Wrapping it up neatly with a bow

Not really, but we'll pretend. :)

Right now, I am sitting in a slowly-getting-packed-up apartment-style dorm. My walls are barren. . . My television has moved to its new home . . . My clothes are packed away.

It feels like the end of an era for me so I'm feeling sentimental.

This was my third year of living on-campus and my second year being on housing staff. I've lived in my residence hall for the last two years and today I'm packing it away for good. I wanted to continue my Assistant Resident Director job next year, but life gets in the way.

I had decided that my blood family was more important than my housing staff family.

I have a great relationship with my "boss" - the Resident Director of my hall, and I'm going to miss our stupid meeting that always end up going extremely off-topic.

As much as residents can be stupid and do less-than-appropriate things, it's going to be weird not having hall-chaos around me all the time.

Some of my best friends live in this Hall with me. I could walk up a few flights of stairs and have a shoulder to lean on when life got too tough or I needed to rant and get some problems off of my chest.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm excited to move in with my Big Sis and little niece, LT, and I won't forget the best roomie ever - my brother-in-law. But I've always loved living on campus. The energy of the Halls is infectious and when residents come up to me and feel like the Hall is a big family, it makes me smile and love this job.

But now is the time for change. I need to be able to get away and help my mom on my days off from work and not worry about duty hours. I called my mother as I was waiting to take a final this morning and started to cry thinking about how she is living alone and dealing with not being able to peel a cold orange because of the crazy drugs she has to be on for treatment. I told her that the pain she is feeling is good pain - it means she's going to get better - and I know I said it more for me than for her.

This is the first summer I'm spending away from my home town and away from my mother. Now change and growth is important, but it's still a weird feeling for me. It also feels like horrible timing considering my mom's cancer diagnosis but she understands that I can't move back and she doesn't really have room for me in her two-bedroom apartment.

Truer now more than ever

This summer is going to be a big change for me, but it is good change.

That's all for now,

Kelsey Jean

"There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction." Winston Churchill

Change - with a capital "C"

It's been a long time. I know, it's terrible. I failed at my inital goal of a couple of posts a week. 

I won't try to make excuses but my life has been chock full of Changes. A lot of changes. 

Shortly before my last post, my Dad passed away. He had a long battle with alcoholism and his body just shut down. My family has been dealing with a lot since this all happened so I didn't know how to write this post. I was afraid of it really. I didn't want to re-open the floodgates of emotion that I have already dealt with since his passing in December. But I think I am in a peaceful place and can deal with it.

Proud Auntie with Niece LT

Happiness came after my dad's passing. My little niece was born! Little LT was born on February 27th, 2012 shortly before 8:30 in the morning. I spent all night in the hospital with my Big Sis and got to greet this gorgeous girl as she came in to the world! I am absolutely obsessed with this "little" girl. She has grown so much and she was already a big "little" girl when she was born. 

I spend as much time as possible with her - I go there after class, before work, after work. Whenever I can! I am moving in with my big sis and her hubby this summer just so I can be roomies with this sweetheart! I can't wait to be that close to her.

Me, my Mom, Big Sis and Little LT

Now, the biggest Change. My Mom was recently diagnosed with Rectal Cancer. Cancer - it's a four letter word. The woman I aspire to be, the woman I have always had in my life, the woman I could always turn to now has Cancer. She is an extremely healthy lady, so it makes no sense to us as to why she would get this diagnosis. But we need to deal with it. 

I'm not going to get into the medical side of her diagnosis, you can turn to my big sis for that, but in the future I will be sharing our experiences with it. 

Now I move on with dealing with the big Changes in my life. I hope that I will be better at posting as it is a little therapeutic for me. Writing has always been a safe place for me to share my emotions and feelings. 

For now, this is it. I hope to share more later,

Kelsey Jean

My First Plunge Into the World of Crafting

Hey Bloggosphere - 

I am following up the last post with the project I created for my sister's Christmas present.

Backstory: My sister is pregnant and expecting a girl in February. This has lead to my brother-in-law remodeling a room and creating a nursery and my sister creating the design for the room. She found this nursery   and is using it as the inspiration for the entire room.

Find it on my pinterest here.

I fell in love with the whole idea of the nursery. I love, love, love black and white with pink. Damask print is one of my favorites (I have it on all of my curtains in my apartment - that my mom and I made). 

The lamps were the distinguishing part of the nursery, but the "designer" of the nursery found them at TJ Maxx. So we knew we would never find the exact ones. This is when I got the idea to make my sister a lamp for Christmas. 

The lamps appeared to have a shiny black base with a plain shade that had pink, black and white fabric cut into circles and stacked and sewn onto the shades. This was my project.

I started by going to a secondhand shop and finding a lamp base.

I found this and I liked the simple shape. . .  but NOT the color

I wanted to paint the base black and put silver glitter on top, just to add a girly touch :)

First I had to cover up the hoop and the base so I wouldn't make a mess.

Here is the finished base after painting.

I also ran to Walmart (gross. . . I know but I don't have many options in this small town), and found as many pink, black and white fabrics as I could find. 

The next step was the most time-consuming part. I had to cut circles out of all the fabric. I started by making a circle out of hard card stock paper and placing that on the fabric and using a rotary cutter to cut out the circles. This was not working well. Luckily, when my sis and I were out shopping on Black Friday, I found a circle fabric cutter! And it was half-off :) That little cutter made my fabric-cutting go so much faster! I cut them in a few different sizes so I could stack them like this:

After stacking them I sewed them together.

