Giveaway.

In all my cleaning and sorting, I discovered that I have two copies of the 2008 issue of Somerset Home. I have no idea how that happened, I can't believe that I could have bought it twice, but I guess that's what happened.

So I'm going to give it away here, along with a few other goodies I'll scrounge up and add to it. Maybe a few vintage papers, maybe this, maybe that, you never know what I'll find in my scrounging!

If you think you'd like the mag (which is a terrific one) and the goodies, just leave a comment on this post between now and Sunday night at midnight. I'll draw someone at random to receive the prize. Please be sure to leave an e-mail in your comment if you don't have your e-mail linked to your Blogger profile, so I can reach you if you win.

And if you post a link to this giveaway on your own blog, let me know in your comment and I'll enter your name in the drawing TWICE. You can't beat them odds, right?

Still here.

Well, I ended up not going along to MD--I decided at literally the last minute that I'd rather just stay here and not walk around in the frigid cold up there looking for stuff to do. I felt bad, but it seems like the right decision--Todd is working till pretty late each evening, so it's not like I would have seen much of him anyway.

I spent most of Monday and part of Tuesday sleeping, and that seems to have helped with the cold and exhaustion. (Thanks for the get well wishes!) I felt much more peppy today, and went back to the horrific mess in my study and almost got it all tamed. Tomorrow I need to do some painting and cleaning elsewhere in the house. I also have a little Valentine's Day project I really want to take some time and work on. I hate it when I buy stuff for a project and then never get it done. That's the source of half the mess in my study!

While I'm sitting here taking a breather, let me share some long-overdue photos from October, when my mother-in-law came down to visit and helped me get some curtains up. There's a very nice blog called Nesting Place whose author has come up with an idea she calls "window mistreatments." This idea really intrigued me, because I've never been fond of traditional window treatments. They're expensive and intimidating, and just not me.

When we moved into this house, the only curtains I put up were some long cream tab-tops from Target in our bedroom, and a rod-pocket valance with cherries on it in the kitchen, which Todd and I had made for our last house (remember, he's the seamstress, not me. I'm just the presser of hems.) Then my mother-in-law made me some simple panels for my study a year or two later. (You can see 'em here, just scroll down almost to the bottom of the month.)

So anyway, window mistreatments. Basically the idea is to grab a long piece of fabric, fold it over so you don't have to hem it, and then use upholstery tacks to stab it into the wall at appropriate intervals.

Viv and I are both a little more precise than that, so we did cut the fabric to the appropriate width and then hem it, rather than having bulky folds. Here's how it came out on the living room window:

The valance looked a little naked, so I went and got some $10 sheers at Wal-Mart and tacked 'em up under the valance. Voila!

In the dining room, we have long vertical blinds on the sliding glass doors to the back deck. They run on a flat, covered rail about 3" wide. I was never able to figure out an easy way to cover that up, but Viv had a brainstorm and suggested clipping fabric directly to the rail with...drumroll...mini clothespins! And it worked great! This is a piece of fabric I'd originally intended for the living room--and we had hemmed it up back when we did the study curtains, but never got around to using it. It looks great in the dining room, I think.

Here's a close-up of how she did it:

Then I had Viv whip up two simple panels with ring-clips to cover the half-bath window off the kitchen, but I don't have a good picture of that.

Now I just need some simple valances for Todd's study and some kind of nice curtain for our bathroom window, and then the house will be fully curtained. And we've only lived here three years and counting...!

Don't I have an awesome mom-in-law? My windows would all be naked but for her!

Away again.

I am heading up to Aberdeen, MD with Todd tomorrow morning to keep him company while he does some work for his company this week. Well, not while he works, but in the evenings, and on the way to and from.

I've seriously debated going, because I have a lot to do here and I am STILL not feeling 100% good, but the suitcase is packed so I have to go now, right?

I have HAD IT with feeling sick, feeling exhausted, and coughing till I pee. HAD. IT. I know I should probably stay home and go to the doctor, but I'm one of those people who has zero faith in the ability of my doctor to be any help to me. If I ignore things long enough, they usually just go away. I know that's stupid, and Todd is even worse about it than I am!

Later!

January weather.

My my my, what a gloomy day! Rainy and cold and dark!

