Tag Archives: Shopping

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5 Things.

Today I decided five things about my future.

1. After waking up to a weather report that said “Currently feels like 3,” I decided I will never be sad to visit my parents in sunny south Florida no matter where I end up in the future.

2. Ice is incredibly slippery and should be avoided at all times while walking. Ice is also very sneaky and often disguises itself as soft, non-slippery snow. I will no longer trust ice.

3. If I end up settling down in a cold, snowy place, I will need to have a son ASAP so that I will always have someone to shovel my driveway and sidewalk.

4. Eating well is expensive and confusing. I received a wonderful vegetarian cookbook for Christmas and promised my mom that I would try out two new recipes a week. Last night I picked out two dishes that sounded wonderful and not too complicated and today I set off for the store. I spent the same amount of money buying the ingredients for those two recipes as I do on a normal basis. I suppose I’ll have to take solace in the fact that each recipe yields about 6 servings so I should be set for a while on freezer leftovers after another week or so of this. I decided I may scale back to one new recipe a week then.

5. I love snow. It’s wonderfully beautiful and delightfully crunchy under my boots. I love kicking it with my toes and seeing it sparkle in the sunlight. I love the way trails of footprints stay in the fresh powdery coating and the way cars look like frosted cupcakes on the side of the road. I am a Florida girl at heart, but I do love snow. I think I’d like to live where it snows forever.

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Whether the weather.

I wish the weather here would make up its mind. One day it’s a high of 50 – cold, windy, I’m pulling out long socks, tights, boots, and gloves. The next day it’s 75 degrees and more humid than Florida.  Just make up your mind, Mr. Weather – is it Fall or not?

Personally, I want it to be Fall. The trees want it to be Fall. Their leaves have already started to change colors and fall to the ground. Just let it happen. Let it be Fall, please.

Because… you know what’s after Fall?

SNOW!

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A lamp and a plan.

In an effort to keep myself busy over the past few days I’ve spent at my parents’ house, I’ve once again taken up my crafting habit.  I also had several in-the-works projects I needed to finish before they were ready to be packed away for the big move.  I finally finished up two of the four throw pillows I was making and also made a lamp just for fun. I’m quite impressed with the outcome of all three items and can’t wait to try my hand at a few more one-step-above-basic projects.

My dad also helped me plan out the arrangement of my new apartment.  I feel like I should explain that my father and I have been fascinated with architecture for years.  One of the best memories I have of growing up is drawing floor plans on graph paper with my dad.  I have a whole binder full of dream houses from different stages of my life.  Needless to say, we had both the materials and basic skills to make a rather detailed plan.

I’m pretty excited about the way it turned it out.  I was starting to become a little terrified of the move, but now that I can see something tangible and I can feel like I’ve worked out at least one tiny part of the puzzle, my excitement is beating out the terror.  Things will work out okay after all.  The other day I heard that Andy Grammer song “Keep Your Head Up” on the radio, and a few lyrics stuck out to me as I was driving home:

I’m buyin in the skeptics,
Skeptics mess with the confidence in my eyes.
I’m seeing all the angles start to get tangled
I start to compromise
My life and the purpose.
Is it all worth it?
Am I gonna turn out fine?

The other day these lyrics resonated with me, and I gave in once again to my fears.  I started to wonder if this crazy path I’ve chosen, pursuing an esoteric field and a position in academia that may be hitting its expiration point soon, is worth it.  Then tonight after dinner with some old family friends who asked me all about my new school and campus and my crazy, wacky love for what I study, I realized that I could talk to them about my passion all night.  They just answer with blank stares and nods most of the time as I go off on some tangent about an obscure poem I read or about an idea I had for my Master’s thesis.  Everyone tells me that they can see how happy I am and how much I love what I do all the time.  I guess I never realize because I never feel like I’m working when I’m doing what I love.  I feel like society has taught me that work is supposed to feel onerous and painful, but I’ve never felt like that while dissecting the use of medieval motifs in Harry Potter or while reading Shakespeare or while learning Middle English.  I’ve never felt like I’m working or killing myself to get a paycheck.  I find myself going back to it, reading articles, finding new books and authors to investigate, during my down time.  And that, right there, is when the rest of the song’s lyrics hit me:

This is just a journey
Drop your worries
You are gonna turn out fine.
Oh, you’ll turn out fine.
Fine, oh, you’ll turn out fine.

