Gilly - Jill Craft Saturday!

I've always been a crafty person, but there hasn't been much reason for me to craft while living in Korea, other than to sew bedding or curtains or to make little things for my 250 sq ft home, but with the wedding coming up, I've found an excuse to come out of my CRAFTY shell!  I debated showing or not showing the things I'm crafting for the wedding, but then thought, for those of you who read my blog AND will be at the big day, it gives you a chance to kinda see the behind the scenes work... Who knows, maybe you'll even appreciate all the hard work just a tinge more! :) 

My sweet friend Gill asked if I wanted to have a wedding crafting day at her apartment this Saturday!  With an "in everything" cat living in my apartment (I love Maverick, but it's true), I was thrilled to be able to lay all my stuff on the ground and not worry about it being scratched up, layed on, eaten, or even worse, thrown up!  Plus it's always more fun to craft with a girlfriend... especially my Gilly!

I've been working on cutting and assembling these fabric flags for weeks!  There are 8 different fabrics that I'm using for different things throughout the wedding, and the fabric flags will pull all 8 together!  Today, I cut and attached 85 flags!  They're all turned upside down in this picture, so you'll have to wait to see what the fabric looks like right side up after the wedding pictures come out!

Today's crafting necessities! 

Gilly is a flower making machine!  She made 6 fabric flowers today, which I'll add pearls to the center of later this week.  I'll be attaching them to an avocado green colored fabric sash and tying them around my two darling flower girls' waist's!   

Didn't they turn out lovely?!  I love even more that Gill handmade them!!

Between cutting and attaching fabric flags to the flag banner, I was busy making little baby bowties and gluing them to small wood pic's to stick in the cupcakes on the big day!
*** Don't mind the no make-up, tossled hair look, please!  It was supposed to be a PJ type crafting day!

I love cupcakes, and I adore mini bow ties... why not pair them up, right?! 

So, there you go!  One full day of wedding-crafting-cutting, gluing, sewing, laughing, and chatting with my Gilly!   Couldn't have asked for a better Saturday!  Thank you for your help, friend!

Cardboard Letters!

I saw a blog the other day, where a girl cut and glued cardboard together to make alphabet letters... Genius!! Then she painted them! I took it one step further and covered them with fabric; two fabrics from the wedding actually! Don't be fooled! They took me all day to make!

When I showed them to Aaron he said they were great and asked if I would make more... My response, "Ummm, NO!" haha. Love how they turned out, but wouldn't recommend it unless you have more free time than you know what to do with!! Lol. Still, I'm kinda proud with what I made out of cardboard, fabric,

and a hot glue gun!

Birthday, Busan style!

Well, it's official, I've eased my way into my thirties and have officially hit 31 today!   My day was celebrated with lots of fun letters from my Korean elementary students (which happen to be quite funny), rice cakes, cupcakes, flowers, pencils, pens, soap flowers, perfume, a book, a notebook, etc... Never thought I'd be turning 31 and receiving pencils, but I can't complain!  I'm a sucker for a fun pencil!

Here are some of the birthday cards I received throughout the day... 

ENJOY THEIR SILLINESS!

Finally, one letter than shows that I actually DO teach grammar and spelling!  LOL

As if those notes weren't cute and thoughtful enough, I was showered with fun gifts too!  These bagels are from one of my 5th graders who remembered me saying that my favorite thing to eat for breakfast is bagels - LAST YEAR!!!!  Amazing memory, right?!

This GIGANTIC hair bow is from two of my 3rd graders!!  I promised them that I would wear it tomorrow!  I'm not kidding when I say it's almost as big as my entire head!  Oh boy!

One of my 5th grade boy's mom's made these soap scented flowers!  Yep, you can actually wash your hands with them!  Pretty cool, eh?  I smelled them and said, "mmmm, yummy!"  He immediately had a look of complete fright and attempted to tell me, in his best English, that I can't eat them!  LOL

Okk, my darling co-teacher surprised me with 3 cupcakes from my favorite cupcake bakery in Nampodong (RED VELVET), and a famous Korean book which was recently translated into English that she really loved.  The beautiful garden roses are from A!

 

How can you not feel loved when your desk looks like this on your birthday?! 

I was overwhelmed by my students and co-workers generosity and thoughtfulness today!  Feels good to be loved, huh?!  During the afternoon today, I got a couple text pictures of paper towels with arrows written on them from my friends Gill and Sam.  I was so confused, as you can see below!   I thought maybe their phones got hacked and were sending these weird arrow pictures to all of their contacts...

Then, I got home and saw this, hanging over my front door keypad, I immediately put two and two together and smiled from ear to ear, because it meant that my two sweet friends had come all the way to my apartment (about an hour by subway and bus) to surprise me with something before they went to work!!

They surprised me with arrows leading to a GORGEOUS white chocolate Tous Les Jours cake!!!!

