Kesha brought her Rainbow tour to OKC...

Free flower crowns & body glitter were passed around to everyone.

...and it was one of the best things ever! She played at the Zoo Amphitheater on July 2nd, 2018. I went with my coworker friend, Audrey, and it was my second Kesha concert. The first time I saw her, I went with my friend, Michelle, and she still spelled her name Ke$ha. It was at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles in September of 2011. That was only seven short years ago but, boy how things have changed! All of us... Kesha, myself and Michelle... are completely different people now. It was rather amazing to see how Kesha has changed as a performer.

How it was in 2011.

The show she put on in 2011 was a party - her set design screamed grungy house party, she drank beer (instead of water) in between songs, she barely even sang her songs, there were backup singers & dancers everywhere and at the end of the show, she encouraged us to all go home with the people sitting next to us. At the time, Michelle & I were in our twenties and a party in LA was what we needed.  I looked back at some old pictures and that concert was great.

Fast forward to the concert last week. Completely (COMPLETELY) different experience. Kesha sang all of the words to each one of her songs and she played the guitar! It was really neat to hear "rock" versions of her older pop songs, such as Blah Blah Blah with electric guitar and an actual live band & vocals. Auto-tune and backing tracks were out and raw performances with instruments were in! There were still back up dancers, glitter and confetti but the show had purpose and meaning. She stopped in between songs to tell us about her struggles and encouraged us all to spread kindness. The visuals from the set design transported us onto Kesha's planet where she reminded us all to be ourselves, unapologetically and without shame.

Her set included a massive space shuttle which she walked out of adorned in a glittering white crown and cape. She started the show with her feminist anthem, Woman. After that song, she explained a sticky predicament she was in - the Zoo Amphitheater does not allow cursing and will charge a fine to all artists who use swear words, but 99% of her songs include swear words. Being Kesha, she gave a huge middle finger to Zoo Amphitheater management and carried on with her foul language. I don't think it offended anyone. She sang many songs from her latest album but sprinkled in some of her old songs as well.  She entered the space shuttle a few times and each time reemerged with a more colorful outfit. At the end of the night, she gave us a two song encore, including an extremely emotional rendition of her song Praying, and showered us all in confetti.

I loved her performance in Los Angeles; as much fun as that was, I think I enjoy the 2018 version of Kesha so much more. As we go through change and the growing pains that accompany life, we often wish we were still young and carefree. But going to this concert reminded me of all the greatness that comes from our pain and experiences. We all weather our own personal storms and with the right mindset, we come out the other end stronger and braver. Thank you Kesha for reminding us of that.

This is the second year Erica made a majority of her Christmas presents...

...and I see it as an accomplishment. I only bought gifts for my mom, her boyfriend Mike, (my soon-to-be step-dad, actually!) and Wes. I made tea light candle holders for my coworkers and a few very special friends this year. I would have posted this before Christmas but I was afraid someone would read this and it would ruin the surprise. They're not really Christmas-y, actually, so I guess the timing of this post doesn't matter. I hope everyone had a spectacular Christmas and an even more wonderful New Year! : )

These are super simple. Here are tutorials of all the candle jars shown above.

Candle #1:
Materials needed - jar with lid, whole coffee beans, tea light candles, hot glue, and ribbon

1. Fill the jar half way with coffee beans and add the tea light to the middle.

2. Hot glue the ribbon to the lid. Keep the lid on the candle when not burning. Remove lid to burn.

3. When you burn the tea light, the entire room should smell like fresh brewed coffee.

Candle #2:
Materials needed - small circular jar, cinnamon sticks (my size jar needed one and a half packs), tea light, hot glue and ribbon (I think I use hot glue and ribbon for everything!)
1. Hot glue the cinnamon sticks all around the jar. Hot glue dries really quickly so I just used small dabs of glue. I also glued around and in between the sticks. My sticks were taller than the jar so it looked like the jar was made of cinnamon sticks, which I thought looked neat. If that's not your taste, you can measure and cut the sticks.
2. Tie a ribbon around the jar.
3. When you burn the tea light, the room will smell cinnamon-y and warm.

Candle #3:
Materials needed - glass jar, tea lights, Elmers glue, hot glue, marbles, pearls, glitter, paint brush, newspaper (as a floor covering -- glitter is messy!), cardstock or cardboard

1. Hot glue marbles and pearls around the jar. Arrange in any pattern you wish. I used a ton of hot glue because I was paranoid of my marbles and pearls coming off. LOL
2. Measure a piece of card stock or cardboard just a pinch smaller the size of your jar with ornaments glued on. Glue the jar onto the cardboard or stock (depending on which you have). This will further prevent them from falling off.
3. Spread glue all over the rest of the jar and sprinkle generously with glitter. I did this over newspaper. I still got glitter all over the ottoman and carpet...sorry, Wes.
4. Put the tea light in and it should be super sparkly when the candle's lit.

Candle #4: (this one is really similar to the one I just did)
Materials needed - glass jar, "gems" - they're actually decorative fillers, tiny pebbles (like the ones at the bottom of aquariums), hot glue, and a tea light
1. Hot glue decorative fillers around the jar. I found them surprisingly easy to glue on.
2. Remove excess hot glue and finger prints from the jar. I used a Clorox wipe.
3. Fill with a very shallow layer of pebbles & place in tea light.

I don't have a close up finished picture of this because I was running out of time and I absentmindedly wrapped them without taking a picture.  The one on the bottom right square is pretty close to complete. And, yes, Sadie loves helping. : )

Merry, jolly, white Christmas from Erica and Sadie!

Last week, my work had an ornament exchange. Everyone brings an ornament; its put in a gift sack and the participant gets to draw a number in return. Later in the day, the participants get to take home the ornament that matches the number they drew in the morning. Some had secondary numbers that corresponded to matching gift cards but I didn't get one of those. I got a nice glittery ornament shaped as a sleigh filled with presents.

For this event, I wanted to make my own ornament (its so close to Christmas, I bet there aren't any good ones left at the stores anyway). I was born in Michigan so I'm pretty sure the love of snow and winter weather is in my blood. Here's a quick run down on how my sparkly snowflake ornaments came to be. They turned out a bit more elementary than I would have preferred but that makes this a great project to do with children.

Materials needed:

dowels, craft glue, wire cutters, paint, glitter, paper plate, ribbon, ruler, paint brush

1. Measure and cut the dowels into pieces to form geometric patterns. I played around with a few shapes and designs. Arrange the pieces on the paper plate into any pattern of your choosing.

2. Glue the pieces together and paint both sides of your snowflake. I waited about an hour to let my glue fully dry before painting. It probably took forever because I used an excessive amount of glue (as you can see in the picture above). Then after painting, I let 'em dry overnight (it was getting late anyway).
3. Using the paintbrush, spread glue all over the snowflake. Then sprinkle generously with glitter. Make sure the whole thing is coated!!

4. Tie ribbon on top to use as the loop to hang on the tree.

I made three so each of my coworkers could either keep one or use it to participate in the ornament exchange. Only a few more days until Christmas. Is all your crafting done? I'm done with my DIY gifts : ) Now all I have left to do is baking...chocolate peppermint bark and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Yum!