Hip Injury Prevention

Hi there! So you may not know this, but I am an Irish Step Dancer, and I have done all kinds of dance styles for my entire life. Over the years I have occurred many injuries (luckily none too serious), but one injury I seem to find most prelevant in not only myself, but in other dancers is hip injuries. We dancers are constantly using our hips while dancing, so many of times, our hips will get injured, and it is no fun! The problem is, is that we tend to ignore these injuries because they do not seem as serious, and we end up just walking them off or taking a break from dance. However, these injuries are very serious, and can lead to very serious problems like Osteoarthritis, which would lead to hip replacement surgery. But fret not! There are very simple ways you can prevent these injuries! I put together this video for a science fair project this year, and I wanted to share it with you all so you can watch it and learn some quick and easy ways to help prevent injuries!
Enjoy!!

Hip Injury Prevention In Dancers [click the link!]

How To: Create A New Belt Hole!

Ok ladies, let's be honest. We all have belts that we buy just *slightly* too tight so that when we put them on, it squeezes us all in tight and snug? Yeah that's not very comfortable....Or, do we have some belts that we've owned for a while, and suddenly are too small to use? Fret no longer! I have found a simple AND easy solution!! All you are going to need is a Screwdriver (or something similar), a Hammer, and a wood block (or a surface you do not mind getting hit at and scuffed)

You are going to find where you need to place the belt hole and place the screwdriver right on top of it. Bang on the hammer on top of the screwdriver until the screwdriver head penetrates the belt material. You may have to flip over the belt and do this on the backside to get a good hole. 

Stick the belt clasp thing (whatever its called) in the hole and move it around to stretch it out a bit to make it usable.

And voila! You fixed a belt! I would recommend only using this technique on leather or faux leather type belts. Other techniques may need to be used for fabric belts, belts made with glitter etc...But this works great for what I needed! Let me know if you have any questions and comment below if you tried this! 

Happy DIY!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Hello! So I have a friend of mine Makayla who is sick (as well as I am), and whenever I'm sick I have this great urge to make cookies...So I decided, why not make some cookies, and bring some to my sick friend! I didn't want to just make a plain old recipe like sugar cookies or chocolate chip, so I decided to twist it up a bit and make a "mash-up" cookie. I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies at Indigo Scones' blog here. Because I am terrible at explaining things (especially baking recipes) I am just going to display my visual step-by-step and you can go to Ellen's blog to find the official recipe! Enjoy! (I certainly did)

The Ingredients

Butter and Peanut Butter to the microwave!

Flour and Baking Soda

PB/Butter Mix, Brown Sugar and Reg. Sugar 

Pouring the flour stuff into Mix (egg picture wouldn't upload)

Just knead it! :D

Spooning time :P

Roll the dough in a bit of flour to have it retain shape.

Roll it in less than this...I put too much :P

Into the oven they go! (Batch 1 of 2)

Best time and temp. (12 minutes is ok too)

Tada! <3

Floating Paint Chip Calendar!

Hello! So today I am going to show you a quick and easy way to make a Floating Paint Chip Calendar! I found this DIY from a Youtube video by TheSorryGirls which you can find here, and Im going to show you in a few easy steps how I replicated it!

 

To start, you are going to need:
-A Floating Image picture frame (basically a picture frame with glass for the front and back, I found mine in a pack of 4 different sizes at Bed, Bath and Beyond)
-About 35 paint chips
-A piece of scrap paper
-Scissors
-Tape

Depending on how you want your calendar to look, choose your paint chips likewise. I decided to do a green and yellow ombre style, so I found these little assistant papers (right picture) to help me choose a good ombre combo that I wanted! You are going to need 7 paint chips to go across, and 5 rows of paint chips, so for mine I had 3 rows of green altering with 2 rows of yellow.

Next you are going to measure your frame and do a little math to see how small each square needs to be. My frame was roughly 11x15.5 inches so each square ended up being 1.75 inches. I made a template out of just a plain white piece of paper to avoid confusion with the other colors.

 Use your template to cut out the 35 squares you need to fill the frame....

Just to make it a little easier on myself I kept all the squares in a pile, and cut them out in the order I was going to place them. (I'm a little OCD...)

After you have them all cut out you're going to lay them all out in order, and I would recommend putting a little rolled piece of tape on the back of each paint chip just in case your seal isn't quite tight enough. Once you are done with that place your glass back to the frame and seal it with the clips (or whatever it is) provided!

This is how mine ended up turning out! Once you're finished creating the frame you can start to draw out your calendar with Expo (dry-erase) markers! The awesome thing about it is that you can erase the marker very easily on glass, and it looks super cute hung up on any wall! It nearly looks like the paint chips are attached to the wall!

I hope you guys all enjoyed this and possibly went out to try this, because it is a super easy DIY, and nearly free if you already have a floating picture frame! 

Let me know in the comments below if you are going to try it and if you do, how it went!

Happy DIY!