My Literary Friends

At this point in my life, I couldn't imagine working anywhere else than at an elementary school.  It's been an amazing first year (well, part of a year), and I've grown SO much.  Seriously, you don't realize how much a daily dose of lunch duty will change you until you go from being scared of a handful of children to walking around shushing a room of a hundred.

One of the most fun things that went on this year was library appreciation week.  Anybody who knows me knows that I love books, so I was excited when our librarian announced a week full of events.  This included guessing teachers' favorite books, Literary Bingo, and trying to figure out how many jelly beans were in a jar.  My favorite thing was that she invited the teachers and staff to dress up as a book character and go on the morning announcements to talk about their book.

This time last year, I never would have been brave enough to do anything like that.  But this year?  I decided to dress up twice, of course.  I still can't believe I did it, and the kids loved it!

My first character was Nancy Drew.  When I went to Five Points, Nancy was my favorite.  I think I read every Nancy Drew book they had in the library, and even the ones at the public library.  The Nancy Drew series has been around since the 1930s, written by a myriad of people under the name Carolyn Keene.  Because I own an original 1945 copy of The Clue in the Crumbling Wall, I decided to go as 1940s Nancy drew.  I altered a 1960s skirt and practiced my victory rolls, and we can't forget a magnifying glass.

 

 

1940s hair is NOT EASY.  But it's SO pretty!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We even got in some really weird, 40s inspired poses. (But what is the deal with my face?)

 

Another of my favorite books is Stargirl.  Stargirl is brave and zany.  She doesn't care what other people think about her, and she's not afraid to have ideas that go contrary with society.  She takes Mica High School by storm.  My favorite of her crazy outfits in the book is the prairie dress.  And it wouldn't be complete without her giant sunflower bag and ukulele.

And we can't forget her faithful pet rat, Cinnamon. He was a pain to make, but so worth it!

This dress is so flowy and I love it.

Look at it!

LOOK.

I even sang and played the ukulele on the announcements to people who had birthdays.  It was great!  And I wore these clothes the whole day, two different days, all over campus.  How many other jobs let you do that?

With school ending, I'm going to be posting again, and way more often!  In just a few days I'll be starting a fashion history series, and after that? Well, sewing, of course.  And writing. And other stuff.  Yep.

Sanctuaries

Here's the thing: I don't ever remember a time when my family didn't go to church.  I know, though, that when I was still tiny, before I would ever be able to remember things, we didn't go to church.  I was probably about three or four when my family started going to this small church that was still just getting started.  I still remember standing in the skeleton of what would be our sanctuary: grey cinder blocks against a cold blue sky.
 
There's something hard about growing up in a Christian home.  I know others who have said the same thing.  You know the truth, you've heard it a hundred times.  You live it out because it's what you think you're supposed to do, but in reality you're not living it out for God.  I did the same thing.  I accepted Jesus when I was seven years old, but after that it was like I was trying to ride on the coattails of my parents' faith.  I tried to be good, I tried to stay out of trouble.  I went to children's church on Sunday mornings and Missionettes on Wednesday nights.  I earned badges and won awards, but in the end I felt so hollow inside.  I was doing it out of fear and extreme belief that everyone around me was judging me.
 
I don't remember when my life started to slip out of my hands, but it did.  I became so consumed with what other people thought about me that I began living in fear.  I didn't talk to people unless I had to.  My group of friends slowly started to shrink.  I constantly put myself and the talents that God gave me down.  I struggled with sin.  I compared myself to others and always came up short.  In college I was exposed to a frightening world that I had to fight to keep myself separated from, and I constantly felt like I wasn't good enough, no matter what my teachers, my peers, or my family said.  I felt it in my heart that I was teetering on the edge of an abyss filled with darkness.  All the lights had gone out.  I had this unnamable fear that gripped my heart with fingers made of ice, and it was all masked by a façade that led everyone to believe I was okay, that I was a good Christian girl, perfect, nothing wrong.
 
