Art.

I found this picture at a thrift store on Monday--three bucks. I just love it, it's some amateur little oil painting that someone masking-taped into a cheap frame, but look how nice it looks against my teal study walls!

Itchy.

Why do I itch all over today? I feel prickly all over my skin. Do I need a lotion bath or something?

Makeovers.

My Target desk and hutch came today, huzzah! Now everybody needs to post a comment and tell my DH to get my old countertop torn down so I can put these together and start whipping this study back into shape!

I love thrifty finds, and screw-it-together furniture seems so...soulless...but honestly, I could look for months for something like this at sales and thrift stores before I found what I was looking for. So, soulless and quick it is.

I am, however, scouting the thrifts for an armchair of some sort for my study. Something comfy, maybe overstuffed, or maybe a little more structured. Not formal, more cottagey.

I found a little ottoman that should be easy to slipcover yesterday, plus a funny little table with a magazine rack built in that I'm going to paint white and put my teal lamp on. So that's done. I just need the countertop down, the computer table moved, and a chair to sit in, and I'll be almost there!

Then I want to slipcover my office chair, put up curtains of some sort...and then one room in this house, at least, will be done.

More yada yada.

I'm doing a little housecleaning on my blogs today, and I added a new blog, too. It's called Nose in a Book, and it will become my new book journal, as the old-style (paper) book journal I started for 2007 is already showing signs of not being sufficient to hold all the books I read in a year. Besides, blogging about books will be more fun.

I have another blog, called Fresh Sweet Corn, that I started last summer when I thought I was going to be cooking lots and becoming a foodie blogger. Well, there are lots of foodie bloggers out there who are far, far, far more qualified than I...and yet, I still harbor the idea that my kitchen will suddenly become so alluring that I'll start concocting wonderful yummy things and writing about them all.

Well, a girl can dream. In the meantime, I am going to try to start updating that blog more often, which will mean cooking more often, so do check it out on occasion, if you'd like.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Chopping heads off chickens and other life skills.

Simply Recipes is one of my very favorite blogs--easy to look at, well-written, entertaining--and oh yes, excellent recipes to boot! Elise, the blog creator, was interviewed on her local NPR station the other day. Here's the link to her post about it, and from there, you can navigate to the broadcast and find her spot. It's about 1/3 of the way through.

It was so fun to hear her voice and find out a little bit about her, and she mentioned something that I think about a lot: how our parents and grandparents carry around so much knowledge and experience with them that we younger folk often don't pay attention to until at some point in our lives we wish to have it.

I commented on her blog that I have a very vivid memory of my grandpa and my dad butchering chickens in my grandparents' yard, and then wandering down to the basement and watching my grandma and my mom plucking the birds and taking out their guts and whatnot. I remember being amazed when they opened one of the birds, and there was an egg intact inside of her. Talk about fresh!

Anyway, I would have no clue, none, about how to butcher a bird. No desire, either. I get yicked out handling grocery store chicken with the skin still on it.

But there are other skills, less gross skills, that I just never got passed along to me. I guess because by the time the 70s and 80s rolled around, they weren't skills that people needed to get through life. But how convenient it would be to be able to sew, or crochet, or make yeast bread, or...any of the other myriads of things I don't know how to do. Seems like the older folks in my family know at least a million things that I don't.

Of course, I can blog. But that doesn't seem like a good skill trade-off!

iPot.

Isn't this the darlingest thing ever?

It's got a mesh insert so you can brew tea, but you can pull it out so the pot can go in the microwave to heat the water.

Here's where you can get one of your own. It's awfully hard to pick a color, though! I picked Sunflower.

Yay, books!

I'm excited...I indulged myself with three new home decor books, which is a real indulgence for me. Paperbacks, no biggie. But big full-color hardback books, those are a little more rare for me to buy.

They came from Amazon today...here's what I got:

Flea Market Style, by Emily Chalmers

The French-Inspired Home, by Kaari Meng

Decorating Easy, by Jane Cumberbatch

I'm so excited about sitting and savoring them that I'm putting off sitting and savoring them, like a kid hoarding bubble gum in a treasure box. Ridiculous.

I had another book by Jane Cumberbatch called Pure Style, but I'm very much afraid I unloaded it in one of my book purges, because the style was a little too pure. Lots of empty granite sinks and shower stalls, if I remember correctly. But I do still wish I had it. If I did indeed get rid of it. Maybe I should just go look.

We had a fabulous book store in Columbus that was inside an old church. Appropriate, as I had a feeling of reverence walking up the steps and seeing books, books and more books.

Most of the books were overstocks...a few used items, but mostly overstocks and, oddly, lots of British books. I got some fabulous British embroidery books there and also quite a few home decor books, like Pure Style.

The really famous bookstore in Columbus was in German Village downtown, and the name completely escapes me rght now, but it was in one of the old brick buildings there, a rabbit warren of room after room absolutely crammed with books. Again, lots of overstocks and odds and ends, but it was hugely popular. The rooms were tiny and full, and then they'd fill up with, oh, two or three people per room, and you couldn't turn around, and your breath would get stopped up in your chest, and you'd have to worm your way out to the tiny courtyard and take a few deep breaths. So although it was a beloved landmark, I never really warmed up to the place after my first visit. The church bookstore was better. It definitely contributed to my book collection explosion of the mid- to late-90s.

