Pity Party

I've been feeling kind of down this past week and I suspect it's a combination of hormones, jealousy, and other random crap that have created this little pity party of mine.

I'm happy for my friends and the great things they have in their lives right now, but it seems like everything great that is happening to them is another reminder of what I don't have.
Two friends (plus husbands) just bought their first homes. Another friend is moving out of state at the end of this month with her husband and kids. Several acquaintances from high school are expecting babies before year's end - most are on their second kid, one is even expecting her fourth.

Elsewhere in my life my health insurance is doubling and I'm too poor to qualify for the rebates. My tuition bill is due soon and I'm tired of living on austerity measures to pay for school plus all my other bills.

School itself is bringing up a host of worries especially about whether I will be able to find a job and if this will turn out to be worth it or just another waste of money.

 And last of all my cough is still not gone. It got better for a while only to relapse a bit. And speaking of medical things I think I'm going to have to see a doctor about my knee which has been giving me pain off and on for a couple years now. Oh joy.

A Place for Everything - Mini Project #2

I didn't blog last week because our WiFi router decided it didn't want to work. After messing with it for nearly a week things are back up and running. I guess I'll have to blog twice some week to make up for it and keep up my once-a-week blogging goal.

So last week I tackled another mini project. In my "craft room" (really it's a guest bedroom) I am forever losing little essential things like marking pens and rulers that can't seem to stay in one place. So I decided to create a place for them.

First I saw this picture on Pinterest:

Credit to justimagine-ddoc.com

I thought it was a classy and inexpensive-looking way to create a container for my stuff. Unfortunately the picture's link did not contain any instructions so I went searching for how to do this and happened upon this tutorial. I didn't follow it exactly but it is close enough to what I ended up doing.

The first step was saving some cans and cleaning them up. Next I found some coordinating paper that I had leftover from my scrapbooking days. My dad happened to have some Mod Podge left from one of his projects and he let me have one of his cheap paintbrushes so the only thing I really had to buy was duct tape (and at 20 yards to a roll I now have a lifetime supply of purple duct tape).

From there I followed the blog tutorial's instructions. I measured and cut the paper, brushed glue on the cans then quickly covered each with paper and smoothed out as many bubbles as I could.

After that I brushed glue on the outside of the paper and let it dry.

Later I cut and applied strips of duct tape and that was that. Easy peasy!

Here are my tips:

• I do not recommend cans with pull-tab lids like some soup cans. My finger learned the hard way that no matter how smooth it looks it can still cut you. I recycled those cans and used bean and veggie cans instead. However, I added the duct tape as an extra layer of protection anyway so if you only have pull-tab cans then just use some wider tape like duct tape and be very careful until it is applied.
• Be sure to cut the paper long enough so that it overlaps by about a half inch when you wrap it around the can. It seemed to make it stick better where the two ends meet.
• I tried using ribbon to cover the rim at first but it would only stick to the outside and refused to stick to the can's interior so I scrapped that and bought the duct tape. The tape maybe isn't as elegant as the ribbon but I'm very pleased with how easy it was to use and it's great at protecting fingers and tools from any sharp spots.
• For the can with the scissors in it I threw a scrap of felt into the bottom so the scissors aren't constantly banging against the bottom of the can.

Finished and filled

Conquering Slowly

By very slow degrees the cough is getting better, or at least less frequent, though it is still quite annoying and now comes with headaches. In between coughing this last week I managed to work on my big final project for my summer class. After four and a half solid days of work I would say it is about 95% done and I will hold off on finalizing it in case the teacher has any more wisdom to impart before it is due.
Now that that is out of the way I have very little homework left for the class, except studying for tests, so I am once again free to work on my projects! Then I can share what I've been working on on here which will finally give me something else to talk about besides coughing and school.