Shopping Justified

Breaking up and dealing with the heartache is never a fun experience. Anyone who thinks otherwise has a twisted personal gauge of “fun”. Coping with matters of the heart, especially when it is your heart that has been broken (in other words you’re the dumpee, not the dumper), can be a very touchy and personal experience. Everyone deals with pain in different ways. I don’t know anything about the way guys’ brains work, so I will not try to pretend to know how they deal, but I have become very well acquainted with how girls handle breakups. Some drown their sorrows in chocolate, others in greasy food like french fries and hamburgers.

Others torture themselves by watching chick flick after chick flick and wondering why their lives can’t work out like the fictional characters in the films.

Although these methods of dealing with the hurt can be effective in short bursts, there is a better way: shopping. Going on a shopping spree after a breakup is the best thing you can do to realign your life because it is less detrimental to your figure and social life than food and movies, it gives you a sense of control, and it helps you realize your true beauty, something that is so easy to forget.

While eating an entire bag of Dove chocolates might make you feel better for an hour or so, give it some time and your stomach will start to protest. Keep this practice up and not only will your stomach feel the strain, but so will your pants as they try to stay buttoned. Every girl needs some chocolate on occasion, but when it comes to feeling lasting results, it’s not the way to go. Shopping and fashion, on the other hand, will only make your figure look better, give you a chance to don a pair of heels, help you get some exercise as you walk around the mall, and fill your arms with shopping bags. Shopping also gives you the opportunity to get out of the house and be social instead of popping in another Nicholas Sparks tearjerker movie adaptation. The only thing that could suffer from this mode of coping is your pocketbook. But as long as you know what your budget is, write it up as an emotional need, and shop the sales, you’ll be just fine.

One of the hardest things about breaking up is the feeling that you lack control of your life. No matter how long you and your significant other were together, the sense of loss from no longer having him around can rock your perfect world in ways you can’t imagine until it happens. Everything seems out of place, and a hole is left where there use to be someone you could always turn to. The only way to regain balance is by focusing on the things you can control in your life. One of those things is the way you look and the way you dress. Get out of your sloppy tear stained pajamas and sweats and show the world the girl you want to become. You have control over what you wear and how fantastic you look everyday. You might not be able to force yourself to be happy and be okay, but you can control the way you look and the way you hold yourself. So go forward with confidence when you put on your new pair of hot pink skinny jeans.

The most important thing that a shopping spree and fashion can do for you in this time of discomfort and gloom is to help you realize that you are beautiful. When someone tells you they no longer want to be with you, it is easy to put all the blame on yourself. You suddenly start thinking of all the things that must be wrong with you that pushed him away. You tell yourself that, if you were prettier, he would have stayed. This is not true. You are beautiful inside and out and letting yourself get all dolled up (even if you have no where to go) can help you remember this. Another great thing about a shopping spree is that it is so much more enjoyable with friends. Take your best girlfriends with you to encourage you and give you the positive feedback you are lacking. Instead of crawling into a hole, becoming a nun, or hiding behind sunglasses and sweats, show him what he’s missing out on. Let the world know that you don’t need anyone to tell you you’re beautiful because you already know you are.

 

Healing a broken heart takes time and strength, but relying on something other than food and chick flicks to help you gain control and remind yourself of your beauty can help speed up the process. I understand that shopping and fashion might be some people’s worst nightmare, but just being yourself and getting back into the swing of life (like you can do by expanding your wardrobe) is important for everyone as they try to overcome the pain. Keep your chin up and know if you’ve hit rock bottom, it can only be up from here!

xoxo
CRM

My Favorite Kind of Weekend

As we were running out the door to make it to the afternoon session of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at the Conference Center, the voice and words of Henry B. Eyring were floating through the house. What an amazing talk that I will watch/read again and again.

Coming home for conference is always a great opportunity to focus on what the spirit can teach me, eat good food and spend time laughing and joking with my family. Some of the highlights:

• Celebrating getting into the Graphic Design program at the UofU by going to lunch at Texas Roadhouse (I can't tell you how excited I am to finally know what the next few years of my life will hold!)
• Coconut Creme filled Doves: AMAZING
• Late night movies (Charlie St. Cloud and Johnny English: Reborn)
• Seeing my little brother and his date off to Preference (made me miss high school dances big time)
• The Muppets Movie (This song is so great)

• Seeing all the amazing spring flowers on Temple Square
• Getting to be in the spirit filled Conference Center for the afternoon session and getting an upgrade on our seats 
• Going to City Creek with the girls while the men were at Priesthood session
• Best sign asking for money I have ever seen: "Brother kidnapped by squirrels-need money for nuts and booby traps"
• Buying a blazer that makes me look super skinny
• Watching the musical numbers from Priesthood session so I could point out all my guy friends who were in the choir (they sounded amazing btw)
• Getting to sleep in my huge queen sized bed 
• Snuggling with my kitty

