cultivate a beautiful life
Today’s Blogger, May I prompt is A Story Without Words. I’m kinda cheating because the pictures have words in them. But they tell a powerful story. They’re from Dale Partridge’s new book, People Over Profit. If you are looking to do any leading or inspiring, you need this book. For real.
Today’s Blogger, May I prompt is Where Do You Call Home. Man that is a loaded question.
Since I was about 10 or 11, I lived in two different places. Half of my life was spent at my mom’s house, the other half was spent at my dad’s house. I still have clothes and shoes spread out between the different locations, even though I’m living in my own house (which is actually my mom’s house that I’m renting from her while she is living in Virginia).
I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of “home” recently. If you go back to posts in March, you’d see that I spent a lot of time whining that I had to pack up my father’s house while he was in the hospital. It’s one thing to move away from your first home, but it’s another entirely to pack it up and sell it. Two different mindsets, I guess. You can always go back if you move away. When you sell it…well, you can’t go back to those memories.
It’s ironic that I’m writing this because I just found out that my father is putting his house on the market. It’s happening for sure whereas back in March it was a suggestion from his sisters. It’s definitely bittersweet. He and I acknowledged that I can’t live there and take care of him forever and that I’ve worked hard to afford what I can and get where I am.
And it’s sad to think that last year, we unwittingly had our last Christmas there. And Easter. And birthdays.
But now, home is where my kitchen is. Like I wrote a few weeks ago, my mom’s kitchen is one of my favorite places. I love to cook and bake. I definitely got that from both of my grandmas, but my mom had a biiiig role in that, too.
She taught me a great deal in her kitchen. I tried to make her kitchen my own, but some things still remain, the her Pfaltzgraff rejects (she got new ones so I got the hand-me-downs. Not complaining!) Nice little touches of home.
So while home is in transition right now, I’ll still have things that remind me of my dad’s house, like the bookcases he built that were in the living room the whole time I was growing up (I already said I’m taking those, no exceptions) and the beautiful Barry Jeter pieces he bought for me.
So I’m sitting here (on Cinco de Mayo might I add) drinking a daquiri out of a pouch, eating potato chips, watching QVC with a load of laundry going in the dryer. Do I know how to party or what? Oh, I also have a face mask on. It’s Mask of Magnamity, so it’s super-chunky, too. I’m so classy right now.
I figured in honor of today’s Share A Recipe prompt for Blogger, May I, I’d share a few of my favorite drink recipes I’ve found on Pinterest lately.
First, this margarita from Laura at Life with Lolo (that I didn’t find on Pinterst, I saw it on her blog because she’s hilarious and I love her and I went right to the source. Direct traffic, baby!) because I feel quite basic tonight with my Lush face mask and liquor out of a pouch.
This best G&T recipe from Drip and Drizzle.
Blackberry beer cocktail? Sign me up. I’d so drink with Fat Head’s Bumbleberry.
Laura posted about a beer-mosa/bromosa last week, but I want to make this Strawberry Beermosa version.
Oh, and {shameless plug} try my Lemon Basil Mojito cocktail as found…..here!
Kids, let me tell you a story. Today’s Blogger, May I prompt is the story behind my blog name. Back when I had an AOL email address (hello 90s), I was enthralled by ‘zines. They were basically just bulk emails that were sent out. I wanted so badly to be one of the popular ones and have tons of replies when I wrote something.
Then there was DeadJournal and LiveJournal and Xanga. I think the only thing I didn’t have was a GeoCities site!
I always loved writing and putting it out there for others to see it. I remember my father asked me why I couldn’t just write in a journal.
Come on now. If you didn’t publish your deepest thoughts for the internet to see, did you really think them? I think I was the original (unintentional) hipster.
Fast forward quite a few years. I saw Julie and Julia. I loved it. I wanted to do that, so I got the genius idea to do it with a quilt. I was in Ohio with my mom and she bought me the most perfect Moda jellyroll I have ever seen. I found a pattern and got to work.
Since I was using Moda fabrics, I named it Moda Vivendi (a play on modus vivendi, meaning agree to disagree; a way of life). And I wrote maybe 2 posts. My follow-through needed a little work. The quilt got finished, though!
I loved the name so I kept using it throughout college. I mostly shared pictures of my nail polish and random thoughts that came up. In 2013, I switched to SyntaxxErrorrr. It’s what I used for all my social media accounts. I would go to events and introduce myself as SytnaxxErrorrr because that’s how people knew me. I had to use it for my blog’s name.
There are still photos tagged like that because I didn’t keep the PSD files and it’s a bitch to reupload everything but they’ll change some day.
What I failed to admit to myself is that “SyntaxxErrorrr” is hard to find online. If you want to have a successful blog, you gotta make it easy for people to get to.
One day last June, I was in the garden watering my plants between jobs – I worked at Sharp Edge in the morning and interned with Yelp in the afternoon. It’s terrible to admit, but I didn’t give a damn what I looked like for Sharp Edge; Rachel, my Yelp supervisor, always looked amazing in cute dresses and accessories, so I always tried to do it up on Yelp days.
So there I was tending to my garden wearing a flowy skirt, platform wedge sandals, and lots of jewelry while wielding a dirty garden hose trying not to get dirt smudged all over my legs. I was rarely successful with that one.
And I said to myself, “Gardening In High Heels – now THAT would be a name for a blog.” I was so excited, I told my mom right away. Even she liked it (and she barely uses email).
I turned that idea over and over until I finally purchased the domain. I just sat with it for a long time until I decided to let go of SyntaxxErrorrr earlier this year and made the leap to change my name for the third time.
Guys, I think this one is going to stick. I really like it here.
Need the prompts for the Blogger, May I challenge? Gotcha covered. Want to use your own prompts? No problem! Just grab a button to show that you’re linking up with myself, Katy, and Meghan. Oh, and use #BloggerMayI on Twitter/Instagram to keep the fun going even after you hit Publish!
The older I get, the harder it is to play Never Have I Ever. It’s also been quite a few years since I’ve had to play Never Have I Ever. Never have I ever had a Big Mac, broken a bone (knock on a huuuuuge pile of wood), operated a chain saw..
Today’s Blogger, May I prompt is Never Have I Ever. Since it’s Makeup Monday, I’m sharing health and beauty things that I’ve never done. When I was sitting down to write this, I realized there are a lot of things I’ve done when it comes to “beauty” stuff – I’ve waxed, dyed, permed, and just about everything in between.
Never have I ever…
I have a Spornette Little Wonder and it’s great but I have no idea what I’m doing with it. I kind of just push hair around. It looks messy instead of..BAM look at my big hair don’t care, which is what I want it to look like.
For the longest time, I always wore red polish on my toe nails. I can’t make up my mind when it comes to finger nail polish, but toe nails were always red. Finally, I managed to break out of that rut, but as experimental as I get with my nails, I can’t bring myself to do the French style on my toe nails. My little baby toe nail is soooo small, it would basically just be entirely white. And look weird.
I’m Italian and as expressive as we are with our hands, our eyebrows are just as expressive. I have dark, heavy brows and they need to be controlled. So I figured I’d get an at-home wax kit and try to use that instead of tweeze. Fail. Fail all over.
I ended up getting about a quarter of my eyelashes stuck to the strip. I did not realize that before I pulled it off my face. I just realized how many waxing blunders I’ve made. I should just leave that to the pros.
And that’s all she wrote. This headache is getting worse the longer I concentrate. Time to zone out with Netflix and Parks & Rec. Leslie Knope heals all wounds.
