Author Archives: Andrej Zivor

Finding Your Home’s Style

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I never really knew what it took to reinvigorate a home until I finally moved in with my girlfriend this past year. Before, I was aware that my parents’ house was nicely decorated and “put together”, but I probably couldn’t have told you why.

Now that I’m on my own and we buy our own furniture and decorations, though, I’m starting to realize what it takes to do it all and really put a place together thematically. And let me tell you, it’s really not as easy as it would seem at first. Even deciding on a theme can take awhile to do, and other times, the theme doesn’t really present itself until you’ve already got mostly everything together. It’s a lot tougher than imagining in your mind that you want a rustic living room and that’s that. What makes it rustic? What would be too much rustic and what’s too little? Obviously, putting something like cardboard boxes in a specific room as art (it happens!) may  not fit a rustic theme, but if you’re going for a more industrial look to a room, having cardboard boxes stacked strategically really could work.

Overall, it’s trial and error. I’ll share a few of my style tips below.

Succulents.

I’m a huge fan of live plants in the house. It makes the air more refreshing, oxygenated, and a little more humid to help combat that dry skin during the winter. Succulents, in my opinion, are the most gorgeous indoor plants you could take care of while also being some of the hardiest around. While one species to the next will differ in how you take care of it, succulents are pretty self-reliant for the most part.

Open space and minimal decor.

One problem people run into when they’re trying to bring a theme together in a room is cramming too many things into a small area. If the room is big, it may require bigger pieces of furniture and decor. If it’s smaller, it’ll require smaller things. No matter the size of the room, though, you don’t ever need to cram too many things in at once. While I will admit that part of our place is still open or barren compared to others and could use some decor, I’d rather have that for the time being than too much stuff.

Liquor bottle display.

This one is dependent on your home, the type of liquor you drink, and where you place it, so be careful about putting too much on display in an ill-fitting spot. I just recently got into finer tequilas and mezcals in the past month or two, and I wanted a way to show them off as decoration rather than having a liquor cabinet specifically to dive into for drinks. Our home entertainment system has a lot of shelves and other similar decor, so I figured putting the tequila bottles next to one another on top of the home entertainment system’s bridge would show off my collection well. I wasn’t disappointed in my choice to move them there and they really don’t seem out of place whatsoever.

All I’ll suggest is shying away from cheaper liquors, as no one really cares to see your bottle of Captain Morgan or Jose Cuervo on display above your TV.

Easter’s On Its Way

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Easter is one of those U.S. holidays that sneaks up on you without much warning. Perhaps it’s because the spring season does the same thing, coming out of nowhere after it’s been winter for seemingly half a year. Perhaps it’s because Easter’s date fluctuates anywhere from late March to mid April. No matter which is the case, I think it can be agreed on that the bunny-filled holiday is quite sneaky.

Easter is a peculiar holiday at the very least. While it’s one grounded in religion, it’s almost received a lot of the same treatment Christmas has in that gifts, bright colors, decorations, and family seem to surround it. And more than any of those things, businesses capitalize on the potential it holds to make a lot of money.

More than any other time of year, Easter is when you’ll see loads of pastels. It doesn’t matter what item or merchandise or decoration it’s on, pastels reign supreme around Easter season. It sort of makes sense, though, in that many of Easter’s themes revolve around new growth and life. The holiday is supposed to go hand in hand with the new spring season, so baby blues (the color of robin eggs), bright greens (new shoots and buds), and soft pinks (reminiscent of flowers) abound.

Like I said, though, Easter can be a cash grab for a lot of businesses. Gift card companies make a killing off of it, just like any other major holiday for them. Candy makers roll out their latest candy boxes to entice parents wanting to stuff their kids’ baskets full of unique treats. And department stores go wild with the stuffed animals, egg-painting kits, and more. It’s almost easy to forget where the holiday actually originated considering how businesses make sales off of the bunnies, candy boxes, chicks, eggs, and baskets more than they do off the figure of Jesus.

Just like any other holiday that’s big in the U.S., Easter isn’t spared by its ability to sell. While most of our holidays have religious, political, historical, or national backgrounds, we find a way to produce and consume it in ways that strip the holiday from its actual origin.

In a way, I find how these holidays are treated by the masses quite harmless. However, if I had more ties to the figures, religions, or nations associated with certain holidays, I could find myself wondering how it’s come to this. The short answer, for anyone wanting to know, is pretty much capitalism. The longer answer probably spans across the realms of culture, business, economy, and history, but it’s better left to the imagination.

The Change in Gaming

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Growing up in a pivotal era of technology gave me a swathe of knowledge and experiences that most kids now likely won’t get. While technology is still advancing each and every year, there’s not quite such a shift as the 90s saw into the 2000s and even then into the 2010s. One of those huge changes in technology that made a big impact on my life is video games.

Gaming used to be all about the experience of going to the store, picking out a new game for your console, and bringing it home in excitement with zero expectations as to what you were going to get. It was all a mystery that was sitting there waiting for you to explore it. You didn’t typically read through game reviews online (as there weren’t many back then), ask your friends for their opinions, and then go get it. No, instead you would go in blind and just enjoy unlocking things with no help and really just being amazed at the experience of it all.

