Soapy.

I read this very nice British blog called Posy from time to time, and today she wrote about her favorite soap, which is wrapped in tissue paper with a band around it--very classy. She, and several of the commenters, mentioned how certain soap scents make them think of certain people.

That reminded me of how my dad says that the smell of Ivory soap always takes him to his grandparents' farm house, where there was always a bar of Ivory on the sink when you came in and washed up.

One of my very favorite soaps is Yardley...rose, lavender or lemon. Oh, and oatmeal. The smell of the rose soap makes me think of early married life in Idaho for some reason--I guess I must have used it for a while when we lived there. Ivory is also very evocative of childhood days, though I don't think we used it all that much.

And now I've found Ellie's soap which is a new favorite, though I haven't settled on a favorite scent, since I've liked every one I've tried. And they last so long, I haven't had the chance to try very many yet!

What's your favorite soap? And do you have a soap scent that takes you back in time?

They're gone!

The ducks are all gone! Yay!

Ah, how I've waited for this day! Three long years and they're finally GONE. So...happy...! *choke, sob*

And Todd sanded down all the paper/glue bits, so I am ready to paint!

You may be wondering why I'm so excited about a guest-bath makeover...well, the guest bathroom is essentially my bathroom. The master bath only has a shower stall, so the guest bath is where I take my baths and shave my legs and do all those ablutions that really require a tub. And it's cozier than the master bath, which has a window that faces out onto the street and which I would constantly be walking naked in front of absentmindedly were I to shower in there. Yes, it's safer in the guest bath.

So that's why I'm particularly stoked about my guest bath transformation from brown-and-beige duck-a-rama to (hopefully) sage-and-lavender feminine vintagefest.

Monday, Monday.

Still working on the wallpaper border, but I'm at the point now where Todd has to take over: the area over the shower where I can't put up the stepladder. I'm too short to reach the border when I stand on the tub. This whole project would have been much easier if I was about five inches taller.

In fact, life in general would be easier if I was five inches taller. I could find pants that fit, and I wouldn't have to ask complete strangers to grab stuff for me off the top shelves at the grocery store. And my upper kitchen cabinets would be completely useful, instead of just 2/3 useful.

Now we just have to get down the tiny bits of paper backing and the glue smudges, and again, I think I'm going to have to turn it over to Todd. I tried a hot water/vinegar solution and a sanding block and it's just not doing the trick. I think it's time to pull out the power tools.

The bathroom is ankle-deep in paper bits. It's so satisfying!

Todd has a little more work to do on the vanity doors and then they'll be ready to prime, paint, and hang. I can hardly wait! Can't wait for that butt-ugly floor to get tossed out on the curb, too!

Here's a prettier shot than the wallpaper bits: this is the cheap blue quilt I bought at Kohl's. I have it folded on the chest at the foot of our bed, and it's quite pleasant to look at. Some of the fabrics almost have a vintage look.

The weather has warmed up dramatically, so I'm trying to get more walking in, and getting some Valentine's packages ready to mail to the nieces and nephews. This week will hopefully be all about painting, once we get the walls totally clean. That's it from here!

Ouch.

I'm not quite as grumpy as I was this afternoon, but I'm not quite happy, either. My arms are killing me!

I'd say we've got about 1/3 of the border down. The part above the shower came off in nice big chunks, mostly--bigger chunks than anywhere else, anyway. So that was good. But there's still a ton of scraping and peeling yet to do. I am SO grateful there's only one border in this house! Glad it's a smallish bathroom, too.

While I was peeling and scraping, Todd got the vanity doors mostly done, and I think they're going to look very nice indeed.

Todd thinks he should tackle the last bits of wallpaper backing and glue residue with the electric sander. Anybody know of any good reason why he shouldn't? They never mention the sander option in any of the articles I've read about wallpaper stripping, and yet it seems like such a good idea...easier than scraping every last millimeter off by hand!

I forgot to mention that I went back to Kohl's on Tuesday and bought another cheapie quilt, this time a blue full/queen for our bedroom. It was $6.99! 90% off! And it came with two pillow shams! (The twin red quilt came with one sham.) The funny/sad thing is, it seemed like an appropriate price for the thing--it's cheaply made, made in China, not at all high-end, and yet someone thought people would fork over $70 for one. And they were wrong, obviously! I like the quilt, don't get me wrong, but $6.99 seemed like a very fair price for it. I wouldn't have wanted to pay more. It will be nice to have for a springtime bed cover; it's got pretty floral patterns in it.

