A few touches of green around my house:
I've been painting doors today. Some of you may recall that we replaced all our interior doors--when was it? February? Ages ago, anyway. We had those flat dark brown 198os doors, and now we have white six-panel doors of the 21st century! (What is the official name for this decade, anyway?)
Eleven interior doors. I painted the first three (all downstairs) fairly quickly, and then I dilly-dallied around because I dislike painting so much. I started on the upstairs doors...got one painted...and then broke my toe. This was at the end of April.
You might not think a broken toe would interfere with painting, but I have to stand on tippy-toe to reach the tops of the doors, and I couldn't tippy-toe when one of the tippy-toes was broken. (I also couldn't wear flip-flops--who knew that you flex your toes when you walk in flip-flops?)
I could have stood on a chair, I guess, but when I paint, I get it everywhere. I would have hated to ruin a chair.
Anyway (sheesh, I'm boring myself with this story) I finally got the paintbrush out today and knocked off two doors. Now I have six done, and five to go. When I get them done, then Todd will let me embark on another project, but I have to finish this project first. He's so annoyingly left-brained!
Once these doors are done, then we'll replace the accordian-fold closet doors in our bedroom (also flat dark brown) with white doors, and then all the doors will be new! Except the ugly door to the garage. And the ugly sliding doors to the deck. There's always something else to tackle, isn't there?
Before/after picture of my study:
One last blast of red for "I Saw Red" week:
So many people participated in "I Saw Red" that it's become a little flickr group of its own called "Shades of Inspiration." This coming week's color is green. I've put in a little button over on the side, go check it out and join in!
Todd has been out all day deep sea fishing with his friend Dave--he said he'd have to catch a LOT of spadefish to make the gasoline worthwhile, but he enjoys it so much, it's worth a splurge.
I've been home cleaning out the fridge, tidying my study, doing laundry and working on putting all my printed-off recipes into page protectors and into a binder with tabs. I don't know why the perfect recipe storage system is so elusive--I've been puzzling over one for years! I think this may work...the page protectors will be perfect for all the things I find on Allrecipes and the Food Network website. And maybe I can get some photo page protectors for the little cut-out recipes from magazines.
I believe some of the people who stop by here have small addictions to scrapbook paper. I won't mention any names. Look at the wall treatment I found on a very nice blog called Storybook Woods:
That's just scrapbook paper from a coordinating pad taped together in strips and then taped to the wall! Doesn't it look great?
I personally have enough paper to create wall treatments for half of Hampton Roads!
I finally figured out why it gets harder and harder for me to conduct my periodic purges of all our excess stuff--it's because the older I get, the more things I have that have memories attached to them, and the less I want to toss either the item or the memory.
Even things that might not have meant much to me when I acquired them develop this coating of meaning--where I bought them, what I was doing then, places they've lived with me.
Knowing why doesn't make it any easier to figure out what to keep and what to toss, though. In particular, since we've moved to this house, I've disposed of things that I'd held onto for years. Most of it went without a backward glance on my part, but now after three or four clean sweeps in 2 1/2 years, we're getting down to the nitty gritty.
The crazy thing is that this house isn't small--I mean it's certainly not on the level that most people seem to be living in nowadays, but it's a three bedroom, two-and-a-half bath normal medium-size house with the requisite amount of closets and whatnot. But with no basement and a one-car garage, we lose out on a lot of storage space that people in other parts of the country take for granted. Oh, for a basement!
And we're losing storage space, if you can believe it--the new bed is too low for all my under-the-bed storage boxes, and the vanity we've chosen for the guest bathroom, when we get around to tackling that, has drawers instead of cupboards, so all my little boxes and our games will have to find a new home someday. So silly!
So, like I said, it's nitty gritty time. Time for all those projects that never got done and all those bits of things I've been saving to be hauled out and disposed of. We're planning a yard sale in a couple of weeks, and I plan to go through every closet and box!
It's funny to contrast our situation with what my grandparents' lives have been like. Married for 65 years, and in the same house for all of those years, they both went to an assisted living facility this spring, and my parents and various other family members have been slowly emptying the house of years and years of accumulated stuff. Grandma and Grandpa never had to throw anything away--they had six bedrooms, an attic, a basement, a barn, Grandpa's old auto body shop, and a few other outbuildings to store things in.
Even if they could have thrown stuff away, they probably wouldn't have--growing up in the Depression years, raising eight kids on very little money, they hung onto everything because they never knew when they might need it. Mom found boxes full of Styrofoam peanuts and plastic bags in one of the bedrooms. I've personally witnessed the fortress of National Geographics in the attic over the kitchen.
