Beautifying a chain link fence

Years ago I found some ideas for making a chain link fence beautiful.  It was mainly photos on Pinterest.  And I was intrigued.

I looked and looked for directions and guidance on materials, etc.  Nothing.

I thought about it several times over the years. And yesterday (back on Pinterest, of course) I found some more ideas!!!

This first photo is what I was looking at originally.  But this is a much closer view and you can tell that this is not added to an ordinary chain link fence.  It was created from the chain link metal in the first place.  I have no idea what this product costs, but I am sure it's not cheap.  It's bound to be worth a lot of $$$ with all the engineering, planning, machinery to create such a thing.

Then I came across this one.  See, it's just cute little crocheted squares made to fit and then sewn on.  I have seen these in several different designs.  Like flowers or snowflakes.  Whatever you can think of, you can make it fit.

And THEN I found this!  Woo Hoo!  Take a look at this!  Cross Stitch over chainlink squares.  I love this idea.  Any needlepoint or cross stitch pattern you have can be transformed to a chain link fence. I have some thinking to do on this.  Materials, some kind of a large curved C-shaped needle, that sort of thing.  But this is do-able!!

Compact Follow Up

Okay, full disclosure here, I have lumped a WHOLE BUNCH of things in to this one idea for myself for the year and I am now completely overwhelmed.

1. Yes, I am committed to the Compact and reducing my purchasing of new items. Yes, I am staying within the guidelines as much as possible.

But I also said I would do a Freezer/Pantry challenge in which I am using up all the food in my freezer and pantry rather than buying something else to prepare for dinner. So there's that.

Then I agreed to a Savings Challenge of seeing how much I could put away in my savings account for the year.  My goal is $5000.  I think this is very conservative and do-able.  But I haven't been accountable in that I didn't write down my starting balance and make note of each deposit.  I think I need to get some of this written down so that I can track where my savings are coming from.

And on top of this!  I signed up on the cleaning-decluttering daily challenge.  Daily is just too much. I  have not been able to commit to this.  I would bet that I haven't even opened this week's daily emails due to the fact that I have been babysitting all week and this is the first time I have been on the computer since last week.  So, I can't very well do the challenge when I haven't even SEEN the challenge.  It's too much.

This is for my own accountability.  But I will try to keep regular updates to stay on track.

Recommitting to The Compact and to Decluttering

Here I am again!

I am going to post these thing separately for ease of searching them out later.  10 years ago in January of 2007 I heard about The Compact, a group of people in San Francisco who made a commitment to not buying anything new for the calendar year.  I signed up on the yahoo group (there are still about 10,000 people participating in that group) and started and education.  Boy, did I learn a LOT!  There are so many ways to look around and find a used item or make do or borrow or barter or any number of ways to do something other than just buy a new whatever-it-is.

What goes hand in hand with not buying new things is taking really good care of your old things. Also, I found a TON of ways to do the environmental thing rather than the easy things.  Such as:

*Use cloth napkins rather than buying and throwing away paper ones. I guarantee you have cloth napkins, or bandanas, or wash cloths or and old table cloth that has a hole/stain in it that you could cut up and hem and make napkins.  I have not bought a single paper napkin in 10 years.  I haven't bought any new cloth napkins either.  I already had some and I have found some in estate sales and added to the pile.  Just a few extra napkins added to a load of laundry will cost you no more in water, soap or electricity.  Plus they are much nicer.

*Recycle everything that you don't compost.  Buy foods with as little packaging as possible.  When you buy food with no packaging you are automatically buying your food as close to its natural form as you can get it.  That means you aren't buying crap for your body, either!  Yay!  I have been known to dig through the garbage and move things to the recycle bin or to the compost bucket.

Here's a short list of things that I throw in the compost bucket, things that no longer go in my trash:
Toilet paper cores, Paper towel cores, used tissues, shredded paper, dead plants, flowers, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells, tamale husks.

Now, picture your trash can and take all those items and compost them.  Then start looking for things to recycle, like oatmeal boxes, glass bottles, plastic bottles.  If you get those things out of the trash, look how small your trash pile is now!  It's awesome.

Anyhoo, I have back-slid quite a ways from my Compacty ways and I am now publicly making a recommitment to get back in to that.  I will post here regularly (not exactly sure how often) and see what I am adding to my list.

In addition to getting Compacty, I found a decluttering challenge called JanuaryCure 2018. Go here to see what is happening with that one.  I signed up for it and today's challenge is to clean out a drawer.  Any drawer.  Freezer drawer, desk drawer, junk drawer, dresser drawer, any drawer. Dump it out, see what you can throw away, recycle, put in its rightful place, clean the drawer inside and then neatly put in the contents that need to live there.  I will be doing that here in just a bit as soon as I select which of my cluttered drawers deserves the honor of being the first one decluttered!

