Morning bird/Night owl

I’m at a crossroads in my life people. I’ve been a certain someone most of of my 36 years, and I desperately want to become another. It’s time. It needs to happen. Change is good. (I keep telling myself that.)

You see, I’m a night owl.

(source)

That’s me…usually wide awake at midnight. (But I don’t need coffee -- I don’t even drink it.)

I’m making a conscious effort to try to become the opposite:

 

Again, without the coffee. I mean, is this a necessity? Please tell me non-coffee drinkers can be the bird.

Just look how happy he is. All alert and peppy and early. The owl just looks freaked out. I want to be the bird.

But…deep in my heart, in my soul, in my being, I just want to do this every morning:

It’s a struggle, to say the least.

I’ve always leaned toward being a later kind of person, but in my adult years it’s gotten worse and worse. When I worked full time and had to be in at 8 a.m., it was absolute torture.

I seemed to always push that 8 a.m. to 8:30, and then I’d stay till 5:30. That was just more comfortable for me.

Blogging doesn’t help. Or at least I use it as an excuse. As a blogger, my days have started and ended later every year. It’s gotten progressively worse. Initially it was because I’ve always blogged and done computer business while my son is asleep. (Which is just a personal decision for us.)

But now, I must come up with a better solution. I’m determined to make a change and I need help and reassurance that it can happen!

Help. me.

Because my kiddo goes to pre-K so few hours a week, it’s hard for me to blog while he’s gone. That’s a time for me to get stuff done, you know what I mean? And it’s just not in me to be functional (in that way) in the morning when he’s gone.

I’m also a procrastinator to a T – always have been. I was a huddle in the library and cram for an exam kind of person, and that always served me well.

Once I wrote a paper well ahead of time, to see if I could do it. It was the worst grade I got on a paper in my four year college career.

My mind just functions better when I have pressure, (that’s why I don’t schedule posts for the week – I have to come up with content by the day and write it as it comes) and it’s the same thing with working earlier in the day. I get in a zone when I write at night, there’s just something about it.

I can’t get in that zone during the day.

It’s weird.

But I’m determined to change my life where this is concerned. Why? Many reasons. One, I just feel out of touch with the world. It’s a yucky feeling waking up later than 90 percent of the world, (at least it feels like that) and knowing so much productivity has been happening while I slept.

I want to fall asleep when my husband does – I’m tired of being the only person awake in our home for hours on end at night. (Sometimes it’s nice, but lately it feels more and more lonely!)

My kiddo goes to school next year, and like it or not, I need to figure this out. I want to be awake and present for him and have plenty of time in the mornings for him to get prepared for the days too. Right now he would much rather go to bed later and sleep in (and that he does – it rocks). He’s turning into me. :)

The world is not a night owl world. Plan and simple. I mean, no one is on Facebook at 2 a.m. ;) And have you seen the television at that time? Thank goodness for the DVR. (And I ask you, where was the DVR for the 3 a.m. feedings five years ago??)

And finally, I’m working out (pretty intensely) again, and I find I feel SO much better when I start out my day with exercise. I feel more productive, more alert…just better. No, not just better, TONS better. It feels GREAT.

But my body fights me. It hates me. ;) I can easily stay up till 2 a.m. – if I had my own clock, that would be my bedtime. If I’m engrossed in a good book, I can stay up till 3 or 3:30 no problem.

I feel more comfortable working out late at night – it is totally not unusual for me to work out at 11 p.m. I know, I see some of your mouths gaping open. Close that, you’ll catch flies. ;)

Thing is, I’m OK once I’m UP. It’s just the getting there that’s the problem. I’ll hit snooze five or six times some mornings. And it doesn’t seem to matter how much sleep I get – my body just struggles no matter what time I went to bed.

I’ve actually done some research in my quest to become a morning lark. It’s quite fascinating too. Turns out whether you are a morning or evening kind of person is largely genetic (which I figured, since my mom is the exact same way). It also is kind of ingrained in you – your body clock (circadian rhythm) is just set a certain way and your body fights to follow it.

What I found most interesting is the consistent traits for each type of person. Studies have shown that night owls have higher intelligence/I.Q. (I don’t believe that personally), and tend to be more creative (that I totally believe.)

If you’re an early birdy and are offended by that, don’t be, because owls also score lower on tests than morning folks (isn’t that odd, considering the intelligence thing?) and are more likely to suffer from depression and/or addictions.

And you lucky morning folks seem to test much better and get better grades than people like me. And you catch the worm. I mean…who doesn’t want to catch the stinkin’ worm?!

I do. I really, really do.

Overall, I just know it needs to change. I want to eat breakfast in the morning (night owls rarely do), I want to not feel rushed and frantic in the mornings (night owls usually do). 

The best part of all this research is that I have hope – it most definitely can happen.

So, I’m trying. Lately, I’ve been forcing myself to go bed earlier. I now recognize that watching  just one more TV show or reading one more blog at 1 a.m. isn’t going to change my life for the better. Eight hours of sleep will. I realize that working out first thing in the morning makes me feel so. much. better. than when I exercise at night.

