Clearing Out & Cutting Back

Blair and I have spent the better part of this week going through every cupboard, closet, pantry, and desk drawer we have, looking for that which may be thrown out, given away, or recycled.  A book about decluttering your home is what prompted this mass cleansing, and I for one am thoroughly enjoying myself. It's amazing the amount of stuff we've amassed that we no longer use. A brief citing of items that we have deemed no longer worthy of being held onto:

• The hoop skirt I wore under my wedding dress
• 5 identical glass flower vases
• An empty Cutco knife holder
• The tiki lamps, lei's, and other decorations from a Hawaiian Murder-Mystery dinner party we threw 4 years ago
• 3 suitcases
• A silver percolating coffee pot I bought at a garage sale and never could get to work
• 4 Pampered Chef cookbooks that I will never use because their cookbooks annoy me with their bolding of specific Pampered Chef pans and utensils you're supposed to use to make recipes. (Will the strawberry dessert really taste different if I use a non-Pampered Chef can opener to open the condensed cream? Will it??)
  
• My master's thesis, college projects, and a ton of childhood papers.

Speaking of childhood papers, no one can claim my mother doesn't love me. Dear God--years ago she gave me masses of papers she'd saved from my childhood. At the time, I stuck them all in a cupboard. But going through them, I found just about every drawing, tracing, math problem, and writing exercise I did from age 5-9, not to mention about 10 holiday turkey's drawn from the tracing of my hand and a seemingly unlimited number of drawings featuring a house, tree, and sun.

I kept about a quarter of the papers, including a drawing on which Mom had written, "First day of  school - Sept. 1975." 

In our digging, Blair found some wonderful black and white photos of his grandfather holding him when he was a boy of about 4, plus some great early pictures of his parents when they were dating. We're going to look into having all of them framed.

The house still hasn't recovered. Piles of stuff--"for Goodwill," "Trash," "To be given to..." are everywhere. I came down yesterday with a hard case of the flu and spent 18 hours in bed with chills, cough, and sneezes. I feel woozy but better today. Still a lot of work to be done to get the house in some semblance of order for the New Year. But I highly recommended the purging exercise. The house just feels lighter. One of the best tips in the book was that if you think you need a new filing cabinet (which I thought I did), stop, and first go through the papers in your old one and see what can be let go. I tossed almost 80% of that which I'd filed and now have plenty of space to grow.

Ack. Getting a biz dizzy sitting at the computer. I think back to bed I shall go.  Happy cleaning. 

Merry Christmas!

Our kitties must have been good this year (where was I?) because Santa appeared during the night and left them stockings full of toys. "Thing In A Bag,"...catnip grass... mice on wheels...new balls... laser light toy... and a great big purple bag with a gaping mouth like a yawning carp that neither cat as of yet has been brave enough to crawl into. We captured most of it on film and I may try to figure out a way to post a splice of it on this blog. After all, what is Christmas without watching cats unwrap gifts? A crappy Christmas, that's what it is...

As for me, I'm eating my way through the holidays.  Downstairs on my kitchen counter I have at my disposal:

• 1/2 a pound cake
• pumpkin pie
• Moravian sugar cookies
• chocolate peanut-butter balls
• chocolate/caramel/pretzel graham cracker cookies
• butterscotch haystacks
• cheese bread
• Hershey's kisses
• orange sweet bread
• frosted sugar cookies in festive Santa and snowmen shapes

Please. Enough with the food.! Consider yourselves warned...the next person I see approaching my house with a holiday tin or anything wrapped in Reynolds or saran wrap is going to get shot at. I mean it. I'm about to explode.

It's chilly and pouring rain here today which is actually a welcome change from the 70 degree weather we've been experiencing. Yes, I suppose it's nice to have the option of wearing shorts in late December but I find it makes it all the harder to enter into the Christmas Spirit. Singing along to "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" while I apply facial sunscreen just ain't cuttin' it...

Well, it's been almost 18 minutes since I last put sugar in my body and I'm starting to feel faint.  I hope everyone is enjoying a chilly, merry, hairy (think dogs and cats) filled Christmas!

Much Love,

Dena

New Year's Party & Humble Pie

Blair and I are typically last minute New Year's Eve people meaning someone at the last minute will offer us an invitation to come to their home and drink champagne and overindulge in fatty foods.

Not this year. This year WE will be the ones offering the obligatory cheese and cracker tray and vegetable dip.  That's right--hold the presses. The Harris' are entertaining.

Before you all take it up on yourselves to forward me the phone numbers of local emergency departments, let me assure you I will have help. It turns out my friend Pam is not only a brilliant author, but a kick-ass cook as well.  She has offered to cook me, Blair, and her husband Michael a full meal on New Years in--get this--MY KITCHEN.  Just like my own little fairy god-mother.  She's even said she'll let me make the pie (under the strictest of supervision).

So we'll wine and dine with Pam and Michael, then hold an open house from 8-midnight for our neighbors. I like the idea of a party where people feel free to come and go or drop in as the mood hits them.

So, the humble pie comes from the fact that after my online rant about insisting the tree and decorations come down on December 26th, I've agreed the house would look more festive for New Years if we left it all up so--gulp--up it stays.

Switching tracks, Blair is on vacation today and next week and I'm very much looking forward to having him around the house. We've compiled a huge to-do list that includes going through closets and cabinets with an iron eye and throwing out anything we don't use, clearing out the Garden of the Dead, shopping for our fish tank, and finding time to watch "The Sound of Music" (holiday tradition).  Busy, busy, busy.

Oh yes, I better find some munchie appetizer dishes to serve as well for New Years. I don't think people will want my apple pie...

Garden of the Dead

Perhaps I need to spend less time worrying over the state of the inside of my house and pay a bit more attention to the looks of the exterior. What you see in the photo is what greets you as you approach our front door. Stick a headstone in there and you'd have a working replica of Dracula's grave. 

Can't help it. I kill flowers. Although, what you see here are the remnants of flowers that did actually bloom this summer. I just haven't gotten around in the past 3 months to weeding them out since they died. You know. Busy...

I've been told some people have "winter gardens." I don't know who these over achieving freaks of nature are, but they better not come near my door. Although I feel secure in the knowledge that one look at our garden of shame would send them into flight far, far away.

I'd like to have a beautiful garden with bursts of color and bloom, graduated plant heights that take full advantage of the sun/shade setup, and cars that slow down as they pass my home, just so they might linger but a moment longer and partake of the beauty I have created.

Instead, we hear the screech of rubber as people careen past our door, fearful of what haunts might lie inside based on the spooky exterior.

In my next like, I'm going to come back as perfect.