the outside and inside edges of the frosting. You want to follow the curves and stitch pretty close to the edge. 

Now its time to make those sweet little sprinkles! This is so easy and there is really no technique, its just random. All you do is make small (various sizes of small looks really great) stitches in different colors all over the frosting. I used one color at a time and just filled in wherever I felt like there needed to be a sprinkle. The back of this piece ends up looking like a mess of colorful threads, but the back doesn't matter :)

I also added sprinkles to the cozy its self. Use the same method of random stitches all over one of the light blue cozy pieces.

Layer the two cozy pieces of felt (make sure the sprinkle side is facing out) on top of each other making sure to match up the edges and corners. Fold the elastic in half and pin inside the felt sandwich according to the elastic placement marking on the pattern. Pin the rest of the sandwich so that it doesn’t move while sewing. Using the sewing machine, stitch around the perimeter of the felt, ⅛” from the edge; making sure to back-stitch at the beginning and the end.

Sew the button onto the cozy, see the button placement marking on the pattern, going through both layers of felt.

Sandwich the batting piece between the plain doughnut piece and the frosting doughnut piece. Center this sandwich on the cozy and pin in place. Using the backstitch and the tan embroidery floss, stitch around the inside edge (where the hole is) of the doughnut, and then stitch around the outside edge. Make sure you are stitching through both doughnut layers and both cozy layers. Where the doughnut hang off the cozy, just keep stitching as if it were through all four layers.

Thats it! I hope you get crafting this holiday season! 

Get your craft on and make some doughnut cozies to slip in those stockings.

If you make one of these darling cozies, please let me know! I would love to see how yours turns out.

Leave a comment here or check out the Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/EvelynandAnna

XOXO,

Coco

PATTERN:

(Print out on a regular sheet of printer paper. I drew the pattern on notebook paper because we were out of printer paper, but if you print it on regular paper the proportions  will be just right.)

 

Robot 1st Birthday Party (3rd installment)

I just couldn't resist putting up the Smash Cake progression. 

I used this recipe for a gluten-free blueberry cake with blueberry cream cheese icing. The cake turned out so yummy! Used the Chillbots ice cube trays to make little chocolate robots and keys to put around the sides. Used this tutorial from KoJo Designs for the #1 sprinkle cake topper.