Gardening in High Heels

cultivate a beautiful life

Currently, January 2015

I had this Currently card all written out last Saturday in preparation of posting this the following week and then I realized I was no where near the end of the month.  But now it’s the end of the month and I’m all like, where did the month go?  It’s amazing the difference a week makes.

Currently List, January 2015 using rukristin's journaling card

Watching

Parks and Rec.  Netflix has treated me so well.  I always magically find the glory of a show on the final season, though, which then always makes me sad.  The Office, HIMYM, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock.

Reading

“Dearie […]” still.  It’s a long book with big pages and tiny writing, okay?  I’m looking forward to finishing a Jimmy Stewart biography when I’m done with this.  Then I’ll move on to “Appetite for Life” by Noel Riley Fitch, another Julia biography.

Listening

Background TV noise.  Nothing even memorable.

Making

A mess of the kitchen.  The floor at my father’s house is being replaced and with the help of Jonathan, it was easier than planned, but it’s still a mess.  Then I decided to make cookies and got flour everywhere.

Feeling

Stuffy.  Cold suck.  These five things make winter suck less, but winter is still a bitch.

Planning

First solo Levo event, which actually already happened.  I’ve mentioned it before, but it was great.  I’ll have to write a recap of what happened.  Inna from Hey What’s Next lead us through some great exercises.  I thought my word / intention for 2015 would be FOCUS but after that night, I changed it to CONNECT.  It feels much better.

Loving

Being Gardening In High Heels.  SynEr was great (and still my personal Twitter/Instagram/Pinterest/Etc) but I like having a clear focus and a dedicated idea of what I’m doing here.

What was your month like?  I still can’t believe it’s already the end of January.

A Tale of Two Brows

Truth time: brow pencils scare me.  I avoid using them because I don’t want to look like that girl with two-tone eyebrows.  I also don’t want to looks like I’ve taken a liquid eyeliner and drawn on rectangles above my eyes.  I think you know what I’m talking about.

I love this video from Jenna Marbles because it illustrates my point perfectly.

Brow maintenance one of my least-favorite activities.  It takes so long to do myself, but I don’t like scheduling an appointment to have someone rip the hair off of my face, pay at least $15 for the pleasure, and then tip them on top of it for something I can do myself.

That said, shout out to Laura at the Sewickley Spa – I used to work there and she’s seriously the brow whisperer.  I haven’t met anyone who can do them like she can.

What happens when you accidentally wax your eyebrow off

One day, I didn’t grab her before she left and I absolutely HAD to do my brows myself because they were tragically beyond tweezing and I was going to a wedding with Jonathan that weekend.  It was the first time we’d be attending something fancy, and it was only a few months after we started dating so I was still pretending #iwokeuplikethis.

I’ve done it before myself and I wasn’t worried.  I carefully applied wax, smoothed the paper on top of it, and ripped off the tail from my right eyebrow.

Sexy.

Panicked, I went to Target and collected all the brow cosmetics I could find.  I compared brand reputation, price, color.  Since I never did anything with my brows, I didn’t know what I needed.  I did know that I needed something that would look natural and stay in place all night.

I lucked out when I chose this Revlon Brow Fantasy pencil/gel combo.  It got me through a humid day and a long night.  The pencil feathers on color naturally and the gel keeps brows in place without looking like you have gel on your brows.

Revlon Brow Fantasy saved a big beauty whoops

I have relatively straight and thick brows, so they don’t need much help.  Translation: I usually don’t put anything on them to make them look presentable.  I don’t need to fill my brows in or apply gel to hold them down.  It’s possible there are other brow products out there that may work better for stubborn brows, but for low-maintenance hairs like mine, I’m really happy with how this turned out.

And if Jonathan noticed, he didn’t say.  He’s much too polite for that anyway.

So that’s today’s tale of two brows.  I’ve had some bad brow experiences, like the time I used pre-waxed strips and got my eyelashes stuck to them.  But that’s another story for another day.

