So I am new to blogging, so excuse the randomness that you are about to read.

So here is a little history of how I got here. My husband, Tom and I have been married for a little over a year. We love to make things for our apartment. All of our hanging decor in our apartment is either made by us or by a family member.

I have always been a crafty. My parents definitely made art something that was a focal point for us as kids. After hearing about artsy things for so long and seeing my dad crochet, my step-mom make an absolutely beautiful home (especially at Christmas) and my mom make whatever nifty thing she did for the school craft shows, you just want to emulate that. And it just sticks. For example, I use to have a lanyard business when I was in elementary school. I never made any money, but I made scads of plastic-beaded lanyards for friends and family, whether they wanted them or not. So that should give you some idea that I love making things with my hands and definitely use it as a stress relief.

My husband is part of the 101st Airborne unit based out of Fort Campbell, KY. He is an infantryman. I am so proud of him, and I am so glad that he is happy with his career after so many hardships in that area. Yay for the economy! We are currently doing the long distance thing since he just moved there after basic, and I still have my job with Iowa State University. I will be staying in Iowa for the time being because come September, Tom will be heading overseas for his first deployment. It’s hard justifying leaving a job I love for an empty home in a strange place.

This is something that we knew was coming eventually, however, neither of us were quite ready for it to happen in September. So what is the first thing I did when I found out that my husband would really be at war in a little over a month? I made door decs for my staff. It is melted crayons on poster board with foam sticker letters.

For those of you not familiar with my job, I am a Hall Director for Iowa State University. I oversee a residential building of 1300 students and supervise a staff of 12 community advisers (or RAs). So there are lots of opportunities for crafts with door decs, bulletin boards, and office organization, and other random things.

Obviously, these door decs are much more elaborate than most. They took me about 3 hours to do just 16 different names. Craziness, I know. But, I felt so accomplished!

Right now Tom is in training, so every day I get to hear how he is training to keep himself and his team alive. Really awesome as a wife right?

And to pile on to this stress, there is also a lot of other random stressors going on with work (Did you know that August is a big month for colleges?) and with some family things. So I started thinking about how I am going to get through the next 10 months of being without the one person who always manages to calm me down. CRAFTS!

I started scouring Pinterest, and my craft board grew and grew. I even made a list of the crafts I wanted to do and in what order. And then came the idea of crafting my way through his deployment. Genius.

I happened to share this idea with some friends, and they all immediately suggested to blog my creation adventures. So here we are.

I do not aim to be funny, inspirational, or really anything, although I hope you all enjoy seeing what I am able to come up with! This will just be an outlet to share my goodies!

I have not set up that I will do a project a week or anything structured like that. That seems a little too much pressure knowing my schedule, and I don’t want this to become a chore. Again, this is supposed to be my stress-relief. My projects will be things that I do for work, gifts for others, and just personal satisfaction. I welcome ideas and suggestions!

So let’s see how this goes…Enjoy!