Things!

Here's what I've been up to this winter:

1. Listening to the Pitch Perfect soundtrack on repeat. Sometimes it's the only thing getting me through the godawful commutes to and from work. Just try listening to this and not feeling happy. (Sequel's coming out in May. Who else is excited?)

2. Rearranging the built-in bookcase. Not much changed, but now everything fits in an orderly manner, which soothes me. Some people do yoga, I organize.

3. Learning how to make cheese and ketchup from scratch. (Really.) (I know.)

4. Eating way too much cheese.

5. Finally getting stuff up on the walls in the dining room. There are two camps of thought when it comes to hanging things. One states that you should carefully measure everything out and tape up paper templates and I think use toothpaste to help mark where the nail should go or something. The other is a more "just start hammering" mindset. (I'm with the latter — is anyone surprised? Our walls are in crappy condition to begin with, so I'm not too worried.)

As Andy put it, the ink blot posters are "a little Rorschach for our shack." I originally bought this pack of cards, then scanned my favorites and ordered prints from Snapfish. There was initially a mistake made with my order, and delivery was delayed by all the snow, but it worked out in the end (and props to Snapfish's customer service for helping me out, too).

6. Taking a Jamaican cooking class. I'm obsessed with the jerk chicken we made.

7. Using the hallway to showcase my postcard collection. The wall was looking a little too bare without the Christmas banner. Clothesline presentation FTW!

8. Treating the gym like a second home. It was one of the few things both open and accessible during all the blizzards, and I've reached the point where I feel weird if I don't go for more than two days in a row. Good for my body, bad for having any free time ever after work.

9. Enjoying having the apartment all to myself...for this week. Not gonna lie, if it wasn't winter and freezing, I'd probably be doing this. (There's been plenty of singing and bad dancing, though.)

10. Counting down the days until I escape to Florida. I'm in desperate need of a legitimate vacation, and this one will combine two of my favorite things: warm weather and Katie! What could be better?

Deep Thoughts (Brought to you by: Red Wine)

This winter has really been wearing on me, so I decided to escape Boston last weekend and went to see Adrienne and Dominik in NYC. While there, we had lunch with one of their friends who has lived in the city for about nine years — and she said she couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

Wait. Nine years? 

She didn't have a husband to stay put for. She didn't have kids (that I knew of). She had a job, but not one that she couldn't theoretically have elsewhere. She just...loved living in New York City.

I was baffled.

It's not that I can't imagine anyone loving New York City. It's more that I have a hard time imagining loving anywhere that much. Loving it enough to want to stay there, just because. It really got me thinking about the idea of home, and what it means to most people. What it means to me.

It's like this: I used to be irrationally afraid of sleeping over at other people's houses. It's not particularly unique because, at around the time this happened (fifth grade or so), I was inexplicably panicked about everything: kids at school making fun of me, people thinking I was weird, people thinking I was fat, the fact that one day I would die, the fact that one day my parents would die — the list went on and on. When the time came that I actually did spend the night at someone else's house, I just wouldn't sleep. Easy as that.

Senior year of high school rolled around. I momentarily grew a backbone and decided to go to college at Syracuse University — the farthest away out of all the schools I'd been accepted to. I felt smug that I hadn't given in to my fears and enrolled at the University of Michigan, which was a mere 45 minutes away with perfect traffic conditions.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep for the first year.

Though I did not grow to love Syracuse and its city's post-apocalyptic charm, I did finally break the spell that kept me firmly tethered to Michigan and the house that I'd spent half a dozen years living in. From then on, when possible, I spent summers interning in other cities (D.C., Boston), studied abroad (London), and constantly dreamed of going anywhere but here.

I've lived in Ohio, Michigan, New York, D.C., England, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. But ever since I grew out of my parents' house, I have yet to find a place that really feels like home. And I worry that I will never find such a place — in fact, a small part of why I took a road trip around the U.S. four years ago was to surreptitiously scope out possible future living situations.

This is what I understand about the concept of home:

1. "It's where your heart is." To me, that's dumb, because your heart is in your chest, and your chest is wherever you happen to be (unless you've been involved in a terrible motor vehicle accident or equally awful bear attack). To most people, I think this probably means that the location encompasses or is adjacent to those that you love, romantically and/or emotionally.
2. It's where you feel most comfortable. 
3. It's where you feel at peace, content.
4. Dare I say, it's where you feel happy?