... and a DARLING card!

Then, minutes later, Aaron showed up with a HUGE bouquet in hand!

I've only seen bouquets this big in Ms. America pageants!  LOL

Sooo blessed with fabulous people who loved me in my love language today!

Aaron did some research online and found out about a FABULOUS Italian restaurant 

near Gwangali Beach, called Bella Cita, and surprised me by taking me there for dinner tonight!

 It was quiet, intimate, romantic, pretty, comfortable, and the food was, in fact, delicious!

Aaron ordered a BBQ set, which came with two beers.  We laughed about how it was a really nice restaurant but that the beers were MILLER LIGHTS!  lol

I had a super yummy pasta!!!  Wedding diet starts tomorrow... FOR REAL!

  

Fun thing about going to Bella Cita was that the beach was right across the street for an after dinner stroll!

It was supposed to rain all day today, but I never saw a drop!   Thank you Jesus! :)

This is how Aaron hails a taxi!  Apparently it's helpful to stand on something and appear to be much taller!  :)

We had such an awesome birthday date, until.... I got out of the taxi and up to my apartment and realized I had left my wallet in the backseat!  uuugggghhhh!  Happy birthday to me!  I spent about 30 mins on the phone with my American bank, cancelling accounts, and ordering a new debit card and checks... and the other 10 mins on the phone with my co-teacher, who was on the other line with the taxi company trying to file a report!

Earlier today I really wanted some new clothes, but now, 

the only thing I really want for my birthday is my wallet back!  haha... fingers crossed!

Welcome to 31, I guess!

   

The Arrival

Tonight was the closing ceremony for the Busan International Performing Arts Festival, and Aaron and I had free tickets to enjoy the show!

Tonight's performance was called "THE ARRIVAL" and was performed by a New Zealand theater company.  It was a migrant tale where the main character flees his homeland, leaving his wife and daughter, to journey across the sea, only to arrive in a strange, wondrous new land where giant ships fly through the air, no one speaks his language, and weird animals abound.  It's a tribute to migrants, refugees and displaced people worldwide, and was a beautiful story of overcoming hardship, of humanity and of hope!

It was definitely one of the most creative, whimsical, exquisite, imaginative, magical and innovative performances I've ever seen!

To make things even better, I got to see Monica (my old co-teacher) again!  She was hanging out at the coffee shop next to the Theater with some girlfriends and her husband.  When she saw me, she yelled, "Chelsey!!" and then nudged her husband and told him in Korean to get up and buy me a hot chocolate!  haha.  Man, I miss her!

As we were walking in the doors to find our seats, I saw my little baby Korean girl who was introducing the show!  She was really nervous, but super excited!

How cute is she?  Aaron caught this photo of me reminding her to smile on stage, 

"because we always look more beautiful when we smile!"  haha  

She ended up doing the whole welcoming speech, flawlessly!  I was such a proud teacher! 

It's always nice to have a date night out... even better when it's FREE! :)

We took a taxi back to Yeong-do and stopped in for a late night dinner at the restaurant under my apartment.  It actually closed a couple months ago and was re-opened under a new name and new owners last week.  So, we went in, sat down, and checked out the menu, which was completely in Korea.  We read through it and didn't recognize anything, so we asked the waitress for the most delicious menu item.  Her response was ******* (can't remember).  We said, great, we'll take it, and then looked it up in our phone translator... PIG TAIL!  Ummmm.... We've both tried some really weird stuff here, but pig tail was something we'd never even heard of Koreans eating!   When the server brought it to our table, it was actually THE SKIN FROM A PIG TAIL!  Eeekkkk!  Aaron and I are in to trying new things, but an entire plate of pig tail skin was something we weren't really up for indulging in.  Luckily, the server gladly allowed us to change our order to MEAT, instead of just SKIN!  lol   It turned out to be a delicious dinner and a really fun night out with A!   

Happy Birthday Loola!

Today is Loola's 28th birthday, so last night I made a trip to the foreign market to buy some baking supplies!  I knew her favorite type of cake was red velvet, so I decided to make red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting!  YUMM!!!

During tea time (after our first class of the day), 

I arranged the cupcakes on the table and lit the candles for a little birthday party...

Loola was very touched and made her birthday wish...

...and the 6 of us (Hana, behind the camera) had a little party between classes!
** These are the people I drink tea with everyday after 1st period.

Loola sent me this message:
Lovely Chelsey...

I was really touched today because of  your lovely event!!
Actually in Korea, Teachers don't have a birthday party in school.
Sometimes my students prepared the surprised party, not a teacher.
Today I had a  very special birthday party which my co teacher prepared.^^
I'll never forget~
Thank you so much~

As a words of affirmation lover, this made my whole day and made my messy kitchen totally worth the hassle of cleaning! 

Happy birthday Loola friend!