New Year, New Crafts

So this was a blog post that I wrote for my new blog, "The Thrift Drift." Turns out, I'm now in a class where I'm required to write a blog through wordpress. I decided to choose Harrisonburg Thrift as my beat. Therefore, my new personal blog became a moot point (I really just wanted to use the word "moot" so I concocted this entire string of events.) So here's the post from the blog I am now deleting. Because even though I write for myself, I have to admit that I like the thought of other people reading it. We're all a little narcissitic. So here you go...

When I visited friends for New Years, one of my fellow book-lovers asked me how many books I'd plowed through over break. While I usually would have relished the snuggle in your bed and crack open a good (or trashy) novel weather, I realized that I had few titles to share. So what on earth have I been doing?

Arts and crafts. At least that's what I called it when I was little. One of the best things in our playroom when I was a kid was the craft table. My dad shortened the legs of a simple heavy kitchen table to the perfect height for our plastic children's chairs. It was okay when you accidently colored off the page or wiped some paint on its welcoming surface. And after a couple years of paper mâché, decapage, markers, paint and beads, the table was tattooed with the memory of our projects. Now, as a "grown up" I don't have a craft table, but my desk has assumed the responsibilities.

This winter, I opened up my craft drawer and worked on a couple projects. My last day in Harrisonburg before break, I visited the Mercy House Thrift Store, where I picked up two 75 cent wooden wall hooks. They weren't necessarily meant to go with each other, but I thought with a little paint I could make them a set. The unpainted one only had a straight thin dowel for the hook so I replaced that with a sturdier hook and gave both items a layer of white. I originally pictured delicate tree branches and blossoms, but then I remembered my lack of artistic skills. Just because I can whip up a graphics digitally, does not mean my hand and the paint brush get along. But sometimes I forget that I never developed their relationship. Unfortunately, I was doomed to inscribe the wood with girly childish words and shapes. Nonetheless, they were fun to paint and may end up in my room next year, if not wrapped as a gift for someone else. (Click on the picture for a closer look.)

While my other projects were not thrift store related, I'll tell their tales as well. My next project was rather unexpected. I was out Christmas shopping with my mom and she asks what I'm getting my brother. I already have a bunch of ideas, but she informs me that he's expecting something very specific. A Calvin and Hobbes lunch box. I remembered mentioning the idea to him. He was talking about how he never eats lunch because paper bag lunches get squashed in his backpack and school lunches cost too much. Laughing at the ridiculousness of a 17-year-old boy not eating lunch I asked if he would eat if I bought him a tin Calvin and Hobbes lunch box. The thought of this item seemed to excite him, but I didn't inventory it on my "stuff-I could-get-Josh-list." Turns out, he had. And he was excited to open this gift Christmas morning. So I had to find one, but I didn't. Calvin and Hobbes lunch boxes don't exist. I looked and looked but realized that i would have to make one exist. So I bought a used Calvin and Hobbes book. (Check out Better World Books, you can get cheap used books and support a good cause!) I painted, decapaged and sealed a King Kong lunch box I bought at 5 Below. At last, the boy can eat. 

My final holiday project was part of a gift I received. A pair of white TOMS. A blank canvas awaiting my creativity. If you are unaware, TOMS Shoes is a company founded by one of heroes, Blake Mycoskie. I covered an article about the commencement ceremony at my school where he happened to be the guest speaker. I wore my TOMS to that speech, already digging the company, but his speech made me a customer for life. The name stands for tomorrow, meaning Shoes for Tomorrow, because for every pair you buy, a pair is given to a child in need. These shoes not only protect the once shoe-less children from disease, but also allow them to go to school.

Anyways, I spent days checking out other custom TOMS, drawing sketches of my ideas and trying out different color schemes. I had recently underlined a line in Emerson's Nature that I wanted to incorporate. "In the woods is perpetual youth." With that in mind, I designed one shoe with a city scape and a business woman who is presumably transformed into a youthful dancing silhouette when she enters the wilderness of the left shoe. So here's the end result.

Can you tell I've been on a bit of a green streak? I didn't even realize that I'd been using it so much, but what can I say, it compliments my favorite color (purple) so well!

