Bookin' It

So, during my unintentional blogging hiatus last week I took on a small project (well, I had planned on it being a small project--it turned out to be a bit more than I had intended).

You see, I have quite a collection of books. It's not, you know, library large, but it's pretty expansive. Many of my books are sitting in boxes in my parents' attack, but some have been traveling from apartment to apartment with me for the past few years. While I had a semi-servicable bookshelf that held, maybe, a third of my books, it obviously was not doing it for me. At our previous apartment, I had stacks of books three feet high surrounding the shelf, sort of defeating the purpose of having the books out, because you could never find what you needed!

Now that we're at the house we've been able to pull some key pieces of furniture out of storage, the big one being the fairly large bookshelf from my grandparents' house. We moved it into our upstairs hallway and I made it my job to take all my books and arrange them on the bookshelf.

However, being the bibliophile that I am, I could hardly just throw the books on the shelves and call it good, especially after going all that time having to search and search for the book I wanted. I decided to sort through the books by genre or subject (the rule being that if four or more books fit a subject area, they got their own section).

What's more, I took it a step further and created labels.

Yep. Labels.

The text is a bit clearer in real life and they are, in my opinion, seriously adorable. And making them was super, duper easy.

1. I went to shabbyblogs.com and checked out their headers. I chose the one above, but there were plenty more.
2. I downloaded the header into my computer and saved the file. I then uploaded the header into a picture editing program (I used Picnik, but any editor that has a text option would work).
3. Then I found the part of the program that allowed me to add text to the picture. I picked a font, centered the text box and added the genre or subject to each picture.
4. Then I resaved the picture with the new text to my laptop, then printed it.
5. After I printed each labe, I mounted them on a stiff paper, leaving just enough paper over the top so I could fold it down and set the labels to rest on the bookshelf.

So, after a few hours for a couple of nights organizing the books (it took me that long because I had to readjust shelf sizes a few time and had to switch up how I was going to organize the books), and then another couple of evenings making the labels, I was able to through everything together.

Okay, so the coolest things on this bookshelf (besides my extensive fantasy collection)? My Havard Classics Collection, which we found here at the new house when we moved in. They were stacked up behind the door of the laundry room.


Here is just a small sampling of what we found. There's everything from Homer to Grimm's fairy tales. I'm pumped.



What's almost as cool as this part of the find are these:

Now, I'm part of the Sparknotes generation--I could hop on my laptop and find endless fodder for analytical essays for books and plays I never got around to reading fully digesting...Not that I ever actually used Sparknotes... However, I remember one of my education professors talking about Masterplots, a series of books she could find at her university library when she was working on her undergrad degree that served a similar purpose to Sparknotes (not that she ever used them, of course...). I thought it was totally hilarious that I, the girl who never, ever would use Sparknotes or anything like it, and a recently graduated Education major, would have a small stack of books choc full of plot giveaways.

Okay, maybe it's only me who thinks this is wicked cool/wicked funny, but I thought I'd share.

So, with all this said and done, and with all the recent book posts I've had up (the top tens, this, a few book reviews in the past), I've sort of decided I might reserect my book blog, So, What Are You Reading? The link is here, but I'm not sure when I'll get anything up there. I've got a few entries on here that I want to do (I'm feeling a little backed up since I didn't write anything for so long!), and then we'll see about the other blog.

Now, if only I could get more readers... :-)

My New Love

I was wondering as I wrote my previous post what I would do about things I found online that I liked and then I remembered I was recently "invited" to join Pinterest. For someone who LOVES favorite-ing and bookmarking random stuff online, this is made for me.

The basic premise is you "pin" things you find that you like online and share them with others. So, that cute dress you spotted on Mocloth the other day? You can easily "pin" it to a board you create on Pinterest and can consult it later (maybe you are about to go dress shopping and want to find something similar or you need a quick way of getting back to the dress when you have cash to buy it). It's a neat visual way to look at what catches your fancy or pick out common trends in your style AND it keeps everything in one convenient location (much like a notebook filled with magazine clippings :-) ).

Where We Stand

Schools over. I'm not currently employed (which may change soon, not sure). We're moving in two weeks. What the hell am I going to do with myself?

Well, the obvious answer to me would be to plop myself down in front of my laptop and/or T.V. and watch Real Housewives episodes and flip through some sort of crap magazine or book.

Unfortunately, I have this naggy side of my personality that prevents me from becoming a vegetable and I guess I'm going to have to something.

Other than send out as many job applications as I can, possibly substitute teach in our school district, take care of my daughter, and take on a few projects at the new house, I have two major things to do: organize (something I'm very bad at) and pack (something I'm very good at, via experience, but not exactly an activity I enjoy, especially when spread out over a couple of weeks).


As of last week, this (see above) is what I had done. I was busy, okay! Today I have a bit more to show for my efforts, having taken Friday as I scrambled to pick up our apartment for my parents' and BFF's arrival to put away a few nonessentials. It's funny, as you pack, you really begin to realize how much crap you really have and how much of it you do actually use. I have to ask myself: Am I actually going to use this within the next two weeks? In a lot of cases, the answer is yes.

So, in addition to trying to get as much packed and put away as possible, I'm attempting to get organized and get rid of some stuff. One of the biggest things I need to clear out are my magazines. I have...a lot of magazines.

The plan had been, oh so long ago, to go through these magazines and pull out articles and recipes that I wanted and then file them way. It never happened, mostly because I never had the time. Somehow writing papers about dead guys became more important. But now I have the time and I've got two seperate magazine-related projects going on.

First of all, I'm taking all the recipes I had pulled previously, but hadn't done anything with, and computer-itizing them (inspired by my cousin Kate's efforts, seen here). I'm using the site Say Mmm (which is great, but the name inspires really immature thoughts, likely because I've spent far too much time around adolescent boys in the last few months). After I'm done with THAT, I'm going to go through the rest of my magazines and put in more recipes that I like/want to try.

The other bit I've got going on is my notebook (I haven't figured out a clever name for it). This is where all my micellaneous magazine clippings go. I paperclip them in and attach the occasional note.

I like this idea, because it keeps all  my stuff readily accessibly and I can consult it quickly and easily. I sort of foresee, however, a time when I accumulate a lot more articles and things and need to find a better way to keep everything. Maybe nice big binders with page protectors organized by subject. Because I'm a loser.