When I graduated from college last year I moved back in with my parents, back to my hometown, and back to the church I grew up in.  Here, I think, God tried to start working himself on my heart.  I made myself go to church every week, and I tried to get something out of it.  Even when I fell back into sin and fear I found myself seeking God out each week.  But once Monday came around I started to slide back down my rope again.

I tried to make myself read a devotional every day, but sometimes I forgot, and a lot of times I wasn't really sure I was getting anything out of it.  I couldn't find a job and there were times when I felt like God had abandoned me.  Now I know that it was my own fears that were getting in the way.  I was so good at being positive for others that I had no positive left for myself.  But I kept trying.  No matter how close I got to the end of my rope, even if my fingers were only grasping at a single strand of His goodness, I held on.
 
Last month, though, something...happened.  It was a Wednesday night and our pastor was away, so our children's pastor, Pastor Matt, was preaching that night.  He talked about how God told him that His people were living with evil spirits that they could get rid of.  It immediately struck a cord with my irrational, unnamable fears, with everything I had been dealing with for my entire life.  He called people down to the altar to come and get rid of those spirits.  My fear glued me to my seat.  It was really like I couldn't move.  The altar?  That had never been for me.  What would people think if they knew I wasn't perfect?  After the first wave of people went Pastor Matt said to not leave without that issue being resolved.  And in that moment it hit me so quickly: I wasn't perfect, and it didn't matter.  Before I knew what I was doing I was down at the alter, a place I've never been before, barely able to tell the elder that I "was afraid of everything."
 
That night I had that spirit of fear cast out and I was baptized in the Holy Spirit.  I never intended to go down there for that last part but before I knew it I was freezing and burning at the same time, on my back and feeling like I had seen the face of God.  He's still working on my fear, because healing takes time, but I can tell you that every time I think about that day, every time I think that thought "I wasn't perfect and it didn't matter," I laugh with joy.  In fact, I've laughed countless times while I've been writing this.
 
It wasn't long at all before God decided to take it one step further, to test this new faith.  Our church was starting a young adult group, The Pursuit, and the first get together was a week and a half away.  I decided to go, but every time I thought about it my stomach would turn over.  I could hear the voice of Satan trying to make excuses for why I couldn't go, but every time I would verbally give that voice a good dose of 2 Timothy 1:7.
 
A few days before the group I woke up with a sore throat, and it wouldn't go away.  I've never had a sore throat that didn't develop into a cold so I knew that this was yet another attempt from Satan to keep me from going.  Saturday night I felt worse and I had a slight fever, but Sunday morning I went to church anyways.  During praise and worship I started feeling ill.  I broke out into a cold sweat and it completely threw me out of the presence of God.  I could have given in right then, but I started praying instead.  I prayed for healing, I told the sickness to leave, and immediately I stopped sweating.  I didn't feel sick and the pain in my throat dulled.
 
That night I went to Pursuit.  I hung out with a bunch of people I barely knew or didn't know at all.  I was nervous, sure, but I'm so glad I didn't miss it.  It was another step on my journey out of fear and into the heart of God.  It would take so much more space than this one blog post to hash out everything I've struggled with in my faith, but that's not the point.  The point is that I felt like I would burst if I didn't tell the world what He has done to me.  He has covered me in his blood.  He has taken the skeleton of my soul, cinder blocks against a cold blue sky, and made it into His sanctuary.  And it's beautiful.

 

All About the Poof

I think one of the most magical things a girl can have is a mom who sews.  How about custom doll clothes for your birthday?  Maybe a dress you saw in the store recreated to perfection?  Or even better: your sewing mom teaching you how to sew.

I was in elementary school when my mom first tried to teach me how to sew.  She believes everyone should have basic sewing knowledge, like sewing a button on a shirt, and she vowed that both I and my sister would have that basic knowledge.  I was actually kind of excited to learn how to sew, but once I started cutting, once I sat down at that machine, the magic faded.  It was like pulling teeth for my mom to get me to finish the 4-H project I had started.  For the kind of person I was, it was so very, very nerve-wracking.  For several years I gave it up, talking my mom into sewing something if I wanted it.