There really is no place like home!

xoxo

CRM

Heartbreak Is

Heartbreak is:

pretending to be okay by dressing up and wearing dark lipstick and heels

agreeing to something even though you know it will mean torture for you

making chocolate covered strawberries so it seems like less chocolate consumption (fyi: it is way more)

curling up on the couch in a huge hoodie and a cozy blanket with all of the lights off

holding onto your stuffed monkey named Squeeze (Z for short) for dear life because it's the only way to hold together the hole in your heart

watching Dear John because you know its sad and anything happy will just make you more upset

looking back through pictures from years ago to the present and thinking of all the "what if's"

                            what happens when you try to move on.



xoxo
CRM

Opposite Day

STRESS

Definition:

• importance
 or significance attached to a thing

• emphasis
 in the form of prominent relative loudness of a syllable or a word as a result of special effortin utterance

• accent
 or emphasis on syllables in a metrical pattern; beat

• the
 physical pressure, pull, or other force exerted on one thing by another; strain

• easy
 to understand, deal with, use

• not
 elaborate or artificial; plain

• not
 ornate or luxurious; unadorned

• unaffected;
 unassuming; modest

• not
 complicated

I laughed when I realized that all the definitions dictionary.com had for the word "stress" had nothing to do with what I have been feeling all weekend. In a way it was almost comforting. If dictionary.com doesn't list "feeling as if everything is weighing down on your back like a ton of bricks" then maybe I it doesn't exist and therefore I cannot be feeling it! 

The other thing I realized is that I was feeling the first kind of stress listed in the definitions and I hadn't even realized it. Most of my physical stress lately has come from the importance and significance I have attached to things/people in my life. As freeing as it would be to let everything go, cut all the strings, let the balloons fly and see where they go, life isn't that simple. 

SIMPLE 

Definition:

I wish I could say the above 5 definitions described my life, but unfortunately it is the exact opposite. 

The moral of the story?

Can we PLEASE bring back opposite day?

That would be grand. 

xoxo

CRM

Joy in the Journey and Faith in the Destination

Imagine a rocket ship about to be launched into space.

Think of all of the preparations, persuasions and perseverance that had to take place to get that rocket ship on the platform about to take off.

It's quite a bit, right?

I can't even comprehend all the science and math that must go on behind the scenes to make everything work smoothly and keep the passengers on board safe while they journey. I'm just glad there are other people who get to take care of those things and not me.

Alright, so you have all the science, you've packed your astronaut food, and your suit has been shined until it sparkles. You board the rocket, the signal is given and with a roar, you slowly begin your flight up into the unknown. The smoke fades, the crowd disperses and you are left alone in the sky. You look down and see the earth that you have come to know so well disappear behind you. You face forward, determined to get to your destination successfully so you can bring back new knowledge to your colleges. You look down at the coordinates that should be blinking on the screen in front of you to tell you which way to turn to begin your adventures in space.

You gasp.

There are no blinking dots.

The screen in blank and you start to panic. Here you are in the middle of nowhere, the middle of nowhere in SPACE, and you have no idea what direction you are suppose to go or even how to get back home. You were expecting there to be a map of some sort with step by step directions to hlep you get to your destination. Suddenly you realize that you don't even know what that destination is. You were never told. Shouldn't this have been part of the debriefing? Shouldn't there be some sort of manual or chart or something to show you what to do in times of peril and panic? This is your future you hold in your hands. This is life or death! One wrong turn of the controls or flip of a toggle switch and you could be flung off the path that you should be on to get to that ever elusive destination.

You look out the windshield to try and get your bearings, but nothing looks familiar. Do you really expect anything to look familiar? This IS your first trip to space.

You take a few deep breaths and try to decide what to do. You know you won't be able to find your way back home, you don't even know how much fuel you have left in the tank. So what do you do now? Continue to panic? Curl up in a ball and wait to die from lack of oxygen?

Or...

You can just enjoy the journey.



The future is scary. I have so many decisions to make in the next two months that sometimes I feel like the character in the rocket ship being flung into the unknown without a map or direction.