We don't really have any bookstores like that here in Hampton Roads. There's a Books-a-Million in Hampton, but it's pretty soulless. There are used bookstores in Newport News and Williamsburg where you can trade in your oldies for credit, and I do take advantage of those, but again, they're both in skanky strip malls and very much without character.

It amazes me that this area is soooo incredibly old, settled for so long (400 years!) and yet soooo without beauty or character. The history is confined to tourist-approved areas (Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, a few blocks in Portsmouth) and everything else is tract housing and strip malls. I don't understand it, and I don't like it.

Not that Columbus didn't have its incredibly ugly spots, but the thing about Ohio is that it's rife with small towns that were all built in an era when people cared about doing things right, and about making buildings beautiful. And there are enough of those towns left, and enough of them have been encapsulated by Columbus' growth, that you can find very charming places wherever you go. I do miss that.

Wow, what a ramble. Maybe I should go crack open a book!

Blogs.

I haven't been writing much on my own blog lately, but here's a few random blogs I've discovered in the past few months that I love to check on regularly:

Posie Gets Cozy
All Buttoned Up
Every Little Thing
Emma's Closet
Daisy Cottage
Folded Gingham
Jane's Apron

There are so many women out there creating beautiful lives for themselves and blogging all about it. That makes me love the Internet!

Spring.

The clouds are pretty this evening. And it feels like spring is really here.

Time to think about gardens and dirt and paint and furniture. And doors--we're on a mission to replace every interior door plus the front door. Time to scrub the siding and paint the trim and shutters. Time to lay down mulch and put in plants.

Time to think about capri pants and tee shirts and bemoan the winter weight gain.

I'll miss winter...this one was a nice one. We had our evenings in front of the fireplace and our nights under my beloved down comforter. I sleep so well under the weight of that comforter! We had our one snow experience--struggling through a blizzard between Baltimore and Washington one Sunday night in January, but that was all. I actually wanted more snow, one or two of those days inside watching the snow fall, but it was not to be, this winter.

Here comes spring, ready or not.

Come back, bunny bowl!

Don't you hate it when you're having a dream in which something really great is about to happen, like having the best sex of your life with your favorite celebrity, and then you feel yourself waking up before you get to the good part? Sometimes I know, in my dream, that I'm waking up and I tell myself, "Stay asleep! STAY ASLEEP!" But that never works, sadly.

This morning I had a dream that I wandered into an auction in the midst of the bidding on a ceramic bowl shaped like a bunny rabbit, with a bunch of other cool stuff piled into the bowl. I didn't really catch what-all was in the bowl, but the bidding was at $3.00, so I bid, and then the other woman who wanted it bid $4.00, and then I bid $5.00.

So all eyes were on this other woman, and she hemmed and hawed and showed me this shelf she'd bought and how cute the ceramic bowl would look on it, somehow thinking I'd relent and let her cheap self have the bowl for $4.00. Chuh! As if.

But I hadn't gotten a number before I bid, so I had to fill out all this paperwork, and I woke up as I was writing my address, and I never got a good look at my bunny bowl or what was inside. Alas.

Those particular lots at auctions are my favorites, by the way--the stuff left over at the end, where they've taken a mess of odds and ends, piled them in a box lid, and then auction them off for a few bucks.

I've gotten some interesting things in those lots--an ancient English teapot, a Carnival glass crock with a lid (which was sadly shattered in my falling table tragedy of November), a pile of very old Sunday School books with beautiful pictures, two lovely old sepia photos of cocker spaniels. To me, there's nothing more fun than rummaging through other people's detrititus.

And my dream denied me the fun! Ah well.

I'm still here.

Hello, just checking in again! Still trying to get the medication ironed out, but I'm doing okay. February is such a dull month, anyway, so at least I'm not missing out on anything spectacular. Just lots of TV-watching and crossword-puzzling., and making a few plans for warm-weather projects. I'll feel like being chatty again soon, I promise!

"I'm not dead yet...I'm getting better..."

(Monty Python quote there)

Just popping my head in to say hi, and all's well here. I started taking some medication last week that makes me loopy and semi-coherent--I keep waiting to feel more myself, but it hasn't happened yet. Anyway, I can barely compose a thought, let alone a post, but I'll be back when I get this ironed out!

Happy V Day...

...from me and the hubby.

Tuesday thoughts.

Rainy and cold here today, but that's better than snow, for sure. I'm getting creeped out seeing all those houses buried to the roofline in New York and elsewhere.

This week is doctor week for me--making appointments, making sure all our old doctors are part of our new health insurance network. (They're not.) I stopped by my new family doctor today and liked him and his office staff quite well. I had to have some blood taken for a thyroid test, and I've never had a stick so gentle before. I barely felt it! I'll have to find a new dentist (ugh) and possibly a new optometrist--haven't checked on that yet. I loooove insurance stuff. (drip, drip goes the sarcasm).

Todd's been at this new job for more than three months, and this is the first time we've actually cracked open the insurance packet and pulled out our cards and checked everything. Either we're very healthy or very lazy. Don't tell me, I know which one...

I went thrifting around the corner last Friday and picked up a few non-essentials: a nice heavy white metal basket, which several people commented on enviously as I carried it around the store, a book on expressing creativity through gardening (I need major help in this area), a 100-year-old French grammar book that will be great for using in various crafty ways, and a long scarf/table runner made from granny squares. Granny squares are such a double-edged sword--so nostalgic and homey, and yet often so, so ugly. Terrible things have been done in the name of granny squares.

