Delight 365 Project -- Week One

I'm involved with this amazing organization called Delight for young woman interested in the creative arts. If you've never heard of it you definitely need to check it out. This year they've organized a picture a day for a year photo challenge. I've actually done this twice in the past but not for 2013 and quite honestly I've missed it. Plus I think it's going to be extra fun to do it with other people! They've set up a calendar with a word for everyday which I may use as a prompt when I get stuck, but for the most part I'll just be documenting my life.  This year I'm doing it a little differently, instead of posting a picture every day I'm going to do a weekly round up. I'm sure it will change a little bit as the year goes on, but I'm going to do my best to write a little blurb about each picture/day as well. This is such a great way of challenging myself as a photographer, but looking back and realizing how much God has blessed me and grown me in the time passed, is my favorite part of this project.
Okay enough rambling. Words are not my strong point. On to the pictures.

1/365 January 1: New- hairdo
2/365 January 2: Goal- putting 3 loads of laundry away
3/365 January 3: Found in the Flood played at The Haven tonight. It was they're debut show and they rocked it. I cannot wait to see them make it to the big leagues, I have no doubt they'll get there.
4/365 January 4: Best friend date to see The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. First cup of Starbucks [hot] coffee in at least a year. I felt like I was cheating on The Haven. I still like our coffee better. Saturdays without work are good days.

DIY- American Flag Shorts

Now I know the title says "DIY", however, this is more along the lines of a failed DIY and I'm going to share it with you anyway. A little backstory: On July 3rd, I had the brilliant idea that I wanted to make my own pair of American flag shorts for The Fourth but I didn't want to go to the store so I had to get creative with what I used. I've seen so many different ways to make your own shorts like this, but I kind of combined the ones that I liked the most with the materials I had on hand. I ended up just using a pair of cut-off shorts that I already had in my closet, some red cool-aid instead of red fabric dye, and for the stars I used an old hanky of my dads with some "under wonder" iron on paper.
Now I guess I'll explain why this could qualify this as a "failed" DIY. First of all, the underwonder I used to fuse the stars to the shorts was... eh... 20ish years old and only held the stars on the shorts for one day, which was alright for my use, but if you actually wanted to wear them more than one day you'd have to find a solution. Which would be very easy to do I might add. The other reason they didn't last is because cool-aid is NOT a permanent dye. Hah! That's pretty self explanatory ;) But like I said, they worked for me since I only wanted them to celebrate Independence Day. Here are some pictures of the process and a terrible finished product picture that I took with my phone instead of my camera. I decided to opt from giving step by step instructions since it didn't work out, but I wanted to show the process anyway. If you have any questions let me know!

Happy Creating!
   xoxo Ashlynne

Independence Day

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of America becoming a free nation. Woohoo! I sure am thankful that God has blessed me with being born in a free nation. Down south we like to celebrate big time. It's actually one of my favorite holidays. My day will include a parade, festival wandering, best friends, good food, amazing peach ice cream, maybe a baseball game, and definitely some fireworks. I also made some American flag shorts that I'm hoping to do a DIY post on soon! I can't wait to don those puppies. I love dressing up in my red, white, and blue! I wish I had the excuse to do it more often... without getting funny looks from strangers. Hah! Since when has that stopped me. Here's to being patriotic, like this dedicated fellow! Happy Birthday America!

Birthdays

I'm in a really good mood right now. Quite peppy and bubbly. I know it's not going to last because I'm about to crash, but I just wanted to share a piece of it with the world. Or what I'd like to think is the world ;) I'm not a huge fan of birthdays, well at least not my own birthday, but this year... this year was a good one.
I'm blessed. I'm really really blessed. I am surrounded by amazing people who GENUINELY care about me (and those are hard to come by I might add). I am loved by God who loves me with an unconditional love when I am so underserving. I mean come on! That alone is hard to wrap my mind around. And then he keeps on going and blessing me with all these wonderful people, my friends and family, and the little adventures I'm getting to have along the way of living this life that is a gift from God. I'm really thankful for the nineteen years I've had on this earth, but this next year I want to be so much more purposeful. I want to have purpose and I want to bring glory to God in what I do. I've got some big dreams and I need to sit down and think them through and then probably put them out here so I have that accountability again, because we all know I need it.
God is good y'all. He is really good. Even when things happen that we don't understand. He is still God and He is still GOOD.

