Things I (Probably) Should Have Learned How to do in College.

When we were alone in the hospital for the first time-just me, Chris, and Jack-there was almost a sense of, "Oh my gosh, what do we even do?!" When it came time to change a diaper or swaddle him or anything like that. When Chris was changing his first diaper, he asked, "Am I doing this right?" To which I replied, "I have no idea." We joked that instead of obscure math classes, they should offer parenting classes in college so you can be prepared for the rest of your life. It made me think of all the things I didn't learn how to do in college, but probably should have...things like:

Change a tire. I don't really foresee a scenario where I want to be alone on the side of the highway changing my own tire, but hey, it's probably still a good idea to know how. Instead, I learned about the different types of drugs poets took in the 1800's to inspire their work. Interesting, sure, but altogether rather useless now.

Build good credit. I had zero credit cards and zero debt to my name when I graduated college. I thought this was a great thing and that it showed that I only spent money if I had it. I had no idea that having no credit cards or anything I was on a payment plan for meant that I had no credit. When I went to sign the lease for our first apartment, the leasing office was like, "Um...do you know you don't have any credit? Like, at all?" I feel like freshman year should come with the recommendation to put things on a credit card (and pay it off on time!), but instead, I learned different conspiracy theories about how Shakespeare never existed.

Jump a car back to life. I really wish that you could have overheard the conversation when I called my dad two years after I had graduated college and asked him what colors went where on a car battery. It was mostly just silence on his part as he was flabbergasted that I had somehow made it through life until then without ever having to use a pair of jumper cables. He asked me what my plan was if my car ever died, and I said I would call Triple A. To which he said, "Do you have Triple A?" No, no I did not. But hey! I can tell you when, where, and how Jack Kerouac died.

Understand health insurance/medical bills. I am so thankful that I have good insurance, but here's what I've learned: They make it as complicated as possible so that you will just pay the bill instead of comparing it to your actual coverage and questioning it. I got a bill for $800 after my initial blood work when from when I found out I was pregnant. Thank God for Chris, because my reaction was "OH MY GOSH THIS IS REDICULOUS BUT I GUESS I OWE $800 UGH." And his reaction was, "Yeah, that doesn't sound right." And within two hours I got an apology call saying I actually owed zero dollars. But if it weren't for Chris, I would have just paid the $800! Because college did not teach me about these things-instead, it taught me all about Literary Theory and the schools of criticism..cool to learn, but ask me how many times I've used that knowledge post-college? Zero.

CPR. Up until a few years ago, if you were choking or needed CPR in front of me, you probably just would have died. My bad. But I did go to a self-defense class, where I learned that I needed to buy pepper spray and a rape whistle. So there's that.

In all reality, I loved my classes. I love that I know tons of obscure facts about authors and genres and the history of poetry. They may not be useful in real life, but they were sure fun to learn about. And there are probably a thousand other things that I should have learned, but hey, I've got forever to learn those, right?

What's something you probably should have learned in college?

Newborn Photos.

 

 

My friend Megan did the most wonderful job capturing my tiny little babe and what those first days after the hospital were like. I will truly treasure these pictures forever...just seeing them makes my heart so happy!

These were taken weeks ago, but even putting this post together now felt so strange...looking at these and thinking, this is my life? It's still so crazy to me that this tiny little human belongs to us. We're having so much fun, it doesn't even feel real sometimes. I can say for sure though, I'm soaking up every single minute. It's an exhausting, magical, frustrating, incredibly fun time of life, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

Pay Attention to The Little Joys.

I have watched The Princess Diaries entirely too much in my lifetime. I haven't seen in it years, but thanks to middle school, I could probably still quote the entire thing.

There's a scene in the movie where they're singing a song at choir practice: "Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day." And lately, as silly as it is and as long as it's been since I've seen the movie, that song has been popping into my head. When something good happens, I hear Mia's rebel best friend singing, "Save it for a rainy day." 

