Patience is key

Patience is key. Cliche but true. 

the more i learn about God and the way that He works the more i learn about patience. the more i learn about desiring His will and not my own. it's so easy for women my age (weird to think i'm considered a woman and not a girl) to be caught up in marriage and in dating. and if I'm honest i've done just that. i've let that get in the way of following the will of God. and well lemme just tell you that God can and will call you out on stuff. 

side note: i believe that the enemy can attack our thoughts and flood our thoughts with things that aren't true, especially when we aren't spending time daily with God. after that we begin to rationalize these thoughts and say that others won't understand causing us to even ignore clear warning signs. And by we, i mean me. 

i have come face to face this summer with what it looks like to be loved so much by God that he calls me out of something that i so clearly did not want to be called out of. funny how we don't want to listen to what the creator of the universe is trying to tell us. but sometimes we don't have a choice and we have to remember that His will is perfect even if what we want isn't a part of that will. something i've also realized is God's wrath would be letting us continue to walk away from him and for us to keep our eyes on something other than Him. like boys. like marriage. like school. like money. His unfailing love is taking away the things that distract us from Him. because in the end as believers we all will get to spend eternity in heaven together, even if that means not being together on earth. the joy we experience here is only a glimpse of what we will get to experience once we get to heaven. and i have very high hopes for the future and the joy i will get to experience. although it sounds like i have it together, this post will be a constant reminder over the next few months. because even though i know that it is good, no great, that i've been called to this position, it is still hard. and one thing i will have to re-learn on the daily is patience. because anything other than patience right now is me wanting to control the situation and get what i want, and not what God wants. so here's to waiting. here's to focusing on today, and not tomorrow.

 "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." -Matt. 6:33-34

School update:

i'm only taking 12 credit as opposed to my usual 15 and i am beyond excited. i also don't have classes on friday which is going to be a true blessing for me. i also only have one studio class which means i will only have one major project to work on at a time. downside i will have to break out my flashcards and study skills for my other classes. which i know is not a big deal for most college students, but after almost an entire year without having to do any major studying, this semester will be interesting. back to my studio class, i will be learning how to drape on the dress form, meaning that designs will hopefully be 10,000x easier to create because i won't have to imagine what it's going to look-like in 2-D but actually manipulate the fabric to do EXACTLY what i want.

Delta Gamma Update:

recruitment is finally over. after a long few weeks of recruitment prep, classes, and set up we received 39 amazing, talented, and gifted new members. putting our chapter at about 127! i am so excited to get to know these new girls. after a couple of late nights, i had the joy of finishing our awesome banner that matched our Rock'n'roll bid day theme. after a few hiccups, i was able to finish this with my newly acquired adobe illustrator skills that i learned in my computers class.

Young Life College update: 

week 1: YLC spike ball tournament was a success.

week 2: roaming gnome was in even bigger success.

THIS WEEK:

we are having club THIS. WEDNESDAY. we get to have club in OUR very own building. words can't even begin to describe how grateful i am, how grateful my team is, or how grateful our entire area is for this place. this place that we get to use for God's glory. we can't even begin to take credit for this blessing. God has literally been a part of every step. every light, cable, chord, nail, piece of wood, drywall, and ounce of paint. even in our very own STAGE! how awesome, how great is HE! and all we can do is stand in awe of Him and thank him for this huge gift. we also can thank a very gracious and obedient family on our committee for providing this building. there were so many other things that could've been done with this building but they chose this. and we are SO grateful. that being said words cannot describe how excited i am to welcome college students from UNT into this building at 8:28 this wednesday! 

here's to a semester filled with patience, learning, and following God's will. 

also here's to keeping this blog updated this semester. 

Sew life with Sky has been a little crazy...

