Heather's Handmade Life | Living, working, and parenting with creativity

DIY school picture timeline

Posted on March 26, 2020 by heatherlauraclarke

Please note: This is the last Handmade Home column for a little while. I hope to be back at it as soon as possible.

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Without fail, we buy a package of our kids’ school photos every single year. Some years, the photos are really nice. Other years, the kids have an awkward smile or a wary gaze. It doesn’t matter to me — I’m ordering them anyway.

I love that we can easily adjust the timeline or swap out frames anytime we want. The S-hooks make it easy to lift the frames off and reposition them.

I dutifully give copies to the grandparents, but the problem was that I didn’t actually display any of the 8x10s I’d ordered for myself. I just couldn’t decide how or where.

Would I only keep the current year’s photo on display? Would I hang them all somewhere? A gallery wall of school photos wouldn’t be practical, since I’d have to update it every single year.

So I did nothing with my copies of the school pictures, except keep buying them and carefully storing them away.

Recently, I had an idea. What if I hung the school pictures in a way that I could show them all — in order — while also being able to add new ones?

Continue reading in my DIY column, My Handmade Home.

Thought work is going to be the key to getting through this

Posted on March 21, 2020 by heatherlauraclarke

Basically, “thought work” is focusing on managing your thoughts. How we THINK controls how we FEEL, and how we FEEL controls how we ACT.

While I highly encourage you to listen to the full episode — and subscribe to the Unf*ck Your Brain podcast because there are SO MANY back episodes to catch up on — I’m going to summarize my main takeaways here. (Mostly so I can come back and re-read this post when I’m spiraling, but also for you guys, too.)

Ready? Let’s go …

Breathing tips for when you’re panicking

Posted on March 15, 2020 by heatherlauraclarke

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If you follow my Instagram stories, you already know the unfolding Situation I Refuse to Name has put me in a very anxious state.

For example, I drove myself to the drugstore in PJs, late at night, panicking that I was having a food allergy reaction and needed antihistamines urgently. (I do not have any known food allergies — just imaginary ones when my anxiety is bad and right now it’s REAL BAD, GUYS.)

I bought the damn antihistamines and took them, even though I knew I probably didn’t need them, but because I needed SOMETHING to calm me down and convince me I (probably) wasn’t going to stop breathing because I’d stupidly taken a bite of my husband’s Hawaiian pizza when my anxiety was already off the charts and pineapple is a weird I-think-I-might-be-allergic trigger for me.