Part of me wishes I could live my life that way. Although I don't like clutter, and I get weighed down when my belongings start to pile up too much, it would be interesting to just live in one spot forever and hang onto whatever I wanted. We've moved seven times in 16 years of marriage, and we still haven't gotten to a house that can hold us and all our hobbies comfortably!
On the other hand, maybe it won't be as hard for us when the time comes for us to purge our stuff once and for all and move into whatever old age facility we can afford. (The way the 401k is looking right now, that may be a cardboard box!) Having moved pretty regularly, having gotten used to assessing what to keep and what to toss, maybe we're gaining a flexibility that will be a benefit to us later on.
Now if we could just curtail our yard sale addiction...!
I haven't had a chance to look for red stuff today, but here's a picture I've been meaning to share:
This is a gerbera daisy from my garden--I went around and took some garden pictures last week when I was trying out my camera.
Can you spot the little guy hanging out in the daisy? I didn't see him until I uploaded the picture.
Isn't he cute? I love having bees and butterflies and birds in the garden, but that's the first grasshopper I've spotted.
I also found a nice blog today with all sorts of crafty, creative ideas for little and big kids: the Crafty Crow. Now that summer's here, maybe some of you are in need of ways to keep the kids occupied. I suggest chores...lots and lots of chores...but when your house and yard are finally spotless, you can reward them with a craft! Hee hee.
I'm sitting here on the couch with Todd, re-watching a Foyle's War DVD that he fell asleep halfway through a couple of days ago. Todd's inability to stay awake doesn't reflect the quality of the show, though. It's a wonderful British mystery show that takes place during World War II. The main character is a cop in a town in the southern coast who wants to "do his bit" in the war, but who has to stay where he is and solve crimes that all reflect the unrest and uneasiness of a country at war.
The show stars Michael Kitchen, who has that muted middle-aged British sexiness down pat. Or maybe I'm the only person who finds middle-aged British men sexy...?
Well, I just caught Todd with his eyes closed again, although he claims it was "a long slow blink." Poor guy--if stuff isn't exploding or scantily-clad girls aren't wiggling across the screen, it's just too hard for him to stay awake!
I'm checking in to say that I updated my blog list over on the left--took out a few that have gone defunct and added some new discoveries. So check them out!
I took a couple of red pictures today but haven't had a chance to upload them and see if they came out. Maybe later.
I don't want to be a big giant baby, I really don't--but it's supposed to be in the 90's here for the entire future 10-day forecast and probably beyond, and all I can say is "Waaaaaaaaaaah!"
It wasn't supposed to happen this soon! It's only the beginning of June! It's too soon for hot and humid! I was supposed to have a couple more weeks!
Every year I take it harder (insert rueful laugh.) The summers are going to be what drives me out of Virginia, I swear it!
Anyway, here's a couple of red pictures--from indoors this time. Although I can't stay inside till this heat wave's over, so I may as well go out and get some groceries. Ugh.
It's been fun the past couple of days, looking for red things in my daily life.
Look at what I got in the mail yesterday from my awesome mom!
She's made quilted tote bags for my sister and my sister-in-law, and a number of people she works with, but I never felt like I needed one. Then a few months ago, I started using reusable grocery bags, and I thought to myself how nice it would be to have a pretty bag for my other shopping. I've never been much of a shopper, and I'm even less of one now that the gas companies have decided to ruin us all, so one bag will cover my non-grocery needs pretty well. I just have to remember to use it! I can usually remember to grab my grocery bags, so I think I can remember to have this one on hand, too.Look at all the pockets inside! I love the fabric--I wanted something darker but still feminine. It was hard to find!
And Mom added little flower buttons on the pocket and the top that just match perfectly. That's my mom all over!
I have just a couple of pictures from the last few weeks to share. My brother's family came to visit for Mother's Day weekend. It was cold and blustery, but we went to the park anyway:
...and we took a walk along the beach. No swimming, though!
They're coming to visit again in a couple of weeks, and as hot as it's been here, I think we'll have some good beach weather for them.
Our wedding anniversary was May 23, and Todd took the day off so we could go to Elizabeth City, NC and do some antique-hunting. I printed off a list of bookstores and antique stores, but it was all quite drab and blah.
But they do have a marina:
...and some nice shady streets to walk along and look at the old houses. We don't have too many old homes here in Newport News (and they're mostly not in places where you'd want to take a stroll) so that was a treat.