So this summer I have been experiencing life with Sky, my nephew, in Fort Collins, Co. It has been absolutely beautiful here all summer and has been a lot cooler than Texas, that's for sure! It has been a busy summer watching my one year old nephew learn to walk, go up and down stairs, and talk. Recently, he learned that if he points at something myself or Tom, my brother in law, or Jess, my sister, will respond by saying the name or give it to him. He also loves light switches and his version of "off" and "on" has become "osh" and "ot" (lol). One thing I have learned this summer is patience, and that I might seriously reconsider being a stay at home mom. Some days we go for walks or go to the store but most days we stay inside. There are a lot of things to go do I am sure I haven't taken advantage of, but sometimes I go crazy being at home with my nephew who can't talk to me yet. God has certainly been using this time to show me patience, and how to love someone. Sky has been a blessing to watch grow up even in just a short one and half months that I have been here. I recently broke out my camera to see if I could start figuring out how to take some quality pictures on an older DSLR that my dad gave me last year. If anyone has any suggestions as to the best way to learn how to take quality pictures, I would love them! Keep in mind this is more so for capturing my own work, more than wanting to enter into the photography business, because let's be real there's enough people doing that already that will be far better than me, and with much nicer cameras!

On top of watching my newphew, I have been helping my sister and her husband set up their new house! I made them these curtains for their kitchen windows. They were pretty easy to do but just a lot of fabric to gather for the ruffles on top! I'm going to start looking for a ruffling foot soon to help out with things like this! 

 Lastly, I decided to make a few dresses this summer using my pattern making skills! Needless to say I think that It's probably a good thing that I brushed up on these skills before school started. I made this dress to wear for sorority events in the fall like meetings and other events we have! It was pretty simple once I got the fit to be perfect with the like 6 muslins I made. I plan to add a bow on the back to sit at the waist line to just add another dimension to this simple dress. Although there are a few things on this dress I messed up on, it turned out great and I hope to post more pictures of me in it when I am not looking like a hot mess. 

 Look out for another post soon  of adventures with Justin while he was here in CO, with pictures of the dress I am making for my sister and another dress for me. These dresses will be for my dad's retirement ceremony in August! I also have a few samples that I have to do for class in the fall that I will post at some point. I will be heading back to Virginia to visit friends and dog-sit on Wednesday while my sister, nephew, and parents go to IOWA for Ragbrai! 

End of the Year excitement

So this post has taken a long time for me to gather all the things I wanted to post about! So my last couple projects for school were all due last Wednesday so the last month or so has been crazy crazy! 

So this dress was for my sewing class and it is made of knit fabrics which is similar to a t-shirt, so it is veyr stretchy. I actually am really happy with the way this dress turned out it was pretty easy in comparison to my other projects and I will be happy to announce that I fit this dress and will be wearing it on game days next year! #GMG 

This dress is from my conceptual project for my patternmaking class. It is based off the Lotus Temple found in India! I wanted it to be very simple and represent the peacefulness that is behind the architecture. The dress pictured is my muslin, which is basically the rough draft of my garment. I don't really like the way that my final turned out so I am going to tweak a few things before I post the picture of it! Sadly it won't be on a dress form once I fix it just because I won't have one at home!

And last but not least I forgot to take pictures of my drawing project but I will definitely post it as soon as I can! I think I packed it away before I could snatch a picture of it so that will be coming soon!

Meanwhile, this past weekend was packed full of many Young Life events! First on friday night, a bunch of us went to see Drew & Ellie Holcomb and we got to sit in the very front on couches and then hang out with them after it was soooooo awesome. If you've never listened to them you need to look them up right now! 

On saturday we had our End of the Year leader party where we got to hang out with our entire leadership and just eat a lot of good food and take funny pictures together like these....

Lastly on Sunday we had our first ever REDNECK RENDEVOUS for Young Life College. We had a great dance party with square dancing like the one from Young Life camp if you've ever been, and if you haven't I strongly suggest you do. There was a lot of country line dancing and a dance party through the ages, and an impromptu sing along to Let it Go after dont stop believing! #totalYLmove

Here are some of the costumes from the event! 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, I want to announce officially that I will be in Fort Collins, CO for the summer nannying for my sister and watching my sweet nephew Skyler. I am very excited to live with my sister and her husband Tom in there brand new house! It will be a lot of fun to watch this little guy grow although he won't remember any of it I am beyond excited to help teach him to walk and talk! I will also be learning how to cook this summer and I'm hoping to get back into shape with my overly active sister and brother in law! 