During college, and especially once I became a Mori girl/Lolita, my attitude towards sewing, and other such related things, changed.  It wasn't always easy to find things that I wanted in thrift stores, and some treasures I found needed altering.  So I took the plunge once again and recruited my mother to help me get back into sewing.  Since starting back my projects have been a dual effort.  There are times when I get so frustrated with something or when I dread sewing a certain thing and I just plain need help.

One of my most recent projects was set into motion by this set of pillowcases:

They're all beautiful vintage pillowcases we got from my brother-in-law's grandmother.  They kept staring at me and taunting me, telling me what a cute dress they would make.  I finally gave in and dug through my pattern stash for just the right dress and found it in this pattern here:

The length will be in between these two lengths.

Because I am my mother's daughter I decided a little bit of pattern altering was in order.  Basically, I kept the bodice and made my own skirt.  There were a myriad reasons why I didn't want to use the pattern, including the fact that it looked like whoever created it was trying to make it harder than it should be.  Another was that it didn't allow for the number of pillowcases I wanted to use.  I love the poof, and more pillowcases mean more poof.

Three yards of muslin

I used six pillowcases and three yards of muslin to line it (pillowcases are thin).  One pillowcase provided the sleeves, another provided the bodice, and the last four made up the skirt.  We had to do some finagling to get the bodice out of a single pillowcase, but it worked out.

Pinning the bodice.  That's the lining up in the left corner.

Every time I thought about setting in the sleeves I screamed internally.  I've only set sleeves in one time before and I only remembered that it was a nightmare.  My mom wasn't looking forward to it either because she knows how I get when I'm frustrated.  At the time I was appointed to do the sleeves she had to go outside and help my dad do something (I'm sure it was tree related.  We've been cutting down a lot of trees lately).  Instead of waiting for her to come back I pushed through and set the sleeves in, and she was quite surprised when she returned and I was finished.  It wasn't quite as vexing as I remember, but then some fabrics are more vexing than others.

So much skirt!

The skirt was far larger than I imagined it would be, because apparently four pillowcases have a lot more fabric than you'd think.  I used both sides of each case separately and sewed them together in a huge rectangle, which ended up being about 144 inches around, or about twice my height.  Hemming that much fabric was a sewing marathon.  The real challenge, though was gathering that much fabric.

Getting ready to gather!

Essentially, I was trying to fit 144 inches of fabric into about 40 inches of space.  I won't go into the details of gathering, just know it required me to sew around the skirt two more times and yank some thread until my fingers were blue.  When I was almost done I broke a thread, which is the nightmare of all nightmares.  Thankfully my mom swooped in and helped.  Then it was only a matter of pinning bodice and skirt together and making them one.  I'm quite pleased with the finished product.

I wore it to church today, belted, and I was even brave enough to wear my poofy petticoat.  Thanks to my mom who took the last pictures.  I'm happy to say that this is probably the project that I've come the closest to in doing by myself.  I did probably about 95% of the work.  What's next?  Well, there is quite a list of sewing projects...

How to Make You Own Hot Leaf Water

I was probably in middle school when I found out that people actually drank tea while it was hot.  Being from the south, where sweet tea is a staple, I thought the idea was ridiculous and strange.  I had never heard of such malarkey.  The first time I tried it I thought it was disgusting, but I tried it again in high school and I was hooked.  A mug of hot tea with another new favorite, oatmeal, was perfect on a cold Saturday morning, especially while sitting by the warm fire.

Over the years my tastes have evolved.  I drink tea every morning, timing the steep of every cup to perfection.  I love green tea and herbal tea, chai and matcha.  We have a tea collection in our home that's overflowing, because every time my mom and I see a new flavor on clearance we feel like we need it.  I only discovered loose leaf tea a couple years ago, but the real kicker was when I found out I could make my own tea.

