My Super Bowl

Have a healthy and joy-full week!

My Not To Do List

My inbox, once again, has grown to monumental capacity. It's become almost overwhelming. I've developed something of a plan to prevent this from happening, but if you don't get to your inbox everyday, even a great plan won't work. So yesterday I began weeding out the uninteresting and apparent unimportant e-mails. And this morning my finger even hovered over the "delete all" button. But there were a few that the little voice inside my head urged me to keep and read. That little voice is brilliant sometimes.

One e-mail I kept to read was a very recent edition of Christine Kane's "Live Creative" e-zine. The featured article, How to Create a Powerful Morning Ritual, included some great suggestions. (Part of my fondness for Christine's e-zine is that her featured article is always done as a list. Yay for lists!) One in particular lit a little light bulb up in the space where my little voice resides. "Be Prepared: Create a Not-to-Do List." Christine's suggestion here is specifically aimed at your morning ritual, but I loved the idea of a Not-to-Do List on a grander scale. So, for example, my list for today . . .

Not To Do:

Let the rainy afternoon go by without spending a while on the glider on the patio.

Give in and eat meat because I feel guilty that the hubby cooked it.

(I haven't eaten meat for over a week and want to continue that way. I've bought

and prepared foods for both of us - with meat for him and without for me.)

Leave the laundry for one more day. It will bug me more tomorrow.

So here's my new note pad.

What will you put on your list?

Peace,

Some favorite things

Some things I'm loving right now . . .

Lion Brand Jiffy Thick & Quick yarn. I only learned how to crochet in December. My daughter-in-law taught me while they were here visiting. To begin, I bought a couple cheap balls of yarn just to practice my stitches. But soon I wanted to actually make something. I found this yarn at the local Joann store, and bought it in the Adirondacks color (not the one in the picture below). I made a scarf - it was so fast because the yarn is so thick! I loved it so much (the color looked great in my living room!), I went back and bought all the yarn they had at the store. Then, while out of town in the "big city," I bought all they had at a Joann store there, and I made a small throw for watching tv or reading on the couch.

For Christmas, one of the gifts I gave my husband was a water bottle I found at Gaiam.com. (It has trout on it. A manly water bottle!) I have a couple, too, but it's difficult to clean them. Today I found a brush especially for cleaning aluminum water bottles at Target. It's made by Sigg and works great. Speaking of water bottles, Papaya has the most beautiful water bottles, tote bags, cards and envelopes ever! I have a couple of their legal pads in my shopping cart right now. I may have to go to work everyday, but there's no reason I can't use beautiful things while I'm there. And one of these gorgeous bottles may wind up in my shopping cart too.



I am a bit obsessive about order and organization. I can't believe I didn't have one already, but I just purchased a Dymo label maker. I recently reorganized my pantry. I love cooking and baking, but sometimes my urge to bake was quashed by the fact that I had to make multiple trips back and forth to the pantry to get everything I needed - the mixer, the flour and sugar and ingredients, the mixing bowls, etc. So I purchased a nice kitchen cart that I can roll in and out of the pantry to use in the kitchen. My mixer sits on top, along with a cookbook stand, my timer, etc. There is a drawer that holds my measuring spoons and cups, a few spatulas, a rolling pin, a silicone mat, a few spices that I use almost exclusively for baking, and a few other things. There is a shelf where my mixing bowls and big canisters for flour and sugar go, and storage space down below behind two doors where I keep a few baking pans, special flours, baking powder, baking soda, etc. I have Tupperware containers in a couple different sizes that stack very nicely, and all the various flours and other dry necessities are stored there. So everything needed to be labeled.

And just for fun - these brown canisters are also Tupperware. I got them when my son was a baby and he'll be 29 in March! Originally there was one more - a larger one - that cracked. But Tupperware replaced it at no cost to me, just from a different set because this set was no longer being made.

