Crafty

It started in kindergarten. When I noticed the teacher always put my art projects on the bottom row of the display board or in a far reaching corner. I knew it was really bad when my own mother bribed my junior high school friends to do my art projects for me. Arts and crafts has never been my specialty. I don't even do stick figures well. 

Women are either teacups or coffee mugs. 

I'm more like a coffee tumbler. 

I so admire the teacups in my life. My sister-in-law, Jessica, has an amazing eye, as does my friend Brittney. Raegan, my friend in Stockton, completely decorated my living room a few years ago and did an amazing job. And I love browsing through anthro catalogs and blogs such as the Nie Nie Dialogues. 

For a long time I envied those with "the eye". In high school my friend Heather would walk into a thrift store and come out twenty minutes later with an incredible outfit (she can still do this. Its something everyone should witness). Meanwhile, I would still be shifting through the front rack looking for anything that had a ROXY logo! And, until I started to grow in myself, I saw my inability to see the world through artistic lenses as a negative quality. 

But maturity has brought self-confidence in my creativity. Just because I won't be setting an etsy shop doesn't mean I don't have an creative bent. I am full of business ideas. At the magazine I came up with some of our most fun stories (tree-houses of Montecito anyone?!!). I can hold my own in the kitchen and I bake a mean cupcake. I write a killer five paragraph essay and although I have no idea what I'm doing I can occasionally take a pretty good photograph. 

So, with my creative confidence in-stride, I figured it was time to challenge myself to the scary stuff. The worse that could happen are a few stares and maybe some whispering about the lady with the crazy clothes and mismatched house. And since I'm learning to get over what people think - who really cares? 

I've been thrift storing a large majority of my clothes and it's been a blast. I'm no Emery but I did rock a red vintage Armani pencil skirt to church the other day. A few people ogled, I was probably wearing it all wrong, but it sure was fun! And yesterday I went to my very first Craft Night. Where, with much guidence, I produced this:

Not too shabby for my first craft since 1987. 

And finally, with my husbands support, I took the big plunge and bought a couch from the Salvation Army (I figure is safer to start with $60 couches rather than $600 ones.). The couch has got to be about forty years old and I can see my mother shaking her head at me as I write this, but I liked it. It doesn't go at all with the rest of the furniture in my home but to hell with conventionality! 

I think I may end up being one of those lattee mugs.