Let me know if you are interested in either getting Compacty in your ways or in decluttering your way through 2018.  I would love to hear from you.

Antique Chairs Revisited and Refinished and Reupholstered!!

Do you remember a few months back I took my beautiful antique chairs from my Aunt Bea down to finally be refinished and reupholstered?  If not, please go look back for the post titled "Antique Chairs" and check out the BEFORE pictures.

Then come on back here and see the after photos.  They are even prettier than I pictured they would be.

Here we go with the photos!!!

Above is chair #1.  There are 3 chairs and chair #1 is a regular standing there with it's 4 legs kind of chair.  It has the needlepoint on the front of the back with the new edging stuff that I found out is called "gimp" and then the nutmeg color velvet on the seat and the back of the back.  I am so in love with the way these turned out I can hardly stand it.

This is chair #2 which is almost identical to #1 except it sits on a base with a rocker spring and is a rocking chair.  It has the matching needlepoint to #1 as well.  Love this chair!!

This big beautiful chair is #3 and it is essentially a chair-and-a-half or a settee.  This is the first time I have seen it with the springs tied down.  They had become untied over the years and talk about bouncy!  Just sitting on it was like taking a roller coaster ride!  This settee is just spectacular now.

This little guy is the one and only foot stool that came to me with the set.  I don't know if that is the way they were sold originally or how it is the only one to survive with the chairs.  It is topped with the fourth and final needlepoint that I was given by my Nana.  It fit perfectly. And can I just say how lovely my rug looks in that photo?

Another shot of #1

And some close up views of the needlepoint and the velvet on the settee.

So, please go check out the before photos and now the afters and let me know what you think. I am beyond thrilled with them.

Now my only issue will be which of my children will get to inherit them.  Because I am not breaking up the set.  No way, no how.  They deserve to stay together.

And stay tuned for my dining chairs to be reupholstered!  The fabric is ordered and due in any time now.  I will post some before photos of them as well.  How on earth that current fabric got so stained is beyond me.

Thanks for reading!  Hope you all have a happy and restful Thanksgiving!

Recycling, Downsizing and Letting go

Remember the other day when I showed you the KonMari book?

I am trying to implement this in my life.  If you know me in real life you may be picking your teeth up and putting them back in your mouth.  I KNOW!!!  I am a packrat.  I love stuff.  I have accumulated loads of stuff.  I have collections of stuff.  Let's face it, I am on my way to being a hoarder.

So I am trying my best to embrace the more minimalist side of myself.  The part of me that sees all the stuff as things that weigh me down, that keep me from being the best I can because I am too busy dusting, arranging and finding homes for all my important stuff.  It is hard to completely change your mindset, especially when you spent years of your life accumulating.  I did recognize years ago that I had a lot of things and made a hard and fast rule that any time I saw something I wanted I had to stop and think of a similar object in my house that I was willing to let go of, be it sweaters or shoes or whatever.  Note:  this rule has never applied to books.  Books are sacred and as such, limitless in the number you can own.

I let things go all the time.  And yet, the clutter persists.  So I am reading and re-reading the KonMari book up there and falling more in love with the idea of having fewer beloved items that now have air around them, that aren't crammed into a large collection so that this item of beauty can shine all on its own.

And you know what is really strange?  Along with minimizing my stuff I am also changing my style of furnishings and things that I want to inhabit my space.  I have always been in the Bohemian camp with loads of competing patterns, fabrics, textures, over-stuffed big comfy furniture and the like.  Nowadays, my taste is running more towards mid-century modern, Danish 1960s looking things and craftsman/arts & crafts.  Where the hell did THIS come from??

I have very slowly over the last 15 years come around to the Small House Movement way of thinking.  I love the idea of making great use of the space you have and not building, heating, cooling and walking through long hallways of unusable space.

That's me right now; recycling things that need to go to someone else, downsizing the amount of treasures I want to keep and letting go of all the things that no longer serve me and no longer spark joy in my life.

Holler at me if you need something, I just might have a collection of said item that I would love to gift you.

Update on the new eyeglasses and a few other things

Did you look at the pretty frames I posted the other day?  Well, I got in to see my eye doctor and the new and improved lenses will be ready to go soon.  However, one of the new frames did not work for me.  Yes, it is sad to say that the Frida Kahlo frames will not be mine.  They did NOT look good on me.  My daughter is coming to visit and I will offer them to her if she wants them and if they look good on her face.  If not?  Well, I will either offer them up to someone else or ask the seller if I can return them.  They are lovely and need to be worn.

Other random thoughts running through my head:

1. When you have little kids and you can't go to the bathroom by yourself, they eventually outgrow that nonsense and give you some space.  When you have cats?  Not so much.  This morning I had 2 in there with me and one at the door.  They are like little 2 year olds with OCD.

