Just a few things I saw today...

Serious Self-Portrait

By a seriously talented artist.
Andrea McArdle
April 2011

Meghan's List of Things to do in her Spare Time

• Exercise. I see you've new shoes and new gym membership and new class plus someone to exercise with. Good move(s).
• Read the B-i-b-l-e. Surely you could do the Recovery Version in a year with Footnotes plan. This may be your year, my friend, to accomplish this. Awesome.
• Read. The ministry. Isaiah Life Studies. Other things the training didn't cover. So much to read. So much time to do it. You could make a schedule. Didn't the team in Irving have one once that we have?
• Read. All those classics you didn't get to yet. The obscure Jane Austen. The Bronte sisters. The Russians. Crime and Punishment. War and Peace. The Brothers Karamazov. Read some syllabuses from University Lit classes for more ideas. (Sounds like my reading list.) Moby Dick. James Fenimore Cooper. New light fluffy stuff.
• Take an art class at a community rec center. It's cheap. Painting. Watercolor. Drawing.
• Take up hand work. Knitting. Crochet. Needlepoint. Hook a rug. It's fun. You'd be amazed. Embroidery a shirt (anthropologie style.)
• Sew. Get a machine. The new patterns I bought you. Be creative. Refashion some thrift or your old stuff, like on that blog. Make new stuff. Use grandma's vintage patterns for some vintage flair.
• Do your nails. Finger. Toe. Get that nasty red chipped polish off of your self. Do it regularly. Make hands and feet soft.
• Facials. Masques.
• Take the children on a walk every day while mommy makes dinner. Or some other time.
• Sing and record it.
• Write letters. Grandparents love it. Those folks that AREN'T on fb. Relatives.
• Make birthday gifts ahead of time with your sewing, knitting, painting skills for your loved ones for whom you may feel that you cannot afford to shop.
• Learn to garden. Pull weeds. Prune shrubs. Trim trees. Create flower beds. Plant seeds. Water them and weed them. You will like it.
• Take a Spanish class at a community college or rec center. Keep your language skills up. Start French.
• Iron your clothes.
• Wash "your" car. Inside and out. By hand. Yourself. Not at a car wash.
• Wash Rosanna's car.
• Tutor. Part-time job. High school or junior high or elementary school kids. Get paid.
• Study for the GRE. Make a schedule. Keep to it.
• Do housework. Regularly. Change sheets once a week, clean bathroom once a week, etcetera.
• Volunteer at the animal shelter. Do not adopt a pet.
• Learn to cook. Learn to bake. Take over one night a week and try new things.
• Audit a course at Tech. Something you need to brush up on (like Spanish) or that you need to get ready for graduate work.
  

Just a start. I'll keep working on it, though. This should keep you busy this week.

Okay. Okay. It's so true. I really must clean out my house. I mean, pare down, scale back. Simplify. I absolutely must do it. Soon.

Simplify. Sounds so good. Uncluttered. Ahhhhh. What a lovely notion.

Too much stuff. Way too much stuff. But how in the heck do you do it? I have so much good stuff!

It starts out so innocently.

You go to a few yard sales. Graduate to estate sales. Okay, some antique malls. Yes, and then those biannual huge sales....

And then, before you know it...... Well, I mean, right after your husband knows it.......

The house is full. The closets are full. The drawers, cabinets, hutches, armoires, computer cabinets, chiffarobes.....full. The garage? Full. Oh, that space behind the garage? Yes, full. The kids' rooms? Well, what were the kids' rooms, when they still lived here....full. The workshop is full. The pantry is full. The breezeway and the closet on the breezeway are full. The gameroom....oh really. You don't want me to go on.

You get the picture. Full, full, full.

Such lovely collections. Or beginning of collections, in some cases. Wonderful things. Beautiful things. Crusty rusty things.

Things with great potential. Things that are really old. Things that are new but look old. Things with patina-both real and the fake kind.