I really like the last one...I love crusty old carved things. Other than the stroll, and a nice lunch at a local nursery that had a little restaurant, Elizabeth City was a bust. But it was a stunningly gorgeous day, and we had fun being together. We treated ourselves to our regular anniversary dinner at the Biergarten in Portsmouth on the way home, so it all ended well!
We were having our new mattress set delivered yesterday sometime between 8 and 10 AM, but we found a few sales that started at 7 AM, so we left bright and early and ran out to see what we could find.
We came skidding back home at about 8:05, and the delivery guys were just getting out of their truck! Whew!
Then after they left, we went back out for a couple more hours. We're yard sale addicts, I fear.Here's a couple things I found:
a small McCoy planter bowl to add to my collection:
two pairs of linen cargo pants, two pairs of capris, one pair of dress pants:
a few old books (I think I might frame the seashell pages for our bedroom):
an old birdcage--at least I think it's old:
We were planning to stop by Target or somewhere to pick up some queen-size sheets for our new bed, but I found a set at a church rummage sale for $3.00. Score!
They don't match everything exactly, but for three bucks they'll certainly do until I find the perfect new set. I think they're quite pretty, too!
Our new bed is so, so wonderful. We've been sleeping in a double bed for 16 years--the first eight years we had a very old hand-me-down from Todd's folks, then we bought a new Sealy Posturepedic in 2000, which started going south after about five years, and now we've made the move to a queen.
We've had the bed since December, when we bought our new bedroom set, but waited around to get the new mattress. So we've had the new headboard propped against the wall with the old full bed in front, and the footboard and side rails tucked up in the garage loft. Not the greatest arrangement! Now it's all put together and looks great.
(Hey, I don't even make the bed for my own husband--do you really think I'm going to make it just to impress y'all?)
I had noticed that Macy's was having a Memorial Day mattress sale last weekend, so we stopped in and lay on a few and found a Sealy with memory foam incorporated that we liked pretty well. But Todd is a shopper-arounder (sometimes annoying, but usually a good thing) and we stopped at the Original Mattress Factory the next day and found one we liked even better. Then we went to Mattress Discounters and lay on a few more Sealys with memory foam. But we ended up liking the Original Mattress Factory set the best.
Can I say a few words about the OMF? This is a chain that was founded by a guy who'd been with some mattress company for years and decided to spin off and build his own mattresses and sell them direct. This guy, Ron Trezinski, does his own commercials, and much as you might expect, they are supremely annoying. He reads his own copy in what I can only describe as a lilting monotone. It makes you want to stick skewers into your ears...especially if you have auditory hyper-sensitivity like I do. <---I made up my own name for my condition--nice, no?
OMF had stores in Columbus, so we were subjected to the commercials when we lived there, and then we moved down to Hampton Roads, VA, which also happens to be an OMF market. Nooooo! When I worked at the scrapbook store and had the radio on all day, I used to sit and fantasize about ways to kill Ron Trezinski, who was a VERY heavy advertiser on the classic rock station! And here we were about to put a fairly hefty sum of money into that man's pocket. But we lay down on this extra-firm mattress with a thin pillowtop and it just felt like heaven. Supportive, yet just the right amount of cushyness.
Ah well. Scruples just can't stand up against the promise of a good night's sleep, and I certainly did have that last night. But Ron Trezinski can still bite me.
We have a winner! Mandy, the Herbgirl of Calendula Court, was the one whose name came out of the teacup. I'm not sure that's comparable to pulling a sword out of a stone, but Mandy will let us know if any unexpected crowns come her way, I hope. Congrats, Mandy!
Thanks so much to everybody else who stopped by, and I hope you'll come back when you get a chance. I'm really looking forward to a long summer of blogging! 'Cause it'll be too hot to do anything else!
Also, if anyone knows how to put together a blog header or knows someone who can do it well, drop me a comment. I'm willing to pay, I just really want something nice. Something vintage/beachy, blues and creams. Let me know!
I made a few yard sale scores today, I'll share those later!
Last May, Kim at The Twice-Remembered Cottage set up a big blogger's giveaway, and it was a lot of fun. I'm getting in on it this year at the very last minute! The theme is "Cottage Charm," and there are 49 participating blogs so far, each and every one giving away something fun. Go here to see the list--there are so many great blogs out there to visit, and maybe you'll find some new favorites.
All you have to do is post a comment here and I'll put your name into the drawing. And you don't even need to wait that long--the drawing is tomorrow, May 31. My lovely assistant will pull a name at, oh, let's say 6 PM, to give everyone a little more time to get here.
