Life Lately

I have recently neglected this blog here, though this has not been my intention. I very much want to come here and continue to spew off my thoughts on this crazy live I am living. Lately though, I've been hard a work and blogging in another place.

Because I started a business. Heather Todero Events.

This has been a month chock full of trial and error. And lots and lots of learning. SEO. Didn't even really know what that meant until a few weeks ago. Creating a website? Other than this blogger account and myspace years ago I hadn't really customized anything. Now I've built one from scratch weebly.

The thing that strikes me as so amazing during this process it the willingness of others, friends, family, strangers, to reach out to show their support to me. Incredible, really.

I feel busy, like really busy again. But it is in the best of busy ways. That exciting, pulse racing, busy. Adrenaline filled hours spent researching and networking and stepping outside of any boxes labeled "comfort" because that's what life is about isn't it?

We can't just live in this comfortable little bubble of a life--what fun would that be? Day in day out the same? Not for me, not in this one life that I get to live.

I am growing. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing.

I'll be back here again, don't worry. But I am working my hardest to post two blogs a week over on HT Events' blog so you can find me there too.

And today, it is rainy and lovely. And I'm baking and reading and digesting on this Monday off of work.

Enjoy!

How Marrying an Extrovert Made Me Realize I'm Not One

I can't be sure if it is my age or the fact that I'm smack dab in the middle of my first year of marriage but lately I've been having lots of "Aha moments" as Oprah would call them. From being better (albeit far from perfect) at keeping a tidy(er) house to feeling more confident in me and my mind and my body to just generally having an "I've got this" feeling about life. Light bulbs seem to be coming on left and right (too bad they don't bring our electric bill down hehe).

Growing up in Residence Life I came to love personality tests, getting a Masters in Counseling I came to understand them even better. However, I either answered the questions thinking about who I wanted to be or I just fell a little more into the extroverted side of the spectrum and that is the label I wore proudly. After all, I was a student leader, I wanted to be seen as a competent supervisor--and I was.  But the label always felt wrong. Like it just didn't fit right.

I graduated. Moved in with Vince. Married him.  And that boy is an Extrovert.  He is the life of the party and he loves to party. Of course does, extroverts thrive on that kind of thing. And for the most part I can jive with that.

I like being center of attention--sometimes.

I like parties--but often talk to a small group or individuals most of the night.

I love public speaking and get a serious charge from it.

I sometimes love my days off where I have the apartment all to myself for 10 hours and I don't even leave it at all that day--that replenishes my soul.

Vince gets antsy when we just hang out here on a weekend. He wants to be out and about, social, doing something, anything. And that made me think about me being an extrovert but maybe just a little "e" extrovert compared to his big "E" extrovert.

And then I watched Susan Cain's TEDtalk on the Power of Introverts and heard the term AMBIVERT. An ambivert is a person who comfortably embodies characteristics of both extroverts AND introverts.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

It all makes sense now that sometimes I want to stand in front of a crowd collecting gold stars and other times the very thought of it makes my skin crawl. That strangers tell me their deepest secrets and I feel comfortable listening and helping them process their messy stuff and sometimes, ok with friends always, I'm okay with my own overshares, but other times I lock it down in a vault to process.

I'm an ambivert.  And good news, ambiverts are pretty powerful. And beneficial in sales....missed calling? Are you an ambivert, take this quiz to find out where you lie on the scale. 

Have you taken the MBTI or another personality assessment?  Did it fit like a glove or like your pants fresh out of the hot dryer? Does having only a dichotomy of options to fit a person seem too restricting?

Productive Day

Today I have been having one of those rare "get on that already" spurts. I put together this terrarium in container I found at Chic Antiques.

I taped over the black electrical tape on pur wedding sign. It was needed to blend in for our ceremony but stuck out terribly on our creamy walls. White blends in much better.

I bought this oval mirror at an estate sale probably over a year ago. I loved the oval shape (seriously, I'm an oval addict. Help!) and the gold detailing, but it was in bad shape. The gold part was practically detached from the main frame. It had dust in all of its crevices. And the mirror was in serious damage of detaching itself and thus shattering all over the place. Rough shape I tell ya! I cleaned her up, reattached the gold detailing, shoved so,e tough little glass holders into place while only slightly butchering my pointer finger in the process. And cherry on top of it all: I hung the pretty little thang up to show her off!

