Things I Learned in May

Can you believe May is almost over? I love the lengthening sunlit hours of an approaching summer. I wake to sunshine and it lingers after we’ve put the kids to bed. Last night Steve and I laid head-to-head on our L-shaped sectional (I took the short side, obvs) and read our library books right through the twilight hour (his & mine). We didn’t even have to turn the lights on.

To celebrate the end of May, today I’m joining Emily of Chatting at the Sky to share five things I learned this month including: how to get myself to eat more salad, what I wish I’d known about DIY, and my fav place to find gorgeous lazy-girl hairstyles!

Let’s go!

1. Watercolor teaches me to love and work with my mistakes.

A few months back I stumbled across Skillshare, an ever-growing library of online courses about creativity. It costs $8-10 a month for unlimited access to 1300+ classes in all kinds of art-related categories. Last month they ran a special–one month for 99¢–so I tried it out! I’ve been wanting to learn more about watercolor, so I enrolled in a class and I’ve been practicing while I watch Call the Midwife on Netflix. 🙂

This has been a really relaxing exercise for me, because water is so unpredictable that it’s forced me to learn to work with and love imperfections.

Pssst! If you want to learn something new & artsy (painting, hand-lettering, photography & more), you can get a free month of Skillshare here!

2. Pretty hairstyles can also be easy!

After loving my super-short bob haircut for almost four years, I started missing the fun of experimenting with long luscious locks. 😉 This month I’ve been playing around with braids, knots, and pony-tails, and none of them (even the ones that look super fancy!) have taken more than about 10 minutes. I have a Pinterest board full of hair ideas, and my favorites so far have all come from Makeup Wearables.

3. Blogging is more complicated than it looks. 🙂

I’ve learned a TON about blogging this month–everything from the discipline it takes to be consistent and how to write interesting and useful copy to how to re-route my subscription feed through Mailchimp to make it look prettier and all kinds of stuff about social media. It is definitely a lot more than I expected to have to learn, but I have really been enjoying the opportunity to dive in and really learn something inside out. Plus isn’t it fun that the internet age means I can watch a problogger webinar while I crochet in my flowered pajama pants? Yay internet!

4. I am about 90% more likely to eat a salad if I buy pre-washed lettuce and pre-cooked chicken.

I don’t know about you, but I have an irrational hatred of prepping lettuce for a salad. You have to wash, dry, and chop it. I know, not a big deal. But you know what, it’s lettuce. A batch of cookies is worth the preparation to me. Lettuce is not. So I started buying the pre-washed lettuce at Costco (I like the mixed spring greens–$3.99 for a huge bin of them–and the super foods salad kit which is about $5) and boom. Suddenly throwing a salad together is practically easier than making a sandwich. I like some protein to keep me full, so I also grab a rotisserie chicken (again, just $5 and I didn’t have to cook it!) and add some chicken slices to the mix. YUM.

5. I need to play to my strengths when I DIY.

Since I started the Cozy Minimalist course I’ve been super excited about doing things myself instead of waiting for/begging the hubs to do it. I hung my own curtain rods over our bed, and that got me so pumped that I decided to tackle the awkward window-near-the-45-degree-angle-wall myself. Like this.

(Things to learn from this photo: 1. I am very short and 2. DO NOT DO THIS. Duh. Why did I do this?)

That part went fine, but then I decided it would be a good idea to rig a bendable curtain rod out of plumping pipe from Home Depot and a too-short curtain rod.

This did not look good.

The nice thing about it, though, was that Steve came home from work and looked at it, saw that I had tried, and then fixed it for me. His brain is much more naturally attuned to math and building than mine, and he came up with this brilliantly simple idea to simply bend the curtain rod like so:

The bend is covered by the curtain (my plumbing pipe was not) so you don’t see it, and now the curtain wraps the corner just a enough to make that window seem bigger.

Look at the chair corner before/after:

Way cozier. 🙂

I’m halfway through the course now, so there’s still lots of fun stuff ahead and I am really loving it.

Your turn! What did you learn this month?