What's a collector/junker/antique lover/embarrassed shopping addict to do?

It really is time to clean out.

The hubby has wanted this for a long time. Well, since we got married and his 1960ish Volkswagon bug-load of belongings got multiplied by, oh, 40 or so in the first year of marriage. Poor dear. He really didn't know what was coming.

But here it is. 33 sweet years later. 33 years of going to college, studying, homemaking, cooking, childrearing, homeschooling, homebirthing, sewing, quilting, crocheting, knitting, gardening, reading, going to soccer games and baseball games and football games and swim meets and school functions and birhday parties, and ballet lessons and tap and jazz lessons and dance recitals, and school plays, and piano, guitar, clarinet, and flute lessons, and all those things require stuff. And then there are the forays into scrapbooking and mosaicing and aerobic dance classes and then sometimes you just have to get out of the house, right? So there are trips to Target and Wal-Mart and garage sales and quilt stores and, oh, you know.

So then there is stuff.

Then there is inherited stuff. And there is stuff given to you. Gifts. Sweet thoughtful tokens from loving family members and dear friends.

And then there are the things the children made. Just for you. The collages and poster/greeting cards with their pictures swiped from your photo album and glued on and their scribbly handwriting. And the little ditties handsewn especially for you with giant stitches and bad fabric. Those funny wood projects made at summer camp. And the wood napkin holders from Bible camp, with Bible verses written on the wood in crayon.

Now I'm going to make myself cry.

But that wasn't the point of this post. That is for another post.

The point was stuff. Is stuff. Clearing it out. Getting rid of it and NOT replacing it.

Paring down collections to just the favorite pieces. Or the favorite collections.

Because, really, I cannot blame the kids nor the hub for the overflowing closets. It's mine. Yes, yes, there are some of their things. Okay, like, 2 rooms full. And there is a bookshelf full of children's books and a shelf full of games. You know. A trunk of baby clothes. But, one trunk. The rest of the stuff is mine. My stuff. My problem. My dilemma.

I've just become quite the collector. Love those estate sales. Love globes, yardsticks, rulers, old cameras. Vintage linens. Quilts, lamps, dishes. Oh, the dishes. Plates out the wazoo.

It's ridiculous, really. I mean, how many plates does one household need?

Clearly, I've got to do something. But how? Where to begin? I think I need to buy another house and just move the best stuff to it and sell the rest.

Somehow I don't think that is an option.

help?!!!

How to Stage a Book Shelf

This is a great example, thanks to Restoration Hardware, of staging a book shelf. What a really nice mix of items, different sizes, shapes and textures. Not too stuffed. Love it! You did it again, RH!

Remember their catalog for great decorating, accessorizing and staging ideas!

60's Style

so then. there. a photo. uploaded. not what i want. not any good. but an image uploaded. funny blog.
funny blog site. maybe another one is more user friendly? maybe some are better for writers and others cater more to those visual folks among us. like me.

can i call hot flashes misery flashes? or flashes of misery? or flash of miserableness. not so hot. but a wave of, well, uncomfortable miserableness. hmmm. go away please. f of m. that would be flash of misery. any other acronym is, er, troublesome.

so many creative people, ladies, making blogs. are we all more creative than we used to be? or are there just more creative crafty products available now so we can buy them, store them, manipulate them, and then publish them, post them, brag about them and try to sell them? to other crafty creative product buying ladies like ourselves?

sounding cynical today. sorry.

in austin. such a hotbed of creativity. should really have the creative juices flowing.....

where are they?

let's try another image.


aha. I did it. Did I? here's a pic from Maui '06 I think. I wanted to pick up the chair from beside the road, but no way to get it home! though now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't being discarded. Maybe someone put it there to sit in while they waited for the bus? hmmm? well. don't know.

ok. so . feeling better now. maybe the "no layout" option is what I want. see. Can tell I'm feeling better about all of this-transitioning into caps. ha.