AWOL

You must be wondering where I've been. I apologize for going AWOL this past week. Unfortunately I was fired from my primary job and it hit me kind of hard. I've never been fired before and was in no way prepared for it. At first I didn't think about the blog at all and when it did finally come to mind I seriously considered dumping it all together. I mean where do I find the money for projects when I have no income. 

Watching my beautiful Butterfly, my staunchest supporter, check religiously to see if I've posted anything new made me realize that there is at least one person out there that looks forward to these posts and I couldn't let her down. Therefore I have decided to continue my blog. 

The new me will be using items from around the house to make fabulously creative crafts and food. Everyone's got to eat right?

This has never happened to me before and at first I was quite lost as I'm sure you would be too. So let's just take this one step at a time. 

Step 1:  

Take a day to calm down, cool off and wallow in self pity. Trust me you won't be able to think clearly for a couple of days anyway. You might also want to take some Tylenol preemtiviely at this point because later that day you will have one whopper of a headache from all the stress. 

Everyone is different, for me I prefer solitude at this juncture and so I took it. But if you are the kind of person who needs a shoulder you can and should lean on your friends and family. They will be nothing but supportive. 

Step 2:  Now that you have taken a day, no more than two, get on the ball. Find out if there is an appeals process for your termination. They won't tell you but you usually only have a few days to request one. If you are unsure about anything ask others and yes you can call up the HR department and ask them questions as well. You'll find out interesting things like there is such a thing as unemployment (seriously I've never been fired, no idea) and that future employers can only verify dates of employment. 

Step 3:  Speaking of unemployment, get online and apply for it. Or at least read up on it first. For instance I found out I can't apply for it until next week because I made over $380 in income for this week. So for me it's a waiting game until next week. No problem, the website had links to some job sites which I took full opportunity of looking at. 

Step 4:  Which brings us to step 4. Look at some job sites. Get a feel for what's out there and take a second to realize that there are jobs out there. You WILL be okay. Also take a moment to think whether or not you want to break into a new industry or job. This is a time to reinvent yourself. Take a look at other types of jobs and figure out how your experiences and skills fit into them. 

Step5:  Okay so at this point you may have seen a job that popped out at you, go to apply for it right away with hope in your heart and realized you don't even have a resume because you haven't needed one for quite some time. Don't fret, now's the time to set one up. 

Pull out a piece of paper and brainstorm what jobs you have had with dates of employment, lists of duties (tip: go online for job descriptions of the job and utilize key words from the job descriptions), skills and any contributions you made to the company. It can be daunting looking at a blank resume template.   Brainstorming some things ahead of time in an unstructured format can keep the pressure off. You may also like to brainstorm types of jobs that sound interesting to you and find out more about them. 

Okay. Now that you have some basics, fill out a more structured resume. You can use a template from Word or just make one up yourself. Go online and look up sample resumes for the types of jobs you are interested in, find one that is professional, fits the needs of the jobs and feels comfortable for you. Loosely fill it out and set it aside. 

Step 6:  Okay we've done a lot in just a few days time. But you may be feeling downhearted and frustrated at this point. I was too. All the waiting and hunting, not knowing what the future will hold. 

Time to gain back your confidence, your spark, you will need this for the upcoming interviews. Do something. Anything really, that makes you feel like you are contributing. Volunteer for an organization, help a friend or neighbor move, or something as simple as I did. 

How I gained back my spark. 

It's the middle of winter here and with temperatures dropping an old house is freezing. Needing to save money we have cut down on our heating usage leaving us with just blankets. So my mom and I went around the house and insulated the windows with cardboard. A little ghetto, I know, but it has helped immensely and, bonus, made me feel as if I accomplished something. Thanks mom. 

On the same note. Call around to all your bills, the phone bill for instance, and try to get a better rate. I saved $70 a month by changing to a different cell plan. One that incidentally was better than the one I currently had. 

