Excitement abound! New reading week project!!

I'm generally not a crafty person. Sometimes I'll make something and it'll actually look good, and then it will fall apart a few days later. Usually when I try to cook a new and exciting recipe, I burn it. But I still dream about being able to create something beautiful, and those dreams are inspired by all the interior design and home improvement blogs I have been following lately. I think I'm ready for another attempt at craftiness this coming week. The following is a much better-looking version of what my Reading Week 2010 project will be:



And this is where I got the idea from. Manhattan Craft Room is a recent addition to my home improvement blog collection, and with this quilt tutorial, I think I am finally ready to attempt my long-awaited

Alpha Phi T-shirt Quilt!

Here's the background story: Throughout my four years at Wilfrid Laurier University, I was a member of a wonderful and prestigious sorority called Alpha Phi. I could go on forever about how the sorority came to be and what its all about, but I'll just tell you that it's probably the most fantastic thing I've ever been a part of. First of all, I met my wonderful boyfriend through one of my sisters. That in itself is pretty darn awesome. Secondly, I am using the skills and confidence that I cultivated by being part of Alpha Phi over the years to succeed in the field of Public Relations and Communications. Heck, if I wasn't in Alpha Phi, I don't even know if I would have paid attention to PR as a possible career path at all. To put it simply, Alpha Phi got me through university and made me the person I am today, and I'm excited for this project because it will be somewhat immortalizing the love that I have for this organization.

Since joining Alpha Phi in 2005, I have collected upwards of 20 t-shirts with my Greek letters on the front: ΑΦ. Now that I have graduated from WLU, I now have a ton of t-shirts that do not really have that much of a purpose anymore. I have a couple of shirts with just my letters on the front, but the rest are themed with whatever event they were made for, and so I cannot really see myself wearing them again unless they are underneath another shirt, which defeats the purpose altogether. So I am taking inspiration from a few of my other sisters who have done this, and I am going to make a quilt using the fronts and backs of all these shirts, so I can display them with pride and make use of them forever.

Now I bet you're wondering, have I ever made a blanket before in my life? An even better question I bet you're asking is whether or not I've ever used a sewing machine. Well, my answer to both those questions is "no", but there's no time like the present to learn. I won't be doing anything fancy like someone who has experience with quilting. This will be a super basic blankie but I'm going to use some fun materials, including my old hot-pink toga.

Oh man, SUPER excited for this. I'll be blogging as I go, just because I want to and I'm sure you're all just itching for me to get started on this so you can follow me on my journey.

Tonight: Wash and dry all my shirts, plan what materials I would need, decide what size squares I want to make out of my shirts. Talk to the mommy, who knows how to use the sewing machine and can therefore show me how to use it without sewing my fingers to my blankie.

Tomorrow: Visit a fabric store to find something awesome for the back of my blankie.

If you have experience making quilts or blankets, and have any advice at all as to how I could go about working with the t-shirt material or whatever, please shoot me a comment. I would appreciate the help!

Happy Thursday, everyone!

♥♥♥
Monica

An Exercise in Assessing the Self

This is the blog post where I tell you my life story. Maybe it’s because this blog is all about me, maybe it’s for a school assignment (hint: it’s the latter). But anyway, here is the “about the author” page of this great and epic internetual novel.

I was born on a rainy Monday in 1986. It was a good year, or so I am told, but I unfortunately was far too young to enjoy the neon-spandexed glory of the 80’s. So I had to settle for building most of my childhood memories in the 90’s, living in the same house from the day I was born until the day I moved out to start university. I grew up playing soccer and violin, eventually adding in flute and a couple of other musical instruments. Some of my other delightful childhood experiences included the following:





I was a true keener in my early years of my schooling, which is another way of saying that I was totally uncool. I wore pink from head to toe, socks over my tights, and my hair in a mushroom cut. I craved attention and obtained it by doing extremely weird things. You could say I was a bit hyperactive but I balanced it out by kicking butt in my classes. Back in those days, I wanted to be a member of several professions including medicine, teaching, and stay-at-home motherhood. Oh the ambitious days of my youth.

