Ruffle Wreath

I try to be crafty and sometimes whatever I'm choosing to make turns out really rough, and other times it ends up super cute.  I'm happy to say that this is one of those times that I was pleased with the outcome.

Since I got married I've been trying to make lots of little changes and incorporating the letter "K" in to things in our home.

I love having a wreath on our front door.  I think it adds a little something to our porch and makes the house seem more welcoming.  I had put a mossy green wreath with an orange bow up a few months ago but I knew it was time for something more, plus it was my same one from last summer.

I came across a wreath online similar to this and I fell in love!!!!  It was super easy to make.  I'm not great a tutorials but I'll try my best so you can make one of these too! :)

What you need:

•                A wreath form (I used a 14inch)

•                Chiffon fabric: 1 yard for the wreath and 1/4 yard for the flowers.

•                Felt, one sheet

•                Buttons

•                Ribbon

•                Paint

•                The Letter of your choice

•                Tools:  Straight pins, rotary cutter and mat; sewing machine and thread; glue gun and glue sticks; paint sponge.

How to make the wreath:

1. Fold your fabric in half.  Cut chiffon into 2.5 inch wide strips.  Use more fabric for a fuller look.

2. Sew a gathering stitch (the longest straight stitch setting on your sewing machine) down the center of the fabric strips. (It doesn't have to be perfect) For the flowers, stitch along the edge of the strips. 

3. Pull the bobbin thread on one end of your strip, gathering fabric to make a ruffle.  (You can make them tight or loose.  Mine were pretty loose) Continue, until the entire strip is ruffled.  Repeat until all strips are ruffled.

4. Pin one end of a ruffled strip to the back of the wreath form.  Wrap the ruffled strip around the wreath and slightly overlap.

5. Secure the end with a straight pin, and begin a new ruffle right where you left off.  Keep doing this until the whole wreath is covered!

Flowers, these are a little tricky!

Cut a 2-inch circle out of felt.  Hand-stitch the ruffled strip to the circle beginning in the middle of the circle and stitching in a spiral pattern to the outside. (This wasn't my favorite part, my first one was a little rough.)  Then sew the button to the center of the flower.

Next I took my painted letter and hot glued it on to the wreath.  I tried to get it on the wreath form but you don't want to move the ruffles too much.  Next I hot glued the flowers in to place.  I also secured them with 2 pins JUST TO BE SAFE since It was hot glued to the chiffon.

Then, cut a long piece of ribbon, tie it in a bow, hang it on your door and TA-DA....a summer-time front door! :)

So now my front porch is colorful and ready for a warm and sunny summer!!!

I think a colorful pillow may be in the works for the bench......we'll see! :)

PEPPERONI PIZZA PUFFS

I'm slowing getting better at cooking. The truth is I don't really enjoy it. I'd much rather make a cake or something fun like that!


Well, I'm currently ADDICTED to Pinterest...if you're not on there, you should be! Anyways, I saw these yummy Pizza muffins and thought they looked good and were easy to make so I made them last night for dinner. They were SO good! It tasted just like eating a pepperoni pizza, only healthier! We paired it with a salad and it was a perfect meal!

Here's what mine looked like

This is what was on the website

They are SO easy to make!!

• 3/4 cup flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
• pinch of salt (my addition, optional)
• pinch of red pepper flakes (my addition, optional)
• 3/4 cup whole milk (I just used low fat)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup cubed pepperoni (I may do more next time)
• 1/2 cup store-bought pizza sauce

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 24-cup mini-muffin pan. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, Italian seasoning, salt and red pepper flakes (if using) ; whisk in the milk and egg. Stir in the mozzarella, Parmesan and pepperoni; let stand for 10 minutes.


2. Stir the batter and divide among the mini-muffin cups. Bake until puffed and golden, 20 to 25 minutes.


3. Meanwhile, microwave the pizza sauce until warmed through. Serve the puffs with the pizza sauce for dipping.


NOTE: I used the extra-large 6 muffin pan. Doing it again I'd probably only make 4 large ones, but you can make them any size you want.  You can also add a different meats other than pepperoni!