I can't lift my arms any more, off to watch TV and push the remote buttons with my big toe. Heh!

Ugh.

People who put up wallpaper in their homes should be ostracized from decent society and made to live with their horrible tasteless walls for the rest of their natural lives.

It's not coming down easy. That's all I have to say--I don't have enough strength left in my arms to type any more words! I. Hate. Wallpaper.

Painting and scraping.

Since I'm sitting here waiting for paint to dry, I thought I'd show what I've been doing this week, though it doesn't look like much yet.

I decided to paint our existing vanity in the guest bath, rather than replace it. I haven't been able to find any vanities I liked, and the one we have holds way, way more stuff than any of the others I've looked at. So I just decided to paint it white. And I'll do the same thing with the one in the master bath when I get around to it.

You can see how much stuff I've got crammed in there.

I pulled off the drawers and doors, because they're kind of beat up, and I don't really like the style...


...and Todd is going to make me new ones. He's cut the drawer fronts and the panel that goes over the big hole in the middle.


The drawer fronts are just plain boards with a bit of a taper on the edges. For the big middle one, I may try to find some kind of decorative carved piece to put on it.

The doors will have a flat raised border the whole way around. I'm hoping he can cut those for me this weekend so I can get those primed and painted, too. I bought new brushed nickel handles for everything, and the doors willl have brushed nickel hinges also, if I can find a store that has them in stock!

I've also started yanking down the bits of duck wallpaper border that I can reach:

I'd love to know why this border is up there. The original owner lived here for 15+ years and did absolutely nothing decorative to the house at all...so why the duck border? I'm just glad this was the only one he put up.

This weekend I'm going to get up on the stepladder and really attack it. I think it's going to come off pretty easily, because it's old enough that it doesn't have that impermeable vinyl covering on it. So I'm hoping the water/fabric softener solution will penetrate the paper and glue without too much trouble. I can't wait to see the last of the ducks!

Once the border is down and the walls are cleaned, I'll start painting them a nice sage green. And then in another couple of weeks, we'll pull out the sink top and floor and medicine cabinet, and replace them. And then we'll have a sparkly new bathroom. I wish it could all be done as fast as those room makeovers on HGTV!

The day the music died.

I didn't realize it till I logged onto Paperback Swap tonight and their home page mentioned this--today's the 50th anniversary of the day Buddy Holly's plane went down in an Iowa field.

I adore Buddy Holly. When I was 10 or 11 years old, I saw "The Buddy Holly Story" on TV and I was just smitten with him. I saved up my nickels and dimes and bought an LP of his greatest hits--the cover art on the album was a shot of graffiti on a stone wall that read "Buddy Holly Lives."

His music probably sounds completely dated and peculiar to anyone who grew up on hip-hop, but I love the way he played his guitar and harmonized with himself. His music is so light-hearted; even the sad songs are hopeful.

From reading about Buddy Holly as a kid, I discovered the Beatles and Elvis, and became a fan of what was then called "classic rock" and I guess now is called "oldies"--the rock-and-roll of the 50s and 60s.

So I've gotten a lot of enjoyment from Buddy--both from his own music and the music he inspired in other people. Dying at 22 didn't sound like such a big deal to me when I was 10 years old, but looking at it from age 38, it seems heartbreakingly sad.

Here he is on the "Arthur Miller Dance Party," introduced by the squarest, whitest, most middle-aged lady ever:



And here's another guy who died too young, singing some of Buddy's songs (fast forward over the one with Yoko blathering in the background, yuck):

You gotta love serendipity.

I had a bit of good luck today. I've been looking for a quilt for the past six months or so, with the idea of wrapping it around the seat cushions of my couch, to extend their lives a little longer. I found a frayed spot right in the center of one of the cushions a while back, and it's just been nagging at me. I don't want the fabric to tear.

We bought the couch new exactly nine years ago and I love it as much now as I did then. It was a momentous purchase because, if memory serves, it was our very first NEW furniture purchase after eight years of marriage. I wasn't at all sure what kind of color/pattern I wanted, but the minute I saw the swatch, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that was what I wanted. The funny thing was, it wasn't at all a color I'd even considered before!

It's just a very simple gray-green with a leafy pattern woven into it. I think the fabric's called jacquard...? This shows the pattern well:

Such a great couch, I just love it. Sigh.