By the time I started university in 2005, I had cut medicine and stay-at-home motherhood from my list of career paths. I was really leaning towards teaching because, well, that was the only legit career path I ever thought I really had. I helped teach music in middle school, so naturally I wanted to be a teacher, right? And I was taking English and History in university so of course I wanted to be a teacher, right? Well, it certainly helps if you’re 100% sure and I actually wasn’t, and so towards the end of 3rd year I knew that I wanted something different out of life. I mean if you’re in a career watching over kids five days a week, you better darn well be positive that you are where you want to be, or you are going to be one awful teacher. Like my first-grade teacher who I’m pretty sure took her misery out on me. It could have also been because I preferred to finish my work early and do somersaults on the carpet while the other kids were still scribbling away. Elementary school was a cakewalk.

The decision to abandon teaching left me scared and confused because I literally had no path to walk on after graduation. Real life was approaching quickly and I was so not ready for it. What the heck else was I good at? I started to make a list. Hmmmm well I like to talk. Great. That’s a starting point. I talk a lot. I ramble, even. Assuming you’ve read my other posts, you know that I enjoy a good ramble. This post in itself is another case in point.

Next, I looked back at the things I enjoyed doing when I was a kid. Creative things. Reading, writing, making things up for the whole world to see. I had such a crazy and imaginative mind when I was younger, what happened to all that? I came to the realization that academia more or less stifled my creative spirit. Everything always had to be so formal, so strict, so structured. That’s completely fine if you can thrive in that environment and if you see a worthwhile future in it, but what I really needed was to be able to start doing those creative things again in order to feel fulfilled in my career. That’s how I came to discover Public Relations.

So here I am now at Mohawk College, studying PR and actually enjoying what I am learning for the first time in years. I love coming up with innovative ways to communicate. I love that I can finally bring a little bit of my personality to the table. I’ve learned skills that are actually applicable to a real career path, which is completely different for me. Towards the end of university I felt like I didn't know what I was there for anymore. But now, for the first time I feel like I’m heading in a good direction because I WANT to be going there, not because I don’t know what else to do.

In one year I want to be working as a public relations professional, preferably doing something that involves a lot of writing. Maybe internal/employee communications? PR is such a broad career field, which is kind of daunting at times but usually very exciting since I know I will be able to find a job that suits my skills and interests perfectly.

In three years I hope to be in some sort of leadership role, perhaps running a team or department that deals with communications for a company or government body. It sounds super ambitious for someone who doesn’t have a whole lot of experience eh? Well where I’m hoping to go (Fort McMurray, Alberta, where the wonderful boyfriend lives) I know that there will be a ridiculous amount of opportunity for me to advance in my career quickly.

In five years I would like to be living back in Ontario, or at least thinking of moving back there soon. I’m sure living in northern Alberta will be sweet and all, but I definitely don’t want to be away from my family for my whole life. But by the time I get back to Ontario, I will have a wealth of knowledge to bring with me to my next job.

Finally, in 10 years I want to be a millionaire with a rollercoaster in my backyard and my own personal McDonalds. Lindsay Lohan will be BEGGING me for PR advice on how to break back into movies when you’re 33 but looking like 50. I will be sipping my first martini at 11 am and I will have a bodyguard who follows me everywhere carrying my cat.

Just kidding. In all honesty, all I want is a job that challenges me and sends me different things every day, yet is still stable enough for me to settle down and have a family. As crazy as the PR biz seems to be, I don’t think that is too much to hope for. Full-time motherhood might make an appearance somewhere in there too.

The End.

No one can ever call me lazy again!

Happy Monday, everyone!

This has been my most productive Monday EVER! And that's even with the fact that I woke up at 11 AM. Why? Because I took it upon myself to clean my ENTIRE kitchen! It took me over 6 hours of solid back-breaking and foot-aching labour to clean that darn thing and I'll be so cross if it gets messy again tomorrow. So here's how it went down.

I fell in love with the Design Sponge blog, which has a lot of really awesome DIY projects, crafts and general cool stuff you can do for your house and I got THIS idea for organizing all my takeout menus:



Cute eh? So my first step was to pull all of the menus out of one of the kitchen drawers. That drawer has generally been a complete mess since forever so naturally the menus were all over the place. But as I kept digging deeper, I began to find some really appalling things and that's where it snowballed. I ended up taking EVERYTHING out of the drawer, washed all of the utensils (it was more or less being used for the barbeque accessories), washed the drawer itself, and then put everything back in, but in a nice order. And I threw about half of the stuff out in the process. I also found about $66 worth of Canadian Tire money. Yay me!