Once the stacking was over, I wanted to (a) cover up the sewing and (b) add some glitz. So I found some big rhinestones to glue onto the fabric. I grabbed my glue gun for this!

Pretty!

After I had all the circles completed, all I had to do was glue the completed circles on the lamp shade. 

TA-DAH!

 (The lampshade was sitting on top of my floor lamp in my room)

I was super-excited to give it to my sister during our gift-exchange on Christmas Eve! And I do believe she loved it!

My big sis with her adorable baby-bump showing off her new lamp!

There it is! The thing I've wanted to talk about forever but I had to keep secret so I wouldn't ruin the surprise for my big sis :)

I hope you all had the merriest of Christmas' and an amazing New Year!

Kelsey Jean

A Bittersweet Christmas Eve

Hey bloggosphere -

I know it's been forever since I posted, but life has gotten in the way.

I've been working on a project for my Big Sis to give to her as her Christmas present. I won't post what it is until I give it to her (as she reads this so I don't want to give it away). But here's one part of the project.

I had to drape an area in my apartment-style dorm room so I could spray paint something and not make a huge mess.

More information regarding this project to come!


I've also been baking (in my family's Christmas tradition) and I made these delicious Andes Mint Cookies.
Head over to my pinterest to find the recipe.
They were sure easy to make
You mix eggs, oil and Devil's Food Cake mix together.
Make balls and flatten.
Cook for 6 mins.
Then put an Andes Mint on top and let it melt.

Enlist someone to help unwrap all the mints . . . Just be sure they don't eat them!

Finally smear it all around :)

They looked so delicious and hot and minty!

My boyfriend is bringing them to his work for a Christmas party and I'm bringing them to my family's Christmas Eve dinner.

I think they'll be a hit :)

Merry Christmas Eve to all!

Kelsey Jean

Doing Something for the Greater Good

A little backinfo: I am in a program at my College called Character in Leadership. You had to apply for it before your Freshman year. There are only about 22 of us in my class anymore. We have one class each semester with the same group of classmates that is dedicated to leadership. We've learned about leadership theory, ethics, and have completed one local service project.

This year we are doing a global service project. We are working with the organization My Fight. My Fight is a solution to poverty. They give out microloans to people in Honduras currently (they are working on getting in to Ethopia) by selling t-shirts. It's a small organization but I see that what they do works. They get back 98% of their microloans (learn more here about micorfinancing) which is HUGE!

The reason we chose My Fight is because they are a solution. I've worked in a nonprofit business, I had an internship at a local YWCA after my senior year of high school. So when we were researching global nonprofits, I knew the lingo that nonprofits speak. I saw that they have a very small overhead cost, and their one (yes, they only have one paid employee) doesn't make much money off of My Fight. Their operation works. I was impressed.

Our Character in Leadership class is working on raising money for My Fight. We have gone dorm room door-to-dorm room door, sold Halloween-o-grams and now My Fight is coming to our campus. More specifically; Jesse, the founder of My Fight, is coming to our campus. If you are in the Jamestown area, come to Jamestown College Campus sometime between 8 and 10pm on Monday, November 14th and see what My Fight is all about. We'll have a musical guest, coffee, and t-shirts for sale. Visit the facebook event here.

Come learn about one of my passions. If you can't join us on Monday night but want to buy a t-shirt (for every shirt that is sold in the month of November and December, an annonymous donor will double your donation! - I bought 3:)) buy a shirt online.

Hopefully you learned something new today :)

Have a great weekend,

Kelsey Jean

All it takes for evil to take over is for one person to let it pass on by.

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Hey bloggosphere -

I titled this "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" for a reason. This is new to me. I've always been a journal-er, but I've never taken the time to write a blog. So here goes!

Trying something new. They say you should always be trying to learn something new every day so I'm learning about blogging. This is my first, concrete, out-on-the-internet blog. I'm writing this with the no idea what I will end up doing with it, who I'm going to reach, or how long I'm going to keep it up. But I'm going to work my hardest to keep it up and keep it interesting (if only for me and my family).

Why am I doing this? Writing has always been a form of therapy for me. It's cheap. It's easy. And it never lets you down. I don't know how many times I have written a journal, read it, and tore it up to throw it away. Personal stuff can be hard to share and put into words, but I'm hoping this won't be a failed attempt will be successful.

Who am I to tell my story to the world? I'm not anyone most people know. I am active on my small, liberal arts college campus; so people here tend to know me. I work at a semi-popular restaurant in town, so people recognize me. I've done a few cool things in my short life. But this isn't to brag about my 21-years-short life. This is to just share my ideas, share my problems, share what I learn. Everyone has a story, and I am going to attempt to share mine.

What are you going to do with this? I am going to try to post 2 or 3 blogs a week. Now, I am a college student, so hell week and finals week I make no guarantees. Some may be short. I love to collect quotes and artifact that have some cool saying or meaning behind them, so I may just share that. My sister is pregnant with a girl, so I may post nursery ideas that we find. Or once baby girl comes, my ideas about parenting and being an auntie. I have a somewhat turbulent family life, so that may be talked about. I am sorta in charge of my Residence Hall on campus, so I may write about the hardship of being a peer to people that get into trouble. But most of all, this is my blog, so I'm going to write about whatever is interesting to me that day.

This is going to be an interesting ride, but I'm game for it if you are!
See you all next time.

Kelsey Jean

Live now. Do it now. Take risks.