My mom loves plants and gardening, so the consequence is that whenever we go to a place that sells plants, she will probably come home with one (this applies to frozen meat, too, but that's another story).  We have everything from marigolds to lime trees, but my favorite plants are the edible ones.  Rosemary, mint, lavender, lemon balm, basil, and recently we even acquired a stevia plant.  I think my favorite, though, is lemongrass.  It was the first plant I used to make my own tea.

Now we have a huge lemongrass in our front yard and I've started making up batches again, so I thought maybe other people might want to know how to make lemongrass tea.

First, find a lemongrass plant.  Buy your own or ask a friend, but don't go up in someone's yard and just steal their lemongrass.  It's rude.

Here's our lemongrass.

Next, cut lemongrass leaves close to where they come off the plant.  I use kitchen scissors, but regular scissors would probably work too.  I usually like to get a good handful of leaves, but the amount you get depends on the size of your plant.

Cut a length of string or twine.  I like to make mine long because I never think I'm going to have enough.

Make sure all the cut ends are fairly even with each other.  It doesn't have to be perfect.

Tie one end of the string as tightly as possible around the bundle of leaves, about 3 or four inches from the cut ends of the leaves.  Use a square knot so all your tying doesn't come undone (right over left, left over right).

Now comes the part I always find the hardest: find a dark, dry place and hang your lemongrass bundle there.  There aren't many dark places in our house where a bunch of leaves can fit, so I usually end up hanging mine off the end of a bookshelf in a corner of our library.

Now you wait.  I usually let my lemongrass dry for a week.  By then it's usually falling right out of the string because it doesn't matter how tight I tie them, they always slip because they shrink.  The leaves won't really be brown, just a faded green.  After all, you don't want them to crumble to nothing.

Now you're going to need those kitchen scissors again, and some kind of airtight container to hold your tea.  I chose this glass container.  It's one of a three piece set that sits in a caddy next to all our other teas, so I thought it would work well.

So, you're going to gather three or four leaves at a time, hold the ends into the container, and snip.  I snip my pieces about a quarter of an inch long, give or take.

Make sure to snip all the way to the end.  This process usually takes a while so pull up a chair and put on your favorite music or a show.  Today I snipped to Downton Abbey.  Sure, I've seen them all, but sometimes you just have to revel in Edwardian fashion.  My hand was a little sore by the end, but I'm a seasoned snipper.  Take a break and don't break your fingers.

And...Voila!

It only filled the container about halfway, but I've got plenty more where that came from.

Now, whenever you want a delicious cup of tea, just grab your favorite teacup or mug and a tea ball.  I usually fill my tea ball with two teaspoons of lemongrass, boil some water (in a kettle, not my teacup), and let the tea steep in the water for about five minutes.  I like to sweeten it with a bit of honey, or occasionally raw sugar.

If I hadn't been so hot from taking these pictures outside then I probably would have made myself a cup, but alas, I live in Florida.  Now I just need to finish my shelves to hold all my teacups, all seventy-something of them.  Yeah...

Seasons

The road doesn't stand out very much if you're not keeping your eye out for the old building that sits on the corner.  It's always been the landmark of the final leg of a very long journey, telling you you're almost there.  The road takes you quickly out of the town below, rising and twisting through so many different views in only minutes.  You still can't believe that you're not that far away from a bustling college town.

After a left at the church on the hill you turn onto a gravel drive hidden in the trees, the green moss creeping over the rocks a sign that you're in a completely different world.  As the car shuts off and you open your door, you're met by the wash of water through the creek.  The cool moist air wraps around your skin and that deep earthy smell finally reaches you.  Eyes close momentarily and you're still, and it's perfect.


My family has been visiting my Grandpa at his cabin in the Appalachians of North Carolina since I can remember.  It's been his summer home for thirty years.  When I was little I would take my barbies and let them have adventures in the creek that flows outside the back deck.  There has never been a trip, even into my twenties, that I haven't spent even a little time building a fairy village with tiny stone steps down to the water, or finding sticks just the right length to build a raft to float through the rapids.  Evenings were marked by a trip over the bridge and along the back road to the apple tree that supplied us with as many tart, little green apples as we wanted.

