Goldie Chucks

I love Converse sneakers. I have always had them in different colors and I don't get rid of them till they are gross. You can wear them with jeans, dresses, shorts, with or without socks (hence the grossness), and they will never ever go out of style. Finito -- I won't argue that point.
In the last 25 years that I have been wearing them I have painted, written and now studded them with little gold studs.

I bought the studs on Ebay and it cost me $7 dollars for 50 studs so it wasn't too expensive. I didn't have a tool or a knife for this project so I pushed them through the canvas with my fingers and bent back the prongs with a spoon. It worked well, but my fingers hurt after 50 studs.

I probably could have added more studs but I didn't have any so I will either leave them like this or just eventually add more studs.
Update: After I was so proud of my Chucks, I wore them everywhere, including to the beach. I totally ruined the little gold studs on them and now have to redo them. Hopefully it will cover up the damage that I did.

 

Now I have to buy a new pair of Converse. 

Note to self: Don't get saltwater on white chucks with fake gold studs on them.

A Bathing suit made me hate myself

I have to be honest. I started this post completely different. and I even saved it so I could read it again and see how stupid I was to even think the thoughts that I had.
I am 5'1" and I weigh 123 pounds after three children, the last one at age 36.
I have close to 20 scars all over my body and skin pigmentation problems on my face and back so that I can't even tan right without looking like a dalmatian.
I try so hard not to hate myself for not looking like I did when I was 20. What? Nobody looks like they are 20 when they are close to 40, unless you had work done or you are a celebrity and your body is your money-maker. Why are women so hard on themselves?
I bought a bathing suit today and I went home and tried it on and have been depressed ever since. I have been walking around the house, moping and starving because I saw my body in a bathing suit.
I eat clean and I work out, but not 7 days a week, and I don't kill myself. I am healthy but not perfect like I would like to be.
I am healthy, for goodness sakes! That is worth way more than a skinny ass, and here I am complaining about how imperfect I am.
I am going to still work out and eat clean because it helps with my skin issues, but I am going to really try not to be so down on myself and be more grateful. I think this is the greatest offense to myself, that I am ungrateful to my body for looking the way it does.
If I was my body, I would tell myself to f*** off and never speak to me again.

Clean Granola in the Crockpot

I was doing really well eating clean for about 2 months and then fell off the wagon, gained 3 pounds, but now I am back in the saddle. I was so\ick of eating eggs everyday, but I was also too lazy to really look for something different until I stumbled across a post  on Bless this mess please about making your own granola. I changed some of the ingredients and I also made it in the crockpot.

Recipe
3 cups coarse oats
3 cups soft oats
3/4 cup almond flour
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 cup honey
2 tbsp Cinnamon
1 pinch ofsalt
2 tbsp vanilla
1/2-1 cup of water
1 cup coconut
optional are dried berries or nuts

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Melt the oil, mix together with honey and water and add to dry mixture.

Stir it until everything is wet and pretty sticky.
Pour into ungreased crockpot and put a spoon under the lid so the moisture can escape.

 

Set on low for 4-5 hours, depending on your Crockpot, stirring every 30 minutes. This step is very important because it will burn if you do not stir as instructed; in the last hour add the berries or nuts

Store it in air tight container and enjoy.

Notes:
My house smelled amazing while this was cooking and the taste is really awesome! I love it even though I did not add the cranberries, which as it turns out, I probably should have.

Soundtrack Saturday

I love music. It can make my mood extra fun or it can make me ugly, even cry in my car, but either way I need my tunes. I have a very eclectic taste in music and I don't really dislike any music except for trash metal -- that shit makes me mean.
I am always looking for new artists and I love that now itunes has radio, where I can listen to the whole song before I buy it.

This week I found several things that I like.
Sam Smith is, in my opinion, a mixture of Jimmy Sommerfield and James Morrison. I love this song and I am really looking forward to the whole album.
Ok, I loved this movie to pieces because it's Dr. Seuss but this is such a great song to listen to loud and just grab the kids and have a dance party in the kitchen. I really like Ester Dean's voice and she was great in Pitch Perfect, which is an awesome soundtrack.


Coldplay has always been one of my favorite feel-good bands and one of the things on my bucket list is to see them live. One of the best performances was the tribute to the Beastie Boys; I loved it!
. The first time I heard Audra Mae was on the show "Sons of Anarchy", when she sang an acapella version of "Forever Young"; I have been hooked ever since. Justin Timberlake can do no wrong. I am having issues on how this is being displayed on the blog, so I hope you can listen to these and I hope you like them.

Tie Dye fail

So, I made a dress from 2 shirts following this tutorial.

The dress came together pretty quick, and I was happy with it but then I decided to tie dye it. That was a huge mistake because I ruined it, and now the only place I can wear it is at home.

 

This is what it looked like after I bleached it. It was so horrible that I just left it hanging on the fence all night.

 

This is after I dyed it black and it still looks horrible. I hate it so much that I would like to set it on fire, but I will probably just wear it to clean. 

The tutorial is awesome so I will definitely make it again but I won't try to color it or bleach it.

Sometimes things go wrong and sometimes you end up with a fugly dress that you can only wear around house.

Barefoot sandals

When you look at cool stuff on pinterest the first thing you think is, "I could totally do that!" but the truth is, not everything is worth doing yourself.
I found these amazing barefoot sandals on Etsy but they are $75 and up.  I thought for sure that I could make something comparable for way less money, but after last night, I now see that they are a ton of work and maybe $75$ isn't as overpriced as I thought.

  

It took hours to get these little pearls on my string and then I ended up changing everything!  But now that they are done, I am sure they will be nice with my sandals or even ballerinas.

If you want a lot of beading, these are a lot of work.  But,  even just a little crocheted flower would be cute.

These are perfect for the Boho/Ethno look.

Move your butt

So I decided to join a challenge to move more for the next 2 months and be a little more accountable to myself for actually doing something.

Click on the pretty picture and it will take you to one of the blogs that is hosting.

There are four blogs that are hosting this challenge but my favorite is the  The Freckled fox; you receive an excel spreadsheet that helps you keep track of your minutes. The cool thing is that by walking today for an hour, I actually took care of my minutes for today and tomorrow. The challenge starts on April 1st and goes to May 31st and comes to 30 minutes a day.  It doesn't matter what you do, be it walking or a workout dvd or whatever you want to do. I walked for an hour today, but I will probably exercise because I have a goal that I am trying to reach (but that is my issue).

I think this is a great challenge because there is no pressure whatsoever to keep up; you just go at your own pace and do what you can.