Pinterest Wednesday- Book Declutter

So remember that time I wrote about 100 ways to improve your life in 60 days? Well, I've been working at it in fits and starts. Not everyday, but as I pointed out at the time, I'm the boss. So ha! Take that, The Man! Or whatever.

Anyway, as a move toward greater organization, I decided to rearrange my books. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should tell you this was not a calmly planned initiative. No. Rather it was late on a Friday night and I was bored and sick of sitting down and realized one of my Sherlock Holmes books had been laying horizontally across the top of the other mysteries for far too long and I had an OCD freakout.

So I pulled all my books off the shelves and sorted them into piles. This is toward the beginning or end of the freak out, this is hardly any of the books I have. I've always loved to read and always collected books. I have many, many books. And I love organizing them. There's a reason I work in a library, is what I'm saying. I also love talking to people who love books about how they organize the books in their home. I don't know if I've ever heard two people describe it the same and I love that. It's all about being able to find the books when you want to, there's no right answer. Mine are organized first by genre: poetry, anthropology, art history, crafts, cookbooks, general science, mystery, science fiction/fantasy, women's studies, essays, etc. Then by author's last name and then by title. I have 5 book shelves and I arrange the genres in different areas for different reasons. The cookbooks are on the shelf between the kitchen and the living room, as are the craft books.

But I digress. Basically, you organize your books how you are comfortable organizing them. I have my way, you have yours. No judging.

One advantage to organizing your books late at night is you find books like this and laugh like a loon for far too long because you are tired and wish you hadn't started this big project, but you can't very well stop.

I got everything reorganized and back on the shelf and I even had a small pile of books I was willing to give away. I piled up the books I haven't read and put them by my bed. Then I turned around a saw this:

Ah, that small stack of books that I forgot about that would necessitate massive shifting to put them where they were supposed to go. Isn't that always the way with projects? Why didn't I turn around 20 minutes earlier?! At this point it was about 3 am so I went to bed anyway. Actually I think that stack of books is still sitting on top of a bookshelf.

Oh well, I can't be perfect because then there would be nothing to reorganize!

White Squirrel compels you to punch deer in face!

My modeling career beings and ends here.

I'm back from the craft show a little sunburned, a little richer, a little tired and a lot happy. The weather was super hot (I'm pretty sure I drank my weight in water every day) but it only rained a little and some people bought some stuff and that is what I call a success. Really, there's very few ways for a craft show with friends to go wrong. Worst case scenario you end up sitting outside laughing and talking with friends while everyone tells you how it's too hot to even look at your knitted goods and you don't make any money. We sat outside laughing and talking while everyone told us that but we made a little money, so we're all set.

We met some truly bonkers crafters, which is always a good time. One of our booth neighbors was a craft show newbie who was extremely nervous about his booth set up and wouldn't just sit down and relax. He was a photographer who was selling a lot of nature photos. His favorite was White Squirrel. It was this picture of a very, very intense looking white squirrel and he must have had at least 5 to 7 prints of it on sale. At any given time there were at least 4 White Squirrels staring at us in our booth and every time a customer wandered into our neighbor's booth they were shown White Squirrel. I'm pretty sure the reason this guy couldn't relax about his booth set up was because White Squirrel was never pleased and this man could hear White Squirrel's commands and felt compelled to obey them. I still see White Squirrel when I close my eyes.

The picture at the top of this post is from the first day. We tweaked our set up every day and were finally happiest with this one:

The colorful posts on either side are holding paper-mache heads my friend Mandi was selling. They are so very cool; kids were in love with them and would point them out to their parents across the street. If said parents weren't looking, it was common for the kids to run up and pet the animals and even talk to them which was adorable. Imagine our shock when one little boy ran up and suddenly punched one of the deer in the face! His mother apologized and no damage was done but we were a little disturbed.

Yesterday I had a bad case of the post-craft sale blues, but today I'm just jazzed to get designing some new ideas I've had and to build up my stock for the next sale (only 67 days away) which is Applefest. I love Applefest: apple cider, pumpkin patch, hayride, corn maize! No one will tell us it's too hot to look at our knitted goods at Applefest (I sincerely hope)! Although, it doesn't have to be quite as freezing as last year. Something about craft shows seems to bring out the extreme in the weather.

Photo credit: I stole these from Erica completely without her permission.

Happy Revenge of the Nerdsday

 

I'll be nerding out at a craft sale for the next three days with some of my darling friends including Liz (who also created this blog with me) and Erica so consider this an early Happy Thursday post. This is us at a craft sale last year. I expect we'll be dressed for the opposite weather this weekend. 

Erica edited this picture and put the "yarn" around us is as a play on "knit 3 together, or K3tog" which is a knitting joke. Wow, this post is super nerdy.

Do you want to hear something kind of sick? While watching Revenge of the Nerds for about the billionth time the other day, I realized I have a crush on Booger. Who has a crush on the gross guy named Booger who wins a belching contest? 

Me, that's who. Don't ask, I think this is a mystery better left unsolved. Sometimes I gross myself out.