Happy Initiation Day!!

It's finally initiation day and I could not be more excited for my little. She finally gets all of her Big/Little gifts too. The one that will mean the most to her today is the letter box. My mom's big made her one when she went through and then years later when I went through my big made one for me. So now I made one for my little. I just bought a wooden box and then decorated it. Since she won't get initiation letters until today, I filled it with chocolate temporarily.

Big/Little Reveal

Last night was Big/Little Reveal and this semester we did matching pajamas. I went to target and found comfy sleep shirts in blue and my pledge sister Elizabeth and I took them to California T's in Lubbock and got them embroidered for like $10. They turned out so cute and everyone really liked them. I also made matching bows for my little and I. I found premade bows at Hobby Lobby and bought red puffy paint to write our letters on them. Everything was so adorable, especially my new little! Welcome to the family!!

Alpha Chi O'Merica

More letters to enjoy! These are the letters I made for my little. To do the stars on the "A" I put down little star stickers and painted over it in a royal blue. Then I taped of the other two letters and painted red in the blank spaces. The letters were white to begin with so it worked well. Slapped on some ribbon with a bit of hot glue and bam. Alpha Chi O'Merica letters.

Lyres and Letters

It's Lyre Week!! Big/Little Reveal is tomorrow and Friday is Initiation! Instead of giving our littles their baskets tomorrow we're doing it Friday. So to get ready, I'll be posting some of the things I made for the basket until then! (And probably some after because there's quite a few).
Today I'll show you the letters I made for a friend's little. They're chevron and are super cute but took forever to make. We painted the teal color first and then we printed out a chevron pattern from the Internet. After cutting out the stripes am we placed them and taped in between in stripes. Once everything was taped down we painted orange over top of everything.

Valentines Day Picture Frame

Valentines Day is literally right around the corner, and although I will be celebrating by myself yet again, one of my best friends has herself a Valentine this year. He got her one of those Valentines teddy bears and she wanted to give him a picture frame with her favorite picture of them together. Keep in mind we are college kids with a low budget. So we went to Walmart yesterday and got a simple black picture frame which she had me decorate. I took a glittery ribbon to tie in a bow and glue down because she loves glitter and he thinks that's funny about her. And then I kept it simple with just a "happy Valentines day" at the bottom. It's simple but cute. And I can't wait to hear what he says.

Hobby Lobby already decorated for Valentines Day, Why can't I?

But really y'all, when I was in Hobby Lobby yesterday they not only had all the Valentines Day decorations out but all the ones for Easter too.
I found a the stencil for this idea online but I didn't want to pay for the stencil when I could easily free hand it. I found the wood block and ribbon at Hobby Lobby. I painted the green edge first, followed by the white surface. Then after it dried, I used pencil to draw on the design and then with extreme care painted in the lines. Finally I used ribbon from my wreath project yesterday to make it so I could hang up the wood.
It turned out really well and I'm thinking of making one for my big sis for Valentines Day.

Winter Wonder Wreaths

I'm kinda bored this week- home by myself before I go back to college. And although I'm not too excited to go back to my current dorm (community bathrooms make me want to gag) I'm super excited for my dorm next year which is more like an on campus apartment (own bedroom and I only have to share a bathroom with one other person). As there's more space for me to decorate I figured I'd get started now since I have nothing better to do. So today I made a tulle wreath for my bedroom door. All my supplies came from Hobby Lobby.
Two spools of tulle (40 yards each)
Medium sized foam wreath form
Spool of ribbon
Decorative elements (I used my Greek letters)

Two and a half hours later and wa-la. It's a little bigger than I wanted but I an always trim the tulle.
Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays!

We Three Kings

Decorating for Christmas and wrapping presents are probably my favorite parts of Christmas. This a really great decorative piece and is an easy DIY present for anyone. I made it for my dad last year, and standing up vertically, everyone kind of joked that it was probably a Red Rider bee-bee gun from A Christmas Story.

Basically I took a board of cedar, sawed it to the appropriate size and painted it red. Then I used a gold acryllic paint to do the words and figures... really you could do any words from a Christmas song. Then to finish it off, I put some holly clusters in the corners.

Merry Christmas!

Blah... Finals....

Studying for finals is such a drag. For my creative math final, we have a take home final full of proofs which all require a lot of thought. So in boredom, while I think about how to do these proofs I've been making snowflakes. Yes I'm a child. But some of them have gotten quite intricate and I've made a ton. I might be going crazy.

Paddle Exchange

For the last chapter of the semester today, all the littles have our bigs the paddles we had made during the semester at the local sorority store, Paddle Tramps. I think my big really liked it.

