Patterned Rugs and Recovery.

I've learned a few things about myself, other people, and stuff in general since starting a job in retail. Here are a few things that I've thought about.

• Comfortable shoes are the most important thing in the world. And why are flats supposed to be more comfortable than heels, yet always so painful?
• People are really gross and messy sometimes. I don't know how hard it is to hang things up when you are done trying them on. Especially when they are already on a hanger but are thrown on a chair/in a bin/on the floor anyway.
• I've become much more aware of when people greet me and how I respond. It is uncomfortable when you greet people and they just ignore you.
• When you stealthily hide something you don't want somewhere other than where it belongs someone will notice. They will notice even more if they just took that item down from a really high rack for you or just looked all over the store for it.
• Baby clothes are the best.
• Hangers are the worst. They like to poke holes in plastic bags and always seem to get in the way.
• The person asking you to sign up for a credit card or write down your email is just as uncomfortable as you are.
• People really enjoy telling me they want to make a change to their purchase after I have passed the point where that is possible. For example: noticing something came up as a different price than it should have, remembering they had a coupon, etc.
• People are willing to wait around for a manager to come so that you can fix that thing they noticed at the last minute, even if it only makes a $1.00 difference.

What are things your job has taught you?

Or if you would like to participate and don't have a job/have never learned anything in a working situation, how am I going to do my nails next?

Redundant In a Good Way.

This pile of stuff is what would eventually become my Melmer. If you're wondering if you are supposed to know what a Melmer is, don't worry. A Melmer is a small 3-drawer filing cabinet style storage system. The name was coined by the online beauty/nail polish community and comes from a product Ikea sells, called the Helmer. The Helmer started being used as nail polish and makeup storage, and then when people started using something similar from Michaels for the same purpose, it became known at the Melmer. The storage system is actually intended for scrapbooking storage, but happens to work perfectly for storing nail polish too. I was in desperate need of a new storage system, and decided I couldn't go wrong with the Melmer. I've been considering it for a few weeks now and finally got around to going to Michaels where I picked one up. (If you go to the store, don't ask for the Melmer, they'll have no idea what you mean.) The original price was $35.00 but Michaels has a lot of great sales (when I was planning to go a few weeks ago I had a 50% off coupon) and I was able to get it for 40% off, which after tax ending up costing me $22.00.


Once I got the Melmer home I was eager to build it and get everything organized (I love both organization and nail polish so it seemed like a win win situation.) However, I'm not the most handy person in the world. Despite that, I set to work building the Melmer. It thankfully wasn't too complicated, but it was time consuming for me. I decided not to pay attention to the time though, I just set Pandora on my favorite station at the moment (Hedley) and stayed focused. The picture was taken over 2/3 of the way through my building adventure, which did end up being a good excuse to break out my paisley tape measure.


And here is the Melmer finished and waiting to be filled with polish!


I had a bit of trouble getting photos of the polishes actually in the drawers. Things were either too blurry or too bright or not even close.


After playing around with my camera settings a bit I ended up getting the best results with the "food" setting. Who would have guessed? I was able to fit all of my nail polish into one drawer of the Melmer. There are around 115 polishes in that drawer, which means it really can hold a ton of polish. Currently I have the polishes organized first my brand and then by color, but I might change things depending on what ends up being the most convenient for me. I have a tendency to organize and reorganize until things are perfect.


Right now the second drawer is home to all things deemed "nail polish related." That means base and top coats (recommend me a new base coat while we're on the topic), files, buffers, nail art tools (more on my favorite one, Konad, in another post), etc. This drawer still has plenty of room and I haven't even touched the third drawer. That leaves me lots of room to expand my nail polish collection and it also means I can keep other things in the Melmer too, which is what I plan to do at school. I haven't quite decided what yet but I know there will be something! After seeing the Melmer in person I even think it could work a bit of double duty in my dorm come fall as a night stand too.

Question time! You know I love to hear your thoughts too. Today I want to know:

1. How do you store your nail polish?
2. Is nail polish something you love to collect or something you prefer to keep to just a few favorite shades?

Happy 4th of July!

Pink Lemonade Season.

It seems like an update is in order. Have two months seriously passed since my last post?

• I graduated high school at the beginning of June.
• I received an award for achievement in design.
• I received a senior superlative in the student newspaper for "Most likely to take over the world when you least expect it."
• I got a summer job working in retail.
• I'm spending most of my time thinking about college and living in NYC.

That is it for my little update, but I'm going to be moving to Manhattan in less than two months (hard to believe) and I know I'll have lots to blog about during that time, and even more once I'm in school. This is going to be the beginning of much more regular posting!

Talk to you soon, looking forward to it.

The Day Awaits.

On the agenda for Thursday:
-AP Literature test
-Interview for summer job (retail!)
-Rewarding myself with fro-yo
-Waiting for the weekend

A Bite of the Apple.

I promised to post about my trip to New York and here it is. Even if it is a tiny bit belated.


On April 8th we headed to New York the day before accepted students day at FIT. We didn't have any specific plans for Friday, but New York is too far away to get there in time on Saturday if we hadn't stayed overnight. I created my own agenda for the day, so after a long bus ride and a late lunch, I decided my priority was finding a Pinkberry. Pinkberry is the ultimate in frozen yogurt, which made it a necessity of my trip. I chose mango yogurt with strawberries, chocolate chips, and a few brownie pieces. It definitely didn't disappoint. Everything was extremely fresh, and you could try out the yogurt flavors before you made a decision. My mom didn't need to test anything out, she knew she couldn't go wrong with chocolate.


After getting Pinkberry we decided just to walk towards 5th avenue. We stopped in a few stores but I didn't want to do any major shopping, it's just fun walking around the city and taking it in. After a lot of walking we ended our night back in the hotel with pizza, Criminal Minds, and cupcakes from Crumbs. We went to Crumbs when we visited New York in the fall, and now I think it's going to be a staple of our visits. Last time I got an amazing basic vanilla cupcake, but this time I tried a Reese Cup cupcake, and it was just as great.


On Saturday I woke up and got ready for Accepted Students Day. We had a little extra time so we hit up the school bookstore beforehand. I ended up with a new sweatshirt and a new mug in my possession. After the bookstore it was time for the planned activities of the day. I got to hear from students in my major first, but my favorite parts were hearing from a panel of the presidential scholars and then taking a tour of the dorms I didn't get to see last time I was there. After our day at FIT my mom asked me if I was still sure about attending, and of course my answer was yes. It is definitely a "you know when you know" sort of situation.

Everything Looks Different.

I'm starting to realize that I really can't function when my room is a mess. It makes me significantly less productive! Which means that now that I've gotten everything back to its original tidy state, I should be getting back into the swing of things (blog wise.) Which means...a post on my trip to New York in the next few days?

PS. I really do love Coco Rocha.

Like Dynamite.

Not all high school movies are created equal, but these four have something in common. They all follow characters in their senior year of high school. When I realize that I'm supposed to be the same age as some of my favorite characters, it gets a little hard for me to believe that I'm actually a senior in high school. I don't have any qualms with growing up, in fact I couldn't be more excited. But as slowly as all of my classes have dragged by, middle school seems like it was just a blink of the eye ago.

The reality of where I am in my life is a little shocking from time to time, but it also makes perfect sense. I'm attending Admitted Students Day at FIT this weekend, I can't wait to meet my future classmates and inspect the dorms. Going to school in Manhattan this fall is definitely starting to seem extremely real.