Football Season Begins!

Since today was OU's first football game of the season, I thought I would focus my blog post on some of my experiences attending these games in college. Waiting in long lines to get in the front row my freshman year, going with friends and yelling and cheering for our school's team, having watch parties for away games, attending OU-TX two years in a row (the first year we got seats on the front row, 30-yard line, while the second year we got the last row at the very top of the stadium). I have so many fun memories from attending these games. Fortunately, as a student, I was able to acquire season tickets every year and attend just about every home game—I think I only missed one or two home games over the four years I was there.

I wanted to post some pictures of my friends and me at some of these games, but I'm afraid I could upload and upload and upload more and more and more photos. I have so many pictures. So instead, I decided to focus on one particular theme—my killer painting skills for the games!

My freshman year of college, I attended these games with two of my friends who I went to high school with. They also attended the University of Oklahoma so we tended to stick together until we started making more friends and getting adjusted to life at school. I enjoyed getting to go to the games with these guys. They were adamant about sitting on the front row so we would show up at the stadium hours and hours before they let people in. We had a great time, and we got on the Jumbo Tron more times than I can count, probably because of my artistic talents as a painter! :)

As you can tell, I have some serious artistic talent right there! :) I was pretty proud of my work. As the years in school followed, I started getting close to some more friends I had met through the Baptist Student Union, so I started going to the games with them. By doing so, I could do other things with my day before the game and show up when they started letting people in. We didn't get front-row seats, but our seats were still pretty great and we still had a blast at the game. I would still go visit Nick and Corbin on the front row though—yep, they were still there. However, even though I was with another crowd, I was still able to show off some of my painting abilities.

Oh, the college years! Loved every minute of it. :) BOOMER SOONER!

Easy Knitting

Hopefully, most of you weren't scared off by the title. I know how intimidating the word knitting can be, but let me just say, again, this is easy knitting. Trust me on that one!

I first learned about this technique at a women's event at my church in Oklahoma. We had a guest come and talk to us about easy, cheap, fun gifts you could either buy or make for Christmas—gifts under ten dollars—and it was through this event that I learned of the knitting loom. I, however, have also used this to make not only Christmas gifts but birthday presents, encouragement gifts, and baby shower gifts.

Here is a picture of the knitting loom I have:

And, yes, it's purple! :D You can find these at Walmart for eight or nine dollars. It is definitely worth it! You'll also want to get a crochet hook if you don't have one already: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Boye-Aluminum-Crochet-Hook-Set-Sizes-J-K-and-N/21989216

I have knit scarves and squares for blankets on this knitting loom, and I do this while sitting on the couch watching TV or a movie with my husband or friends. Once you get the hang of it, it's second nature to just sit down and knit. I've included the link to the video I watched to learn how to do this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpERQSnzk28

She uses two different strands of yarn in her video to knit her scarf, but with the yarn I highly recommend, you only need to use one strand. You'll notice in the picture above that I did actually use two strands of yarn but this was before I discovered a particular brand of yarn that I absolutely love! I use Lion Brand Hometown U.S.A. yarn for everything I knit on the loom. It is thick, soft, and fills out the scarves and squares nicely.

You can order a bundle of this yarn at Walmart online for a very reasonable price and they have this brand in so many different colors and patterns: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Lion-Brand-Hometown-USA-Yarn-Value-Bundle-4-Pack/22153776

Not only have I made scarves with this loom but I have also made blankets—adult blankets and baby blankets. I made Aaron a blanket to give to him our first Christmas together when we were dating. If I could do it over again, I would use the Lion Brand yarn because it is much fuller and would have filled it out better. Unfortunately, when you pick up Aaron's blanket you can easily see the holes in the blanket because of the thin yarn I used. However, he still really loved it and we still have it in our blanket closet.

How I do this is by doing the exact same thing as the lady does in the video but instead of sectioning off some of the pegs so I limit how wide it is, I just use all of the pegs so I can get a nice, wide square. After I have knitted my squares, I lay them out and chain crochet stitch them together. Here is a video about the chain crochet stitch and other crochet stitches if you are interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-XL8ez3Ds He gabs on for a little bit at the beginning so if you want to get straight to the chain stitch, jump to about 1:48 and that's where he begins.