I want to help my kiddos lean toward a morning bird life too. My stepdaughter is at college and is already on the dark side with me…and when she gets a full time job, it’s gonna hurt. And I don’t want the Bub sleeping away his summer mornings when his friends are already out playing at 9 a.m.

It’s time for a change. And I’m working on it. :)

So, tell me. Are you are a lark or an owl? Do you like what you are, or do you struggle like me? Have any of you owls-at-heart changed to a morning person? Do you get up without an alarm clock? I’d love to hear your tips and anything that’s worked for you!

Thanks in advance! I’m off to get ready for bed. We’ll see how this goes. Cheer me on!!! ;)

Styling the new bookcase

Hey heyyyy! Hope you had a GREAT weekend and Monday! I spent a bit of time styling a new bookshelf – which I find just plain fun. If I’ve got time and the resources (aka STUFF from the basement), I find it oddly relaxing.

I totally get in a ZONE.

It usually takes me some time though, so I go through a process. A lot of placing something, stepping back, moving something, stepping back, switching something, stepping back. Lots of hokey pokey. And turn yourself around.

You last saw our living room after our new floors were put down last fall:

Pretty much immediately I started making changes. :)

I installed wainscoting around the room a couple years ago and it’s always bugged me that you couldn’t see any of it the way the room was set up.

I did some rearranging, which I liked, and then a few weeks ago came across a PERFECT addition for the space between the windows. It was a tall bookcase from HomeGoods:

I LOVED the detail on the sides and that it was open on the back. (So you can see some of my hard work.)

I’m kind of obsessed with the colors that are in the drapery fabric in this room:

(You can see more about that fabric on my FAQ page.)

That deep peacock blue is my favorite. (And to think I never had an ounce of blue in this house only a couple years ago!) I’m trying to pull that and more of the green into the space.

I styled the shelves (or decorated them, but “styling” seems to be the word nowadays) over the weekend and wanted to share how I made it happen. The only challenge was that I wanted to use what I had – no shopping allowed. Although some of it I had gotten recently, it just happened to work perfectly. :)

One thing I do as I’m working on a space like this is to take pictures – it really gives me a different perspective to see it on the camera screen. I don’t know why, but it does.

The top shelf holds some of the more recent finds, and they were from a local antique shop. I just discovered it and I can’t believe it’s been under my nose all this time! I can’t wait to go back. :)

I found the most adorable brass owl, and had to add him to the shelves somewhere. The vintage books were just beautiful and worked with the colors in this space perfectly:

I had to add something to the back to cover the meeeellions of holes on that wall. I can patch them but don’t have the wall paint anymore, and it’s not made anymore either (and I know from experience it wouldn’t color match perfectly.) Soooo…I have holes. (I have an plan to rectify this though…it’s number 464 on my list.)

The little pot was from Goodwill, isn’t it cute?:

The faux plant is from IKEA – it is the most realistic fake plant I’ve ever seen!

The next shelf is pretty self explanatory:

Ack. Darn HOLES!

The wood dough bowl was a Wuslu.com find – I LOVE it. I just filled it with my rattan balls and dollar store mossy rocks that I had.

I was going to add something to the back, but it got too busy.

Moving on down, I tried to pull more of that beautiful blue, and the green from the drapes in with the next shelf:

The ceramic candle holder was a clearance find at Cost Plus a few months ago, and the green jar was a Goodwill find years ago. (It was covered in old rattan and I took it off.)

That photo is a good example of how I like to use accessories that make your eye move up and down. I use that little rule often and it always works.

The bottom shelf had one more Cost Plus item – a storage box I picked up a few weeks ago, a couple more books I already had in those lovely colors:

That pedestal was horribly tarnished when I found it, but this stuff always does the trick:

With a little elbow grease it made it shine!:

After much hokey pokeying, I finally came up with a display I liked:

I’m pretty happy with it, considering I was using stuff from my stash.

And ignore the missing drapery panel – those are getting a little redo too. ;)

I LOVE how the bookcase fills in the this space between the windows:

It fits perfectly, and it’s got tons of character too, so unique!

I love looking back to see how this space has transformed over the years – first the red and black days:

You can see how to knock off those Ballard Design shelves here.

Here it is last year with showing the difference new drapes and some color can make:

And here it is now, sans a couple drapes:

Before and afters are my very favorite things. :) Other than fried chicken. And reality TV.

Believe it or not, I don’t have a lot of spaces I can decorate with accessories in our house, so I love having a new spot!

I hope to change up a few more things in here in the next few months. Me saying that out loud means it will probably happen next year. Whatever. I can hope.

So, do you struggle with accessorizing? Styling? Whatever? ;) Do you have tricks that work for you? Anymore I head straight to Pinterest for ideas too, or even catalogs. They have some GREAT inspiration! (I even have a “vignette” board on Pinterest!)