I happened to pick up the Kohl's flyer out of the newspaper yesterday and all their quilts were on sale. So I stopped by this morning and found a twin-size quilt on an end-cap that looked much closer to what I had in mind than anything else I'd seen. It was $31.99 on sale, which wasn't great, but I figured I'd take it home and give it a shot and bring it back if it didn't work. $31.99 is still cheaper than a whole new couch, right?

When I got to the check-out, the girl beeped it, and then gasped. "This is only $5.99?!" she said. Yep, as a matter of fact, it was! It's discontinued! Huzzah!

Here's how it looks:

What do you think? I haven't sat on it yet, but I think it looks nice. I may have to safety-pin it along the bottom if it shifts around too much, but that's okay.

Later!

The Bowl.

Something happened in this house tonight that has never happened in our home, to my memory. Todd and I watched football. Together. And screamed at the TV. Both of us!

I am decidedly NOT a football watcher, and Todd only watches football when the Steelers are doing well at the end of a season. But his buddy who was supposed to come over bailed on him, so I watched the game with him tonight for fun. (I had a book close at hand and read through most of the second and third quarters.) I was rooting for the Cardinals (if a mild interest can be described as "rooting") and he, of course, was rooting for the Steelers.

What a nail-biter, right down to the final minutes, though I was bummed that "my" team didn't win, since they'd made such a great comeback from behind. It was exciting, esp. that last Pittsburgh touchdown! Maybe in another ten years I'll watch another football game! But probably not. I'll watch a little of the rampaging and rioting that's undoubtedly going on in Pittsburgh tonight, and that will be enough to convince me that the football world is not my world. Fun game, though.

Saturday doings.

Yesterday I sat down and made my Valentine's Day cards for the nephews and nieces. I found these great papers at the scrapbook store--it's a line called Splendid by Fancy Pants.

The one paper in the set has 12 small valentine images on it that you can cut out and either use for school exchanges or glitter up and put on a bigger card. I did the latter.

I just think they are SO CUTE.

We went down to Portsmouth today and had lunch, and stopped in at The Queen Bee, which is a small but wonderful antique store right across the street from the Biergarten, our favorite purveyor of knockwurst and German potato salad. The woman who runs The Queen Bee seems to have the exact same taste as me, because her store is loaded with old china, vintage hankies and pins, old kitchen doodads, etc. And her prices are very fair. Some things are expensive, but it's because they're rare and in perfect condition. And the things that aren't so rare or perfect are nicely affordable. I can live with that. What annoys me is when I see a dealer trying to sell some chipped, cracked dirty piece for way more than its worth. But The Queen Bee doesn't seem to do that.

I got this, which I don't think is vintage, it just looks that way:

And this, which is definitely vintage:

The owner told me it was a pattern that Jewel Tea sold in the mid-20th century, made by Hall China. I guess their famous pattern is Autumn Leaf, and I can't for the life of me remember what she said this pattern is. I like to collect china made in southeastern Ohio, and this dish is stamped "Cambridge" which is about an hour from where I went to college.

A cursory Google search reveals that this topic is far more complicated than I have time for at the moment. I may have to call the store and find out exactly what this pattern is called. But anyway, I've been thinking about getting a small casserole dish, since our two-person meals don't always require big dishes, and this should fit the bill.

I am extremely disillusioned with my Pfaltzgraff dinnerware and I decided I'd like to replace it with something American-made, but the options are very, very limited. So now I'm thinking about leaping into estate-sale season with a goal, when it starts up here in the next couple months: a new (old) set of dishes. I'm kicking myself for selling the like-new set I picked up at an auction two years ago for five bucks, but at the time I didn't have a place to store it. Now I wish I'd kept it, now that the Pfaltzgraff is cracking and crazing and making me mad.

All right, I'm off to pry up and paint some bathroom trim. Yippee!

Having fun.

Here are a few fun things we've done lately:

Two weeks ago we went and visited my brother's family, armed with a present for my niece Natalie's sixth birthday.

I decided several years ago that for each of my nieces' sixth birthdays, I would get them an American Girl historical doll. Our birthday gifts are usually much, much more modest, believe me, but I just think those dolls are so neat. So Natalie was the fourth niece to get her AG doll, and I got her Samantha.


She seemed to like her! This was the first time I've actually been able to give a doll in person, all my other nieces live too far away.

