Snow Day!

Like most of Southwest and Central Virginia, I went to bed Tuesday night with a few inches of snow already covering the ground, and with no plans for the following day, I was excited to see what I would wake up to.  I dreamt that it snowed several feet of snow, and while that wasn't the case, the 8 1/2 inches of snow that we did get wasn't disappointing!  I hadn't gone out and played in the snow in years, so I got on Pinterest to get some fun snowman ideas.  Instead of a snowman, I got the idea for a snow cat.  It was easy to make and I even managed to get a picture with the snow cat and my real cat.  After coming in from the snow I ate lunch and then planted myself on the couch.  I Skyped with some friends, and then got on Pinterest and Facebook, read, napped, and repeated that cycle until dinner.  After dinner there was a game of Scrabble and now I'm watching the Olympics.  A perfect snow day if you ask me!

"Connected At The Heart" Gift

This post is long overdue, but I've been slightly preoccupied lately, what with the whole moving to another country in a few weeks thing happening.  But for Christmas this year I wanted all of my gifts to have an England theme to them.  Coming up with something for my mom, dad, and brother-in-law was  pretty easy but I had no idea what to get my sister.  Their spare bedroom has a travel theme to it and has a big map in it, and had been pinning lots of gifts idea that had to do with traveling, so I decided to go that route.

These pins were my inspiration:

via

And this was my final product:

I started by finding a map of Virginia in an atlas and tearing it out.  Then I printed off a map of Virginia from the computer, cut it out, and used it as a template to cut out Virginia from the map.  I made sure that Blacksburg was in a relatively accurate place on the map.

Next I found a picture of a map of England, one that had a similar look to the atlas map.  Then I printed it off and cut it out.  It wasn't until then that I realized I should have done that for Virginia too.  It would have been proportionate and would have saved a step of cutting.  Oh well, you live and learn!

I laid the two maps out on a piece of card stock, and then I started looking for a quote I wanted to use.  I found the one I used on Pinterest, and then I practiced writing it several different ways until I came up with an arrangement I liked.  I wrote it in pencil first and then went over it in Sharpie.

The final step was drawing red hearts around the cities of Blacksburg and Birmingham, and then connecting the two with a dotted line that formed a heart.