peaceful evening

 

surprised to hear from me twice in one week? i'm really going to try to be better about documenting my crazy life.

so you may have noticed that i spend a LOT of time complaining about the kids...i've definitely noticed that. i confess that i'm having trouble settling into my role as a stepmom with almost full responsibility for taking care of them when they are with us and a house and food and laundry while also doing a full-time job. i think if i were younger i wouldn't feel so overwhelmed most of the time, at least that's the story i tell myself.

however, i don't want to complain today, i just want to talk about last night and how peaceful and wonderful it was to be just the 2 of us at home. the difference between last night and the night before (when disrespect was hitting an all time high) is like night and day. i need more of these days in my life.

that was the scene for dinner last night, doesn't it look delightful? chris came home at a decent hour (something that doesn't usually happen these days) and grilled a couple of steaks while also fixing rice and some hot dogs for his lunch today and it was so nice to have him make the effort and not leave everything for me to figure out.

the weather was perfect (i love this time of year) so we sat outside on our porch and just talked and laughed and it was nothing special but it was special, ya know?

these are the moments i live for.

hair and other fun stuff

 

want to know what i did all weekend? my hair.

i'm kind of obsessed with my hair, you might have guessed this with all the many (many, many, many) pictures i take of myself - i'm mostly documenting my hair.

i wasn't always this way, i have had freakishly short hair for most of my life. i blame my mother for the start of this because she didn't like having to remind me to brush my hair or spend hours brushing out tangles because i wasn't all that good at taking care of my hair so she chopped it all off in the 3rd grade and i stayed short-haired on into adulthood.

now that i have a girl of my own who isn't good at all about brushing her hair and winds up with these huge tangled mats of hair, i cut my mother a little slack because i can totally see why she got so frustrated.

but somewhere in the last several years, i started growing out my hair - mostly because haircuts cost too much money but also because i like the way i look with long hair and now my hair is like a living breathing extra person in my life. i'm always wondering if i should leave it loose or put it up or getting it caught on things or having it get in the way in intimate moments but no matter how annoying any of that is, i never, ever, ever think about cutting it.

i obsess over the color as well, mostly blond but sometimes branching out into red or pink.

pink was on my mind this weekend and i had this vision of going to the beach on sunday with the most delightful pink mermaid hair streaming out behind me so i bought pink hair dye on saturday and colored my hair that evening.

when i got out of the shower and toweled off i thought it looked a little darker than the cotton candy pink on the haircolor box but hoped it would lighten as it dried so imagine my shock and disappointment when i woke up sunday morning to find it had dried to a decidedly unpink, mousy brown color.

yuck.

i was born with brown hair and never really liked it so as soon as i was living on my own, i went blonde. i wasn't about to go back to brown now so (after canceling the beach trip, partly because of the hair and partly because of other reasons) i was off to the drugstore to pick up another box of hair color and get back to blonde. no, i don't go to the salon (although i would love to) because - yes, you guess it, it costs too much.

i normally don't like to color my hair twice in a 24 hour period because it's not good for it but i was left with no choice. unfortunately, as you can see from the picture above, i am still not a blonde. i'm not sure what this color is - i think it's kind of reddish - but it's not the wonderful "light golden blonde" that the box promised however i'm going to have to live with it for a little while because my hair needs a break. actually, i'm kind of digging this color for right now.

in other news, i was invited to come up to the main virginia office for an employee appreciation event to celebrate being with the agency for 5 years (which actually happened last year but they didn't have an event) and they were going to pay to fly me up there but only pay for 1 night of hotel. unfortunately none of the flights worked with that schedule and all the options they presented me with would have cost ME hundreds of dollars and they couldn't see their way to compromise and the whole episode left me feeling the exact opposite of appreciated so i chose not to go which is fine, not the end of the world except that i grew up in that area of virginia and haven't been back in several years so i was really looking forward to it. they invited 3 of us from the florida office to go there but 2 of us are among the lowest paid employees in the company and neither one of us could afford to go so the only one that actually went is the 2nd highest paid employee in our office and that kind of sucks.

so i have started putting my resume out there to see what else is there but i'm at an age where i really don't want to start all over again plus i need flexibility because of the kids' schedules and that isn't usually found, especially in  new job so it would work out best for me to stay in my current job but i feel i'm being undervalued and i'm so damned tired of never having any extra money. taz and i lived like that for so many years and it's not like i need a lot but i guess the sacrificing is getting to me right now.

