Friendship Bracelets

Ahlan wa Sahlan on this beautiful Friday afternoon/evening! 

Now I know what you're thinking: "It's not Frida afternoon/evening, it's Friday morning " 

Well, then I'd have to correct you and share the exciting news: I moved to Saudi Arabia!! Finally! And here it is indeed currently the afternoon/evening time. 

I know I haven't posted in a while and I should really update on everything that's happened in that while but I'll save that for a later date and get back to today's blog theme. 

I started thinking about this topic a couple of days ago while I was making some friendship bracelets via friendship bracelet wheel, which makes it so much easier and less time consuming which was perfect for me because I had barely a week. Or so I thought. 

The reason why I was making these friendship bracelets to begin with is because I went over to one family's house for the second time. They're Egyptian, they live next to the gym(which they own), and they are super nice. While we(my sisters and I) were at their house, the oldest girl, Asila(if that's how her name is spelled), was making beaded bracelets that just threw me back to some simultaneously awesome and not-so-awesome times. Her bracelets were very pretty as we could see by the ones she'd already made and had on her arm. When she finished the bracelet she was working on, she tied it off and gave it to Sakina which was so nice. Then she gave the ones she had on to me and Laila, although we were a little reluctant to accept seeing as they were hers and it just didn't seem right to take them from her. But we did and they are adorable and we love them. Here's a picture of mine:

So, I was so happy that she had given the bracelets to us that I said that I would make some bracelets for all those girls as well. I actually even ended up making one for their mom. Well, actually I didn't. Laila did because I asked her to help and that was the one she chose to do. Here are all the finished bracelets that Laila and I made. 

From Left to Right it's: Asila's, the middle girl's, the youngest girl's, and their mom's

No, I don't know the others' names except I think their mom's name is Mero. Maybe. That's what her Facebook says(she added me and Laila)

So, anyway, the whole friendship bracelet thing got me thinking about how I first learned how to make friendship bracelets. 

I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Partly to visit a family we sorta know and also, according to my father, so that he could try to get a job there. The oldest girl, who I shall call Z, was making friendship bracelets while we were there and I, being a craft lover, wanted to know how to make them as well. Also, I was trying to think of anything to talk about with her. Truth be told, she wasn't making it easy. So she taught me and Laila how to do it and gave us the yarn in order to make one. However, either her instructions weren't that great or we were just so horrible at it that she didn't want to say anything because our bracelets looked wonky as ever and she kept saying we were doing it right. -___- 

I want to pause and say that I'm not the type to bash people. I'm just pointing out some facts. Also, I really wanted to be friends with her and everything but she just really didn't seem to like us so maybe that could've been part of the reason she didn't seem to give a care what our bracelets looked like. But, maybe I misunderstood her. Also, I haven't seen her in years and I hope that she's doing well InshaAllah and that her family is doing well too. 

Anyway, back to my story. So when we got back home(to Ohio) and we went to the library, I immediately checked out some books on how to make friendship bracelets because A. I was pretty intrigued and B. I had forgotten all her instructions and I had no idea what I was doing. So I poured over the books learning the instructions again and started making a whole bunch of friendship bracelets. Then I ended up getting some embroidery floss which turned out to be way less bulky than the yarn I'd been using and since then I've been making friendship bracelets when the mood strikes me. I actually made 2 or 3 for one of my old best friends and 2 for her little sister. When I moved to NC and was actually able to meet her and go to Sunday School with her, I noticed that she was wearing them all. Which was fine by me :D I wonder if she still wears them...

Btw, funny story. Making friendship bracelets is actually how my pajama pants became totally unwearable even though I wore them anyway. I had read that to keep the bracelet steady, you could pin it to your jeans. So I would do that. One time, however, I was wearing my pajama pants and thought: "Maybe I could pin it to these as well" or something along those lines. I found out the hard way that no, pajama pants are not optimal for friendship bracelet making and, in doing so, put a tiny hole in the knee of my pajama pants. They then got messed up even further when I used a different safety pin to pin the hole closed so I could still make salaat in those pajama pants. So my pajama pants had even more holes in the knee. Those holes got huger over time and if you saw how my pajama pants looked by the time I got rid of them(which was actually just this year when I finally got new pajamas) you would die from laughter. So yeah, I had holey pajama pants for about 5-6 years and I wore them faithfully. Now I have cute black and white striped pajama pants which feel so soft and comfortable and I couldn't wish for better pajamas. They also have pockets which is cool. 