But this piece is nice--good colors, good-quality yarn (maybe wool?) and expertly crocheted. I'm not sure if it will be a Christmas accessory or if I can get away with having it in the living room at non-Christmas times, since the living room is mostly red and green. I guess I'll throw it nonchalantly over the arm of a chair or something. Who knows? I just liked it.

I was planning to put potted plants in the basket and stick it out on the porch or something come spring, but I think it may be too nice a basket for that. Maybe better suited to holding guest bath towels or something.

Maybe I need to get my "house vision" honed a little bit better before I start dragging home stuff willy nilly, do you think? We have brought home so many yard sale finds over the years that ended up going on to a better home in very short order. It's hard to stop and think about whether you will use something and what you will use it for when you know you have to grab it now or never see it again. That's the pressure of thrift store and yard sale shopping!

And I'm finishing up yet another Civil War-themed book: The Emancipator's Wife by Barbara Hambly, a novel about the life of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Barbara Hambly authored a set of historical mysteries about a free black man living in New Orleans in the 1830s that aren't just some of the best mysteries I've read, they're some of the best historical writing I've read, and really, some of the best writing, period. So I was glad to spot this book at the library the other day.

There used to be a series of children's biographies, written in the 1950s, I think, that were about famous people in their childhood years. Looking back , I see that they had to have been heavily fictionalized, but I used to check my favorites out of the school library over and over. One of my faves was about Mary Todd Lincoln.

Her adult life is hardly the stuff of children's stories, with grief and mental illness and terrible tragedy...but Hambly takes all this sad material and still finds some redemption in it. The characters of Mary and Abraham Lincoln come to life, and they are so sympathetically described, and the story of their marriage is so compelling. Sad, but a good read.

Thursday again?

Thursday night, Todd is in bed, I'm at the 'puter. I'm watching/listening to a Reno 911 episode on a free video site, which is a pretty lousy site, but which I'm linking because you can also watch all the British episodes of The Office there. If you've never seen it, it's definitely worth checking out. But not with kids in the room--the Brits are a leetle more lax with their TV standards than we are over here.

I hadn't seen the British version in a few years, since we rented it. Then the American version came out and I was quite disdainful of it after watching the pilot, because it seemed like--and actually, was at that point--a poorly warmed-over version of the British pilot. But then the Americans found their own creative groove, and now the American Office is one of the best things on TV--in my humble opinion.

The British version really struck me, on my recent re-viewing, as even darker and harsher than I remembered, after the sunnier American version. But it really has some incredible moments, so check it out if you never have!

I wanted to mention a recent read...the majority of my reading is non-fiction, but I made a foray over into fiction and it came out pretty well. The book was March, by Geraldine Brooks, which has been on my "to read" list, for oh--two years or so!

The book is written in the voices of the parents from Little Women, which was a huge childhood favorite of mine. This book explores Father March's experiences in the Civil War, and the toll it took on his relationship with Marmee, his wife. There are also flashbacks that fill in some of the backstory of Little Women--how Father and Marmee met, the source of Aunt March's difficult relationship with the family, how the Marches lost their money, etc.

I loved the way the author filled in the blanks of this very familiar story. While Little Women focuses almost exclusively on the March sisters, and sees the world through their eyes, this book gives you the grown-up story, and really explores the harshness of the war, the slave experience, and the terrible hardships that befall Father March. Both Father and Marmee have to look at themselves and rethink every ideal they held dear before the war.

It's beautifully written and haunting...not bad at all. I recommend it, especially if you loved Little Women. And it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction last year.

Finally, I've been surfing around and have come across a few British craft or home decor or lifestyle blogs, several of which mention an event called the Shepton Mallet Antiques Fair. I would give just about anything to attend the Shepton Mallet Antiques Fair, just based on the name alone. Sounds like the kind of place where you'd find Paddington the Bear strolling arm-in-arm with Miss Jane Marple.

This has been a total February week--cold and kind of listless. I've been favoring my neck and arm this week, but it's all feeling better now, and so am I. Tomorrow: laundry. (AAAAAH!)

You go, Jim.

Senator Jim Webb on the floor of the Senate Tuesday:

"As I have said before, it is inverted logic to claim that we should continue to fight this war on behalf of the troops. The fact is that they are fighting this war on behalf of the political process. They deserve political leadership that is knowledgeable and that proceeds from an assumption that our national goals are equal to the sacrifices we are asking them to make."

And:

"What is truly surprising -- and unsettling -- is this administration's lack of overt diplomatic effort to bring order out of this chaos, in a way that might allow us to dramatically decrease our presence in Iraq and at the same time increase the stability of the region, increase our ability to fight terrorism and allow us to address strategic challenges elsewhere in the world."

I'd call it "freaking scary" as opposed to "unsettling," but...anyway... you can read the transcript of his whole speech here. It's worth reading. I'm glad to have one senator with some amount of integrity anyway--I can't say much about our other Virginia senator, Warner, who axed his own Iraq resolution.

Checking in.

Suddenly, I feel like I'm coming up with a vision of some of the rooms in this house that have eluded me. My scraproom, and the spare bathroom, and the beginnings of a vision of the master bedroom--suddenly I'm looking at all of these spaces and I can SEE how I want them to be. This is huge, as I've been extremely stumped by this house ever since we moved in over a year ago.

Now I just need some large sums of money! Hee!