Then I crochet a little design on them if I want to. For Aaron's blanket, I just had plain squares without any embellishments, but I did want to add little animals on the baby blankets. Here are some of the baby blankets I made:

I hope you have fun with this and enjoy it! It's a great way to make fun, handmade, cheap but beautiful gifts for your friends or family! If you aren't much of a crafter and would rather just purchase something like this from me, feel free to visit my Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/159912787/purple-knitted-scarf

I have a blue and purple scarf posted so far but I hope to post more in the future. I haven't posted any blankets yet, but I also intend to do that sometime soon as well. If you are very interested in a baby blanket, please message me with what you are looking for and I will then post it on Etsy with all of the pricing details so you can order it. These blankets usually take me about two to three weeks to make.

Once again, enjoy your easy knitting! :D

Film Adaptations

Let me start this post by saying that my favorite authors/writers include: Jane Austen, Ted Dekker, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Alice Hoffman, Francine Rivers, and Shakespeare.

Now that you can see I have a wide range of credible authors I love and follow, I can begin my post about another book series that I enjoyed without, hopefully, you discrediting me completely as a writer. ;) I am often teased for enjoying these books, but I am also rather offended at the same time because most of the people who are making fun of me for enjoying these books have never actually read them themselves; they are basing their snap judgments solely on the movies that have been adapted from them. Surely most of you have guessed by now what books I am talking about. Well, if you haven't, I would like to be clear that, yes, I am referring to those Twilight books.

Don't run away yet!

This weekend, the first Twilight movie came on television and I did indulge myself by watching it. Following the first movie, I proceeded to have a Twilight movie marathon this weekend. Feel free to make fun of the movies all you want, I'm right there with you, and now we can get to my topic at hand—film adaptation.

With these books in particular, I can now look back over the films and decidedly say that the film adaptation ruined these books. You will hear many people mock and sneer at this series—some of you might have been some of the ones to do that—but I truly believe that the object of this derision should be the movies themselves and not the books.

No, I do not believe Stephanie Meyer is that brilliant of a writer. You will notice at the beginning of this post, I did not include Stephanie Meyer on my list of favorite authors/writers. With that being said, I will say that I do believe Stephanie Meyer is a great storyteller. While you won't be able to tell this from the movies necessarily, she really did have a unique and wonderful fictional story to tell. Her characters were creative and the story was intriguing—it definitely had me flipping the pages when they first came out, and still does. I just picked up the first book on Sunday and finished it yesterday.

Her language is simple, her characters have an air of mystery, and she does actually produce a main character that many young girls can relate to (not really fitting in; a difficult family dynamic; feeling awkward; not feeling like you are beautiful, especially in high school; etc.) While I don't believe Bella's obsession with Edward is healthy—even in the books she went a little crazy—I still enjoyed the overall story and finding out what would happen with the couple.

The movies, unfortunately, really ruined these books for a lot of people and the fans of them as well. Why should I be ashamed to actually admit I really enjoyed these books? Because if I openly admit that to anyone, I am ridiculed and teased relentlessly. The reason I believe these books made poor movies are: 1. Kristen Stewart, I'm sorry, but you were not a good actress in these films. You just weren't the Bella I had in my head when I was reading these books. 2. The movies lost the humor that was used in these books (Bella and Edward would actually have fun and joke with one another, especially in the beginning. They weren't so serious all of the time). 3. There wasn't enough development of their relationship in the films (in the books you followed how they actually grew to trust each other and like each other. It wasn't an automatic, "I'm in love with you after having never really talked to you before," like it was in the movies). 4. You weren't given enough of the backstory to see that Bella never really felt like she fit in with everyone. She was out of sorts from the rest of the world. Also, Edward had been living alone for the past one hundred years. Bella is his one true love. He finally found her. Of course he's going to be protective of her.