Mom's Weekend: Day 1

So this weekend, our Alpha Chi chapter hosted a Mom's weekend. So yesterday my mom flew in and we got to hang out basically all day. Then last night we all went up to the lodge for a Pajama Party. Everyone got matching Mom and Me pajamas and we had several team games we played.

My favorite game was decorating a pair of cupcakes so they had the same theme (years of watching my dad decorate cakes probably explains why it was my favorite). This is what my mom and I came up with.

Can't Catch Me...

I went to a Christmas party at a Cru staff members house last night. Of all the fun activities they had planned for us, I think decorating gingerbread men had to be my favorite. I even made a whole family. And the only supplies needed are the gingerbread people (obviously), a couple tubes of icing in different colors (I just used red and green in the holiday spirit) and some sprinkles (preferably Christmas as well).

Love me some home cooking

The best thing of coming home for Thanksgiving is the home cooked food made to my liking because I've been away all semester. And I'm not talking about the Thanksgiving dinner, because frankly I don't like Thanksgiving type foods including turkey. No for breakfast this morning my dad made a cinnamon roll ring. Absolutely delicious.

Best Big Ever

Big-Little Reveal took place tonight, and I could not have been blessed with a better big sis! Love her so much!
Basically what happened was, we were all at the lodge for an Alpha Chi workshop, and after it was over they kept the new member class up in the chapter room while they put boxes with our names on it and then the bigs hid outside in our front yard to surprise us, since all that was in the box was a  t-shirt and instructions on what to do. Mine also had an old school kodak disposable camera. Super cute!
I put on my shirt and went out and even though I was pretty sure about who my big was (and I was exactly right) I was still shocked and super excited to see her in a matching t-shirt. Legit didn't even care about the basket, I was just more excited about my new family. Although the basket didn't hurt :) And my big spend a lot of time and effort on it. Take a look.

Lap Desk Complete

This is a project I have been working on since before I left for college, but now that I have my letters, I was finally able to complete my lap desk. I bought the actual thing at Michael's along with the ribbon you see. When I got it home I hot glued the ribbon on and ruffled it, so to speak. Then with sharpie I wrote my name and decorated a little. I had the Double -T sticker all ready, and I got the Alpha Chi Omega sticker in my welcome bag at Bid Day.

All the Best Girls Wear Lyres and Pearls

I had sooooo much fun at Bid Day yesterday! I opened my bid card and was literally soooo excited, because there's only one way to go and that's A Chi O!! When we got to the house, we got our Bid Day tees and a bunch of other AXO goodies.

Dorm sweet dorm

Well it's been a week since I arrived in Lubbock and almost a week since moving in. I've been so busy with rush that I haven't had time for much else. Today is bid day so I am sitting in my dorm room waiting with so much excitement to go get my bid and go to the house. But now I have time to upload pictures of my dorm room.

I Found the Dress! Now to Find the Man...

I was watching Randy to the Rescue last night on TLC, and one thing led to another, and I found my self wedding dress shopping in no time. This is actually quite a dangerous habit as it seems because I found the perfect dress, and yet I'm not even dating (flirting a little, but still...). This dress has absolutely everything I was looking for. Now everything could change by the time I'm actually engaged, but currently I want:
- a lace dress
-sweetheart neckline
-button down back
-diamond cut out on the back
-little to no ribbon or crystal embellishment
I'm a bit picky, but I also know what I would be comfortable with and what would look good on my body type. So, my dress is the Bernadette by Maggie Sottero.

The Lunch of Aliens

As college approaches, my days as a nanny wind down, so I'm making every bit count. I started introducing the kids to new food, and by that I mean mayonnaise and mustard. They were excited to try mustard when I made hot dogs, but they didn't want it on their hot dogs in case they didn't like it. So, I pulled out one of the oldest tricks I know - Alien Food! My uncle used to do this with us when we were little to make dinner time more fun, and I remembered how much I use to love that so I tried it out on these kiddos. Expected Response Achieved! I started out with a regular old hot dog (actually four, but hey...) and then cut them into rounds like you might do for a baby. Arrange the rounds into a smiley face with the ends of the hot dogs for the eyes and you have the basis for this creation.

Next, I knew the kids all liked ketchup, so I was safe to use that for pupils on the eyes. This is the only time the condiment ever touched the food.

Here's the really fun part - decorating the rest of the alien. Because the kids had never tried mustard before and I had no idea if they would like it, I opted for mustard to be the least used condiment. Thus I used it for the lines of the antennas.

I capped off each antennas with a blob of ketchup, and there you have it. Alien hot dogs.

Happy Friday!!

Dorm Decor

I was at Target, looking for dorm stuff and I happened across a cute white board to hang on our dorm door that matched our color scheme. I bought it and took it home, and instead of putting pictures in it, I used blue and green stickers I found in the dollar section at Target to spell our names and accessorized with cute little bows. My roomie loves it and so do I!