My father-in-law is driving home through all of that, and I hope he's having a safe trip. Come to think of it, he may be home by now, or close to it, if the weather cooperated. He was here for five days and he and Todd did a ton of kayak fishing and hanging out together. It was a really nice visit.

In cleaning out my study, I found an album of pictures from Todd's family that I must have borrowed from my mother-in-law years ago (at least three moves ago, I'm thinking) and inexplicably never returned. I never scanned and saved any of the photos, either--I don't know what I was thinking. So I did that last evening so my FIL could take it back home where it belongs today.

I have seen very few photos from my FIL's side of the family--I'm not sure where they've all scattered to, but there was a nice big 8x10 in the album that definitely caught my eye:

This is the Ferrante family in 1947. Todd's great-grandparents are in the middle, surrounded by their eight children and some of the children's spouses, and the grandchildren that had come along by that time. I'm sure there were more later on.

Todd's grandpap is the second man from the left, and Todd's dad is the baby sitting on Todd's grandma's lap way over on the right.

I'm amazed they got all those kids to stand and sit so nicely, knowing firsthand how those large family group photos usually proceed. Maybe kids were better behaved back then!

It looks like Todd's great-grandparents did pretty well for themselves and their family, for a couple of Italian immigrants who came here, I'm sure, with very little. I'm always fascinated with other people's dressed-up, stylish-looking ancestors, because most of mine were Mennonites who, even if they were dressed nicely for a photographed occasion, certainly weren't dressed in the fashion of the day.

In other news, my study remains a disaster as I sit and stare at piles of things to be sorted, and heave a sigh, and move into another, tidier room for a few hours. It's crazy to have so many uncompleted projects just sitting around. Mostly pages that need to go into albums, and albums that don't have room for any more pages. Funny how that works.

I think I'll get started on some supper so I don't have to sit here and look at them anymore!

On the move.

Ahhh, I'm finally coming out of my stupor of sickness, and it feels so good!

Today I decided to take advantage of having Todd's dad here and have him and Todd rearrange the furniture in my study. I had to take everything off my big bookshelves, clear off my desk, move it all across the hall into my bedroom, and then they came in and did the heavy lifting.

Then I started bringing everything back in, pausing for occasional coughing fits. All the dust didn't help with that!

I still don't have it all put away yet...that will take a while. I have to go through everything, toss stuff out, re-pack some of it, re-organize more of it, etc. etc. And hang stuff and all that. I got my comfy chair all nestled into the corner, though, and it looks nice.

Tomorrow I'm cracking the whip again and they'll be taking down the outdoor Christmas lights and putting the tree and ornaments in the attic. Hee hee! (*rubbing hands with glee*) Men are so darn useful!

I also listed a huge stack of cookbooks on PaperbackSwap. I realize that I turn to the Internet now whenever I'm looking for a cooking idea--Allrecipes is my stand-by site. And I need the space the books are taking up. I still have plenty left, don't worry!

Then I'm going to empty out all the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen and figure out where things need to go now. I have stuff busting out of everywhere, and I know I don't need some of it. And some of it might be able to go somewhere else, too. Although it feels like all I do in this house is move things from one storage spot to another, trying to find the perfect place.

Speaking of the Internet supplanting books...do you think I should get rid of my paperback thesaurus and my big hardback dictionary? I check the Merriam-Webster and Thesaurus.com sites automatically now, before it ever occurs to me to check the actual books.

I love January. I love starting out the New Year getting organized!

Bye bye, Christmas.

Here's the last week of my Christmas journal:

I had kind of a hard time getting the last pages of this thing done. And it wasn't just the cold medicine and lack of inspiration. This was just a *blah* Christmas this year in a lot of ways. Being sick was the worst part, and missing out on seeing a lot of people. My parents were exhausted and stressed. My sister's family lost their grandpa just a couple weeks before. It was sad to see my grandma who is really just not herself anymore.

One of the really sad moments was being at my church's Christmas Eve service...it's almost always a chorus concert, and I sang in the chorus all through junior high, high school, and into college. Whenever I sit through the Christmas Eve service I always think about those years and years of previous services and how much fun they were.