Life is so full of little joys. A hot cup of coffee, making it to work on time even though you left the house late, a stranger giving you a compliment, the perfect combination of sunshine and a good breeze. I think what happens most of the time is that these things make us happy for just a second or two, and then we forget all about them. We smile in the moment, but then we move on, leaving whatever happy thing happened in that moment.

I've been trying to pay more attention to the little joys, because heaven knows I certainly pay enough attention to the things that go wrong.

So when good things happen-an extra 15 minutes of sleep or a really pretty sunset or an unexpectedly good movie turns into a new favorite-that song plays in my head, and I think about saving all of those happy little moments.

Because we all know that when a string of bad little things happen, we can name each and every incident of bad luck. So let's do the same with the good luck days, too. The little joys, the slices of happy that make life good. Catch them and hold onto them. Save them for a rainy day.

Book Page Bouquet Part One: Paper Rose DIY

Whenever I share pictures from my wedding, I always get emails asking about my bridesmaid's bouquets. 

I love books and wanted to incorporate them into as many ways as possible in the wedding, and these were a great way to do that. Plus, it saved roughly $1,100 on flowers. Winning. 

My mom and I made them-we watched a bunch of different paper flower tutorials and kind of combined them all together to make these. I think they turned out so great, and I love that so many of my bridesmaids still have their bouquets.

If you want to make your own (you do, because paper roses made from your favorite book are just adorable), here's how to do it!

You will need: 

-a book

-scissors

-a hot glue gun

Optional for a bouquet: 

-floral stems

-ribbon

 First, rip some pages out of a book. Yes, it will hurt your book-lover's heart. But it's okay. You can do it.

 Take the top right corner of the page and fold it over to meet the other side of the page, like this:

Cut off the page below the fold, leaving a triangle. 

 Fold the triangle over on itself, making a smaller triangle....

...and then again one more time, so you end up with this: 

 Holding the triangle point down, cut the top into a rounded shape, like an ice-cream cone.

Or like a petal, I guess. But ice cream cone just sounds more fun.

 Unfold your ice cream cone, and you have your flower! Now, in order to make these look like a rose, you need to curl the edges of the petals with something. I used a crochet hook here, but I've also used a pen and a wooden skewer. Whatever you have laying around will work, just curl the petals under, like this:

 When you're done, your flower should look something similar to this. Make three of these flower pieces. 

What you're going to do now is cut some smaller petals. Cut one petal from one flower, two from the next flower, and three from the next flower. Like this: 

 You should now have six pieces, like these:

Using a glue gun, glue the flowers "back together" so that there is no gap in them.

When you get to the single petal, just roll in up in a loose tube. Your six pieces should now look like this:

Now onto the fun part: making the rose!

The flower with the most petals is your base. If you're going to be making a bouquet, take the stem and poke it through the base flower. If you're just making roses without stems, skip this step.

 Secure it with a bit of hot glue. It doesn't have to be perfectly centered, as you can bend the stem whichever way you need it to go later.

Next, take the second-biggest flower (the one you cut two petals from) and cut a little bit off of the bottom so it fits nicely into the base flower. 

Using hot glue, lay this flower over the base flower.

 Try to line the flowers up in such a way that one flower's petals covers the flower's below its gaps.

Continue doing this with all of the pieces, in order from biggest to smallest. The smaller the piece, the more you might need to cut off from the bottom of the flower to make it fit the way you want it to.

 The final step is putting the single petal you rolled up right in the middle! If you have a stem in the flower, use this piece to cover it up.

 And that's it! These are so fun and easy to make, and can be used for so many cute things. If you have any questions or get stuck on any of the steps, just ask and I'll answer in the comments! This is one of those DIYs where it seems a bit tricky at first, but once you make one, you'll get the hang of it be able to knock tons of them out in no time.

I'll be back next week to show you how to make a bouquet out of these!