Filed under: Everyday Life by Chelsea

In case you hadn’t picked up on this already, I’m not a very sappy person. I’m more of a reactor than a brooder. When I get dumped, I don’t eat cartons of ice cream; I’m more likely to date your best friend or chop off all my hair (a la Britney Spears).  And I’m one of those cold-hearted bitches who didn’t cry during Titanic. My friends will never let me live that one down.

Anyway, this non-sappiness of mine doesn’t lend itself well to New Years (or to writing vows, but that’s a whole different story). Nostalgia just doesn’t come naturally to me. I don’t understand why we would dwell on Top Ten lists or mope about old acquaintances who’ve been forgotten (if you can’t remember them, why do you care? And isn’t that why we have Facebook…so we don’t forget?). Nonetheless, I was attempting to reflect on my  past year for the sake of not being a total downer. A lot has happened: I moved, got engaged, began my blog, and started a new job. But the practical me won’t let me forget about some of the struggles I’ve also had in the last year: a lot of family difficulties, a less-than-ideal financial situation (we are in a recession after all), I moved even farther away from my family than I already was, and there have been a number of illnesses thrown in there for good measure. It was kind of a roller-coaster year, actually. And as I was in the middle of contemplating all this “reflecting,” this happened:

Yes, that’s my car. And that’s a tow dolly. My transmission failed, which pretty much means I’m out of a car (it’s an absolute minimum of $2,000 to fix – yikes). This was the grand conclusion to my 2009. So if you ask me today to review my year, it was crap. It was a crap year. Goodbye 2009! And welcome, New Year.

Filed under: Revamps & Redesigns by Chelsea

As I mentioned the other day in a post about my cat’s unfortunate bladder control issues (that’s a compelling synopsis if I’ve ever read one!), we’re currently living with Nate’s parents to save on rent while he finishes up the police academy. So we’ve gotten rid of a lot of stuff but we’re trying to fit what’s left into as little space as possible because we don’t totally overwhelm his parent’s home with our junk. Which is why all our DVDs and electronics are on an ugly shelf in our room right now and are a terrible eyesore.

Ignore the copious amount of shoes and jewelry. It’s a problem; I’m working on it. Anyway, I don’t really believe in having ANY electronics in the bedroom, but that’s a whole other subject no one wants to hear me ramble about. Point is, I don’t want to stare at these ugly shelves any more. And buying new shelves with closing doors (or adding doors to the current ones to hide the shelves) just isn’t an option with our budget right now. So I made do with what I could scrounge up around the house: an adjustable curtain rod, a spare white sheet, and some pretty fabric for a valance.

I simply folded over the top of the sheets and sewed them to form a loop to go through the curtain rod (if they’d been longer I would’ve had to cut them, but they were fortunately the perfect size). I super-glued the curtain rod to the side of the shelves. A spring-loaded curtain rod probably would have been a better choice but this is just what I had on hand.  Obviously it’s not totally ideal. I mean, ideally I would live on the beach, sunbathe all day and have maids/personal assistants to deal with hiding shelves and all that kind of crap for me. For that matter, I would have shelves that magically slide back into the wall at the push of a button. But it’s a definite improvement for now!