Small Strokes Big Oaks

Image by Chu? via Flickr

Happy 2011! Here’s a cute robot-looking-thing to help you usher in the New Year. 🙂

Many of you bloggers have been doing a 2010 recap.  Here’s mine: wedding, wedding, teaching, wedding, California, wedding, California again, marriage.  Oh yea, I finished grad school somewhere in there, too.  All said, 2010 was a wonderful whirlwind of a year, but I spent most of it getting ready to get married, and now I’m really looking forward to spending time actually being married, as well as having more time (and money) for other things I really love.

Because of this, 1/1/11 truly seemed like a clean slate this year.  Between our wedding and my best friend’s wedding (which was in December), I was in wedding mode all year and now, suddenly, all wedding-talk has ceased.  It was kind of sad but also kind of nice to go back to school the Monday after the new year and be asked to work on something for school and actually be able to do it without the sense of being overwhelmed or having something else I’d rather do.  I had a really hard time teaching last semester and found myself with a really negative attitude about it, and I blamed it on a million things, but not having a wedding to plan on top of it has really taken a weight off my shoulders and has brought this semester to a much better start.  I’ve been so busy planning and re-planning my curriculum for this semester, as opposed to last semester when I just used stuff that had worked well enough in the past because, well, I had other things to do.  And let me tell you, I love it.  I love having the time to come up with new ideas and implement them the way I really want to.  Seeing kids deeply involved in a lesson in which you’re also deeply involved is the biggest payoff.

For me, productivity in one area of my life usually leads to productivity in another area as well, and I’ve been able to knock off several of my 30 Before 30 list in just the past few weeks.  See how motivated you can be by just writing things down?  I knocked off #2 – Visit San Francisco a few weeks ago, which I knew I was going to do before I created that list.  But it’s not cheating because I’ve always always always wanted to go to San Francisco.  I just happen to have a wonderful husband who was willing to take a honeymoon there because I really wanted to.  I have so much to share from that trip that it’ll have to be a post in and of itself later.

Last night, I also tackled #30 – organizing my jewelry.  I have to admit, that one was thrown on the end there because I needed a 30th thing for my list, but it had really been bugging me how disorganized my jewelry was for a long time.  I have some really nice pieces of jewelry, but I never wear them because I can’t find one of the pair of earrings or don’t have time to untangle a necklace from the mess.  And it seriously was a mess.

I mean look at that.  What the hell is all that stuff, anyway?  There’s like a tangle of jewelry, a little book, a plastic baggie, bags from stores… Jeeze.

So I searched around on the internet and asked some people for tips and came up with a solution that I liked.  Since I have a ton of wall space in my vanity area (outside of the bathroom and next to the closet – I usually get ready in this area in the morning), I knew I wanted something hanging.  I went to Target and bought some of those hooks you can stick to the wall, a mesh letter tray from their home office collection, and a hanging tie rack.

Tie Rack

Letter Tray and Hooks

Then I set upon the task of matching earrings and untangling necklaces.  That took about two hours, but I have to say, every necklace came untangled and EVERY EARRING HAD A PAIR!  This is a source of pride for me, because I had no flippin’ clue whether or not that would be the case.

Look at all those nice pairs!!

Then I went about hanging them on the letter tray.  I hung those with posts closer to the open end of it so  I could get them off without taking the tray off the wall, and hung the ones with hooks as close to color-coordinated as I could.  It doesn’t really matter, though, because as soon as I wear them, I’ll probably put them back somewhere else.

I also hung the necklaces very carefully on the tie rack.  I realize now that it would have been smarter to have a tie rack that had all the prongs in a row rather than up and down, and maybe I’ll switch over to that a little later, but this works OK for now.  After I had all the jewelry in place, I put the hooks on the wall and hung the jewelry displays in the bathroom.  Not only do I have more counter space and organized jewelry, but I now have sparkly things on my bathroom wall.  Which sort of tackles #26 – Get some artwork for the walls of our home.  It may not be artwork, but it definitely makes the walls in there look less white and more interesting.

Speaking of not-artwork on the walls, I also picked up some pretty sweet picture frames for wedding stuff.  I always knew I wanted a collage frame for fun pictures of the wedding party and families (ever since I saw my friend and bridesmaid, Jill, had one in her house), and there happened to be one at Target that was PERFECT (and black! Our room isn’t black, but our wedding colors were black and white, so I wanted black frames).

I also picked up a shadowbox and some scrapbooking stickers and put together a little montage of our wedding stuff – a program, invite, and save the date card to hang on the wall.

I’m really proud of this one, especially since my #4 is Learn to Scrapbook (even though this isn’t scrapbooking, it’s a start!).  The items are on a sparkly black background (and the glitter is totally all over the shadowbox, but it still looks cool…) and held in there by pushpins.  I then put scrapbooking stickers on top of the pushpins to create a 3-D effect.  Unfortunately, the pushpins came out the back and hurt pretty bad if you touch them, but since it’ll be on the wall, I just covered the sharp edges with tape and hope no one tries to take it down for a better look. 🙂

So that’s what I’ve been doing lately instead of blogging, and I’ve got to say, I feel pretty accomplished.  I’ll feel even better when we get this stuff on the walls and it isn’t cluttering up my living room, which is my next task!  I’ll also have a pictorial blog update about San Francisco and some of my favorite wedding pictures.  I know I’ve been promising that last one for a while, but I swear it’s coming!