DIY Correspondence Book with Stab Binding

How many of you out there would like to write a book someday? I'm with you. I've started lots of stories and I still hold out hope that someday I will have the time and inspiration to finish one, even if for only myself/friends. If nothing else, one November (National Novel Writing Month!) I'll FORCE myself to crank one out, even if it sucks, just to say I have. But right now with Graduate School and everything, there's just not time to sit in front of the computer trying to come up with material. I only work on fiction if I am hit with sudden inspiration. Unfortunately much of that is drained by Graduate School papers.

However, that doesn't mean I can't make other "books" in the meantime to somewhat assuage my cravings to create. Over Christmas I taped together 18 "Ancestry Books" with my and husband's immediate and extended family trees (after doing HOURS of research, making calls, and using the free trial on ancestry.com to get information) to give to my family members. They turned out cute and interesting, I think, if almost too small to read on a few pages since I printed it on 8.5 x 11 paper instead of something bigger.

I've also been working on another "book project" that I finally finished today. For this one, I already had all the text material - I just needed to format it, print it, and assemble.

I recently used Facebook's new tool to download and backup content (like messages and pictures) from my account. During our 5 years of dating, Matt and I often used Facebook to send messages to one another, especially in the early months when we normally saw each other only 2 days a week and weren't quite brave enough to call each other all the time. My parents were usually unhappy about the length of those calls once I did cross that threshold. We used Facebook like instant messaging sometimes, so there ended up being a lot of messages. Being a collector of things, such as all of Matt's letters and notes to me, of course I needed to save these messages. In the past I'd tried copy-&-pasting these to Word documents. The new "backup" tool is much more effective.

I downloaded all the messages from 2007, when we both started using Facebook, to our wedding in April of this year.

At 12-point font, there were 602 single-spaced pages.

I lowered the font size and deleted extra spaces to lower the length to a manageable size. The only bad thing was that I can see the date of each post in my download folder, but not when I copy the text over to LibreOffice Writer, the program we have on our main computer. I decided NOT to go through and type in the date for every post. That would have been a nice touch, but maddening. I did type in the name of each new month so I could keep some track of time. Then I selected all the posts from 2007 only and decided to start there, saying I'd possibly move on to later years in the future.

From just July to December 2007 takes up about 80 pages at Times New Roman 10.5. I wanted to make a small-size book, so I formatted the page landscape-wise with 2 columns. Basically most of the rest of the work consisted of making everything justified (because then it looks like a novel), formatting every line that ended a paragraph to fix the word spacing that justifying created, and tabbing in most new paragraphs by hand since it copied as straight text with almost no formatting. Whoo. Took forever.

Then the fun part. Printing each page front-and-back manually so I didn't waste paper and would have an 80-page book instead of a 160-page book.

Then came assembling the book.

Matt got me a really awesome book called Indie Publishing: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book. It has everything you'd need to know, from ISBNs to self-publishing to design. Towards the end is a section that shows you how to create your own books on a small scale, such as with pamphlet pages or stab binding. I used stab binding to create my correspondence book:

Line up all the pages and the cover (which needs to be twice the width of a page plus the width of the stack of your pages ... my cover needed to be 11 3/8 inches because the stack was about 3/8 of an inch tall). Secure the pages and cover in place with binder clips. Measure, mark, and punch the holes. They suggest using a "screw punch." I don't have one of these and I'm impatient, so I used the long, sharp, needle-like instrument you see in the picture, which is a scrapbooking tool for poking holes. I had to hammer it through the pages and eventually do the back side as well to make the holes large enough for my needle. Still, it was hard to shove the needle through later. Make sure if you ever do this to make the holes large enough.

Thread the binding. There is a funny formula for how to bind the book to make it look uniform and sturdy. I'm not going to go into all that detail here unless someone asks. Also you can probably find out how to do stab binding online somewhere. Tip: Make sure your thread is PLENTY long enough the first time. Probably three times the length of the book is good. I just about ran out.

Tie it off and you are done! Here's my finished book that more than anything I just wanted to share with everyone after the hours of work I put into it. And I didn't even fix all our typos in the text! I decided that made it more realistic (and we apologize for them in many messages) ... plus, that would have driven me crazy. I can now look back at our messages whenever I want ... but I can also pretend that Matt and I wrote a book together. We basically did! I remember when "text message" novels for teens were kind of popular, or diary-entry novels ... this is just like that. And we didn't have to make anything up, it's all what we really wrote. Pretty fun, I think. But I'm also a hopeless romantic.