So there are two nieces left who have yet to turn six, one next year and one the year after that. It's fun to do something special for them when they're right at an age to really enjoy it. I like being an aunt.

For dinner that night, my cousin Trina and her husband Brian came over, and I finally got to see their baby boy Tristan, who is six months old. He's so precious!


I love holding babies. Tristan is very alert and loves to look all around and smile at people.

The girls like him, too.

I tried to take a lot of pictures, I really did, but two active girls and a squirmy baby don't make for good photo ops. But we had a really great evening...the adults got to talk and talk, and the girls played, and the baby hung out on various people's laps till he fell asleep.

We hadn't seen Trina and Brian in a year or two, so it was super to spend some time catching up. They are both smart and funny and just very good people. Baby Tristan totally lucked out, getting them for a mom and dad.

The next morning, we stopped off in Charlottesville on our way home and met my cousin Alan and his girlfriend Krista for lunch on the downtown mall. This time we had such a good time, I never even remembered to take my camera out of my pocket! I think I need my scrapbooker's club membership revoked.

We went to a restaurant called Himalayan Fusion for lunch, which is one of the things I love about C-ville (funky restaurants) and stopped into several used bookstores, which is another thing I love about C-ville (people there read), and then we had gelato, which is yet another thing I love about C-ville (fancy ice cream.) I bought a biography of Catherine the Great, a book about Richmond burning at the end of the Civil War, and a book about the Jamestown colony.

I am a big fan of my cousin Alan, so I was curious to meet Krista, and I liked her a lot. She's super-smart and we had a big long conversation about books. In other words, she completely filled my requirements for Alan's girlfriend. Hee! It was another terrific time of just talking and laughing with two good people.

I realize, re-reading this, that smartness seems to be something I look for and appreciate in a person. In my experience, smartness usually goes hand-in-hand with niceness. Now I know there are some smart, mean people out there (Dick Cheney springs to mind) but in my experience, the smart folks I've known are also super people.

Also in my experience, stupid seems to go hand-in-hand with mean. In general.

Speaking of Dick Cheney, last weekend, we went to see the movie about his old boss: "Frost/Nixon." Richard Nixon, another smartie but baddie. It was a good movie. Funny, interesting, and a great character study. You don't have to know a whole lot about Watergate to enjoy the movie, it's really more about a president who broke the law and the very unlikely person who made him look hard at what he'd done and finally take some responsibility for it.

So then on the drive home, Todd and I had a long chat about why Nixon got caught and yet Bush 2 has gotten away with crimes that seem much worse to me than anything Nixon and his co-horts did. This is also why I love my husband, because he'll talk about Watergate with me. Smart and nice. Last night we were watching TV and this funny phrase kept coming up, and I turned to him and said, "We need to add this to our..." and he said, "Lexicon?"

And I swear that made me want to jump his bones right there. 'Cause smart and nice is sexy, too!

Have a fun weekend!

Babbles.

I'm up late at night again, talking to myself. Todd conked out at 9:30 while we were watching "The New Adventures of Old Christine" on DVD. I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Anybody who can look that good at whatever her age is--without getting all plastic-surgery-freakish--is a hero to me. (Wikipedia says she's 48.) And she is so funny, and she loves being funny and doing whatever it takes to get the laugh. Love it!

We had fajitas tonight because I saw Tyler Florence make them on the Food Network last week and they looked delicious. I used his recipe, which calls for chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, which I'm sure are stacked in mountains on the grocery store shelves in L.A. and New York, but which are harder to come by here in what we fondly call the butt crack of Virginia.

I had to go to two different stores to find them, and in the second store, I had to keep muttering "chipotles in adobo, chipotles in adobo" to myself as I was shopping, so I wouldn't forget to go back to the Mexican aisle and pick them up, as I'd already passed that aisle once and forgotten.

It occurred to me that "chipotles in adobo" would be a good mantra if you were in one of the goofier meditative religions and needed a catchy mantra. It's just this side of nonsensical, especially if you mutter it 10 or 20 times.

I think weird thoughts in the grocery store. At my old grocery store, I would wheel my cart around and sing along with the oldies they played on the Muzak system, so chanting grocery items is a step up from that, I think. Maybe not. Anyway, the fajitas were good. It was hard to scrub the chipotle stink off my hands, though.