So I cleaned out the master closet on Sunday, and then pulled everything out of the closet in my study, and started packing stuff back into it, and somewhere in there I pulled my neck/shoulder/arm again, so I've been doing very little constructive work since then. It seems like it takes less and less to totally yank everything out of whack in there...frustrating.

Add in a ripsnorter of a headache (18 hours and counting) and you have my week so far. But at least I have a vision.

My guy.

The Two Peas blog challenge today:

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, what attracted you to your DH/SO?

My DH and I were extremely young when we became friends and fell in love--I was 17 and he was 18. From this vantage point it seems impossible to find a soulmate at that age, but that is what happened. In the 19 years since then, I've never met anyone who could hold a candle to him.

So what attracted me to him? He was--and is--super smart, which I love, and he was--and is--a fantastic listener. Interested in just about everything, optimistic and willing to tackle almost any challenge. And he's a real wiseass, with a dark yet goofy sense of humor. Throw in big brown eyes with long lashes and a round little butt, you've got the perfect guy. For me, anyway. I'm very blessed.

God bless the Dutch...

...who grow these gorgeous gems of color and ship them over to us to rescue us from the February doldrums.


I do have the doldrums today, though--or maybe the grumpies is more correct. Just generally feelin' grumpy for absolutely no good reason except that I have so many things I SHOULD be doing that I don't WANT to be doing.

And it's not simple cross-it-off-the-list accomplishments, it's stuff like: Eat right. Lose weight. Sleep less. Move more. Be cheerful. Call people. Clean the closets (which may sound like a cross-it-off-the-list item, but which spawns any number of other chores, which spiral into a black hole of household chaos.)

You know, all that life change stuff that you can't just do once, but that you have to decide to do. Every. Single. Day. Over and over for the rest of your life.

Stuff I was determined to tackle, once and for all, in January, and now it's February and I haven't tackled any of it. Where does the mojo come from? Am I trying to re-invent too many things about myself? Is it expecting too much to turn from a lazy slug of a person into an upright citizen who eats salads and goes for walks at the crack of dawn and flosses her teeth faithfully?

Yawn.

In other news, I found a charming yet overpriced green gingham platter at the thrift store this afternoon:

And a handmade pottery mug in just the right color for holding brushes or pencils in my study:

There were two there by the same creator, and this was obviously the second attempt, after the creator got the hang of what a mug is shaped like and how big the handle needs to be!

Todd is playing paintball today and I think that's why I feel so at loose ends. Also this is the first weekend in a month that we haven't been traveling or had company. Funny how that punctuates your weeks, and then a free weekend feels so directionless.

I'm going to try to muck out my study now, wish me luck.

I heart winter.

I saw this quote on another blog this morning:

February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer. (Shirley Jackson)

For me, it should read the opposite:

August, when the days of summer seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of winter. (Janelle Clark)

Yes, I like winter, especially the watered-down quasi-winters we get here in southern Virginia. I'd actually like a little more snow, but otherwise winter here is a pretty good thing--plenty of sunshine, warm days interspersed with the cold--not too bad a deal.

Happy birthday to my friend Matthew, who is eleven years old today, with a terrific life all stretched out in front of him like a groundhog's shadow!

More Thursday thoughts.

I heard about a website last night called LibraryThing, where you catalog all your books and can browse other people's libraries, get suggestions, form groups, etc.

I'm still trying to figure out if this is worth messing with. The anal-retentive part of me relishes having a nice neat list of all my books...however, this would take AGES to compile. I just entered a few off the top of my head last night and I'm already up to 74 books. The tip of the iceberg, I assure you.

What's really scary is that I've purged my library at least twice in the past year and gotten rid of a good 150-200 books. And you'd never know it. And I suspect there's a box or two that never got unpacked from the move, because I've thought of several books lately that I know I didn't get rid of, yet can't find.

With all that said--is it really worth cataloging such a fluid collection, where I lose 'em, trade 'em in for new ones, and generally just stack 'em around in little piles?

I dunno. Here's the link to what I've entered so far, though.

I pulled out a Dave Matthews CD and listened to it today, after hearing one of my faves on the radio this afternoon. I don't think Before These Crowded Streets is very well-thought of by the devotees, but I like it. He does go on about death, though, doesn't he? I haven't listened to DMB in ages and ages--it's so funny how an album can pinpoint you to a specific moment in your life. You hear it and it's like you were there again. I'm glad that's not really true.

It smells so FABULOUS outside, I wish I could bottle it up and save it for one of those drippy humid stiflingly hot days that's coming just as sure as anything, and sooner than I'd like. We got a dusting of snow today, which turned to rain, and it's just cold and wet and clean-smelling outside. The kind of air that makes your nose shrivel up inside when you inhale it. Yum.

Thursday thoughts.

If I couldn't procrastinate, I couldn't live. Tons of stuff to do, and I sit here in front of the computer.

A new episode of The Office is on tonight--hurray!

My brother wrote a funny bit in his blog yesterday--check it out and see that madness does run in my family.

Time to go clean the kitchen and strum on my guitar a little bit before my lesson.

Summerland.

"The tantrums of giants, are, of course, quite literally the stuff of legend. How many of the world's volcanoes, maelstroms, and boiling geysers, how many of its hurricane winds and earthquakes, have been attributed to the ill-tempered fumings and poor sportsmanship of giants!"

Just one of many charming observations from Summerland, by Michael Chabon, which I discovered at the thrift store this past weekend. I've never read anything by him, and this was apparently the first children's book he wrote, after a Pulitzer-winning career as a writer of grown-up books. I'm totally enjoying it.