Being a Mrs.

I've been married for 3 weeks!! 21 days!!! It's crazy to me how fast the time has gone by! It's still weird to not come home and worry about wedding planning and not constantly carry a to do book around with me writing down every little thing I think of during the day. I'm still getting use to the fact that there is also a boy there when I go to bed and when I wake up.

While things are awesome we still have our little spats about where things need to go and the why can't you put foil back on the bowl arguments. I've come to terms with that fact that clothes will be left in the floor when he gets in the shower, razors will be left next to the sink, and the wrong towel will be used to wipe the dogs dirty feet.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to be a wife and to love when I want to scream, and cook when the kitchen fills with smoke but I wouldn't change one thing that I have in my life right now. God has blessed me with an amazing husband that I cannot get enough of and I'm so excited for this journey that we are on and so happy that we get to figure it out together.

Wedding pictures coming soon.

Mrs. Kessler.

Advice to My Younger Self

I saw this article on Real Simple (I ADORE Real Simple) but I just LOVED it and so I thought I would share! I definitely agree with everything she says!

ADVICE I WISH I COULD GIVE MY YOUNGER SELF
1. Stop apologizing so much.
2. Appreciate how you look right now. It’s a lot better than you think.
3. Understand that sometimes boys are just clueless. They are not being intentionally clueless to hurt your feelings.
4. One cupcake/donut/piece of candy is not really that important.
5. If you have to ask yourself whether you should have one more drink, the answer is probably no.
6. If you think everybody is looking at you, you’re wrong.
7. No matter how much you love your parents, they probably love you more.
8. Sometimes doing the right thing is embarrassing and not cool. Get over that.
9. When you are arguing with someone, yelling rarely accomplishes anything.
10. Many of the smartest people are the best listeners.
11. Waterproof mascara is not worth the hassle of taking it off.
12. Just because you hated a book at age 20 does not mean you will hate it at age 40.
13. Arguing with your boyfriend after 10 p.m. is just completely counterproductive.
14. There is no substitute for a cake made from scratch.
15. Be careful when stating your opinion because it might change tomorrow.

What would you add to this list?

What story are you telling?

GREAT book!! Check out this video!! Order you copy on Amazon today!

What story are you telling? from Rhetorik Creative on Vimeo.

Things I'm eXCitEd About!

1. I get to marry the man of my dreams in 65 days! 65! I can't believe how fast the last few months have gone by! It seems like just yesterday he put a ring on my finger!

2. Since I'm getting married in 65 days that means SO many out of state friends and family members are coming in to town. I'm SO excited to see each of them!

3. I get to begin having all of my fun showers in 2 weeks!

4. I'm going to redo my guest bedroom! Add bright green walls and some damask pattern! LOVE :)

5. Spring time is coming soon!! That means shorts and flip flops ALL the time!

6. In 66 days I'll be laying on the beach in Mexico!

Engagements!

My friend Michelle Meisner is one of THE BEST photographers!!!

She is so incredibly talented!!!

She took our engagement pictures last weekend before the storm hit!

You can see her sneak peak on her blog! :)

Life Lately.

It seems are though I completely fell off of the blog scene when I got engaged...my mind just became interested in other things! I got back on today and realized how much I love reading and learning about people and things that are important in their life!

Lately you'd think my life would be consumed with wedding things but it really isn't at all. Sure I think about little things every day but it's not controlling my thoughts and I know that I haven't done probably half of the things that I need to be doing!

I've always wanted a HUGE beautiful wedding with all the works and it's getting to that point but I really just long to be married, maybe we should have just eloped!

Brian is here full time now which means I get to see his sweet face everyday! It's been so fun coming home to him and getting to cook and eat dinner with him and take care of our new baby Millie but when 10:30 or so rolls around and we have to say goodbye it just sucks!

We only have 94 days left and I couldn't be happier!!! I'm so stinkin' ready to be Mrs. Kessler!!