I actually Googled "what is home" and waded through some of the results, but it got a little too nebulous for me to accept. It's well and good to say that home is wherever your husband/lover/life partner is, but what if I don't have one of those? Next.

"Home is where I can take my bra off." If that's the case, then I've got a kingdom's worth of homes to choose from! (Just kidding, mom.)

"Home is where the rags of your life are turned into quilts, lemons become lemonade, and a few extra pounds are simply welcomed as more of you to love.” Good Lord, barf. Note to Self: stop consulting Real Simple for life advice.

Before I moved to Boston, I was back in my parent's house in Michigan, climbing the walls and itching to escape. Boston and D.C. seemed like the two most logical choices for a future home base, since both were fairly large cities and would likely have more job opportunities, and both were home to at least one person I could probably count on for emotional support. Honestly, it was pure luck that I ended up in Boston: Adrienne finished grad school and was looking to move into a place she could afford, and that meant getting a roommate. It was that Sign from the universe that I'm always looking for, and I grabbed on to it.

Two years later, I'm still in Boston and Adrienne has split. And lately (okay, for the past six months, at least), I can't help what wonder: what am I still doing here? I always figured that decent reasons to stay put included a mix of (1) your dream job, (2) good friends, (3) love, and (4) a great city/town/desert island. These days, I've got maybe one of those — and to be perfectly honest, it's hard to out-and-out love Boston right now, with this Winter of Discontent so firmly blanketing the city and no signs of it letting go. 

But it's not just the winter that's getting to me. It's that ever-present itch, that feeling that I'm missing out on something better just because I'm in the wrong place. I always assumed that I wouldn't feel that way anymore when I finally found the right place to be, but what if that never happens? What if I was just born with a heart filled with Wanderlust instead of the more easily remedied Regular Lust?

What if Boston is Home, but I just haven't found the Right People to make it so? How long do I wait around for that to happen? What if I find the Right Job, but it's in the Wrong City? What if every place I've lived was the Right One, but I left before it had a chance to be? (Scratch that last one, Pennsylvania was not, and never will be, the Right One.)

WHAT IF I'M JUST A TERRIBLE PERSON WHO IS NEVER SATISFIED WITH ANYTHING IN LIFE?

These are the things that I worry about, now that my nights aren't consumed with thoughts of boys making fun of me or my parent's funerals.

A Different Kind of Retail Therapy

If I had to pick a moment that perfectly encapsulated my adolescent awkwardness, it would be this: 

It's the seventh grade. Despite feeling the scarlet mark of "new girl" even after a full year in Michigan, I've managed to wrangle an invite to the most glamorous of middle school events: the bat mitzvah. I'm wearing black platform sandals, a shiny, spaghetti-strapped dress from Kohl's, and am rocking a flowering vine tattoo on my bicep, courtesy of the airbrush artist that's set up near the drinks table. I don't yet realize that I have curly hair, so my shoulder-length bob is brushed to maximum bushy capacity. Unfortunately, I'm still several years away from the magical straightening effects of my braces — which, coincidentally, color-coordinate with my blue dress! (On the plus side, I'm pretty sure I've at least graduated to contacts at this point.)

Awww yeah.

Most of the night has been spent dancing enthusiastically to the Backstreet Boys and N*Sync, but the DJ soon switches to the first slow song of the night. One by one, boys that are still several inches shorter than me ask some of the more popular girls to dance, and then just other girls, period.

I remain on the sidelines. And it sucks.

When shopping at places like The Goodwill Store, it's so tempting to be like those seventh grade boys and pass over anything that's less than perfect. You walk up and down the dirty, unswept aisles and wonder where your mint-condition MCM dresser is, where your $6 Tulip chair is to be found. (I don't know where one does find those things, but I'll tell you this: it's not at the Allston Goodwill.) You leave behind the endless array of novelty mugs, the assortment of grandmotherly baskets, and the small Dollar Store frames that come with black and white images of Girl Laughing To Herself or Perfect Family in Park.

But friends, you (we!) are missing out. Because some things just need a little help to reach their true potential. In my case, that involved prescription acne cream, copious amounts of mousse, and the self-awareness to finally, for the love of God, put down the stretchy choker.

As for these frames? All they required was a single can of quality gold spray paint.

(Sidenote: How great/awful is that plastic shower curtain I use as a dropcloth? When we moved in, our realtor gave us a care package that included this shower curtain, a sponge, some individually wrapped aspirin, and plastic hooks. I dare anyone to come up with a more random assortment of move-in goodies.)

