Spring Cleaning - Closet Style

It's that time of year again when "spring fever" hits and everyone starts their annual spring cleaning!  Let me be honest - I HATE spring cleaning.  I have always hated spring cleaning.  But this year, I have kind of gone off the deep end on spring cleaning.  I think I've just had enough of the stuff that we never use but I have to keep clean and organized (I use the term "organized" here very loosely...).  So this year I have gone all gung-ho on cleaning and organizing (let me put this in perspective...I've spent a week on my closet and an entire day on my linen closet...), and while cleaning I said to myself, "Self, I wonder if there's a way to display all of my scarves and all of my husband's ties without having to buy one of those expensive specialty tie/scarf hangers, because having them folded up in a drawer, we can't see what we have so we don't wear them..."  Keep in mind I was standing in my closet looking around while saying this to myself and then it hit me!  Most closets (mine included) have those wire rack thingies that you hang your clothes on so you can put stuff on the shelf created above, but there's about six inches of room between where your clothes stop hanging and your wall begins.  DING!  There went the lightbulb in my head.  I don't know why I didn't think of it before (and I'm sure if I'd searched for it at Pinterest I would have come up with this solution earlier...), but I felt like a genius when I hung all of my husband's ties behind his clothes:

It didn't hit me until a day later that the same could be done for my scarves!  So here's a top view of how I looped my scarves over every other rung (so they would all have room without crowding and getting smushed and whatnot):

And here's what they look like hanging behind my clothes.  Don't worry, they're color-coordinated so I can find a specific color quickly...pretty much everything is color-coordinated in my closet except the hangers...:

With the sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from hanging all those scarves and ties, I decided to tackle my linen closet as well.  This is what it looked like before:

First, I just removed everything from the closet so I could start from scratch.  Then I organized everything into piles according to its use.  On the top shelf (since it's the highest one and not as easily reached) are a few extra blankets (all the heavy comforters and quilts went in the top of my closet since I wasn't using that space); the beach blankets and towels; and extra curtains, bed skirts, and table covers (they're not really table cloths since they're just fancy knitted/crocheted coverings to make the table pretty...).  On the second shelf from the top I put all the stuff that goes with the guest room.  On the left are the guest towels and washcloths, and on the right are extra sheet sets.  The next shelf down holds all the stuff that goes with the master bedroom.  Since we keep our towels on a rack in bathroom, this shelf holds washcloths and extra sheet sets.  The very bottom shelf holds extra fancy towels (I guess for when guests come over?) and some towels I was given when I went off to college that have my monogram on them and extra paper towels (I know the paper towel supply should go near the kitchen, but the kitchen is overcrowded as it is - I haven't gotten around to cleaning it yet for spring cleaning, but I will!).  That left room in the bottom of the closet to see the floor and put away my vacuum and steam cleaner.  So this is the finished product and I am so proud of myself:

Oh, and those extra sheet sets are organized as well so I have everything together right when I need it.  *Thank you Pinterest*  I pinned this about two months ago when I was trying to get myself ready for the "dreaded" spring cleaning (which has turned out to be very fun and rewarding, to my surprise!).  I don't know why I never thought of putting everything needed to change my sheets into one of the pillow cases in the closet...it seems like a no-brainer now that I know about it!  So, that's it for my first bit of spring cleaning.  I'm sure I'll bring you more updates as they happen.

Adventure Kit

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about my younger cousin's prom.  Now, in between her mother's funeral and her prom, my younger cousin moved in with my parents two states away.  For the past two years, she'd been living with another cousin of ours (who is ever-so-slightly older than me) and this particular cousin had tried to explain the move as an adventure.  After talking with my older cousin, I decided an "adventure kit" was exactly what my younger cousin needed while making this transition.  Since my husband and I live equidistant from my older cousin and my parents, we all decided that a week at our house was just what my younger cousin needed to decompress and deal with the complex emotions (and it helped my mom get some much needed rest after a hectic two weeks during tax season -- did I mention she's a CPA and this was not a good time for her?  Not that it's a good time to die for anyone, but dealing with everything else that happened as a result of this death was a little much...).  So, while my husband and I let my cousin just sit and veg out on couch (in between some shopping for blue jeans and a first ever 3-D Imax movie for my cousin), I thought more about what my older cousin had said about making this an adventure.  This gave me an idea: I made her an "adventure kit!"