Rip Tides

A girl walked out of the dining hall today and exclaimed “what am I going to do?” to her friend. Presumably, this was part of a conversation detailing the issue or issues going on in said girl’s life. However, since this last exclamation was what she said as she went through the doors, and since she either had a rather loud voice or had escalated her volume in frustration, a lot of bystanders (or bybustlers) heard her. I was one of them, and like a lot of my fellow by-people, I turned and kind of laughed to myself. Not at her. In fact, at the cliché-ness of the comment. Isn’t that what we all were feeling?

My professor just gave me a zillion assignments and seems to think that I am a full-time reporter for his class alone rather than a full-time student, part-time worker and part-time writer for a school publication. You can go ahead and knock part-time friend, family member, and “live”-er of the list.

If you assume my lack of blogging is any indication of my busy-ness, you’d be right. Assuming I am a typical college student/person in general, than most people are probably really busy right now. Of course, if you could assume that, then you could also assume that no one reads the news just because one person does not. And if that were true, my schooling as a journalist would be for nothing and I could sit here and write about how lazy and bored I was instead of this.

However, I think it’s still a pretty safe assumption that a lot of us are busy. Heck, I’m late to a gym date with a friend right now, because this felt necessary. I needed to write sometime not for a grade, not for a requirement but just for myself. Because the thoughts in my head are getting really loud. So loud that when I read other people’s thoughts, my eyes see them, by brain cannot absorb them. All this reading I have due is undoable. Therefore, this is necessary. Of course, I could probably blog this on the treadmill at the gym if I had a smart phone, but wouldn’t having a smart phone make me feel more busy? The extra work hours I would have to pick up to pay for it and its data plan would be and I guess that’s enough for now.

So, readers, if there are any of you left, please excuse the typos, the madeup words and the lack of pics and join me in taking a deep breath- and going with the flow and ride the waves, or rip tides (whichever be occurring in your life). 

Leaving Neverland.

You would think I would have more time to blog over winter break. The thing is, ideas kept sprouting, but they never blossomed. I was going to write a followup to the weekday veg post's enormous response. Then I was going to write about the disappointment of finding out that those hits were for a past post because my blog had become a popular source on a image search engine for "treasure map." I wrote a couple paragraphs on the craft projects that have entertained me over break, but I decided that those may be better suited for my new endeaver. Today, however, I thought of a subject that's been coming up a lot lately. Growing up.

I've always been like a lost boys shoved back into the real world. I age kicking and screaming. I rarely go through a birthday without a couple tears about how much I miss being a kid. I'm sure the big two-oh will prove too overwhelming for my tear ducts this year. It's not like I don't like the responsibility and freedom of being older. I've always embraced that, but I guess aging is always bitter-sweet for me. I wish I could concoct a new phrase to describe that cliche feeling, but it really is so correct. I guess I could call it a sour patch moment? Not quite as elegant, but if you've seen the "first they're sour, then they're sweet" commercials, I think you know exactly what I mean.

Anyways, tonight I find myself writing a list of things I've discovered or come across this winter. So with out further ado:

You know you're a grown up when....

• You find yourself grocery shopping with a cart instead of a handful of junk food in your hand. 
• You go on a ski trip and worry about all the possible injuries the loved ones in your party could go home with.
• You tell your parents you're going out for the night and you mean you'll be home in the morning, not the 11pm curfew.
• People you knew in high school are engaged or married.
• You don't go out and play in the first snow of the season. (Don't worry, another snowpocalypse -knock on wood- and I'll bring out my new sled.)
• Instead of asking you what you want to be when you grow up, people speculate about whether they think your area of study will bring success in the job market. (Wanting to be a princess no longer receives the same response.)
• You check out at a store and think the cashier looks significantly younger than you.

That list is surprisingly short. It seems like I've been saying "wow I feel so grown up" a lot lately. I'm sure there are a million other things list, but right now, they've escaped me. For now, I'm still, as the five-year-old I watch called it, a "girl-woman." I haven't started mailing my own Christmas card or going to bed at 9 or anything scary like that. In fact, I would argue am the quintessential Hannah Montana right now... yup that's right I used it.. I have the "best of both worlds."