Busy, busy, busy...

Obviously. Currently, it's 5:52AM, the morning of the first day of school. I think one of the reasons why I am awake is because of nervousness, though I really can't feel it unless it's that nausea in my stomach. My bed is hot and itchy, but I'd like to think if I was completely calm, I'd still be able to sleep. Oh well, I'm planning out my day.

The past 2 weeks, I've been orienting for school. There's so much covered that I'm just tired at the end of the day. I'm going to try to blog at least once a week though. If I don't, it'll consume my thoughts. I need these outlets, you know.

Times like these is when multitasking is of the utmost importance. I bought some shoes that I've been testing out over the past week. In shoe stores, I don't think anyone really stays there 15 minutes just to walk around in a pair of shoes. Therefore, if a pair really has potential, I buy them, and bring them home to test out. Wearing my heels, I go through the motions of my daily life: dishes, brushing my teeth, washing my face, folding clothes, ironing. These are all actually pretty light activities compared to walking around downtown, so if my feet hurt, or feel uncomfortable with these, there's no way I could do any more. The shoes go back to the store.

How many people out there practice with their new purchases?

Local Fare - Galveston, TX

About 3 weeks ago, my sisters, cousins, and I went to the coast.


Galveston coast to be precise. The stamina of my cousins for beach going and boozing is really pretty amazing. Given that drinking hasn't been in my interests as of late, I explored elsewhere: souvenir shops.

I like taking a little something back with me whenever I go somewhere new. It's nice to have a little something with a story behind it...especially if it was something you were looking for or on sale!


I haven't come across soft water pearls anywhere but festival stands and the Fantasy Isle Souvenir shop that was on Poretto Beach. They were having a 3 for $10 sale, which was kind of convenient. Normally soft water pearls would be >$10, but because of the sale...to get the most bang for my buck, I had to buy two other things.



I got a nice coral colored puka shell necklace.


Also, at a loss for my last item, I bought my sister a pair of earrings...and check it out: Lead Free. Personally, I find the stringed detailing pretty cool, but my ears aren't pierced. Gotta remember to give these back to Irene.

Also, among cooler things...

I was talking to my dad in these photos

I got sundresses! Gotta love Wings. Though a chain, it's only in coastal states, with the physical store being presumably along the coast. It's a specialty shop for beach wear. And do you have any idea how hard it is to find a maxi dress when you're 5'2"? Do you? What's even more awesome was how this dress had pockets. @ $20, fine, I'll take it.

I did it my waaayyyyyyy

I've always had this tendency to want to put my own swing on things: style, research papers, lesson plans...you name it! After moving into my current house, it took me a long time to get settled because of the lack of usable space in my closet. (2 hanging rods? Puh-Leaze)

I also needed drawers. Just drawers. I found that the ones that I only sort of wanted were kind of a lot of money...there was a little bit of a conflict of interest there. The story's actually outlined here. My dad thought it would've been easier for me to just get something at IKEA, but is it really wrong for me to want to buy things I want to keep?

I find that motivation is easier to come by when I have a big project that needs to be done...just kind of staring me in the face.

This was staring me in the face.

I'd never sanded before. Never stained wood. It didn't sound too difficult. Time consuming? Probably, but nothing hard.

Ta-da!

And here's what I did! Before I was thinking of doing this cool two tone design, but...then I saw the stain colors that Minwax offered and my eyes stuck on Bayou Green. I was iffy on the two tone design anyway and right now, I'm really happy with how it came out. My logic with the green was that at some point, I'd like to move this dresser out of my closet and have it display elsewhere.

It was a learning experience. Stripping paint is hard. I started off with 120 grain before slowly realizing that to strip off the paint, I had to go down to 60 grain sandpaper. Sheesh.

Anyway, finishing this allowed me to finally get my clothes in order. And after getting my dresser in the closet, I realized that I still didn't have enough closet space to accommodate the mess strewn around my room.

For some extra hanging space, I added IKEA's Portis Hat Rack to accommodate my button downs that still needed to be ironed at the time. The layout of my closet is two hanging rods on opposite sides of a long closet, that middle space wasn't being used and I found it's useless presence rather irritating.

Lots of ironing and folding later... I had a full closet. From left to right:

blazers & skirts on the rod. Sweaters, jeans, cotton trousers, and shorts on the shelf. That yellow bag is my sock bag.

Center: blouses, shirts, the dresser with foldables.

Left: dresses and dress slacks.

Small closets and me just don't get along, There are some things I just won't get rid of. I've adapted to so many closets over the past 6 years, it doesn't rub me the right way to feel I have to get rid of things here and there when I know the most of the places I've been living have always been on some kind of temporary basis.

You know what's the odd thing about closets? Even if you have an avalanche of clothes outside of your closet, having a relatively empty closet can really give you the feeling the something is lacking in your wardrobe...even if you actually have too much.

"not wanting" is the key to success

So, I'm rather irritated right now. I can't find my camera adapter cord and it's hidden somewhere in one of the many cars that happen to reside at my house in San Antonio. It's like an annoying version of the price is right. For now, I'll just make do until I can ask someone for it, after all it is 3:20am and really, I want it just to have it on me.

Anyway...

currently I'm quite content with my clothing situation, save a few side projects I need to finish. After having read Amanda Lee's article on doing more with the clothes you have, I got the final push to finish organizing my closet. I tackled my ironing, any clothes that needed to be folded and laundered. Truthfully, at some point I was afraid that even with all the new alterations (additional hanging rack, newly finished dresser, shelf for my sweaters) to my closet I still wouldn't be able to fit everything in. I seriously have a lot of clothes. After going through that ordeal, I found it kind of ridiculous to want to buy more clothes. Sure, there are a few things I still need (black button-down, black heels, black sweater) and a few things I want (turquoise pencil skirt), I'm just considerably less motivated to actively seek out and spend money on things when I have a full closet.

ch...ch...ch...ch...changes!

Not really.

Although I am happy to say that I feel like this will be the last name change for a good long while. Most of the other names I had before gave me some varying degree of comfort, but for now - I really like this.

For one thing, I like monsters. My closet is a monster to handle. And, among cooler things, the effect of the barbies on the title bar kind of gives me the same feeling that ventriloquist dummies and string puppets do. There's some scary appeal in it.



Going off the tangent of scary appeal. I made this from an art museum brochure that talked about vintage paper dolls. I'm also really fond of menswear.