Summer 2013: Summer of Projects: Repainted Nighstands: I DID IT!

The other day I got this from my landlord.  She had it in her garage, and when I expressed interest, she practically begged me to take it.  Apparently an old tenant left it and she didn't have any need for it:

FREE!!!!!

So... naturally... I couldn't just leave it alone.  So I started looking at blogs... here were some pictures I used for inspiration:

After agonizing for farrrr too long about colors and design choices, (and forcing Dan and Lisa to give me all of their input), I finally went off and bought supplies.  I hit up Home Depot and JoAnn.  I knew I didn't want to sand, so first, I had to make sure I used a lot of primer.

This particular primer was AWESOME.  I could really feel it sticking.

Again, after more agonizing over coloring at Home Depot (and forcing the ladies in the paint department for their input), I went with Emergency Zone (orange) for the interior, and Charter Blue for the exterior.  Originally I was going to go for Navy, but I wanted it to be a little lighter and little grayer. This is what it ended up looking like the first night:

I wasn't crazy about the color.  It was too purple.  :(  I was pretty bummed.  But oh well, I would just redo a different blue the next day.  

At least I made one pretty thing that day.  I grabbed an old mason jar (which Johnny HAAATES to see in our cupboard because he thinks using mason jars as drinking glasses is garbage) and used some leftover acrylic paint I had to paint the outside.  I took the rough part of a sponge and scraped off the paint where the lettering was.  Gave it that shabby look pinteresters loves so much:

I bought 2 bunches of those little flowers at JoAnn's for about 89 cents each!  Cheap cheap decorations.

Went back to Home Depot... on the way I made a detour and stopped by Ross (yeah, it happens) and bought an adorable vintage milk jug.  I stopped back at JoAnn to buy a pretty flower to put in it.  :)  You'll see it later.  Oh and I painted the INSIDE of that one.  But... again, we'll get to that later.  So I went with a new color.  I can't remember what it's called.  Probably Cobalt something.  Whatever.  Anyway, it's a lot more BLUE-BLUE, and not quite as dark as I was hoping... but I was definitely happier with it than the blue from the day before.  It grew on me.

Voila, BLUE.

Then I taped up the little shelf to ready it for spray painting.  I've always really liked the chevron design, so I figured I'd add a little zing to my nightstand by adding that.  I also went with GOLD.  The nightstand has one tiny little gold knob on it, so I just went with gold :)

Funny story, as I was taping this, I swear I thought I was going crazy.  I had put the tape down next to me, and went to pick it back up and it was NOWHERE TO BE SEEN.  I heard Johnny walking by my door so I opened my door and begged him to help me out.  I knew it had to be close, but I could not, for the LIFE OF ME, find it.  It had simply rolled across the floor to my dresser.  I'm going to blame the paint fumes for that.

I LOVE HOW THIS LOOKS.  

Anyway, I spray painted it and then waited for it to dry.  While I did that, I debated on what color to paint the inside of my milk jar.  This time, I enlisted the help of Hollie :)  I sent her this photo (along with the previous photo of the blue mason jar so she'd know what was going to be it's partner):

It's pretty, but you can't really see the lettering.  Blue on blue... so we went with a really creamy light yellow.  It's like a sweet cream, if you will.

I LOVE HOW THIS LOOKS EVEN MORE!  (It's so satisfying to peel off that tape!)

Once I did that, I just painted some lasting touches over the whole thing, and voila!

Of course I had to "dress" it up.  So... here's the REAL finished product :)

And there you have it!  LOOK WHAT I DID!

"Oh when the day is BLUE, I'll sit here wondering about you..." - Eisley, "I Wasn't Prepared"

I love Sherri Dupree. She is my inspiration for a lot of things. Do y'all find her face familiar? Perhaps it's from many of the thousands (exaggeration? Yes.) of blogposts that I've written about Eisley (the band she's in). Anyway, she's constantly changing her hair color and she's constantly blogging about it on tumblr and I'm constantly finding myself wanting to BE her.