This is everything I put in her adventure kit:

There's the suitcase/box (at the very top); a journal and colorful calligraphy pens (top left); directly to the right of that is (in her favorite scent from Bath & Body Works) lotion, body scrub, and a loofah in her favorite color; a hibiscus water bottle from Target (also in her favorite color - top right); "I Love You" hand sanitizer (from Bath & Body Works) and a hand sanitizer holder for her purse/bookbag with a toy compass on it (center, left); zebra print duck tape (center); a handmade card (bottom left); Bath & Body Works flavored lip gloss (bottom middle-left) - because in my family, if you go out looking "ugly," everyone in the family will call you Elzie Marie or Bueler May (real people in my family that apparently went out "looking ugly" at all times...); patterned Band-Aids (bottom middle-right); and a pair of underwear in her favorite color (bottom right) - because my mom and aunt have always told us kids to carry a pair of clean underwear with us at all times "just in case" (my mom's reasoning was, "What if you get in an accident?  You don't want to be wearing dirty underwear when the paramedics cut off your clothes, now do you?" To which I replied, "I'm pretty sure my dirty underwear is the last thing on the paramedics mind if they feel it necessary to cut off my clothes.")


This is what I wrote inside the card to tell her why I put everything in there:

For those of you that can't read my handwriting (I'm sorry, I write like a 5-year old...), it says:

"Everything You Need For Adventure
 A map for exploring
A compass to find your way

Hand sanitizer to keep you clean

A water bottle to keep you hydrated

Clean underwear for your purse

Lip gloss to always look your best

Duck tape to hold life together

Bandaids for life's little accidents

Lotion and body scrub for the rough patches

A loofah to wash the grime away

A journal to write your story"

This is the box I put everything in.  It's a decorative suitcase I got from the craft store that has a map on the inside and the outside:

This is how I arranged everything so it fit inside the suitcase/box before I put the journal on top:

I put the journal in last on top of everything else because I wrote in the first page things I think she needed to hear at this stage in her life, but also things that I think she'll look back on during the next year.  I know it's going to be hard on her, and she'll need reassurance often, but she's a little shy to open up about her feelings to people, and I want to be there for her even when she doesn't want to ask me for guidance.

So that's my cousin's adventure kit.  I thought it would be great to put this here since I shared the pictures with the teenagers at work and they thought it was a great idea (and now want their own "adventure kit"), and especially since I couldn't find anything helpful to me when I put this together.  Most everything I found when searching for ideas for this were for "children's adventure kits" that were centered first aid kits geared for mothers to pack/carry for their preschool-age children.  Hopefully someone out there will find this post helpful if they find a teenager in need of some smiles and uplifting words - and maybe just for people in general that need to be reminded that someone cares for them.

DIY Shoe-gasm

So, I love shoes.  I mean, I really love shoes!  I currently have between 65 and 75 pair of shoes.  And not a single one is the same as any other.  Sure, I have a lot of black shoes, but they're not all just straight black shoes;  I have a pair that is black and white checkered, a black a white houndstooth pair, 4-inch black shoes with bling (a wedding present from my husband - he knows how to please a woman!), and so on.  Again, no two pair of shoes looks the same.  That being said, I love each and every one of my shoes (I probably have an unnatural affinity for shoes that borders on unhealthy...but no one's perfect, right?).  So, with my love of shoes, you can imagine how upset I was years ago in college when I was dog-sitting for my mom.  I had just bought these shoes and worn them once and they were quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite pair!