Feel free to visit our wedding website!!!

I'm Engaged!!!

It's hard to believe but I've got one really fun sparkly ring on my finger. I think I'm still in shock and it's been two days!

Saturday was SUCH a surprise to me! It started out as such a normal day to me. I got up and worked about 3 hours at American Eagle, I did some Christmas shopping, I took a nap, and watched The Last Song. I had even planned to go to Buffalo Wild Wings after horse riding to see some friends that were in town!

Brian has been saying for awhile that he wanted to go out and go horseback riding together. So, he told me a couple weeks ago that one of the Pioneer managers knew a lady in Guthrie that had horses and he hooked us up to go and ride. YAY for riding horses.

So, he gets to my house about 3:00 after coming in to town from Lawton. I thought we were going to head out to Guthrie has soon as we got there but he said we weren't going to leave until close to 4:00. I thought that was kinda weird because it takes 45minutes to get out there and it was going to be getting dark. But Brian was good in all of his lies through this whole thing and told me that she wasn't going to be ready until later and he knew I wasn't going to want to ride too long since it would be getting cold.

So, I went in to change out of my sweats in to jeans and a sweater and I was going to put on what Brian had tagged long ago as my "horse riding boots" but he didn't want me to wear those just to wear my regular ones so I didn't do too much arguing. (This was because he knew I'd be mad wearing my junky ones later in the evening.)

We drove out to Guthrie to this little farm house in the middle of nowhere and got on the horses. I was on a pretty white horse with crimped hair and pink tail. We rode around for about an hour and it was hard staying together because the horses didn't want to be next to one another.

Jayla with our Horses

So I finally got to a point where I was really cold. I had put on my gloves and the hood of my jacket. The sun had set and it was getting colder outside. Brian asked if I was ready to go and I was like yeah. So we got off the horses and went to put them in this barn.

Brian was struggling trying to get this door open. I even asked if I needed to go get the lady to help him come and open it. All of a sudden he swings the door back and I see lots of twinkle lights and the horses go running in to the barn.

Then it all just happened so fast Brian was on his knee and he was saying stuff that I don't really remember and I was like "Are you Serious?" and I was in such shock that I didn't answer him right away I just kept kissing him over and over and he was like, "so it that as yes?" and I said, "Yes" so....then he was my fiance!

He's so hot!

My parents were there with my friend Larissa and they took some pictures of us and my hand was shaking! It was SO fun and I was totally surprised!

Me and Larissa!

We went back to my house for a big engagement party with all of our friends and families!

I Love these people!

I'm just so blessed to have Brian in my life. He is my best friend in the whole entire world and I cannot image a day without him!! He's moving here in February and I am so excited to start our life together!!

God has just truly blessed me and I couldn't be more thankful!!

Builder Statements

I am a part of a wonderful church! I have the privilege of working with some of the most amazing people I know! The BFC Senior High. For over 5 years I have watched a particular group of now junior girls grow in to amazing young women! I am SO ridiculously blessed to have them in my life and I feel like they challenge and make me grow maybe more than I help them to grow. My heart seriously feels with joy when I think about these girls and what they mean to me and I can't imagine my life without them!

I also get to be a part of a really great staff. People that love these kids as much as I do, that are fun to hang out with and learn from!

This last Wednesday Chris Pollock had a great lesson! He has been bringing it the last few weeks and completely nailing it!

This last week he talked about using kind words to one another and we skyped with one of his friends from St. Louis. He talked about how when a student in his youth group puts down another he stops everything he is doing and brings the 2 together and the person that put the other one down has to say 3 things they like about the persons character (Builder Statements). As our time wrapped up Chris had all of the students stand up and give each other builder statements. It was such an awesome time watching them all interact with one another.

It's amazing how sometimes it's so easy to put others down but when trying to come up with 3 positive things is so hard!

Challenge of the week: Use Builder statements to other people! It's amazing the smile you can get out of it. You'll not only make the person feel better but feel better yourself just by releasing positive vibes!