Endorphins

If you've read my first post (here) then you know that this blog was originally designed as a class assignment, a way to get us writing, and this weeks assignment is to "build a case" about something, anything we want. This week was Valentines Day and a lot of people would expect me to talk about love or something, but I'm going to talk about happiness and how doing things can make you happy.

One of my favorite movies of all times is Legally Blonde with Reese Witherspoon and Luke Wilson. First off, if you have not seen this movie, STOP what you are doing, and go watch it. You can come back when you're done watching it. Ok, done watching the movie? Good! So here's the basic story line of this movie. Elle Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon, is a California girl who never had to work for anything and has everything she could ever want. That is, until she is dumped by her boyfriend Warner because he needs someone "less of a Marilyn and more of a Jackie" if he "wants to be a senator before before he's 30". This depressing change of events triggers Elle to go after Warner, all the way to Harvard Law. When she goes to school, all everyone sees in her is the blonde, sorority girl who doesn't belong at the school.

Saying all of that leads to this, during the process of being at school Elle actually gets good at the lawyer thing and lands an internship at her professors law firm, and the trial that they work on during the internship is defending Brooke Windham,  a success fitness expert who is being charged with murdering her husband.

And the reason I have gone on about all of this is because during the trial, when the interns are talking together, Elle says a line "Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't." And that is very true.

Endorphins are the neurotransmitter that make you happy and doing things that are positive can make you feel better.  If you have ever heard of having a "runners high" its the same kind of thing. Something in your body releases the endorphins and can give you a "natural high". Having a lack of endorphins in your body is what causes depression and antidepressants fight the lack by increasing production of endorphins. Watch this video to understand a little better.

My case for this blog is that, everyone needs to find something that they love to do, and truly makes them happy, and find time to do it. If you're like me and its crafting or playing music or if you're like some people who exercise to relax or even if its just dancing in your mirror listening to your "happy music" you understand the importance of having you "thing" to do. Especially if you are a college kid and stressed with school and everything else you need the as many endorphins in your life as possible. So find whatever it is in your life that gives off your endorphins and enjoy it.

Till Later <3
Felecia

Party Night

This week has been a great week. I got to enjoy the week with my friends and we even had party! So that is where this weeks craft comes from. I am currently in the process of training for the academic music fraternity for women, Sigma Alpha Iota and something we have to do during the training process is throw a dinner for the sisters of Sigma Alpha Iota and the brothers of Phi Mu Alpha. The party was thrown with the help of the Probationary Members of Phi Mu Alpha and I must say it was a great success. :D

For this party, I was doing the decorations. I actually found a Pinterest idea and decided to try it myself. What we used is a bunch of wine glasses, tea candles, and Styrofoam cups. We were able to get everything from the dollar store too. We had to make center pieces for the tables so what we were theoretically doing was place the tea light candles in the wine glasses with water in it. And once we light the candles then we would put the cups on top of them to make little lamps. But here's how it turned out!

These were the wine glasses we got. And the tea lights. We actually ended up putting water in the glasses to try and prevent an accidental fire in case someone spilt one.

These are the cups we used. They started white and we painted them red and then added black paint to add some dectoration on them. 

 Unfortunately for us, we didn't think through that fire burns things and that styrofoam melts pretty easily, so during the party, we had to take the tops off the cups before I got a picture of them. But they looked really cute.

The idea would have worked better if we had used paper cups instead of styrofoam, but the concept was cute.

This is me and Alex at the dinner last night. He is a brother of Phi Mu Alpha so he was at the dinner with me! Even though he was just sitting there while I was working. It was fun and I'm glad he was there. 

Till Later,
<3 Felecia

Music All Around

 Well this week has been interesting to say the least. It started off like a normal week until I was walking to symphony band rehearsal and fell...and sprained my ankle. So I spent Monday night at the doctors office getting X-Rays and medicine.

This is what my foot looks like. Look at all the bones!

This is my swollen ankle. I had already taken medicine so some of the medicine so thankfully most of the swelling had gone down at this point. 

 

 

I also had my first symphony band concert this week. It was so much fun and I can't believe how well the concert went. My first concert and I got to perform for a theater full of high school kids at the 40th Annual South Eastern United States Band Clinic. Its an honor band for the high school students from around Alabama and surrounding states.

The Troy University Symphony Band for Spring 2013 during the SEUS concert.

Okay, so heres to the craftyness now that I am done talking about my crazy week.  My boyfriend Alex is a music education teacher and he has to teach tomorrow for the first time. He has to make rhythm sticks so my craft for the week is making the sticks. We went to Lowes earlier and bought the stuff and made the sticks! And here is my simple tutorial about how to do it!

We went to Lowes and Wal-Mart and bought the materials. Six rods, 1/4 inch in diameter, a small hand saw, and some paint.

We used Apple Barrel Bight Blue Acrylic Paint, because he wanted "a happy color for the kids" and blue makes everyone smile.

This is Alex. He is cutting wood with a saw. I don't think he appreciates that I took this picture.

Here is the saw we used. It is a Kobalt saw and it works great. I think he paid about $6 for it and we cut all the rods with it. Because he has to teach first graders, he wanted the rods to be about six inches long so I took a ruler and marked the sticks up before he cut them.

This is Ares. Alex's roommates dog. He kept trying to eat the sticks while we were working on them...that would have been bad.

Here they all are after we cut them. 36 of them. The class he is teaching has 16 kids in it and he needs two for each kid. Well when we cut the wood, they didn't have exactly the smoothest ends. And since little children will be playing with them we decided that it would probably be a good idea to sand them down. So we went back to Wal-Mart and got sand paper and sanded them down. It turned into a race of who could sand them down the fastest, and I won.

Now that they are all sanded down, we set them on a paper towel on the table and started painting.

Here they are after they are all painted. They're finishing drying before he takes them to school. I'll let you know how it goes after he teaches tomorrow. Hopefully the little first graders will like them. 

Yeah, this post was fairly short but I hope maybe someone will find it useful.

Until next time,
Felecia <3