Inspiration.

Today's blog challenge at Two Peas:

What kinds of things inspire you lately?

Lately I've been pulling out my small collection of Stampington magazines: Somerset Studio, Legacy, Stamper's Sampler, Somerset Home...etc. Somerset Studio is my very favorite. The art pieces in that magazine used to look so over the top to me, and now I can hardly get enough of looking at them and fantasizing about what I could create myself.

Small online projects have also been inspiring to me, like Shimelle's classes, and the stuff at Big Picture Scrapbooking. I like the camaraderie of making something and sharing it with lots of other people who made the same thing--only different!

And I've been on a total reading kick for the past month, so books have been my inspiration. Not in a way that perks up your eyes or ears, but in a way that perks up your mind and gets you to thinking and making connections for yourself.

I'm doing more absorbing right now, and less acting on the inspiration. Maybe I'm coiling up, ready to pounce on something right around the corner. I can't tell!

Monday morning.

I love the days when I get up and know there's nowhere I need to be and nothing I need to go out of the house for. They're rare enough that I really enjoy them when they come along, especially in a cold day like today. I can just "putz around the house," which is an expression from Todd's family. I know "putz" means something else in Yiddish, but in our house it just means to putter around tending to this and that, with little breaks for lunch, a cup of tea, or...blogging.

Speaking of Todd's family, his parents left for Ohio this morning after three days here with us. They are the perfect houseguests, and I always hate to see them go, because it's nice to have other people in the house.

Somehow this became a thrifting weekend--when they come down in spring or fall, we often go to yard sales, but those are non-existent in January, so I took them around to a bunch of shops on Friday while Todd was working, and then we went down to Virginia Beach on Saturday afternoon and hit a bunch more. My mother-in-law is a thrift shop devotee--it is not within her power to buy an item new if she thinks she can get it used. Me, I am certainly not opposed to buying items new, but I like finding things that are old and unique--and cheap is nice too, but harder and harder to come by, even at thrift stores.

I ended up bringing home a tremendous stack of books:


Including an old stained Moosewood Cookbook, which I've always wanted to own:


As well as four small teacups with pink thistles on the front--they're soft pink on the inside, and white on the outside:


And the goofiest knickknack I ever did see, but it made me laugh, and that's worth a buck:


A long thin picture--I think it's 40-45 years old--that fits perfectly on the scrap of wall between the kitchen entry and the storage closet:

A pile of wool sweaters in nice colors, for felting:

A couple small pictures and a tiny picture frame I think I'll try to paint in white:


And a little wood chest that would be great to make into an art piece, if I ever get around to it:

Plus a couple of flannel shirts for Todd and a hooded sweater for me. I think that's all!

It was quite a mix of stores we explored, from the frightening to the upscale, most of which I'd never been to before. But, as it turned out, the most profitable store, for all of us, was the one right around the corner from our house, run by the Disabled American Veterans. At least now I know which one is the best in town!

Other than that, we had a couple very nice dinners out, hung around the house, played cards, napped, read...it was a great weekend. And now January is all but done.

Winter bouquet.

I confess.

Last weekend, Shimelle Laine held a free mini-class on her site...wherein one was supposed to make a mini album of things one had to confess--silly, serious, whatever.

The album's pages were to be made from 4x6 or 5x7 photos, hole-punched and bound, which is an awesome idea for a mini book, but I just wasn't in the mood to take pictures. Plus, I was out of town that weekend.

But the idea stayed in my mind, and when I was in a scrapbook store on my out-of-town trip, I saw a rack full of these little photographic die cuts. And looking at them, many of the images spawned a reaction in my mind.

Hence my own little confession book (4x4"). I subtitled it "fifteen random secrets" but some of these confessions aren't really secrets. It's just that "secrets" was a word of the perfect length to make, with "random" and "fifteen," a perfect square subtitle block.

Here's a few of the pages. I'll bind them all together with jump rings once I get a chance to go pick some up, and them probably add some ribbon.

Just call me...

...Her Exalted Highness Duchess Janelle the Coherent of Gallop Hophill.

That's got a certain ring to it. Thanks for the link, Mimi!

Thursday thoughts.

We are --finally!--getting some wintry weather here, with nice brisk air, and today, a cold gray drizzle. I've been strutting around in my brown wool jacket, feeling happy that I finally get to wear the darn thing. It was a case of love at first sight when I saw it at TJ Maxx, and I love it more each time I wear it. It's got an embroidered shawl collar and just closes with one button-and-loop at the bosom--looks great with jeans and a turtleneck, which is my cold-weather uniform. Nice to be able to dress up my uniform a bit.

In an effort to sharpen our brains, we've gotten interested in puzzles around here. I bought Todd a sudoku book for Christmas, and we rented a very interesting little documentary called Wordplay about the NY Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz and the crossword championship he created and hosts each year.

I haven't done a crossword in ages, since Jeremy used to let me help him with the puzzles in his Games magazine when we were kids, but I worked one in one of his books when I was at his house last weekend, and I picked up an "easy" level NY Times crossword book for myself today.

Another brain stretcher for me the past week has been the introduction to music theory my guitar teacher embarked upon...well, honestly, the whole thing is a brain stretcher and has been from the beginning, but the theory stuff is really overwhelming, causing major Algebra II flashbacks, wherein I sit in a chair and listen to a teacher describe something that I have no understanding of whatsoever. So I also bought myself The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory, knowing I can retain stuff much better reading it as opposed to hearing someone tell me it...and also knowing that I am indeed a Complete Idiot.