Have you had a beauty oops?  How did you get yourself out of it?

Sunday Lately, 4

This week was kind of crazy.  I had my first solo Local Levo event (if you’re in Pittsburgh, please join us in Feb at Wigle Whiskey!), I feel like I worked it really hard at work, and Jonathan and I are going on Day 2 of burger eating.  Yesterday was Bubba’s after the Beer Blizzard and today is Steer and Wheel food truck during Weather Permitting.  They have my absolute favoritest fries in the city.

Sunday Lately 4

Updating

Still updating this little bloggy space of mine.  I love how these prompts let me remind you so much that things are still a-changing around here.  I’m okay with that!

Reminding

..Myself not to get wrapped up in things I cannot control. So much of my job is apologizing to people because something didn’t work correctly. Not that I did anything wrong, but empathy is the first step in disarming an angry person. Mix that with my knee-jerk reaction of apologizing for stuff in my personal life and I’ve got a sure-fire way to think that everything is my fault.

Needing

Furniture!  I have a bunch of hand-me-down stuff and it works but it is only comfortable really just for me.  I can’t host people for long periods of time without being embarrassed that my living room furniture consists of an old armchair and ottoman slip-covered in sheets from Target and a papasan chair that really belongs outside.

Amusing

..Coworkers with my responses to emails we all get.  For example: when someone sends a message in all caps, I’m that person emailing the department, “OKAY, I’LL ANSWER THIS ONE.”  Always good for a chuckle.

Being

Just being. As in reminding, I just need to be and I’m not. I should schedule massages for myself more often so I can “just be.”

What are you up to lately?

Five things that need to stop in reality shows

I’m not a huge TV watcher.  When I come home from work, I’m either working on freelance, developing things for this blog, feeling guilty for not more frequently guest posting for PghCBN, or trying to give my eyes a break from screens.

Long story short, when I do actually watch TV, it’s usually some dumb zone-out reality show.  I know, they are total trash, but I really just want to not think about my job and responsibilities and get absorbed in someone else’s life for 45 minutes.

I fully buy in to competition reality shows.  I love seeing deserving people win $10,000 for putting together an edible meal made with pickled chicken parts, gummy worms, and some weird looking squash.  And then Vanderpump Rules because omg the drama.  And the clothes.  And the drama.

Five cliches that need to stop happening in reality shows

But I still love to make fun of this trash that advertisers support knowing that we’ll overlook some of these cliches.

Why are you crying?

If I were on a competition show, my nerves would be shot, too.  When I’m maxed out, I tend to break down and have myself a good cry.  But I prefer to do that alone.  Sometimes Jonathan sees it.

I don’t want someone who is judging me to see me cry, though.  If I can’t keep it together while I’m baking cupcakes or something, why would Gordon Ramsay trust me with his restaurant?  Maybe going on a competition reality show isn’t the most mentally sound decision someone should make this week.

We can tell he’s only dating you because you’re on TV, why can’t you?

So you’re sitting around, bummed that you can’t get a date.  You’re pretty, intelligent, and miraculously into sports.

“I know!” you exclaim.  “I’ll go on a reality show to find quality men and the prize will be a lifetime together with me!”

Oh sweetie, oh honey, no.  What is wrong with you that you need to go on a reality show to find the love of your life?  Haven’t you seen the tabloids?!  The last 10 of you already tried that and the guy either cheated or they got divorced.

Maybe that was a little harsh, but really.

Yes, we all are here to win.

The cliches of, “I’m here to win!” and, “I know I rocked that round” are just obnoxious filler.  Of course you’re here to win!  No one says, “I’m here to lose.  I’m just happy I made it here.”

You’re running around the world to win a million dollars.  Of course you’re not putting yourself through that without the end goal of winning a million dollars!

Plus, the people who say, “I made the best dish in that round” are clearly jinxing themselves.

We know you got that job because you’re on TV.

