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.

Sweet Tooth

If you know me, it's pretty obvious that I have a sweet tooth. When I was working at our local cafe I think I ate some sort of sweet goodie every shift. It was really a problem. Since then I have cut back a lot and if there aren't sweets around I'm not usually tempted. However, tonight after dinner I had my heart set on a piece of homemade apple cake, only to find out my family finished it off at lunch without me! Needless to say, I had to come up with something to hit the spot. That's when I hopped on pinterest to find a recipe that we had all (or enough) ingredients on hand for and I came across this recipe for a Chocolate Peanut Butter Mug Cake. I changed up the recipe a little by cutting back the amount of cocoa powder and I didn't use the frosting recipe listed because we didn't have any cool whip on hand, but I made up a frosting recipe on the spot so it wasn't a bare cake. My verdict? Overall it was delicious and I'll probably make it again one day. I would watch the cooking time carefully though because I thought it was a smidgen dry. Next time I definitely want to try the frosting recipe too, but fair warning, you'll definitely want to share this with someone. It was so rich! I shared it with both my little brothers who were raving about it. If you try it, let me know! I woud love to see pictures and hear what you thought. Any other great mug recipes? What's one of your favorite desserts?

Beginnings

This is a new beginning for me. I've tried blogging before and it has been very short lived. I just assumed it wasn't for me. However, over the last few months a dear friend of mine, Kate, started a blog. Since then, she has been politely nagging me to start my own, and it's definitely taken some persuading on her part to convince me. You see, she is a writer. I am not. But I've come to terms that this blog is for me, so it's okay that I'm not a writer, maybe I'll find my "voice" through it. This is to document my life. What inspires me now, what I'm doing now, because in a week, a month, a few years, my life will be so different and I want to be able to look back and remember exactly what I was doing on one particular day in February, this day, it will be writing my first blog post. This is going to be an experiment. The first little while, I'll be finding out what works and what doesn't, but I'm excited. I'm excited to share what I love, little bits of my life, my photos, my memories, little pieces of me. I'm excited to put myself out there, it's good practice for life right? I can't wait to see what comes of this little blog.