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Fall Bucket List

MazieSeptember 11, 201720 Comments

I think I mentioned earlier in this blog that for the past couple years I have been doing seasonal bucket lists with my best friend Andrea. It’s by no means a strict list but more so just a guide line for what we want to get done during the season. Since Fall is both of our favourite seasons, we definitely are hype for this years list.

On one of our thrifting excursions, we found a copy of The Year of Cozy by Adrianna Adarme and we were super excited to incorporate some of those seasonal things into this list! The titles of the tasks might be a bit vague, but I’ll update them once each one is complete!

Homemade Chicken Wings
Wine & Paint Night
Go on a hike* * or a short horizontal jaunt
Go apple picking
~~BAKE SOMETHING!~~ I baked Pumpkin Snickerdoodles, and Banana Bread and a Smores Pie!
Make Butternut Squash Soup!

Leaf Collecting
Carve Pumpkin
Roast Pumpkin Seeds
Howell’s Pumpkin Farm
Ghost Walk in NOTL
~~Balls Falls Festival~~
Fall Photo Shoot
~~Thanksgiving Dinner~~

Red Lobster
Crochet scarves and things! (ongoing)
Fall (HOME) Spa Day
Christmas planning
Halloween movies (Hallmark ones more specifically)

I’m going to try to plan some corresponding blog posts for every time we cross an item off the list. My prediction is that we are going to be trying to get at least a couple done each time we see each other since she recently moved a bit further away and we might not get to see each other as often as usual. Once I have the corresponding post for each task up, I will link it here so that it’s easier to find!

If you have any other cute suggestions for our Fall Bucket List, please leave them in the comments below!

Be Fearlessly Authentic

MazieSeptember 7, 20171 Comment

Today I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking and reflecting on a lot lately. I, unfortunately, can’t remember the exact situation that got me thinking about it but I want to talk about authenticity. Not in any specific capacity, like in regards to social media, or online personas, though I do think those things are important and I will touch on that, but more so just being your authentic self and focusing on what makes you feel the most you.

Being authentic boils down to knowing who you are, knowing what makes you unique, and not ditching those things just because they might make you different.

I’ve been challenging myself to stay mindful about being authentic on all fronts. For me authenticity means:

being up front with myself and with others about what I like and don’t like.
asking myself “is that something I really want to do?”
not modifying myself to be loved or accepted by others.
not editing my life in a way to make myself seem perfect.
saying no whenever I god damn feel like it. (+5 points for feeling this sassy!)

I have been listening to all kinds of podcasts and e-books about well being and personal development lately, and one thing that they all have in common is that they all say you need to embrace your true self in order to be truly happy. The number of people I’ve heard talk about how much time they wasted trying to be something they weren’t was so insane, and it kind of shocked me into obsessing about being authentic and whether or not I was wasting my time trying to be someone I’m not.

When it comes to social media or just my online persona, I find that I constantly struggle with this internal conflict or belief that people deserve to know what I’m doing all the time, even when I really don’t feel like sharing something. That can easily be taken in a very conceited way, but I assure you that’s not what I mean. I don’t mean that people want to know what I’m up to, just that I feel like I owe everyone something…for some reason. Maybe that’s just my personality type? Maybe I should look up what my personality type is? (< true revelation just happened right there, actually though, I wrote it down in my BUJO! It’s a thing now!)

So I’ve got a little bit of a plan aside from the list of things above, that is hopefully going to help me be more authentic, help me give less of a fox (see what I did there!? Am I allowed to swear here?), and hopefully help me kick these expectations of perfection when it comes to how I appear to other people.

A while back when that Sarahahahaha.com site was a thing, someone left this comment on my page and it kind of just made me laugh because I really don’t feel that way at all. It may look perfect online because I don’t post the bad parts but my life is most definitely not perfect. Maybe this is what sparked this post topic…. I don’t know. Anyways, I hope that this post wasn’t too rambly or weird. But then again, I’m trying not to care too much about that!

Let me know if you struggle with these kinds of things or feel like you could be a little more authentic too, so I know I’m not alone!

Thanks for reading,

in the cart: September

MazieSeptember 5, 2017Leave a comment

Lately, I have been really enjoying these kinds of wish list, haul style posts so I figured that I’d give it a try to see if anyone in my audience enjoys them! This is totally a trial thing so please do share your feedback in the comments below so I know if I should continue with them. So I guess I’m going to just pile it all into this post, and see how things go!

Please note that this post does include some affiliate links, which means that I make a few cents if you click on them, at no extra cost to you! That being said, I will never include links to products that I don’t fully believe in or support.

