New York: Day's One and Two

Day one and day two in New York were a success if I don't say so myself! On day one, I got into the airport just after 5am. So early! I slept a little bit on the plane..just about as much as you can in those sitting up in those seats. It took just under an hour to get to the hotel via taxi. When I got to the hotel, I got to see my hubby! Yippee! It had been almost two whole days since I dropped him off at the airport! :)

Day one wasn't too eventful. I explored a wee bit but it was so dang hot! And humid. It was gross really. I think the high was at least 91. But I did walk around the Brooklyn Bridge Park and a couple of the Piers there at the park. It's kind of cool actually. One pier had basketball courts, another one there was sand volleyball and a soccer field on another. You can also see the Statue of Liberty! I posted a couple photos on the gram. (at)iamtrissab

I think I took a nap at this point. And then roamed around and got some froyo right by the hotel. They have sweet spoons!! Definitely adding it to my froyo spoon collection that I have going. After Scott got out of his training we went on a stroll together! Took the train over to Manhattan! Went to Central  Park and saw Jason Sudeikis on the set of one of his new films, SWOP or Sleeping With Other People. Probably is going to be rated R but we totally saw them recording the little bench scene in Central Park!

We also walked by the American Museum of Natural History! I must go see that while I am here and explore every floor! And then watch the movie The Night at the Museum. :) We also walked around Time Square! So many lights and HUGE screens!

And that was the jist of day one.

Day two I was a bum and decided to wait until my hubby got out of training. BUT I did go to a Bikram Yoga class. Hot hot hot hot hot. My goodness. I am not used to doing that anymore! WHEW. After about a week of it, it shouldn't be too bad.

After Scott got off, we hopped on the train down to Coney Island. It was freezing! And super windy. Nothing like the day before, though the ocean probably would have felt better with the heat! We had a famous hotdog at Nathan's where the current Hotdog Eating Contest records are 49 for females and 69 for males. That is both gross and ridiculous. I was pretty upset that the famous Cyclone roller coster was currently not in service, but we did get to take a ride on the Wonder Wheel! It's about 150 feet in the air and was at one point the biggest one ever! (I'm pretty sure that has since changed) It's also almost 100 years old. Oh! And Zoltar told us our fortunes.

After Coney Island, which is on the very bottom of Brooklyn just about, we hopped on the train and went over to Chinatown and Little Italy. Little Italy was a pretty quaint little area. We will most likely be back for an Italian Date Night. Scott was pretty pumped when he found a little fruit cart selling Lychees. Those things are weird! They taste good, but still weird. The last time Scott had one of those was when he was serving his mission for the LDS Church in Madagascar. I'm sure we will be getting some more of those soon!

After that little exploration, we hopped on the train over to the stop by the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across the bridge, to our hotel. A nice little walk must I say, but it would probably be a bit dreadful during the middle of the day in the heat AND humidity. Manhattan looks quite pretty from the bridge at night nonetheless!

New York City is pretty fun. This first week is more of my chillin week and then I will get to some more exploring. Each day will most likely depend on the weather. But I love it! Glad we get to be here for a couple weeks.

Check back soon for more NYC updates! For now, here are some photos!! (My apologies, some of them are not in the correct order)

Statue of Liberty!

The set for the movie SWOP

Museum of Natural History

Statue of M&M Liberty!

Way in the distance is Manhattan

Crazy Zoltar

This is a Lychee

Dragon fruit look crazy!

Statue of Liberty!

New York : T minus 5 days

It is fast approaching! The anticipation is so extreme it could almost kill!

The hubby and I are soon to be embarking on a new chapter of our life that we will entitle “A Splash of New York!” You know, since we aren’t moving there or anything (at least not at this point in our lives), it’s just a splash. It’s also way cheaper this way. New York is EXPENSIVE! Sheesh! You get paid more there, but I don’t think it’s the same cost of living to money being made ratio that here in Arizona. Actually I’m pretty positive it isn’t the same. But that’s beside the point…

Neither one of us has started packing yet. What do you even pack when you are going to be exploring for an entire month?! Am I right?! After I do some laundry I guess I should figure all that out. I found my camera at least! I just want to find my little nook book. It’s probably in a box still from the last time I moved…and now we going to be moving after we get back… so maybe I’ll get lucky and find it before then. :)

Anyway, I’m super upset that Scott and I most likely aren’t going to be able to make it to the crown level in the Statue of Liberty. I had NO IDEA you have to reserve tickets two to three months in advanced! They currently have reservations available for September through November. How depressing. I’m so distraught. I’ll still go to the Statue of Liberty; I’ll just have to go to the crown some other time… sigh…

I still have no idea what I’m going to do in New York. Everything maybe? I probably have enough time for that.

Anywho, here are some of the ideas of things I want to do! And check my instagram (at)iamtrissab for some instant trip updates!

