Procrastination does not make perfect! (and sometimes the truth is ugly)

Ready to hear a secret? Here goes...
I come from a pretty lazy family.

Because of this, the idea of filling up my time productively and making the most of every day was foreign to me. That is until I met a girl named Suzanne in the spring of 2000. Suzanne was a free spirit, artsy chic born to two former hippies who still burned patchouli in the house at night. She was one of those girls who constantly dreamed, thought outside the box, set goals and wanted to change the world. She had a fire in her that I was not familiar with at all. But I liked it.

Suzanne hated wasting time and she'd repeatedly tell you that. She couldn't stand it. Yes, every once in a while she'd just lounge around in pjs with her family watching a movie but even in her world that wasn't lazy, it was spending time with family. The rest of her time was working on art projects, taking classes to learn new things, coordinating bible studies (hippie style as I called it), writing songs, playing gigs, meeting new people, traveling, networking, joining organizations, creating ideas, reading, writing, or doing things for others. It blew my mind.

And as much as I'd like to be like Suzanne, I'm not. I find that I am a lot like what was modeled for me growing up. I work, I come home, I eat, and either spend the rest of the evening on the computer or watching tv, with the occasional get together with friends one night a week. Weekends are a bit different though. I try to keep my weekends packed and do stuff because I do hate to waste my weekends.

There is a point to all of this...I promise. :)

I'm sick of being lazy! No, I'm not the type that can be too terribly busy because I can't stay sane that way. I do need my down time. However, I'm sick of wasting my time, just like Suzanne always said.

When I'm at home on week nights, there is no excuse why I couldn't be pulling out my sewing machine and trying to learn how to sew. It's something I've always wanted to do. So why have I not been doing it? I'm wasting precious time. (I believe I've posted about this sewing dilemma before.)

I see so many blogs of people who are always working on something and spend a good portion of their day dedicated to that thing. Every time I see someones handmade purse, jewelry, stationary, curtains, scrapbooks and even clothes I think to myself "Why am I not doing this?". Most of these people even have a job, a spouse and children to take care of and yet they still make time to do these things. What's my excuse?

I hate looking back on my life even now and thinking that there is this one thing I always wanted to do and had all the time in the world a few years ago and never did it. And now I have even less time than before, and as life goes on my free time will get less and less and less. So why am I procrastinating?

It's time to change!

No, I don't want to be so busy that I'm overwhelmed and can't handle everything I've put on my plate, because I can't operate that way and it will just drive me crazy. But I can start small and set 1 goal for now and see how I do. I admit I've never been good at setting goals and acheiving them, but every day is a day to start over, right? If I want to be different, then I have to do something different, it doesn't just happen on it's own.

So here it is folks...goal no. 1 - Sew!

I'm a huge perfectionist and making mistakes is going to aggrevate the hell out of me and make me want to give up, but I am going to have to keep at it. Because only practice makes perfect. (Not that 'perfect' even exist, but you get the idea.)

Thankfully I have a ton of blogs out there to help me with inspiration:

• Heart of Light
• How About Orange...
• Making It Lovely
• Posey Gets Cozy

...just to name a few.

If you have any suggestions, tips, advice, links or words of encouragement I'd love to hear it! I'm going to need all the help I can get to stay on task.

Once I get my s**t together, the ultimate goal is to make my own clothes. It's always been hard trying to find clothes for a 6'1 girl with a 36 inseam and other abnormally large porportions. :)

Woof!

I came across this post earlier and started day dreaming of a day when I'd have the time and the money to spend hours my kitchen making homemade organic treats for my man's pups. He is very much in love with his babies, Rosco and Lacy. Rosco is a hillarious English Bulldog and Lacy is a hyper Boxer. The two together are the hillarious odd couple. I'll have to take some pictures of them soon.

Well here is the recipe I plan on trying if I ever get around to it. Here's hoping...

photo via: The Sustainable Diet

My Weekend

Friday night my plans fell through to go see The Running downtown. (A local band of 3 guys I went to school with.) So, determined not to sit at home, I called up my cousin Jen and joined her in visiting her dad and step mom (my aunt and uncle) for dinner at their house.

I love visiting my aunt and uncle. There's always good food and good conversation.

My other cousin, Jessica also joined us and brought her 11 month old son Dominic. He is so precious. Beautiful dark, almond shaped eyes, long eye lashes and Angelina Jolie lips (boy version of course). :) Can't believe he's going to be 1 year old in just 2 weeks! Here is a picture of him that my uncle took the next day while outside.We all ended up staying the night and woke up to a wonderful homemade breakfast. (I mentioned the good food, right?) :) Then we spent the rest of the day outside on the back patio reading magazines, telling funny stories and playing with the baby. I ended up with the craziest sunburn! Due to sitting at the patio table holding the baby most of the day or a magazine in my lap, I was only burned on the tops of my arms, my forehead, nose and neck. I look so funny with red stripes down both of my arms! Fun times! I used to never burn in the sun and now I go out for 1 day and I'm toast! What is up with that? Is my skin changing or is it the sun?

My cousin Jessica happens to have majored in the Plant & Soil Science field in college and so I took ample advantage of the fact that she was there and asked her what types of things I should plant out on my balcony this year. She gave me a list of flower and plant combinations to put together in pots. Then my uncle gave me some terracotta pots he wasn't planning on using. I was ecstatic. Expert advise and some free pots. I left around 4pm and went straight to Home Depot! I spent about $35 on potting soil and 10 plants and headed home.

I spent the next 2 hours outdoors on my balcony with my cats, elbow high in dirt and loving every minute of it. It feels so amazing to work with your hands. Gives me a very strong feeling of accomplishment.

I didn't exactly put together the exact arrangements my cousin had laid out for me since my Home Depot didn't have everything she suggested, so I came up with my own arrangements, working with what they did have. Here's my work:
Can't wait to see what they'll look like mid summer! I'll be sure to share photos.

The rest of my weekend was lovely as well and I'm glad to have had a full, fun and fabulous weekend! :) We need those from time to time. Wouldn't you agree?!

Miss Susie Homemaker

It's probably just a phase that will be on its way out soon, but I've been quite domestic lately.

My mother is a picky eater. This I believe to be the very reason she always cooked the same stuff when I was little and not very adventurous in the kitchen. She was also the type of person who didn't like "too many cooks in the kitchen". So, cooking was never really something I picked up.

Over the past year my cousin Jen has been inviting me over to her lovely bohemian cottage home in East Nashville to try her new recipes on me. It's already become a memory I will always cherish; me sitting at her dinning room table talking about what's going on in my life as she slices and dices away on ingredients. She says she likes to cook for me because I always think everything is so great and amazing. :) Which I really do! She's a great cook! I like it because it feels like home. Not necessarily my home or the home I grew up in, just "home" in general, a place of comfort and warmth and happiness.

Anyway, so lately I have had the urge to try cooking at home myself. Around Christmas it started with just typical sugar cookies. (But hey, I had to start somewhere.) Then it was a Hot Fudge Chocolate cake. Oh so good! And most recently it was chili.


I have to say, I'm quite proud of myself. :) Now I know that I'll only get better at this cooking thing with time and eventually I will be able to fill my home with a family and cook for them, hoping to be more adventurous in the kitchen then my mother was. :)

So what have you cooked/baked recently?