The music director at our church all through those years was a great guy--smart, funny, just very, very nice. I really admired him. He committed suicide this past spring...I think it shocked almost everyone who knew him to the core. So I was sitting there on Christmas Eve listening to all those familiar voices, and thinking about all those other Christmas Eves with John directing the chorus, and I just couldn't get him out of my mind.

I got up to go to the restroom during a part where the chorus was sitting down and they were having some instrumental music, and who should I run into at the drinking fountain but John's sister. She is a fellow alto, and we stood next to each other in the alto section in the chorus.

I debated for a second whether to say anything to her about him, but I had been having such a strong sense of him, so I told her I was thinking about John. Her eyes filled with tears and she said, "I can hardly get through this night." We both just stood there and wept for a couple of minutes. It broke my heart and I still can't figure if it was right to mention him to her or not, since she had to pull it together and go back in and sing after that. I hope it helped her to know that someone else was thinking about him, too.

Sooo...just some sadness this Christmas. And this feeling that as the years go by, there will be other people I'll be missing as well. Ugh.

Not that there weren't lots of little lovely moments, too, because there were! I called them "moments of grace" in my last entry. These tiny things that connect you to the people you love, conversations, smiles, shared jokes and laughter. Thank goodness for those! I enjoyed my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie SO much this year...they are growing up into delightful people and it's fun to relate to them in a new way now that they're not "littles" any more. (Not that I don't adore the "littles" in the family--I do!) And my sweetie pie Todd makes every Christmas happy for me in a myriad of ways.

So the tree came down today and the journal is done, and I'm more than ready to move on from the holiday season and get my hands onto and into 2009.

Word for the year.

The much-revered Ali E. has a question on her blog about what one word you would choose to sum up what you want to focus on in 2009.

The word I picked is "pursue." I spent way too much of 2008 sitting on my keister waiting for things to happen. This year I am going to pursue the things I want for myself. (Right now I want to pursue a good cough remedy and a lengthy neck massage!)

What's your word?

Happy New Year!

Here I sit all alone with my cough and my laptop. Todd and his dad (who's braving our house of plague for a visit) went to bed at eleven.

So I'm lifting my water glass in a toast to a really wonderful 2009 for everybody out there! Somehow I have a good feeling about this year, I don't know why. I have a lot I want to get done and a lot I want to experience this year.

Happy New Year!!!

Cough. Cough.

I don't know how Todd can keep his hands off me--I'm hacking up virulent plague germs, I reek of Vicks Vap-O-Rub, and I'm all bleary-eyed and snotty. Nothing like being sick to make you feel really sexy! I'm all gooey from the Vap-O-Rub, too...mmmmm baby!

Still not better, but as long as I'm not coughing I feel okay. It's the coughing that's killing me; I've pulled a muscle in my neck and shoulder and my ribs are sore.

I have so much stuff I want to do...organize my craft room and my kitchen, finish my Christmas journal, rip a bunch of CDs--I never got to make it to any post-holiday sales, pout. And I need to take down my tree and find some ornament storage boxes. And the baseboards need dusting and the carpets need vacuuming. And the laundry. And the clutter. And my suitcase needs unpacked. Urgh. It's frustrating. My big accomplishment today was making it to the grocery store so we'll have food for the long weekend.

Ah well. I'm warm and comfy and I have soup, cocoa, and medicine. I'm not so bad off, right?

Home. Sick.

Well, I was having a really nice Christmas vacation till I woke up with a sore throat on Christmas morning, which was a full-blown chest cold by Friday morning. Then I spent the next couple days all alone on the couch at my in-laws' house at the lake, coughing, and missing lunch with my cousins and aunt, and also missing my sister-in-law Julie's visit with my niece and nephew, whom I only get to see twice a year.

By Sunday morning, I just wanted to be at home. It's so much easier to be sick in your own house. So we left a day early, missing my extended family's get-together and my cousin Pam's announcement of her engagement and my cousin Janine's announcement of her pregnancy. I hate missing out on stuff--I already feel like I miss out on so much, living so far away, and then to be sick for half of my trip...I was feeling pretty sad and sorry on Friday and Saturday, I can tell you.

