Scrapbooking

Here are some pages that I want to make and love and I really want to scrapbook, maybe once I make some of my own pages I will post them on here:

blogs i borrowed these layouts from:

Cosmo Cricket
Sassafras
Studio Calico

New Favorite Quotes

There is one thing that's always been true for me, and that's the fact that I LOVE quotes.  Here are some recent favorites that I have found that are wonderful, and true, and honest:

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty. Believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."

"I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

"Sometimes you have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down."

"Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should..."

"Always continue to believe, never lose faith and never give up. This applies to everything in your life. And it applies to every principal that one chooses to believe in. If something is worth believing in, it is also worth defending at all cost, no matter how mundane."

"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?" 

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."
 

Belief

Today I am really scared that I will never become a teacher.  State wide budget cuts, teacher lay offs, deficits...it's all screaming that teaching in the near future is seemingly impossible.  So today I am trying to remind myself to believe in the voice in my heart calling me to be a teacher and listening and trusting the instincts that are mine. Instincts that know I will be a teacher. 

I can't let others fears get in the way of mine.  So these are my little reminders for today that if I just believe in my dreams then it will eventually happen.

When It Rains It Pours

This post really isn't going to be long.  I just want to vent about feeling stuck and sad and miserable.  And i know most of my blog posts have been about uplifting things and trying to look at the positive and believe me I still do, but every once in a while a girl's allowed to have a crap day/week/year...and it's just been one of those crappy times for me.

Bad things keep happening to me and everyone I care about and I am just tired of it. Tired of crying and worrying and wondering and being upset and feeling so alone.  It's just been super hard on me and my soul and my heart and my ability to pick myself back up again. 

I just want to crawl into a whole and hide out for a few weeks until all things get better and I can stop worrying, wondering, crying and feeling very alone.  I'm ready to be rid of crappy feelings and crappy things and I just want to be happy.  I just want all the crap to go away.  Even for just one day.  No more crap for ONE day...is that so hard?...

My Hips Look Huge. Ugh.

Spring is just around the corner, or, according to the calendar, it has already begun.  In my binge shopping therapy sprees I have seen lots of cute floral prints, tank tops, and other adorable outfits that no longer seem to look cute on me.  I try on everything I think might look okay and it ends up looking horrendous!  I see girls who arms don't flap in the windI see girls who thighs don't touch and who's ass still fits into a size 27 and I wonder if they know how lucky they are to not have their fat thighs chafe as they rub against each other...  and I am envious. 

Just today I returned a skirt because it a. made my hips look gargantuan and b. was in no way flattering to my larger than life ass.  After walking through two stores today and determining that I am too out of shape and not skinny enough for their clothes I went into a slight depression, one in which I loath over my unattractive body and wonder how I let this happen to myself.  I fantasized about having buff and toned arms and thin legs.  Then I wondered if there were a trainer that could whip my fat butt into shape in two months.  Then when I realized there was no way I was going to lose all the weight I wanted in two months and that my hips were probably always going to be too large for a poofy skirt, I got really sad, and all I wanted to do was eat pizza.  or a cookie.  or go drink a big cold soda.  Which is why I can't fit into the skirts or jeans to begin with.  Depression = food.  Food = fat me.  Fat me = Depression.  Depressed me over not being skinny enough to fit into the cute spring clothes I want = FOOD.  It's a terrible cycle to be in.  Fat, depressed and really full.

Today I am wearing all black, probably to symbolize my semi-depressive state, instead of the purples and yellows and pinks that I see everyone else in.  I realize I should probably change my attire and start going to the gym.  But this time change has made me really tired and the gym sounds so boring and hard.

So I am going to try to use these spring images to motivate me to get a move on and try to work out enough that I can look cute in all the spring clothes I keep seeing all over town.

Fragile Little Things

Just a few moments ago I found out that one of my twin nieces who is 4 was rushed to the hospital after falling off a stool.  No one seems to be answering their phones and with my family a million miles away I am only left with my destructive thoughts to try to piece together what may be happening right now.

First off,  I am overcome with sadness that she fell and hurt herself and I can't imagine how scared and how much pain she actually is in right now.  I worry that because my brother-in-law was without my sister that it was tremendously hard for him to somehow get one twin and the other out of the restaurant they were in and somehow sooth poor little Ella.  I just imagine this horrific terrible event happening and I feel sad and upset that I couldn't be there to help out.  Or how, if only she hadn't taken that one faulty step then she wouldn't have fallen. 

It's moments like these when I realize how much I really truly love and miss my family and how I wish I could be there for them for everything they ever have to go through.  I wish we all lived down the street from each other so that I could be there at the hospital right now in the ER.  Or I could have been there when the other twin fell and cracked her head open.  I think about how many good and bad moments I've  missed in the lived of people that mean so much to me because I am far away.  This year especially.  I am so terribly far away that I feel so disconnected from every one and I feel like I chose to make my life something different thinking that what I has wasn't enough.  Thinking that I needed to search to find new and better things, when I realize now that all I ever wanted - I had.  

I had every thing I could have ever asked for.  Friends, great family, a beautiful place to live, a job that made me happy, a lifestyle that was carefree and full of life and joy and laughter.  But for some reason that wasn't enough, and now, in moments where someone needs me most, I am stuck in an apartment ALONE, because I have no one in Chicago, and crying by myself because the only thing I can do is wait by the phone to hear what happens next.

I am not really living.  I am surviving off old memories and waiting for phone calls.  I am revisiting happier times to somehow manage to live another day.  I am reminiscing through old photos or old laugher but I am not creating anything new. 

I took for granted all the fragile little things I had in life.  The things that didn't seem to matter from day to day.  I thought that I somehow would come to this new city and this new place and find some miraculous thing that I had never seen or had before, when I realize now that the real miracle was having a full and abundant life.  

Life is full of fragile little things that make it all worth it.  My advice:  don't ever forget that.

Who is St. Patrick?

Today is a day I have never really understood, nor really cared to understand.  It's just a holiday like Cinco De Mayo, another reason for people to drink a lot and claim they aren't alcoholics even though getting belligerent on a Wednesday used to be a sure fire sign of alcoholism.  Now it's just socially acceptable, when it shouldn't be (in my opinion).  Neither should dressing up like a leprechaun, but that's what's happening in this world.  Drinking on a random nonsensical holiday, and dressing up like red heads makes you cool or fun or something.

Personally, I wish the world were to celebrate actual things more often.  Things that make this world happy and cheerful and honest and real.  Lets get dressed up and dance and have a party for our parents every single day for raising us, or let's laugh and sit together and have dinner outside because it is a beautiful night and down coats are finally unnecessary.  Or let's have a block party and invite every single one of our friends and let's celebrate our friendship, just because it's Wednesday and for no other reason than for our friends to know how important they are.  Let's celebrate, and not by drinking, that we are ALIVE and breathing and loving individuals and have a roof over our heads and food to eat for breakfast lunch and dinner.  How about the celebration of the fact that we can drink or eat or do as we please, whenever we so choose to.

Perhaps St. Patrick did something amazing.  Maybe I'm missing the point since I haven't done my research.  BUT, regardless.   Let today be a reminder to celebrate the little things and the wonderfully meaningless but very significant things in life.  I wish people celebrated these small wonders as much as they celebrate holidays like St. Patrick's Day or Cinco De Mayo.

Just think if the world found wonder and significance in truly meaningful small pieces of life and lived to celebrate it the way they do a holiday most people know nothing about.    Just imagine it now...