Can we just take a second to appreciate how adorable these are?! None of me needs more measuring cups, but all of my wants them, so you better they are probably going to happen!

I’ve been in the market for a new backpack to replace my purse. With all the writing events coming in the future, I know I’m going to need something to carry all my material everywhere. That being said, I didn’t want to commit to a back pack, so I’ve been keeping my eye out for a nice black convertible bag that can also turn into a cross body bag! I think I found the perfect one for me aesthetic wise. I fell in love with this bag as soon as I saw it. I’m on the fence about it currently, since I realized that it is genuine leather, which I don’t support, so this is a big maybe, but if you know any companies that make a bag like this but vegan-friendly, please let me know!

This cicada necklace is everything I didn’t realize I needed around my neck! It’s perfect for literally every outfit I could possibly make and it has quickly become my soon to be favourite fall accessory.

Check Meowt?! ENOUGH SAID! I’ve been looking for new pins for my jacket so this is perfect!

This beautiful cozy shawl from Indigo is currently on sale, and it has sent me spiraling into the world of autumn attire. Hence the rest of the clothing in this post! I felt this one while I was in the store the other day, and let me tell you, it is the epitome of cozy.

Loving the Riverdale vibe that this comfy letterman jacket gives me! Can’t wait to add it to my collection of go to jackets.

Speaking of jackets, I have been rocking the same winter coat for at least two years now, and I figured it was time for a change. Loving the army green moss colour, which is included in my extended capsule wardrobe palette, in case I get bored of all my gray neutrals. I think it will look nice with the ugly yellow hat I plan on making!

This is more of a sheer cardigan but I’m all about those embroidered chest pieces. I really think this will lighten up and outfit I add it too, I can see it becoming a fall staple for me.

This scarf has hints of colours from all of the winter accessories I have started planning out/ crocheting so I figured this would be a smart way of pulling those pieces together, without having to buy 5 different scarves to match each set!

I have been looking for a basic plaid like this, as all my blanket scarves are pretty colourful, this will pair so nicely with that green coat up there! So excited to press the check out button on these!

These two pieces are from Loll3’s Society6 collection, and I am in love with them! I wish the notebook was graph paper, but unfortunately, they only come in lined and blank! The pouch is medium so that it can fit pens or if I change my mind make up. But I’m also debating on picking up the large, as a project bag for some on the go crochet projects, or for keeping notes together during NaNo.

Again, I really hope that this was something that you enjoyed reading from me, it’s a bit out of my comfort zone, so please give me some feedback! I’m by no means a fashion blogger, so I have no idea what I’m doing, and always appreciate the constructive criticism!

Whats in your cart right now? Let me know in the comments below! Share your posts with me as well if you’d like! I’d love to check them out!

Thanks for reading, hope you’re having a spectacular day!

Do No Harm, But Take No Shit

MazieAugust 22, 2017Leave a comment

This isn’t a scheduled post. This wasn’t planned, thought out or even really considered postable until yesterday.I feel like I need to throw a content warning in here just incase. Who knows if this post will even stay on the blog, it might not even make it out of the drafts. But in case it does, I want to state this as a safety measure:

Content Warning: Emotional Abuse
I won’t be posting any kind of actual details, but just the way that I felt then compared to the way I feel now. I know that might not really call for a CW but when I read survivors posts or pov I sometimes get really emotional or panicky.

It feels so weird typing this right now, because I am in such an amazing place currently, but yesterday marked my 4 year anniversary of leaving a very unhealthy relationship, and a friend suggested that I talk about it. So 4 years ago yesterday I got to start my life over again. Thanks to a best friend and his van, I was able to leave a city and a person that I dropped literally everything for, and I got to come back home.

I’m going to share an excerpt from a journal entry I wrote while I was still there, about a month before I left.

” I have never been the type to get stranded somewhere. Never the type of girl to get legitimately stuck. I have always thought things out so that when things boil down, there is nothing left unknown, nothing left to hurt me, that I didn’t already know would. I’m here now, in this place that is okay most of the time, in this place with you. I guess that this is the indicator of how much you meant to me before everything. I would never sacrifice my ability to drop everything and run away at any given second, not for just anyone, but for you I signed a dotted line …or maybe two? and now I’m forced to stay in one place for a year with you. It’s nights like these, when we fall asleep back to back and regardless of how cold the distance between us, I am genuinely relieved to not be wrapped up in you. These are the nights and the kind of feelings that show me how wrong I was to get stranded here.”

(21 year old me had a kind of cringey style of writing, sorry!)