But then I realized that it could not stop there. If THAT drawer was in that disgusting state, that means the OTHER drawers must need some loving too. And so for the next several hours I went drawer by drawer, taking everything out, washing everything, then putting it back in a more coherent order. And now everything in my kitchen has a designated spot, I can see the back of the counter again in one spot, and I found about 30 pens that I never knew I had.

After all that was finished, I was finally able to make my takeout menu binder, which my brother promptly used to order Chinese food. Yummmmmmm. And I'm thinking of taking the Canadian Tire money as a commission.

So that was my productive day. I realize now that I probably should have channeled my productivity towards my homework or better yet, my pigsty of a room, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

♥♥♥

Monica


p.s. Taylor Swift beat out Beyonce and Lady GaGa for Album of the Year at last night's Grammy's. Suck on THAT, Kanye.

Back by popular demand!

A couple of people have asked me to start writing in my blog again. I have no idea why, my posts definitely weren't that interesting to begin with. But maybe, just maybe, I'll pop on once in a while to let you kids know what I'm doing/watching/reading.

I had a funny conversation with my lovely boyfriend today about grilled cheese. Everyone loves grilled cheese. I am a firm believer that if you don't like grilled cheese, you have no soul. Anyway, we disagreed on the point of whether or not grilled cheese and ketchup belong together. He believes that cheese and ketchup actually hate each other like two coworkers who can't stand the other but continue to work side by side because neither wants to lose their job. I, on the other hand, believe that grilled cheese and ketchup and kindred spirits, best friends and delicious co-treats. What camp do YOU belong to?

It's 2:40 AM right now, so any further blogging will result in really frustrating typos. Here's a disappointed rabbit on the moon for your time:


from cuteoverload.com

♥♥♥
Monica

Last one

Alright, so here's the deal. I actually don't like blogging. And here's why. When I come across something that interests me, I find an actual human being and share it with them. As you've probably been able to tell, my blog posts haven't been exactly inspired. I dont have anything AGAINST blogs or bloggers in general, I just don't like blogging myself. This is all just for an assignment at school. There, I confessed.

I guess I just don't really see how someone could create consistent, frequent and interesting blog posts just about the things that happen in their life. I think that the blogs that have some sort of theme work out best. Photography, cooking, politics, sports... There's always something to WRITE about. Or post pictures about. This assignment has shown me that I'm leading a rather dull existence right now, my only entertainment coming from YouTube binges and celebrity gossip. Oh well. Might as well keep to a theme. Here's a bunch of pictures and videos that I found to be amusing. Goodbye Bloggerland!!

♥ ♥♥
Monica






How does someone even come up with something like this?!


SHAKING AND CRYING
If you don't think that this is the cutest video of ALL TIME, you have no soul. NO SOUL.

Amazing architecture
An article with 15 insane staircases. Makes mine look like a carved piece of poo.



Maybe its the fatigue, but my brain just leaked out of my ear a little bit.

Twitter avatars
This artist creates new pictures inside the shape of the Twitter bird. Cute!


Also, all of these videos and pictures were found on probably my new favourite site: Neatorama


Oh hay, it's 1:35 AM. Guess I should put an end to my last blog post. Goodnight!

Weekend Update

Happy Sunday Evening, all!

I don't even know why, but I keep forgetting that today is Sunday. I keep thinking that it is still Saturday, and of course that is very disorienting. Its not like I've been bumming around, letting the days melt one into the other. They've been structured with work, meals, and me-time. Maybe I'm just becoming apathetic, like I am slowly losing the meaning of the days. Maybe I've just had a very lazy weekend, despite the fact that I've been constantly on the ball at work.

Yesterday and today were two good shifts. They went by quickly, most likely because the store was so busy. The only times I wanted to set myself on fire were when bitchy women would come through cash, clearly taking their bad moods out on me. Seriously. Why would you go shopping when you're in a foul mood? Why would you come shopping on a busy Saturday and expect everyone to drop everything and wait on you hand and foot? And why would you be surprised and angry to find out that due to everyone ELSE shopping on this busy saturday, some things you may have wanted are sold out? Some people are just genuinely stupid.

