About Me

Hello and welcome! I’m Rachel. 

I started this blog in 2010 to share my crafty aspirations and projects. Since then it has become a place for me to share lots more.  Here I’ve recorded my thoughts and experiences from many of my adventures- in travel, food, crafts, friends, family and love. When I started blogging here I was a sophomore at a small Christian, Liberal Arts school called Greenville College in Illinois.  I had awesome professors and made adventurous, thoughtful & hilarious friends. Also around this time I had just been dating Joshua Cranston for about a year.  This is us during that first year.

And this is us with our friends in California on a week long camping trip.

In college I majored in Cross-Cultural Studies and Teaching English as a Second Language. I loved my studies, but my best college memories mostly center around quality time with my friends.  We took crazy road trips, laughed a lot, played games and ate lots of delicious food. 

During my junior year I spent a semester in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Cuba. I loved it.  I loved speaking Spanish, I loved the climate and I loved living with Costa Ricans and Nicaraguans who so lovingly accepted me into their families. I made some wonderful friends and we loved to eat Trits (the most delicious ice cream sandwich on the face of the Earth).  

I kept doing the whole college thing and graduated in May 2012.  During the summer I taught in GC’s Intensive English Language Program.  It was challenging, but in the end, quite rewarding.  Also during the summer I was honored to participate in two of my best friends’ wedding.  Then, it was my turn!  On July 21, 2012 Josh and I got married in a pine grove outside of Greenville, IL.  The trees were magical and the day was so full of joy.  I still think back to that day with complete awe.  

Two weeks after our wedding, Josh and I moved to Oslo, Norway, where he worked on a Master’s Program in Environment and Philosophy and I worked as an ESL tutor and a babysitter for three cute Norwegian kids.  It was an interesting, challenging and wonderful adjustment to be college graduates, to be married and to be living in a new country. We made some good friends, traveled a bit in Europe and learned to cross country ski!

Now we live in Wichita in a house with Josh's cousin and her husband. Two newlyweds in one house is a lot of fun. The four of us are interested in intentional communal living, so we eat most meals together, pray together weekly and take care of our houseplants and composting worms together. I am working as an ESOL Paraeducator in an elementary school and I aspire to be an actual Elementary ESOL teacher someday soon (more education looms in my near future). Josh is writing his master's thesis, working as an after school program leader and as leader in a garden that employs at-risk youth. 

While this blog is often a record of our daily doings and new adventures, I still use this space to record my crafting endeavors and to share updates about my paper shop on etsy. 

So, that's me in a pretty big nutshell. Thanks for visiting my blog.  I hope you stick around and say hello!