2. I am still sick.  I believe I am on the mend, but I am still sick.  And every time I go to a doctor they all ask "Are you depressed?"  Well, let me think.  I have been sick since April 1 and before that I had sciatica and couldn't walk and before that was the frozen shoulder.  What do you think?

3. I know summer is the worst time to try and watch anything on t.v. because it's usually a wasteland of crap and reruns.  In case you haven't seen any of these great summer shows, here are a few I highly recommend:  The Jim Gaffigan Show.  It's on Nickelodeon or TVLand.  Also the FX channel has 2 great new shows, Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll starring Denis Leary and John Corbett, and also one called Married.  These are outstanding t.v. Look for them.  The upcoming fall season is going to include The Bastard Executioner whick I am really looking forward to and what appears to be the final season of The League.

4. I am still doing the mostly all meat-free, dairy-free and gluten-free.  I say mostly because I have eaten a bit of meat here and there.  Maybe once a week.  But no dairy and almost no gluten.  I went to an Indian restaurant and of course I had a small naan and one of the golub jammun for dessert.  The naan was totally worth it and the golub jammun was not.  It was not as good as I am used to and was a total waste of calories and gluten.  So far, I am still with the sinus congestion and still coughing.  I have lost 1 pants size so there's that!

5. I am almost completely off the caffeine, too.  I dropped my black teas months ago and drink a cup of green tea in the morning and then switch to red tea (rooibos) and herbal teas after that.  AND NO SUGAR!!!

6. I have been starting the Kon-Mari method of tidying up and decluttering my life.  I love her philosophy.  Here's the book in case you haven't seen it yet.

And that picture is almost life-size.  The book is tiny.  Everything in your life, your house, etc. should spark joy and bring happiness and be useful.  If not, thank it, and release it.

Have a great long Labor Day weekend!

FINALLY!!!!

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning know what an epiphany this is.  Anyone else, just play along.

Remember how I am a tea hoarder?  You know I have whittled and whittled down my tea stash only to create a tea tin stash?  I can NOT bring myself to throw away perfectly good tins.  I have looked and searched and thought and thought of ways to recycle, reuse those tins and not much has come to mind.

And then I found this  Please, go check out this fabulous recycling blog.  Beautiful, creative and innovative ways to use found objects.

Here are a couple pictures of the tea tin lights

Before:

And after:

Very clever.

Lots of stuff!

I have so many things flitting around in my head to tell you about and pictures to show you!

First up!

Just when you think you have seen everything, you haven't.  Check this out:  We were driving through a parking lot and saw this truck with shrimp decals on the back window and then saw the driver's door.

In case it wasn't clear enough, I got a much closer view below.

THE SHRIMP PIMP!  It's a Shrimp Pimp-mobile!!

When's the last time you saw one of those?  I'm gonna go out on a limb and say probably never.  Ha!

And now, let me share with you my latest project.  Do you remember a long while back I showed you pictures of the cute trivets I was going to make when I got enough metal bottle caps saved up?  Well, after having some family members here for a good long visit we accumulated a great supply of bottle caps.  Yay!!

Here is the little tub I have been collecting the caps in.  A varying assortment of beer, ginger beer, root beer and I guess some non-beer caps!

Next to the bottle caps you will see that I am using just plain #10 cotton crochet thread.  I have scads and scads of that stuff.  Small amounts of about every color under the sun leftover from other projects.  Just the right thing to use on this and turn a leftover bit of thread and a rescued-from-the-garbage bottle cap into something useful and cute as hell!

As I make up the crochet-covered caps I am storing them in a ziplock bag while I accumulate enough to put them together in some sort of cute trivet design.

And here are the first two I have finished!  They are going to be my sister-in-law's birthday present. She has the cutest 1950's all original kitchen in shades of blue and yellow.  It is bright, sunny and just as cute as it can be.  I wanted to be sure to take photos of them before I give them to her.  Shhh, don't tell her!

Aren't they awesome?  I am so excited to get even more made!  I have loads of cotton thread.  Certainly enough to make hundreds of trivets.  It's just the bottle caps that I have to keep stocked up on.  I have been picking them up off the street and in parking lots too.  Any that I find that aren't flattened out or too bent are snagged and taken home and washed.

If you look closely at the photos, you can kind of make out that there are different color caps underneath the thread.  I gotta tell you, this is shaping up to be one of my favorite projects!

And if that wasn't enough cuteness already?

I have some pics of the little mama kitty and the one remaining baby kitty that we have been fostering. The little boy kitten has already gone to his forever home and has been given the moniker of Ollie.  Very cute.