I was in high school when I finally knew that North Carolina was my future home.  I didn't know how I was going to get there, but I felt it in the vibrating of my soul, just at the thought.  Last weekend I took a trip up to the cabin with my mom, aunt, and cousin as a Father's Day surprise for Grandpa.  I hadn't been in two years, so it was pretty exciting.  We spent a lot of time with Grandpa and found some pretty good views.



Sophee, still aspiring to be a juvenile delinquent.



View of Boone from Howard's Knob

Pretty flowers from our walk!

To the apple tree...

This little guy landed on me while I was standing on the waterfall.

The rushing, raging creek.

On the parkway.

Right after I took this picture a man came walking down that hill, hopped the fence, got in his car, and drove away.

I always like to take pictures of wavy grass.

I managed to snap this in a moving vehicle the day we left.

But the trip wasn't just to see Grandpa.

Recently my Grandpa and his wife had been considering selling the cabin and staying in Florida year round.  I won't get into details, but keeping the cabin has become a burden on them, and this summer they got serious.  We went up there for a weekend to see if he needed help getting anything ready, and while we were there the signs went up.

Now, just days later, they've sold it.  It's finally real that I'll probably never have my morning tea on the back deck again, never haul a cold watermelon up the steps beside the waterfall, never squeeze into the older-than-me Suburban for a trek down the mountain.  The gateway through which I came to fall in love with the mountains has closed.  I must find some other route.

I've heard people talk about seasons in a comforting way, "There's a season for everything."  They talk about better things to come.  But what I don't hear very often is the opposite: when a brilliant and wonderful season must pass away, and you're left to face a new and unknown season.  I try to remind myself  that there's no guarantee that this is the end.  I don't really know for sure that I'll never see that place again.  What I do know is that God will get me back there somehow.  But the knowing doesn't make this new season hurt any less.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel

As some of you know I've been on a great new hair adventure the past few years, but my whole life has kind of been a great hair adventure to be honest.  While I've never been victim to the dreaded bowl cut, like a dear friend and cousin of mine has, or gone so drastic as a pixie, in my book my hair has practically seen it all.  So let's start from the beginning and see how all of that went.

I was born with dark hair, and basically with the shortest hair I've ever had.  Also, we should note that I was adorable.

 
It didn't take long for my hair to go blonde, which was inevitable since it was the same with my sister and my dad.

Then my mom decided bangs were the way to go.  Every time I've tried bangs since then I haven't really liked them.

Second grade was the drastic change.  I wanted short, and I got it.  My sister called me a boy for weeks, and still I'm being nice enough not to detail her great perm fiasco.  Let's just say I wasn't the only one who "looked like a boy."

It eventually grew out, and at the same time my hair started getting darker.

Over my public school years it varied in lengths and styles, including the Shirley temple beauty pageant look

these really big curls

and the eighth grade St. Maarten braids.

Looking back, I've noticed that my hair took a mostly shorter trend.  There weren't many times that I let it get too far past my shoulders before I decided it was time to whack it off.  That time in tenth grade was probably the longest it had ever been.

Which brings me to the summer of 2011.  Another visit to Panama City, and another hair whacking.  This time all the way to my chin!

Sometime between then and Christmas 2011 I had an epiphany.  I realized that I was addicted to cutting my hair.  I was addicted to the new and drastic feeling of having my hair cut off.  I don't really know why that was either, because not too long after I'd start complaining about how I wouldn't be able to put it in a pony tail, or really do anything with it.  And then just when it would fit into a hairtie, I'd chop it off again.  It was especially taxing on my grandmother, because she has always been the one to cut my hair.  She was always worried that I wouldn't like the cut and blame her, which I never did.  It was all my own fault.

And when this realization hit me, I made a decision, a very hard decision, to grow my hair out.  Nearly four years later, I think it's probably the best hair decision I've ever made.  It's made me realize the goals I can achieve with PATIENCE.  It's also led to more healthy hair decisions.  But let me just tell you right now, if you're planning on growing your hair out and keeping it healthy, the journey is not for the faint of heart.