I am also loving this book. There is so much information - a lot of it new to me - and it's presented in an upbeat and entertaining way. I've already tried a couple of the recipes, and so far I can highly recommend the Cheesy, Oozy Guacamole Bean Dip. It was delish hot from the oven, but was even really good cold the next day. I may do another post on this book later.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Mail Art - Handmade postcards

I'm having a blast using up leftover scrapbooking papers, stickers, seam binding and just about anything else I can get my hands on. One of these cards is on its way to Katerina in Greece.

And I had the time to play tonight with a really cool gadget that I got for Christmas. It's called the enveloper, and making envelopes is a cinch with this!

Have a creative day!

Finding my rhythm

Here I am - at the start of the last week of the month already. Sigh . . .

It was a month ago - almost exactly - that I remember looking forward to the busy-ness of the holidays being over. And my holidays were wonderful, really. There was a dark cloud or two, but also a silver lining, if you'll pardon the cliche. My son and his family came home for a funeral and were here until almost Christmas. We celebrated Christmas early, of course, and it was the first time in a long time both of my children were here and we were all together for Christmas. It was the first time that the two cousins (my grandkids) were together, and it was perhaps my favorite Christmas ever!

But I did miss some things. I missed writing letters and postcards and working on mail art. I missed making tags and scrapbooking. And I missed blogging, or, more specifically, the sharing and connecting that I feel when blogging. I looked forward to picking up where I'd left off, getting back to my comfortable and comforting routine. It's just taken me longer than I'd planned.

I've taken a little time to read. I've spent some time in the kitchen cooking and baking. And when my Daughter-in-Law, C, was here, she taught me how to crochet. And I've been hooked (pun intended). I've made some scarves, I made a lap throw for sitting on the couch, I've made some dish cloths, and I'm working on a small tote bag currently.

I got a couple of my girlfriends, S & T, to go with me to a Crochet 101 class at the local Joann's store a couple of weeks ago. It was fun; we laughed a LOT! At one point S said, "You know, people say this is calming and soothing. I'm not getting that. This is a pain in the a**!" And I told her that she just needed to practice. I explained that when you get comfortable with the stitches and are just sitting with your yarn and your hook - yarn over, draw up, pull through, yarn over, draw up, pull through - that you fall into a soothing little pattern. You fall into a rhythm.

And I've been hearing my own words again lately. "Find your rhythm." I hear them often, as a matter of fact. "Find your rhythm." And so I'm here. And I hope to be back often.

xoxoxo

Feeding the body and the soul

Things have been so hectic. And I'll be honest -- I'm glad to be getting back to my boring little rut.

The weekend was nice though. Thanksgiving dinner was small and quiet. My daughter and son-in-law and granddaughter, k, came over. We ate late afternoon and it was nice enough to sit on the back patio for a while after dinner. I'd cooked the giblets from the turkey for the cats that "live" in our backyard, and I cut them up and k and I put some out in a little saucer for them. I'd named the black and white kitten Zorro some months ago, but k renamed it (she? he?) Patch. So Patch it is. Daughter and family went home with a bag full of leftovers, and hubby and I went to bed with tummies full of pie. Life is good.

k came over again on Friday. We planted pansy seeds and watered everything else in the yard. We painted - I painted Patch and k painted an abstract, with some help from Grandpa. I must say I like hers better! It's currently displayed in La Galeria de Mi Cocina - aka up on my fridge.



k had a runny nose and I had a bit of a headache, so we decided midafternoon to climb into Grandma's bed and watch TV. I even let her take a little package of mini M&M's with her. She'd found them and wanted them during dinner on Thursday, but she didn't eat her food, so she didn't get her M&M's. Normally M&M's in the bed would be a big no-no, but I've learned over the years that it's wise to pick your battles. We both fell asleep and had a yummy nap. Yesterday I washed the blankets and spot cleaned the bedspread by hand to remove the little smudged chocolate fingerprints. Yes, life is good.

I am grateful

for my inner artist.