*Museum of Natural History
Museum of Modern Art
*Little Italy
*Chinatown
*Bikram yoga in NY
Summer movies in the park
*Central park
Bronx Zoo
Statue of Liberty
*Twin Towers monument (9/11 Memorial)
Rockefeller Plaza
*Beach!
Corona Park
Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn Promenade
*Coney Island
Empire State Building
*Grand Central Terminal
*The High Line
*Brooklyn Bridge Park
Fort Greene Park
Inwood Hill Park
*Prospect Park
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guggenheim
*Walk the Brooklyn Bridge
Attend a Broadway Show
*Washington Square Park
Brooklyn Flea
Explore Soho
Aerial tram to Roosevelt Island
5Pointz Aero Art Center
Shakespeare in the Park
*Time Square
*See a game in the Yankee Stadium
*Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
Kayak for free
Rockettes
*Bike New York
Bryant Park
Upstate New York

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch but here is at least a snippet! If you know some great places in New York, throw them at me! The weather is going to be in the 80s for the most part and humid and maybe a bit rainy at times but I am SO ready to get out of the desert!


Cheers!

Love at First Stitch (Tilly Buttons) - Clémence skirt

If any of you fellow readers out there are wanting to pick up sewing or you have already started and want to learn more, you MUST add this book into your collection! It's called Love at First Stitch written by miss Tilly. You can check out her blog here! It is definitaly a very good reference book and it has really good explanations and the patters are super cute but basic enough to do. You will also learn a lot of valuable information!

It's on Amazon! Love at First Stitch. Or you can go to Tilly's blog and order it from her if you want her to sign the copy. But either way, its a fabulous investment!

But anywho, I made a few of the Clémence skirt from in the book and I love it! (I almost forgot how much I love it!)

(Photo cred:Photography-Hill)

These are adorable. And the invisible zipper is cake. (Tilly is great at explaining everything in great details.) Seriously your sewing machine does just about everything for you and I love it. Making clothes is so much fun and you can add your own little touch of you to it! (pockets, lace, bows, buttons, etc...)

I'm going to try and tackle everything in that book. And I love making my own clothes! Everything fits me the way I want it to and I can pick out what material I want and it's just perfect!

So far I have tackled a couple shirts, which I just LOVE! You can check that out here! I've also made a couple super cute and simple pencil skirts and my baseball type shirt dress is just being so stubborn! But the best way to learn is trial and error and try and try again! The more you do the better you will become. :) Have fun with it! Because it is sew much fun!

You can check out some of my other sewing creations on my instagram here: @tmcreates or select the sewing tab at the top! 

Cheers!

How To Make A Rope Rug - A Simpler Way

I am going to go ahead and share with you How To Make A Rope Rug! Yay!!

So I've seen a couple tutorials but I personally think their explanation is TERRIBLE. They look really nice, but they really aren't user friendly for beginners. I'm pretty much a beginner, so if I can do it... you can too!!! And I've been trying to take lots of pictures to show you what exactly I am doing :)

Also, the best motto ever I think is K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid!! I think some of these other tutorials forget about the simplicity part. If there is an easier and simpler way to do something, do it!

Here we go!! 

Materials!

1. You are going to need some kind of cording. The one I used for this particular rug is 1/4" clothesline from Home-depot. I used 2 packets (each is 100ft long). This is fine and all, but attaching it is kind of annoying. And if you want it bigger, you will need MORE. If you live in Arizona, I would suggest going to Mesa Sales or Tempe Sales and get one of those huge rolls. The cording is a little different than the clothesline but still soft enough to go through your sewing machine. 

2. A sewing machine!

3. A jean needle since you will be going through fabric and the rope or cording

4. A lot of strips of fabric 1" wide and however long as you want to make them! Two feet is probably long enough. Anything too long might be annoying while you are wrapping the cording. (I bought maybe 4 yards of fabric and still haven't even finished cutting it all up. I might not even need it all. You may need more if you want to make your rug SUPER big)
5. Matching tread or a contrasting color. Which ever you think will look the best (I would get the dual duty/all purpose thread) You may need to get at least 2 things of thread. Possibly more depending on how big you want it to be but it would stink if you ran out and had to go back to the store!!
6. A pin to hold your wrapping in place!

So first off, you are going to want to use the three zig zag stitch. It pretty much looks like a zig zag but it has little spots missing on the picture. Usually its next to the normal zig zag. For instance...

This is what my machine looks like. My normal zig zag is the second one and my three zig zag is right next to it. You are going to want to use this stitch! You also will want to make it the widest zig zag. The biggest zig was a five. I think that is normal on most machines but I could be wrong. You also will want the stitch length to be between 2.5-3. For mine, I used 2.5. (BTW: you may need to play around with the tension if you are having issues with the thread. I had to! My tension is usually always at four and I moved it to three for this project)

Starting your rug!!

