Feliz Navidad y Prospero Año Nuevo

flickr photo by Anna in NY

This might be the longest blog post I've written on here...but I also think it could be one of the most important. Hope you'll bear with me and take it in. :)


Hi, everyone...wow, I don't even know where to begin on this holiday season! It was crazy, busy, and filled with love and family and friends...and also one night filled with pure fear in my heart. Last night, KameraWhore, her sister, our bff Bonarcissist, and I met for dinner to finally do our Christmas gift exchange. We'd been trying forever (seemingly) to coordinate all our schedules and finally pinned it down for last night. We had barely ordered our food and started opening gifts when I got a call that my husband had been in a head-on collision. (This was New Year's Day in the evening.) It wasn't his fault...we don't know for sure, but we suspect the other driver was drunk. My husband was going uphill around a bend, when suddenly this other car was heading towards him downhill...IN HIS LANE. There was nowhere he could go to get out of the way, and the other car did not even TRY. Because of three airbags deploying in his car, my husband walked away from it with only minor bruising and scraping. His car ended up on one side of the road in someone's driveway; the other car landed across the street. One of their axles was lying in the middle of the road (not sure which yet). The other driver was hurt pretty bad and was transported to the hospital in an ambulance. I rushed home, crying, to get my husband to the hospital to have him checked out, just to be sure. They said he was fine. I still don't know how to process all of this. I am just so thankful to God for sparing my husband. I can't even describe the feeling. My husband and I COULD view the start of our new year as really horrible...but we are choosing to view it as exceptionally happy because we are sharing it together. It's really all a matter of perspective.


I don't know what to say about it beyond: please, I beg of you, for your own sake and other people on the road, do not EVER drive after you've been drinking. When you have alcohol in your system, sometimes you can trick yourself into thinking you're capable of driving safely anyway. Don't listen to that voice in your head. Just please, don't.


Oh, my. It's just so hard to even think about. Anyway, I did want to post some pictures of the evening's festivities before I got the news. 

I got Kam (and, yes, one for me...) an Avett Brothers shirt and makeup setting spray...

and she got me kitty PJ pants and a bird necklace. :)

I don't quite know how to segue this after what I've just written...but I sincerely hope that all of you out there had a peaceful holiday season. The holidays can be really great or really sad, depending on what you might be going through at the time. I had some really awful, hard ones after my mom died...the last few have taught me that it can be a happy season again for me. This year, more than ever, I am just immensely grateful!!! Here's a snapshot of my Christmas:

FOOTIE PAJAMAS!!! Eeekk!! Reminiscent of Ralphie's bunny suit, and I LOVE IT!! 

And handmade legwarmers from my mom-in-law!!

Now, obviously, New Year's Day is typically a time for people to make well-intentioned resolutions to change a habit, become better in some way, or finally do something they've always wanted to do but have been putting off. It got me thinking about this time last year, when KW and I were making vision boards for things we wanted to accomplish in the upcoming year of 2010. I actually managed to accomplish almost everything on my board. If you don't know, a vision board is where you compile pictures and phrases you've cut out/written/drawn on a piece of paper (or, in our case, tri-fold foam board) that represent your goals and dreams. The idea behind it is that the more you focus on visualizing those things, the more of them you'll accomplish. Making mine was one of the best things I've ever done for myself! We made a group event out of it, which made it even more fun. If you've never made one, I'd highly recommend it! We also wrote down, on little strips of paper, any fears that were holding us back from achieving what we wanted in life. Then we burned them in a candle flame. It was very symbolic...and apparently worked!

Another tip I'd like to share concerning resolutions is to change your phrasing. Instead of saying, "I resolve to..." or "I will no longer..." and the like (because we all know it almost always fizzles out eventually), try switching up your wording to something like, "I am so thankful that I..." This is basic law of attraction/The Secret type of stuff. But trust me, it really works! The key to getting anything you want out of life is first being grateful for what you already have. The more grateful you are, the more you open yourself up to receiving even more of what you want. If you thank God/the Universe/your own self that you have already accomplished whatever it is, even though you haven't, you're more likely to believe that it's possible and therefore end up doing it. Just try it!


I hope that all of you will decide to be thankful that you are more confident now than you have EVER been before. :) I hope you love yourself with more fervor, intentionally focus on how grateful you are simply to be alive and be given the body and face you were given, and remember that you are a one-of-a-kind gift to the world that NO ONE else could ever be like or replace. Cheers to YOU!


TCN was barely more than a twinkle in our eye at the time we made our vision boards, and now we've been going strong for almost a whole year...wow!! And it feels awesome. I'm never one to blog just for the sake of having a post every day; I only write when something feels like it needs to be posted for whatever reason. But, oh, how I thrive on all of this...and I'm so lucky to be on this ride with KW. Pulling our vision boards together absolutely helped us to cement our plans in what we wanted to do with this thing and believing we could do anything we wanted. It's something we just feel compelled to do. We're thankful for all of you who read us and hopefully get something out of it! We have become more confident women ourselves just by doing this project, and I hope that has rubbed off on many of you.


And, hopefully tomorrow, we'll be making a big announcement! To get ready for this exciting new thing, we're planning to change our blog address to blog.theclosetnarcissist.com (don't type in the www) to better tie in with our web site. It will still be the same blog and will look the same, just with a different address, and those of you who follow us SHOULD automatically be redirected. If you experience any issues with this, please let us know somehow. :)