Watching the movies, I can still enjoy them because I know the backstory and the reasoning behind everything. However, watching the movies with other people around who have never read the books, I find myself trying to see how they are seeing these movies and I feel ashamed and embarrassed. Did he really just pop up in her bedroom? That is super creepy! Ha ha, yes, it is pretty creepy watching it unfold in the movies that way. In the books, Bella and Edward had just spent the day together when she invites him to stay with her. Nothing happens—a rarety you see today in the film industry. This is another thing I enjoyed about the books was that Edward insisted they wait for marriage to have sex. How our culture and world has lost touch with this? I still believe in it and held to it. Now, watching this on film was awkward! Let me just say that while I admired the value they held for waiting until marriage to have sex and to know how popular these films were to teenagers around the world and how they would, hopefully, influence them in this, how they filmed their wedding night was extremely uncomfortable and shocking, thinking of the intended audience for these films. Wow, did I want to sink down into my seat? Yikes! 

I will say about the movies, I thought they ended the story in a much better way than Stephanie Meyer did in the books. SPOILER ALERT: In the books, they went up to fight, decided not to, and everyone left. WHAT?! However, in the movie, through Alice's vision, it appeared that they had begun a war and there were several casualties of characters you knew and loved. It was surprising, intense, complex, but then it was the best of both worlds because you later find out that it was all apart of Alice's vision and what would have happened had Aro decided to attack. Yay! Carlisle, Jasper, Seth, and Leah are all okay! :D I thought the directors were turning this film into a play off Hamlet! :O

What film adaptations have you liked/disliked? Please leave your answers below or feel free to message me. I'm very interested to hear them! 

Personally, I loved Coraline's adaptation, Harry Potter (although there were still many things I disliked that they left out or changed, but you can't expect them to fit each of these books, every single detail, into a two-hour film), Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Lord of the Rings. 

Well, now you know. I loved these books. (I had a really hard time reading through the first book this second time around. Having been an editor for the past two years, my mind has been programmed to find the grammatical mistakes, the punctuation mistakes, and spelling mistakes, and, man, did I find them in these books! Come on, editors, what were you doing?!)

Sous Vide

Anyone out there love steak as much as I do? It's pretty good stuff. Now I don't eat steak very much because most of the time it's pretty pricey (especially if you are eating out) and it's not so good when you're trying to lose weight, but every now and then Aaron and I get to have it. Recently, Aaron discovered this special way to cook steaks. We can't have a grill at our apartment so he tried to find another way to make steak—introducing Sous vide! 

Sous vide means under vacuum in French. How this works is you season the steak with whatever seasoning you like (we use Tony's seasoning and Worcestershire sauce—mmm good!), fill a water cooler with extremely hot water (I think Aaron likes to make sure it's at 165 or 185 degrees. Please see the video link I have provided for the accurate temperature), put the seasoned steaks in ziplock baggies, sink them in the water slowly to allow the hot water to seal them as they are emerged in the water and seal the bags tightly so no water can get into the steaks, then leave the steaks in the water for at least an hour. 

By doing this, you are allowing the steaks to be cooked all of the way through. After at least an hour, Aaron takes out the steaks and throws them in the skillet on the stove to sear the outside of the steak. And there you have it—Sous vide! Here is a link to a how-to video on how to do this yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQD3os7OVIs This guy actually uses a rice cooker and a thermometer he made himself, but we have been fine using a cooler and thermometer. 

We had some friends over last night and we were able to enjoy this tasty dish! I'm so glad I have a great husband who enjoys researching and cooking. :) I made the mashed potatoes and the dessert! :D

During dinner, we also watched The Shawshank Redemption. Aaron and Emily were giving Stephen (her husband) a hard time because he had never seen this movie before. After listening to them give him such a hard time about it, I bravely piped up and admitted I hadn't ever seen it either. Well, now I have seen it and can tell you it is a great movie! I definitely recommend it!

A steak dinner, a spectacular movie, and great friends! What a night! Well, I hope you and your family will try this out too. It's a great way to cook a steak. Enjoy!

