My Favorite Things
It’s been a while, but I think it’s high time for another edition of My Favorite Things!
Pretty Paper Products
Rifle Paper Company is run by a husband and wife team in Florida, and literally everything they make is adorable. This week, I’ve been drooling over their gorgeous calendars (pictured, available here), but they make more adorable paper than I could begin to list here - including precious custom illustrations for your stationery, invitations, or calling cards.
Nan Lawson
Nan Lawson is an illustrator after my own heart. Her self described “cute quirky and nerdy art” is adorable, and I want to hang it all on the walls of my office. Check her out on etsy for more precious prints like The Piemaker (be still my Pushing Daisies loving heart!), pictured.
Downton Abbey
If you’re not watching this show, drop everything and START WATCHING THIS SHOW. I’m not even going to elaborate. You’ll start watching and then you’ll watch the whole first season on Netflix in one week like I did and then you’ll understand.
Role Models: Katniss Everdeen
First of all, don’t judge. Chances are if you didn’t love The Hunger Games, it’s because you didn’t read The Hunger Games. And if you did read the Hunger Games, then you know what I’m talking about when I say Katniss Everdeen is a BAMF with serious role model potential, and definitely not a girl to be trifled with. Why? I’ll tell you why:
Family, y’all.
Katniss loves her family more than she loves her own freedom. She is a total mama bear when it comes to Prim, going so far as to volunteer to take her place in The Hunger Games – which gives her a 1/24 chance of survival. For Katniss, there was no other option. She couldn’t let her sweet sister go into that terrible arena, so she went instead. Simple as that. And I can’t even talk about sweet Rue without getting a little weepy, so let’s just say that Prim is not the only kid Katniss would do anything for. She’s a killer with a heart of gold.
Survival Skills
Here’s the deal: if Katniss Everdeen and Bear Gryllis had a wilderness survival showdown, my money would be on Katniss every day of the week. Katniss can kill and prepare her own food, climb any tree, outwit her predators, and she gets ruthless when she needs to. Chances are, Katniss would charm Bear into giving her half his food and all the blankets and drinking water before she left him in her dust and scampered into her top secret tree fort to commune with the mockingjays and wait for him to cry uncle.
Great Hair
Katniss understands that the best hairstyles are the simplest, which is why she mastered the side braid early on. Girls, you do not have to tease and spray and curl and straighten and spray some more. Just take a page from the book of Katniss, learn how to French braid (or fishtail braid, if you’re feeling fancy!), and move on to more important things. Like survival skills and archery and Peeta vs. Gale (This blog is firmly Team Peeta, for the record).
Priorities
This is probably my favorite thing about Katniss. Peeta and Gale are cute, sure, and she gets the warm fuzzies from them both…but when it comes down to it, she has bigger fish to fry. Like political upheaval and her generation’s survival. Katniss isn’t heartless – she has crushes and she gets her smooches in where she can. But at the end of the day, she’s not a breathless, fluttery, boy-crazy nitwit. Snuggling is nice, but surviving and protecting the people you care about is more important, and Katniss gets that.
Another Role Model:
Lessons from Jo March
My Handwriting
When I saw this post at eef-etc, I knew I had to jump on board this bandwagon. Handwriting has always been very important to me. I was the girl who “tried on” different styles of writing at the beginning of every school year - the way other girls would try on new shoes or new dresses.
My handwriting has always been a big part of who I am. Now that I’m a grown up and I don’t have time for silly things like throwing away sheets of paper because I didn’t like the way my writing looked, I have settled on what you see below, and I’ll take it.
You like how I automatically added the “u” after “q” in my alphabet? Me, too.
If you feel like it, leave me a link to your handwriting in the comments! It’ll be like we’re all passing one big note around the Internet. I like the sound of that.
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12 in 12: January
The morning of January 21 was cold, rainy, and generally gross. The alarm went off way too early, I was way too tired and completely unprepared. Honestly, the only thing that kept me from backing out was the thought of having to write a post admitting to giving up on my FIRST 5k of the year. No way. Not acceptable. Not in 2012.
So I rolled out of bed, pulled my bedhead into a ponytail, tied my running shoes, and headed into downtown Greenville, SC for the Greenville News 5k. I think this was the biggest race I’ve ever run - somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 people braved the dreary weather to pound the pavement, and mom and I were right in the middle of the pack.
As I mentioned, I was completely unprepared for this race. No training at all - which is why my hips were aching all the way home, and why I slept for a solid 10 hours on Saturday night. Mom stuck with me (although she could have left me in her dust!), and I probably walked as much as I ran, but I’m happy with how I did. Obviously, I won’t benefit from this resolution at all if I roll out of bed and stumble through each race without any training or work beforehand. I’ve got my starting time and a plan for February, and it’ s only going to get better from here.
January Time: 41:53
*This was the time on the race clock when we finished. It took us about 30 seconds to actually cross the start line after the race started, so this is probably a little inflated, but I’ll count it.
February Goal: Under 40
February Race: Frostbite 5k in Asheville, NC