You'll see what I mean when I have been saying that the little mama kitty didn't appear to be any more than 6 to 8 months when she gave birth.  She had these babies on July 4th, so they have been with us for 7 weeks today.  And this is probably their last week with us (and together) as they will each be making their way to their respective new homes.  Awwww.

Check them out:

See, you probably thought this was the baby because she is so small, but nope.  That's the tiny mama!

Here's the teensy baby kitty hiding under the table so that I won't take her picture and steal her soul or whatever it is that baby kitties might think!

There she is again!  Hiding under a chair.

And here's the mama kitty with her savior and rescuer.  Isn't she precious?  Look at those stripes!

And here's the baby.  Awwwww!

Look at that little bundle of trouble!

And here's one more of the mama kitty sitting on a foot stool looking up at me. What a pretty, dainty little girl.

Lots of Musings and Catching Up Stuff

Oh my, I have so many things to share!  And even pictures this time!  Woo Hoo!  I know, could I use my excitement point more?!!!

First up, Judge Belvin seriously admonished the attorneys (attornies?) about being such slow-ass slackers and recessed court till tomorrow.  It's like a 24 hour time out for lawyers.  Ha!  He is such a sweet man even when he was telling them to get their triflin' asses into gear.  So, I finally had enough time to go get my camera to show you the goings-on.

Without further ado . . .


Y'all know that I play Mah Jongg twice a month, right?  And never and I mean to tell you never does it come up that 2 of the 4 of us are playing the SAME HAND.  Well, hardly ever.  But last time we played, Jen and I played for the same hand with reversed suits.

Here is a picture of her tiles, and then mine.

See?  She was doing dots and then cracks.  I was doing cracks and then dots.  She won.  All I lacked was a 1 crack which she had!

And believe it or don't, we did it AGAIN!  That same night, we picked the exact same hand another time.  I can not even imagine what the odds are that 2 players on the same night will choose the exact same hands twice out of 5 games.  But it must be like a gazillion to 1.  1 crack that is!

Next up is something I captured when I was driving across town to purchase something in a plastic-free container vs the one right around the corner from my house that comes in plastic.

See the first picture?  That is some moron standing on a street corner in front of the grocery store with a bullhorn (bull horn??) yelling.  So I rolled down my window and turned down the radio so I could hear what was so important.  He was yelling about Jesus.  And not in a friendly, Jesus loves you sort of way, but more like Repent and turn to Jesus or burn in hell you damn heathens kind of way.

That's odd, I said to myself.  You don't see this every day.  And certainly not in this location.  You want to know what was on the opposite corner from this wiener?

Ta Da!!!  It's the Beer 'n All!  For those of you not from around here the Beer 'n All is basically a drive-thru beer barn that sells margaritas, or should I quote their menu and say Adult Snow Cones.  Here's my only story of the Beer 'n All; Sparky and I were driving through this intersection years ago when they first opened up the B'n All and whipped in to see what all the hoopla was about.  They have scantily clad skinny little girls working there for tips.  So we pull up and a scantily-clad skinny little girl hands us a menu that basically is what kind of flavors of frozen margaritas I mean Adult Snow Cones they have. So we went with plain regular lime margarita flavor.  Then she asks us this question.

"So how many shots do you want it that?"

We were all Huh?  Wtf?  It seems that in a 16 oz. styrofoam cup (boo! hiss! on the styrofoam) you can get UP TO FOUR EXTRA SHOTS of alkeehaul at the B 'n A!!!   Holy Toledo!  We got the plain ordinary regular one.  They made no money on us and if I remember right, she got a minimal tip.  How do they get away with selling you frozen margaritas to go, you might ask?  Well, here's how they get around that whole pesky Drinking and Driving silliness:  They then take the cup with a lid on it and stick the whole thing in a clear plastic bag and seal it.  They give you the straw separate.  So technically it's still a sealed container and what you do with it after you drive through is none of their concern.  I guess it's the same as if you bought a bottle of liquor and took it to the car.  Whatever with them.  It's a stupid business that requires these girls to degrade themselves for tips.

And now we come to much more interesting news and events!  Tomatoes!  All sorts of bounty from the garden.  And things we made from said bounty.  Check it out.

Firstly we have jars of Chili Sauce, which is basically exciting ketchup.  Gorgeous, aren't they?  That used to be about 24 giant heirloom tomatoes that got turned into 16 cups of peeled, cored and chopped tomatoes.  And then mixed with peppers, onion, garlic, spices, sugar and vinegar and then cooked for hours and hours.

See the close-up of the the red vs. green?  The red was made with mostly Cherokee Purple variety tomatoes and the green was with German Green.  These are NOT green as in unripe, immature but rather in a beautiful tomato that stays green when it is ripe.  It has a lovely tomato flavor.  Isn't it pretty with the red cayenne pepper floating in there like confetti?