It seems that’s shifted big time since then, though. Now, you know exactly what games you want to buy before they even release, because they’ve been hyped up by big gaming expos and the game in question is likely part of a series that you already know you enjoy. Rarely do people decide to try a new game on a whim. They may try new games, sure, but it’s always calculated and researched before hand.

The other big difference is in the packaging, or lack thereof. Digital downloads and mobile gaming are taking the world by force, and while physical copies of games are still quite prevalent, it’s looking more and more like they may be on the way out in just a decade’s time.

The only thing I can really think of regarding this huge shift in the culture of video games is how different the experience must be for kids being introduced to games. I’m sure it’s just as fun and exciting as my experience was growing up, but I can’t help but feel it’s just a lot different and maybe not as “magical”.

So, something I’ve considered now that I’m old enough to be thinking about kids soon is how I’ll introduce gaming to them. It’s undoubtedly a part of my life with my significant other currently, so I know it’ll be a part of my children’s lives too.

Part of me, though, thinks we’ll dig out the old cardboard boxes full of cartridges and CDs and let our kids just play through older games. Because really, how would they know what a new game versus and older one is while still at a young age? Eventually they’d “graduate” into newer and newer games with better and better graphics, but they’d still learn to appreciate the more subtle things in games, such as story and dialogue that a lot of kids don’t see in their games today (because games such as Fortnite and Clash of Clans lack story, dialogue, and other common aspects in adventure games).

So, that gives me all the reason in the world to hold onto those old cardboard boxes full of games I never threw away, and I have no plans on getting rid of them anytime soon.

What’s in a Name: Cardboard

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Often if you’re told to picture a general thing, the image you conjure up in your own mind differs wildly from the next person’s imagination. This is common simply because the thing that you were told to picture isn’t one extremely specific concept but rather has multiple variations or can be interpreted differently depending on someone’s culture or experiences.

Think about it for a minute, though. If I told you to imagine a house, you may think of a grand, two-story farmhouse with 5000 square feet if you grew up in a wealthier family located just outside of small farmtown. On the other hand, you may think of a small 1500 square foot house abutting other small similar houses, each with fenced in front yards and toys scattered about, if you grew up in a family with lower income located in the city.

Basically, a lot of the concepts out there differ so much from one person to the next because of our experiences and what we have come to know. If I say to picture a mug, you may think of something which we drink coffee and tea out of or you may picture a beer mug if you’re from a different culture.

One of those things that most people picture the same, however, is cardboard boxes. For the most part, we think of a rectangular brown box composed of corrugated cardboard. There’s not much else that springs to mind when you hear that term.

But did you know that these sorts of boxes can range from round to long and cylindrical to highly specialized for specific purposes? One of those boxes in particular is candy boxes. The last thing you’d think of when I say the word cardboard boxes is a box made for packaging candy, right?

Well, if you’re a baker or own your own confectionary business, candy boxes actually may spring to mind when you hear cardboard box.

This entire article goes to show that there are so many different things out there that one word doesn’t encapsulate what an entire population perceives as that word in particular. It all boils down to your own experiences, culture, and preferences.

And since there are a variety of items and concepts that fit into more general terms like “cardboard boxes” or “houses” or “mug,” it’s no surprise that different people would imagine different things when first hearing these terms.

The Appeal of Vinyl Albums

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I’m a big fan of vinyl records ever since my girlfriend’s father gave us his old turntable. I knew that records were popular back in the day and even gained a resurgence as of late with more hip crowds, but I never quite understood why until I owned one and bought my first few albums from the local record store.

If anything, it all takes me back to collecting CDs when I was in high school and early college. There was something real about purchasing one of my favorite bands’ new albums on CD and playing it in my truck while driving around. The whole experience had a meaning to it. It had weight. It became an experience.

Nowadays, if I want to listen to something new by someone, I can hop on Spotify and go to their new album right away to quickly cycle through different tracks until I like what I hear. It’s definitely convenient and faster than anything else out there, but it also doesn’t carry the same sort of weight as making a trip to buy a new album and then listening to it on the way home.

The only problem I seem to have with getting a new album, though, is that my first few were of records I had already known inside and out. Now, is this a bad thing? Well not at all. I wanted my first three or four albums to be of artists I already love, and I wanted those records to be of absolutely complete albums from the first to last track.

What I’m saying is I was predispositioned on the first few albums I got. I wanted what I already liked because I wanted to make those first few records special.

From here on, however, I think I want to do it differently. I want to still purchase records from my favorite artists, but I want to listen to their new music on record first. No more hopping into Spotify immediately to make sure I like the new stuff. If it’s an artist I highly support and follow closely, there’s a reason for that. Their past stuff is already amazing, so there’s no doubt the new stuff would be too.

And if anything, the whole point of records back in the day was to listen to the next great record as soon as it drops and experience that music for yourself. To listen to it before anyone else could and then own that record for good.

To me, that’s what I’m looking forward to. I have such an expansive taste in music lately that anything goes, so all sorts of artists will be dropping new music year in and year out for me to like. While going after new music all the time will likely mean my two cardboard boxes of old albums will grow to four cardboard boxes, it’s all worth it simply because they are timeless so long as turntables are still considered vintage and can be repaired or bought like new.