During my original jaunt to Michael's a few weeks back, I selected a can of Krylon Metallic Gold, excited to pick up everything I needed in one place. Mistake! The Krylon came out as as greenish-gold, that shade you might see on furniture from the 70s or cheap earrings that have started to turn. I'm sure I'll find a use for it, but not for this project. So I went to Blick's and coughed up the couple extra bucks for a can of Montana Black in what turned out to be the perfect shade of gold. Lesson learned.

I laid out my dropcloth, opened the windows for as long as I dared to in the middle of January, and got to painting. First a couple thin coats of primer, then the gold. My strategy was to pick frames with an interesting shape or textures and try to ignore everything else that may have been hideous about them. It was hard. 

Really hard.

But I pressed on. I embodied the spirit of an enlightened 13-year-old boy, looking past superficial blemishes in favor of hidden beauty. 

And now I have this.

A nearly complete collection of interesting frames that will make some great wall décor in their own right. Don't get me wrong, I love art as much as the next person, but I'd rather collect stuff I like at my own pace than just splurge on a bunch of prints that are just so-so, all for the sake of filling the ginormous blank wall we have in the dining room.

A couple more frames (i'm hoping for one or two non-rectangular ones to balance out the mix), along with the completion of my other secret project, and we'll be good to go. Unless, of course, my progress is stalled again by yet ANOTHER blizzard.

Moving south is looking more and more appealing with every passing day.

My Reading List

Let's talk about inspiration. Let's talk about resources. Let's talk about what I waste approximately 20% of my day doing: reading design blogs.

My friend John just moved into a new apartment with his girlfriend and he's understandably pumped, but I think he also realizes that it's now time to up his interior game. He wants to make this new place look really great but, being a normal person who's been historically more interested in movies and sports than paint color trends and gallery walls, he doesn't really know where to start. In fact, his main source of interior design information seems to be me, which is terrifying.

So, this list is for him, and for anyone else interested in fixing up their place, getting free ideas, or just looking for something new to read.

Amazing Interior Design Blogs You'll Want to Read Almost Every Day
 

Apartment Therapy: The absolute mother lode of information about everything involving renting, renovating, decorating, and just plain living in an apartment (or house!). If you have something specific you're looking for info about, there's a good chance there's a post on AT about it. A personal warning from me: do your best not to get sucked into reading the comments section; AT offers a wealth of knowledge, but its vocal readers offer a wealth of cattiness that just messes with all the fun design vibes.

A Beautiful Mess: This site will not be for everyone, but if you love Zooey Deschanel, ultra-bright pops of color, and dorky wordplay, you might be a Beautiful Mess reader. Decorating tips and projects are mixed in with recipes, crafts projects, and fashion posts, so beware that there will be some wading involved if you're focused solely on the former. They've recently started mixing in some more ambitious projects (i.e. they involve trips to Home Depot and use power tools), but there are still plenty of easy fixes and craft ideas for the less handy, as well.

Manhattan Nest: I've expounded on the virtues of Daniel and his blog in the past, and even now that it's become more renovation- and construction-focused, I still enjoy it. Sometimes you read things for the practical information and sometimes you read things for sheer pleasure. If you're looking for more approachable ideas (not all of us own two historic houses in varying states of disrepair), venture back to the early days of the blog when he was just a lowly college apartment dweller. There's a good mix of instruction and inspiration.

Design*Sponge: If you've never heard of Design*Sponge, this is obviously your first foray into the world of design. Although this site isn't limited to interior design, it does comprise a bulk of the posts and there are hundreds of house tours and sneak peeks to check out if you're into that kind of porn. There are also some great project how-tos, basic skill instructions, and design history information.

Yellow Brick Home: Confession: I went back and read this blog from the very beginning (because that's what I do) when I first saw it being mentioned, and I was not impressed. I wasn't into their style and the writing was still a little awkward and too-PC (again with the weird lack of swearing in the interior design sphere of the Web). BUT. I followed the progression of the blog, and with it, their style, and this is now a favorite that I look forward to. Think of this not as a source of project instructions but as a source of inspiration to get off your butt and go thrifting, paint something, or finally get those frames up on the wall.

Vintage Revivals: Typos and scary enthusiasm aside, this blog is one that most frequently makes me think "Man, I want to try that." (The Himmeli wreath in our living room has this blog to thank.) Eye candy is nice and all, but it's also fun to see project ideas that are so innovative, you actually do them.