So,  I went to class and everything was great.  I got home and this is what the dog-shaped spawn of satan left for me:

I was so upset I nearly cried.  I didn't know what to do.  But I knew I wasn't throwing out an otherwise good pair of shoes.  I decided that at least I could find someone to put some new fabric on them or something one day...so I held on to them.  Thank everything holy that I did!  (I'm gonna go ahead and put Pinterest into that category, since without Pinterest and the three hours I spent browsing one night, I wouldn't have come across this pin that inspired me to do something similar with my own shoes.)  Thus, the glueing began...only after about 12 hours of sorting through the giant bucket o' bling from the craft store.  Then the fun began.  After only about 30 minutes, this is how far I had come (I started on the non-satan-spawn-destroyed shoe, to make sure the modpodge would hold...):

 

So far so good.  So I took another 45 minutes and worked my way up to the fabric:

Finally after a total of almost two hours I finished one shoe!

Now came the hard part -- I had to work on the almost destroyed shoe.  To start, I had to get all the extra strings cut off the fabric and smooth out the heel.

It only took about 2 minutes to cut all the strings off, but it took about an hour to smooth out the heel with a nail file (seeing as how I still live in an apartment, there's really no reason for me to own any sandpaper at this point in my life...or so I thought.  After that hour, I wanted to go and buy a box of every type of sandpaper there is for whenever I could possibly need it...)

There was still some size difference between the top where there was a little bit of prettiness left on the heel and the bottom where there was nothing but sadness and despair, so, to even these two zones of the heel out, I applied a very thick layer of modpodge and let it sit overnight to dry:

This is what it looked like in the morning after the glue dried (I was so excited to see that it dries clear so that once I got all the bling on my shoes I could apply a layer on top to make sure all the bling stays where it's supposed to):

And after applying all the bling onto the second shoe (which took longer than the first since I had to go back and try to place all the different sized bling in the exact same position so they'd look the same), this is the final finished product before the final coat of modpodge (which is going to dry clear - yay!) so enjoy my first DIY shoe fix!

Prom - Music Video Style

So last month, a lot went down in my family.  My aunt died of complications from diabetes (and not really taking care of herself, especially the diabetes), leaving her 16 year old daughter two weeks before prom.  Now, I know some of you are wondering why I'm so worried about my cousin going to prom when her mother just died.  But let's put this in perspective for a second.  She's had to grow up a lot in her 16 years.  When she was 7, she came to live with me and my parents while I was in high school (her brother was born, and both he and my aunt were in the hospital for a bit...again she didn't really take very good care of herself considering her diabetes and being pregnant...), and once her brother was born and she went home, she had to grow up quickly and take care of her brother while the men came and went in her mother's life.  That being said, my cousin is a remarkable woman.  She's loving, giving, and beautiful, both inside and out; however, she didn't know what was going to happen to her when her mother died.  We didn't either.  We knew she wasn't going to end up in foster care, especially with so many of us able to take care of her; hell, she'd been living with another cousin for the past two years and all of a sudden someone sticks their nose where it doesn't belong and runs to child services saying she was in danger (ummm, I don't think so.  If she'd been in danger, don't you think something would've happened in the past two years?  But with child services trying to take her away, we knew the only thing we could do to keep her from going to foster care was to move her two states away to live with my parents again).  So with all these life changes occurring all at once, we wanted to try to make everything as normal for her as possible.  And since prom is such a big event for high schoolers, we wanted to make it as memorable as possible, especially since it was the last school sanctioned event she would attend with her lifelong friends before moving.

