Updated Wallets!

I've made several more wallets and the designs are getting more detailed! Please check them out and if you'd like, order some!

Also, read my previous blog to find out more about Cooperative Crafting :) I'm still raising money for my cousin and her mission to pay for the surgery of a young boy in Nicaragua who cannot afford the procedure.

Trebiddi's Cooperative Crafting

Hello! I've started a new project. I don't have a specific name for it just yet, but Trebiddi's Cooperative Crafting works for this post :)

I love making crafts, as this blog tells. The problem is that the more crafts I make, the more things I have in my little one bedroom apartment. My crafts need a new home, and that's why I'm selling my hand made goods from now on!

For each craft that is sold, half of the money will be given to a cause each month. That's why I'm calling it "Cooperative Crafting" :) This month I'm supporting my cousin Maddie's fundraising efforts. She had an opportunity to go on a mission trip to Nicaragua the last two summers and there she met and bonded with a young boy named Chepe. Chepe is in need of some surgery that his mother cannot afford, and Maddie has been busy in the states raising money for Chepe's procedure.

Currently, I've been keeping busy with creating duct tape wallets! Each wallet is $10, unless it is an especially difficult design :)

If you or someone you know is interested in purchasing a wallet or another craft (I will eventually be posting some more greeting cards and paintings), then email me at Trebiddi@gmail.com to figure out the details! Thank you so much for considering helping Maddie and Chepe out, and for supporting my Cooperative Crafting project!

"If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities." Luke 16:10

I used to Sew

Sewing was one of my main crafts in high school. I never used a pattern, I just found fabric I liked and then went at it. Obviously, that resulted in imperfect pieces, but it's such a rewarding craft. If I'm going to get into it again, I'm going to need to learn the specifics about how to use my sewing machine and maybe try using some patterns or creating my own. Anyway, a couple of these outfits I truly wore in real life, and those shoes were an essential part of my high school getups (accompanied, often, by fishnets and miniskirts). Enjoy!

I actually love this skirt and would have worn it if I hadn't screwed up the zipper!

It was also a tad tight...

I didn't make the shirt. How do you like those shoes!?

I wore this one to school. You see, I was up late one night with a boy watching PBS and suddenly it turned into the Vietnamese Broadcasting Channel, and a bunch of girls got onto for a concert. They were all wearing purple and one of them had on an extremely tiny mini skirt and these legging/stocking/half-pants things. I was captivated and needed to make them for myself!! Although my skirt is about 4 inches longer than hers was. 

To make my legs even longer.

I thought using these would be a nice touch.

Space Frump Dress.

The fabric was on clearance.

This was actually an angel costume for a church Christmas play.

This is the only one of all these that I used a pattern for. It was for a choir cabaret concert. 

I'm the most proud of this one, I feel like it turned out really nicely. 

Oh yeah, reeeeal nicely ;)

If for any reason you want any of these, let me know :)

Grandma's Idea

So every 4th of July weekend, my grandparents come up with some type of activity or craft for all of us grand-kids to do. We've had marshmallow shooters, bug houses, rubber band guns... and lots of others that I can't remember. Well, this summer my grandpa's activity was to bury "pirate treasure" (coins) in the yard and beach and then search for it with a metal detector he had picked up at a garage sale. This activity quickly became more of a challenge than anyone thought and the kids got bored as Grandpa and Uncle Tom took over the treasure hunt for the next hour. It was an awesome idea and activity, but the pirates just didn't want their treasure to be discovered by meddling kids, I guess.

Meanwhile, Grandma's activity for us was to decorate the rock wall lining the patio. She brought up some cheap acrylic paints and paintbrushes and shellac and a couple of books about painting animals and flowers onto rocks. Flowers and forest animals were just the beginning of our creations, and I found myself spending 7+ hours at the picnic table painting rocks that day. It was a little more popular with the girls, but the boys still contributed some neat creations. A couple of my favorite ones that I did were pretty neat because I found rocks that already had a shape of an animal in them and I just "painted them to life," so-to-speak. It was simple enough, paint the rocks, let them dry, shellac 'em and find a place for them in the wall. Enjoy :)

My cousin told me that I had drawn a picture of a horse for her a long time ago that she loved and hung on to for a long time, and so I told her I'd paint a horse rock for her. Unfortunately, this one turned out to be very fat and stubby looking, but at least you can still tell it's a horse!

This rock had a chunky, crystalline surface on the bottom left area and I thought it resembled something under water. The attempt here was to create a coral-like scene for the octopus. Also, there was no blue paint, so the water is purple, green, and white :) 

This one is by far my favorite and the one for which I am most proud! Look at the face and the shape the rock is - of course it was meant to be the face of a turtle! I think the shell rock lined up pretty nicely too, and the pebbles were easy enough to find for the feet. I used Gorilla Glue to attach the rocks, and this little baby is being kept safe inside of the cabin so it doesn't risk facing the elements lol. 