So hopefully we are staving off Alzheimer's a little longer here at our house.

Tomorrow we are headed to York, PA for the weekend and a machine show that we attended five or six years ago. When we went before, I stayed for a while and took in the show, then headed out to find all the scrapbook and stamp stores in the area. I'm hoping to put the spending freeze on hold and make it to a few shops on Saturday and relive the fun. This will be a shorter trip--last time we were in the area for four days or so--but we're looking forward to seeing some new places and shaking the winter doldrums off a little. Hopefully the weather will cooperate, too.

I've been debating for a few days whether to bring this up here, because it's a tragedy that I am at the very far periphery of, and I feel reluctant to...I don't know, to say that my feelings are even a fraction of what my friend feels, or to try to express grief for a situation I'm not really a part of. It feels presumptuous somehow, and I know I'm not expressing this well at all. But it's something that has colored this week for me and for everyone who knows this family.

My friend's son committed suicide on Monday. He was 13 years old. He was a sweet, polite, smart boy with a lot of pain in his heart. I wish he had known how many people would cry for him and how many lives his life touched. Please say a prayer for his parents, his brother and sister, and all the people who loved him.

Monday was a gorgeous sunny 75-degree day, and on Tuesday the weather turned cold and gloomy. While I am enjoying this taste of winter, as I said above, the change does feel appropriate for the feelings around here this week. There's just a layer of sadness over things right now. Please keep them in your prayers.

But hey, at least Saddam's toast.

What can you buy for $1.2 trillion dollars?

Read this and weep for what could have been.

More weekend pictures.

Since the weather was so warm Sunday, we spent the day playing outside. Todd, Jeremy and I played with Tanner, pitching and batting the ball around. I know I always say this, but he looks so grown-up in this picture.


And his little sister is about a foot taller than when I last saw her in July!

Here's my dad rocking Marissa almost to sleep in her swing:

Todd and Marissa playing choo-choo train with folding chairs:

Kylie and I reading:

And here's the beautiful birthday girl:

Pictures.

We had a lovely little weekend at my brother's house, celebrating his birthday and his daughter Natalie's birthday, too. My parents, my sister, and my niece and nephew all came down from Ohio, too, so it was a houseful of fun, for sure.

I brought my guitar, and Tanner and I picked out "Ode to Joy" together. He's much better on the piano than I am on the guitar, but maybe someday I can catch him up:

Natalie and Kylie indulged their love/hate relationship--they're two years apart and really love each other--most of the time. Here they are in a peaceful moment:

Can you believe they're barefooted in January? (Just for sandbox play--we weren't letting them run around like that all day.) This freakishly warm weather is starting to scare me!

When we were kids, we had this great fabric playhouse my aunt Molly made us. It was like a sleeve that fit over a card table--a way upscale version of the old blanket-over-the-table fort. It had windows and a door that closed and everything.

My mom has made her own versions of this for Tanner and for Kylie, and now it's Natalie's turn to have her own special place. She LOVED it.

Little Miss Marissa is such a joy. She says so many words, with her little finger pointing at whatever she's talking about. And she has a great sense of humor. Looooves to swing!

What a cutie.

I'll put a few more in another post...I seem to be at my limit for photos here.

A few cards.

Here's what we're making in my at-home class tomorrow:

No real rhyme or reason to the themes--it's mostly what's sitting on my desk at any given moment! I did use a few new stamps, though. I totally need some new inks--half of mine are dried out--and some new sentiment stamps. But I put myself on a spending freeze till May 1, so...oh well! Stamping is even more of a money pit than scrapbooking, because the inks and stamps are soooo expensive.

Not much else going on here...we're definitely in the post-holiday slump. This weekend we're going to my brother's house for my niece's fourth birthday party. My parents and my sister and her kids will be there, too, so that should be fun!

Weekend update.

Wow, this week went by fast! It was a combination of productive and frustrating...I got the downstairs pretty nicely cleaned up and organized, but there were some errands and other projects that left me spinning my wheels. I'm also very frustrated with my guitar today. I think I understand the whole Pete Townsend-smashing-guitars-into-little-bits thing a lot better now!

Other than that, I've just been reading like a maniac all week and hitting the library for the first time in literally years. Our libraries around here are sort of lousy, and I get frustrated and homesick for Columbus and its awesome libraries every time I go into a library down here, but right now I'm just sucking it up and going and trying to find what I want. I stand by my feeling that a city this size should have a much better library system than it does, but I guess libraries are at the bottom of the state priority list.

I've read:

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme. Reading the Julie and Julia book I mentioned before got me interested in Julia Child's life, and this book is really inspiring. She found her life's work at age thirty-six, which is how old I am. Hmmm.

Catch a Wave by Peter Ames Carlin, which is a biography of Brian Wilson, mostly from the point-of-view of his music, and less from the ins and out of his personal life, although that does get mentioned somewhat. Carlin puts Brian Wilson's lyrics and themes right up there with writers like Steinbeck and Twain as part of the American voice, which I thought was audacious but interesting and probably pretty legitimate.

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan...this was recommended by someone at Two Peas, and it's a totally compelling book about the Dust Bowl in the 1930's. I couldn't put it down...so many tragic stories and so much hubris that led to this environmental disaster.

