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All is calm…

The presents are wrapped, the cookies baked all that is left to do is sit by the fire and gaze lovingly at the tree. The tree is looking especially pretty right now because it knows its days are numbered. Nothing loses its charm faster than a Christmas tree the day after Christmas.

I have until the day after New Year’s off from work. I am going to spend the time organizing and decluttering so I can start the new year off with a fresh start. I have so much filing to do it’s astonishing. I have masses of stacked paperwork (mostly which can be thrown out, I’m sure) that have piled up. I just stack more papers on top and now and then I’ll need to find a receipt or a car title and I have to go through it all and I vow each time that I’m going to get on top of it. This upcoming week I shall.

I also want to move furniture. I read somewhere that you should move your furniture and decorations around pretty regularly ~ to keep your home from feeling stale and boring. Can’t have that. Along those lines I also like to change the bed linens. I find that just changing the quilts on the beds changes the look of the entire room. I’m going for fresh, cozy and inviting in all the rooms. Right now I’ve got a shabby chic (rather overused phrase but it accurately describes the look) thing going on. Faded florals and all. I want something a little, I don’t know, less calculated looking.

And finally ~ time permitting ~ I’ll set up my new office/project room. Now that would be a great start to the new year – to have that space set up and defined.

I think the little, uncompleted things weigh on you, even though you may not be consciously aware of them. We have a couple of minor projects that we need to tackle, things we’ve been living with for so long we don’t even notice them on the surface but once they are completed I’m sure we’ll feel a big sense of accomplishment and relief.

That’s the way to start the new year – without old things carried over and hanging about.

~May peace and sweet contentment be your lot this Yuletide season~

Winter Solstice

Happy First Day of Winter! Okay technically it happened yesterday at 4:42pm PT but today is the first full day. This means the days will start getting longer! Which leads to garden longing.

I really need to learn how to just stay in the moment and not be looking forward to the next thing. That’s going to be one of my goals for 2007. Christmas hasn’t even happened and I’m moving on to Spring.

Indulge me for a minute though. Last year I drew up plans for a rose garden. We have a lot of trees on our property so my gardening tends to be more of the azalea and rhododendron variety when my heart really yearns for roses. I did manage to eke out a bit of sunny space around the back deck but not nearly enough.

We have a flat spot below the back lawn that extends out to the creek. We refer to it as the field but really it’s just weeds and berry bushes. There is water already piped down there so I got the idea of clearing the space and creating a rose garden.

It was to be about 20′ x 40′ with a picket fence surrounding it. Arbors on each short end and an arch over the gate leading into it. There was to be four rose beds with gravel paths separating them. A burbling fountain right in the center. A bench under one arbor and little cafe set under the other where I could sit and have a glass of ice tea and admire my blooms.

I was going to only plant roses that had names of my loved ones. Like Agnes for my Grandmother. Queen Elizabeth for my niece. Mixed in with the roses would be lavender and Canterbury bells and little English daisies. Oh I had the whole thing planned out.

Then last year on New Year’s eve I woke up to rain. It had rained steadily all night long. I wandered to living room window and looked out and something just didn’t look right. Something was moving down at the bottom of the lawn. It was the creek that had risen during the night and had flooded the field. It was two feet under rushing water. Our creek, which is normally about 20 feet across, had swelled to over 100 feet. It was astonishing to say the least.

So my dream rose garden was washed away. Thank goodness it was just a dream at that point otherwise it would have ended up two towns downstream.

We don’t feel that this is our final home. We hope to move closer to the shore and whenever and wherever ~ there will be a sunny spot for roses. A little rose cottage by the sea.

That didn’t exactly turn out…

Last night I found myself with some spare time (!) so I ran over to ~~the eighth circle of hell~~ JoAnn’s Fabrics to see if I could find some embroidery supplies. I haven’t embroidered since I don’t know when.

I have a confession. I am a crafting poser. I have a closet full of supplies for projects I would like to do but never quite get around to doing. Part of my procrastination is I hate having a visual in my head and then discovering I don’t have the skills to back it up. So I give up before I even get started. But this seemed like a pretty low energy, low cost project so I jumped right in. I should go back to posing. My stitches leave a lot to be desired.

I also don’t remember a lot of the stitches. I went online and found a few tutorials but I need to just practice more. Well this can be my practice project and if, once it is completed, it isn’t horrible looking maybe I’ll turn it into a tea cozy. I’m hoping the transfer washes off. I was rather alarmed at how bold it ended up being.

Back in my Miss Clark days my mother gave me a set of sewing books. The Art of Sewing by Time Life Books. I received a new one each month on a different topic. Very sophisticated stuff, some of it. I think I have about 12 volumes (which would make sense – I think it was a year long book of the month club) and I remember packing them up several moves ago (like 20 years ago) and I’m hoping they are still in the attic. It would be just like me to toss the whole box in a fit of cleaning. I’ll have to go up to the attic and see if I can find them. I’m betting that I would find them much more interesting and useful now than I did back when I was 13 years old.