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Quite the… I don’t know yet.

Yesterday, after a wonderful lunch with some great friends whom I am going to miss dearly when I move, I decided to venture out to the craft store once again.  A new friend of mine mentioned on Wednesday that Joann’s was having a button sale and that bunches of buttons were selling for $0.50.  She had made several pairs of adorable earrings from them, but I couldn’t help but think that timing was perfect on this one.  Just a few days ago I had seen a cardigan decorated with all sorts of vintage inspired buttons on sale for about $50.00.  I knew I could never spend that much on a sweater, so I admired it for a little while then kept walking.  Now I find out that Joann’s is having a sale on buttons.  This alone would be great, but added to the great timing of such a revelation was the other revelation by one of my friends at lunch that another Goodwill store exists about 10 minutes down the road from campus.  Hooray.  Putting two and two together, I headed out, loaded myself with buttons from Joann’s, and headed to Goodwill where I found not only the perfect cardigan to house my buttons but also two dresses and another brown sweater.  Add to that the fact that both sweaters were the color of week (and therefore 50% off), and I was quite satisfied with my luck that day.

I instantly came home, removed the cardigan’s old teal buttons, and replaced them with my own.  The finished product is not exactly what I had pictured in my mind, but I’m pleased with it all the same.  When I told my mom about my new cardigan and the fact that I had embellished it all on my own, she said “Well, aren’t you becoming quite the crafter.”  I laughed and told her that I simply enjoy making things.  I like having an idea, figuring out how it will work, and having a finished product about which I can say “I made that.”  It makes me feel accomplished and it’s fun as well.  I talked a while back about creating a personal style for myself, and now I’ve realized that it might be fun to take that “create” quite literally.

It’s a funny thing – my getting into crafting.  I enjoy it truly and I’m starting to realize that I can tap into new hobbies and ideas, that I can develop latent sides of my personality.  The major life change of graduating, gaining free time galore, moving to a new state, and beginning graduate school has brought out the crafter in me.  Right now, it works to fill my lazy days with some sort of activity and to help me feel productive, but I have a feeling I have found my new stress reliever.  I can’t tell you how many times my mom has told me that I need a way to vent, a way to relax and to feel happy when I’m at my worst.  Now, serendipitously, I think I’ve found it.

Developing this new hobby makes me wonder what else lies latent in my personality, what else will I discover I enjoy over the next couple years.  How much will I change and grow?  I’m at the tipping point of becoming anyone I want and I’m excited to discover what lies ahead.  I guess things have a way of working out and lining up even when we least expect it.  We live.  We grow.  We change.  We adapt to what we’re given and as long as we keep an open mind and embrace the eccentricities of this life, we truly can be happy.

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As promised.

I promised this morning to share some of my recent makeovers.  I have recently decided to spend my free time creating things.  I like creating things; I always feel accomplished and productive afterward.  So on that note, I began scouring the internet for some ideas of where to start.  I decided my new apartment in New Jersey was a good place to start, so DIY home decor it was.  Pretty soon, I happened upon this lovely collection on Etsy.

They were so cute, but on my tiny, student budget, I just don’t have the resources to purchase $40.00 to $55.00 throw pillows.  At that price the pillows would cost me more than my couch (a hand-me-down from my grandfather covered in a sage green slipcover from my parents – aka, free).

 

 

 

 

Using my new-found desire to create something, I set out for the craft store and decided to begin with these pillows in mind.  Unsurprisingly I found everything I needed and more.  A measly $25.00 later, I had about 20 sheets of felt in various colors and enough backing material for four (rather than just two) pillows.  Happy with my purchases, I headed home to get started.