A Happy Day for a Crafter

Aaron and I were very fortunate that we were able to apply for a one bedroom-den apartment when we moved to Dallas. They call it a den but it's really just a second bedroom that's a little smaller than our room. Aaron knew getting a guest bedroom was important to me. I love having my friends and family come and stay with us when they are in town! An added benefit of having this other room is that I could finally have a craft room! :)

For my birthday this year, Aaron went in on a craft desk for me and I was able to use some of my birthday money to get the rest of it! I say a happy day for a crafter because at our last apartment my crafting would either be sprawled out all over the floor or all over the kitchen table and when we were having guests over or I couldn't stand the clutter anymore, I would have to put all of my crafts back into my little craft bag and shove them aside. It always made me so sad to have to put everything away!

I'm sure many of you crafters out there know what I'm talking about! Finally having a place where you can store your crafts and craft, without having to clean it up all of the time, is such a blessing! Check it out!

It's so organized! :D I love being organized. I love for things to be in order, so having a place where everything fits and I still have room to craft is pretty awesome!

And not only do I have a place where I can store everything and craft, but I'm also able to display some of my crafts here!

I should note that only the card is something I crafted! The little cute owl bag is a product I purchased at World Market (Love that store!). It's great for keeping my markers in!

If you don't have a craft room or a designated area for crafting yet, don't worry! Your day will come! And in the meantime, be sure to check out Pinterest and see if anyone has some ideas about how to create your own crafting area in a small space. I used my kitchen table since we never ate on it then and that totally worked for me for a while. You do what you have to do, but the important thing is that you're crafting. You are making something special and unique that you can be proud of and that your friends and family will love!

Remembering A Friend

Today I remember a friend who passed away seven years ago. That day will forever be etched on my mind—the day we found out that Kevin had passed away. I watched as those closest to him and to me took it all in. Kevin was a fairly new friend of mine back then so while I was hurting so much over what had happened, I couldn't begin to imagine how much pain my friends were experiencing. As the years have gone by, I have tried not thinking about that day because it would hurt too much, but now as I think back on it all I am filled more with the wonderful memories I have of him. 

Because of the many great friends we had in common, Kevin and I had just started getting to know each other. He was a bit shy, but very funny once he finally started opening up a bit around me. We used to get into these car-tagging wars that were pretty entertaining. I wish I had pictures of the different things we wrote on each other's cars, but I'm not sure I took as many pictures back then as I do now. One time, I think he even left me a card on my car. It was a Harry Potter birthday card with the birthday part scratched out and Thursday written in—Happy Thursday! (I'm pretty sure it was Kevin who gave me that but it might have also been Alicia. She'll have to correct me if I'm wrong. They both knew how much I loved Harry Potter—still do!) Kevin even signed my yearbook multiple years as Harry Potter. I had to give him a hard time about it for a while so he would actually sign my yearbook as himself, but I did love having a Harry Potter signature in my yearbook. If only my school was as cool as Hogwarts! :)

I remember the week before his accident jamming to "Gold digger" in Ryan's car on our way to see either Step Up or Talladega Nights. I think we actually saw both of those movies that week. The guys all left the theater after Step Up yelling, "Skinny's dead, Skinny's dead"—a part of the movie they found entertaining. 

I wish I had another picture of Kevin to post, but unfortunately this is the only one I could find at my new apartment. Most of my old high school pictures are at my parents' house on their computer. But this was the thing to do back then—taking feet pictures—so I guess it's appropriate. This was one of the nights before his accident when we all went to McDonald's and hung out. It was a lot of fun! 

Kevin, you are still sorely missed. You were a sweet, funny, caring guy. I miss our car-tagging wars, going to movies, jammin' in the car, and hearing your jokes (I still remember the one you made up just for me). I hope you are rockin' it out up in heaven. Know that your family is prayed for by me so much! I know they miss you most of all. 