I never realized how silly it was that I felt so stuck there. So helpless! No piece of paper should be able to trap you in a relationship you don’t want to be in anymore. No lease gets to dictate who you have to share a room or bed with. No dotted line can suddenly grow prison bars and trap you somewhere. If you aren’t feeling safe or loved or happy in a situation, don’t let a piece of paper bind you anywhere.

I’m sitting here now looking back on those desperate feelings, and I can’t help but feel a bit reminiscent about it all, if thats not completely messed up. I remember writing this, late one night when I couldn’t sleep. I was so uneasy, and trying to contact anyone I could, but it was 3 in the morning and no one was awake, so I just opened a blank document and started typing everything I felt. It had no punctuation, so many spelling errors, but I just kept typing. I talk about the things that had happened that day, my breaking point, the things that were said and I just got it all out. I remember thinking to myself that I should just leave, pack a bag, and write a letter to our landlord saying sorry. But I shook it off, thinking it was impossible and then I convinced myself that how I was feeling was normal, or at least it was my normal now, and that everything would be fine, and that I had no choice. So I closed my laptop, and crawled back into bed.

I wish I could go back and knock some sense into myself. Tell myself to go with my gut feeling, and just leave. Tell myself if you don’t leave, its only going to get worse.

I wish I knew what I know now. Which is I didn’t have to wait for it to get worse to have an excuse to leave. I also wish I didn’t leave so much damage to clean up when I left, and that leaving silently and tactfully would have been enough. I’ve since found my mantra of “do no harm, but take no shit,” which has really helped me in situations where I’ve felt taken for granted or hurt. Its a reminder that I don’t need to have the last word, or the hardest hit, just as long as I stand up for myself and what I believe in. Thats enough. I wish I could have realized that earlier on in life.

So here we are, 4 years later. I’m 25 years old, working full time in a career that he never thought I’d make it in, living with the love of my life, despite the fact he said I was unlovable, and happy with the person I have become, even though he told me that he was doing me a favour by being with “someone like me.”

So what I hope you have taken away from all of this, if anything is that you are a strong person, and if someone in your life is tearing you down or trying to dull your shine, you are in complete control and you can edit that out of your life, no matter how permanent it might feel. I learned this after the fact, and after some damage was done, but there are still people that haven’t learned this yet, or people that have learned it too late, and that weighs heavy on my heart.

I spent all yesterday feeling like I wasn’t doing enough, and that raising awareness can only spread so far, but there is so much more work to be done. I spent part of my day researching different organizations, local shelters and programs that aim to help people who have been in emotionally or physically traumatic relationships. And I spent the other part of my day trying to brainstorm what I can do to contribute. So I came up with a little something that might work.

I designed this little graphic that says “Do no harm, but take no shit” on it and put it up on my Red Bubble page. On the page you’ll be able to see which products I’ve enabled but here are my favourite ones! (Of course they are stationery related!)

I’ve decided that any money made from any product with my graphic on it, will be donated to a local or online program that focuses on rehabilitating and empowering abuse victims/survivors. I’m still researching to find which one I want to contribute to, but if you know of any please please contact me with your suggestions so I can look into them! I’ll be posting updates once I pick one! (Note: I’m looking for an all inclusive group or program! Groups that exclude male abuse victims don’t really sit that well with me. Men can be abused too, and they should be provided support as well, in my opinion.)

As usual, thank you so much for reading this post and please stay tuned for more content in the future.

Grievances

MazieNovember 7, 2016Leave a comment

I have never been good at coping with death or losing people who I care about. I mean, obviously I know that death is easy for no one and that everyone grieves, but I guess some people just deal better than others. Whether it’s a matter of just not having the emotions to express your feelings, or just being desensitized due to past experiences, it’s a known fact that everyone grieves differently. In my experience, I can go one of two ways. I am either the calm, consoling type, that grieves while making sure the people around me are okay, or I completely shut down. The ultimate reason I have decided to post this here is because I don’t know exactly how to explain how I feel after the recent death of a close friend.

It’s not common for me to talk about those that I have lost in this way, I’d say I’m a pretty private griever, but due to a recent event, and the fact that my new counsellor thinks its best for me to use my writing as an outlet for this kind of thing, here I am and here are some statistics: In my 24 years of life I have lost two family members and five friends, three of which were extremely close. In this post I am going to be talking about two of the people I have lost, for a few different reasons.

Though all of these losses were difficult, I had by far the hardest time (up until now) coping with the death of my friend from high school, who passed way too soon from cancer in his liver. I still remember that morning at 6am when my mom called me while I was living in London, to let me know that he had passed, before I went online to be shocked by all of the posts. I remember sobbing, which was never a first reaction that I ever had in this kind of situation, and then I remember staying curled up in my bed re-watching all of the movies he had filmed over and over, re-watching all of the clips from drama class, or our school plays. I spent the day looking through photos him and I had shared and I just wept and wept. I hadn’t known him for as long as I have known some of the other people I have lost in life, but it was my first true loss as an adult, where I could distinctly see and understand my stages of grieving…or at least I thought I understood.

