Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and wishes came true!

I had a looong day at work, but the weather was AMAZING!  and then I had the traditional jewish Christmas meal--Chinese food!  Delish!!

xoxo 

jaimie

Happy Hanukkah!!

 

I think this might be my new favorite hanukkah song!

xoxo

jaimie

room makeover: the closet

Ever just feel like you need a litte organization in your life??  I do!

Currently, I'm in desperate need of a serious clothes-ervention & closet rehab.

I don't know why, but suddenly it feels like I have clothes coming out of my ears!  A few months ago, I bought pretty new pink, slimline hangers.  I had to buy 3 boxes of them to fit what I thought would be everything.  Turns out, 120 hangers is not enough - and I have no idea how that happened!  When I stand at my closet to get dressed, there may as well be 12 hangers in there, because I still can't figure out what to wear.  Part of my problem is that I wear a "uniform" to work (black shirt, black pants) so most of the stuff in my closet, especially the nicer stuff, doesn't get worn, because I mostly bought it with work in mind.  I think the rest of the problem is that I can't see any of it very well because it's squished in there, so I forget what's there.  With 2012 on its way, now seems like the perfect time to make a change.

Before I can even dream of having the perfect dream closet that looks something like this,

(seriously, isn't it beautiful?!)

I need to organize organize organize!

Here's the thing:  I'm a packrat.  I keep things "just in case."  Actually, I keep A LOT of things for that reason.  Which is a horrible reason to keep things.  I would love to participate in Kendi's 30 for 30 remix challenge, but it would take me waaaay more than 30 days to complete!  Not that I won't absolutely do it at some point in the future, but it's just not totally practical right now.

So, it's back to some good old-fashioned cleaning out!  I have to be prepared to be ruthless and keep only what's necessary.  I'm going to start with Simplify101's closet organization list:

Looks doable.

I also heard some great tips from friends of mine.

1)  Put all your clothes on hangers and flip the hangers reverse in your closet.  When you wear something, flip that piece/hanger back.  In a few months, you can easily see what you wear and what you don't, because if you haven't worn it after that period of time, you can take it out of your closet.

2)  Take the pieces you're unsure about out of your closet/room and put them somewhere (in a bag?  in the garage?) where you won't see them.  If at the end of 6 months or so you haven't wanted anything in the bag, have forgotten about it and not needed something  it, it's safe to say those clothes can go.

Both of these have the same basic idea, so given the cramped sitch in my closet at the moment, I'll probably try the bag trick.  In the meantime, I'm going to pretend my closet looks like this.

{all images via everything fab}

What are your tricks to staying organized and keeping your closet up to date?!



get excited...

because I'm back, baby!

I'm going to skip the long-winded apologies and reasons why I haven't blogged in MONTHS!  Life just gets in the way sometimes, ya know?

So here's the reader's guide version of the past few months of my life.

Work, shopping, work, personal training, hanging out with friends, work, work-sponsored social activities, family time, me time.

But, I haven't forgotten about all of you or this here little bloggy!  It really is striking to me how much less creative I feel and less motivated I am to do creative things when I'm not blogging.  But, I will say this, when I do fun activities, try fun new recipes (like making a kick-ass Thanksgiving turkey), go new places, buy new clothes, put together cute outfits or do pretty much anything, I think, "this would make a great blog post," even though I knew I probably wouldn't actually write about it.  I guess you can take the girl away from the blog, but you can't take the blog away from the girl!

(or something like that...)

So, we're going to give this another go and see what comes out of it!  I so appreciate all of your sweet comments and the fact that you care about, or even read, what I have to say and am looking forward to reconnecting with you!