A Room of My Own: Part 1

 

It was Virginia Woolf who said that every woman -- and more specifically every woman writer -- needs a room of her own.  To express herself, collect her thoughts, and escape from domesticity (i.e., dirty dishes and spit-up).  As a woman with lots of thoughts -- and things -- I went ahead and claimed not one but two spaces.

The first is my closet.  When I look at everything in it, I find it hard to believe that most of it was once crammed into the bedroom in my Brigantine rental.  Moving into my house was like learning to breathe.  For the first time, I could really spread out and embrace decorating.  Also, avoid getting black and blue marks every time I wanted to finagle access to a certain bag/pair of pumps/feather boa.  (Side note: I hate that something as fab as a feather boa is named after something as awful as a boa constrictor.)  Sometimes, I just stand in this room and look around as if I've never seen it. The world falls away, sealing me in my bubble.  I feel like Rapunzel. Minus the super-long hair and captivity.

Now, in my eighth day of coronavirus-inspired self-quarantine, I'm more grateful than ever for my sanctuary.  Although I've (happily) spent the last week in pajamas, it's nice to see my wardrobe waiting.

That said, stay tuned for the second installment of A Room of My Own -- and see what's behind door number two.

Butterflies and Botany and Beads You Can Eat Without Choking

 Boho Butterfly Necklace, Sparkly Saguaro Bracelet

Top: Mudd, Kohl's
Jeans: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's
Boots: Penny Loves Kenny, Amazon
Bags: Charming Charlie
Bangles: Iris Apfel for INC, Macy's

Butterflies are the best.  And botany isn't bad either.  Especially when it comes to cacti!  That said, on this first weekend of spring, I'm making the most of both in this Boho Butterfly Necklace and Sparkly Saguaro Bracelet.  I love the way their jewel tones look against my yellow tee.  You can't tell from the picture, but it's made of a waffle weave.  It brings me right back to the '90s, a.k.a. the decade when thermals-slash-long johns became cool.  Or maybe I should say cozy.

Speaking of which, the tee's color reminds me more of Kozy Shack tapioca (in sensibility if not exact shade) than a weighty carb at the breakfast buffet.

Maybe that's because I really like tapioca.  It's got those sweet, bead-like globes that burst on your tongue.  Like dessert caviar or unburned creme brulee.  It makes me think of school lunches (not mine, but someone's) and snack time at the senior center.

By the way, the lifespan of a monarch is measured in months, whereas the saguaro can live for one hundred and fifty years.  The monarch is delicate and fleeting; the saguaro is sturdy and steady.  We humans never know for sure which camp we fall into, or how much time we have left.  Not knowing puts things in perspective, reminding us to savor each second.  And each spoonful of pudding.

Long live your snack shack, big K.

St. Pat's Brats

The best thing about St. Patrick's Day is the wearing of the green.  Even if, in this pic, I'm wearing the green that I wore last August.

The husband commemorated the day by drenching his pancakes in whiskey-infused maple syrup.  He said that it's what St. Patrick would've wanted.

I'm not into whiskey -- or, for that matter, maple syrup -- so I'm celebrating by photographing some green stuff in our house.

 Amazon

 Kohl's

 HomeGoods

Gifted by Mama E. (the husband's name for my mother) 

The tchotchkes are mine; the plant is the husband's.  He's the one with the (insert laugh track) green thumb.  I'm better with plants that are plastic.

So, happy St. Pat's.  May the grass that you stand on be the grass that's always greener.

Even if it's just AstroTurf.  

Rainbow Swirl Summer: Revolution Ablution

 Trendy Tortoise Necklace

 Kitsch Corner Earrings

Top: Elizabeth and James, Kohl's

Skirt: Wild Fable, Target

Shoes: Worthington, JCPenney

Bag: Arizona Jeans, JCPenney

Neon stretch bracelets: Amrita Singh, Zulily

Royal blue bangle: So, Kohl's

Turquoise bangle: Burlington Coat Factory

Turquoise stretch bracelet: Cloud Nine, Ocean City

Pink flower bracelet: Belk

Ring: PinkBopp, Etsy

Barrettes: The Tote Trove

Whenever I go to ShopRite, I always stop to look at the books.  They're at the end of the juice aisle, and as soon as I spy the Ocean Spray and V8 Splash, I feel a bubbling of anticipation.  Granted, most of the titles aren't interesting.  But just seeing the covers makes me happy, and there's usually one that I've been wanting to read.  Although I can get any of them cheaper on Amazon, tossing a paperback into my cart along with my Cheerios feels decadent.  Because books are soul Oreos.  Which is to say, one of life's simple pleasures. 