We made "name rocks" to keep at the stump. Ours is little because I branched off from the family names to get married  :)

Grandma really wanted someone to turn this particular rock into a rabbit. I wish I had a picture of all the rocks before we painted them, because I wonder how many others could have picked out the animals that we did when the rocks were "naked." So here's a white rabbit per Grandma's request. 

This bird isn't quite my favorite creation, but the lump in the middle looked like a wing to me. I don't love the proportions, but I think it works for what I had to work with. Because I wasn't able to use the whole rock, I just used black paint to accentuate the shape of the bird and camouflage the unused rock.  

This is another of  my favorites. I think someone told me to make an alligator, I don't really remember where the inspiration came from. I went on an "alligator hunt" trying to find the perfect rock, and I found two that I had to glue together. Isn't the body perfect?? Turns out it was a bigger rock and my cousin had broken it earlier, so it was an unintentional team effort. There's a third rock behind the "joint" to support the alligator. 

So it was a really fun project and it sort of reminds me of a 3D version of the scribble game since you need to find a picture, animal, object out of the raw material :)

Oh, PS... here's my husband's one and only rock creation, and a picture of a section of our rock wall:

Hope you enjoyed this crog! (craft blog haha)

The Art of Managing Headaches

Today I just feel like sharing a little part of my life. Actually, it's a big part of my life. It's a big, unfortunate, painful, frustrating part of my life, and it's an issue that I've only just begun to understand how to deal with. The issue I'm referring to is that of headaches and migraines.

This particular story line of my life began when I was about 4 years old. I don't necessarily recall a "first" headache, but my mom told me that I was at least that young when I started complaining about pain in my head. What I do remember is missing many days of school because of migraines that caused me to puke. I remember getting sick almost every time I got in the car, especially during long road trips. I missed the first day of 5th grade because of a migraine. I remember waking up at my friend Megan's house and nearly throwing up because I desperately needed food in me and my head was spinning. I remember many play dates scheduled that had to be cancelled after I went directly up to the computer room and laid on the couch with an ice pack on my neck. I remember yelling at my friends at a few of my own birthday parties telling them to be quiet because I had a migraine. I remember laying on the floor at the back of a few church services at summer camp, crying because of the pain and the noise, and the fact that no one would let me leave to lie down in my bed.

There are a lot more stories like that, but you get the point. I just accepted my headaches and didn't think anything could really be done. A few of my aunts and cousins get migraines and headaches, so it wasn't too unusual for me to have them from a family history standpoint. The thing about my headaches is that there isn't just one cause for them. Nearly anything can trigger one. If my environment is too bright, too dark, too cold, too hot, too humid, or too noisy I will get a headache. If I've had too much or not enough sugar or caffeine, not enough sleep, too much sleep, or uncomfortable sleep I will get a headache. If there is a strong odor or a specific type of odor (the combination of peanut butter sandwiches and Doritos gives me a dull ache every time) I will get a headache. If I'm standing all day long or holding my purse for a good chunk of time I will get a headache (I almost always get one after I've been to the mall). Or if I'm sitting or laying around all day I will get a headache. I had to miss out on seeing Jumanji in the theater because I got an nauseous migraine. I get motion sickness on almost all types of rides and car trips (not as badly as an adult because I don't do as many rides and I've learned how to manage myself in cars enough to avoid headaches). Altitude changes and humidity changes give me headaches.

As you can see, there are a lot of unavoidable circumstances that bring on headaches for me. As a child, I don't think there was any way to communicate these things clearly to my parents and they had no way to understand what was going on, but we all just more or less accepted that this was how life was for me. My neck has always been a contributing factor in my headaches and migraines as well - I don't remember my shoulders and neck muscles ever being relaxed. My mom would give me a massage and then tug down on my shoulders demanding me to relax! I didn't know how to, but that was definitely what I needed.

We didn't seek professional help until I was a junior in high school. The pain of my headaches combined with my fair share of emotional instability often caused me to wish for an early end to my life. Following a significant breakup, a significant loss of friendships, and a D in precalc... I more or less hit a low spot in my life and rarely smiled and often cried myself to sleep. I remember sitting at the kitchen counter in defeat, and my mom suggested that I get help for my depression. Being a Christian, I thought it would be wrong to seek help for my emotions, as God should be enough for me. Ironically, I thought it would be OK if I got help for my physical problems from a doctor... more on that later haha. So I ended up going to a neurologist and I know I started crying when he acknowledged that I was probably feeling overwhelmed and helpless. He prescribed Zoloft for falling asleep. It was taking me about two hours each night to fall asleep because of my extreme anxiety, which didn't help a lot for the headaches. After seeing the neurologist, I started seeing a biofeedback specialist, which is basically a person who teaches you how to breathe correctly until you can relax.