She likes her hair
Anyway, I guess she inspired me. Also, I've been bored. I want something different with my hair, but I'm too chicken to make any drastic changes. I also kind of want a tattoo, but I'm too scared for something too permanent. At least this is only semi-permanent, I can change colors eventually or just dye it back to black... it won't be exactly the same as my natural hair color, but the way I see it, it'll at least grow back and I can start from scratch again! :)

Look at all the colors!
Thomas helped me bleach it. That was actually pretty fun to do with him! I want to go ahead and dye it blue... but remember the days when I used to do it in high school, the color tends to stick to the tub a bit for a week or so. I don't really want to freak out Thomas's parents with a blue tub. Which reminds me of a HILARIOUS story about Jenny.In high school... Jenny and I both made all state choirs so we were in San Antonio for the convention. She decided that I was having too much fun coloring my hair and she wanted to do it too! So, one night, in our hotel room, I started the process of dying her hair purple. I can't remember if we just did streaks or tips, but either way, we bleached it and then dyed it. She hopped in the shower. About 5 minutes into her shower, I hear her say something, probably an expletive and then my name. I heard the water turn off and out of the shower sprints Jenny. She was wrapped in a towel and I think her hair still had some shampoo in it. She looked like she was ready to cry. She gestured for me to go into the bathroom so I did. I was semi-horrified about what I might find. She looked like she was going to be sick! She pointed to the tub, stained a light purple, and shouted, "AM I GOING TO HAVE TO BUY THE MARRIOTT A NEW TUB?!" I remember clutching my stomach and falling to the floor almost to tears. I probably sarcastically answered her, "Yes, Jenny. You're going to have to pay to replace this tub," before reassuring her that the dye is not permanent and will wash off after subsequent showers. (And in case you're wondering, it did).

Hairspiration
So anyway... yeah. Blue hair coming up soon! :)

Weight Loss -- They're Just Like Us! #1: Jennifer Hudson

So one of those tabloid mags often has a section where they point out how celebrities are just like us (e.g., they walk their dog, they go to Starbucks, they pick wedgies). Well, my sister just blogged about this dude and his weight loss and it reminded me how often actors have to worry about their weight. Sometimes they HAVE to gain and then lose for roles and yada yada. Other times they're just sick of playing the big girl... which is what I'm guessing Jennifer Hudson did. She said she just wanted to feel BETTER about herself. And she should now! Anyway, here's her before and after and just part of my inspiration for getting off my ass and working out.

If she can do it, I can do it!

80 pounds later...

I Get Why Arlie Hated LC

No offense LC, I think this is really a post on why I get that Arlie hated us as a class in general. I just like to remember how much Arlie specifically hated you... haha

Choir students never want to stand when they're asked to and they never sit quietly when they're asked to. They rarely hold up their music the way they're supposed to and in turn do not sing out like they should with great posture. Choir students are chatty and think that it's social hour. Choir students try to USE THEIR CELL PHONE in the middle of class when they obviously shouldn't have it out. Choir students think they know better than their teacher and argue about little changes that the director may make.

The only difference between my choirs and the choirs I've been in (and the one that creates a HUGE LINE between loving and hating something) is that MY choir students are 10-14 years old... and... we were 18-22. We should've known better. Like, seriously.

I think back to all those times when Arlie just stared at us in disbelief that we were still talking and I literally can't get my mind around it. Here we were, adults, young adults, but adults nevertheless, blatantly disrespecting someone that (whether we liked him/her or not) deserved our respect if we wanted to be a successful choir. I have to spout this rhetoric to my students all the time but I understand that they're young and they don't quite understand the consequences of their actions. We definitely were NOT too young to know that if we waste a whole class period talking, we end up having terrible songs like... Spinning Wheel, Neutron Dance, or Walking on Sunshine. I'm about 101% positive there are more, but those are just songs that I remember really REALLY hating.

I remember one class when Arlie just walked out and said she was leaving after trying to warm us up (and we didn't shut up). We all cried foul, shook our fists, and didn't understand why she was being a drama queen. We decided that we would get work done without her (after all, we DID have Jack). But now I totally get it. We were total jerks. Seriously. Who did we think we were?

Had a rough day with the 6th grade boys today. Excuses, excuses, excuses. I guess I'm just thinking out loud on paper on screen. (?)

2011: Light Fuse and Get Away

This New Years, my family and I went crazy with the fireworks (details to come later).

On the instructions for almost any firework (the non-sparkler ones, anyway) ended with the words, "light fuse and get away."