I'm back

I'm back. For now. I'm gonna try to keep blogging up this time around. It's summertime and I've got more time on my hands and if I learn to manage it and keep my priorities straight, maybe I can actually blog on a regular basis. I've been missing it. It's good to be back. I did decided not to play catch up though. The idea of summing up the last few months overwhelms me too much and I don't want to take the joy out of this whole blogging thing. So we're picking up just where we are now.
Like I said. It's summer. Yes. Summertime. I decided to make this the best one yet. I'm not even sure what it means, but I think I'll just try to make the best out of every situation thrown at me. It's a choice I want to make. A choice to make the best out of life, out of all the little (and big) adventures I'm sure lie ahead for summer twenty thirteen.
I have some summer "goals" I want to post in the near future because maybe if I put them here, I'll feel more obligated to actually complete them. I really am a goal oriented person, but I have a terrible habit of A: making too many unrealistic goals and getting burnt out, or B: making a list of goals and losing the actual list until a much later point in time when they don't matter anymore. I want this time to be different. I want to have a fun, productive, adventurous summer. Oo! Maybe I'll even make a list of words that I want to represent this summer. Oo oo! Maybe I'll even turn it into a photo project.
See lookie here. Blogging is already doing wonders for my brain and creativity.
Here goes nothing. Only two more days until the first official day of SUMMER!

Kate Spade + Keds? Yes please

I was totally inspired a few months back when I saw that Kate Spade and Keds were teaming up to release a spring line sneakers. Of course they were a little out of my price range so I decided to make my own. I purchased a pair of plain Keds at goodwill for $2.34 (can I get a "woot woot" for thrift stores?!) and decided to DIY it up.

The Inspiration! Kate Spade for Keds

Alright, into the DIY part!
Starting off with my plain white shoes, I cleaned them with rubbing alcohol to insure the paint would adhere to the surface and since they were previously owned I thought it was a good precaution. 

Another before picture.

After the shoes were all cleaned up I started drawing diagonal lines with a pencil beginning at the toe of the shoe. After I finished that, I went from the other direction so the diagonal lines crisscrossed. Then at every point where the lines intersected I drew a circle. And that's how I got a little guide. Now it's far from perfect, but I wanted to have some order to the polkadots rather than a random pattern.

Then I used fabric paint and began filling in the dots. First a used a paint brush, but it was difficult to control in the small area, so I decided to experiment and found out a q-tip made an excellent dot. 

 Just continue filling in the dots until you're finished and repeat for the other shoe. I ended adding a few extra polka dots that weren't on my pattern, just because I felt there was too much white space. The guidelines are just there to help you. There's no need to follow them to the T.  After the paint dries, remove all the guidelines you drew with the pencil. I just wiped mine off with a damp cloth. 

Then add some shoelaces and you're finished!! However, when you're buying your shoe laces remember to check how long they are, I remembered the hard way. 

I purchased my laces at wal-mart for less than $5

And last, but certainly not least, it's time to don your new shoes and show them off to all your friends!

 I hope you enjoyed this little DIY project. It was really fun to do, and I hope to do more DIY's in the future!

Short and Sweet

You know you're best friends when...
eating dinner with her family, her dad looks at her mom and says, "I think Ashlynne is moving in", to which her little brother replies "Yes!!"
or
standing in her bathroom getting ready for a girls' night out she looks at you and says "you might as well just leave a toothbrush here"

In closing, friendship is a beautiful thing. It's just an extension of family and I love it.