Right now I'm reading The Great Deluge: Hurrican Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley, and it's making me so angry I've had to start reading it in smaller chunks so I don't get overwhelmed. Although I don't discount, and Brinkley certainly doesn't, the outrageous neglect on a local and state level in Louisiana, this book confirms my growing feeling that the Bush presidency is the one of the most tragic things that's ever happened to this country. It's a tremendously interesting and heartbreaking book, and there are many small inspiring stories, too. I really recommend it.

Ring out the old!

Only three hours left in 2006...wow, where did this year go? I was sitting in the living room sipping a cup of tea a little while ago, thinking about the painting and packing we were doing this time last year, and yeah, this New Year's Eve is way better!

We're just spending the weekend being busy little beavers, knocking some stuff off the "to do" list. Kind of fun, actually.

Just for fun, I thought I'd make a little year-in-review list of totally random items:

10 books I read in 2006:

Julie and Julia
Snow Falling on Cedars
Assassination Vacation
A Long Shadow
The Kite Runner
Tender at the Bone
The Reading Group
St. Dale
Locked Rooms
Jane Austen: A Life

8 movies I saw in 2006:
(In a theater, that is--and this is all of 'em, not even ten!)

Casino Royale
Stranger than Fiction
Talladega Nights
The Holiday
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
X-Men: the Last Stand
Flags of our Fathers
Marie Antoinette

10 Movies I rented in 2006:

Walk the Line
A Prairie Home Companion
The Matador
The Reckoning
Memento
Spanglish
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Match Point
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
Wedding Crashers

10 CDs I bought in 2006:

Wintersong
Barenaked Ladies Are Me
We Shall Overcome—the Seeger Sessions
The Very Best of Marvin Gaye
A Mighty Wind soundtrack
Smart Kid (Clumsy Lovers)
Yours, Mine and Ours (Pernice Brothers)
The Little Willies
Ricky Nelson Greatest Hits
Highway Companion (Tom Petty)

And finally...
10 Embarassing Songs I downloaded in 2006:

Play Me (Neil Diamond)
Looks Like We Made It (Barry Manilow)
Sister Golden Hair (America)
Magic (Olivia Newton-John)
I Say a Little Prayer for You (Dionne Warwick)
Baby, I Love Your Way (Peter Frampton)
If I Can't Have You (Yvonne Elliman)
Crazy Love (Poco)
Everything I Own (Bread)
...and the most cringe-inducing...Afternoon Delight (Starland Vocal Band)

All from the Seventies, Decade of Shame. And Decade of my Childhood...this is my musical heritage we're looking at here. Consider this last list an homage to our late President, Mr. Ford, who presided over a slice of my childhood, albeit a smaller slice than either Barry Manilow or Neil Diamond.

Happy 2007, everybody--may you have perfect peace and contentment this coming year! Thanks for reading my mutterings and crazy thoughts in 2006! Love ya, man!

The last of Christmas journaling.

I've got the final four pages of my journal done!

Here's the page for the 15th which I put off because the prompt for the day was not something I could relate to. I swapped in a later prompt for this date:

And here's the page for the 20th, which was about Christmas mail. We got many fewer cards than usual, and nothing particularly unexpected, so I just clipped some stamps and postmarks and stuck them in a pocket:

For the 24th, I wrote about a very vivid childhood memory:

And wrapped it all up neat and tidy for the 25th:

I need to figure out how to decorate the cover...if I come up with anything awesome, I'll share it. Thanks for looking and all the great comments I got...this was a fun project and it really made my holidays more fun!

A more perfect me.

The weeks after Christmas always follow the same script: Janelle tugs worriedly, hand over hand, at the skinny rope attached to the household that is slowly, slowly teetering on the brink of collapse.

At least that's how it feels. In the lead-up to Christmas, I neglect the house even more than I usually do, thinking that when January 1 comes, that will be the perfect time to pull everything back into shape for the New Year. January 1 is like my magic "do over" date.

So after Christmas, there are presents to shoehorn into storage spots, and closets to go through, and always complete rehaulings of at least one room if not more, while trying to pick up the clutter that has gathered in every room, and maybe scrape a layer of dirt off stuff, too. Oh, and all the Christmas decor to put away, which is always horrible...all the magical wonderful holiday stuff that has brightened your month, now just another loathsome chore to be added to the long list.

This is the time of year we often buy furniture or new storage set-ups, which require lots of rearranging. Last year at this time we were dismantling one household while trying to prepare a new household for habitation. I've been thanking God on bended knee every day lately that I don't have to do THAT again this year.

Finances always need attention after Christmas too--enter the receipts, bring the accounts up-to-date, file the last of this year's paperwork and set up folders for next year's paperwork. Shudder at the sums you've spent on Christmas and, worse, on after-Christmas sales, and calculate how many months into 2007 you'll be paying off your spending orgy. (The past couple weeks have been abnormally hard on my credit card.)

Now I'm up very late tonight feeling some major anxiety pangs...not quite sure about what. Just everything, I guess. I have such a long list of chores for the next couple of weeks, and an even longer list of goals for the upcoming year. Spend less, eat less, clean more, walk more, get organized, get life figured out. It's making me twitchy.

Catching up and throwing up.

This week between Christmas and New Year's always throws me off. Nothing is routine!

Todd had Tuesday off so we planned a movie marathon where we would see four movies, carefully planned according to the theater schedule. But then the first movie (The Holiday) ran far longer than we figured (why does a romantic comedy need to be over two hours long?!), throwing off our second movie (The Good Shepherd). So we killed a little time at TJ Maxx, where I found and bought a very cute brown wool jacket.

