Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Jonas Brothers vs. NSYNC

Humor me if you will and allow me to do a brief comparative study of a boy band of my 14 year old sister's time (now), the Jonas Brothers, and NSYNC, from my own beloved boy band days. (Whether those days ever ended is debatable...)


Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Abby and I watched the Jonas Brothers 3D Concert Experience DVD, which I gave her for Christmas last year. This is Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas:They are rather entertaining, I must say. While their flips and tricks and random flailing are pretty cool, I sorely missed the tight choreography and dance moves that NSYNC offered. I guess the trade off is that the Jo Bros play instruments while onstage. Except for Joe, he can only play a tamborine...hence, no guitar in the picture above.

Meanwhile, about a decade ago, these cuties were making it big:

Chris, Lance, Justin, JC and Joey. I guess JC got the shiny denim memo instead of the black shirt memo. Ah, the maroon Joey hair phase, the JT fro phase and...is that Lance's own hand or is Chris reaching across trying to hug him? Might be, since the media claims Lance is now gay, though I will not acknowledge that. He has a bass voice, tried to go into space and is my favorite. He can't be gay! (I might have once had chapstick with Lance's face pictured on the tube....)

Anyway.

Here is the point of this comparative study. Abby and I are watching the DVD and the Jo Bros start singing Hello Beautiful. Suddenly they are rising into the air and end up each standing on a separate raised platform, high above the stage:



My initial reaction was not "That's cool. I wonder if they are scared up there." No. My reaction was "COPYCATS!!!" Behold NSYNC performing God Must Have Spent A Little More Time On You during the No Strings Attached tour:


They did it first! Please note that I had the No Strings Attached concert on VHS. That's right. I think it has sadly gone to the world of Lost In One of My Parents Last Three Moves. Very sad....not that I have a VCR to even play it if I still had it... At any rate, I do not condemn the Jonas Brothers for stealing NSYNC's raised platform idea. I rather appreciate the shout out to their predecessors.
Just in case anyone still doubts my eternal dedication to NSYNC, this is the CD I'm currently jamming to in my car these days:

:-)

Monday, November 29, 2010

On Display

We spent Thanksgiving in Fredericksburg with my family and I made a stop at Beulah's on Friday to drop off some more hats I had made. This is in the front window of the store:


Those are my hats!! In a storefront display on Fredericksburg Main Street with Beulah's price tags on them! I was so excited. Customers were probably like "why is that girl taking pictures of the tree in the window??" Because I MADE those, that's why! :-)

Here is a close up of a Santa hat. Sorry it looks like it is glowing, I couldn't figure out how to make my camera not do that.

I hope everyone had a splendid Thanksgiving. I sure did. Good time with family, got to relax and got several hats done. Onward to Christmas!

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A Conventional Weekend

This past Thursday through Monday, Trent and I and Sonny, another youth volunteer at our church, were in Nashville, TN (yeehaw!) for the National Youth Workers Convention. It was super. Here was my first clue that I liked these convention planning people:


Scheduled nap time? My kind of convention. I did not actually take advantage of this repeatedly scheduled block but did snooze on a bench in the convention center at one point with my backpack for a pillow and my hoodie for a blanket. (I suppose it wasn't a hoodie because it had no hood) There were several others around doing the same thing. Must have looked like a bunch of homeless youth workers.

Anyway.

I say the convention was great, meaning I got lots of good information and training, bought a book on ministering to teenage girls in this crazy world, enjoyed the speakers, enjoyed the entertainment, really enjoyed the worship (more on that later). I enjoyed rehashing stuff with Trent and Sonny at the end of the day, over delicious food.

But this convention was great for ME personally. It was a kick in the butt, a shot in the arm, whatever you want to call it. I am jazzed. I am psyched. I guess I'm on a high but I'd really like to think it will stick around. See, highschool was a really good time for me spiritually but then college happened and life happened and it kind of went away. Life happening is no excuse for losing touch with God. I settled into going through the motions outwardly but there wasn't much going on inwardly. And that's no fun. It's kind of like "what's the point?" When you see no point, it's hard to continue. I caught the point again this weekend. It's not just about me + God anymore and spiritual habits or lack thereof. I am endeavoring to invest in the lives of young people, alongside Trent and Sonny and others. What does a spiritually blah investor have to offer them? Sure I could offer some advice about friends or drama or life maybe, but that shouldn't be all. I want these kids to have a genuine hunger for God like I did in highschool. And unlike me, I want them to carry that hunger into college and beyond.

I might be making this sound like my motives are to bypass myself, to simply go through motions with a new vigor so that I can be a good example. I'm not neglecting myself and what this new jazziness can jumpstart for me spiritually. It would be kind of stupid and misleading to play the part of spiritual mentor and put on a face of knowledge and connectedness when you are actually spiritually blah and just putting on a show. I'm hoping to awaken those places from (wow) 7 years ago and genuinely grow and learn. And then if I am able to pass that along in some positive way to others, super. In the meantime, I'll keep working on myself.