This is some of the remaining tomatoes left on our kitchen counter.  See the other German Greens there on the right?  Next to them is another cayenne pepper that is green.  But it is green because it hasn't turned red yet.

See the bowls of small tomatoes?  Same thing here, all heirloom varieties.  The red ones are called Big Cherry and the green (but ripe) ones are called Green Grape.  They are delicious.

In the windowsill are some that Mr. Big Ed picked to ripen inside away from the threat of bugs, birds and wildlife.

And what else do we have in the windowsill?  3 small pots and 1 larger pot all with baby seedlings of different varieties of tobacco.  Sparky has decided to try his hand at growing tobacco.  Tricky thing is tobacco can NOT  be grown next to tomatoes.  Remember Mr. Big Ed's NINETY-FIVE tomato plants? They are all over the place.  So when these guys get big enough to brave the outside world we have to be really careful where they go.  Hopefully they will make it and I can keep you apprised on the tobacco growing.

Personally, I would like to put in a couple of tea bushes.  Wouldn't a tea bush be a lovely thing to have in your yard?  And useful, too!  Then I could finally use up all those damn tea tins I have left over from the Tea Hoarding Challenge.

Speaking of which, if you are in the need of some tea tins, mostly the round Republic of Tea type, please let me know.  I would be happy to off-load some of them to help you out.

I am thrilled to have gotten caught up on this stuff. If you are happy to have been reading it, please thank Judge Belvin.

Back to the trial tomorrow.

Plastic Ban Day 9

I feel like I am being thwarted at every turn.  Honestly, you can't pick up one damn thing without plastic being a part of it.  I got so damn grumpy at the store yesterday that I barely bought anything on my list.

First off, they didn't have the Nido powdered milk that I was going to get.  And I was not going to be forced to buy an inferior product that I don't know.  So no milk at all.

Then I went down the laundry soap aisle trying to decide what to get.  I had made up my mind to just get the Tide in a box that only has the plastic scoop rather than other options that had more plastic.  And do you know what?  They were totally out of Tide for the HE washers.  Out.  None.  Not one flipping box!  So I was forced to look at the liquids in the PLASTIC bottles.  The usual Tide or Cheer come in a giant bottle where as I could get the Method brand that is highly concentrated and comes in a much tinier plastic bottle (that has refills) for the same number of loads.  And I caved and bought that one.

Further down the aisle is the dish soap.  In this store there is no such thing as dish soap in anything other than plastic.  It was all plastic, plastic and more plastic.

I got so disgusted by the whole process that I grabbed some kitty treats and left.

I am going to have to re-address this issue tomorrow.  I don't know what my options are going to be. If you have any suggestions, please feel free, I can certainly use some encouragement.

Plastic Ban Day 8

I was traveling for 3 days and let me just say that road trips are NOT conducive to reducing plastic.  The very first thing that happened was filling up the car with gas and picking up a glass bottle of Mocha Frappuchino to drink on the road.  While it is a glass bottle with a metal top it was COVERED in plastic wrap that had to come off.  Then I had a straw.

2 pieces of plastic for one drink.

First stop of the trip was at Buc-ees which is my favorite place to stop on any road trip!  Love the Buc-ees! They have reasonably priced gas, they have the cleanest restrooms with 72 stalls and the store goes on forever!  Miles and miles of the best tasting stuff and also the cutest stuff with Buc-ee beaver on it.  It is just too much fun to go to Buc-ees.

And my favorite thing there is the Beaver Nuggets.  It's a junk food item they make that tastes like a cross between Cap'n Crunch, Corn Pops and Poppycock.  You just know this stuff is waaaaay bad for you, and yet?  you can't stop eating it!

Beaver Nuggets?  They come in a damn plastic bag.  Plus I got a fountain drink of iced tea with a splash of lemonade.  This was in a tall styrofoam cup with a plastic top and a straw.  What's my plastic total for the day?  4 plastics and 1 styrofoam.  And I have only been gone from the house a little over an hour!

That was it for that day. But the return trip home was much the same, a couple of road trip cups with plastic tops and straws.

I was saving all my plastic stuff in a container to photograph and show you at the end of the month, but I did not save the stuff from the beginning of the trip and keep it in the car for 3 days to bring home and photograph.  So my pile will look smaller than it actually is.

Today I will hit the grocery store and have to make the hard decisions on some items.  I am 99% sure that I will be bringing home the Nido brand powdered milk that has zero plastic, but I don't know about the laundry soap.  I will have to check out all the packaging when I get there.

Current total: 6 plastics and 2 styrofoams.

Plastic No More

My compact/blog friend Julia Park Tracey has created a challenge for herself and her family for the month of June. Go here to read about it.  I am going to step out and say that I too will try to do this as well.