My latest grocery store score was Elin Hilderbrand's Summer of '69.  After buying it, I immediately abandoned the snooze of a book I was reading and dove right in.  

Like 99% of Hilderbrand's novels, Summer of '69 is set on Nantucket and features the familiar theme of family drama.  Only, this particular tale is tie-dyed with the turmoil of the times, touching upon civil rights, women's rights, the moon landing, and Vietnam.  Add a healthy dose of coming-of-age, broken hearts, and good old-fashioned kleptomania, and you've got a bestie for the next couple of days.  This time, the family is the Foley/Levins.  Kate is the mom, and her husband David is the lawyer who handled the case of hubby number one's suicide.  A dashing lieutenant who served in Korea, the first Mr. Kate was charismatic -- but also problematic.  David is his opposite: ordinary, unassuming, and steady.  He's also Jewish, which unnerves Kate's aristocratic mother.  Kate's offspring have their issues, too.  Big sister Blair is married to a troubled MIT professor and is enormous with his twins in Boston, wild child Kirby has defected to rival island Martha's Vineyard, and former high school football star Tiger has been drafted, leaving Jessie, who has just turned thirteen, all alone.  As if entering her teen years isn't tough enough, Jessie has the distinction of being David's daughter, setting her apart from her siblings.  A sensitive bookworm, Jessie reads Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl and suffers through tennis lessons at her grandmother's club.  It's the kind of summer that makes her a woman.  No, she doesn't lose her virginity -- she's only thirteen! -- but she does get her period.  And a boatload of wisdom. 

Although Jessie is, in many ways, the main character -- indeed, the glue that holds the Foley/Levins together -- Summer of '69 isn't just about her.  As always, Hilderbrand gets into her characters' heads with her time-honored technique of devoting whole sections to each one's point of view.  Which is ideal because I get to find out what everyone's thinking and feeling.  That's what makes novels great, after all, pulling back the curtain on characters' facing-the-world facades to show who they really are.  And in this case, the historical angle only heightens these revelations.  Hilderbrand wraps her story in all the music, fashion, and tension of the 1960s to paint a portrait of Americana.

Hoodie: Gifted, Tee: Candies, Kohl's

At one point, Kirby sends Jessie a tie-dyed Martha's Vineyard tee shirt with the hopes that she'll wear it to tennis and scandalize their grandmother.  In the not-quite spirit of that, I posted this pic of the tie-dyed hoodie that my parents brought me back from Newport, Rhode Island.  I love it.  Although the image of the dog is ironic, seeing as how I hate canines.

And that makes for a nice segue into today's crafts.  Although not tie-dyed, I present the neon-studded Trendy Tortoise Necklace and Kitsch Corner Earrings to you on a hippie-happy backdrop of tie-dyed sweatshirt and faux leather fringed bag.  The necklace was a Target clearance rack item, and the charms for the earrings were vintage bits I got when my sister cleaned out her craft room.  They look more '70s or '80s than '60s (they subtly scream disco fever, if subtly screaming is a thing), but I was drawn to their clean lines and aged cream enamel.  Anyway, as they say, time is an illusion, and fashion traverses it all.  It's an anchor in an uncertain ocean, a light on the long, dark road home.

Like a serving of chick lit amidst cardboard Kind bars.

At ShopRite, the granola bars are by the books too.

Six Feet Apart: Ham for Dinner

Yesterday, I went to the post office to mail a package to a customer.  When I approached the entrance, a man held the door open for me, smiled, and said, "Six feet apart."  I smiled back and thanked him, returning the gesture of grinning-and-bearing-it solidarity.  But on the inside I felt uneasy, and I think that he did too.  Because our little exchange confirmed the unthinkable: the threat of the coronavirus had gone from being something in the news to something at our local post office.  And that's when I knew that it would be my last trip there for awhile and that I'd (temporarily) close my Etsy shop.

The Tote Trove is a happy place, and I don't like to sully it with references to the gloomy things that go on in the world.  But I'm also committed to keeping it real.  And the coronavirus is as real as it gets.  So I'm taking precautions like everyone else, hunkering down in my house with my meager supply of price-gouged antibacterial gel and boxes of granola bars.  I'm going to read lots of books and watch lots of TV and make lots of things and keep on believing in the rainbow that will come after this rainstorm.