While the Zoloft helped me to sleep and get over my slump and the biofeedback helped me learn to relax, I wasn't cured of my headaches. My headaches had mainly been attributed to stress and heredity, and that was that for awhile. I don't remember for sure, but I'd say I was getting headaches 1-4 times a week (from childhood until college).

Advil has become nearly ineffective. Rest (and my rest I mean going to bed at 7:30) has usually been the only thing that can help me. For a time, I was getting monthly massages. The man I went to see said, "Wait... how old are you?" (20) "I've never seen knots like this on anyone younger than 40..." I have a sick sense of pride about that, mostly because it shows that I'm not lying about what's going on in my body. (Side note. Some people ask if exercise helps - I gotta admit, working out is not a strong suit of mine, but when I spent a year in Texas, we had corporate work outs 3x a week for an hour, working every muscle in our bodies, and I still was as tense as ever, migraines keeping me from my work too often). Another time, this past fall, I got another professional massage and the lady said "I've never worked on anyone for so long with so little results."

Oh, and within the past year, my headaches have gotten out of control. I'd say they've been occurring about 5 days of each week since right before we got married. My best conclusion about this is that I started birth control and it aggravated my head and I was also back on Zoloft after a 4 year break. I decided that I needed to go off of birth control so that I could get some health points back (lol) and it helped a little bit - it took the edge off of the headaches, but the frequency was still as high as ever. I thought maybe I had sleep apnea since I wake up feeling sore and headachey almost daily, and I often hold my breath during the day. In fact, it's almost guaranteed I'll get a headache when I'm taking tests in school because I'm concentrating and holding my breath for as long as I can. Well, the doctor didn't think there was enough reason to believe that I had sleep apnea, but she prescribed some muscle relaxants and naproxen and some physical therapy.

Blah blah blah, there are just too many details. Basically, where I'm at now, is I'm seeing a new chiropractor, my neck is straight and has no curve, muscle relaxants are the only thing that really help anything, but I can only take them at night cuz I get too loopy otherwise. I have this contraption hanging over my door that I strap my head into and it lifts my skull up to relieve pressure, and that helps. I'm also supposed to hang my head off the edge of the couch or bed to try to regain some curvature to my neck vertebrae. OH and I'm wearing colored contacts because the eye doctor said I have large pupils and fair retinas, so too much light is coming into my eyes and causing extra pain. My headaches are less sharp and frequent, but I'm "on stand-by" a good chunk of the week. I have to use ice packs on my neck almost daily, but that helps to ease some of the pain as well.

At this point in my life, I've come to realize that headaches have been a disability and have kept me from a lot of things. I haven't done enough to fight against them, and it's time for me to do so. I firmly believe that God has a lot in store for me, and that I am capable of a lot of things, but not until I conquer my headaches. So, this time of my life is dedicated to finding some sort of solution, and I am ready to fight these suckas the best I can so that I can be a vessel worth using :)

The Birth of Suzie

Shaped the head out of a Styrofoam ball and gouged out some eyes and nose holes. Sliced off the bottom jaw and set aside. 

Carved out a place for my hand (which I later had to make some adjustments to because it shouldn't have been so open and my palm needed a place to rest). 

Cut out a space for my thumb in the bottom jaw and covered the Styrofoam part with fabric so it wasn't so scratchy on my skin. Covered the opening of the hole with cardboard to give a place for resistance for my thumb. 

Covered the Styrofoam with fabric (flannel) to keep it from being too scratchy. 

Using a glue gun, although I could have used spray adhesive, I attached the flannel to the face and head, wrapping around the edges of the jaw. 

I cut off the extra flannel from the back of the head. 

I used large googly eyes and wanted some eyelids so she didn't look too much like an alien. 

I poked some holes into the back of the eyes so I could drop some glue in there to keep the eyes from "googling." Then I glued the eyelids into place. 

Added felt eyelashes. Oh, and the nose is a small ball of Styrofoam covered in flannel. I just piled in a bunch of glue into each socket to secure the eyes and nose. 

After covering the bottom jaw with flannel, I lined it up with the top jaw and glued along the hinges to attach the mouth. 

Glued on some black felt for the inside of the mouth. 

Back of Suzie's unfinished neck. Needed a "tube" for my arm and hand to fit into. 

Got the wig at a thrift store and just glued a ribbon into her hair to make her a little less like a granny. 

Glued around the neck of an old tshirt so that she could wear clothes and have stuffing put inside without making a mess when I use her. 

"Neck tube" is inside of the tshirt. 

Finally, just sewed some hands and attached them to the sleeves of the tshirt. I stuffed the whole tshirt, but not the neck tube, and finally put her thrift store baby dress on over the lumpy stuffed tshirt. 

And there's my baby!!