I was doing really well for a long time with planning meals, making grocery lists, and cooking, but somehow the double whammy of Christmas travel and being sick really threw me off my stride. We're still eating at home most of the time, but I'm scrounging around at the last moment every night for an idea, and I don't like that. I need to get back into my groove.

The couponing has just been dreadful lately, too, and that's also disheartening. There are so many of them I just can't or won't use because the products are too salty or too gross or whatever, and it seems like the ones I do use are getting worse. 50¢ off one item is much better (when your store doubles and triples coupons under 99¢) than $1.00 off two items is. And the sticker shock is such that I really feel motivated to get those coupons and USE them with the sales. It's just not happening.

I've been having to go to my happy place a lot the past few days because of my anxiety over this economic stimulus package and the cost of it and hearing every day about jobs lost, and homes lost, and the post office talking about cutting back mail days because it's so broke...it's all a little disturbing. I try not to fret about it because there's nothing I can do about any of it, but it's this nagging worry and you can't help but wonder how bad it's really going to get. And you have no idea who to believe about what we need to do to fix it all. It's not keeping me up nights, but I know there are lots and lots of people who are having sleepless nights wondering how they're going to survive, and I feel terrible for them. We are doing okay for now--Todd's company has more work than they have people to do it--but I don't want to get complacent. Things can change in an instant.

And on that cheerful note--night-night.

Thank you, thank you for the sweet comments below. When I started writing that last post, I certainly wasn't thinking it would turn into what the girls at Two Peas call a PVM (please validate me) post, but it kind of did! So thanks for the validation. Sometimes you just need a pat on the back, I guess.

We are having a big pile of lousy weather here--no snow, but lots of rain and wind, both of which are currently slamming against my study windows. It was about 60 degrees this morning, so I opened some of the downstairs windows to let the fresh air blow around a little. But the window screens smell funky, so the air that blew through them ended up smelling funky, too. Is there some homemaker rule about regularly scrubbing down window screens that I missed out on, along with all the other homemaker rules I missed out on? Is this a job for Febreze?

I saw on somebody's blog the other day where she wrapped a store-bought candle with fancy paper, so I grabbed a scrap of paper and an old sticker that were on top of a pile of supplies sitting on the floor, and covered a Glade candle.

You could really get fancy with such a project, but I was in a slap-it-on mood. It's a strawberries-and-cream scent, and it smells so good. On a gloomy day like today, you want a nice summery scent, something that reminds you of sunshine. But now I want some strawberry ice cream.

I'm feeling very scratchy and impatient with myself today. I don't seem to be able to get into the zone on anything I've attempted, all day long. Everything I touch seems to break or stop working. Urgh.

Hope the sun comes out tomorrow, that would be quite nice!

Blogs and bleah-gs.

I've been perusing a lot of different blogs the past month or so...first I was visiting a lot of blogs from participants in the Journal Your Christmas class, and lately I've been looking for some more good blogs about home decor and/or thrifting and vintage stuff.

All this blog-reading (bleading?) has cemented in my mind what I like and what I don't like in the world of blogs. I'm only going to link to examples of what I do like...examples of what I don't like should spring to mind readily enough for anybody who's blog-surfed even a little.

--I like a blog with nice big type on a light-colored background. Not too big, I don't need the large-print setting (yet) but not wee wee tiny, either. White words on a black background = your prose had better be right up there with Dickens and Twain to make me stick around and risk irreversible eye strain.

Here's a very nice example of a perfectly typeset blog, written by the perfectly wonderful Suzanne: Notes For My Kids' Therapist.

--While I'm talking type...I don't need you to change fonts and colors every couple of sentences or make various sentences or words real big while the rest of your typing is normal-size. It makes you look like a thirteen-year-old. I've noticed that the quality of writing on these types of blogs is usually at the thirteen-year-old level, too.

This is the neatest, tidiest, most grown-up-looking blog I know of: Simply Recipes. The side ads are an unfortunate development, but if it means success for Elise, I can deal.

--Here's a hint: if your blog header takes up my entire computer screen, I'm going to feel less and less compelled to scroll down past it every time I visit. Yes, I have blog header envy, since I still haven't found someone who will explain to me in baby talk how to make a fancy one for myself, but still. Bigger is not always better.

This is one of my favoritest blog headers ever...so clean, so simple, so freshvintage.

Another nice one: Gracious Hospitality.

