Getting Ready

Christmas is done and all the decorations are put away. I seriously tried to eliminate one of our containers of decorations but was unsuccessful. I did however put the items that I trim the house with in two separate containers. My "plan" is to bring these down after the Halloween decorations go up to the attic so that they are ready to at least do up the house in early December. We never seem to get our tree up until a few days before Christmas and when all the ornaments are mixed together the house doesn't get down until the tree is put up. I sometimes wonder WHY am I doing this. But now I am ready for next year.

I love this ornament - there are so many wonderful ones that tell a story

The linen closet is NOW totally emptied of its contents. I would love to say it was all linen. There were some sheets, extra pillows and some blankets in there but the bulk of the closet was kid's board games, beach towels, sleeping bags and fabric and batting for quilts. Surprising how much was in that closet. I boxed up the sheets. The beach towels, pillows and batting I put into a space saver bag - amazing things that they are. I have these two hard bags now that take up hardly any room. The first time I used one we were going to visit family in The Pas Manitoba in February. We had to pack winter gear as well as indoor clothes for a week. I put all our winter gear into one bag and vacuumed out the air and all fit into one suit case.

The only things left to do are to wrap this mirror up for storage, move the dresser, the small chest underneath and to empty out the front hall closet. I think I will invite Michael to help. This will be interesting.

"BURIED ALIVE"

I have started removing "stuff" from the hall closets in preparation for the next reno. Oh what you find. I decided to keep only what I need in the future. There are two closets in the hallway. The linen closet/auxiliary fabric closet. You see I am somewhat of a fabric hoarder - mostly quilting fabrics. I used to buy fat quarters but a friend said why bother - buy at least a meter. What good is a fat quarter unless you are going to frame it. It was easy to sort through the linen, pillows and towels. Nice not worn or faded stay and I packed them into boxes - the rest into the Sally Ann bag. But the fabric, that is another story. I decided to leave that for another day. I need to have a plan for where to put (hide) it. So on to the front door closet. It houses snowmobile helmuts - we recently sold the snowmobiles; it also houses boxes of organized photos; jackets and "stuff". Oh my - OUR HOUSE is small and storage is at a premium. One of the goals of this renovation is to create more storage. THE goal should be to "get rid of" "stuff".

Getting rid of "stuff" - that is harder than I thought. I am following "THE PROCESS" as described by all the shows and all the websites on decluttering. Remove everything, do a quick sort - you know "keep, sell or toss". Okay I did a good job of that part. Now to really go through it. NOOOOOOOOOO!!! I hit a wall. I tried one more sort and got rid of a few more things. Then I got out those large vacuum bags and pushed in as much as I could and VOILA. Done I promise I will sort again once the removation is done YUP Promise!!

And now to the fabric stash. Most of this is for C & G Creations - can't get rid of that so where on earth am I going to store this. I will have to be creative with this.

Ukrainian Christmas

I live with an Irish/Ukrainian and this year he is bound and determined to celebrate it.  Well at least he wanted our $60 tree to stay up until January 7th. I think it was for Ukrainian Christmas but maybe it was that $60 was spent on the tree. Sixty dollars! CRAZY we live in the forest - but who am I.

We will have perogies for sure and meatless cabbage rolls and kielbasa. I don't think we will have wheat, everyone says it has a different flavour. If my sister-in-law from The Pas, was here I bet we would have things like Beet Leaf buns and all sorts of yummy food. This however is Michael's gig so I will just attend.

  

The first meal Michael ever cooked for me was homemade perogies - he told me to have some cold mashed potatoes, flour, milk and an egg and he would make them. And he did. On rainy mornings he gets up and makes bags of them for the freezer. He takes a wonderful bowlful of these morsels to potluck dinners. I don't know what it is about perogies but we all go nuts over them - a mass of dough, filling - potatoes, cottage cheese, sauerkraut, potatoes and cheese, - and then the butter and onions that is poured over top and then the sour cream. But we do go nuts over them. He has made them in the middle of nowhere, made them in a campsite by lantern light. He made them on our trip to St. Lucia last February- my perogy maker.