Whoo! Just got a little angry there myself, could you tell? Enough about work. I'm feeling much better than I was at the beginning of the week. I don't feel like I'm going to puke and die anymore, but I still get embarrassing coughing fits from time to time. Mostly at night, I'm not sure why. It's just annoying when I'm trying to get to sleep and NOW my cough decides to return. So hopefully it'll be gone in a few days and I'll be back to being happy healthy Monica.

Well now, I do believe it is time for me to get to bed, as I have to go back to work for 9 AM tomorrow. I much prefer morning shifts, because usually it isn't ridiculously busy first thing in the morning on a Monday. It is Monday tomorrow right? Have a good week everyone!

♥♥♥

Monica

Exhausted but Rewarded

Hey kidlets!

I'm so tired, I feel like I'm drunk! So what's the best thing to do when you're incredibly exhausted and you can't feel your face? If you answered "write on your blog!" then you'd be correct!

So here's what's been going on in my life over the past couple of days:

For the past week my group in my PR class has been putting our Organizational Application assignment into action. We were tapped by the United Way campaign at our school to host a fundraiser. We had about three weeks to get the whole thing together, but we pulled it off and I think it went pretty well if I do say so myself. We got a TON of cool prizes and sold raffle tickets all this week and part of last week, with all the proceeds going to the United Way. Just a few of the sponsors include:

Xbox
Motorola
Sierra Online
Hair Unlimited
The Hamilton Bulldogs
Playstation

And that's not even all. The actual list is so long that I couldn't memorize it even if I wasn't stupidly tired. We hosted the draw at The Arnie, which is Mohawk College's campus club. This meant that I did not get to crawl into my bed until about 1 AM. Grand.

So that was yesterday/this week. The whole thing went surprisingly well, considering that I've encountered huge speed bumps in planning things like these in the past. There were a few minor hiccups in communication but I'd call the assignment a success. We raised almost $600 in total for the United Way! Yay!!!



For those of you who don't know, the United Way is an organization that raises money to support local charities and social services.

Clicky here if you want to know more about the United Way :D

TODAY, I had to wake up bright and early at 7 AM and head BACK to Mohawk. Yayyyy I could barely stay awake during class (Sorry Tim! Not my fault!) and then I had to write a quiz in my Print Design class. I thought I was going to completely bomb it since I had only started studying yesterday before the United Way event, but I actually did pretty well.

After the morning was over, a bunch of us went down to the Hamilton Yacht Club for a conference/workshop run by the International Association of Business Communicators. We split into groups, and each table was led by representatives of an organization in Hamilton. The group that I worked with was The Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association, represented by Lloyd and Beatrice, two very nice and informative people. In our groups, we had to address two communication issues brought up by the representatives, and come up with strategies and tactics to help them out. The two members of my group were another PR student from McMaster, and a communications professional, so she did a LOT of the talking but I made some really good suggestions too. We even had enough time at the end to start working on a communications plan for an upcoming program launch. Overall, it was an incredibly informative and useful afternoon, even though I was beyond tired.

Clicky here if you want to know more about the Afro Canadian Caribbean Association of Hamilton :D

And so those were my past couple of days! I'm off to bed now, gotta work in the morning AGAIN, then gotta do a Photoshop assignment. It never ends!!

♥♥♥

Monica

Things that come out of nowhere

Just found out that the frontman of Jacksoul, Haydain Neale, passed away after fighting cancer. He was just 39, leaving behind a wife and daughter. This is also two years after he was in a major automobile accident that he almost didn't survive. It makes you really think about what you have, and how much of it you take for granted. Its too bad. He had a lovely voice. I think most people would remember him for this song:



Makes me feel guilty for complaining about being sick right now, considering that my sickness is merely a cold (which was the original "Thing that came out of nowhere" that this blog was supposed to be about). I don't get sick very often but when I do, it hits me hard and I can't function at all. But when I hear about things like this happening, a man's life cut short when he should be enjoying it to the fullest, I feel like I should stop being a whiner and just push on through. So I'm sorry for being a whiner. I need a healthy dose of perspective every once in a while.

