Recycling Party- Great Girls Night Out

We all have it.  The bag or box of clothes or shoes that we really do mean to donate to charity, yet it still sits there neglected and unused in the dark scary recesses of our closets.  Well ladies (and gents for those of you who like fashion) dig those old outfits out and invite your friends over for some vino and play dress up.  It's called a recycling party and it's not a new concept, but unfortunately this idea still hasn't caught on.  In this economy when times are so tight, a recycling party is a great way of trading items you no longer want for treasures your friends are willing to give up. 

So dig up the stuff you mean to sell in a yard sell, throw together some finger foods and snacks and Facebook all your pals asking them to bring their used clothes, shoes, purses, ball caps, backpacks, jewelry and anything else they want to unload.  Organize the items into groups.  Then let everyone go to town.  It's FREE shopping!  It has all the gratification of spending the night at the mall with your girlfriends and none of the guilt associated with a high credit card bill.  So grab up a funky new evening bag, some retro suiting, seriously fierce ballet flats and a fabulous new formal for FREE.  Just open your home and present the idea to your posse, trust me, they will come and they will have a blast.  Did you notice that other than the costs of snacks, this is FREE? 

Live Life Passionately

A few months ago, I got into an argument with a friend about passion.  Writing passionately, living passionately, being passionate.  I may have written about this before, but as the months have gone by, I can see his side more clearly.  So the question I'm asking is how to live life more passionately?

Passionate means "strong intense emotional response, whether sexual, loving, angry, or hateful."  As a woman, I've often thought of passion in the loving and sexual sense.  I am a woman of the heart and I love to love.  For me, that is being passionate, loving my husband, my family, my kids, my friends.  I am passionate about them.  I want to see them happy and successful.  I care intensely about them and their welfare.  They inspire in me strong emotional responses from extreme joy to the depths of despair.  This constant emotional rollar coaster is exhausting, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

Now my friend, he's passionate about bikes.  He lives, eats, drinks, breathes bmx.  He wants nothing more than to ride.  He writes about it.  He has a bike team.  He has an online store that sells bmx stuff.  That is his passion.  See for yourself at http://www.plussizebmx.com/.

My husband is passionate about beer.  Everything about it, makes him happy.  He loves to brew it, to drink it, to talk and joke about it.  He writes a blog about it too at http://www.hop-daddy.blogspot.com/.  He visits breweries and plans our date nights around where he can find a new beer to try.  Beer is his passion.

So seeing their enthusiasm, seeing their passion for something outside of themselves, makes me question my own passions.  If I find that the most passionate things in my life are other people, then my happiness will always be determined by their happiness, which is completely out of my control.   I will be doomed to a passionate but heartbreaking future.  So how do I live life passionately, if it's not to love the people who mean the most to me?

I write, but do I write passionately?  Nah.  I write a bunch of crap that nobody really wants to read.  I mainly write for therapy so I don't loose my mind.  Is that passionate?  No, it's more like life preserving.  Would I want to write everyday?  Would I want to make a living writing?  Yes.  I'd love to write and be successful.  But is that passion?

I bake cupcakes.  Do I bake them passionately?  I do like them.  They provide a certain amount of comfort and homeiness to my life.  But would I want to bake cupcakes all day long, everyday?  No because then it wouldn't be fun anymore.

So here I am back to the beginning again.  How can I live my life more passionately?  I'm still trying to figure it out.  In the meantime, maybe I'll go call my best friend and say hi. 

Coffee

I'm one of those people who doesn't just enjoy a cup of coffee, I need coffee.  The smell, texture, aroma and the feel of the warm cup in my hands, comforts and inspires me at the same time.  I wake up just to drink that first cup.  It is the sweetest best moment of the day, the half sip of caffienated love warming my lips, throat and belly as it makes it's way into my system.

Coffee figures predominantly in many of my memories. When I was a baby, my grandma would put just a little in my milk bottle with sugar and cream.  I remember those bottles.  When I was studying all night during Pioneer School, coffee made it possible to pull an all-nighter and still be awake during the classes the next day.  When hubby and I opened our wedding presents, our friends had bought us a Krups coffee maker/cappucino machine.  We wore it out!  When my friends wanted to hang out, we went to the coffeehouse nearby to listen to music and play games.  One of my previous employers used Starbuck's as a reward, giving me gift cards or showing up with my favorite drink to say thanks.  Recently, my sister-in-law gave me a coffee maker as an anniversary gift.  Coffee has always been a big part of my life.

When it comes to coffee, my preferences are pretty clear: dark strong coffee, slightly sweetened with cream.  If the cream is flavored it must be French Vanilla.  One of my old co-workers called my morning cup of coffee "Cake."  I call it yummy! 

I'm a creature of habit and drink out of the same cup everyday.  It actually holds one and a half cups of joe.  It features the painting of "Scream" by E. Munch.  I'm a pretty happy person, so the contradiction of the angst on the cup to my morning sunshine is humorous to me.  I'm a morning person, but coffee makes every morning better.

Who knows what future memories I will have while drinking a cup of freshly brewed coffee.  So many family celebrations and mornings with my kids lay ahead.  But I do know one thing:
"Life is too short to drink bad coffee, cheap beer and awful wine."