--Funny is good. Sarcastic funny is even better. But your blog doesn't even have to be funny or clever, just well-written. A few bloggers whose writing style I admire:

Vintage Rescue Squad

I Am Not Left-Handed

Thrift Shop Romantic

Red Molly

--I like music. You like music, too. But we probably don't like the same kind of music. And when your nifty playlist player on the sidebar starts to blast out something very loud a few seconds or even minutes after I've come to your blog, usually over top of whatever I'm listening to at the moment, it scares the beejeebers out of me and makes me want to run away and never come back. 'Kay?

--I love seeing pictures of what you found at the flea market. Not so crazy about seeing pictures of what you spotted in some high-end catalog that you're currently dying for. Flea market finds are way more interesting than designer clocks.

--I don't know if blogging should be about writing about your exciting life, or about making your boring life sound exciting. I prefer hearing about boring lives, though. The exciting, fancy lives just make me feel old and, well...boring.

I would never say any of these people's lives are boring, but they're normal and they make me feel kinship, instead of horrible bitter jealousy:

Bigger Than a Breadbox

Oodles and Oodles

My Romantic Home

One Woman's Cottage Life

Mint Basil

I love getting peeps into other people's lives. I think, at its best, that's what blogging should be about: the words, the pictures, and getting to really know the people you visit regularly. I hope this blog is like that. All the extra stuff is distraction. I've been writing this blog for almost four years, and I think about yanking the plug at least once a month. It's a little of this and a little of that, and none of it feels terribly interesting. I don't get a lot of traffic, I don't have an Etsy shop, I'm not plugging a project, I don't run with any hip blogging crowd. It's just me here, typing words as they come to mind. I feel constrained sometimes by what I don't want people to know about me, especially the people who come here who do know me.

Mmm...introspection. Or in other words, "Like a doofus, I had caff-tea with supper and now I'm buzzed up late at night and thinking thoughts!"

Anyway, if you stop by here on occasion, I hope you like my blog. Chances are, I'm liking yours, too.

Paint chips.

Well, we've been doing some house project planning...I finally finished the last interior door (*fanfare*) and Saturday we picked up the big bi-fold doors for our bedroom closet. So, I guess technically, I haven't finished the last interior door, but it was the last regular door, and let me enjoy my feeling of accomplishment, okay?

Once again we're turning our attention to our two bathroom re-dos, but I think this time we may actually get one of them done in the foreseeable future. I'd love to do both bathrooms in one huge swoop of productivity, but Todd is dubious that such a feat is possible. Both bathrooms need new paint on baseboards and walls, new flooring, new vanities, new sinktops, and new medicine cabinet doors.

Over on the right are the latest of the many, many paint chips I've picked up for our master bath. I'd like it to be some shade of light blue or a light teal, to coordinate with our bedroom, which has light coffee-colored walls and blue and teal accents.

Blue is a tricky color. I've never dithered around with a paint color as much as I have with this one. You don't want it too icy, or too bright. Nothing's worse than electric blue walls. We painted our bedroom light blue in the last house we owned, and although it was soothing at night, it was just this side of screechy in the daytime.

This bathroom has a south-facing window, so it gets lots of light, which also really affects the way a particular shade of blue looks at a particular time of day. I'm stumped so far. I know I don't want a really, really pale blue, but neither do I want it to be too dark. I like the idea of a light teal, but again, it can't be too dark. One of the things we like about the bathroom is how full of light it is, and we don't want to detract from that too much with a dark wall color.

These kinds of things are fun to fuss over--until it's go-time and you have to make a decision. Fortunately, I still have some fussing time left. We'll tackle the guest bath first and who knows when the master bath will get its due. I suspect it will need a new sub-floor, which will elevate it to a whole new level of home improvement headache.

Anyway, Todd likes the second chip from the top, which is called Lisbon Blue. I like it, too, but when I picture it on four whole walls, I think it might be a little screechy. Which one do you like?

I think they all look nice with my old framed postcards, which are the main decoration in the limited wall space of that bathroom. I collected a bunch of them years ago that each had a body of water in the picture, and framed them in super-cheap IKEA frames that I white-washed. They used to hang in a dark green bathroom in our old house in Columbus, and looked nice there, but I think they might really pop against the right shade of blue. I have eight of them all lined up against the right side of the window.

