Heartbeat Weekly (55): I Revamped My TBR Jar!

Posted by Jessi (Geo) on March 1, 2015 | 15 Comments


hbweekly

 

Books I got this week

book haul

Weekly Recap

Posts on the blog:

What I’ve been up to this week:

1) Photography and Instagram! I have been obsessed lately about pictures for Instagram. I’ve been trying to get more creative and interesting pictures, and I find that I’m addicted to it! I’ve asked my fiancé to teach me how to use his fancy $900 camera and his lights so that I can do photo shoots with my books :D (Which means I’m that much closer to the bookshelf tour!!)
Also, I’m kind of humbled because I went from 400 followers to over 700 literally overnight. Nikki (tumblr.books) reposted the picture of my rearranged bookshelves, and my Instagram blew up! My average # of likes per picture used to be 30-40 max, and that picture got a whopping 250 likes. Um, what?! It’s totally a weird feeling for me because it happened so fast. But now that I have more people, I want to try harder to have better pictures!

2) Kitten in heat. Oh dear lord. She woke me up at 3 am last week making her little chirruping noise, but I didn’t think anything of it. Then, when I got home from work, she did it for more than an hour straight. I started watching her, and she was flopping around all over the floor and rubbing against everything. When I said her name, she would cower close to the ground and slit her eyes – it was really weird! She was acting very submissive and that’s not like her (AT ALL). At first I was like, WTF is wrong with my cat? and after a minute of watching her I was like, …..oh, SHIT. You have got to be kidding me….

I don’t know anything about the heat cycle because I’ve never had to deal with it before. I’ve always had my cats spayed (and neutered, not that that matters lol) by 6 months of age. But since I left the vet I haven’t found another place to go yet (and also don’t have the money), so I put it out of my mind. She’s now 10 months old. I didn’t realize the heat cycle started that early! Despite working at a vet for 7 years, I never bothered to learn about it because it never mattered to me. I never expected to leave female whole past 6 months old.

I found a site online that says they’ll be in heat for 1-7 days (yowling and all), and that they go “out of heat” for 1-3 weeks. From January to fall. (Can anyone add to that information? Does anyone have expertise in this area?!) So you’re telling me I have to deal with this every 3 weeks for months?! Oh good heavens, she’s getting spayed as soon as I get my tax return. O__O

I made a new TBR jar!

I’ve been wanting to re-do my TBR jar for a while, because let’s face it: My old one was boring as hell.

Old tbr jar tbr jar paper stars

On the left you can see the old, ugly one. I threw something together real fast for the label, took the jar from whatever my parents had available at the time, and used cut up notecards, folded and taped, to put the book names on (in plain handwriting). I’ve been unhappy with it for some time now, and wanting to do something different. So I took a field trip to Hobby Lobby! I was looking for a book charm to put on the twine originally, but I had trouble finding a small silver one. All of the books were bigger and kind of gaudy. I was about to give up when I saw the “Once Upon a Time…” banner, and I was like HARK! It’s perfect!! I spent about $16 – the jar was $5.99 but was 50% off, the paper was $0.44 a sheet and I bought 5 sheets of each color, the pack of labels was $2.99, the charm was $3.99, and the twine was $2.99 for a big roll.

I used this tutorial for the origami stars. It was trial and error, because the first few I made were awful! I eventually learned that when you pinch the edges, you have to use your nail in the center of each edge to make a crease so that the edges are more crisp. And, instead of boring ole handwriting, I wrote the book names in calligraphy!

how to tbr jarLike the picture on Instagram!

In this picture I only have the blue, pink, and purple stars. That’s because the black ones were an afterthought. On the black zebra stars, I wrote themes instead of book names – i.e. “A book with a red cover” or “A book with mermaids” or “A fairytale retelling.”
All in all I had a lot of fun making this jar (I’ve been feeling super crafty lately!) and I’m really happy with how it turned out!

tbr jar front tbr jar back
What’s in your mailbox, loverlies? Link me up!

Jessi (Geo)

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15 responses to “Heartbeat Weekly (55): I Revamped My TBR Jar!

  1. I absolutely love your TBR jar! I’ve always thought about making one, but I’m a mood reader and am not sure if that’d work for me. If I get the time to make one, I’ll definitely have to try it out.

    Sorry I can’t help you on the cat issue. I’ve never had a cat. Hope you get your answers!

  2. Your jar is soooo cute! :) I just got a bunch of jars in that style from my in laws (complete with that chalk board label!). I adore them!! But mine will probably be filled with things like almond flour, which is a lot less exciting than a TBR jar. :D

  3. That jar is so cute, and such a brilliant idea!

    As for the vet, I don’t know if you have a Petsmart near you, but have you considered the Banfield wellness plan? I’ve had them for all of my pets. I pay $40.95 a month for my cat, but that includes her plan, which has the dental cleaning on it (the dental plan is basically the same price as the kitten plan though, which covers spay/neuter and when they fix them, they will do a microchip if you want for 30$ extra) and her Revolution (flea/tick medicine. She is indoor, but we are military, so I keep her well protected). I love the plan. I get to pay it monthly, never have to worry about tapping into our emergency funds for pet things, and it covers all her shots and checkups and if I ever need to take her in for anything, her fee is always free, which saves on the $43 office visit. She’s been on it since the beginning of 2012. In the time I also had another dog (whom I lost to cancer) for 2 years and a third dog (who we had to give up because although I struggled with it, he wasn’t right for our family) for a year and a half. My paperwork used to tell me how much I’ve saved to date, but last time I looked it was well over $3500. She went yesterday for her comprehensive exam and boosters and I saved $401.65 yesterday alone. She goes back in 6 months for her next comprehensive and dental cleaning. It’s really nice. And if you ever decide to cancel, you only keep paying for whatever services you have used for the year. So you get all the same coverage (plus perks) as a normal vet would charge, but you get to pay monthly. Just something to look into.