In a nutshell, it is don't bring anything plastic into your house for one month.  Nothing.  No plastic of any kind.  No tags, no wrappers, nothing. Zip, nada, zilch.

No plastic.

That's the rules.  This is going to be one touch challenge, my friends.  Be aware of every single thing you touch.  Everything you pick up.  Tough.

And you know what they say; When the going gets tough, the tough stick it out and don't bring home any plastic!

At least, that's what they could say!

I will post a weekly update here to let you know how things are going.  Are you willing to take this challenge?  If so, let me know how it goes.

Good luck everyone!

Bottle Caps!

Does anyone remember the song we used to sing at Girl Scout camp about bottle caps?  Never mind, I just looked it up and it is "One bottle pop, two bottle pop, etc."  WTH is bottle pop?  Oh well, I think most of those old GS songs had crazy lyrics.  (But they sure were fun!)

So!  My friend and fellow Compactor Ellen has just made a fabulous little bottle cap ornament.  And that got me thinking about the project I have on the back burner that requires bottle caps.  I am trying to save up as many as I can.  Now, none of us drink bottled soda or beer on a regular basis that have cool metal bottle caps.  Certainly none of those crappy plastic ones, either.  What on earth could you possibly do with those?

And then I remembered that I have not one, but two of the cutest necklace and earring sets made of bottle caps.  So here are some pics of those for Ellen to look at, and of course the rest of you that aren't bored to tears talking about old school metal bottle caps.

First up is a pic of the project I am hoping to get enough bottle caps to make.

And here is a more updated version:

Aren't those adorable?

The old school Granny pineapple pattern comes with variations to make into a bunch of grapes and also a butterfly.  They each require 50 - 60 bottle caps.  

If any of you are interested, I would be happy to post the crochet instructions on how to do these lovelies.

Now, on to my bottle cap necklaces!  The first one is made with all Big Red caps and the fronts are done with all Scotties, plaid patterns and mail boxes (with heavy plastic covering the pics).  Cute, right?  There are little pewter-y dangle things that pertain to the theme.

The next one is all RC cola caps on the back side and on the front each one is different brightly colored quilt patterns.  The little dangly things are scissors, hearts, sewing machines, etc. It is so precious! Could I be any more of an old lady?

Oooh!  Look at the thimble!  Isn't it sweet?

Don't you love them?

Ellen, if you are here and still reading this; could you tell me where you got your bottle cap puncher thing?  That really seems like a useful tool to have around the house.  You never know when you are going to want to embellish your bottle caps with dangly hearts and thimbles and then further dangle said caps from a necklace or turn it into a lovely ornament or whatever.

Oh!  Also, the Sarah with an H has not contacted me.  I will give it a few days and then draw a different name out of the hat.

Have a great day out there!

Year in Review or the Rear-view mirror

It has been many days since I last posted, and while thinking about what scintillating topic to ramble on about, I thought to myself "Self, remember last year when you made all those resolutions for this year? How did that go?"

So, I went back to the beginning of this year and scoped out the post on what all I was going to accomplish.  (See, the reason I started blogging was to hold myself accountable.  If it is all typed out in black and pink then I need to follow through)

What follows is my list of six items that I thought I could accomplish in 2010 and then I will update with what really happened.

1. My savings account will increase by $20,000. I don't know how do-able this really is, but I am using Sluggy as my motivator. She shot for 60K last year and landed in the 20's, which I think is great work. Now last year I moaned and ranted and bitched about how every time I save $250 for example, I then get a bill for $250, so I am REALLY hoping this is not going to be the case with my $20,000 goal. Please wish me luck and cross something for me.

What happened here is lots and lots of car maintenance.  Sparky's car, Rachel Pie's car and my own car all needed new brakes, tires, I think there were batteries and rotors and heaven only knows what other parts involved.  Also, I took July and August off of birthing since we had the big family cruise and the wedding, so that was loss of income.  Then my Grandma (r.i.p.) got so sick and I had to give away clients for Sept. and Oct. when I went to be with her, so that was more loss of income.  I will end the year with $5,000 in my savings account.  That is a far cry from $20,000.  But at least it is still something to the positive, right?

2. Continue on my Compact goals of lightening my footprint on the Mother Earth. I am going to step up all of my activities to another level and see how that goes. You know the drill, less packaging in the house, less things in the garbage, more in the compost, more things gone to Goodwill, less things brought in to the house in the first place.

This went well.  I really did buy way less.  I did choose things with less packaging.  Our compost heaps over-runneth!  And our garbage cans are hardly ever full.  There is still way too much going into the recycling though.  I would love to find a way to get even that reduced by more than half.  

