Monday Musings: Getting Crafty

I usually see cute do-it-yourself craft projects on Pinterest and think, "I should make that!" I then pin it and save it for a rainy day. Rarely do I get around to actually making any of these adorable things. But this past weekend I decided to give a fairly simple looking idea a shot. It's a great way to store and display your favorite headbands. Mine usually get thrown in a box, and I loved this idea!

Source: makeitmyown.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

The source is Lyssa Beth blog. She has lots of fun DIY ideas!  

So,  here's my result - it was so easy. All you need is a large oatmeal canister, a candle holder, scrapbook paper and glue. My total cost was $3. And I made some delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with the oatmeal :) 

Apply glue to the back side of the scrapbook paper (a sponge paint brush works well) and then wrap around the canister. I used a hot glue gun to attach the candle holder ($0.05 at a rummage sale down the street) to the bottom of the canister. I had this cute vintage french themed scrapbook paper already. This took me all of 10 minutes to do, and voila!

Monday Musings: A picture is worth a thousand words... or a billion dollars.

I was pretty shocked to read the news today that Mark Zuckerburg announced that Facebook purchased the photo sharing app Instagram for $1 billion. WOW! This is a small company with 13 employees that made no profit from the app that's available for iPhone and Android. It has quickly grown to 30 million users. I recently got an iPhone last month and had heard the buzz about Instagram. So I downloaded the app and instantly (no pun intended) loved it! It's a place to create beautiful photos with many choices of filters that turn an ordinary photo into something unique. Here's a few that I've taken around San Diego recently. 

My neighborhood - the Little Italy Farmer's Market

Sunset on La Jolla Shores after Happy Hour

View from lunch on La Jolla Shores

Seagull taking off - San Diego Harbor

A walk along the Harbor on Easter Sunday

So, Facebook proved once again that they are taking over the world... I just hope they don't change Instagram too much. It's a great place to get to look beautiful photos without all of the ads and clutter of Facebook. So not only are pictures worth a thousand words, they're worth a billion dollars. 

Follow me on Instagram at @jessabell23. 

~Jess

Monday Musings: Invisible Children and the KONY 2012 campaign

Unless you've been living under rock and don't use social media, you've probably heard about the KONY 2012 video by Invisible Children. It was posted last Tuesday, and instantly went viral. The 30 minute film whose primary goal is to raise awareness about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony and make him a household name, has gotten over 74 million views on YouTube. With such publicity comes speculation and questions. Don't believe everything you hear that is critiquing the non-profit. Invisible Children responded with a very well written piece on their website, I suggest reading it. 

When I first heard about the LRA and Joseph Kony I was mortified at this injustice and treatment of tens of thousands of Ugandan children. For more than two decades, Joseph Kony’s tactics of war have been brutal. Kony and the LRA have abducted more than 30,000 children in northern Uganda. He has forced children to kill their parents or siblings. He abducted girls to be sex slaves for his officers. At the height of the conflict in Uganda, children “night commuted” to avoid abduction. Every evening they would leave their homes and walk miles to the city centers. Hundreds of children would sleep in school houses, churches, or bus depots to avoid abduction by the LRA. The LRA left Uganda for good in 2006 when the Juba Peace Talks began. Since 2008, they have continued their attacks in the border regions of northeastern Congo, South Sudan, and Central African Republic.

Invisible Children began after a group of Southern Californian students went to Uganda in 2003 to film the conflict. What they discovered was the catalyst for forming the non-profit. Their mission as stated on their website is to stop LRA violence and support the war-affected communities in East and Central Africa. The three ways they achieve this mission are:

1) Make the world aware of the LRA. This includes making documentary films and touring them around the world so that they are seen for free by millions of people.
2) Channel energy from viewers of IC films into large-scale advocacy campaigns to stop the LRA and protect civilians.
3) Operate programs on the ground in LRA-affected areas that provide protection, rehabilitation and development assistance.

I had the great pleasure of hearing the founders of Invisible Children speak at the 2010 Classy Awards in San Diego, which honors achievements by non-profits. They won the nationwide award for Most Effect Awareness Campaign. You can read my post about the night here. I went up to one of the guys afterwards, and told them about Ruined, a play my theatre had coming up about abuse of women in the Congo. I told them that we'd love to have them attend the Opening Night. Then our fabulous marketing team got them involved as community partners for the play and one performance helped raise money for Invisible Children. I had the pleasure of meeting the Co-founder and Filmmaker Jason Russell and Chief Operations Officer Chris Carver at the Opening Night of Ruined. Since then I've been a huge fan of this non-profit and what they stand for. If you have not watched the video, GO WATCH IT NOW! It will open your eyes and definitely make them tear up. 

Jason Russell (left) and Chris Carver (right) at the Ruined Opening Night party.

Photo by Daniel Norwood Photography

Monday Musings: Time Flies

I will try to make this a regular Monday post, with my musings for the day. 

Musing: noun
1. Contemplation; meditation.
2. A product of contemplation; a thought. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about how fast time goes by. My 10 year high school reunion will be this fall. (How did that happen?) I'm helping to plan it, and it's so crazy to think I was in high school a decade ago! I've stayed close with many of my high school friends, and I am so lucky to have friends like them that have been a part of my life for so long. I've now been to many of their weddings and some have even had babies. It doesn't seem like that long ago we were gossiping about boys and picking out dresses for the Prom.

Me and my best girlfriends at Senior Prom (I'm the short one on the far left.)

I'm really excited to see my friends in October and catch up with people that I haven't seen since graduation. Being from a small town, I see a lot of childhood friends when I'm home for the holidays. But as we've gotten older and moved further away, I see less and less of them. But no matter how long it's been, we always catch up where we left off. That's the wonderful thing about old friends.

My brother Nick is graduating from Clemson, my alma mater, in a few monthes. It's very hard to believe it's been 6 years since my college graduation. I'm flying back to South Carolina in May for the big event. It will be kind of surreal to see him walk across the same stage I crossed, what doesn't seem that long ago. It's been so fun to see him have many of the same college experiences that I had - from football games, campus ministry, a Spring Break trip to Germany, to the same college bars. And now to see him graduate! I'm really lucky to have had the education and college experience that I did. And I made some lifelong friends along the way. 

And it's also hard to believe that almost two years have passed since I made the trip across country to move to San Diego. I find myself sometimes willing time to slow down. I get so caught up in the day to day, that before I know it a month has passed, then several, and then a whole year. Time is a precious thing and there's never enough of it. But it's important to be thankful for the time we do have and try to make it count as much as possible. I find that I all too often say that I'll get around to doing things. So, my resolution this year is to actually get around to them! There's no time like the present.


I find sometimes that a song, a picture or conversation can make those old times feel like they just happened. This is one of my favorite songs, I Go Back by Kenny Chesney. 

What are some of your favorite high school or college memories?