Easy Peasy

 

Thank you Michael for the wonderful garden we had last year - thank you for all the tomatoes that you lovingly grew. I took them and canned them, made them into salsa AND thankfully made them into spaghetti sauce. YUMMY - I used those awesome zucchini's, and the marvellous onions and married it with the oregano and basil and garlic that I grew in my kitchen garden and VOILA the spaghetti sauce - so last night - no fuss, no muss - a tasty lasagna.

So lucky -  so wonderful. So easy - now I can get on with the packing up of all the "stuff" that is in the hallway in preparation for the renovation or as Michael says "ripping and tearing".

Our hallway has become a gallery of souvenirs from our many holidays and pictures of grandchildren. It also is the home for some amazing black and white photos that came with the house. They were taken by the son of the owner and they were left behind - too beautiful to get rid of.

?? Living with Purpose???

Now I thought that would be a great resolution that I would be able to do every day. The last two days are going to PHISH! Yesterday I felt like my foot was planted and I was going around in circles. Today I have absolutely no focus what so ever. I need to ground myself somehow and focus on the tasks at hand. I think I am juggling to many balls. ??? I can't juggle more than two - what does that say. I am trying to work but my mind is now flying away on getting organized for our holiday. I booked our return hotel using AreoPlan air miles - good use them up. I tried to use Air Miles to book a rental car - OMG! That was 17 minutes of telephone music and then to find out I don't have a pin AND my birthdate that is recorded with them is wrong. REALLY! I think I know when my birthdate is. I was told that it may have been entered wrong when I applied for a card - I applied for the card in the days of paper applications. Okay so calm down now - focus. Here is something to focus on - this is sunset over the ocean - calm and peace.

 

Back to work - Back to a routine

Business as usual today - walk, yoga and work. The WALK - in a sprinkle of rain but a blustery wind, totally invigorating - the YOGA - with my new mat and jasmine tea afterwards - making me mindful today I will concentrate on joy and WORK - quick responses to the new year requests - on it - with pleasure.

Yesterday was a wonderful day. The start to the year. Isn't it grand to have time to sift through things, organize, review calendars and let go. I dug through an old file box. It revealed old knitting projects, some lovely wool forgotten and a shoe box full of wonderful photos. I think a task for this year is to organize the many shoeboxes of photos into something - can't decide if I want to scan them or scrapbook them - both seem onerous. There is also many canisters of slides I would love to digitize. This will require a scanner that will scan slides. I do want to make a scrapbook of all the pictures of my son. I did this for the girls when they graduated but the one for my son was left to his father and a few years ago it was passed back to me - hence I really need to go through those slides - most of his life's pictures are in slides. Back to my search for a scanner for this purpose.

Mike wants us to continue on with our house renovations. We took a break last year because of the flood in the yard. So you will be watching our progress soon. The plan is for the main bathroom, hallway and entryway. Sometime this week I will go and find the bits for the bathroom - new sink, faucets etc.
And here it is - our current bathroom - the footprint will not change however. We will add a shower to the tub.


Some things I will miss about this room

 - I love the yellow - bright and cheerful; I love the 50's plastic pearlized tile; I love my funky cabinet handles. We may have to keep those - not sure - the cabinets will be changed so they may not go back. Do like them though.

HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2012

New Year - New! - start fresh. Any New Year's Resolutions? I think for me I am going to live this year with purpose. What will that mean? To me it will mean doing things with thought and purpose - to put meaning into every action. 

Yesterday, I took my Grandson and his stepbrother to Courtenay. It was fun spending time with these two - a 14 year old and a 6 year old - we laughed a lot. We poked around in some techy stores. The 14 year old was on a mission - he is looking for somekind of powerpack to keep his iPad and iPhone charged when he is camping. AND he wanted to buy party food for his New Year's party that he was hosting. Interesting selections - but I did manage to get him to buy a tray of cut up vegetables. I am sure they had a great time. Not sure about the noise level that his parents had to endure.

Now Mike and I on the other hand spent a quiet evening - good dinner - baked potato, acorn squash (still from our garden) and chateaubriand with bearnaise sauce - some good wine and then a bottle of bubbly at midnight.