Our map fell off the wall, command strips used to be so reliable but not of late. So his new home is resting on top of our bookcase. Which I cleared off the top off and arranged some details on it. 

I also moved around my gallery wall a bit. But can't get one frame back together... How is that possible? The backing just won't go back in and I got frustrated so it is currently sitting on the table awaiting Vince's handiness to fix it. So I'm off to do dishes and vacuum. Who wants to come organize my closets? They need a come to Jesus moment--STAT!

Gotta love random Tuesdays off of work! 

Questions Laced With Opinions

I've always heard that as soon as you get married people will start asking you about babies. And truth be told people feel entitled to lots of information about you from the point of becoming engaged. So this is nothing new. But what I've really realized is that no matter what your response to these deeply personal questions, the other person undoubtedly has an opinion on said response.

And this can be hard. I remember my cousin, when she had her first baby, becoming so upset because she was overwhelmed by all of the "advice" being thrown her way. I say "advice" because its damn hard to just let things like that to roll off your back because of course you want to do it the RIGHT way, its your child! How do you filter the helpful out of the panoply of bullshit personal anecdotes? (Still not sure how you've done it Kassie, good work!)

While we aren't pregnant yet, there are many people that have strong feelings either way about a life change that effects exactly 3 people personally. Me, Vince and future baby Todero. And to be honest when people tell me that you must do A, B, C and have X, Y, and Z together pre-baby I just want to say, "EFF off. It is oddly not your life that this impacts. I got this."

Alas, I don't. Because that's as rude as the others. And my momtaught me to always be nice to everyone; even, or maybe especially,  the jerkwads.

Now I'm not sure how even got on that little soapbox. I really was coming here to talk about houses. And how everyone has an opinion about houses, not the state of my uterus.

By everyone I mean me. I am biased. I was fortunate enough to grow up in beautiful houses (thanks Mom  Dad!) and I vividly remember the look in friends eyes change when the came into our house and saw how nice it was.

It was like I Moved up a rung on the silly middle school social ladder because my my parents worked their tails off to afford a nice roof over our heads and my mom has a killer ability to make houses look great. But I liked that feeling.

And now, we are married. And we are renters. And when we moved into this apartment we got a lot of "oh you aren't buying...That's cool."

Um, did you know houses are expensive. And you have to have thousands of dollars saved to really do yourself justice in buying.  We just aren't there yet. And I'm more than okay with that. 

I fear becoming house poor. I look at homes o  Trulia and yes the are beautiful and a lot have mortgage payments equal or less than our rent payment. And I'm afraid to tell people that I don't want a BIG, impressive home that instantly people will bump me up their cool ladders because we own what they think is a status symbol.

I want a small house. One that I can clean top to bottom in 2 hours. Even more I want a house that we live in all of the spaces, not just some if them. And guess what future hypothetical children, I want you to share a room. Because in life it is so important to learn how to really live with someone. 

So there. I said it. I'm gonna have babies when we are ready and when we buy a house, you probably won't be wowed by a picturesque 4 bed, 3 bath and 18 living room home. I want to learn to make a beautiful home with less.

Comfy, cozy. Modest but beautiful; another lesson I'd like hypothetical daughters to learn. 

What questions do you feel people ask you with their opinion in mind before you respond? How do you make sure you follow your heart rather than Person X's advice? Do you live large in a small space? If so I'd love to hear about it!

Junk in My Trunk

I drive around 300 miles a week for work and with other people in my car the interior generally stays clean (ok, usually there's 5 or so water bottles and a couple fast food bags in the back) but my trunk....

Yea. Its a disaster. Full of (4 grocery bags) of garbage, (7) books, tennis rackets and balls, laundry supplies, leftovers from a (unsent) care package, jumper cables, two drink containers that need to go back to my mother-in-law, and a lot more crap.

