Natural Wonders & Monuments To See:

N:

1. Yellowstone Park
2. Glacier National Park
3. Northern Lights



Image from Telegraph UK

4. Egyptian Pyramids
5. Taj Mahal
6. Grand Canyon
7. Amazon Rainforest
8. Galapagos Islands
9. Great Barrier Reef
10. Niagra Falls
11. Rolling Irish fields
12. Tides at the Bay of Fundy



Image from Boston.com

S:

1. Galapagos Islands



Image from National Geographic>

2. Yellowstone
3. Alaska/Denali National Park
4. Everglades
5. Crystal Caves - any and all of them!



Image from Crystalinks.com>

6. Those caves where they found the first cave paintings, in France I think
7. The super super giant redwood trees, the ones only a few scientists know about in the middle of California somewhere
8. Ice Caves - in Greenland maybe?
9. Amazon rainforest

It's kinda funny but S and I have a lot of overlap! Also we've done things on each other's lists. I've been to Alaska and the Everglades and she's seen the Northern Lights and Niagra Falls. I do think we should go to the Galapagos Islands and/or Yellowstone together soon!

Paint Chip Mosaic

So I recently moved into a new house, and was struggling to find cheap decorations for my walls that didn't look awful. After many Pinterest searches, I came across the idea of making a paint chip mosaic! The inspiration comes from here, and I pretty much copied the design exactly since I love sunflowers.

The first step is going to the hardware store and stealing a ton of paint chips. This is the best step. You get to pretend that you are painting all the rooms in your house, and that you really need 15 chips of the same color, just in case. Maybe you have 15 roommates and they all want their own sample to approve before you paint it. I made up a lot of stories in my head like this, in case a store employee asked me what I was doing. No one did.

Despite stealing like 100, I still ran out of the colors I needed but luckily found this entire book of them in our garage!

Next you trace out your design lightly in pencil, cut your paint chips in to small, uneven squares and get to pasting! (Note: This will take 1 million years).

I made my pieces a little too small, so it really took forever. I did each piece individually, putting a dab of glue on the back of each with a toothpick. It's good to watch old episodes of Arthur while doing this. 

I framed it on some white printer paper, and voila!

It really complements my craigslist chair.

Final thoughts: Would I recommend this project? I guess, if you are under-employed, not easily bored, have TV to catch up on, and your housemates don't mind having a table covered in newspaper and glue and scraps of paper for weeks. 

The end result was quite nice though! 

Things you would like to learn how to make with your own two hands:

I love lists.  Maybe a bit more than S but I think we both love lists.  Anyway, she loves lists at least enough to make a few lists with me.  When I came across this book with topics for tons of lists I knew it'd be the next Donuts After Dark feature!  Here we go...

Things you would like to learn how to make with your own two hands:

N:

1. Bread! I <3 Bread.
2. Beautiful dumplings like my grandma (hers are so uniform!)
   
3. Good looking shelves/other woodworking projects. Like a HOUSE.
4. Good looking and well fitting clothing (normally my sewing projects turn out okay..)
5. An impressive sculpted bust of my dog
   
6. Welding! Just cause.

S:

1. Bread! All my bread-baking endeavors have been failures, probably because I am too lazy to knead or let rise properly. 

2. Dresses. I always start sewing projects enthusiastically then get overwhelmed by the patterns, and give up once I inevitably break the sewing machine and can't figure out how to rethread it.
3. Tables/chairs/general woodworking. I did take wood shop in middle school and successfully completed a box and a mirror frame. Our teacher had multiple missing fingers. The wood shop was actually closed down after our year because too many people were giving each other tattoos with the wood burners. I remember really enjoying drafting. 
4. Origami. Just to impress people at dinner parties and such. 
5. Goat cheese. Because I love it and then I would get to have a pet goat.

Based on this you should probably expect some posts on bread, carpentry and sewing coming up!