Go Haus Go: "Refreshingly approachable," is the phrase I keep coming back to. Not 100% vintage or 100% IKEA or 100%...anything, really. A normal person who lives in — gasp! — not New York or California and is just trying to make her house look awesome. I dig.

Brooklyn to West: Nowadays, the writer is selling handmade projects from her wood shop, but for something really, insanely impressive, check out all the posts from when she was helping design and build a restaurant in California — using primarily salvaged materials. (Click "Il Vecchio" on the side menu.)

Emily Henderson: Former HGTV show host, current professional stylist. Not a particularly practical source of information since she has rich clients to pay for everything, but man, there's something pretty stuff to look at.

I could go on, but I'll stop myself there. Any suggestions I didn't list? I'm always looking for more to add to my feedly! (Seriously. I am.)

Thrift Store Impulse Buys and Other Saturday Adventures

As part of my New Year's resolution to stop over-thinking everything, I got up bright and early last Saturday and left the apartment on a mission. My first stop was Winmil Fabrics, in the Chinatown/Downtown Crossing area.

(Does anyone other than ambitious tourists actually venture downtown before noon on the weekends? It was eerily deserted at 11 a.m.)

My thorough research showed that Boston has basically one fabric store within the city limits (i.e. accessible to us carless people), and this is it. I'm sorry to report that it was as dingy and unimpressive as the outside suggested. To be fair, it had the kind of selection that fourth-grade-sewing-class-Lisa would have been all over: cotton/polyester with busy patterns in bright colors — pretty much everything you'd want for that reversible vest that you definitely wore in public on several separate occasions.

Ahem. Unfortunately, this did not fit present-day-Lisa's needs. Disappointing. This strike-out pretty much solidified what I had feared: I was going to have to order my fabric online.

Ordinarily, I prefer to do my shopping online. However, as someone who works in the online retail industry, I know firsthand just how unreliable product photographs can be, and fabric is especially finicky. But I was reading Rosa Beltran's blog when she mentioned that she buys a lot of the fabric for her projects from Fabric.com because they offer free returns within 30 days of purchase, so it's essentially a risk-free way to try a bunch of different options.

WHAT. This is kind of mind-blowing, because when you order fabric yardage, you're making a cut in the bolt that can't be undone. So, unless someone else wants the exact same fabric for the exact same length or less, the store is pretty screwed trying to re-sell it. I don't know how Fabric.com functions with this policy, but it was enough to convince me to just go ahead and order something already. (2015! New year! Cut the crap!)

Next stop: Michael's, to burn through the shiny new gift card I got for Christmas. There's no better way to celebrate the birth of Christ than by purchasing multiple cans of spray paint, right?

On my way home, I made a stop at Cheap Chic, a thrift store in Allston. I think a more accurate name would be Sometimes Cheap, Rarely Chic, but it's one of Nathan's go-to places for apartment stuff, so I figured I would give it a try. I was originally on the lookout for a mirror but an accent table caught my eye instead.

Remember this? Furniture shame incarnate?

Oof.

Do not stare directly into its depths.

So, this table, down in the basement depths of Cheap Chic, caught my eye. It seemed like the right measurements for that corner of the living room, and there was something about the shape and details that I really dug. I'll admit, I waffled for a bit, walking endless circles around the piles of furniture while I had an inner debate.

No. Cut the crap. I bought it, and even haggled the price down a bit to make me feel better. I then proceeded to carry it home three-quarters of a mile. (Bet you didn't know that thrifting could be such a great arm workout.)

That's the angle that sold me on it. But it's not without its problem areas...

Part of the decorative molding was ripped off one side, which I hadn't noticed at the store. Perhaps I was too quick to pull the trigger? Oh, irony.

The top, I knew, sported the most damage. I'm not concerned about the middle portion, since that will be covered by the stereo and record player. But I'll have to try out a few things for the edges. So far, rubbing coffee grounds into the scuffs and scratches has not worked, and something tells me that the other at-home remedies I've seen won't make a difference either. Maybe a scratch correcting marker from the hardware store?

Or maybe I'll paint it. As much as I enjoy the little inlaid jazziness going on at the top, I'm tempted to cover the whole thing in a fresh coat of...deep navy? With faux brass end caps on the legs and the metalwork coated in brassy paint? Who knows. Weigh in with your thoughts, please.