Holiday Fun

Some highlights from December and Christmas:

Llyr being cute:

 

Making presents for Matt. I made him a decal for the computer he made and christened "The Bebop" out of sticker paper, Cowboy Bebop mugs with a Sharpie (we'll see who is right about them staying or washing off, I've heard both), and a kindle sleeve. 

Treats!

 

 Opening Stockings:

 

 Seeing Christmas Laser Kitty:

Our first Christmas was certainly a merry one!

How to Decorate for Christmas If You Live in a Small House with a Rambunctious Kitty

Being married and in our first home made me extra excited to decorate for every occasion, but especially Christmas. I started the day after Thanksgiving, which normally I think is a bit soon, but no one comes over often except for Matt's guy friends, and they wouldn't care, so I went ahead and started. It's been a drawn out process anyway. So, here's how I decorated our (perfect for us but still rather) small rental home so that it would look festive but still be as kitty-proof as possible.

Step One: Garland. It's the real stuff! Cut from cedar trees at M's grandparents' acreage. Then I wired the several branches together with floral wire and attached them to the mantle using nails carefully hammered right below the mantle shelf and more wire. I don't really have "process pictures" of this step.

I made stockings out of what I think is upholstery fabric (which Llyr adored laying on) for Matt, me, and Llyr, of course. I hung our most special ornaments on the mantle: our new "First Christmas" ornament, our pickle, and our "Wish" ornament. I worry a little about how well those nails will hold once the stockings get full, but I think they'll be all right with light items.

Step Two: Other Ornaments. What to do with the rest of my ornaments, though? They wouldn't all fit on the garland and at this point we weren't sure if we wanted to do a tree because of a) space, or lack of it, and b) kitty, who I'm sure would want to climb it. Since then I've seen some REALLY cool ideas for trees that aren't trees on buzzfeed (including drawn ones, small ones made of sticks, ones made of a ladder which actually looked pretty awesome, and another made of hanging green baubles. Check it out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/38-fabulous-diy-christmas-trees-that-arent-actual). I decided to hang some of my ornaments (not all the ones I have accrued over the years, but a favorite series, the Hallmark Puppy Love ornaments) in the area between the living room and kitchen. I used twine. The twine sags a little, but it works. There are my puppies! I also put up some of my "kid" decorations on shelves to (hopefully) keep them away from kitty.

Step Three: My Lego Train. Christmas decorations are not complete without the Lego train. I'm not sure if Llyr liked playing with it or was scared of it - he seemed to change his mind a lot. I eventually moved it out of the middle of the living room and next to one wall. I plan to pile presents in the middle of the track later on.

 Step Four: Advent Calendar. Matt asked if we'd have one like his mom always did for him and his brothers. There was a really cool idea in my Martha Stewart Magazine that used little muslin bags tied to branches, but I couldn't find any of those within the week or so after he asked me and before December started. I made little envelopes out of paper instead and hung them with ribbon and thumb tacks. Worked decently, but I had to secure a few envelopes with tape after putting the candies in them.

 Step Five:  Christmas Dragon. Matt bought me the first Christmas dragon a couple of Christmases ago. Unfortunately, he became a casualty of our kitty over the summer. Glass dragons only get to fly once, as Matt says. So the new Christmas dragon doesn't get to stay out as a decoration all the time. But his friend Mark Twain can!

 Step Six: Chalkboard Decorations. I do have "process pictures" of this one. I saw this idea (with a different quote for wall art) on Pinterest and it was genius. To get perfect font even if you don't have good handwriting (especially with chalk), just transfer the picture to the chalkboard. Basically, print out what you want to write/draw, color the entire area of the image on the back side of the paper with chalk (make it thorough), then tape the paper right side up to the chalkboard and color in every space that needs to transfer. You can go over the image again with chalk if it is too faint, but I liked the way mine turned out without doing that.

That's about all I have for now, but it has remained safe from crazy Llyr so far!

Why Proofreading is Important

This semester began my two-year stint as a Graduate Assistant at a University where I will be teaching two Composition 1 classes while taking two or three of my own Graduate courses for a Masters of Arts in English. Recently my students turned in their second paper for the course--a definition paper. They had about a week and a half to two weeks to write their first paper (depending on how industrious they were at starting early) with tutorials during the drafting process.