Wishing you all good health and good spirits this week.

♥♥♥
Monica

A question for the ages...

Why is it that whenever you get a song stuck in your head, it has the be the most annoying, crappy song out there?

Here's what I've had stuck in my head for the past hour, thanks to working at Suzy Shier:



For the record, this is the first time I've ever seen the video for this song. And you can call me old fashioned or a prude or whatever, but I think the producers had a field day making SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Miley look like she's 25. I didn't dance around like that when I was 17. I didn't point and wave to older dudes who were gawking at me. I bet the bearded guy wearing aviators 27 seconds in is kicking himself now, knowing that he checked out a girl who isn't even legal yet. But whatever. the point is, this song sucks and it wont leave me alone. I dare Miley to sing this song without lipsynching or using auto-tune. If she can pull it off without sounding like a bag of feral cats (which she kind of sounds like anyway, despite the wonders of sound-editing technology) I might give her some credit.

I actually watched an interview with her the other day where she admitted that she a) didn't write the song and b) doesn't even know what songs Jay-Z sings. So when she sings about how a Jay-Z song played on the radio while she was taking a TAXI to Hollywood for the first time, not only is it NOT her song, but she wouldn't know a Jay-Z lyric if it hit her in the face. Okay girl, I know you're young, but if you're going to sing a song, you should probably know what you're singing about. One word: Credibility. Now go put some clothes on before someone calls the Pedobear.



I just wish that I could have something more substantial running through my ears and into my brain on a daily basis. This is the reason why I can't watch MuchMusic anymore, because it's all the same thing. Catchy songs featuring some cute young thing but where is the actual talent?

Fellow bloggers, PLEASE suggest to me some GOOD music to listen to, with the hopes of pushing Miley, Britney, The Pussycat Dolls, and all those other pop puppets out of my head. I'll love you forever.

♥♥♥
Monica

Another wee rant about working in retail...

Scroll on by if you don't like people bitching about their jobs. Because that's what I'm going to do now.

#1 People Who Stay Past Closing

If you are one of those people who liked to go into a store ten minutes before closing and not leave until quarter after, I enthusiastically encourage you to light yourself on fire. You make my life suck. I deal with stupid people who don't know their ass from their elbow all day long, and then YOU come along, mess up all the walls and tables that I cleaned (because you know, we're closing in ten minutes), and then you keep on shopping even when you watch us turn off the music and PULL THE DOOR ACROSS. Then, you keep trying stuff on, even when we've TOLD you that the store is in fact closed, and then you don't buy anything and leave a giant mess for us to clean up.

When people keep shopping even ten minutes after the store is closed, we usually have to stay an average of 20 minutes later because we have to clean the whole store in addition to RE-cleaning everything that you messed up, and put away all the clothes you didn't want. Honestly. Don't you know that we have lives that we'd like to get back to sometime tonight? When the store is closed, the store is closed.

#2- Stinky Families

Several times a week, entire groups of people come into the store together, and they all STINK. They stink like body odor! The kind of body odor that smells like a cross between wet feet and onions. You know what I'm talking about. Entire families. They stink up my fitting rooms, the point where OTHER customers complain to me about the smell, and then they try on clothes and make the CLOTHES smell.

Stinky person, I ask you: HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOU STINK? How long do you have to forgo showering until you reach that level of stench? It almost makes me want to experiment, but I'm pretty sure that I am conscious of what I smell like, and take active measures to ensure that smell is pleasant. It just boggles my mind, how someone could smell so bad that people around them have to breathe through their mouths.

To add to this stinky business, what is with people who don't take care of their oral hygiene? There is a lady who frequents the old store I used to work at, and we actually nick-named her "Death Breath" because that's what she smelled like. She smelled like a rotting carcass wrapped in tinfoil and left in a field on a sunny day. I hope you're not reading this close to mealtime. It doesn't make sense how someone could completely ignore the state of their teeth to the point where they're brown and they smell like my dad's farts.

I beg of you, people of the world. If you smell bad, don't go to public places until you have fixed the problem. It's not a difficult thing to do. Soap, shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant. All of these things are widely available in Canada and for affordable prices.

This has been a Public Service Announcement brought to you by me.

♥♥♥
Monica