While at the store, I decided to make a few changes to the color scheme of my own pillows so that they would match the couch and slipcover I already have, but I still liked the idea of a nice bright background to wake everything up.  I was pretty pleased with the way everything looked after creating my template and cutting out the felt pieces.

 

 

 

Isn’t he cute?

Happy as I was, I set about sewing.

I’m pretty happy with him.  Now to work on his friends: the pillows of many tiny birds (pictures to come soon) and to decide which makeover is next for my life.

I’m thinking a haircut and possibly another dye job.  We’ll see.  I always have a hard time choosing a hair dye color.  O well, adventures at the supermarket to follow.

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Sometimes a t-shirt is all you need.

Because I have nothing else to occupy my mind and idle fingers while at work from 8am-12pm every Monday through Thursday, I’ve taken to perusing online shops.  This is a dangerous game I’m playing.  I know that, but I have chosen to tempt fate.  I must give myself credit, though, because I never turn to online nerd shopping until after reading at least a section in my Shakespeare book and completing both the Daily Jigsaw and the USA Today crossword.  That’s will power right there.

Anyway, some of the things I’ve found are simply too great to keep to myself, so I once again will be sharing a collection of delightfully dorky t-shirts for your viewing pleasure.

<– That, but on a shirt.  Fantastic.  Books and magic: two of my favorite things.

Courtesy of woot.com.

We all know that a closet of nerdy t-shirts wouldn’t be complete without a Monty Python reference.  The fact that this happens one of my favorite movies is just a bonus.  I think I can even get over the fact that I’d be wearing math on my shirt.

To shift themes a little bit, here are two t-shirts that explain my last year of undergrad studies perfectly.  One can only hope it goes up from here and that my Master’s thesis turns out to be just as fun a project as my Honors undergrad one was.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Make that three because I just found this one:

Here’s something I tell my boyfriend on a daily basis.  Perhaps displaying it in mathematical concepts will help him understand.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  And last but not least, in case you didn’t know already that I’m a nerd: 

While none of these shirts can beat the glory of the JSTOR t-shirt I found a few weeks ago, they all certainly made me chuckle while counting down the minutes I was stuck in the office yesterday.

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Shopping = Panacea… even for geeks like me.

I spent today shopping.  It was great.  I’m usually not one to spend hours at the mall lusting after items far too expensive for anyone to ever actually buy them, but sometimes I just want to spend a day wandering around stores, strolling up down aisle after aisle.  Most of the time, I don’t even end up buying anything.  Today, however, that was not the case.

I’m trying to build a new wardrobe for grad school which is turning out to be more difficult than I anticipated.  While I found some wonderful things today (shirt covered in tiny giraffes, super soft blue scarf…), I’ve also got my eye on some especially nerdy online finds.

1. A shirt that explains it all.  I was recently introduced to a website called Think Geek.  It’s a great little gem of a website filled with everything geeky.  From t-shirts to cubicle decorations, pretty much everything on this site makes me smile or laugh.  Of course half of the jokes revolve around crazy computer lingo I don’t understand, but I’ve been told that those, too, are quite funny.  I’ll have to take my boyfriend’s word for it.

2. My favorite novels on t-shirts?  What could be better?  I found this site through a fashion blog I’ve been reading for the last few months and immediately wanted almost every shirt they make.  How great are they?  Now I don’t even have to walk around with my nose in a book to look like a pretentious English major.  I can display my affinity for the written word right there on my t-shirt.  Fantastic.  I’m loving the Catcher shirt, but I don’t think my English grad student wardrobe will ever be complete without at least six of these great t’s.  Yes, you can say it; I already know I’m a nerd.

3. JSTOR.  On a t-shirt.  That’s all.

And now I’m off to scour the web for some more geeky, nerdy goodness.