There were a couple of silver linings:

-Since my in-laws now own two homes, I had a place to sit and be sick in peace and quiet, which was such a blessing, since every other place I could have stayed was full of people and kids.
-When you're sick, everybody's so sweet and concerned about you. It made me feel very loved, which I knew I was anyway, but it's nice to be reminded.
-Leaving early meant we were driving across rural Maryland and rural Virginia in the dark and got to enjoy a beautiful sky full of stars, not something I see much in light-polluted Hampton Roads.

That's all the silver linings I can think of, though! Well, it was probably a good thing that we left Sunday afternoon...I have been coughing worse than ever today and that would have been hard in the car. I was able to keep the coughing mostly under control on the way home with Mucinex, but today the Mucinex only seems to help for a short while, and then it's back to coughing again. I am so over the coughing!

When I was a kid, June Allyson used to do these commercials for female incontinence pads, and I used to think how horrible it would be to get so old you couldn't hold your own pee. Now I know how horrible it is--when I cough, there ain't no holding it, and it's just run, run, run to the bathroom all night long, which is exhausting in and of itself, besides the coughing.

To get through the nine-hour drive back to Virginia, I broke down and bought some of those old-lady pads, and what a help they were. And still are, as I continue to cough-and-pee. So I learned a new cold coping skill, too. I guess that's a good thing...

I had a nice time before the cold, though--my mom and I did a little shopping and had lunch on Monday and I looked through a bunch of old family photos with my dad. Tuesday we took my nephew Tanner and niece Kylie to Pittsburgh and had an absolute blast with them. They are eleven and seven years old, and exactly the right age to really enjoy stuff with. And Christmas itself wasn't so bad--I was feeling under the weather at that point, but not flat-out sick, and we had fun opening presents and having dinner. Got to spend a couple really nice evenings with my in-laws, too. So it wasn't all bad.

I was feeling pretty good this evening; the Mucinex and Vicks Vap-o-Rub were working and Todd brought me home chicken in garlic sauce and hot-and-sour soup, and I was reviving...and now I'm back to the uncontrollable coughing again. Oh well. I feel like I might have passed the worst of it. I hope so.

Hope everybody else had a happy and HEALTHY Christmas!

Up, up and away.

Well, we are getting ready to pack up and hitch up the sleigh tomorrow morning and head for warm, balmy Ohio, where it's currently snowing and about 20 degrees. I'm actually excited at the thought of seeing some snow, although I know there are plenty of people across the country who would smack me for saying that! I know Todd and I are going to freeze--our blood gets thinner every year we spend in the southlands.

I'm just sitting here waiting for Todd to get out of the bathroom so I can go in and get prettied up for his office party. The house is all cleaned up except for the vacuuming, all the presents are wrapped, and my suitcase is packed with everything but the last-minute stuff. I have the past few days' Christmas journal entries about half done, so I'll have to finish and post them when I get back. I'm really going to try and get them done even though Christmas will be over, and not put them off till November like I did last/this year!

I hope everyone who stops in at this blog has a really wonderful Christmas, safe travels, good times, and at least a moment or two of peace and calm to think about the meaning of the season, whatever that meaning is for you.

I'll sign off with one last picture...is there anything happier than a Christmas tree with lots of presents underneath? Seems a shame to pack them all up and leave the poor guy all naked down below.

Have a merry Christmas!

My favorite rooms.

I was sitting at the kitchen table after eating my Crispix this morning, having a cup of tea and surfing the net while waiting for my dryer load to finish, and I just looked around and thought how much I like this part of my house.

On the ground floor, we have the living room and entryway and stairs on the front side of the house, and the kitchen/dining room and a small half-bath on the back side of the house. The kitchen and dining room are my favorite rooms in the house, or maybe I should just say "room" since it's just one big area.


On a gray day like today, it's especially warm-feeling, with the bright lights and the green walls. And I can sit and look out the back doors at the trees.


Or I can look the other way at my messy table and desk.

Nah.

It's not fancy, but it's comfortable and warm. And I like all my stuff.

I am actually enjoying a smidgen of down time today because I've gotten so much done this week. (Patting self on back here.) Today is laundry and cleaning out the fridge and getting the downstairs tidied up, and going out for a farewell bash for one of Todd's co-workers tonight. Tomorrow is packing, getting the upstairs tidied up, and vacuuming, and then going to Todd's office party. And then Sunday morning we're off to Ohio. So it's nice to have a little patch of time where I can just enjoy being at home.