3. Get started WAAAAAAYY earlier on Christmas and birthday gifts. I did not allow near enough time this year and Harry and David came to the rescue for several gifts. Not good planning on my part. I think lots of gifts this year will be through Heifer and Kiva. But the homemade gifts will be started on in April, I think.

Yeah, not so much.  Again, with the poor planning.  Thank the stars above for Harry and for David.  April would have been a good place to start on gifts, but that didn't happen.  Big fat failure on item number 3.

4. Start walking and find a way to get in much better health and better shape this year. 2 of my high school friends dropped dead this year unexpectedly and I am not only deeply saddened by this, but shocked that 50 year old people who should be in their prime are not. I would really like to be around for a little longer. I have more to accomplish, more to see, and I am not even remotely ready to kick said bucket.

You would think that I would remember this particular item.  But no, I had no recollection of this.  As a matter of fact, a little germ of an idea has been sprouting in my brain that says 2011 will be the year of me. The year that I will take care of me.  The year that I will make myself a priority.  Nay, not A priority, but rather THE priority!  Not even a glimmer that I had thought this very thing a year ago. 

5. Toward the end of better health, I will be doing more of my meal planning and shopping through Greenling our local online green grocer and at the farmers markets. Keeping it local and organic can only be good for all of us.

I did do this.  Not as consistently as I would have liked.  But it was an a-typical year with me being gone for extended lengths of time.  I will plan on doing even better on this in the coming year.  And this goes back to item number 2, all the local green grocer shopping and farmers market shopping have NO plastic involved.

6. Remove 1 full shelf of cookbooks from my collection. There are plenty of them that I have never used. There are plenty more that I only have made 1 single item from. These books need to be set free.

This was a complete success.  I got rid of about 75 books and my shelves have breathing room in them now.  I have not purchased (or been gifted) a single cookbook this year.  I did buy the November Bon Apetit with the new Thanksgiving day recipes to add to my collection.  But that is as close as I came to buying a new cookbook.

If I were grading myself I would give myself:

1. C

2. A

3. F

4. F

5. B

6. A

Horrible.  Now I have to decide what I am going to do for this coming year and how to hold myself accountable in a manner that will really work!  Any ideas?  Do I need to do a monthly or quarterly check-in?

This time of year between Christmas and New Year's is typically a time that I get really introspective and even a little sad, melancholy or sometimes depressed.  And it seemed like the right time to look back and see how I was doing with my goals.  Not very well, it would appear.

Oh, remember the Tea Hoarding Challenge of 2009?  I didn't buy a single tea for the whole calendar year in order to force myself to use up the stockpile of teas already ensconced in my pantry.  Lots of people in my family knew of this and throughout the year of 2010 gifted me teas, like I needed them or something!  And those no good sorry asses at Whole Paycheck Foods stopped having my very favorite morning tea in stock. I bet I went in there 5 or 6 times and spoke to the tea ordering person and gave her my card and asked her to please call me whenever they got re-stocked.  I get really irritated at this store because they carry items and you try them and like them and get used to them and the next thing you know, BAM!  they don't have it anymore.  It's rather like shopping at Costco in that regard!

So I started worrying that maybe Taylor's of Harrogate had quit making the awesome Scottish Breakfast Tea and it wasn't Whole Paycheck Foods' fault that they no longer carried the best tea ever.  And I went online and scoped it out.  

Of course they still make it!  Of course they were perfectly willing to sell it to me and ship it over here from Merry Ole England!  Even with the shipping it would still be comparable to WF price.  So I quit panicking and decided that I would order some as soon as my current tea stash went down. 

Meanwhile, my sister went on the hunt and sent me a box for Christmas.  (She had previously sent me a different tea, 2 gorgeous tea cups and a tea towel for my birthday) And my husband, Mr. Big Ed, got me a package of SIX BOXES of the famous Scottish Breakfast Tea for Christmas!!!  So I currently have 7 boxes of my favorite morning tea.  

Have I mentioned that each of these boxes contains 50 bags?  By anyone's estimations this is a year's supply of tea.  So!  No more tea buying for me.  I have yet to make my list of resolutions, but suffice it to say there will be no tea shopping for me in 2011.  : )

Next week I will post my list of 2011 resolutions and maybe motivation and memory-boosting need to be at the top of that list?

Questions, queries, things to ponder

I have had to go out shopping recently.  In the old days, that would not even be news-worthy but 4 years ago I started The Compact which I have discussed ad nauseum and which also means I don't shop recreationally any more.  It's a waste of time, $$, resources, etc.  And the truth is . . . I don't need  a damn thing.  How many of us really and truly need anything?  So, shopping is off my list of hobbies.  But I have this nephew who is getting married and this weekend we have a full schedule of festivities. Friday night there are showers followed up by bachelor and bachelorette parties, Bridesmaid luncheon, another shower (hosted by moi, Queen B and my sister Bertha), Sunday is the rehearsal dinner and Monday is the Big Event.  As you can see this will require a lot of clothes.  A lot of different clothes. You can't wear the same damn thing over again to each event and look like a schmuck in all the photos.  And I tried to shop at vintage and thrift stores first before I headed to the mall.