For now, I've opted to just live with it, as is, and hold off on any paint-related solutions until it gets warmer out and I can once again use the balcony for my more fume-y projects. 

The cord situation kind of kills me, but it's not like it was much better before. Maybe I'll try wrapping that bundle in black electrical tape, just to wrangle and camouflage it a bit better.

Now. About that spray paint...

It's a Christmas Miracle!

Behold, let there be rug.

Just as I was psyching myself up to drop a hefty sum of money on a rug online, I received a text from Andy. While he was home for Thanksgiving, he spied a stash of rugs his mom had in the basement and, being the amazing roommate he is, asked if we might be able to take one off of her hands.

UM, YES PLEASE. Andy's mom is officially my fairy godmother of rugs. Seriously, who is this fabulous person?

Obligatory terrible-quality image to give you an idea of how big this thing is:

In a word, massive. It takes up nearly the entire room. And as soon as it was unrolled, the dining room immediately started to feel like a more hospitable place. Rug? Check.

So now I have no excuses to put off the upholstering project any longer (yes, I'm as sick of hearing about it as you). I've been obsessively scanning Joann Fabrics' web site, Etsy, Fabric.com, and the deep recesses of the web for something, anything, that might feel like The One. A big problem is that the patterns I gravitate toward aren't ones that are going to fit in the space — not with the chairs I have and the rug that I'm now working with.

(It's weird to try to separate what parts of the apartment are truly "my" taste, and what just organically came about because of the space and what we had to work with. That's not to say that I dislike how things are, just that if I had to start from scratch, things could easily go in a completely different direction. I like a little bit of every style, it seems.)

Another problem is the fact that I've become unbearably indecisive. About everything. And it's really slowing down my creative process. So I've decided — hello, 2015! — to cut the crap and stop spiraling into endless "What if?" circles every time I'm faced with a decision. As I told Adrienne during one of my many rants, "Failure IS an option. And that's okay."

No more worrying about the money. No more worrying about picking the wrong color, the wrong size, the wrong whatever. In the words of a famous multinational corporation, "Just do it."

On it.

A Few Things.

Happy New Year and all that jazz!

1. I'm still alive. 
    
2. I meant to get out an Operation: Christmas Cheer, Step 3 post before Christmas. Obviously, I failed at that, so let me sum up what it would have consisted of: bake delicious stuff (these turned out surprisingly well for Christmas morning) and watch Christmas movies/shows (Elf, A Muppet Christmas Carol, SNL Christmas Special: check)
    
3. Aside from Christmas-related crafting, I lost a lot of my creative drive in December, and am currently fighting against my annual January-induced, month-long malaise. But I have some ideas that might be worth changing out of my pajamas and leaving the house for. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, one of my best friends has finally moved back to the States after way too many years away, and in the process of getting ready to move her stuff out of storage, she unearthed this gem:

Hi, my name is Lisa, and I'm a DIY gifter.

It's not an addiction I'm particularly proud of, and I fully blame Pinterest and HGTV for feeding what was originally an innocent "Hey! I like to make things!" mindset.

I made this for Katie when I was living in Pennsylvania, working at a job I hated in a town I hated more. I had no friends, I lived alone, and I had way, waaaaaay too much free time. Katie's a marine biologist, so it's not a completely random choice of subject matter, but it wasn't until I'd finished it and proudly shared my accomplishment with Adrienne that it was pointed out to me how it bears a certain likeness to a certain part of the male anatomy. 

Yup. High on all that focused crafting excitement, I'd inadvertently made my best friend a three-foot-tall painting of a jellypenis.

This, of course, didn't stop me from giving it to her, because I have no shame. (That same year, I made Adrienne a giant wreath out of dictionary pages for her Christmas present, and had to then construct a house-shaped frankenstein box in order to ship it to her. I've been informed that it almost immediately fell to pieces upon arrival. Those were dark days.)

Nowadays, I try to rein in the urge to automatically (blindly) make someone their gift and, at the very least, pair a small-scale project (ornaments, for example) with something legit that they might actually want. I haven't managed to go cold turkey yet, but I have hope that one day I will be perfectly happy just purchasing nice things for my friends. Nice things that don't look like floating orange penises.

Unless, you know, that's what they asked for.

