We're Zombies...on a Clock

So remember this Amazing Find?! Well I got it in the mail on Saturday! I had received an email with the tracking info which said it would be delivered Saturday. I spent the afternoon staring out the window and when the mailman came I was stalking him like a hawk, watching his ever move until he got to my building!
I tore it open and saw pure awesome!!







Jenny from Off Her Rocker Art was a complete pleasure to work with!! We exchanged quite a few emails to get all the details worked out; hair color, eye color, what we'd be wearing, etc. The shirt that Jeremy has on is one of my favorites of his. It says 'RooK' and has a big rook chess piece on it. He wore it the third day we hung out and he told me that he plays chess when I asked him about it. That totally made me realize that there was more to him than meets the eye. Every time he wears it, I'm reminded of how amazing and complex he is. I'm wearing an angel wing necklace that is one of my absolute favorties which Liz got for me a few years ago while she was in Boston.
I am so happy with how this turned out and I highly recommend you all check out Jenny's shop, you won't be disappointed!

Book Review: Unbroken

The book we read in Book Club for the month of February was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.


It's a true story and so, so good!
The story is about Louie Zamperini who grew up in California, had a bit of a trouble childhood but as a teenager he started running. And holy moly did he run!! He ended up breaking all kinds of state and country records and eventually went to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He shook Hitler's hand...creeeepy! He ended up traning again for the 1940 Olympics which were supposed to be held in Tokyo. However, WWII broke out and Japan backed out of hosting the Olympics. They were then supposed to be held in Finland but also because of WWII the Olympics never happened. Louie ended up being drafted and becoming a bombardier (the guy who actually drops the bombs out of the planes) in the US Army.
Around page 100ish the book got a little slow. I think it was because they went out on a mission and I was expecting the plane to crash. The book opens with a scene of Louie stranded in the Pacific ocean. That didn't happen for a little while though and I just had so much anticipation!
Then it happened, the plane crashed and I don't want to give any major spoilers but let me say this...punching sharks! This man punches sharks!! The amount of time he is stranded in the Pacific ocean is unbelievable. I had to remind myself multiple times that I was reading a true story.
Eventually he ends up in POW camps and is transferred to a few different ones. The things that man, and all the men endured at the hands of their Japanese captures made me cry. Multiple times I was reading this book at night and crying or getting choked up.
When the war is declared over and Louie returns home, the war isn't actually over for him. The post traumatic stress and the horrors that haunt him was so overwhelming. He turns to drinking to try and drown out the war.
At book club Liz told us that this book has some controversy behind it because people believe it to be propaganda. At the end Louie turns to God and is saved by Billy Graham, the evangelical preacher (you've probably seen him on TV.) I do not believe this book to be any sort of propaganda, this is just what happened to Louie. It never once says that everyone needs to live their life for God and all that. Louie lives well into his 90s and doing all sorts of crazy things in his old age! Skiing, skateboarding and gets back into running. He ran the Olympic torch in 1984 past one of the now destroyed POW camps he was enslaved at.
I highly recommend this book and give it 5 stars!

March Goals

I've been in a funk the last week or so. I don't know what it is but I have zero motivation to do anything. All I think of is everything I want/need to do which then stresses me out...and leads to more funk (and not the fun Earth, Wind and Fire kind of funk. No, this is more like that gross toe jam kind of funk.) So last night I sat down and made a list, are you surprised? I'm sure you recall a few mentions I've made about my affinity for lists. I think this is something I may do monthly now since I was already thinking of things I need/want to do in April!

March Goals
Paint Lindsay's Piggy Bank

Dye Curtains
Clean out 3 dresser drawers

Clean out/organize the closet

Clean under craft table
Try 2 new recipes

Finish next Book Club book
Fix Car!!!

Workout 4 hours a week

Get a plant for my apartment

Save $100 for Florida

So that's them. I can't decide if it's a lot or not but whatevs. I am going to try my best to complete them all in the 3 1/2 weeks left this month.

Handwriting Game

The lovely Louana over on Eleventh Monkey did this Handwriting Game and I thought it would be fun to do too!

All you have to do is take out a pen and paper, answer the following questions and post it to your blog. Here are the questions:

1. What’s your name / blogger name? Jamie Winifred Toohey - I used to be embarassed by middle name but now I love it. I'm named after my great Aunt Winnie. My first name is after my Uncle Jimmy (James). My last name used to be Towey until my family came from Ireland to Ellis Island and it was changed. When I was younger I used to write my name as Jme 2e a lot!

2. What’s your blogs URL? you already know this =)

3. Write, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

4. Favorite quote? "The sleep of reason produces monsters". This is a quote by the artist Francisco Goya but it's actually "El sueño de la razón produce monstruos". This is part of a series of etchings called Los Caprichos. I've loved this quote for quite a while and it can be interpreted many ways. To me it means if you don't use your head or occupy your brain, bad things will happen. This is entirely true for me. I used to be such a hopeless romantic and not that there is anything wrong with that but I would follow my heart even when my brain was telling me I was being stupid. I ended up getting hurt and allowing a lot of shit to happen to me that I should have known to get out of. Also, I know that if I don't occupy myself as far as crafting, reading or just trying to better myself in any way I end up depressed and closed off.