I've decided to adopt that instruction for this coming up year. I haven't exactly pinpointed just how I plan to metaphorically "light the fuse" and I definitely don't know exactly what I'm going to "get away" from, but it just sounds like a good plan. For now, I've decided that my long-term subbing stint has been my form of lighting the fuse. Once I'm done, I'm going to blast out some resumes and get away, that is, step back and see what happens.

Dear God I hope something happens!

Posts to look forward to:

1. Brief Holiday Recap

2. Last.fm 2010 Stats

3. More BSC book blogs!

4. 2010 Recap

5. 2011 Goals

This is Why I Love Clark

Clark Newman. He's such a brilliant man and I'm happy he's in my life (albeit via the interwebs). I just read this blog he had written a week ago and it just makes me love him even more.

This is why Clark is the shit.

Go ahead and just read his entire blog. Very inspiring.

Things To Get Life In Order

Here are some things I need to do in order to get my life back together... it is currently in shambles!

1. Do laundry. I've been saying this for days.

2. Finish my damn book, or at least read SOMETHING.

3. GO TO THE GYM, DAMMIT! You were doing so well and then you fell off... and you said you'd get back on, but alas, you did not... and you SUCK.

4. You bought a Bible... read it.

5. You got yourself an "adoptaplatoon" penpal... WRITE TO YOUR PENPAL!

6. Focus.

7. Fucking lose that weight already you lazy ass mother HEIFER! (See what I just did there?)

8. Get inspired again.

9. Cook more... that one time was nice... DO IT AGAIN!

10. STOP TALKING TO YOURSELF VIA BLOGSPOT! KTHXBYESENS!

On a slightly better note, Buddy and I bought our tickets to Boston today! I know, I know, I was JUST THERE a year ago... but Jenny's graduating! I have to! :)

The school she's graduating from

Just another something I'm looking forward to seeing again... the beautiful flowers! :)


But of course, most of all, I'm excited to see my JenJar! ("Oh heyyyy!")

The Party Planning Committee's First Party

After LC and I talked about how we should start our own party planning company (The Party Planning Committee?) I decided that we needed to plan Nia's first bday party. I sent Eshe an e-mail. She has yet to respond. This is my inspiration board for Nia's bday party though... so I'll send it to Eshe and make sure she's on board (with the board?) If she's not, then... I will find some other poor little girl who has a birthday coming up that I can sic my party on.

*I hope y'all noticed the stars... Johnny Pham has agreed to supply us with thousands of stars. He has one month... an ENTIRE SPRING BREAK OF STAR MAKING! This is like when Zack made Lisa make friendship bracelets for their business. But then Jessie, Slater & Kelly left and made an AWESOME VIDEO for Buddy Bands!

The Cause of Peace and Brotherhood

As I read more and more of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s autobiography, I become more and more amazed. I dog-ear pages where he says something particularly moving or still relevant. I have to be very conservative in this dog-earring of pages, cause if I wasn't, my book would be impossible to back with all it's dog-eared pages making it fatter and fatter at the top.

Anyway, I'm only maybe... 3/5 of the way through the book. It's been slow. Not because it hasn't been good, but I think mostly because I'm... a slow reader. I like things to sink in. I can't skim. If I even start to FEEL like I skimmed, I usually have to go back 2 pages or so to re-read to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Do you guys know how many times MLK had gone to jail? A lot. Like, a lot. At first it was just things to keep him off the streets and off the pulpit--traffic tickets, stuff like that. Then it was for violating injunctions on protests (despite the fact they were peaceful protests). He's spent time in a Montgomery, Albany and Birmingham jail. He also wrote a super long letter to some "don't-rock-the-boat" ministers & rabbis that had criticized him for coming into Birmingham and trying to stir up trouble. He wrote about 16 pages (well in my book) worth as a rebuttal to what those ministers and rabbis had said about him in a paper. All he had were scraps of paper and the margins of the newspaper to write on. He. Is. A. Badass. Is it okay to call an ordained reverend a badass? Whatevs. What's done is done.

Anyway, my inspiration board for today heavily features the Reverend King. The top right photo is probably one of my favorites. MLK just got convicted of "violating the state's anti-boycott law." His wife, the beautiful, faithful, loving, caring, nurturing, steadfast Coretta Scott King is seen giving her hubby a giant smooch after his conviction. He later wrote,

"Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice. It was the crime of seeking to instill within my people a sense of dignity and self-respect. It was the crime of desiring for my people the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was above all the crime of seeking to convince my people that noncooperation with evil is just as much a moral duty as is cooperation with good."

