Crafty, Crafty

We've taken things to a whole new level here in my cozy, city apartment. The roomie and I are in full crafting mode; brought on, do doubt, by the holiday season! Our coffee table has been covered with projects and remnants of projects for the last few days, and it's such fun! 

Our projects have included pine cone  ornaments for the Christmas tree, purple picture frames, and red jewelry chests. Here's our coffee table in various stages of craftiness:

The only down side to all this lovely, adventurous, homemade goodness, is that one of my (many) flaws rears its ugly head. I am a perfectionist. In the most awful sense of the word. I'm irrationally demanding, and boy do I like things just so. Eek! This leads me to great heights of disappointment, irritation and dissatisfaction as I go about my crafting business. Nothing is ever as "right" as I imagine it in my head. None of my projects come out quite like the vintage or clever finished product I desired. Oh, the pains of perfection!  

I'm making an early new years resolution (super early, and strange, because I never make them on the real holiday) to not be such a controlling perfectionist. Who cares if a little red bow isn't draped over a pine cone just so? Does it really matter if the Christmas ornaments are scattered in a perfect random pattern? In short, no. So maybe I should just stop worrying about it, have fun crafting and let the finished products take care of themselves! It'd probably be a whole lot more fun that way. . .

For The Birds

As I prepared to head to bed last night, I had this odd sort of foreboding. I mean, I was returning to work after a 4.5 day hiatus and it just seemed natural that maybe tomorrow would be kind of chaotic.

I wish that word covered it.

At 6:30AM my alarm goes off, to my great confusion. It takes me a moment to understand what that heinous noise is, but from the recesses of my memory (from 4 days ago) I recall what that sound means. GET UP! So I do.

I hop into my shower, cursing the crap water pressure and wonder when the plumber's coming. After a mediocre shower, I head into my room wear I decide upon one of my least favorite outfits ever on the basis that it's clean, and functional. A mere half hour later, I enter the kitchen deciding to kick this morning up a notch with a nice fried egg sandwich for breakfast. I'm excited and everything goes as planned until the moment I whisk the egg from it's carton. I gently crack it against the edge of the counter and as I go to open it. bam. raw egg explosion.

Raw egg everywhere. Down my shirt, pants, counter, stove. Hello, Monday.

Skip ahead to mid day, I leave lunch early and set off for City Hall where I hope to rectify a sticky situation involving my new resident parking permit which seems to have the wrong license plate number written on it. My lunch break ends at 1:00, so you can imagine my sense of urgency as I step up to the counter at 12:55. Determined to make it through, I explain my plight to the service person and hand over my registration. Service Lady takes a gander at my registration at which time, she points out that my parking permit has the same license plate number as my registration. That's funny because the license plate the RMV of the great state of Massachusetts gave me is a completely different number. How does that even happen?? Ever so helpful, the lady encourages me by telling me the $40 ticket I got as a result of this fiasco will easily be erased upon my fixing this little snafu with the RMV. 

I, of course, have no time to dwell on this because it's 1:01 and I have to get back to work so I can continue training the new employee no one told me I'd be taking under my wing, despite the fact that I've only been at this job for 3 months.  

I'm laughing as I write this, because, really, there's nothing else to do.

In the spirit of the past months tender, thankful moments. I'm going to let all this roll off my back and think thankful thoughts. Trains came on time today, the city hall employees were surprisingly very friendly, and my Christmas tree is up and decorated.

Three Days of Thanksgiving

I've basically been eating like it's Thanksgiving everyday for the last 3 days.

Tomorrow, it's time to crack down, me thinks. . .

cheeks cheeks cheeks

 I nixed VLogging today. There just aren't enough hours in the day to work, eat dinner, have guests, and make a fool out of yourself on camera and post it on your blog for the world to see. whew.

But all that craziness can't stop me from giving thanks! Today I'm thankful for 

babies.

OK, that might sound a little creepy. But, seriously, babies make my heart so happy. They're beautiful, amazing beings, and they smell so dang good. I hope to be lucky enough to be a mother of lots of little ones one day, but until then, I'm just thankful other people are poppin' 'em out!

 In fact, I was just at a baby shower this weekend for a friend, and was bursting with happiness that she is soon to be a momma. It's such a blessing!

This little girl in particular, the daughter of one of the woman whose blog I read (you can see it here) literally makes me tear up sometimes with how cute she is and can we talk about those cheeks.

I'm all weak at the knees. Man, do babies slay me :)

It's Been So Long

I guess I've gone the same amount of time as I usual do between postings on the weekend, but it seems  

so long this time.

So, I loved the whole vlogging thing, but in part I feel like I'm missing the writing parts of my blog. I'm still going to Vlog my last three thankfuls, but today I'm going to write mine! I gotta get some practice in before Friday rolls around and I'm back to the good stuff!

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to be thankful for today. I wanted something profound, serious, funny, smart and challenging.

Then, my day got started and it was a whirlwind, I felt sick, my body was achy and resistant to moving. So many reasons this day did not go as planned.

But. I made it through.

That's what I'm thankful for. On this day, where I was tired, grumpy, achy, and stressed about many things. I got done what I needed to do, made it through the day and even got to finish it off my doing some "baking."

I mean it was half-baking since I mostly just melted ingredients, combined them, and then chilled them. Still, it calmed my soul and made me feel like me again. So I'm thankful for making it through today because it means I'm that much closer to Thanksgiving. And it means I can make it through any day. Especially if I get to bake!

me, happy I made it through the day. And happy I'm heading to bed in T minus 5 minutes!

Lassie, or something

I keep having things I want to share with you guys, but I know having stories AND vlogs is a bit much! Still, here's just one teensy, happy tidbit of my life. Here are some lovely pictures of Josh Radin (and me loving me some JR when I went, and was thankful, a few weeks ago!)

SEVEN days!

Can we talk about what a hot mess I am in this video. I'm sorry all. Whipped this baby out in about 2 minutes and threw it up!

I'm no less thankful, just wiped from my day and looking forward to my lovely, downy, warm bed. yum