Directions my rocket ship COULD turn:

-I apply again for the Graphic Design Program at the U at the end of the month (the thought that I have to choose 12 pieces to go into my portfolio out of the hundred or so I have in a pile at home makes me start to sweat). Do I get in? Or not?
-If I don't get into the program (at this point I have no idea the outcome), what new major do I choose? Or, heaven forbid, do I transfer to a different school?
-Do I stay in my apartment with my lovely roomies in SLC for the summer or do I move home?
-Will I ever get a conformation/rejection letter from the Especially For Youth (EFY) people which will help me decide where to go for the summer? (I mean, it's been two months people. I think that's enough time to decide whether or not I am peppy enough to be an EFY councilor. Every time an email comes up on my phone, my mind does a little dance, hoping it's from them.)
-Or do I box up all of the aforementioned ideas for two years and spend my time getting my papers together to go on a mission when I turn 21 in September? (I have always wanted to serve a mission, but the thought of leaving my family, my friends and my ward that I have become so comfortable with for so long is frightening.)


With all of these thoughts running rampant in my mind, throwing over tables, spilling drinks and breaking the fine china, I am in great need for direction. Where can I turn?

Well, unlike the poor soul in the rocket ship, we DO have a map: the scriptures.

And we DO have a team of experts upstairs who know exactly where our ship is headed.

And we DO know our final destination if we are faithful to the end and we keep an eternal perspective.

Does this make all the panic subside and the doubt drift away? Not always. To be honest, I have had panic attack moments that leave me wondering if I will ever make it through. But as President Uchtdorf said in his talk The Infinite Power of Hope: 


"We learn to cultivate hope the same way we learn to walk, one step at a time. There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope. Like Father Abraham, we will 'against hope [believe] in hope.' Or, as one writer expressed, 'in the depth of winter, [we find] within [us] an invincible summer.'"

May we all find the invincible summer within us, find joy in the journey and have faith in our destinations. Our rocket ship is NOT going to run out of fuel, crash or start leaking oxygen unless we let it.

xoxo
CRM

p.s. This is one of the songs that keeps me going. So beautiful.

A Few Do's and Don'ts of Fashion

I have never uploaded a video to YouTube before, and I must say it was rather exhilarating to see my work up for the world to see. It's nothing ground breaking, but I enjoyed making it and hopefully you will enjoy watching it and maybe even learn something new! :)

xoxo
CRM

More Addicting than Pintrest

Hello Facebook friends and any other random strangers that decide to take a peek at this little blog of mine. It kind of frightens me to look at the little count going in the corner that says 29 people have already looked at my blog and I haven't even told anyone it was up until now.

Kinda creepy. 

But anyways, I created this blog for my current Writing for New Media class, but decided to try to make it good enough that I would want to keep it and continue to post on it for you all. I know that most likely I will be the only one that actually cares about what I have to say, but it's always nice to imagine someone else reading your words and finding some sort of comfort, humor or satisfaction. 

I don't expect any of you to come back unless I keep things interesting, so I will try my hardest. (My roommates always laugh at my jokes but I can never tell if it is because I am actually funny or because it is usually at atrocious hours of the night when these situations come about. Like now as I sit and type this at 1:30 in the morning.) 

I don't promise to be as addicting as Facebook, Pintrest, chocolate or tetris, but I do hope to hear from you and brighten your day in some small way! Wish me luck and perseverance as I take the dive into the ocean that is the Blogosphere. I have packed my life jacket, water floaties, nose plug and hair net. Hopefully I've got everything. 

Oh, I forgot the kitchen sink. 

Silly me!

xoxo

CRM

*Note: I am still working on the layout/colors/fonts/etc. so if some of them are wonky for a little while, I apologize! 

The Evolution of Fashion

The History of Fashion is such a broad topic that millions of books, articles, websites and blogs are dedicated to the study of it. Trying to narrow fashion down to a specific cut and dry history is almost impossible. Throughout time periods and cultures, every country, state, even city, has had their own history of fashion and unique style. Most everyone has a different view or opinion of what fashion is, but what is it that makes fashion so important and versatile over the years?

Since the beginning of the civilization, clothing has been important to the masses. From the time of Adam and Eve wearing fig leaves to cover his nakedness, to now days, where society spends a good chunk of their time worrying, obsessing and fussing over it, fashion has an impact on each of us whether we like it or not. As is sung in “The Creation of Man” from the musical, The Scarlet Pimpernel^[i], the lyrics “Now, drape your cape and puff your cuff, embroider those lapels! Be the king of the beasts in pastels! La, but someone has to strike a pose, and bear the weight of well-tailored clothes, and that is why the Lord created men” demonstrate just how important clothing is to our society.