This is always a nice time of year to look around and think about new ways to feather your nest. It's too cold to be out and about too much, and so you can rummage through closets and find treasures and hang and rearrange things. I've been going through kitchen cupboards and drawers and tossing things and organizing. The only danger is when you make a bigger mess than you had before, and then you have to figure out how to get it all put away. That's when it's tempting to just forget the big projects and cuddle up with a blanket and book and keep the house tidy!

Giveaway alert!

Jeune Girl Crafts is giving away a nice big custom-decorated Provo Craft wall letter on her blog--go over and leave a comment for a chance to win!

It's almost at the end, but Casii at Granny Panty Chic is also doing a great giveaway, so be sure to check that out before tomorrow, too!

See ya later!

President Obama.

I haven't written very much about Barack Obama in my blog. It's hard for a hopeful yet cynical person to know what to say about him.

I have never been a sloganeer or a follower or a breathless believer in much of anything. I haven't trusted a politician since Gary Hart broke my 14-year-old heart in 1984.

So I don't have much use for "Yes, we can!" or for the people who seem to think that the minute Obama places his hand on the Bible, America will spring into glorious Technicolor, just like when Dorothy stepped out of her house into Oz. Nobody, and certainly no politician, has that kind of power in this country. Obama is taking on the presidency at a scary and dangerous moment, and most of his plans will fall under the twists and turns of forces and people outside his control.

But I did vote for him, and I am excited about today and I do like him. The main thing that makes me root for him to succeed is that he's my kind of person. He's a reader. He likes to think and talk about big ideas. He likes to look at all the different sides of a thing. He seems to take his life's responsibilities seriously. I just hope someone like that can succeed in today's Presidency.

The former President was the exact opposite of my kind of person. He could not have been more opposite. The only thing I kind of liked about him was that he could be a bit of a smartass. But since he was usually being a smartass about things that are important to me like...oh...war...and you know, the Constitution and stuff, I didn't fully appreciate that side of him, either.

Anyway, I'm pretty neutral about what Obama will be able to do--not quite pessimistic, not quite optimistic. More of a wait-and-see setting. The disappointments of the Clinton era are still a little too fresh in my mind for me to think that Obama will be able to enact many, if any, of the major changes he has in mind. I just hope he stays safe and healthy, that his wife and daughters thrive in their new life, and that we see some real cooperation and agreement in our government on where to go from here.

Just kidding about that last part. That would be Oz!

Buh-bye.

The time has come to say good-bye. So, guys...

...For all that you did.
...For all that you didn't do.
...For all that you did and pretended you didn't do.
...For all that you didn't do but patted yourselves on the back for anyway.
...For all that one of you did while the other was oblivious.
...For all that one of you did while the other pulled the strings.
...For all that you ignored, neglected, manipulated, obstructed, hid, scoffed at, and just plain screwed up.
...For all the power grabs, bogus invasions, signing statements, late-night Justice department phone calls, facial shootings, malapropisms, record deficits, wiretappings, waterboardings, vacation days, and deleted e-mails.

For all these things and more, we'll never forget you guys.

Even though we wish we could.

Don't let the back door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

A winner!

When you get up on Monday morning and your first task is to get that last closet door painted, the one you've been putting off for four or five months, and then you can't find a paintbrush anywhere...so you move on to the next task, which is to vacuum up the Christmas tree needles and glitter flakes from the tree and ornaments you took down three weeks ago, and the vacuum blows a circuit breaker ten seconds in...to me that's fate's way of saying, "Janelle, forget all this pesky housework and go do your blog giveaway."

So Brittney, my Canadian friend, congrats!!! You win the magazine, the notecards, and anything else I can find around here and shove into a big envelope. (Be afraid, be very afraid.) And thanks, everybody else, for stopping by and entering. I like having visitors here, even if my blog isn't quite the most fascinating or stimulating thing on the Internet! And now I have some new friends' blogs to visit, too, so thanks!

More later...I have to get back to my household tasks and see what else will go awry today. Maybe I can chop off a finger and get out of housework forever!

Away again, for reals.

Todd got home tonight from his week in Maryland, and tomorrow we're just making a quick run over to the middle part of the state, to have a birthday dinner with my brother's family (my brother turned 34 on the 13th; my niece turns 6 on the 20th) and then lunch the next day with my cousin.

I found some cute cards in the dollar section at Michael's and blinged them up with some Stickles, so they're going into the giveaway jackpot, too. I'd take a picture but I can't lay hands on my camera at the moment. Doh.

See ya later!