glitter.

I don't know if every christmasaholic has this problem, or if it's just me... but I LOVE GLITTER. It's not a recent obsession, or something that I remember how much I love every Christmas (like Christmas lights choreographed to music- I always forget how much I love that!) No, I realized my glitter obsession goes back quite a while, and today I give you my sparkly timeline.

MIDDLE SCHOOL: Most girls go through a terrible makeup phase. For those who went thru the 80's wearing makeup, I'm going to assume it was the neon blue and green eye makeup with Barbie pink lipstick. For those girls experimenting these days, it's typically an orange spray tan combined with too much bronzer. For me, it was my excessively sparkly eyelids. And trust me, I'm not exaggerating. They were a work of art. Instead of eyeliner, it was a thin line of body glitter (seriously!!) with loose glitter dabbed on top. I'm not making this up. Two layers of glitter on my eyelid- I looked like a disco ball, and it's no wonder I didn't wear contacts until high school. 

COLLEGE: As a Tridelta in college, my biggest contribution came at pivotal Greek moments such as sorority recruitment (rush), Greek Sing and Homecoming. Being a terrible dancer, I chose to be in the background of such events as the prop girl. My fellow tridelta Lauren and I would spend hours in the basement of the sorority house perfecting the art of making oversized shapes (ranging from turkeys to baseball bats to giant forks to polo horses) out of foam insulation, and then painting and drowning them in glitter. Through this experience I learned how to shade and shadow with glitter, learned the pros and cons of coarse vs. fine glitter, discovered which stores in Lexington KY carried the BEST selection of glitter, and learned that if you can't find the color glitter you need you can always buy the white glitter and paint whatever color you really wanted underneath it to create the glittery creation of your dreams. Seriously. Try it. (And for the record, you can do magical things with Martha Stewart glitter. It's beautiful.)

POST-COLLEGE: After graduation, I apparently hadn't had my fill of glitter and proceeded to work as a manager for Pier 1 Imports and as a designer for Weddings by Michele. Now I'll get to Pier 1 in a minute, but part of my duties as a designer for WbM is to create and fabricate local area high school's prom invitations. Which means that every spring, my living room is full of prom with themes like "Midnight in Paris" and "Venetian Carnival." If you know me at all, you must know it means that I spend hours upon hours glittering and reglittering invitations that will inevitably be lost or shoved in a textbook and forgotten. I pretend that it really means they are scrapbooked and framed as a token of high school memories... but let's be honest.

Now back to Pier 1. Anyone who works retail knows that holidays come early. And anyone who works at Pier 1 knows that holidays sparkle. Which leads me to the first week of October... which was when our Christmas shipment came in :) I adore Christmas at the Pier, and I'm not being sarcastic. I love picking up a box and glitter just dumping out because the 3' tall snowflake is literally shedding glitter. I find it amazing that I will spend 20 minutes dustmopping the front of the store to no avail because the glitter won't sweep up, it just finds refuge in the grout lines. And I love that inevitably at the end of the day, I have glitter all in my clothes and stuck in my hair so that regardless of how many times I shower, I still sparkle. It's a Twilight fan's dream... everyone who works at Pier 1 sparkles!

And finally, CHRISTMAS: Christmas glitter is the best glitter of all. Personally, I think that apple green glitter is the best- and it looks FABULOUS with a Christmas tree (and yes, it's all over my tree!) But I also love the faux snow glitter, it looks so old timey and wintry. And who can forget how fabulous sparkles look with Christmas lights? They were made to be together. And who am I to tear such a pair apart?!

And yep, I'm not kidding. This is an entire blog dedicated to my love of glitter. Next up- Christmas lights. White or colored or combo?!