What I find ironic about fashion and its increasing importance in our everyday lives is the lack of people who actually know how to sew. “Ready-made clothing…resulted in the devaluation of the sewing machine in the minds of Americans, which lead to its ‘disappearance’ in American culture. Since it was no longer a status symbol, the sewing machine became an object whose use was assumed but not proclaimed—something akin to a washtub or broom.” In our culture today you rarely hear of people making their own clothing. More often I hear of people throwing or giving away old clothes, or even new ones, that don’t fit them because they don’t know how to mend or alter them to fit. This trend is unlikely to be reversed, but at least there are some designers left who devote all their time to making beautiful clothing. If not, we might all be running around in potato sacks. How uncomfortable.

In contrast to the lack of at home designers today, the first “fashion designers” were disputed throughout the history. Before the 1800’s, most seamstresses were anonymous and were employed by the rich and powerful. At the time, the rich were able to dictate specific fashion trends. If a queen, princess, duchess or other important noble man or woman wore something new, it was instantly the height of fashion. A more recent example of this is charm bracelets. They became popular in Queen Victoria’s reign because she “loved to wear and give charm bracelets. When her beloved Prince Albert died, she even made ‘mourning’ charms popular; lockets of hair from the deceased, miniature portraits of the deceased, charm bracelets carved in jet.”^[ii] Charles Frederick Worth^[iii] is said to have been one of the first fashion designers who was actually recognized for his work. He led his customers to embrace the new trends he conjured by “preparing a variety of designs that were shown on live models at the House of Worth…his aggressive self-promotion earned him the titles ‘father of haute couture’ and ‘the first couturier.’”^[iv]

There have been many fashion revolutions and shifts throughout the years that have shaped our ideas and given names to the trends we see today. For example, Mrs. Bloomer who “had a skirt just below the knees and trousers gathered at the ankles,”^[v] the flappers of the 20’s, the greasers of the 50’s, the peace loving folks of the 60’s, and the hipsters of 2012. One of my favorite and commonly overlooked revolutions in fashion was Christian Dior’s “New Look” of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. After World War II, people needed something new and exciting to help them emerge from the dregs of penny pinching and assisting the war effort. “Christian Dior delivered it in a collection of luxurious clothes with soft shoulders, waspy waists and full flowing skirts intended for what he called ‘flower women’.”^[vi] The fifties are a huge inspiration for me in my designs and the way that Dior was able to take America by storm in a single, simple silhouette is remarkable. “All the reference books agree: contemporary fashion was born in 1947, with the New Look, the child of Christian Dior.”^[vii] Many fashion designers like Dior have changed the world in their time. That is why we continue to be inspired by their creations and people are willing to spend small fortunes on a dress just because it has a particular label on the back.

Another interesting aspect of fashion is the way we use it as an alternate way to study history and the people involved in it. CBS news posted a video on their website that shows in three minutes the evolution of fashion by a woman changing just her hair style and the clothes on her upper shoulders. Even with such a limited view, the watcher can instantly relate to what time period she is embodying.^[viii]


Moby - Wait for me from Lena Nosenko on Vimeo.
Another video shows a man and a woman dancing while their clothes and the music they are dancing to changes to match the time period. We are such a visual culture that when someone mentions a decade, the first thing that pops into most of our minds is a picture of someone in that time periods clothing.

To answer the question I posed at the beginning of this post, the reason that fashion has remained so important and versatile over the years is because it directly involves people and their imaginations. As long as a nudist colony doesn’t take over the world, we will always need something to wear. The individualist nature of humans will continue to push us towards the new, different and exciting things that fashion has to offer year to year. We are always stealing from the past and the styles they held while looking towards the future and the evolution that is bound to continue.

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[i] “The Creation of Man,” last modified 2012, http://www.lyricsondemand.com/soundtracks/s/scarletpimpernellyrics/thecreationofmanlyrics.html.

[ii] “Charm bracelet,” last modified February 14, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charm_bracelet.

[iii] “History of fashion design,” last modified February 20, 2012, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fashion.

[iv] “Charles Frederick Worth (1826-1895) and The House of Worth,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, accessed February 22, 2012, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.htm.

[v] Wilfred Mark Webb, The Heritage of Dress: Being notes on the history and evolution of clothes: (London: E. Grant Richards, 1907), 361, accessed February 21, 2012, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/HumanEcol/HumanEcol-idx?type=goto&id=HumanEcol.MBWebbHeritage&isize=M&submit=Go+to+page&page=361.

[vi] “Christian Dior: Fashion Designer (1905-1957),” Design Museum, accessed February 21, 2012, designmuseum.org/design/christian-dior.

[vii] “History of the House of Dior,” Dior, accessed February 22, 2012, http://www.dior.com/couture/en_us/The-House-of-Dior/House-of-Dior-in-Video/The-House-of-Dior.

[viii] “Evolution of fashion and style for women over centuries,” last modified September 21, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-20109692-10391705.html.