Operation: Christmas Cheer, Step Two

I used to hate Christmas music. I blame it on a life that involved driving everywhere I needed to go — enduring those Godawful 24-hour Christmas radio stations — and relying on our town's mall for most of my shopping needs. It wasn't until I was back home in Michigan for Thanksgiving that I realized my blessed current existence:

No car = no radio (and no frantic jamming of the Seek button to flee from "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer")

City living = no mall (and no parking nightmares, or piped-in Christmas slow jams, or hordes of children crying because they've been waiting for Santa for 45 minutes)

Bliss.

Now I realize that I don't hate Christmas music, I just hate not being able to choose what kind of Christmas music I get to listen to. So I made some Christmas playlists to share — now you can be forced to listen to the kind of Christmas music I like! Isn't the Internet grand?

Just kidding. Step Two of cultivating Christmas cheer is to listen to whatever kind of Christmas music makes you happy. If that means the local radio station's 24/7 offerings, or jazz-exclusive renderings, or indie acoustic covers, go for it. And ignore your eldest brother when he inevitably starts criticizing your taste in music. That's Grinch-like behavior and it will. not. stand, Matthew!

In the meantime, feel free to try these out as you're wrapping those presents you've been putting off for weeks. As you'll see, I consider the Home Alone soundtrack to be the utmost in classy offerings, but I'm always looking for more good songs. What favorites of yours am I missing?

DIY Ornaments

I may not have my own tree to decorate, but I still have some pretty strong opinions regarding Christmas ornaments. To me, decorating the tree isn't about following trends or trying out a new theme every year. I'll take a messy macaroni ornament over a glittering, mass-produced trinket any day. Don't get me wrong — I'm just as easily swayed by pretty, shiny things as the next person. But the perfect Christmas tree requires the perfect mix of nostalgia, cheese, pretty, and tradition. It's a proportion that I think our family tree manages to nail (when my brothers and I are around to keep my mom's ornament collection in check).

For every trio of bright gold ball, detailed wise man, and sparkling santa, you need gems like this:

(Yes, that's an angel made out of construction paper, a paper plate, and yarn. And yes, it has only one star-sticker eye. I love it.)

For every ceramic gingerbread house, wooden nutcracker, and embroidered angel, there's this:

I believe this is Mrs. Claus, after a brutal attack by the family dog several years ago. Mr. Claus might not have survived that one. (The one-eyed theme is not intentional, I promise.)

It's all about balance, people. Great Christmas trees are cultivated over many, many years, not purchased in one swift attack on the Macy's ornament section. Which is why I've started the tradition of making ornaments for my friends who have reached the stage in their life where they actually have their own Christmas tree. Namely, Adrienne. (Katie, you're next!)

Per my Christmas tree philosophy, I try to do an even mix of tasteful and hilariously random ornaments. Last year's batch included this sad whale:

This year, I continued the felt theme because, well, I love felt. We've already established that I tend to craft like a second grader.

This year's batch, however, is clearly fourth grade-caliber. Felt sushi rolls, an embroidered vinyl record (or alien boob — you decide), an embroidered starburst thingy, and a clay ornament with the Brooklyn bridge. More specifically, an illustration of the Brooklyn bridge that Dominik did for their wedding invitation.

Can we talk openly about the fact that wedding-related ornaments and ornaments meant to celebrate a couple's first year of marriage all suck? After extensive research, I've found that the majority of them to fall on either end of the following spectrum:

The goal here is to strike that perfect balance of sentiment and taste, or what I like to call the "Aw" factor. And let me tell you, it's hard. One wrong step and you're embroidering the Webster's dictionary definition of marriage or modpodging a rhyme that references both cowboy boots and Jesus. 

But I think what I ended up with here is an acceptable offering, and — even better — a really easy method for making customizable ornaments. Ready? Here's what you need:

Materials

• Oven-bake clay (I used Fimo)
• Waxed paper
• A printer

That's it.

First, roll out your clay and cut into your desired shape. Don't tell your roommates, but the cookie cutters in the kitchen are pretty handy for this. Next, use a skewer or other makeshift tool to carefully poke a hole near the top for hanging the finished ornament by.

Bake the clay the for the proper amount of time until hard — the instructions will be on the wrapper, so try not to throw that away when you get caught up in the nostalgia of crafting with clay again. 

(Once baked, I gave the surface a light sanding with fine grit sandpaper. This might be completely unnecessary, but we all know that I'll take any excuse to break out the sandpaper.)

Next, figure out what image you want and insert it into a basic word document, sized to fit the surface of the ornament. I went with Dominik's drawing because (1) I really like the look of the simple lines and (2) the restaurant where we celebrated their wedding day was at the base of the Brooklyn bridge. Can I get an "Aw"?