5. Your favorite song? 'Change' by Blind Melon. This song kind of goes along with some of the things in the above quote. My favorite line is "When life is hard, you have to change." This is so incredibly true, if things aren't going the way you want or you are miserable you need to do something to change your life. I try to live by this as much as possible.

6. Your favorite band / singers? Tool, Guns n Roses, Pantera, Maiden, SVR (stevie ray vaughn) and seriously...this list could get out of control. Music is such an integral part of my life that I have soo many favorites, especially depending on the mood I'm in. I've been going through a bit of blues phase right now and thank goodness for Pandora!!

7. Anything else you want to say? Seriously, do you see how my handwriting from the title to this sentence went straight down the crapper?! I have terrible handwriting normally. It's a combination of print and cursive and I have a tendancy to leave out letters. I think faster than I write so the entire time I am rushing! I was just told by a coworker a week or so ago that I have the handwriting of a 12 year old boy!

8. Tag 3 bloggers to participate. I am tagging three awesome ladies!
Courtney - you will...won't you?
Amy - The Mad Crafter
Erin - My Beautiful Disaster


Play a long if you want, leave a link here so I can see your handwriting too. Some girls have such nice curly, cursivey handwriting that I love!

Crochet Candle Holder Cozies

That was a lot of C's!
Anyway...Tanya over on Shoot from the Hips made adorable Mason Jar Cozies and even provided directions on the different stitches she used! I've been looking for more candle holders and I had two glasses that I was using. I decided that crocheting them some little cozies would add just what was missing!

I used the Spider Stitch and the Twists DC stitch, I think I like the Twists the best. I used a light yellow and a darker yellow yarn for accents. The one with the two stripes totally remind me of the tube socks my Dad wore when I was little!
They look sooo pretty at night with the lights off!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a fabulous Thirsty Thursday!

Zombie Magnets

Another thing I made for Jeremy's birthday were these cute little zombie magnets. I had seen the pattern a few times on Craftster and decided to make him some. The pattern is from NeedleNoodles. I used that plastic weave stuff and then sewed a piece of felt on the backs and stuck little magnets I found at Joanns between the back of the plastic and the felt.



That pattern is only for the guy so I just changed the hair to make a girl one too. The magnets are surprisingly strong which made me happy because that means Jeremy can actually use the magnets instead of just have them on the fridge for decoration.

Have a fabulous Wednesday!

Love Muffins!

Jeremy's birthday was this past Sunday and one thing I made for him were Love Muffins! He's on a bit of a health kick so I thought muffins for breakfast for a week were a lot better than a breakfast sandwich from Wawa every day!
I originally got the idea when Kimberly from chez sucre chez shared a video on how to make heart shaped cupcakes. He doesn't like sweets (which drives me nuts!) so I thought muffins might work and I mean...love muffins...it just sounded to perfect to not at least try!
Next I needed to decide on what kind of muffins. I searched around on allrecipes.com and found these Cranberry Pecan Muffins. I followed the recipe just as described except I used double the amount of dried cranberries and first soaked them in apple sauce. I have to say they are delish!! The heart shape didn't work as well as I had hoped on all of the muffins but a lot of them looked good. I made sure to put those ones on top. I found these adorable boxes at Joann's. They are so perfect and make the muffins look so professional!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh or frozen cranberries

1/2 cup chopped pecans

TOPPING:

2 tablespoons sugar

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Here are all the ingredients and you can see my yarn stash in the background and my apron on my sewing dummy....not on me, oops! Oh and also...some gratuitous advertising for my Dad's band 2 Big 2 Fail is back there =)

I was so pleasantly surprised by the foil lid on the sour cream. It's an image of Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur, California. Isn't that great?! I usually buy generic sour cream but decided to go classy with Daisy for these muffins. Because of this, I will totally be buying this brand all the time now!

Directions:

First I dumped all the cranberrys in a bowl with enough applesauce to coat them all.

Then, in a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. Fold in sour cream. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg and salt; stir into creamed mixture just until moistened. Fold in cranberries (apple sauce and all) and pecans. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Combine topping ingredients; sprinkle over batter. Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

If you watched the video, then you already know but if not, to get the heart shape you fill the liner 1/3 of the way, place a marble between the muffin liner and the tin and then fill another 1/3.

Like so...

After baking here is what they looked like. Not all of them looked like hearts but it didn't bother me too much. There were enough that did and it's the thought that counts!

I'm sure these would look better if they were cupcakes and I could have used the icing to accentuate the heart shape but whatev...these were cute and tasty!

On a side note, do you blogspot-ers like the new way pictures are put into your blog? Instead of the path it's the actual picture. I thought I liked it at first but after doing this post with so many pictures, it was a real pain in the foot! Dragging the pictures is kind of difficult, especially since I like to write and then post the pictures so I'm all messed up!

Have a wondeful day!