Here's what you'll be receiving (click on the picture for an up-close view!):
--the July 2008 Romantic Homes magazine
--a sweet vintage red-and-white saucer from Syracuse China
--a "Home Sweet Home"-scented Yankee votive candle
--a packet of Flower Garden Mix seeds--this has calendula, cosmos, zinnia, delphinium, and rudbeckia in the mix, to name just a few.
--a gratitude journal from Running Rhino--this is so pretty. It closes with a velcro flap and each page has a quote and a pale green garden sketch on it, flowers, birds, etc.
--a box of Stash tea bags. I included a pomegranate/raspberry green tea in the picture--if this doesn't float your boat, you can request mango/passionfruit herbal, blueberry herbal, chai green, chai black, or decaf chai black. (I hit a sale!)
Just post a comment here, and please include your e-mail address if you don't have a blog, so I can track you down if you win!
Oh my, the flack I've been getting for letting this blog slide! Should I be flattered or should I tell my naggers to get a life? LOL.
I am the one who needs to get a life, actually. My thoughts have just dried up and my life is so dull. SO dull. I've also been wanting to make some visual changes to this blog and I can't find someone who can help me out with that. So I've been putting off posting until I can get the blog the way I want it--perfectionist? Moi???
Anyway, I have a few pictures, I have a giveaway planned, I have some other stuff lurking hopefully, and I have a new digital camera to take lots of eye candy shots, thanks to my sweet DH, so I shall return. Really. I swear!
Oh, what a gorgeous spring day we are having here. Today started out cloudy but the sun came out around lunchtime, so we've had big billowy clouds and blue skies all afternoon. Warm, but not too warm. A perfect day, though not windy enough to suit Todd. I can hear him out in the garage sanding away on something, though, so he sounds happy enough!
We've been home puttering contentedly all day. I've been working my way through the laundry, and I gave Todd a badly-needed haircut this morning. I'm so proud of how my hair-cutting skills have developed--no more side-of-the-head bald spots!
We had tuna sandwiches and salad and grapes and Girl Scout cookies for lunch, and then I headed out to work my way through the big flower bed out front.
I have been putting off dealing with this front bed since last fall. I let it get all overgrown in the late summer, and then I didn't have the desire (or the arm strength) to clean it out. I've been staring at it guiltily since New Year's, and when you figure that it's the first thing I see when I enter or leave the house, or look out the front windows...that's a lot of guilty staring!
Friday something clicked and I went out and spent about an hour working my way down the bed, pulling out all the dead plants, trimming the dead growth off the perennials, and raking out the dead leaves. That got me about a third of the way done, and I quit early so my arm wouldn't hurt too much. This afternoon I spent a couple more hours at it, and now almost everything is cleaned out and ready to grow and for new plants to be added. Now my arm and shoulder hurt!
But three-four weeks of physical therapy and home exercises have definitely strengthened the muscles, and I think gardening in small chunks will be very do-able. I had my last physical therapy visit on Friday, and I'm supposed to try to keep from reaching over my head, and keep up with the exercises, and then if it's not substantially better in a couple months, then I'll head back to the orthopedist and decide where to go from there.
Thursday night we were taking a walk around the neighborhood and spotted two paper boxes by the curb, each one filled with a giant clump of daisy plants (with a sign scribbled on a bit of cardboard that said "daisies".) So when we finished our walk, we drove back over and hauled them home. So another part of my gardening tasks involved dividing the clumps and arranging them around. I also pulled some stray tubers off the daisies that I planted last year and re-distributed them around the bed. I think this summer will be daisy-riffic, to coin a phrase. I'm so curious to see what color the freebie daisies will be! The leaves are a little different than the ones I planted last year.
I've been in a sour mood the past few days because of following some of the political stories that are going on right now, and then when I was working out in the garden, I just was so in the moment, listening to a mockingbird on the neighbor's chimney, looking at the new growth on my established plants, spotting earthworms, cleaning and tidying...it was so enjoyable. Then I came inside and opened the laptop to write this post, and the browser window was open to a news site, and seeing it made that sour feeling poke its head up again. So the solution seems pretty obvious--no more politics! At least not for a while. Spring is too pretty to pollute it with all our human garbage, don't you think?
Tomorrow I'll see if I can get some good pictures of some of the baby leaves and shoots.
So I'm downstairs this morning, tidying up the kitchen, eating a nice late breakfast, just getting ready to sit down with a cup of tea for a minute, and then I spot them out the window, coming up the street.
The Jehovah's Witnesses.