  4. I love those little stars! I’ve tried to do a TBR jar, but I’m too much of a mood reader to really use it the way it should. I like the idea of the themes though-leaves it open for options for different moods and such.

    My cat is about 2 and a half and we still haven’t had a chance to fix her (yet). She goes into heat for about a week every 4-6 weeks. It’s not as often as that website said. Granted, every cat may be different, but it’s never been that frequent with her.

    • Thank you! I’m glad to hear that it may not be as often as the site says. I was really grateful that she was only in heat for 2-3 days (or at least she only acted like a psycho for 2-3 days lol). Hopefully it won’t happen too frequently!

  5. Oh wow! I am in LOVE with your new TBR jar! I remember seeing you post pics of it on Instagram…and I am finding myself wanting one! Hobby Lobby you say for the jar?

    So questions! Cause I’m a geek of details! Now the Once Upon a Time part is the charm you threaded with twine? Was it on the jar already? I might be mimicking your jar idea! Just because I love the idea and I loooooove the OUAT charm, because fairy tales are where it all started with me! Lol!

    And the black label…is that a chalkboard kind of label or just a black sticker label?

    Though not sure I am crafty enough for those incredible origami stars! Plus, I have no fingernails for the pushing part! LOL! And I don’t think I have the knack for the calligraphy, which is gorgeous by the way! I guess that comes with practice, but I’ve always had terrible handwriting! I remember in grade school, my second grade teacher thought there was something wrong with me because I had terrible handwriting. But that was because I believe we were learning cursive, and I have horrible cursive. It’s still pretty ucky!

    But my handwriting is has always been the sloppy sort, because of my theory. Which is that when writing, I’m already thinking what I want to write, the sentence is perfectly crafted in my head, and then I am writing so fast to get it down exactly how I created it so I don’t forget a word or mix them up. And then after I have that sentence down it’s time for the next and so forth! I never wanted to go back and rewrite it all nicely, because I already wrote it down once! lol

    So yeah, odd theories, but that’s what I got!

    And again, NICE TBR jar! I might need to go to Hobby Lobby next weekend and look for one! I’ve considered a TBR jar on occasion, though at the moment, I am giving my attention to review books, but it might come in hand for afterwards.

    Though I have to ask, if you have half of a series on your TBR mountain…do you just write down number 1? Or would you write all that you have? What if you picked book 5 and still need to read 3? Odd CDO booknerd question, I know!

    But very nice! I think I might craft one of these myself, but I doubt it’s going to look as nice! Especially considering I was never very good with origami! lol!

    Happy Reading!–after all that gushing over the TBR jar! I loved Salt & Stone, really hoping Victoria writes a book 3, because OMG that ending!!

    Here’s my STS

    Have a GREAT day!

    Old Follower :)

    • Haha yep, Hobby Lobby! I cut two equal length pieces of twine and threaded them through the charm. I had to add little rings – I’m not sure what they’re called, but they have an opening where you can open/close them with pliers – because the holes on the charm were too small for the thick twine. I actually had to look up how to make the perfect bow, because the way I tie my bows is different (I make two loops then tie them together instead of going around & under one loop) and it was ugly lol.

      It’s a chalkboard label, I couldn’t find any plain black ones but it ended up working with my white calligraphy ink just fine. A white jelly pen would probably work great with it, too.

      Oh my gosh, haha! I like my handwriting sometimes, but it’s not nearly as pretty as I’d like it to be. so I was really surprised that I’m decent at calligraphy! It’s more of drawing that actually writing, though – you have to go slow and carefully draw the lines in the shape you want them. I used tutorials and copied their calligraphy to learn it.

      You totally should make your own jar! If you do, tag me in it on Instagram so I can see it :D And I don’t write every book in a series, just the first book. Then if I want to continue I’ll go from there. I’m the same way on Goodreads – if I haven’t read a series, I don’t add anything past the first book until I know I’ll want to continue!

      Thanks for the awesome comment girlie! <3

  6. I just finished The Darkest Part of the Forest and I really enjoyed it! I hope you do too :) But – please tell – what is ARCycling?? I want to read the other two books you got this week too hehe. I don’t have an Instagram, but I’m considering getting one for the blog. I don’t really take a lot of pictures though, so IDK! But that’s awesome about your followers! I love your new bookshelf set up too, so I’m not surprised so many others did as well. And you TBR jar is freaking awesome – I need to brainstorm something similar!

  7. I love your TBR jar! It’s just so cute!

    And I totally remember when Odette had her first heat and my mom and I freaked out! We’ve always gotten our pups spayed, but she can’t be, so it was new to us, too! I don’t know anything about cats, but if it’s anything like dogs, just wait it out. Although every three months seems kind of often! Good luck! :P

  8. JESSI YOU ROCK!

    I love your Instagram and all the awesome photos you’re doing! I’m definitely excited to see more from you.

    The cat in heat thing made me DIE of laughter. I don’t have pets but I can imagine how weird it must’ve been at first. Like “OH SHIZZLES”

    Your TBR jar is my goals. Also your bookshelf. Let’s just say that I’m shipping myself to your place so I can admire your bookish things!

    My Stacking the Shelves + Montly Recap here.

    – Nova @ Out of Time

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