Take your waxed paper and cut to the size of standard printer paper (or smaller, and then just tape to a piece of paper). Feed it into the printer and then press the magic button. Take the paper with the printed image and carefully place, ink side down, onto the surface of the ornament. Use your thumbnail to emboss the back of the paper and transfer all of the ink onto the clay. Then, simply peel away the waxed paper.

MAGIC.

Use your fanciest string, ribbon, or thread to add a loop and you're good to go. I also wrote Adrienne & Dominik's names on the back, along with their wedding date, because I'm sappy like that.

Congratulations! You can now go back to making tacky ornaments that your mom will try to "forget" to put out each year. But you will always find them and prevail, because no tree is complete without something like this guy:

Operation: Christmas Cheer, Step One

Christmas — like birthdays, snow days and New Year's Eve — loses approximately 87% of its magic when you get old enough to start worrying more about bills than whether or not you'll get the Nerf bow and arrow set that you asked for. When you're an adult, it's a choice to get into the holiday spirit, not a given. And now, two weeks into December, after endless days of rain, missed buses, lost wallets, and long workdays, I. am. ready.

Step one for gaining some Christmas cheer: Decorate.

I know, I know. You have a million excuses not to. Christmas is less than two weeks away. Your apartment is tiny. You don't want to spend the money. Blah blah blah. The solution I came up with trumps all those complaints.

Rather than dealing with a full-sized (ha, not gonna happen) or even miniature tree, I snagged a bunch of greenery from a flower shop on my way home from work. I prefer the long needles for a simpler, more classy look, but you go with your gut. For $8, this bunch was hefty enough to perfectly fill an old, industrial-sized olive jar that I had on hand (confession: I've had this since my days of catering in college, hoarded from a food prep day. My only regret is that I didn't snag more). But let's be real, you can't just toss a bunch of branches in a jar and call it a day.

I nested a pint glass inside the jar and surrounded it with old wine corks. On the off-chance that you're not a part-time bartender and don't just have piles and piles (seriously) of these hanging around, feel free to get creative with what you have. Live in the suburbs or the sticks? Collect some pinecones, acorns, or even rocks. Depending on the size of your vessel, you could fill it with clementines — they can get pretty tiny. Even just some plain kraft paper gently crumpled could look lovely. Go crazy. There are no rules, except for maybe one: try not to spend any money.

I filled the pint glass with water to help with making my greenery last and did my best to arrange the bunch into an evenly distributed bouquet. Since my choice of greenery doesn't have very strong branches (it's mostly needles), I opted against putting lights on the tree and went with a garland of gold stars that I had instead (see, Adrienne? I hang on to your gifts, too). The lights that we had from last year's tiny tree were perfect for winding around the base of the arrangement. (If there's one thing I would be okay spending money on, it's lights. They're the secret weapon for easy Christmas decorating and an instant fix of warm and fuzzy feelings.)

Nathan bought some battery operated candles to put in the windows last year, and while I was rummaging around for those, I came across the makeshift marquee I had whipped up then, too. Up it went, along with some candy canes we've had since last December. (Seriously, does anyone actually eat those?)

Note: In my opinion, the easiest way to fill space on a blank or otherwise just awkward wall is with a clothesline arrangement. Whether it's with twine and actual clothespins or fishing line and binder clips, I've used this method in every place I've lived since college. It's great for displaying all your favorite photographs or other two-dimensional keepsakes, it's easy to switch up, and it takes about five minutes to set up. Plus, it's especially useful for holidays and special occasions.

Makeshift tree? Check. Christmas lights? Check. Banner & candy canes? Check. All that was left were the snowflakes.

You learn a lot of important things in the second grade that stay with you for the rest of your life: Don't pick your nose. Stop, drop, and roll. And, most importantly, how to make some pretty sweet snowflakes with just printer paper and safety scissors.

Whether your snowflakes look like authentic cumulus offspring or bizarre, tribal-like symbols, you can take pride in knowing that, either way, they look really cool from the street.

I'll admit that the snowflakes took a little time, but then again, I'm always looking for an excuse to rewatch old episodes of obscure TV series. The rest of it, though? The tree? Took about as long as it did for me to make and enjoy a glass of hot spiced cider and bourbon. (Step 1b to cultivating Christmas cheer: booze.)

You can do it.