Then we skipped our third planned movie (The Nativity Story) and went straight to the fourth movie (Casino Royale). After that we had dinner and debated whether to try to catch a late show of The Good Shepherd, but we were both tired and Todd had to work this morning. So our four-movie marathon turned into a two-movie...um...mini-marathon?

I woke up at 3:30 this morning throwing up, so I laid low and slept much of the day away today. I was going to clean and tidy and maybe start putting Christmas away, but I was a little too sore and achy for that. I'm feeling steadily better, though.

I've been ripping CDs to my computer today, about the only activity I felt good enough to tackle, and I played a bit of one of my Eva Cassidy albums just now. I don't know if you've ever heard a voice pure enough to make you cry, but she had it for sure. Listen to the first track on Eva By Heart and see if it doesn't get you. I remembered then why I stopped listening to the albums--it's hard to drive with tears in your eyes!

I made an appalling discovery today--the Christmas journal class runs through Epiphany! That's January 6 for any heathens out there. I thought it just went through Christmas.

Well, not only won't my album hold that many more pages, but I am officially OVER Christmas and it will be hard enough making myself catch up with the four pages I need to finish. So I think I'll be hopping off this ride before the end.

I hope to get the final pages done and up by the end of this weekend.

Merry Christmas!

I hope everybody's having a happy day today. Joy to the world!

We had a relaxing day yesterday, with lasagna and Christmas cookies for dinner, and wine in snowman mugs because I didn't have time to run out and find wine glasses. Then we went to a late candlelight service at church that was really beautiful. Great music.

This morning we both woke up way earlier than I had planned, just in time for an early call from Todd's sister Lisa. Opened presents, ate breakfast, and now we're just hanging out. This afternoon we'll go spend some time with my friend Cheryl's family.

Here's my Christmas journal page for December 23. I finished this page last night, so I'm just two behind! I think I'll work on them tonight and see if I can get this project done!

Day 22.

My relatively short to-do list...I thought the snowmen scurrying to and fro on this paper were too cute and appropriate to cover up:

Journal. Almost there!

Here's Day 21 of my Christmas Journal...we were supposed to take a picture of our home "as is" and see how it shows our state of readiness. Or words to that effect, it's all a little fuzzy now.

Day 20's prompt was about unexpected Christmas mail, but as we have yet to get anything really spectacular in the mail yet...I'm postponing that one. There's still a few days left to get something awesome, right?

Pooped.

Oof. I hit a wall sometime yesterday and now I want to sit by a crackling fire with a cup of tea and a British mystery I've never read before with a blizzard whirling outside and Christmas cookies on the table...and not have to do one blessed thing at all.

However. It's still in the 50's here, so no snow and no real need for a fire...I have no British mysteries to read...and I'm too tired to make cookies. Hm.

I guess I'll just have a cup of tea. And fold some laundry. And get dinner started. Sigh. I'm pooped today! Anybody else feeling that pre-holiday energy pinch?

One more.

Christmas Journal for Day 19:


I think this may be the first letter I ever wrote to Santa...we didn't do Santa when I was a kid! It felt weird, but that was what Shimelle said to do today, so...!

C is for Cookie.

One more post for today--the challenge at Two Peas is to blog about your favorite Christmas cookie.

I love cut-out sugar cookies, but they have to taste GOOD, not cardboard-y.

For years I made my mom's stand-by Betty Crocker cookbook recipe, which is good and tastes like home...but then five or six years ago, a friend shared her tried-and-true recipe with me.

Eva's Sugar Cookies

2 cups butter or margarine, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
6 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla and almond extracts until light and fluffy. In another large bowl, combine flour and baking soda. Gradually stir flour mixture into butter and sugar mixture until blended. Chill for one hour, then roll out on a floured board and cut into shapes. Bake at 350 degrees on lightly greased (or parchment-lined) baking sheets for 8-10 minutes, until light golden brown. Makes 12 dozen cookies.

It's the almond extract that makes the difference here--these are some delicious cookies. The last time I made them, they never made it to the frosting stage--Todd and I devoured them all plain! But when I do manage to get them frosted, I usually add a drop of almond extract to the frosting, too. I just use whatever generic white frosting recipe is in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

Mmmm...now I'm craving some!

Day 18.

Here's my December 18 page. I'm starting to get a complex--every single journaling prompt is about what do you always do for this and how do you always do that, and the fact is that in my life, no one Christmas is like any other one!


So...a typical Christmas dinner--there is no such thing! I'm going to put a couple recipes in the pocket, probably for the braciole and for my mom's rolls that I may try to make this year. I keep thinking of all these things to do and try and the fact of the matter is that time is rapidly running out to do or try anything!

Best thing since sliced bread.

Just a quick note: my friend Cheryl was asking me about the Krylon pens I mentioned yesterday, so I thought I'd mention them again, as they are one of the all-time bestest, most wonderful tools I've ever used. They are called Krylon Leafing Pens and they come in five colors. They don't really show in the pictures of the canvases I posted, since I used them on the edges, but trust me, the effect they give is wonderful.

For a while there it seemed like I was using them on every last thing I made, because they are so easy to use and look so great. I'm trying to find something where maybe they show up a little better so you can see...well, I can't find any saved photos at the moment. But they're perfect for edging things so you get just a little glimmer here and there. Love 'em! That's my commercial for today.