In other news (<<– Ha! I sound like a features writer for the Daily Gazette circa 1952). I went to my very favorite Japanese stationary store, MaiDo, yesterday for a few last little stocking stuffers and bought these cute little postcards to use as thank you cards (my, aren’t I presumptuous?).

The shopping center where the store is located is undergoing extensive remodeling and some of the businesses have had to go elsewhere. I asked the woman at the checkout if they were going to be impacted and she said they weren’t because they were moving to San Francisco next month any way! I am so sad – I love this store and would make a trip there every couple of months to stock up on Japanese notebooks and pens.

I am done with my shopping and now I just need to finish up my wrapping. I think I’m just about at the ‘all is calm’ state.

Coming off the chocolate…

That was a really cranky post yesterday. Sorry about that. I ate my weight in chocolate yesterday and it was playing havoc with my good nature.

I love the January issues magazines. They all have a fresh, let’s get organized and look forward to Spring air about them. I love curling up on my love seat with a pile of new magazines and planning out my garden, or noting tips for decluttering, destressing, detoxing after the holidays.

I just bought the Martha Stewart Living January issue and it has an article on shelf brackets and the above picture made me catch my breath. It is just so lovely. I want that space. I need that space. I love everything about that space. Especially the gentle curve of the desktop and all that painted white woodwork.

I don’t have a dedicated work area (says the person that actually works from home…). I have wireless so I can spread out at the kitchen table or the dining room table but it looks a mess and if I want to use said table I have to put everything away. It’s just not very conducive to being productive and organized.

My under utilized dining room is painted almost that exact shade of green. I think I might have to appropriate the space and turn it into an office/project room. And to make things simpler the dining room is where my craft closet is! I’m practically moved in already. I’ve had this idea for some time now and that picture is just going to push me over the edge.

Not quite there yet…

In fact I’m having a kind of Grinchy day. It would appear that everyone has lost their good sense and their goodwill toward man today. Rushing about trying to get their last minute errands done (like I was). I was hampered by people that were just kind of oblivious to anyone else around them. To each of you I bestow a tight-lipped smile and a broken candy cane:

The lady at the drive up mailbox that turned off her car, rummaged around her car for an eternity looking for those darn Christmas cards…where did the heck did they go to…, got out of her car to deposit them into the mailbox then got back into her car and took another eternity to buckle back up, pull out her to do list to see what was next on her list and then finally, when postage rates certainly had increased she was there so long, pulled out so the 53 cars behind her could throw their cards into the mailbox with the hopes that they would at least arrive by Easter.

The guy at the grocery store helping me find french cut green beans in the freezer section that had to read of each and every bag of vegetables….hmmm, let’s see…okra..nope that’s not it…broccoli florets…no…creamed spinach (looks at me hopefully. No – french. cut. green. beans.)…snow peas – hey would that work?…

The woman that pulled her huge Mercedes and blocked the only ramp off the sidewalk to the parking lot and then explained to me that she wanted to fill up her water jug and didn’t seem to understand me when I said there was no way for anyone to get their carts to parking lot with her car parked there and why didn’t she park in the parking space ten feet away that was designated for water getting people. She was apologetic which I appreciate but what she needed to do was just hop in her car and move it five feet so I didn’t have to wait for her 20 gallon water bottle to fill up.

The woman that was pan handling by car. Seriously – I understand that poverty is a terrible and very real problem but if you are driving a newer car than I am do not pull up to me as I’m loading groceries into my trunk, roll down your window and ask me if I can spare a few bucks then drive over to the next person and ask them the same thing.

Okay glad I got that off my chest. What happened to my resolve to slow down, simplify and most importantly, enjoy myself.

I’ve made a decision that I am going to take all of next December off. I have the vacation time accumulated and I rarely take a real vacation. Next year I am not going to have the squeezing of skull feeling I get every year about this time as I am dashing about trying to finish last minute things. I’ve actually managed what little spare time I do have pretty well.

Well except for yesterday evening when I got totally and hopelessly lost leaving a shopping mall. They had half the exits blocked off so I ended up exiting out a back way I wasn’t familiar with and within minutes I was completely lost and not in a particularly helpful looking part of town. I had to call Rick, who was 165 miles away and have him look up intersections on Mapquest as I passed them so he could direct me back to California. By the time I finally got to a freeway I recognized 45 minutes had passed and I was about 10 miles south of where I should have been. I have a terrible sense of direction.

I did manage to cross off almost all of the rest of my to do list today so from here on out it’s going to be calm and bright. Tomorrow I’ll be Cindy Lou of Whoville.

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