Spring time only makes me want Summer time

So, I haven't been able to post anything recently because of how busy life has gotten...and I hate plugging my iPhone into my computer to get the pictures off. So now that I've done that here is an update on what the last few weeks has looked like....
Here's the final product for my jacket! This is a tailored wool jacket, it has a lot of hand-stitched details like pad-stitching on the collar and lapel and the hem lining and jacket hem is hand stitched. This jacket would probably be priced around $400 roughly according to my teacher. I also received an A on the project, so I would hope it would be well worth the first 4-5 weeks of the semester.

After finishing my jacket, we went on Spring break to Port Aransas, TX which is off the southern coast. Young Life College rented a house on the beach! The week was full of fellowship, spikeball, and lots of seafood! There were 24 of us total staying in the beach house, although it was only sunny one day while we were there, we made the best of it. Everyone loved to grab blankets and hang out on the balcony! YLC is looking to do a similar trip in the years to come!

 This past weekend we had The Big Event at UNT, a campus wide service event for the area! My sorority was sent to pick up trash along the roads in Denton, sponsored by Keep Denton Beautiful. Although this is not the only thing we do, last year we were in charge of pulling weeds and taking out cactus in a local garden off Loop 288. Here's my family, my little sister Brooke (far left), my big sister Kathryn (next to me), and my twin sister Liberty (far right)!

 Lastly, this past weekend we had founders day for my sorority! We honored our 3 founders on Sunday where we gave out numerous awards and celebrated a pledge class from 1964! Proud to say that the Kappa Fam won first in grades for our entire chapter!

Outside of all of this, I have started a couple new projects that I look forward to posting in the weeks to come! Only one more month left of school! Another topic I wanted to touch on was Lent. My entire life I've grown up participating in Lent and it wasn't until this year that I truly understood and felt the desire to participate in this season. This year I have decided to give up my curling iron and straightener. If you really knew me, you'd know I've been attached to them since middle school and I hate when I have to wear my hair up. So, I had been praying a lot about what I wanted to give up when I suddenly felt convicted about wanting to only get up early to do my hair before class and then not leave enough time to spend with Jesus. My roommate gave me the perfect reason to participate this year as well, she said you should give me something up that is going to challenge you in your walk with Christ. Needless to say I haven't touched them for the last few weeks, which has been challenging but also a blessing because I have a lot more time on my hands, time that I have been choosing to spend with Jesus. Then over spring break, I felt like I was being convicted to give up my social media like instagram and twitter (I still have facebook). The mindless scrolling would take away anywhere from 20 mins to an hour from my day, which I have now devoted to spending more time with Jesus and being better about my class assignments so I don't have to pull any all-nighters. I'm not sure when or if I will decide to use them after Lent has ended, but I know that my desire to look perfect all the time has decreased and I won't be reaching for my curling iron or straightener as often, which I know my split ends will thank me for!

Happy Spring time, thanks for reading my blogs! Shout out to my sister Megan, she told me shes read all of my posts which made me happy to hear that I'm not just talking to myself!

Greek Week... may the odds be ever in our favor

This week at my school we have Greek Week! Basically, we have a couple events throughout the week that lead up to our Greek Award ceremony! These events include a banner contest, writing letters to the troops, letters check-in (wearing your sorority's/fraternity's letters all day), greek games (a scavenger hunt sorta thing), a speaker event, extravaCANza and eagles escapades (dance competition). These last few weeks we have all been collecting cans to donate to the Denton Local food bank and on friday we will construct a CAN structure to match our theme, Elvis Presley! I haven't been able to participate as much as I would like to because of class and schoolwork but here is the banner that we created! I helped paint the car but all the credit goes to the art majors in our sorority and to our wonderful panhellenic representative, Jessie (on the left)!

I think we're going to have a great turnout this week, our dance looks awesome and Jessie has an awesome idea for our can structure.

In other news, I'm almost done with my tailored wool jacket and will be posting a picture soon of the most recent update! I have to turn it in next week so you will get to see it with out all the markings! I have also been working on my croquis style, which is an exaggerated figure about 10 heads long!

Today I also got to read though Psalm 119, which I didn't realize how long it was when I started but it was a very sweet prayer asking God to realign your steps and just asking for guidance and to be protected from sin and people trying to bring you down--which is exactly what I needed to be praying! Here is the final excerpt, written in the message (don't hate):

"Let my cry come right into your presence, God; 

provide me with the insight that comes

only from your Word. 