Shopping used to be fun.  It used to be exhilarating.  All those brand new things just waiting to go home with you!  Now?  Not so much.  The store lighting is bad.  You can't match colors worth a damn in those lights and you can't take things outside to check them in the natural sunlight.   The new clothes smell is not the same as it used to be.  Now it is too "chemical-y" and sometimes I have bought things in the last 5 years or so and that strong chemical-y smell never goes away.  Wash all you will, it won't go.  So those things are a HUGE waste of money and an even huger disappointment.  What is that smell?  It can't possibly be good for you to wear it against your skin and breathe it in, whatever it is.

And!  In case that wasn't bad enough, most everything is made in China.  I am trying so hard to live a good life and do the right thing.  Buying Made-in-China crap is definitely NOT doing the right thing.  You don't need me to tell you all the gazillion reasons why we shouldn't do that.  So now try going shopping in a light-hearted mood and think about the fun times you are going to have in the lovely outfits you are trying to buy and then to be assaulted by this smell, bad lighting, salespeople who bathe in cheap perfume and find that 1 out of 10 items is NOT made in China.  That one item?  It was made in Taiwan.  See?  It gets depressing.

Are you depressed yet from just reading this?  I am sorry about that.  I guess my questions here are these:

1. What is that smell?  Is it something sprayed on the clothes?  Is it in the cloth before it is cut and sewn?
2. Do you like to shop?
3. Do you have certain criteria?  Such as no Made-in-China?  Or no man-made fabrics? Or only from Vintage and Thrift stores?
4. How about hand-made items?  Do you sew?  Do you knit?
5. And that brings me to this.  What do you do with your old clothes?  Do you pass them on, like hand-me-downs for kids?  Do you take them to a consignment store?  How about thrift stores?  Or do you cut them up to go into a quilt or a braided rug?

I get really curious to know how other people do things.  Lemme hear from you!  And I will post some pics after the wedding so you can see all the lovely non-smelly, non-made-in-China clothes I ended up wearing!

Updating. or . . . Everything old is new again.

I have just figured out that I need to get my eyes checked.  Somehow I missed going last summer.  I go every summer to get my eyeballs checked and get my glasses updated if need be.  And I can't remember a thing that happened last summer that was so pressing that I would forget to get my eyes looked at.

Charming Miss Rachel Pie says to me yesterday when I was grumbling and bitching about not being able to see because I had missed last year's eyeball check that "here's a novel idea!  you could just get them checked in the fall!  or the winter!  or hell, break out of a rut and go in the spring!"  Madness.  That's what I say.

Why wouldn't that kind of care-free willy-nilly idea occur to me?  I have no clue.  But the fact is, it doesn't. If I normally do something in August and it gets skipped, well, it just stays skipped till NEXT August.

Anyhoo, all this planning to get my eyes checked has got me planning on what kind of new glasses frames I want to get.  Right now I am wearing some that are at least 3 and maybe 4 years old.  They were way cool and different when I got them.  Now?  Not so much.  Everybody and their mother has this style now. Even Tina Fey and Sarah Palin.  Time for an update, is what I am sayin'.

Interestingly enough, over on the Compact group site, one of my very favorite people posted a question as to where one could get eyes checked and not pay a bazillion dollars for new glasses.  So I perked up and have been checking everyone's responses as to how they manage to not go broke each time their own eyeballs need new lenses.  And the best idea popped up, and I am really sorry that I have no clue who it was who posted this, but there is a store near her that sells really cool vintage frames.  Vintage is right up my alley.  So, of course I have been scoping out vintage frame people all over the internet.

Here is one vintage frame site that I really like.  And here are a handful of the frames that I really like:

Are those the cutest things you ever did see?  How about ever see through???  I love them all.

Now apparently, I need to come up with measurements of my current glasses to know which of these will fit my face and not be too small or too big.  And let me just say this . . .   every single one of these awesome vintage frames are cheaper than the new and not nearly as awesome new ones that I have seen. Of course, I can't see.  Which is why I need to go get my eyeballs checked and get new prescription lenses.

Do any of you wear glasses?  Did you just switch to contacts because the whole wearing glasses thing was too much trouble?  Did you get the lasik surgery because the contacts were way more trouble? Do you just have perfectly shaped eyeballs and don't need all this stuff?

And most importantly, which frames do you think I should get?  : )