****

And here I would like to share the passage of Scripture that got me through this tough time. It reminded me that God is still good and He has a plan. God still loves us. Even when we're hurting and may not understand why something has happened, God is still there. This passage gave me hope. It helped me see beyond what was happening to the hope we have in Him.

"Then I saw 'a new heaven and a new earth,' for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

-Revelation 21:1-4

If you are going through something similar right now, I hope you will take some comfort in knowing that this world isn't all there is. God has made a way for us to be reconciled to Him through His Son Jesus Christ. And one day we will be with God in heaven and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. That is such a beautiful picture of what we as believers have to look forward to. I pray that you would accept His gift as well and take comfort in knowing that He will never leave us nor forsake us. There are a lot of bad things that happen in this world that we don't always understand because we live in a broken world, but in the midst of it all, God is still good, all the time. 

 The Dill

8-12-89   8-21-06

Thank-You Cards and Cooking

I was hoping my blog post title might intrigue some of you to read this, but, as a matter of fact, these two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other, other than they were both apart of my day yesterday. :)

I'll start with Thank-You Cards. I would like to start off by admitting to all of you that I am horrible at writing/making thank-you cards. I know I should get better at this. I love making cards so why don't I write thank-you cards? It seems I always forget about it. However, yesterday my sweet friend Aaryn sent me a thank-you card in the mail for letting her and her husband stay at our apartment about a month ago.

Isn't this so cute? You will also come to know—if you continue to read my blog—that I am fairly obsessed with purple. I don't really know why or how it happened, but I just really love purple! It's so fun and colorful! Also, there are so many different shades of purple and they are all so pretty! Moving on...

It definitely brightened up my day and it got me thinking about needing to get better at thank-you cards myself. It's such a simple and easy gesture yet it's so hard to remember to do. Having given some thought to this yesterday, I was a bit surprised to find out what was in my Paper Pumpkin this month, which I received in the mail today—thank-you cards!

[Side note: Paper Pumpkin is this awesome product by Stampin' Up. You subscribe for a Paper Pumpkin and you receive one in the mail every month that you are subscribed to it. They send you a clear block for your stamp in the first kit, and in every kit you receive some fun craft to do, a stamp to use with it, ink for the stamp, and sometimes buttons to add some dimension to your card.

And what's so fun about this is that it's a new craft every month and you never know what it's going to be! I can't wait to get started on this one! For more information you can visit my demonstrator's promotional page for Stampin' Up here: http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/ngayle/promotions. They have a special going on on this for the next week and half. Catch it while you can!]

Anyway, my goal is to get better at making and writing thank-you cards! I'll be sure to post some of the cute ones I make on here for you to see! And now that I've told you I hope to get better at this, hopefully that established some accountability for me to actually do this. :)

How it All Started

Welcome to tashcrafts.blogspot.com. Hopefully you will find this blog both entertaining and helpful as I hope to not only talk about some of the things going on in my life, but to also present some of my photography, short stories, and crafts. I love to write and I love to craft. I struggled for a while trying to decide what I would blog about—crafts or my short stories or travel or photography. After putting it off for so long, I decided I should just start blogging and incorporate all of the above—hence the title of my blog "Natasha's Craftings." Maybe one day, if this blog appears to be unsuccessful, I will stick to one of these topics that I am passionate about, but for now I just want to write. I want to write about what's going on in my life—my struggles, my triumphs, and the lessons I'm learning each day. But another part of my life is crafting. I love to craft! I love to help others craft and brainstorm ideas of their own. I love to instill the joy of crafting to others! And I love to learn new crafts. I just recently learned how to crochet a hat. It was both difficult and frustrating at first, but after determining to stick with it, I successfully crocheted a hat and it was very gratifying! 

As you can see from the picture, I'm pretty excited about my accomplishment. :) My husband Aaron has been wanting me to crochet him a hit for about a year now so I finally decided—currently being unemployed and having a lot of time on my hands—to do something useful with my time that would give me another skill and make Aaron proud! I haven't crocheted him a hat yet. I wanted to try this out first to make sure I could do it. My next project will be to buy some yarn in the color he would want and start making him a hat.