Old-Fashioned Talent

Since Husband and I have been married we've received many beautiful wedding gifts. Admittedly some of my favorites are the homemade ones (not that I'm ungrateful for any of them at all! Honest!).


My sister-in-law gave us a block with a picture of the temple mod-podged to it.

My old roommate made a block puzzle with a few of our wedding pictures she printed off facebook, also utilizing mod-podge and a lot of time and effort.

My (great-?) aunt on my mom's side made these BEAUTIFUL pillow shams that you exchange out monthly, kind of a seasonal thing.

The picture does NOT do it justice. Seriously, the detail? HOLY WOW. I never in my wildest dreams imagined you could do something like this yourself...

And then there's my grandmother. She's always been a sewing whiz. She used to play April Fool's day pranks with a needle and thread, like sewing towels to racks or sewing grandpa's fly shut so he couldn't wear his pants in the morning. (She always did this weird stitch though that you could just pull it apart and there was no harm done... but it was still funny.) So for a wedding/birthday present she hand-stitched us this BEAUTIFUL quilt...

(Yeah the pillows are crookedy. Get over it...)
I love this. I stared at it and hugged it for a while when I first opened the box it was in. I love it! 

My grandma said she hand-stitched THE WHOLE THING. I feel SO BLESSED when I look at all these wonderful things that people took the time to make for Husband and I... These are things I'll treasure for so many years to come.


Which makes me feel really guilty because I really can't do things like this. I'm sure I could do basic block patterns, like the jungle quilt my mom made me before I went to college (another quilt I LOVE) but things like this? The detailed pillow shams, the intricate quilt? What on earth do I have to leave behind for my future children, to make for them? My mom has a quilt from one of her family members before her, and she treasures it.


Hm. This is something to thing about... And definitely inspires me. What are you leaving behind?

Yockeyite Spotlight (and a few confessions)

Confession 1: I'm one of the last Yockeyite's do join the blogging world, (but the first from my people!), so some of the other Yockeyite's have been up and running for a while. One of the Yockeyite's travels a bunch, so reading her blogs makes me soooooo jealous and I drool pretty much the entire time I read her blogs... She also has the Yockeyite sense of humor, and so her blogs are so fun to read, too! Her main blog, Do what you like; like what you do has a lot of her personal insights about things like potpourri and posts on some world issues. This leads me to confession 2- I don't really understand world issues, so for me this blog can be an unusual read sometimes. But maybe by reading it I could actually learn something? She understands so much! Maybe when I graduate college I, too, can be a master of the mind...


She also just recently started two others: Circumambulate the World is about the places she travels and the things she sees there (this is the one that really endangers my laptop- I need to bring a handtowel or something to put over my keyboard), and another that I never would have thought to blog about, What the Home? This one has new housing ideas, and it's an interesting read. I mean, we've all heard about humans possibly inhabiting the moon someday, right? But who would have thought about living in the ocean?


One last thing to leave you with, that's unrelated to my fellow Yockeyite-- I've been meaning to post a craft or two that I've been working on. The problem is, it involves spray paint, so when I went to do it on Monday it was too windy and yesterday it was rainy... (Seriously, Monday it was fine until right before I went outside to spray paint. Grr...) So hopefully I'll get more active and have more to say... until then, my fellow Yockeyite should capture quite a bit of your attention on at least one of her blogs.

Staying Out of Debt

No, the Yockeyites are not in debt. They're just simply trying to stay away from it. Far, far away from it. I'm taking a real-world math class, a required class at my college, which is to say that we're going to learn mind-boggling things such as budgeting. It doesn't seem difficult in principle, until I looked at what we were spending while trying to complete a homework assignment and found expenses on the example that we are not spending, and things in our spending list that we didn't know what to label. I rather imagine that my teacher will scratch his head at our, what, $100 in "Misc. Spending"... when really that's where we put things like organ shoes, concert clothes, a new backpack, and a trumpet mute.


I know what you're thinking... "With all those expenses PLUS the both of you going to college, how on earth are you not in debt already?"


The answer? There are a couple... #1: Hellooooo federal grants. We both were awarded and we both have our tuition covered. #2: A lot of our expenses are covered by loving family members. Such as the clinic bills from when I got pneumonia a week and a half before our wedding. #3: I believe in blessings. There's a reason we're able to not be in debt, especially with being in school... I just don't know what it is yet.


I can still read your mind- "You're a jerk for making me feel poor. Shut up and stop bragging."


I'm not trying to brag! My original point is about staying out of debt, and you interrupted me with your question! So in our church, our church leaders have said that we need to stay as far away from debt as possible, especially in today's society. School loans and debts are excepted, along with a modest home mortgage, and perhaps a small car.


Your mind interrupts me again- "How is this possible?"


Well, they're not going to tell us to stay away from debt if it wasn't possible. In my mind, the answer is clear: Don't purchase things you do not need. Yes, that new sports car is ridiculously awesome but if you can't afford it, then it's not worth it. Yes, those jeans are designer and make your behind look so fabulous you can't sit still, but my $40 jeans will last me at least a year, probably longer. What's that? My jeans aren't as cool as your jeans? That's ok! I don't need the world staring at me to know that I'm a beautiful, confident person. Husband and I live without cable TV and a phone landline. We only go out to eat because we have gift money left over from the wedding. We try to plan ahead for meals. We've already started our food storage- it's meager, but there.


There goes your mind again- "You'll end up in debt eventually."


Yes, we probably will. I can't rule out that possibility without being totally naive. The idea is that if you have to get into debt, get out of it as fast as possible. Cut corners where you can- lay off on purchasing ice cream and accessories until you can pay it off. It will all be worth it in the end. And while we're blessed with having enough money to stay out of debt now, we're trying to save as much as we can for anything that might come up.


Now, if you're in debt or have student loans or something, I'm not bashing you. I'm just spewing thoughts. I certainly don't think I'm an expert on these things- I just think that the idea of not spending a ton of money on things is doable. Think about it...


http://lds.org/ensign/1997/09/understanding-interest-on-debt?lang=eng&query=debt

http://lds.org/ensign/1996/08/escaping-the-debt-trap?lang=eng&query=debt

PS- I'm not trying to convert you to my side of the religion fence. I'm just trying to share the wisdom that is in these articles. My next post won't be quite as heavy... I'm only in this because of math. Blech...

The Age of the Yockeyites

I have to begin by saying I'm not a native Yockeyite... I married into the family. (Or, as Husband puts it, they imported talent into the family...) While the Yockeyites and my people are different, they are also very similar, being that we are both LDS families and both have a great sense of humor. How Husband and I even ended up together is still a mystery to me... He's crazy smart and a complete computer nerd, and I'm a bit of a dork and a complete music nerd, which goes to show that personality really does hold a lot of importance in a relationship. He's tone-deaf; I'm computer-illiterate (at least by his standards- after all, I figured out how to run a decent-looking blog, no?) So somehow, while we are separated for 8-10 hours a day dutifully studying in our respective fields, we manage to fall in love with each other more and more every day.


So this is the record of the Yockeyites, beginning about 7 months after marriage; their random thoughts, some of my crafts, maybe a thought from Husband here and there, and, ok yeah, a spiritual thought or two. If nothing else, perhaps you can get a good laugh now and then.