So the first thing you are going to need to do is begin wrapping your rope! You will want to make sure that the tip is fully wrapped in fabric. Put a pin in the tip to hold it in place while you wrap the rest of that fabric strip. Make sure it is tight!! While wrapping, you are going to want to overlap the fabric about halfway, as you can see here. Once you finish that strip, just go ahead and place a pin in it to keep it in place. It will be easier to start the rug at this point, that way we dont have to worry about the tip! It also holds the rope in place which makes it easier for a tighter wrap.

So what I did when I started it (btw this is my very first rope rug!) I folded the tip about a centemeter and slipped it under my sewing machine foot. (You are going to want to make sure the wrapped rope that you are attaching is on the right side like mine is shown in the photo above.)

So when I began, I manually stitched it a couple times until it started making a nice circle. I did it this way because it was MUCH easier to control it. Once the coils are formed, you don't have to do it manually anymore because that would take FOREVER!!

While you are sewing, you want to have the center of the foot to be alligned with where the already coiled rope meets with the soon to be sewed rope. You can kind of see in the photo below. See the little lines that are RED on the press foot?? You can see how I liked it up. This is because we want the three zigzag stitch to be centered so it centered so it latches onto both of the ropes. You can see what I mean and what it should look like completed with the blue and green fabric in the left of the photo.

Once you get it started a little bit, go ahead and wrap your little heart out!! Since sewing is SO much faster than wrapping, I would suggest wrapping as much as you can before you sew. Pop in a movie or something! That's what I did. See? Just make sure you put a pin at the end to keep it from unraveling.

It will just start getting bigger and bigger!

Just a heads up, as you are sewing, make sure you do NOT pull on the rope you are feeding to be sewed tight. This will more than likely cause the rope rug to slowly turn into a bowl. If you want a bowl, thats great! but if you want a rug, you need to keep it flat. Try keeping it tight like this...

I just had one hand on the rug and my other hand where it is in the picture making sure the part where they are connecting is in the middle.

Basically you keep doing this over and over again until the rug is as big as you want it to be. To be honest, I still haven't finished mine.

When your rug starts to get bigger, you are going to want to keep your rug as flat as possible! I put some books next to my machine to keep it level. I would check out the photos they have on here. It's a fabulous blog!! They have the cutest crafts and pictures! However, I would suggest ignoring the steps to make their rug. To many steps and half of them are a waste of time and will probably cause more frustration than anything else. ( my opinion anyway..)  

See the books? 

This is as big as I have it right now...

It would be bigger but I did get a chance to work on it at all yesterday!! I also did all of that in an afternoon! :) 

Finishing:

When you finish, wrap all the way to the end and then wrap it back the other way. At least that's what I did and I folded it in so it was as neat as I could make it. 

I'm making this for my kitchen in the soon to be new apartment! Or whenever else I decide to put it.. Pictures will be posted once we move!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! And if you need more clarifications or if you have any questions or need me to explain something a little bit better, please ask away! Leave questions in the comment section and I will reply as soon as I can.

Enjoy!

Music Monday

Here's my music recap and top ten songs from the last week! (no particular order btw)

1. Landon Pigg - Falling In Love At A Coffee Shop
2. Lily Allen - Never Gonna Happen
3. Lykke Li - Everybody But Me
4. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Home
5. Steel Train - I Feel Weird
6. Jack Johnson - bubble
7. Trace Adkins - Honky Tonk Badonkadonk
8. Sublime - What I Got
9. Lana Del Rey - Young and Beautiful
10. Regina Spektor - The Call


I'm thinking of maybe having some kind of theme for each music monday.... Hmmmm?

So there's this bird...

Happy Saturday everyone!

Soooooo there's this bird… let's call him George. He took my parking spot!!

Okay so let's back up a little bit. After I cleaned up the apartment a little bit, I went to the fabric store! And I got some goodies… I am so excited about that and can't wait until I share it with you! (later) And  then I went to Walmart to pick up some materials for pineapple salsa! (seriously is delicious) And when I came back to my apartment, I came across this little guy, George.























That's my parking spot! Bleh! That bird is a little monster! But when I pulled up, it wasn't moving out of the way. Just was standing there. So I opted out of the spot and parked in the sunshine. I'm pretty sure the bird is a crow of some kind. At least it's one of those dark brown/black birds… And I decided not to fry it with the heat of my car. So night huh?

When I went to my car to make sure it was locked and put up my sun shades, the mama bird came! Up to where the nest was though and little George was just chirping away and the mama was looking around for him and then she spotted him! And flew down to George. The mama bird seemed to be yelling at Gworge as to say, "Why did you leave the nest?!" And George was squawking as if to say, "FEED ME!" And then the mama flew away. But she's come back a couple times. Every time the mama goes over to the baby, I can just HEAR the squawking bird… And then over in the grass, there was a bunch of the grownup birds chirping at each other as to figure out what to do with this bird that was on the ground. I honestly don't even know how the bird got out of the nest. There isn't even a real opening at the bottom and the bird surly can't fly to go up and out! I just want the little guy to move so I can park in the shade…