At least I assume they're Jehovah's Witnesses--three African-American ladies, nicely dressed, a couple of them pushing strollers. They were through here a couple of weeks ago and I hid then, too.
Yes, I drop what I'm doing in mid-tea sip, close the front door which is standing wide open, and pop upstairs so they can't spot me through the windows, ignoring their knocks.
I have lived in many different neighborhoods in my adult life, and never have I been subjected to as much prosetylization (is that a word? Blogger says no) as in this neighborhood. If it's not the Witnesses, it's the Mormons, and if it's not the Mormons, it's the home improvement companies. What is it about this neighborhood that makes these people think I might be even remotely open to buying their religion or their storm windows?
There's enough daylight crime in this town that I've simply stopped answering the door when I'm home alone unless someone I know is standing there. But it still feels like an invasion of privacy when they come up on my porch and can see me through my front door and windows unless I run and hide.
What's the solution? It's so irritating!
Just poking my head in to say...there's only one reason I wish I'd had kids. Not for the companionship or the joy of knowing my genes will carry on forever, or the hours of potty training, homework and driver's ed.
I wish I'd had kids so I could have named them. I have some strong opinions on weird made-up names, and I always felt that parenthood would be my chance to strike a blow for nice, normal, pretty, traditional names.
(I know my name isn't exactly traditional, but I do think it's normal and pretty. Now my parents did make up my sister's name, as far as I can tell: Jenita. I think it's pretty, too, and maybe not totally normal, but not crazy, either! And at least they didn't give it one of those semi-literate spellings that are all the rage nowadays. Today my poor sister would be named JyNee'tah or something worse.)
Anyway, I stumbled across this site the other day and it's given me such reading pleasure I thought I'd pass it along:
Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing
Just a little pretty I saw while I was out and about today. -->
I don't know why, but none of my violas came up this year. Unless they're buried under piles of leaves out there and I just haven't noticed. I'm afraid we killed a lot of things in our garden last year by overwatering. And what didn't get killed that way got taken out by the sun and heat. I just can't seem to get it right!
I am beat tonight, and my arm hurts...I am off to bed early with a good book. That's my favorite thing about winter nights--getting to go to bed early with a book and my down comforter!
...to my sweetie-pie, my best friend, my husband extraordinaire! You are a special guy in so many ways. I hope you know how very much you are loved by all of us who are lucky enough to have you in our lives. Smooches!
Was it Herbert Hoover that promised a chicken in every pot when he was running for President? Maybe it was Coolidge...
Anyway, maybe that's something today's candidates should get behind. Or maybe not. Because chickens are gross.
I don't cook a whole bird very often, but I just wrestled one out of its skin-tight plastic and into the crockpot. And it was soooo grooooosss! Jamming my hand down in to get the little gizzard packet (shudder) and rinsing its slippery little body off and then cramming lemons, onions and celery up its butt, and then dusting it with spices. It's like handling a dead baby. (shudder again.)
I feel bad about being ooked out by poultry, since I am merely one hop on the family tree away from people who butchered, scalded, plucked and cleaned their own poultry routinely--my mom and her parents, my dad and his parents. Seems like I'm not far away enough, genetically, to have developed the aversion so soon.
But come to think of it, my dad avoided eating chicken for years and years because he claimed he could smell the chicken yard stink even on a cooked bird, so maybe my aversion isn't that irrational.
Todd says that a dead chicken carcass is nowhere near as disgusting as a freshly killed rabbit carcass, and that when the intestines are pulled out of a dead rabbit, you can see all the little rabbit poop pellets inside them. Ulp. That sort of makes the unlaid eggs I once saw inside a freshly butchered chicken seem almost sweet and wholesome.
I know there's a lot to be said for knowing where your meat comes from, especially in light of all these tainted meat scares and nasty corporate farming practices. But there's a lot to be said for neat, cut-up bits of meat from the grocery store, too.
Anyway, we're having chicken tonight--want to come over??? There should be plenty, because I think I lost my appetite!!
A driver is stuck in a traffic jam going into downtown Chicago . Nothing is moving north or south. Suddenly a man knocks on his window.
The driver rolls down his window and asks, ‘What happened, what’s the hold up?’ “Terrorists have kidnapped President Bush and Vice President Cheney,” the man answers.
He continues, “They are asking for a $10 million ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them with gasoline and set them on fire. We are going from car to car, taking up a collection.”
The driver asks, “On average, how much is everyone giving?”
“About a gallon.”
-------------------------------------
I want to laugh at this joke, but it's getting harder and harder to find the humor in our national debacle. Still, I'm in for a gallon.