Anyway, that's it for today. Hope you're having an awesome day, whoever is reading this. 

Signing off for now, sayonara, annyeong, bye, adiós, au revoir, ma'a salaama!!!

Sumiyya <3 

Welcome September!

Hey y'all :)

My head is hurting so this is probably going to be pretty short. First of all, welcome September! How are you? Good to see you. Means Fall is near.

Anyway, Happy Labor Day to whoever's reading this that celebrates it. I don't. And it's not because I'm not American and don't support my country or whatever, it's because I'm not supposed to celebrate anything besides the Eidain(which were given to Muslims and Muslims alone as a special Holiday of our own). Either way, I'm not even sure what Labor Day is celebrated for. I should probably look it up. No sense in being ignorant on purpose.

So, past all that. I have a boatload of catching up to do. Let's see, I'm keeping in touch with some of the people I met while volunteering. It's been awesome chatting with them and getting to know more about them. Today I started back with homeschool and we took assessment math tests and I totally bombed because half of the test had stuff I haven't learned yet. So my mom says that I can do a different test seeing as you can't assess what someone remembers if they haven't had the chance to learn it, let alone remember it. Still, seeing such a low grade on my math test(my favorite subject in case you didn't know) made me a tiny bit sad.

Besides that, lessons with my Quran teacher are getting a bit wishy-washy. She keeps not calling us on the weekends(even though she says she will) and we're wondering if maybe she doesn't want to deal with us anymore because we missed her call on Thursday and stuff hasn't been going right. I don't know. InshaAllah, everything will work out.

Also, my father is back in Saudi Arabia and we moved our rooms around again and we went shopping last week and I got to spend my own money I made from Swagbucks and also my iPod is fried so I'm sad and desperately wanting to get a new one.

So yeah, that's it. As I said, my head is killing me. I'll hopefully talk next more next Monday.

Signing off for now, annyeong, ma'a salaama, au revoir, sayonara, adios, bye!

Sumiyya <3

Summer Volunteering Has Come to an End

What's up?

I know it is Thursday, not Monday, and I'm super late but today is the best day to be writing this because Summer Volunteering is all over and we had the party and now I can tell you all about it. Yay! :D

So Tuesday was our last day of volunteering. I mostly pulled holds and checked them in(by myself which was super awesome since it was my first time doing so) and then I started shelving them but then was called to cut some crafts. Monday I did a craft table pretty much all shift long but it was okay.

Tuesday was also the day that everyone found out if they won one the Summer Reading grand prizes. A friend I made while volunteering won a Chromebook. Sweet, right? Sadly, I did not win an iPad Mini. I was really hoping to but alas, not a winner. Although my father says that if we really want it we can get one in November. I don't really want it that much though. If anything I want an iPhone 5s but as that is pricy and requires also getting phone service I shall hang tight and just Swagbuck until I have enough to where we can go half and half at the least.Speaking of Swagbucks, I've been meaning to put a referral link in my blog. If you're reading this then definitely click on it and sign up. There's a team challenge going on right now so if you hurry up and join then you'll be on a team and you'll get even more swagbucks. Here's my referral link right here and if you sign up you can come back to my blog and here's the link to the team challenge and also on the homepage there is a search quest thing and you can join that too and possibly win 500 swagbucks which is the equivalent of $5.

Anyway, back to volunteering and all that, yesterday was, as you know, the Teen Summer Volunteer Appreciation Party!!! I got my clothes ready nearly a week prior and was just waiting so long for it to happen. So I woke up yesterday and I studied and I did some other stuff and basically just waited for it to be 3 so I could take a shower and then get ready at four. So when all that finally happened, I got ready, did my makeup, put on my outfit everything and we were this close to being out the door and my Quran teacher called. it was 4:40 and I knew I'd be done pretty quick so I answered, read my surahs, and was out the door. We got there and then signed the card for Mrs. Rebecca(who's leaving to another branch, so sad. :( She and Ms.Tiffany are two of my favorite librarians so it's sad to see her go) and then went inside and joined the party. It was totally fun. We ate pizza(just one slice because I wasn't really hungry) and cupcakes, which were delish and had these cute toothpicks/topper-things on them:

Then we played trivia in between listening to songs. I won one(how many strings does a violin have?) and got some rubber band things that make those rubber band bracelets.I gave them to Laila since she's been wanting to make them for a while.

