Sunday, September 14, 2014

I'm… awesome? Yes, I'm awesome!



I've been thinking about the future in terms of my career recently.  My kids are getting older and soon I will feel comfortable leaving them alone at home for a few hours so I can pursue the full-time career I put on hold when my daughter was born.  I had a career I loved in publishing in my "previous life."  I started off as a project manager then as the years went on, I did design and moved to a different department and started doing some marketing for them.  And before that was another job that I wasn't crazy about, but I felt I did pretty well with what I had.

So anyway, I thought it was time to dust off the resume and start thinking about the upcoming year(s) and what I wanted to do with my life.  After my stay-at-home mom stint, I started working the last three+ years at something I found very fulfilling but not a "career" (as my bank account will tell you).  For two years I worked with ENL students, then last year and now this one with special needs kids.  I wanted to add that to the resume and update all of my other older job stuff on there.  I know the rules of resumes have changed over the years and I didn't want to start off looking for my new career with a horribly outdated resume.  I contacted a young friend who I knew had a knack for jazzing up resumes that actually get you phone calls for interviews.  I was worried that my resume sucked… that there was nothing interesting on it.  That I wouldn't be able to compete with people who didn't take time out of the rat race to be a mom.  I contacted my friend in the hopes that she could doctor it up to make me look good.  (Ask any of my friends- I can be horribly insecure!!!)  So I send my friend my resume and pray that she won't laugh at my old ass and think I'm incredibly lame and react like:  photo yolandagag.gif

Then I get a response from her after she had time to look it over… "Wow, this is really impressive!"  That was so not the response I thought I'd get.  I thought I'd hear "Damn this is going to take me all weekend and then some to spice this up!"  So she did polish it off a bit- took some older job stuff off, changed a bit of the formatting, used a different, clean font but that's about it.  So I started to REALLY look at my resume.  Promotions, corporate awards, an award I was given by co-workers, a deal that I made on my own that had saved my department alone thousands of dollars just on the art budget, and so on and so on.  And then looking at what I've done while working with these students the last few years.  The connections I've made, the kids I've helped.  Plus the volunteer work that I've done locally over the years, community relations, advertising, etc.  And lastly, the small home-based business I created and have done very well with!  It made me realize that I was selling myself short.  After being "MOM" for 11 years, I forgot that I'm my own person too, and damn I'm AWESOME!!!  :o)  I then sent out the resume to a few "professional" friends for any tips and suggestions and got positive feedback as well from people who never knew me in my professional life but were not surprised by what they read.
I sure wish I could always see myself the way that others do.  Not sure why we tend to sell ourselves short.

Now all I have to say about myself is:
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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Dance Moms TV Party

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One of my daughter's favorite shows is Dance Moms (now you just hush your judgey thoughts. I'm sure your kid watches a shitty show too).  She was really excited for the season premier (seriously… she looked forward to it all summer) and asked if she could have a couple of her "Dance Mom fan" friends over to watch it and sleep over.  I thought it sounded like fun and said ok.  Tallulah was just having 3 friends over but wanted to make some fun homemade invites because I recently got out my old rubber stamps and inks and we have been making some cool cards for the last couple of weeks.  So invites were made and handed out.  I told Tanner to have a friend come over too so he could do some dude stuff and wouldn't have to put up with a room full of crazy Dance girls.  On the day of the season premier, I made some dance-themed cupcakes and we ordered a couple of pizzas for the kids.



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The invites cracked me up.  We had fun looking for funny pictures to use and this is what she came up with.  So we stamped, cut, glued and completed the invites.


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That tv stamp and the crazy spiral/target design were my favorite stamps back in the day when everyone was stamping (mid 90s?).  Anyway, it was fun to get these back out again.  Now Tallulah is really into stamping and making cards too!

The only other thing I did was make the cupcakes.  Tallulah wanted them to be dance-themed.  The closest thing I could find in my baking supplies were these ballerinas.  I liked them but the pink and blue just didn't seem right for a girls Dance Moms tv party.

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Soooo, I got out these Sharpie paint pens.  I bought them awhile ago and never had a chance to use them.  Glad I remembered I had them, otherwise they would have sat in the bottom of the kitchen junk drawer until they were all dried up!  The colors were fun and festive- just what i wanted.  Tallulah and I sat at the kitchen table together and jazzed up the blue and pink ballerinas.

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We slopped a bit on the base of the ballerinas but I didn't care. I knew it would be covered in icing.
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I made some strawberry and blueberry cupcakes to put them on.  I had made these exact cupcakes the other day for a friend and i wanted to make another small batch for Tallulah's tv party because they just came out so darn cute.  This is blueberry season out here and i just got 15 pounds of blueberries so I had plenty to use in the blue cake.  I got a bunch of local Plymouth strawberries back in June and what we didn't eat, I cooked into a strawberry puree/reduction and froze it specifically for my strawberry cakes!
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I loooooove these neon sprinkles!  They're my favorites and looked really fun on these.

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I used the neon sprinkles on half and on the other half and I used this awesome silver and gold star glitter!

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Everyone had a good time!  Last time I peeked upstairs was around 1am and the lights were finally turned off and the girls had gone to sleep.  Tanner had fallen asleep in my bed watching tv with my husband long ago.  I enjoyed the precious silence by staying up and watching an awesome 80's movie then went to bed around 2:30am.  Needless to say I have been tired all day.
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Where to buy:

The silver and gold star glitter, the ballerina toppers and jumbo baking cups:
http://www.layercakeshop.com