It’s amazing what a few days of peace and quiet and a little break from the normal hustle and bustle can do for you.  It’s like a steaming cup of tea for the soul.  Except I don’t really like tea… so let’s go with apple cider.  But probably like…boozy apple cider.  I mean, if we’re being honest.

After my recent long weekend, for the first time in a long time, I was actually feeling kind of relaxed and ok with things in general.  I know we all have our hot button issues that stress us out (for me: money, health/fitness, overwhelming amounts of work to do, making my home an acceptable and healthy environment for my little family to live in.. the ‘yushe.).  Whatever they are, we have them.  And normally I’m sweating and twitching due to at least two of them at a time, and trying to shove the rest of my worries under an area rug that I’m still not convinced actually matches the furniture.
See where I’m going here?

So things were seemingly going swimmingly and then… out of nowhere, like a landmine, I ascended down a great decline.  Little fires started popping up faster than I could put them out and left me scrambling for my sanity all over again.

Exhibit A: I accidentally consigned my favorite pair of jeans.  (Update: they’ve since been reclaimed and reunited with their rightful owner.  VERY close call though.)

Exhibit B: We ran out of oil for our furnace. Again.  (Yes, I realize that we are clearly idiots who do not understand the concept of checking your oil levels, but hey, we’re new at this homeowner thing.  And maybe having feeling in all our extremities is not a priority for us.)   So because of our lack of said fossil fuels, I ended up hardly sleeping at all Tuesday night (mostly shivering), and once the pup needed to go out at 5 am, I was officially up and sleep was not coming back round my way.  This made for a super pleasant Wednesday, let me tell you.

Exhibit C.  I almost got backed into in my gym parking lot for the 2nd time.  I’m confident when I say that if that had actually happened again, my gym membership would most likely be as of right now revoked due to the scene that would have went down.

Once the wrath of Wednesday had finally come to a close, and I walked through my front door defeated and tired, I was told the following within 30 seconds:
1. My puppy ate my new library book.  Which I haven’t even read.  And now coincidentally own.  But can’t read.  Because he ate it.
2. My puppy also broke his retractable leash, which as it turns out, is now non-retractable.
3.  We still have no oil.

Ok.  So this week might not be living up to the great optimistic start it once had.  But you see how the two pictures of my finished wreaths are different?  (Hint: One was just the plain wire…)  What had happened was I came home after dropping off my favorite jeans to be sold at a much lower price than I originally paid (alright, I’ll let it go), and I noticed my wreath’s balls were… drooping.  They had started coming off the wire and were sadly hanging there, minutes from falling to the ground.  So what I did I do?  I picked up my sad droopy balls, improved their foundation, and look at my balls now.  Hanging tough, like little champs.

So as this metaphor implies, I have decided to pick up the droopy balls of a week I started having and make it better.  It’s already Thursday (looking up already), I’m back in full swing with my gym routine and for the second month in a row, I hit  my sales goal.  So what if I now own 3/4 ths of Bethenny Frankel’s, “A Place of Yes” and I have to wear 2 pairs of sweatpants to sleep tonight.  These are all problems that in the grand scheme of things aren’t really all that bad.  So rock on, new-found sense of optimism.  I don’t see you round these parts too often, so let’s run with it.

After all, I do have the prettiest holiday wreath on the block.
Can’t stop my shine.

DIY Holiday Wreath
(Inspired by 2 Junk Chix)
You’ll Need:
18″ wire wreath
at least 5 packs of 6, multi-sized styrofoam balls (can always return unused)
Yarn (colors of your choice)
Hot glue gun and glue sticks
Roll of burlap
Additional embellishments of your liking

Directions:  Cover the wire wreath by tightly wrapping it in burlap, then gluing to secure.  Wrap the yarn around each foam ball so it looks like an actual ball of yarn, again, gluing to secure ends of thread.  Place balls around the wreath and secure with hot glue, also gluing them to one-another for extra support.  Add extras to fill in holes and add some texture.  Hang and enjoy!

*Edited 11/27/12: There was a very similar version of this on ABC’s The Chew this morning!