there are so many things i'd like to do, the main one being able to travel, even just a little. i'm going to try to be creative and come up with some sort of way to have a little road trip just for chris and me. 

 the kids had a holiday from school last monday and i had a holiday from work so we hung out at a local playground and had lunch at a local fast food place we rarely go to because it's on the expensive side...so expensive, in fact, that when i saw that just 2 kid meals were going to be almost $20, i chose not to eat which made me a little cranky, to be honest.

and here's my confession - i get a little disappointed when i realize a work & school holiday falls on a monday when it's our turn to have the kids which means i have  them by myself for the whole day. i realize that's really selfish of me but it's not really a holiday for me when i have to plan activities and referee their fights...which are constant as they've gotten older. when we first started dating we only had the kids every other weekend so this never was a problem but that situation changed at some point and i've rarely had a holiday to myself since then. it wouldn't be as bad if chris had holidays too and then we could just plan something special as a family but you don't get a lot of holidays in medical transport, unfortunately.

ok, that's enough of my bitching because all the complaining in the world isn't going to change anything so i just need to adjust my attitude and carry on...me and my reddish hair. LOL

welcome to my studio

 

we've finally made it to february! i swear, i think january was 782 days long.

something fun and new has been capturing most of my time these days - jewelry making.

now i know i've talked about this before and shown y'all pictures of some of my first earring attempts but shit's getting serious now.

chris spent both of his christmas and new year holidays moving rooms around in our house - moving boxes (pretty much all mine from my house) out of our spare room into the shed then moving j into the spare room so that he could set up my little studio space.

a jewelry making friend of mine told me a couple of years ago that to really get into making jewelry i needed a space dedicated solely to it, some place i didn't have to clean up after every session so that i could leave in the middle of a project and have it be there waiting for me.

i tried to do that on the dining room table (which we rarely use for meals) but it's also kind of a catch all space so my stuff kept getting crowded out. then i tried to set up a space in our bedroom but there just wasn't room and i never used it so chris took matters into his own hands and, voila, my studio was born.

i have been busy obtaining all the makings for jewelry and i've spent quite a bit of time in there coming up with designs and putting things together. my jewelry "company" is named skull baby boho so that's why some of my first efforts have been sugar skulls but i plan on having a lot of boho in there as well.

i've been working on getting the space as pretty as i can (even though some of j's toys haven't quite made it out of the room yet) and one of the first things i did was put up new curtains (see old curtains below)

because i want the space to feel as magical as possible and those boring beige curtains weren't working for me.

i also took back my mother's dress form (which i had given to c but she wasn't using it and had set it out in the hall) to hang some inspiration necklaces that have been made by others. of course i had to put a hat on it because i am all about hats and i think it looks cute.

i hung this sign on the door to proclaim to the world that this is my space but that's become somewhat of a problem. i started playing in my studio (and referring to it as *my* studio) during a weekend when the kids were with their mother and the more time i spent in there, the more i realized i wanted the whole space to myself even though chris had basically told c that she could use it too.

we got her a sewing machine for christmas which she has not opened or touched or shown any interest in but one night, while i was in another part of the house, chris started setting up a table for her sewing machine from an old bunk bed frame and when i walked in the room and saw my table and shelving kind of shoved aside to make room for this massive sewing table, i was feeling some kind of way about it. 

after the kids went to bed i walked in again hoping that my feelings would change but they hadn't and i got tears in my eyes because it felt like my stuff was being taken over for something for the kids even though they have large rooms of their own with plenty of room for their projects.

chris came in, all proud of himself for coming up with the design for the sewing table and asked me what i thought and i, very quietly, told him that it really bothered me to see all my stuff shoved in a corner and that i had never wanted to share the room in the first place. i had never voiced that outloud and i guess that's selfish of me but i feel like i've had to give up so much and i've done so many things for the kids and this was the first time something was being done just for me but now it wasn't. i guess i never should have put that sign up on the door and let myself think of it as mine. chris said he understood and will try to figure out how to move her sewing machine into her room. since she's shown absolutely no interest in getting the machine out of the box i guess there's no hurry and i'll just continue to work in my half of the room and ignore all the stuff that doesn't belong to me.

if it ever really does become my room, i have all sorts of plans for additional shelving and storage plus i'll need a place to store all the display items that i've been collecting to use when i start selling my jewelry at craft fairs.

but before i start selling, i'm going to have to get a lot better. sometimes my hands are so clumsy that i feel like i really suck at this even though i love it. i know there's a learning curve and i just need to keep at it. at least i'm having fun even while i suck!