Chicks dig scars.

(I found this old, unpublished post from last year and thought I'd share it. Enjoy.)

I started thinking recently about scars. We all have them. Some are reminders of crazy adventures, and others mark sadder moments in our lives. I bruise like a peach and scar pretty easily.

I have a scar on my chin from falling off of the monkey bars in the first grade. I remember that I was wearing my pumpkin jumper, so I know it must have been October. It wasn't a particularly traumatic fall, but I will always have a physical reminder.

I have a scar on my right knee from playing Musical Chairs in kindergarten. It was down to the final round. It was me versus Taylor Smith. I knew I could beat him, and I totally would have...if he hadn't pushed me out of the chair and caused me to slice my knee open. My teacher couldn't find a BandAid, so she taped a cotton ball to my knee with masking tape. My knee healed with cotton fibers stuck in it.

I have a scar on my right thigh from Little's wedding last October. During group photos before the ceremony, I dislocated my knee and went crashing down. The stems of my bouquet gashed my leg. Looking back, it's a pretty funny thing, and I will always have a reminder of that happy day. (A five inch reminder, to be exact.)

I have a small scar on the palm of my left hand. When I was little, I was trying to cut a Q-tip with kitchen scissors and my grip slipped. (I was making a caterpillar out of paper plates and needed antennae, obviously.) It's shaped like a wishbone and I still remember how much it hurt when I did it.

I have a gnarly scar on my right knee from elementary school. We were playing basketball on the asphalt court at recess and Makisha Campbell shoved me down to get the ball. How rude. I remember that I was wearing a purple jogging suit with an appliqué bunny rabbit on the sweatshirt. Hello 1990s. (And yes, I generally associate memories with what I was wearing at the time. My Mom does the same thing.)

Anyone have any interesting scar stories to share? I'd love to hear them. (Does that make me weird?)

Love and Rockets,
A

Decking the halls.

All of the awesome DIYs from this link-up got me inspired and I decided to get crafty last night.  I'm just a day late posting about it.  Don't act surprised.  
Here is the original that I fell in love with on Pinterest.

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I headed over to Michael's and grabbed a foam wreath ring.  Then I browsed the clearance section and found some fall-colored flowers and ribbon.  I was originally going to try to copy this exactly by the fake hydrangeas are $7.99 each and the clearance flowers were at most $2.19 each.  I decided to just use this image as inspiration.  

With a little bit of time and a few sticks of hot glue, here is the final result.

What do you think?  I think it turned out really cute!  Now, I will just have to figure out what to make for next week...
Love and Rockets, A

The C Word

I know I'm a day late on posting and linking up, but better late than never!  And I want to say a very special congratulations to IA on the birth of her beautiful baby boy!


I want to take a minute to talk about the C word.  No, not that one.  Cancer.  It affects way too many people that we know and love.  It is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing. Why am I bringing it up?  I'll tell you.

Two weeks ago, I went to the dermatologist to have a routine check up.  I haven't been in a few years and I wanted to go while my current insurance plan will still pay for it.  (I switch plans on December 1 and it will not be covered.)  I waited almost a year for this appointment.  I wanted the doctor to look at some suspicious moles/freckles.  I had one particular mole on my left breast that has grown over the past few years and had undefined borders.  She was immediately concerned by it and cut it off for a biopsy.  The place she removed was about the size of a dime.  She told me it would be a week or so before she had the results.  The day before my 26th birthday, I got the call.  The nurse on the other end of the line told me that the biopsy showed that I had very severe atypia.  Very severe?  Doesn't that seem redundant?  I questioned what that meant and I was told that that meant that the mole was becoming cancer and that I needed to have it removed before it reached that point, and I needed it removed as soon as possible.  They had not gotten clear margins and would need to go back and  remove part of my breast to make sure that we were in the clear.  It would be a minor surgery that would require stitches.  Well, today is that day.  My appointment is in an hour and I'm not going to lie, I am nervous.  This isn't my first rodeo with the C word.  My cervix thought it would be really cool to grow severely atypical cells my senior year in college.  I had to have multiple procedures to nip it in the bud.  Trust me, colposcopy is never a word you want to hear your doctor say.  (Well, it is in the sense that it is helpful, but it is most certainly not pleasant.  It involves liquid nitrogen, scissors, and your cervix.  I'll let you just picture that for a moment.)  I was finally in the clear, but it was a close call.  In the 3 months between my two procedures, I had progressed from moderate to severe atypical cells.

I have been lucky in both instances for early detection of these abnormalities.  I am very grateful for this.  Two cancer scares before you turn 26 is not ideal.  (I also had a lump removed from my right breast in 2008, but it turned out to just be scar tissue.)  I urge every one of you to keep regular appointments with your physicians.  Take note of your moles/freckles/lumps/bumps and alert your doctor when they change.  You can never be too careful.  Today, I will add another scar to my body, but it's worth it.

Stay classy and stay healthy,
A