Then, after the trivia and all that we moved the tables and played some games(some people played Apples to Apples, some Jenga, and Laila and I rotated with other people playing Just Dance). It was really fun.

Before we started Just Dance though, we did the drawing for the TNT prizes. I think it was Semayt who ended up winning the iPod shuffle and then after that they drew smaller prizes such as earbuds and can cups(Laila won one!):

  

So then after all the prize drawings we played and talked the party away and then it was time to go and Jibreel came to get us so we all(including Jibreel) helped put stuff away and then we grabbed our goodie bags(filled with sweets ^o^), exchanged emails and stuff and left. 

So all in all it was a fun experience. I can't believe it's all over now. I'm going to miss volunteering and everyone I volunteered with(especially since I'll be moving InshaAllah). I'm going to try and keep in touch with everyone.

I thank Mrs. Rebecca and Ms. Tiffany for choosing me and Laila to be volunteers and I'm so glad I had such a wonderful experience. 

Thanks for reading and for bearing with my lateness throughout this Summer. I hope your summer was full of fun things and awesome experiences. I wonder what next summer will bring.

Oh, almost forgot. Here's what  I wore, what Laila wore, and a group picture(yes, I screenshot it from IG and uploaded it to my laptop). Enjoy!

 

Signing off for now, ma'a salaama, annyeong, adios, au revoir, sayonara, bye!! >o<

                Sumiyya <3

Eid Mubarak!!

I'm super late because Eid is already over now but Eid Mubarak!!! 

Ramadhan is over, Shawaal is here, July is ending. It's all mixed up. :D I don't know how I feel about August to be honest. 

Anyway, today was Eid and it was pretty nice. Ummi(my mom), Laila, Sakina(who's actually baaligh now O_o) and I  had to stay home from the Eid salaat because all the boys went and there wasn't enough space to get in without wrinkling something or whatever. So we stayed home and did pretty much nothing. 

We're kinda broke this Eid so doing something fancy was out of the question so we just went to the park and played soccer. Then we ate pizza and spaghetti for dinner. Awesome, right? 

Also, Laila made her own Eid outfit this year which looked really cute and I just put together an outfit out of stuff I have. Here both of them are:

And my mom made a sign:

Cute, right?

Anyway, I'll see you all next Monday. Bye! 

As Salaamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Baratuh!

Signing off for now, bye, sayonara, annyeong, au revoir, adiós, Ma'a Salamaa!!! 

Sumiyya <3 

[Insert Blog Title Here]

Konichiwa!

  So today I don't have much to say. I just pretty much volunteered, which went okay today. Although there were quite a bit of hitches. For instance, I was late for pretty much the first time. Then when I was supposed to pull holds, it turned out they had given my hold list to one of the teen leads, who, of course, didn't even notice that it clearly had my name on it. But other than that, it was great.

  After that, we came home and just chilled for a bit and then we went to my grandparents' house. This time we were boy free. By boy free I mean we didn't bring the boys that are staying with us. They went to stay with their older sister for a little while. However, it was short-lived and they're right back here where they shall stay for about another 2 weeks. I'm not so opposed to it anymore though. I guess the barely two days that they were gone was like a little gulp of air and I'm ready to face the next two weeks now. Plus, they've grown on me.

  Anyway, like I said, not much to say today. Mrs. Tiffany, one of the teen section librarians and co-overseer of the Teen Summer Volunteer Program emailed a while ago announcing the date of the volunteer party. I'm so excited! They're going to have cake there and everything. I remember last year we were at ImaginOn the day of their Summer Volunteer party. People kept asking us if we came for the volunteer party and we, salty at the question, just said no. The reason we were salty was because we wanted to be volunteers last year but weren't picked, as you know by now. So we're finally going to be part of the party! Again, I'm super excited! You can tell how excited I am by the fact that I'm using exclamation marks! quite liberally. :D

   I think that's it for today. I have to go make taraweeh and witr and head to bed. Got more volunteering to do tomorrow. Plus, I'm working Circulation(blehhhhh) so I have to be at my best. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like to work Circ, or shelf(which is basically all you do when you're working Circ), it's just a bit taxing you know? A lot of bending and moving.

  Anyway, signing off for now, ma'a salaama, bye, anneyeong, au revoir, adios, sayonara!! 

                            Sumiyya <3

 
 

Wednesday Reminiscing

    Hey!