Because that package I was mailing?  It was my Fabulous Felt Ham Dinner Barrette, and it was going to a fellow New Jerseyian who had previously messaged me that it was "the best thing I’ve seen in a while."  When she bought it earlier this week, I was going through a tough time (non-coronavirus-related), and seeing that Etsy Transactions notification email in my inbox was like a sign.  That it's what I do at the Tote Trove that matters, my way of putting good out into the world.

That's why, despite these dark times, I choose to believe that the world will give that good back.

So please stay safe, sane, and healthy out there.  And keep an eye out for that rainbow.

Office Flowers are Always Open

T-Shirt & Jeans, Amazon

LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Betsey Johnson, Macy's

This post is about flowers and fruits and veggies and purses (see above carrot barrettes and veggie sweater.  For the record, fashion is the only way I let peas infiltrate my life).  It's also about my home office (a.k.a. the cactus room) where I write these posts, online shop, and pay bills with stamps like an old lady.  But you already knew that, right down to the stamps. 

Flowers make great metaphors.  Especially roses.  As in, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" and "Every Rose Has its Thorn".  Even this week's episode of "The Unicorn" (a sitcom about a widower named Wade [Walton Goggins] that I once watched ironically but now genuinely like) had a game called rose and thorn in it.  In an effort to help Wade's seventh-grader daughter Grace open up, his friends Delia (Michaela Watkins) and Michelle (Maya Lynne Robinson) suggest this exercise in which each person shares one good thing that happened that week -- that's the rose -- and one bad thing -- yes, that's the thorn.  And although it didn't ultimately work out -- Delia and Michelle had to reminisce about their own middle school misadventures before Grace finally spilled about her boy troubles -- I found the idea appealing.  So here are some of my roses and thorns from this week.


Roses:

I sold two brooches, one to someone in Arkansas and one to someone in Pennsylvania.

I got a box of free stuff from Kohl's.  No, they haven't decided to reward me for all the blogging I do about their products.  The loot was gratis because I had a "big fat check" from Rakuten and opted to upgrade it to a Kohl's gift card.  Which means it technically wasn't free because I had to spend a lot to get the cashback.  But it made me happy.  So, rose it is.

Thorns:

"This is Us" wasn't on.

My left thumbnail tore below the quick.  Ouch!


Playing rose and thorn is a good way to get stuff off your chest.  Or, even if you play it alone, a way to remain grateful.  For me, it comes in handy when life hands me something more seemingly insurmountable than a week without Jack Pearson's wisdom.  It reminds me to stay positive.  And open to the good stuff.

Like roses.  And '80s hair bands.  

Paint Party Hearty: Sweet Eats

Last spring, my sister asked me to enter an art show with her.  I'd been out of the painting game for a while and didn't have so much as a tube of burnt umber, so I hit Michaels for the essentials.  But even with a restocked arsenal, I didn't want to switch gears from making jewelry.  I still participated in the show; I just used paintings I'd made a long time ago.  Yet the pile of new paints and canvasses haunted me the following summer, fall, and winter until one day I said, "Enough!  No paint will dry up on my watch!"  So I hunkered down in my cozy craft room and proceeded to bust out my brushes.  The above not-quite-symmetrical, day-glo, sugar-fueled dreamscape was the result.  The husband asked if the two suns in the sky looking down at the ice cream were Ben and Jerry.  It wasn't without a little regret that I admitted this wasn't the case.  I didn't have a plan in mind when I was painting, but the finished product looks like the packaging for a Japanese board game.  Which is to say, wonderful.  I had so much fun making it!  I took my time, working on it on and off for two weeks while I watched TV.  I forgot how zen painting can be, how peaceful yet satisfying it is to cover white space with color to create something new.

I'm not the only painter in my household.  You may recall that the husband paints houses.  And he's got the brushes to prove it. 
 

Clearly, he too has whimsy and is a collector of colorful things.  He might not like that I said he has whimsy, though.  It doesn't sound very manly.  Then again, earlier today when we were in Lowe's, he was drooling over a mitre saw.  So, maybe mentioning that makes up for it.

Next time, I'll paint frosting-topped pine trees around a blue blob and call it Tastykake Lake.  Because I live closer to Pennsylvania than Vermont and grew up on Butterscotch Krimpets instead of Chunky Monkey.

Not that I'm opposed to painting a monkey swinging from a Red Vine. I'd call it Snack Attack.

Good thing I have six more canvases.