I bought three bins from Marshalls for $7.99 each? Cleared the garbage, and threw everything in bins based on catergory. Since I did this on my lunch break, there are still items that will be removed but here's my trunk organization as it currently stands in pictures.

Does your trunk need a spring...errr SUMMER cleaning?

A Full Weekend (in Instagrams)

My weekends off are a treasured treat for me. You see, I work for a company that has a seven-days-a-week program, so I work almost every other weekend. This schedule, though certainly not ideal, does afford me some pretty cool benefits. Like having this Monday morning off until noon to read and write. Having random week days off which lead to high productivity on things like housework and laundry and grocery shopping so that my evenings (that I'm not working late of course) are mostly free to do what we like.

But weekends like this past weekend, where we have a whole Saturday together to just drive and explore, to just be. Those are a amazing. And since they don't always happen even monthly when life is busy with events, the rare occasion for them makes them wonderful.

Here's this weekend in photos:

My Grandparents celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary. They are in Iowa so I couldn't be there but was there in spirit as they renewed their vows and cut a cake. It was precious (I saw a video!)

Vince and his brother hung and decorated our office shelves...this is temporary.

Some prints for our gallery wall picked up at the Berkley Art Bash. Husband loves them.

We found the (second) largest tree I've ever seen. The homeowner insisted she take a picture of both of us in front of it. 

I made four dozen M&M cookies for V's cousin's graduation party.

I also had the assistance of my sister-in-law Miranda as we baked 8 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. I didn't take any photos for evidence of how I made a major math miscalculation that resulted in me QUADRUPLING the recipe. But they were delicious and it's always fun to have sister time while baking :)

Sunday we headed to Grand Rapids and had this lovely HUGE hole happen to our tire while on the  interstate. Thank goodness we were able to maintain control. 

Thanks goodness he's super handy (thanks Father-in-Law for making sure he knows how to work on cars!)

We also got to see this cutie and a whole bunch of other family. 

So that was our weekend as seen through our Instagram feeds! What did you do this weekend?

Happier

Can I first acknowledge my failures. I posted nine pretty little posts of the 31 that I was supposed to for Every Day in May. FAIL. I was in such denial about this that I did not even read any of Jenni's posts after I bailed on it, I just let them build up in my reader and then on June 1st "marked all as read" because facing them was hurting my ego. Oh well. I tried, I got almost 1/3 of the way in.

But really, I just got busy with life, and my anxiety had increased as I had mentioned in this post, so I stopped. No shame in that. Those anxiety times are exciting times. I gained yet another sister (one of the best things of marriage is the ever growing family). And she made the most gorgeous bride ever. Check out this picture that my very talented sister(in-law, but who's counting?), Michelle, took of Arianna. Stunning, right?

So with the wedding being busy, family being in town, trying to maintain the carefully cultivated mess that is our apartment while also still working our normal full-time 9-5 (psh, I wish I worked regular hours)--life got crazy.

In any case, I feel rested and happier after some actual "weekend" days on Monday and Tuesday this week. And after yesterday's Big Idea I have spent my morning off today sipping on some Earl Grey and reading to my hearts content about things to fill in my Big Idea with several smaller ideas.

And though my idea yesterday isn't really based on the big "H" word Happy, that's what I've been reading about today. First I was reading a little about The Third Metric conference hosted by Arianna Huffington yesterday, which you should check out because there is some good stuff there, then I went back to one of my favorite bloggers Aidan at Ivy League Insecurities and dug through some of her archives on being happier, not Happy. Seriously, check out this post, You Are Not Happy, and this one, I Will Be Happier in Twelve Weeks. She's great, and she makes me think. And I like that.

In fact, I miss THINKING. "Oh, Heather doesn't think anymore," that's what you're thinking now. No, of course I think. But since I am not in school anymore, I don't have that constant intellectual challenge unless I seek it out myself.

And that makes me wonder: at this age, this post-grad school-we are all in new jobs-slowly spreading across this county-taking on new roles-being adults life that my friends and I live in now how do we make sure that we continue to grow? How do we make sure that we are enriching our minds and our knowledge base? 

And even more, how do we stay connected? How do we grow our connections?

And through it all, are we living our lives to be happier?