     What's up? I know "This isn't Monday!" is probably what you're thinking. I assure you, I am very much aware of that fact as you can see by the title. Anyway I was just talking to my mom, reminiscing about this past winter when it snowed, and I realized that I never wrote a blog post about how much fun we had.

      The first time it snowed it was the 28th of January. We were so excited but it was only a small coating and it was pretty much all gone within two days. But then on February 12th it snowed again. This time there was more but we didn't know if it would last. It did though and the very next day we had about half a foot of snow. It was more than enough to play around. So we had snowball fights and made snow angels and even constructed a mini snowman that kinda failed. The snow was actually kinda icy by then but that was good because it allowed it to pack better.

      At first, when my siblings had said they were all going to go outside and play in the snow and they asked me to come I said no because I was busy and I thought "It'll be there tomorrow, then I'll go." They were kinda mad but they let me be. So then I was sitting and I was thinking "What if it melts by tomorrow? What if I don't get the chance? This could be a repeat of the sledding thing in Xenia." So I decided I'd go out. I got on my old boots that I hadn't worn since 2010-2011 time-frame. I got on my abaya and hijab and niqab and I put on my hat that I made. Then I put on my hoodie and my sister's bubble jacket(which kinda look like life vests to me, just sayin') and I put on some gloves and I went out the back door so that they wouldn't see me and I could ambush them with snowballs. I stopped to draw something in the snow: a heart with an S in it(Which I've always done, it's like my signature thing. That, or my name in cursive with a heart on it.)

     As you see, it's not that visible but it was okay. My footprints are the things around it. Also, as you see, there were some random sticks lying in the snow near it. Anyway, after drawing that I went and gathered a huge wad of snow and rushed to the front yard yelling "Ambush!" and then it was on. Snowballs started flying left and right. I got hit a couple times but I hit everyone else at least twice and I dodged a lot too. It was a lot of fun.

     Then we went and made snow angels. I don't have a picture of that because they didn't really come out that great. But, of course, it was fun nonetheless. Then we attempted to make a snowman. Which, as you know turned out to be a fail.

     After that we went inside, intending to come back out but we stayed inside. My brother actually stayed outside helping some lady shovel the snow on the road. Other people pitched in as well. So all in all, it was a fun day. An hour spent playing the snow did not hurt and it was so much fun and I loved it :))

      So now that I've told the story of our winter escapades, a story that is great for this summer time because it reminds of cooler times, I will do a spam of all the pictures I took. The first couple will be of the January snow, the rest of the 12th and 13th of February.

 
     So yeah, that's pretty much all I wanted to talk about. See you Monday! ^_~

     Signing off for now, annyeong, ma'a salaama, sayonara, adios, au revoir, baiiiieee!!!

                 Sumiyya <3

Hey, Ramadhan! Where are you going?

     Hello!

     Today is the 16th day of Ramadhan. Can you believe it? Ramadhan always seems to go fast. At the start you're like "Okay, here goes" and then when you're at this point you're like "Wait, what? It's halfway over?" and then at the end you're like "Where'd Ramadhan go?" InshaAllah at this point we should really start reflecting on our Ramadhan thus far and try to regain the standing and the plans and schedules we set at the start of/before Ramadhan.

     So, I'm going to try and re-up my Quran reading. And also it's meaning. InshaAllah I should finish a khatam in a few days. I'm going to start planning my du'aa because it is really super awkward when you have to make your du'aa out loud and you're stuttering and wondering if you should even ask Allah for that new bike or iPod or whatever because that seems so trivial and everyone is just sitting there and you feel like they're silently judging you. Run on sentences for the win!

     Speaking of Quran, I recently got a new Quran teacher. She is doing the lessons over Skype. So far they've been going okay.

     Volunteering today went really well. I got to pull holds for the first time(finally!). It was cool but also kinda annoying when something was shelved in the wrong section. It's like going on a scavenger hunt.

     Funny volunteering stories: Today while I was shelving these little girls came by and one of them was saying "It's funny that there are so many kids in the library, when half of them don't like to read!" I was laughing so hard to myself. I mean she was so real. Spot on. It's so true and apparent that even a kid notices it.
     Btw, sorry for missing last week's post. I came home from volunteering that day and it was just like: collapse on my bed. I don't even recall why I didn't.

     Okay, I gotta go. I have to study and figure out how to deal with some stuff. I'll see you next week(not in the literal sense of course).

     Signing off for now, sayonara, bye, annyeong, adios, au revoir, ma'a salaama!!!

                   Sumiyya <3