Yesterday's and today's journal entries:

My favorite raincheck.

About ten years ago, this commercial was playing on TV a lot, probably around Christmastime.

And it never fails to make me laugh out loud every single time, even a lousy copy like this. I actually have a copy of it on one of my old videotapes of MST3K--I usually edited out the commercials when I taped them, but I HAD to leave that commercial in! That kid is adorable.

I thought of it tonight when we went off to Michael's to see if Santa could get me a Cuttlebug for Christmas at 50% off, but had to settle for a raincheck. Santa said he would wrap it up in a fancy envelope for me. Chuh. Maybe I should frolic about with it and snuggle it close like the kid in the commercial!

More pages.

Isn't it funny how you start December feeling sort of on top of things, and then get busier and crazier as the days go by? Or does that just happen to me?

It's not really all that crazy here, but we're both quite busy getting last-minute gifts made and that sort of thing. We're heading to Ohio on the 21st (we decided to stay for Todd's office party on the 20th after all) so everything has to be bought, created, wrapped, and packed by then--it's always a bit of a crunch at the end when you have four or five or six days lopped off of your Christmas prep time.

I sat down for a little while this morning and got the past three days' worth of Christmas journaling done, though.


We went up to Williamsburg on Sunday to get one last gift, and stopped off at Merchants Square downtown to see a performance of "A Christmas Carol" that I'd heard about. It was a one-man (well, one man plus a stage manager named Bob), 15-minute version, performed by an actor named Ed Whitacre on a tiny set built into what looked like a little moving trailer. First he came out and explained the show, sort of like a circus barker...

And then he became Scrooge and acted out the story with the help of some strategically placed props. See that little table he's about to fall asleep on?

With a little flip, the table top comes off and becomes the ghost of Jacob Marley!

The ghost of Christmas Past came out of Scrooge's bathrobe pocket...the ghost of Christmas Present was a puppet that emerged from the picture above the fireplace:

And the ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come was a long skeleton arm that emerged from the backstage door and then pushed out Scrooge's tombstone from within the fireplace.

It was all very clever, very broadly played, with some audience participation to keep the kids interested...I really enjoyed it. Of course, I love the story of "A Christmas Carol," and even though it was a condensed version, it hit all the important bits, especially the part about getting a second chance to start over, as Ed-the-actor runs out of time when the stage manager's stopwatch hits 15 minutes before the end of the show. Ed falls into despair, but Bob the stage manager perks him up with a chorus of "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow" and Ed leaps back into the show just in time to show Scrooge's wonderful awakening on Christmas morning. Very entertaining!

Okay, I'm off to get a few more things crossed off my to do list. See ya!

Here is Day 13, and then Day 10's entry, too...I finally got enough presents wrapped to take a nice picture.


I want to say...in case anybody happens to look at this journal and think it looks too time-consuming to do at Christmastime, it's really not. Or it doesn't have to be. I have a big pile of the papers and embellishments I picked out for this, and I just grab a couple things, slap them down, maybe rub a little ink around the edges, and call it good. It took me less than fifteen minutes to do today's entry, and that included printing out the photo.

Doing a small book (mine is 5x7" this year) and minimal journaling helps keep it fast. Next year, though, I am planning to do a lot more writing, so that will take more time. But it really has helped to make the lead-up to Christmas more special and fun for me. I've never really bought into the rush-rush, drive-yourself-crazy part of Christmas anyway, but I do get my sad or anxious or overwhelmed moments, and this journal helps keep me focused and calm. It was wonderful of Shimelle to come up with this idea and to generously leave the class open every year to those who have taken it before. The camaraderie on the forums with other people from all over the world is an added bonus!

Here's Day 12--pretty stripped down compared to yesterday!

I really want to do some Christmas baking, but I don't know who would eat it. Maybe I'll bake some stuff and send some of it to work with Todd next week...I am dying for mince tarts and fruitcake, but I think I'm the only person who would eat either one. Plus fruits and nuts are SUPER expensive this year, like everything else. Ho hum, what to do?