So let's get back to the whole my cousin is beautiful statement I made earlier.  She is.  And not beautiful in a societally sanctioned way...she's not a size 0 with legs to Canada and perfect teeth and whatever else beauty magazines will have you believe is beautiful.  She's real world beautiful - she's average height with proportional features and a heart to make Mother Theresa jealous.  And she's a lot more mature than some 20-somethings, and smarter than a lot of 20-somethings too.  I like to think of her as that intriguing not-square package under the tree at Christmas time -- that one that doesn't quite fit in with the rest, but it's intriguing to see what's inside because you know such a unique package has to have something amazing inside it!  You know the one I'm talking about...it's not square, but not round.  Not really geometric in any way, which makes it harder to wrap, but you put extra care to wrap it nicely anyway because you don't want anyone to peek at the great stuff inside and spoil the surprise.  Now, I know she's beautiful and everyone in the family knows she's beautiful, and her friends know she's beautiful, but she doesn't know she's beautiful -- I don't really think it's a self-confidence issue here, rather I think it has to do with society trying to fit her into a tall, thin, tan person, and that's just not her.  So here's where the music video comes in to play - when I took her prom dress shopping, I realized how much she struggles with how beautiful she is.  We're there in the mall and she's trying on the same dresses that the other girls (who are size 0) are trying on and she's hearing all the other girls talk about how they need a smaller size and she's getting more disheartened by the minute.  Rather than make her stay in the department store not finding anything that she really loves (because in this family, if you don't love it, you don't buy it - that's just how we roll).  So, understandably, my cousin was very down at this point in time and was ready to throw in the towel and decide to not go to prom.  I wasn't having any of that.  She had been talking all day about a specialty store that all her friends had gone to for their prom dresses and she said she'd never get to go there because it was so expensive and she couldn't afford it.  Guess what, sister...we went to that store and we found a dress that she absolutely LOVED!  She glowed!  It was the first time I'd really seen her smile - genuinely smile - since she lived with us all those years ago!  So, of course, we bought it.  And prom was back on.

Now, I live two states away and didn't know if I'd have the weekend off work (remember, I still wait tables...) to go down and help her get ready - she looked so downtrodden that I wouldn't be able to help her get ready since I had helped her find a dress and jewelry and shoes, so I had to get the weekend off work - come hell or high water I was going to help her get ready for prom.  The great thing was that for two weeks, my family (especially my mother, who is really bad at keeping secrets) and her boyfriend (my cousin's boyfriend...not my mom's boyfriend - she's married) were able to keep the secret that I was coming down to help her get ready.  She called me the night before prom as I was 30 minutes away from the hotel they were staying at (and where I would be staying directly across the hall!!! - I'll let it sink in for a minute how difficult it is to stay hidden from a 16 year old when you're directly across the hall and she desperately wants you to come help her get ready for prom so your mother doesn't give her hair by GE in the morning...) to see if I could help her find hairstyles that she liked that my mother could feasibly do.  The whole time I was trying not to let on that I would be there in 30 minutes and that I had taken off just one day to drive down and get her ready for prom and then head back home so I could go to work -- I wanted to surprise her first thing in the morning for breakfast.  Thankfully, we stayed hidden all night and that morning for breakfast, she was in for one of the best surprises that week!  I made my husband video the entire day and I took pictures all day to document it, and I came home and made a music video.  So here's the video.  Enjoy!

Upcycling Candle Jars

So I recently joined in on the Pinterest fun (I tried my best to not get sucked in, but apparently the pull of Pinterest was more than I could resist...and I'm glad for that), and after a lot of looking and clicking and browsing and, let's admit it, an unnatural amount of coffee, I came across a pin that screamed for me to read.  Before I jump into that, let me give you a little background.  You see, I spent a LOT of time on my grandmother's farm when I was little and, since she grew up in the Great Depression, you didn't waste anything at Grandma's.  And I mean anything.  Lord help you if you broke a crayon at Grandma's and tried to throw it away.  That being said, although I wasn't even a twinkle in my mother's eye (since she wasn't even a twinkle in her mother's eye...) during the Great Depression, I still feel guilty about throwing things away that I could reuse later (much to the chagrin of my husband...).  That goes for pretty glass jars from old candles, which is where I am at this point in time.  I love these pretty jars, but I don't want to risk scratching the jars to get all the wax out and whatnot...

Enter Stage Left: Pinterest

So after looking for a bit, I found a pin that might help me out with this.  So I clicked through to the original blog and I decided I'd give it a shot.  So, here's where I'm at right now:

Once I poured in the hot water, the wax in this one immediately came to the top.

These two took a while to get the wax started. 

This is such a pretty jar!  I have high hopes for it.

 I love this color!  Maybe I can make a smaller candle with this leftover wax...

Let's be honest, I sat there watching the wax slowly float to the top.  It was so pretty!

I guess now it's time to wait for the wax and the water to cool.

 Still waiting...

Still waiting...