I’m sure you’re a great writer and you’re qualified to write a makeup series simply because your bathroom looks like a new Sephora location.  But I know just as well as everyone else that the only reason why that blog will pay you to write is so you’ll talk about it on your cable TV show and drive traffic to their site.

Clever PR move.  Kudos!

The really drunk girl.

I understand you need to drink to cope, but why oh why are you letting yourself get this horrifically, embarrassingly drunk?  You are on national TV!

Not only are you glorifying black-out-drunk drinking, you’re making yourself look really stupid.  I’m sure your new blog contact is so thrilled that you’re representing them.

What reality show cliches would you add to this list?

Why customer service matters as a blogger

Don’t underestimate good customer service.  I am always on the phone with Tubu.net, my hosting tech support, a lot.  As someone who “does” customer service for a day job, I get it from both sides of the coin.

Why Customer Service Matters for Bloggers

A little bit ago, I had a stupid problem, but it seemed like a not-stupid problem.  I was trying to upload pictures to WordPress and it wouldn’t let me.  It kept saying that the file wasn’t permitted for security reasons and I’m all like, “What’s such a security threat?  It’s just a picture of my outfit.”

I thought it was because I updated my theme.  The last time I added a new theme, WordPress freaked out.  I was panicked, so I called Tubu support and had such a great experience last time that I figured I would call again sooner this time.

Let’s be honest, I’d just try to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting it to work.  I guess I’m growing up when I recognize that I can’t fix this one myself.

Here’s the crazy thing: I talked to the same guy I talked to last time.  It’s been a few months, sure, so it wasn’t an immediate recognition on his end, but it was the same guy as before.

It was so reassuring that I 1) was talking to someone in America who I could understand and 2) had a positive experience with this person in the past.

It ended up being a really stupid-easy fix.  We tried using Chrome, removing spaces from my file name, he did some tech voodoo over in Back-end Webroot PHP-land…nada.  Turns out my genius self didn’t end the file in .jpg.

That makes a difference, folks.

But kudos to Rick who was probably sitting there going, “Wow, lady, that’s the first thing I would have checked.”  I know he was thinking that because most of the time I’m sitting at work thinking, “Did you really just call me when you couldn’t post to Facebook but you didn’t check to see if you were still connected to Facebook first?”

Side note: can we strike “please advise” from all emails?

It’s so rewarding when people are genuinely excited and thankful for your help that it eases the sting that you just took 30 minutes to explain how to highlight text and change the font size.  Or, in Rick’s case, to figure out that I needed the file extension.

He was laughing along at with me, making conversation while we waited, and just made the overall experience really pleasant.

Sometimes you just need that little reminder that there’s always someone on the flip side.  I try really hard to be nice to customer service reps because I’ve been in those shoes; I don’t want someone yelling at me, so I don’t yell at them.

Also, when you lose your cool, it’s a one-way ticket to I’m Going To Do As Little As Possible To Help You-sville.

Moral of today’s story: good customer service is imperative.

As a blogger, it’s important to think about what customer service means to you.  It can be responding to comments, reading other blogs, retweeting content to support the blogger, making sure what you’re repinning isn’t just a weird spam link, etc.

You are a brand, whether you think so or not.  How you conduct yourself matters and reflects back on you.  Good customer/reader service deepens your brand image in a meaningful way.

Write down a code of conduct for how you’ll approach situations.  What would you say if someone wanted you to write a review for free? (Here’s a great response!)

How will you approach others about writing a guest blog for them?  (Here are three ways to be a good guest poster and here are some tips for inviting guest posters.)

Or do you have a time frame of when you can realistically respond to comments?  Write it all down and stick to it.

This will contribute to a strong, positive image for your blog.  Your readers will know what to expect and you’ll be happy knowing that you have a plan for responding graciously to all kinds of situations.

What was your last good customer service experience like?  How do you offer good customer service to your readers?

Let’s Play

           

People Really Dug These

We Belong in the Garden Together