Step 7:  Now it's time to get back to business. Serious job hunting. Okay before we can refine our resume we need to know what jobs we are applying for. So go a hunting. At first look for something that will both pay the bills and be exciting for you. As the weeks wear on you can lower your standards, but for now hold out for a few days and go for a dream job. Or at least one you will be comfortable with. 

But just remember, if it comes down to it at some point you will need a job, any job whether it pays good or not. If it comes to this point don't be afraid or too proud. Just take it and keep working on finding that dream job. 

By now you have found some jobs and you have a basic resume. From here comes the tedious part, tweaking your resume to align with the job in question. Pinterest has all kinds of valuable information on how to do this with dos and don'ts of the trade. Utilize it. Also research the company and job you are applying for to figure out the key skills and traits they are looking for. Without fabricating fake skills, etc. use these key words in your own resume to gain their attention and make you stand out as the perfect candidate. 

Once you have honed the resume down to a perfect point, practiced your interview questions and brushed off the suit, send it out into the universe and apply, apply, apply. 

There you have it folks. You are well on your way to getting back on your feet. Don't forget to apply for unemployment in the meantime, keep busy to avoid depression and most of all remember that you will be okay. 

Alas that is all I have for you today as this is where I am in the process. Stay tuned and wish me luck. 

P.S if you know of any jobs in the Omaha, NE area send them my way. :)

Curtains

After we bought our house we realized that the previous owners took the curtains with them. Bummer but it wasn't worth losing our house over so we let it go. So instead we have these lovely tarps up over the windows in the meantime. Hubby has been bugging me to make the curtains so yesterday I decided to do just that. 

Ages ago when I decided to make my own curtains instead of buying them I used a formula from this site (http://xoimagine.com/how-to-calculate-yardage-for-window-coverings-drapes-and-curtains/) to figure out how many yards of fabric I needed and then I went to the local fabric store and bought some home decor fabric. 

What do you think?  Pretty huh. And only $7 per yard. I suggest waiting until the fabric goes on super sale or it can get really pricey. 

The next step was trying to figure out how I wanted to hang my curtains. I'm thinking just a simple rod that slides into a pocket along the top edge of the curtain. I thought about lining the curtain but decided against it to save on money. 

Most of the pins I looked at involved curtains with lining so I just decided to wing it.  First I found out the width and length I needed the curtains to be. For instance, in the living room I have three windows in series on one wall that are about 128" wide and 80" from the top of the window to the floor. There were several ways to hang a curtain or curtains and I decided for this bank of windows to have two panels for each window, one on either side of each window. Kind of like this. 

After crunching the math I decided I would need six panels (my fabric width was 54" and I needed to cover 128" with extra width added for fullness). Six panels would work great giving me one panel on each side of the three windows.   If you smell something burning right now it's just the smell of my brain working overtime to figure all this out. 

I'll try to make it simple. You figure out the entire width you need to cover and multiply it by 2.5 for fullness. Add a few inches for seam allowance. Then divide that by the width of your fabric. This will give you the number of panels needed to cover that distance. Now you can choose to sew panels together to get one wide curtain or have several panels to cover the distance like me. It works out nicely because I have three windows all lined up next to each other. 

Now that I know how many panels I need I made a test panel to make sure all my measurements were correct. Since the height I need to cover is 80" I added 2" for a bottom hem and 8" for a pocket along the top. Again had to use some math to figure that out. I wasn't sure what diameter rod I would be using so I decided to just go big.  Adding 8" to the top will be a little less than four inches doubled over after seam allowance and will accommodate up to a 2" diameter rod comfortably. 

Okay now that all that was taken care of I cut out my fabric, 90" in length the entire width of the fabric. 

The salvedge had a nice frayed edge that looked neat so I simply folded it over on the sides a 1/4" and sewed a straight seam on the sides. 

Next I sewed the pocket along the top edge of the fabric by folding it over a 1/4", stitching a straight seam then folding it over 4" and sewing another straight seam. 

As you can see I used chip clips to keep it straight while I sewed because I hate ironing. 

Then we hung it up to check the length, which was perfect yay!  Then I stitched a two inch hem along the bottom to finish it all off. 

One down five to go. Wish me luck.