See? Badass. In the middle, you see a photo of Rosa Parks. Also, a Grade A Badass. The middle is MLK with a photo of one of his biggest inspirations, India's Mahatma Ghandi. He practiced what he preached--nonviolent civil disobedience. Without Ghandi's trailblazing efforts to overcome his opposition through nonviolence, who knew if the leaders of our civil rights movement would've known to take the same steps?

If this philosophy had not emerged, by now many streets of the South would, I am convinced, be flowing with blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as "rabble-rousers" and "outside agitators" those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes will, out of frustration and despair, seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies--a development that would inevitably lead to a frightening racial nightmare."

I can quote this man forever, but you see my point. Ever since I started reading this book, I've constantly tried to find arguments and parallels and instances where things Dr. King had said were still relevant today. While almost everything regarding race relations that he says is indeed still relevant today, I found a lot of what he said applicable to the struggle for LGBT (GLBT?) rights. I'll end this blog with one last thing that MLK said that really sparked something in me. I've always been a proponent of gay rights (omg, can we just fricken let them marry already?!) and what MLK said makes me really want to get out there. And... it also makes it disappointed in the church for not spreading the message of love when it comes to homosexuality. Then again, I've read (and seen banners) for a group at the UCC called "PRISM" and they are a group for LGBT (basically all non-heterosexual) Catholics who meet every Monday. I think I'd actually really like to go to meetings, just to learn more. Yes. I'm going to do that. Anyway, here's a few more words from the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

There was a time when the Church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. [...] Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

*All excerpts were taken from The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Clayborne Carson. If you're interested in this novel, you can purchase it here!

107 Seniors, 107 Accepted Into College

Stories of success, especially success against all odds, are always moving and inspiring to me. Congrats to all 107 of these college-bound young men! They (along with their family and friends... and hell, their hardworking educators) should all be proud!

Click here for the full article.

Let The Color Scheme Arrive!

Today, I am inspired by two things:

1. Mates of State's "Get Better" - Mostly the lyrics, "Forget all your politics for awhile, let the color scheme arrive!" and "Everything's gonna get lighter, even if it never gets better!" Which inspired me to think about my second inspiration of the day,

2. Colorful Balloons. Ever since the Valentine's Day dinner scene that Carrie & Miranda had in the SATC movie, where the ceiling is completely filled by balloons, I've had this obsession with bunches and bunches of balloons. Up certainly didn't help my fixation with these colorful air receptacles.

The following mini inspiration board (fashioned quickly during my lunch hour) was made with photos from: here, here, here & here (clockwise from the top left). I love color.

Miep Gies (15 February 1909 – 11 January 2010)

I was in the car today and Bobby Bones went to commercial and so I switched to NPR. I felt it. Before they even started the story, I could feel another tearful morning coming on. The next thing I know, they announced that Miep Gies died at 100 years old. 100 years old. She helped hide the van Pels, Mr. Pfeffer, and of course the Franks. Most notably, Anne. She always said that she wasn't a hero, to the contrary of what everyone believed. She said she only did what she thought was right--she said that she had imagined the sleepless nights and the regret that she would feel if she didn't help, and she knew she couldn't live that life.

It still is shocking to me to think that such an atrocity like the Holocost could happen in "modern" times. Genocide. Fucking genocide. What disgusts me even more is the idea that I could be guilty of being someone who lived during a genocide and did nothing to help prevent it. I mean, Darfur. I never really hopped on that whole thing when it was happening real big at UT, but that was mostly out of ignorance--I didn't really know much about it, I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know how big of a deal it was. Johnny was all about it, which led me to believe that it was definitely legit (I've found that I have the same view of Johnny as I do my brother David. I highly respect their points of views and I take almost everything they say as fact). I still don't know much about it. I need to educate myself more. Note to self: Reread Anne Frank's Diary. I'm pretty sure we had to read it in 8th grade when we did a whole unit on the Holocaust (remember Schindler's List in Mr. Hancock's room?), but for some reason, I don't really remember it.

What can I do to make my life meaningful for other people? For the world? Gies didn't feel like she was doing anything extraordinary--she just felt she was doing what was right. If I live my life as "right" as I possibly can, will that be enough?