I took advantage of this time being home for the holidays to condense and get rid of clothing and knick knacks. I own way too much stuff which is why it was so hard to move out. I didn't know what to bring and was too attached to everything I own. Moving away from home taught me to be minimal and clutter-free and I now feel comfortable getting rid of long time belongings.

If you told me to get rid of this bag a few months ago, I would have said hell no!

This bag was the first bag, and if I recall correctly, the first item I owned that I altered. When I was young, I mostly made clothes for my Barbies and Babysitters Club dolls. Never have I felt encouraged to alter my clothes. Took me some time after puberty to start my rebellion phase and customize my own things.

In seventh grade, I no longer wore this rose shirt and thought it would look cool combined with this stripe fabric. Instead of making something for myself, I felt bored with my school bag and decorated it with this shirt and stripes.

I used this bag every single day for I think two years which would explain the worn in look, and white fabric that is no longer white. It was my favorite bag.

I apparently didn't get any sort of satisfaction of doodling on my school papers that I colored in so much of my bag as you can see. It was made of denim material so I colored in strips of the woven material.

Deep down, it makes me sad to be getting rid of things that are so dear to me, but it's also a huge relief. As long as I documented it, I'm totally fine with throwing this bag into the donation bin. It's so worn in that I doubt anyone will want it. Maybe there's another girl out there who's entering her rebellion phase looking for a cool, worn-in bag to sport to school.
But hey, it's out of my hands now. Out of sight, out of mind!

It's nice being home for the holidays.
Feels good charging myself back up to get ready to go back to Portland. After the new year, big changes are going to happen for me again which I'm looking forward to. This year has been one big roller coaster ride and I'm eager to see where life's going to bring me next.

In the meantime, I'm excited for my new Palladium boots, Madeleine recipe book and molds, and my monkey tea infuser!

I'm going to keep this post short and wish y'all a wonderful holiday season!

Have you heard of Made With Code yet? It's a website by Google that features projects for girls to create with code. I never really thought most of these featured tools and projects would be considered as 'code', but it's a cool concept and I love the push for girls to follow their dreams and create.

I can't quite remember what month this took place, but 3D printing was promoted by Shapeways which gave you the option to test out this 3D printing and create a bracelet.
Mine came in the mail not too long ago.

You got to choose the specifics - the size, color, and the words. I obviously chose to write the name I use for everything - Mars En Route.

It fits real perfect, and I had fun snapping artsy picture to show it off!

I've been real interested in this kind of 3D printing and am considering making a few cool things with this method. I have some ideas in my head and can't wait to finalize them and possibly print them through Shapeways.

I've been going through a phase of wanting to redo my wardrobe. I've had the same clothes since middle school and I'm the kind of person to hold on to the old while adding new to my closet.
Coming home for the holidays, I'm walking back into my room full of items I don't need anymore and want to get rid of so much and start over and move on. #goals

01. Graphic Print Sweater from Oasap - This print is real cool and I love it on the gray. I've been all about sweaters lately and I want to collect more. I don't know why I don't have more!
02. Canvas Backpack from Oasap - I'm still searching for the perfect backpack and this one seems like the perfect structure and size I'm looking for.
03. Stay Home Club Tote Bag - This tote is awesome in size, and I'm sure it's the perfect bag to bring food shopping. And the print is real cool at the same time.
04. Farewell on Solestruck - Platforms were a thing I was always about and grew up wearing, and I love the grayscale and splatter.
05. Agyness Deyn/Dr. Martens on Solestruck - I have a love/hate relationship with Docs. I love the vintage feel/bowling shoes aspect.
06. Stay Home Club Pennant - I love pennants and banners and this one is adorable.

Seeing the items in this post has made me realized I've been all about neutrals and grays lately. I love my occasional bright pattern, but it's interesting to see how style changes over time.

I've never felt so uninspired in my life.
I haven't been in the mood to post about anything lately. I am still going through my dilemma about not having music as easily accessible as it was when I was living at home, so my days have basically been uber silent. (Don't get me wrong, I know how easy it is to play music on my laptop, but I loved my boombox. I sound so ridiculous saying that.) I don't leave the house too much, and I can't seem to get myself out of bed before 1 pm. I could go on and on about how my life has changed so drastically. But if I can be honest, I feel like I'm fallen in a ditch. Call it depression or whatever you want, but it's been taking a while for me to adjust and it definitely has taken a toll on me. I question if this is what rock bottom feels like. I've been deeply considering changing the situation, or sort of 'undoing' things. I definitely don't regret this move, because as so many people told me, if it doesn't work out, I can easily come back home and know that I did it. I won't ever be wondering that dreaded "what if".
This is all talk as of now anyway. But I'm seriously considering leaving before I fall deeper into this hole.