You know, I think I'll go grab a sandwich and come back.  I'll post later with some updates on how everything turned out.  Now I've just gotta figure out what to do with all these jars.  Looks like I'm headed back to pinterest...

In the beginning...

Hi all!  Or if you're from the south (like me), it's "Hi y'all!"  This is the third blog I've started, and I'm hoping this one sticks.  My first blog attempt was for a digital publishing class in grad school that was really only read by my classmates and professor (as it was designed that way).  Obviously, once the class was over, there was really no reason for me to continue the blog.  My second blog attempt was about a year ago when I was looking for a creative outlet.  I had graduated with a Master's Degree and was still waiting tables (as of this point in time, I still have a Master's Degree and I still wait tables...), and I was in desperate need of some outlet for my ideas.  I needed a way to feel important.  I wanted to share ideas.  However, I didn't know myself very well, since I chose a topic that was much to narrow for me to talk about for any length of time; that second blog was about television commercials and what I didn't like about them.  Needless to say, I ran out of material very quickly.  That brings me to my present moment.  So let's start here.  Let's start fresh.

In the beginning, there was just me.  Sitting at my desk.  Reading.  I've been wanting to start a new blog since my first two failed weren't fitting in with who I am.  But I couldn't find my voice.  I tried the smart thing, and it worked for my class, but it isn't who I am.  Yeah, I have two college degrees - so what?  Yeah, I use big words sometimes - who doesn't?  They're fun!  (Go ahead...look up a big word and say it out loud.  It's fun!  Don't worry, I'll wait...)  But that isn't me all the time.  There's a time and a place for smarty-pantsery, and this is not one of them.  At least, not all of the time.  Then I tried the critic snob thing, but, again, it isn't me.  I felt rude, tearing those commercials apart.  Sure, I talk about stuff like that sometimes, but I give credit where it's due.  But there wasn't room for that on my second blog.  It was all about the stupid person who did this and the crappy editor who didn't do that or whatever.  That blog was scathing with no room for happy thoughts and credit where it was due.  It was painful to write sometimes, knowing how hard people had worked to put their creative ideas out there to be viewed and commented on.  I felt dirty.  So this blog is just about me.  Who I am, what I believe, how I view my world.  I say "my world" here because I can't comment on the entire world as I cannot even begin to fathom the entirety of the world at any one moment -- I can only know what is in the world around me and how I view it.  (I didn't say I would never do the smarty-pants thing, I just said I wouldn't do it all the time...)

So, to help you all get to know me, let's start with why I chose to title my blog "Life in Manifesto."  The driving force behind actually motivating me to sit down and write this blog is the Cluetrain Manifesto.  I read it years ago for my graduate thesis, and it resonated with me.  I picked it up not too long ago to re-read it, and it still holds true for me.  I love this book, and I will forever be changed by the ideas presented therein.  Although the Cluetrain Manifesto is the driving force behind starting this blog, it is not my sole reason for the title; since I am writing about myself - who I am, what I believe, my life in general - I wanted to encompass all that I am in one short, memorable title - my own manifesto.  (For reference, here's the Wikipedia article on "manifesto.")

Now, I'm writing this in a conversational tone because, like the Cluetrain Manifesto says, it's about conversation.  Life is about conversation!  So why not write a blog about life as a conversation!?  So, let's get to the real stuff.  I know I haven't told you that much about myself, but I'm sure you'll get to know me more as the days go on and I post more.  One thing to know right off the bat is that I can't promise to write every day, or every other day, or even every week.  I can only promise to write when I have something to say.  I won't promise a schedule of when this will be updated because life is unpredictable - life is not on a schedule!  Life is spontaneous!  That's what makes it beautiful, and interesting, and fun!  So I leave you now, after a very long introduction, but not before I impart you with some words of wisdom from the Cluetrain Manifesto (chapter 1):

"Life is too short," we say, and it is.  Too short for office politics, for busywork and pointless paper chases, for jumping through hoops and covering our asses, for trying to please, to not offend, for constantly struggling to achieve some ever-receding definition of success.  Too short as well for worrying whether we bought the right suit, the right breakfast cereal, the right laptop computer, the right brand of underarm deodorant.

Life is too short because we die.