Give my request your personal attention,

rescue me on the terms of your promise.

 Let praise cascade off my lips;

after all, you've taught me the truth about life!

And let your promises ring from my tongue;

every order you've giver is right.

Put your hand out and steady me

since I've chosen to live by your counsel.

I'm homesick, God, for your salvation;

I lvoe it when you show yourself!

Invigorate my soul so I can praise you well, 

use your decrees to put iron in my soul.

And should I wander off like a lost

sheep----seek me!

I'll recognize the sound of your voice."

-Psalm 119:169-176

Time flies when your having fun

So it has been about two weeks since I last updated y'all on my semester and how everything is going here in the great state of Texas. If you were wondering what has been preoccupying my time here's a few pictures.....

The shorts were my first conceptual project of the semester, it was based off a piece of hardware that's use to hold down small pipes or pvc pipes. It's basically a little bridge and has 2 holes on either side for screws and then a half circle arch in the middle with a groove that made it look like 3 lines. That's why the straps show up in a group of 3 and there are 2 buttons on either side of the piping that are shown. I don't know that this was my best work, but this was my first pair of pants (shorts) that I've ever made and that stands for something right?

And in my sewing class, I am currently making a tailored jacket. Today,I put in the red lining and I will be finishing it up this week and next week. It has been quite a process these last 2 weeks putting this jacket together. I have to say I am very very proud of this jacker and I am looking forward to the finished product. On the other hand I don't think I'll be going into the jacket business anytime soon! 

So, other then staying very busy with my school work I have been learning a lot about myself, and how I have poor time management skills and that sometimes I just want to crawl under my covers and never come out. This semester has a huge eye opener for me in my walk with Christ, slowly but surely God has been showing me what I need to let go of. 

Today, at church Matt Chandler, The Village church pastor, talked about the fear of man. His analogy was that our neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, etc are like kittens in comparison to the Lion, that God is. So why is it that we are fearful of these kittens around us but are so willing to slap the one lion in our life? Makes you second guess your fear of kittens right? What's stopping us from being bold and from stepping out in faith, a little awkwardness, distance in a friendship, but if that boldness some day leads your friend to Christ, is it not worth it? 

This has been on my heart for quite sometime, and one thing that really stuck for me today was when Matt Chandler said "Your fear of what someone thinks about you, will stop you from loving them. You cannot love someone who controls you." Gosh that hit me so hard in the face, if there's one thing I want my friends to feel, christians or not, is that I love and care for them like God cares for me, but the hardest thing I've had to face this semester, is fearing what others think about me and that most definitely has halted any love from reaching them. 

I've seen other blogs do this, so here it goes: comment below with your thoughts on being fearful of man, and what that looks like in your life and how you have been able to overcome it or how you have been trying to work through it!

Water color is harder than it looks

So the last week has been very busy with multiple projects going in all of my classes. Right now we're learning how to paint fashion faces and if you're wondering what that means I can explain... a fashion face has exaggerated everything and perfect proportions, the perfect button nose, exaggerated eyes, perfect eyebrows, flawless hair, big luscious lips, and a long neck. My teacher literally told us to research people we though were beautiful...models, actresses and maybe even our friends. After all that...we have to paint in water colors, leaving exaggerated high lights and lots of blush. If you ask me I thought water colors were going to be a lot easier....but then I realized I have no patience for it. Layer after layer of make up, and not to mention her skin cant be to yellow or to orange or she'll look fake... as if exaggerating everything else didn't already make her look fake she has to have a REAL skin tone... here was my progress last week, notice her skin isn't exactly normal her hair looks freaking awesome though....

The second page are the test faces I did.... I couldn't get the 3/4 view right... it was a little off but practice makes perfect! 

Also, this past week I've done quiet a few embroidery projects for people. A couple of vests and lab coats! I only have pictures of the vests though. I only charge five dollars for a monogram but I've decided to put a rush fee on any embroidered items and charge an extra five dollars if you want it anytime less than a week. 

(P.S. this girl provided me with vests I didn't purchase them but I did the embroidery)

More to come hopefully this week about what I've been learning about being a part of my local church and how I've been growing this semester in my relationship!

Comment below if you have any questions about embroidery! I'm planning on setting up an etsy shop soon for handmade bows and t-shirt dresses!