Anyway, now that the super honest part of how I've been feeling has been shared, I'll say that I just haven't had much going on for me right now. I think the issue of having too much time on my hands makes me not utilize my days correctly. I've been wasting so much time doing who knows what, and I feel so guilty not posting, but I just don't know what to post about. I've been working on projects here and there, but they're all in progress and nothing is completed and I haven't had much motivation to finish them.

I thought maybe changing up the blog layout would be a good idea to keep me busy and create something fresh, but I figured that's too much work right now. Then I thought maybe tweaking a few things here and there.
I'm not a big fan of taking pictures of myself, but I thought it was about time to change the top photo of me, as that was taken a year ago. I did it. I sucked it up and played with the self timer, and I concluded I look depressed in 90% of the photos I took. Honest portrayal of how I feel. But not really welcoming for a top image on a blog. Dilemma.

This one screams "I've been crying an hour before taking this photo. Look at the bags under my eyes". I scrapped that one. I didn't have much of a selection, so I picked the image where you saw half my face and can't really see too much emotion. Played it safe.
I also liked how I edited the initial image, so I followed the same scheme.
Minor blog change, but at least it's something.

I'm hoping to get out of this rut soon. I'll be going home for a few days for the holidays. I'll be home two weeks. A good amount of time to recuperate, or it might be just enough to be a tease. Either way, like I said, I'm considering changing this scenario, even if it feels like I've regressed. I just can't live like this anymore.
I apologize for getting too personal. I like to keep this blog an outlet for me to post about projects and crafts and positive things, but my life hasn't been too enjoyable to post uplifting things. I just hate not posting.

Sometime last month I mentioned this canvas art experimentation project I was working on.
Well, it's all finished finally and here's the result! I made palmistry inspired canvas art using my paper mache method.

Usually for paper mache projects, I like using a blender to get my scrap paper to a pulp-like consistency. I'm unfortunately not living with a blender at the moment, so I had to figure out another way to make it work. So I soaked my shredded paper scraps in a container of water overnight.
After I molded the hands using the soaked shredded paper and a towel to soak up the excess water, I let them sit on a dry towel to dry for a few days. When they were all dry, I used dry paper scraps to decoupage and smooth out the hands.

After experimenting with both methods with the soaked paper, I think I prefer the blender process better because the pulp stays together, as the process I tried this time around didn't work as successfully. But I made it work.

I got inspired from this pattern I made a few months ago and wanted to build something off of it. I took some of those elements and placed them on the hands along with other elements I researched.

I painted a base coat for two out of the three hands, and painted the elements by hand. I had a couple of variations drawn on paper and once I found a design that worked, I followed the design when painting everything.

To finish it off, I poked two holes at the top and molded wire to make them ready to hang.

It seems like a complicated process, but it's pretty easy. Just time consuming. It is pretty easy to lose patience around some parts of the process though, which is why I take so long to finish these sometimes, but the end result is always exciting.

All three are up for sale on my Storenvy shop. As I always say, I may make more if these sell. They're fun to make, and they're completely made up of recycled items, as is all my canvas art up for sale.

This was my first Thanksgiving away from home; it was quite different for sure.
I went a little crazy baking pies to distract myself from the fact that I wasn't with family. Well, I only baked two. I made my usual cinnamon pie, but I wanted to experiment with another. I watched Waitress recently and loved the marshmallow mermaid pie and actually found recipes for it. I created my version of it since I did a bad job at following the directions exactly.

I kept it as simple as possible.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of marshmallows (I recommend peppermint marshmallows if you can find!)
1 cup of milk (whole milk is best)
2 cups of cool whip
4 tablespoons of crushed chocolate (dark chocolate is the way to go)
1 9-inch graham cracker crust

Directions:
01. Melt two cups of marshmallows and the milk into a saucepan over low heat. Make sure to stir.
02. When it's melted, transfer to a bowl and let it cool.
03. In a bigger bowl, beat the cool whip. I beat it by hand with a baking spatula, but you can use a mixer.
04. Pour the crushed chocolate pieces into the cool whip and fold in the chocolate.
05. After you're satisfied with the amount of chocolate mixed in, pour in the marshmallow mix and fold in the mixture.
06. Finally, pour the mix into the graham cracker crust.
07. Take the leftover marshmallows and place them on top of the pie until you're satisfied.
08. Refrigerate for at least half an hour before eating.

Caution: don't slice a big piece as it is pretty damn sugary. But it's light, whipped, and delicious. So enjoy!