Crafty? Yes!

I was inspired by Ania's post about her latest craft project and I decided to post about what crafty things I've been up to lately. For those of you who don't know, if I wasn't going to be a photographer I would be an interior decorater/designer. (My favorite channel is HGTV. lol!) Anyway, I get the e-newsletters from Better Homes & Gardens and got some inspiration for my bedroom. So I've been in the middle of re-decorating my room and I thought I'd share some of the things I did.

1.) Computer desk to Vanity




This actually isn't completely finished, (I still need to glue fabric to the bottom half), but basically this is what it looks like. I glued pieces of old jeans to the top half, I glued blue and white ribbon around the center, I painted the other border with brown nail polish(yes nail polish).

Then there are some mini projects that made up the vanity:

Last year I recieved this for a birthday present:


Now a year later, all the make-up I liked was used up and I was left with an empty, pretty container. However I cut the thing up and with it I made this mirror:



And I made the drawers for the vanity:



(The handles are made out of a pair of earrings that had broken which I bent into the shape of a handle and super-glued on.)

And I made my initials on my green mirror:


2. Left-Over Fabric to Earring Holder
My earring holder is made out of a strip of green tulle (left over from an old sewing project) which I attached to my drop ceiling:



(I made the sign by taking the back of a broken earring, bending it and glueing it to the paper so the sign could hang as well.)

3. Bunch of Stuff to a Necklace/Bracelet Holder
I made a necklace/bracelet holder out of a hanger, an empty paper towel roll and scrapbooking paper:

(I had this weird white block of wood on my wall which I covered up with the purple scrapbooking paper, then I took the handle of a broken hanger, covered it with ribbon, added a fake crafts jewel to the end, covered an empty roll with scrapbooking paper, attached the role to the hanger end thingy and attached all of that to the covered up block of wood. Then I added the butterfly sticker.)


4.) Broken frame to Sparkling Beauty
I took an old frame and covered it in glue, and then silver glitter, then I glued ribbon to the back and then hung a purple sparkly snowflake (for winter decorations I hang something else for each season):

(For some weird reason the whole wall and picture looks rounded in the picture below, it looks a little bit like I used a fish-eye lens or something which is weird since I don't'have one.)


5. Antique Japanese plates t0 Wall Decor
I found this beautiful antique Japanese tea set at a yard sale for only $5 and I bought it for my grandmother who collects tea pots and tea cups. It came with the tea pot, two cups, and four plates so I kept two of the plates. I had no idea what to do with them. I wanted to hang them on my wall but I wasn't sure how. What I ended up doing was gluing ribbon to the back of each plate:


That's pretty much it. I know this post is really all about me and not my whole family, but, oh well! :) I've been having fun with all these projects and the cool thing is everything I used I found either in my craft/scrapbooking supplies or my mom's.

So all my times of saving things that I should have thrown away have payed off!
(And I'm sorry that most of the pictures are in pretty bad quality, but unfortunately I have horrible lighting in my room and I didn't have time to play around with the lighting when I took the pictures.)
Love,

March for Life

The March for Life went really well. It was a great day. My dad and I left our house at 3:15 AM, stopped at Sheetz to get something to eat for breakfast later, then went to the church. The bus left St. Joe's at 4:00AM and we showed up at the D.C. Armory around 6:15 (I'm not sure exactly what time but it was after 6 and still dark outside). We had an awesome time at the Youth Rally which included Mass and the Rosary as well as some fun praise & worship songs with 10,000 other teenagers. We then ate our lunches and headed over on the Metro to the National Mall where the March starts. Last year I deliberately left my camera at home thinking that I would have no need for a camera. I was very mistaken and very mad at myself last year. So this year I made sure to bring my camera. D.C. is such a cool city and even though we didn't go very far in the city, I got some great pictures.


The Capitol:

Our banner:

Another picture of our banner:

A girl named Tess and her awesome sign:



No idea who he is, but me and my friends loved his sign and so we asked him if we could take a picture:

Another great sign:

My five best friends:



This is the original edit:

And then with this one the trees are gone! Yes I figured out how to clone stuff out of a picture! Pretty cool right?

Again, this is the original edit:

And then with the distracting sings and trees out:



Loved this sign too:

Not sure which building this is:

I had one chance while crossing the street to get a picture of all three flags and I got it!

Inside the D.C. Armory, the left side of the back:

The right side front:

The left side, front:


The pictures in the Armory did not come out very well because it had terrible lighting. But I had to show how many people there were!

Love,

The Big 40 + Random Tidbits of Life in the Ant Hill

Phew, that was a long title. So as the title suggests Jan. 20th was my Dad's 40th birthday. We had a spontaneous lunch party on his actual birthday and we had the planned party on the following Saturday night.
I'm not even going to try to go light on the pictures because you only turn 40 once and it should be honored. So here you go, a boatload of pictures:

David Anthony is getting so big:

Opening gifts at his luncheon party:




Yes, that is indeed 40 candles on the cake:


He was so fast a blowing all 40 candles out that I couldn't' even take a picture:

John Paul has been excited about this birthday for about two years ever since he saw all the "Over the Hill" decorations at Party City two years ago. So he and Max bought my dad these:

At his second party these were the candles:

They were extremely tall:



Father Joe as well as my Dad's family came over for the Sat. night party:

His parents and sister gave him a gift that night. First he opens the box:

Inside is a present wrapped in newspaper, under the newspaper is wrapping paper...

...under the wrapping paper is more newspaper, under that newspaper is paper towels...

...and even more paper towels. In the end it turned out to be a box of Swiss Cake Rolls. This is funny because their has been a longstanding joke in the Anthony family that when my Dad and Uncles were in school my grandmother would open a package of two Swiss Cake rolls and give each of the boys one of the rolls, not the whole package which has two together.


So Happy 40th Birthday Dad!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now on to some Random Tidbits of Life in the Ant Hill

Joey loved his pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies:

He also loves all the snow that we keep getting:

And he loves walking! This isn't a great picture, but it's about the only one I have of him walking/standing:

And we all are loving the snow too:



Our beautiful snow-covered street:

Now this picture has a funny story, and I had to post it despite the poor quality of the picture. Last week we had grapefruits in our house and then a few days later my mom called me up to the bathroom and pointed out the window. Apparently a squirrel found the leftover grapefruit skins from the garbage and decided to have a picnic on the tree:

These snow pictures I just took today, the earlier ones are from last week:


Cecilia and I did a watercolor class in the fall and here are two of my paintings:


I've taken an interest in photographing eyes, this one is my best so far:

And lastly, a preview of the March for Life which I will blog about in a couple days (actually hopefully tomorrow.):


Now I have to go make some chocolate chip cookies and then finish schoolwork!

Love,