Maybe the spiritually blah place is a good place to mentor from too. Maybe it's a place to realize "let's be spiritually blah together, but let's try to fix that...together." It's a vulnerable place, a place where you have to show a youth that you really don't know all the answers and don't have it all together. But it's a chance to show that you are willing and wanting to grow alongside them. How cool would that be? Start from the ground up and figure stuff out together. I bet a youth would be more willing to meet you in that place that try to track with an "I know all the answers" attitude. Well hurrah, cuz I'm starting from the bottom again and working my way through this stuff afresh. I'm eager to see who wants to come with me.

I realize my blog just took a turn to the serious and I am airing some laundry (though not necessarily dirty), but I hope people are ok with that. Hey, it's my blog. I can mix pictures of cute hats with thoughts on God and ministry if I want to! If you are ok with it, feel free to comment with your thoughts and stay tuned for some more of my thoughts and pictures from this past weekend including: the power of powerful worship, community in a common purpose, being a husband and wife team in this ministry, and why I like Nashville.

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving everyone!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Pumpkins

You are probably thinking "Oh my gosh, is she done posting YET?" Almost. Last one for today.


I got the idea one day last month to knit a pumpkin. So I did:



I then decided to get mellow-er colored yarn so it would look more like an actual pumpkin and leave the bottom open to that it would be a hat:


I then grew/knitted a patch of pumpkin hats to send to Beulah's in Fredericksburg:


I figured out how to do this kind of late in the season so pumpkin time is already past, but maybe I will have some orders for pumpkin hats next year. :-)

Monday, November 15, 2010

Retreat! Retreat!

You know you need to make more time in your busy life for retreats when it takes you over a week to post pictures and blog about the retreat you did manage to make time for... Two weekends ago, I went to Ragle's Retreat with a lovely group of ladies. I knitted, Tricia made beaded snowflakes, Angela scrapbooked, Kristin digitally scrapbooked and Chrystal did a bit of everything. We moved from the craft tables, to the dining table and back from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. We watched seven chick flicks: You've Got Mail, The Proposal, The Devil Wears Prada, When Harry Met Sally, 13 Going on 30, 27 Dresses and Two Weeks Notice. Turns out New York City is a good setting for chick flicks...

Here was my spot for the weekend, equipped with all my tools (I'll do an entry later on the how-to of my hat making).

You say cup holder...

I say yarn holder!

Everyone hard at work. Current movie: You've Got Mail

Before...

After...

Redefining the term "hat box".

Our group. Kristin, me, Angela, Chrystal, Tricia.

I finished three Santa hats that I had started before this weekend and made 12 other hats. Besides hats and movies, there was good conversation, laughter, sopapilla cheesecake, other delicious meals and snacks, a little bit of sleep and overall a lot of fun! Thanks ladies for a great time. Let's do it again soon!

Friday, November 5, 2010

Purpose

You may recall a while back when I was sad that my blog was rather purposeless. Well I will still have some purposeless entries in here, but I am also going to add the purpose of blogging about my crafting adventures. I thought about starting a separate blog for it but figured, what the heck, I'll just combine them.

My current crafting adventure is hats. Hats, hats and more hats. Still working hard to fill orders and I'm getting closer to feeling like I'm on top of them. This crafting retreat weekend could not be more perfectly timed. Some lovely ladies and I are going to Ragle's Retreat this weekend to knit, bead, scrapbook, chat, eat and have a good time. My goal is to finish at least 16 hats this weekend, which I think I can do. At about an hour a piece, we shall see. I'll have basically from 1:00 today until about 3:00 Sunday (that includes knitting in the car on the way there and back) so that should be plenty of time. Just depends on if I stay focused and if my hands don't start hurting like they tend to do after large chunks of knitting time. I am bringing our laptop to have digital scrapbooking as a back up option for a change of pace/rest for hands. Overall, I am SO excited about this weekend and ready to get away and get a lot of hats done!

So, anyway, I'll start putting some more pictures of hats on this blog. I have had several people interested in seeing pictures of them that I was not friends with on facebook, which is currently my only place they are displayed. So I want to be able to send people here to see pictures as well, since it is more easily accessible. In the meantime, here are some pictures of happy hat customers!

Savannah in her TCU hat


Patrick and Amanda, Sic Em Bears!

Jessie's niece, little Bear


Mary Katherine, lookin' snazzy and stayin' warm


MK's friend's baby boy in his hunting hat

Many thanks to those who have purchased any of my hats so far. I really appreciate your interest in my work. If you have bought a hat from me and have taken a picture while wearing it, please send it to me! I would love to post more happy hat customer pics!