Meanwhile, my Christmas shopping is almost done, just one more thing to pick up, and the cards are almost all done and sent, too. And it doesn't look like we'll be going to Todd's office party, so no need to dredge up something festive to wear to that. They finally sent out invitations yesterday for a party on the 20th--good planning, that. A lot of people aren't going to be able to make it...should be a dull party, especially since the caterer doesn't have a liquor license. Most of the fun of Todd's office parties stems from the quantities of alcohol imbibed!

Anyway, we'll be en route to Ohio that day, so we won't be going, either. Ah well! So what remains on my Christmas to-do list is making a few last gifts and getting it all wrapped. I'm feeling pretty much on top of things, at least for the moment. How about you?

I've got my page for today done, but yesterday's is still awaiting a picture. The page for today looks a little demented, I think--I was trying to get a lot of things on there that don't match each other, but, oh well!

I went out and did a little holiday shopping today and it's craaaazzzy out there! I'm so glad I did 90% of my shopping online! The mall was jammed at 1:00 in the middle of a weekday afternoon--don't people have jobs anymore? Or are they all lazy good-for-nothings like me?

It was about 70 degrees and rainy, too, so all the stores were very overheated and the floors were wet and slippery. I have had the worst head-, tooth-, and jaw-ache this week from the pressure of this weather system going over us. Hopefully, hopefully, tomorrow it will be gone and we'll go back to clear and cold and this 800-pound fat man crushing my face will go back where he came from. 'Cause I'm losing my mojo in a big way right now...I just want to sit and stare out the window!

Catch-up.

I got a little behind on my journal--we've been busy and I've been tired! Here are days 7, 8, and 9. Day 7 has a few things blurred out on the "to do" list for secrecy's sake!

Steamed and pressed.

I hate to iron. Lord, how I hate it!

Wouldn't it be nice if men's shirts came with a tag that said, "WARNING: Although this shirt looks perfectly wonderful hanging on this hangar, it has been constructed in such a way that the minute it is exposed to a washer and dryer, it will immediately curl into a tight, wrinkled ball of Rubik's Cube-ian impossibility. At that point, it will vanish into the depths of your closet, never to emerge until your semi-yearly clean-out at which point it will proceed directly to the nearest charity thrift shop. So don't waste your money!"

Because you can't tell. You just can't tell! We've bought 100% cotton, we've bought cotton/synthetic blends, we've bought cheap shirts, we've bought expensive shirts, and there is absolutely no way to determine which ones will be wonderfully wrinkle-free and which ones will, well, not.

My home economics training was sadly lacking on all counts, but never more than in the ironing department. I had a toy ironing board and a little iron, but somehow that early indoctrination failed to translate into real-world expertise.

I know my mom ironed, and I can remember ironing a few skirts and dresses in high school and college when I absolutely had to (in college, on the floor on a folded towel, as I recall), but I never learned how to iron a man's shirt. I guess that's because my dad's good shirts all originated in the Era of Polyester, also known as the 70's. They were made of the same indestructible substance as his sport jackets and dress pants, which not only never needed ironing, they could simply be hosed off when a stain occurred, as the plastic fibers were impermeable to liquids of all kinds.

Now I have a husband who works a white-collar job that sadly does not require white collars, which could just be sent out to the dry cleaners. His casual-dress job calls for Dockers and casual long-sleeve dress shirts in plaids and dark solids, hardly worth a dry cleaner trip and fee.

So after two weeks of dawdling, I finally ironed the shirts that have been draped across the chest at the end of our bed. And they honestly don't look any better. I try re-tumbling them in the dryer, sometimes with a damp washcloth, but as our dryer is responsible for much of the wrinkling because it's a small stackable, that doesn't really do any good. And it doesn't help those awful buttonhole strips on the front at all. Why do they always, always wrinkle up like the ruffles on a pirate shirt? Some of Todd's shirts don't wrinkle one little bit, except for the buttonhole part. Why???

I always burn myself at least once, too, which doesn't endear me to the job at all. And I can't figure out how to iron sleeves, or that flat part across the upper back.

We've managed to get our wardrobes to the point where they need virtually no ironing, but every now and then a wrinkly shirt sneaks through. I'm always hearing about people who iron sheets and underwear and I cannot fathom the depths of boredom a person would have to sink to to consider that a worthy pastime.

So now Todd's ironed shirts hang neatly in his closet. He's not allowed to wear them ever again.