For the second paper, the students had about a week to write the paper. It is not going to be formally graded, but rather taken as pass/fail with the opportunity to rewrite either it or the first paper for their third assignment. There was a peer review day but no tutorials this time around. I expected these papers to be shorter, less in-depth, and certainly much less polished. However, here are a few sentences that would alert any teacher of a lack of proofreading on the students' part. I'm hoping that during later tutorials and during class to use examples such as these to remind students that proofreading is NECESSARY. But in the meantime, I'll use them as opportunities to take a break and laugh. Although I certainly do not want to laugh at my students, I think you'll agree that these sentences are fair game. Besides, if I don't see the lighter side of this I'm going to get depressed that my students were too lazy to catch these. (On a side note, most of them during tutorials to prepare for their rewrite did admit that these papers were not their best work and that many of their sentences needed MAJOR work). All sentences are reproduced, with no corrections, to the best of my ability.

This student started out defining the word "legit" (not exactly what I was looking for, but fair game I guess) but then sort of moved on to slang. Here is my favorite sentence of the whole batch:

"The words LOL meaning laugh out loud, legit meaning legitimate or even the word sick which most people see the word sick they think when they say sick the literally mean sick but they are actually meaning something is cool or awesome, in modern days people would even go to say it is legit."

Hubs and I laughed over that one all during lunch after I showed it to him. Another great one from that paper:

"When someone says 'That sign was legit and colorful' the best was to say that would have been 'The sign was really colorful.' Statement done no confusion no misunderstandings it was blunt and straight and to the point."

I'm going to start using that when I say something and people ask me to rephrase or repeat what I just said: "Statement done no confusion no misunderstandings . . . ."

Someone else quoted a well known phrase:

"[A lot of people say] 'does what you love and love what you do.'"

I just don't see how he couldn't hear that something was wrong there when he wrote it. Just a couple more before I go:

"And I question this definition that many people define the word with."

"Peace can be as something as big as war or small as doing the right thing, or being nice to the people around you."

"The economy lies to people all the time, and most people don't even realize it."

"Freedom is a vague term with no indefinite definition."

Inspired by "Spineless Classics"

Ever heard of "Spineless Classics?" They are awesome! I saw one with The Hubster while we were on our honeymoon to Wales and England. If you check out the website, http://www.spinelessclassics.com, you'll see that Spineless Classics are poster-sized printings of the full text of a classic novel, usually with areas of white space forming a design that has to do with the story. For example, the first one I saw was Romeo and Juliet. The title was centered in a white heart pierced by a sword, surrounded by the entire text of the play in about 4-point font. I really want to have one of these someday in my house - perhaps Pride and Prejudice?

They are a bit expensive though. So in the meantime while I wait to save up some money and acquire the wall space for one, I decided to try making one of my own. I created two pieces in Inkscape - one a short story from the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh fables, the other "The Black Cat" by Poe. "The Black Cat" is postcard size while the other is 8.5 by 11 inches. Unfortunately, I had to make my font around 3.5 to fit the words, so it is a bit harder to read. But, they are pretty cool and I plan to make more word art in the future - it's fun and not terribly difficult with Inkscape using the "Text > Flow into Frame" tool.

Craft Extravaganza

I recently got a couple of days off work and got to do lots of fun stuff around the house (as well as lots of chores).

Chalkboard fridge panel:

My mom came up with the idea for the chalkboard paint on the side of the fridge when she saw it in a magazine - we'd already done the painting. Recently I stenciled and put up a Coldplay quote.

Bingo Card Wedding Date Art:

I got some vintage Bingo cards with my friend during her Bachelorette celebration. I had the idea that if one of them had a 4 and 28 in the first two columns (our wedding date), I'd mark it like you mark a Bingo card, like a save the date, but just as art for my wall. I found two cards that would work - this one looked better. I didn't have a stamper, so I just used my thumb in some stamp ink. A cooler idea would have been for me to use my thumbprint on one number and Matt to do his on the other. Still, I think it's pretty neat.

Collage Wall:

Self explanatory, I just wanted to show it off.

Hopefully more crafts to come in the future!

Excellence

You know something good has just happened when you receive a folder with only the word "excellence" written on it in gold letters in the mail.

This certificate is telling me that I did an outstanding job on the English Content Area Praxis II exam, the test I have to pass before I can become an English teacher. It cost somewhere around $130 to take, so knowing that I passed it the first time was a relief. After receiving this packet in the mail, I quickly went to check my scores online, as test-takers have 45 days to download their scores once they are released. 

Fingers crossed ...

I got a 199! The possible scores range from 100 (if you get zero to about seven or eight questions correct) to 200 (if you miss zero to about seven or eight questions). There are 120 questions. I missed 9 out of the 120 according to my score sheet. Darn, one more point would have been nice, but I'll happily take the 199 and fancy "excellence" folder and certificate! YES!