By the spring of 2012 I had ceased using my flatiron and I had started going for a more natural look.  Of course, I was still blow drying and using a curling iron.  By the time I moved to Tallahassee to start at FSU that fall I had cut out the blow dryer, and by Christmas I was heat free.  I noticed such a change in my hair.  Sure I had to wash it early enough to let it air dry before I went to bed, but it was worth it to not have to literally sweat through blow drying and straightening.  By the summer of 2013 my hair felt like it was so long, even though it really wasn't.  I had begun to devise ways in which to curl it without heat, to much success.  I also began to braid my hair at night.  I felt like I lived in the 1800s, but easy brushing the next morning was worth it.  By the summer of 2014 my hair was so long it was giving me hairtie headaches, and milkmaid braids were my go-to when my hair was dirty.

June 2014

Now let's fast forward to today.  In the big scheme of things, my waist length hair isn't all that long, but for me it's a big deal.  My go-to is a French braid to avoid headaches, and I rarely wear ponytails.  I also use a giant clip and tie my nightly sleeping braid with a soft length of t-shirt material.  These are all ways I fight breakage, which is one of my biggest enemies.  I've cut out my hair products completely.  About a month ago I stopped using mousse, which I've used since childhood, and I've even stopped with my anti-frizz product.  I found that the mousse caused my hair to take longer to dry.  All I really do is shampoo and condition, and I only do that once a week.  Yes, friends, I only wash my hair once a week.  It's WAY better for my hair, and it makes a difference in how moisturized it is.  I've also been benefitting from the wonders of coconut oil as a treatment before my weekly wash.  It also helps moisturize and keeps some of the frizz at bay.  But my latest weapon is my new brush.

As a treat for finishing my novel's rough draft in April I finally ordered my fancy hair brush that I had been researching for weeks. It cost way more that anything I could get at Walmart or even Sally's, but even after only using it for a few weeks I can see a difference in my hair.  The secret is that it's made of wood.  Not the brush itself, though that's made of wood too, but the bristles.  Each individual bristle is solid wood.  The wood soaks up the oils near your scalp and then distributes it throughout your hair, helping combat dryness, frizz, an itchy scalp, and the need to wash you hair more often.  I know that might sound gross, but there's a reason our scalps produce oil.  "Back in the olden days" women didn't wash their hair very often, and used a similar system with a boar bristle brush to redistribute the oil in their hair.  It's also the reason they could achieve such elaborate hairstyles without hairspray, and the reason why today it's so much easier to braid your hair when it's "dirty."  Having long hair is work.  I mean, there's a reason women used to have ladies maids.

June 2015

Currently my hair is only about two inches away from my next goal (butt length), but after that, who knows where I'll go.  I've decided that I won't go to much longer because it would get too hard to manage.  Long hair is not just work, it can be a hindrance as well.  Because we've recently opened our pool I've discovered how not fun it is to swim with long hair, and I LOVE to swim!  Even keeping it in a braid doesn't help much.  It takes a while to rinse the chlorine out and then untangle knots.  Driving is an issue too, and sitting in general.  I have to move my hair out of the way so it's not squished between me and the seat, and I also have to move it out of the way to put on my seatbelt.  The closest way to describe it is that it's like having a paralyzed appendage.  I'm constantly aware of where my hair is and what it's doing.  Do I have to move it out of the way?  Is it touching my food?  If I bend over will it brush something gross that I don't want in my hair?  Is that my braid that's digging into my back while I'm trying to sleep?  Is that my hair grazing my arm or a vicious man-eating spider attacking me?  Is the wind so bad that I need to take my brush with me to the store?  Am I going to get a braid tan down my back if I don't put it in a clip?  I'll stop there, but the list goes on.

Still, if you want long hair, go for it!  I know a lot of this sounds discouraging, but be patient, it takes time and effort, and not everyone's hair grows at the same rate.  Ignore all those people who ask you when you're going to cut it and go for it Rapunzel!

The next adventure?  A Florida summer with three feet of hair.