This past weekend I lost one of the most genuine people I have ever known. He was one of the first friends that I can recall, one of the first people I can remember playing with as a kid, and one of the only kids who stood up for me when I was too shy to. Actually just last year I found a messily written secret note that he must have written in grade 1 or 2, reassuring me that “maysie iz a nice nAme.” He always hated that the kids in our class made fun of my name, and he was super vocal about it. It was the first time someone defended me, and I remember it so vividly. Growing up, we were simply inseparable, be it Kindergarten to grade 6, or even just kinder karate, our parents had to break us up so often. Our families were always that close though, I’m almost positive that he was one of the first non-related kids I ever met, I think around age 2 or 3. Our families were so tight that we always ended up going to each other’s big family christmas parties, where we would hide out and play pool, or video games because the adults were so boring. I look back now and I cannot think of one single bad or negative experience that I ever had with him. Actually, that’s not true, I totally can! We were in a self-defence karate class, we had to have been 5 or 6 and we were paired up and he accidentally punched me in the chin (not even that hard) but I remember him crying way more than I did.

Even though we and our families drifted apart with time after we moved away to another town, in passing at shows or events we were always able to pick up right where we left off. Looking back now, I really wish I had of made more time to come out to visit and catch up with him. It’s still unclear what exactly happened to him, but from the sounds of things, it seems like he could have used someone to talk to, and that is what breaks my heart the most.

Cody, you had this way of brightening any room you walked into. You could make anyone and everyone feel welcomed and safe, and you could make anyone (no exceptions) laugh.

Without a doubt, Hamilton is going to be a lot duller without you there to brighten it up!

There is so much more that I want to say, that I need to say, but every word that I type breaks my heart a little more. I have quite a few posts written and saved so that I can start releasing content on a more regular basis, but I’m not sure when that will be starting now.

Rest in Paradise Cody Gillespie

Love always, maysie.

A Welcome of Sorts

MazieAugust 12, 2016Leave a comment

Oh hey there

My name is Mazie, and this is the first post on this crazy new site. Basically in this post I’m going to explain what you can expect to see here, and maybe if you’re lucky a little bit about myself too. You might be here because you clicked on a link somewhere, you might know me, or you may have just stumbled upon it accidentally. No matter the way you got here, I hope that my content can inspire you a little bit in some way, or even just open your eyes to something new!

We created this site to act as some sort of safe place for my writing, thoughts and feelings; a place where I don’t have to worry about my career in freelance writing taking over. On this site you will be able to find any writing that I don’t plan to publish some day, including personal essays, poetry, short stories or just explorative pieces like rants, reviews or developmental lists.
I kind of have a bit of a list problem, which will become more apparent later on for sure. You can also expect a lot of writing process posts, art, inspiration and music posts, as well as posts about organization, how I keep my life from falling apart, along with my journey towards a semi-minimalistic lifestyle.

You may also be here because you used to follow TheseLittlePieces and if that’s the case, this is the part of the post where I explain how I lost momentum, motivation and just became overwhelmed by it because even though I was changing and growing, its tone and content stayed the same. One day I logged in to post something and it just didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore. So this is essentially going to be my new outlet for content like that.

Well I guess this is the part where I kind of tell you about myself a little bit. As I said before, my name is Mazie, and no that is not a pen name, it is my given name (its actually Mazie-Olivia) even though no one seems to think it’s a real name at all. I’m named after someone super super super old in my family who passed away when they were younger from pneumonia, back when there wasn’t really any medications to help cure it. Born in ’92, I am now 24 years old and not really happy that I have to get any older than this. I graduated from Journalism school a little over a year ago and I became self-employed in freelance writing and editing while I was still in school. I have had the opportunity to interview so many interesting people and I’m super pleased with my career so far. Just for fun, I also work at a really awesome thrift store in the heart of my favourite artsy little city.

When I’m not working I am most likely cuddling my adorable little feline creature Navi Bones, playing video games, reading self help books or beat poetry, writing sci-fi fiction or you know…sleeping? I live in a cute little apartment with my little cat and a guy named Steve.

For now, I hope that you will consider liking and subscribing to this blog and stay tuned for updates on social media links and other posts to come!

Thank you so much for staying to read my excessively long post about myself and I hope that you are having a lovely day, wherever you are in the world!(Leave a comment telling me where you’re reading this from!
That could be super nifty!) mazie bones