Mushy Ol’ Me

People change your lives in expected ways. From a simple “good morning” to a passionate “I love you,” words and actions constantly morph who you are. I say this from experience. I’m currently experiencing my first love. I didn’t know it for a while. Then I knew, and wasn’t sure if I was ready emotionally. Things happened, as they always do in our world, but the love just grew. This wasn’t the ordinary relationship that I had signed up for, and that has made me ever so happy.

I was never really a happy kid. I was always pushed extremely hard by my family to be the best in everything. It was exhausting and confusing. I never made decisions for myself, and my opinions weren’t heard. As I grew older, I was a realist, not planning too far in the future because I knew I may not be lucky enough to live that long. I didn’t look forward to love or companionship or a family. They were risks, and I was taught to seek guaranteed successes, for that was logical. (I swear I wasn’t raised by Vulcans.) As I grew up, I could feel that something was missing. Like all people who search for something missing in their lives, I had to look in the wrong places to find out that they were wrong. Finally, something that I thought would be the wrong place turned out to be exactly what I was missing. One cold, blustery, February Friday, I took my first important risk. I met a boy, a nervous, extremely talkative, polite boy.

Fast forward about three years, I’m a woman, this boy’s a man, and he’s my greatest, closest friend. I always wanted a best friend. Someone who was on the same mental wavelength as myself. Someone who knew me well. Someone who encouraged me to leave my comfort zone and try new things. Someone who would pick up some of my quirks and popular phrases as I did his or hers. And I may have known when I met him. It was different. We had talked on and off for around a year before ever meeting. I knew him without knowing who he was. But now, man oh man. People probably hate when we’re together because we’re the mushiest, most talkative, craziest pair. But we’re also the happiest. I know my parents won’t admit it until probably I’m older, but I know they know that I’m at my happiest, and have been for three years. It’s one of those relationships where even silence speaks.

This relationship, not just romantically, has chipped away at my Self, further revealing the beautiful sculpture that is me. I’ve learned that my opinion truly does matter and that trying my best is the best I can do. I’ve learned to let go and relax. I’ve learned to go on adventures and try new things. I’ve learned to push the boundaries. I’ve learned to only be afraid of things that are worthy of my fear. I’ve begun to find myself and find confidence in myself. I’ve realized how little others’ opinions of me matter. Who cares if my outfit isn’t the definition of fashionable to that person over there? I’ve started to see my style as an inside joke between me and I. No one else understands, and they really shouldn’t. It’s personal and only really relevant to me. And my eating habits? I wanna be healthy and fit, but I’ve also learned to live a little. Having a little of that butter or McDonald’s won’t kill me. I’ve also started to look at life for hopefully and more long-term. I plan life projects instead of age deadlines. I’m just overall happier. And no, it’s not all because I made this friend and then fell in love. That’s a part of it. But I think it’s just because I’ve been growing into myself. I also have my college education to thank. I’m only a year and a half in, but college really has opened my eyes to this world so much. It has taught me lessons that no textbook could ever show. It’s exposed me to so many different types of people and sparked my interest in countless unexpected ways, including rekindling my love for writing, hence this blog!

I know this post has been pretty mushy, and so have all my recent posts. But I actually am working on something new and exciting–an original story just for this blog! The first part will be out soon!! As usual, thank you for reading my post and following! I would love to hear from you in the comments!

How to: Ceramic Flower Pot Bells

Hello, everyone! This is my first Pin-tried, or rather Pin-spired (see what I did there?) post! Because I’m an elementary education major, I’m currently taking a class on teaching music to children, and I had a project in which I had to create an original instrument from found materials that made a loud and clear sound and was aesthetically pleasing. After driving myself nuts for a whole day and coming up with nothing, I decided to resort to that holy grail of good ideas, Pinterest. You can find my inspiration for my instrument here! I wound up creating amazing sounding bells from flower pots! This is a really simple, easy project that you could do as a teacher or with the kids!

Materials Needed:

4 ceramic flower pots (with a hole on each bottom!) of varying sizes

4 tiny ceramic flower pots (with a hole on each bottom!) of the same size

some shoelace-type rope

scissors

rhinestones, stickers, and other decorations

Instructions:

1) First, cut your thin rope a decent length (you want it to be a little too long and trim it rather than it be too short!!). Feed your rope through the hole of one of the mini pots. Tie a good number of knots from the inside of the pot. You should be able to hold the top of the string and your little pot will safely dangle from the bottom.

2) Feed the top of your string through the first pot. While holding the string, hold your larger pot and ring your bell. Figure out where you would like to tie your knots to get your desired sound. (When I hold my bells, the little pot sticks out a little from the bottom. When the little pot is too far in, it will scrape along the sides of the larger pot inside of strike the sides.)

3) Tie a good number of knots. Your knots should be on top of your larger pot, like in the picture above.

4) Ring your bell! It should sound loud and clear. If you are not happy with its sound, undo your latest knots and readjust your pots and then re-knot.

5) Repeat the process with your remaining pots.

6) Decorate your flower pot bells! Go wild!

I hope that you enjoy your bells and get really creative with them! Different shapes of pots will create tons of different sounds! My yellow bell (the second from the left) makes a slightly different sound from the others because of its more narrow shape, which was really interesting! This is my first major teaching project, and I can’t wait to do more!!