My This and That 83: First Post!

I suppose I should start off with a little about myself and this blog. My name is Jessica and I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. I am 31 years old and have been happily married for 6 1/2 years. My occupation is primarily as a homemaker, but I do have a small medical billing company that I run from home.

'This and That' is an apropos name since this blog won't really focus on any one thing. My hobbies and interests are reading, writing short stories, music, TV and movies, nail art, knitting, and other various arts and crafts. This blog will focus on some of those hobbies. Basically I just want a place to talk about and share pics of my nail art and art projects. Also I may from time to time talk about what I am reading or watching or music that I am currently enjoying.

There is a little history behind two of my hobbies: knitting and nail art. I first learned to knit when I was about 11 years old. My father was career Navy and I grew up as a military brat. Most of my formative years we were posted overseas in Europe. It was while we were living in London that I learned to knit. My grandmother was visiting from New Jersey and I begged her to teach me. It had been years since she had knitted herself and the only thing she was able to teach me was a basic knit stitch.

For years, that was the only stitch I knew and the only thing I had ever successfully knitted were scarves. It wasn't until about 2 years ago that I moved on from there, actually. I just started watching Youtube videos about different types of stitches and practicing them. Eventually, I moved on to finding patterns and combining the things I had learned to start creating finished projects like socks, hats, washcloths, a shawl, and even gloves!

Another fairly new interest of mine is nail art. For the first thirty years of my life I was an avid nail biter. I did manage to quit while I was wearing braces as a teenager, but more out of an inability to bite my nails than desire. As soon as the braces came off, I resumed the bad habit. Then almost a year ago I had a double root canal on my two front teeth. The teeth were so painful afterwards that it was impossible to bite my nails. By the time I could have bitten them again, I had no desire to since my nails had grown so long and beautiful.

Since then, I have developed a new habit of keeping my nails long, trimmed, and painted. This keeps me from biting them when I get frustrated or anxious because I don't want to destroy all my hard work! Since I don't have a very steady hand, keeping my nails painted just meant a solid color manicure. I couldn't seem to do any freehand nail art because my hands shook too much and I just wasn't coordinated enough to manage it with my non-dominant hand. Then about a month ago, I discovered water marbling. I read blogs and watched dozens of video tutorials on Youtube before trying it myself.

I was thrilled to discover this was something I could do! I won't go so far as to say it was easy, especially not the first time. It is taking patience and practice to test polishes and how they react in the water, to draw patterns without messing up the whole design by accidentally drawing through polish that has already dried, etc... However, I am beginning to get the knack of it and have discovered something I really enjoy!

So, I decided to start this blog to have someplace to talk about these hobbies and show pictures, etc. I hope other people will feel free to comment and tell me about your hobbies and interests! Since this is my first post I am posting a couple pictures and a video of my naked nails. After my next water marble I will post some more pics but this will show the length and health of the nails without any polish.