My Friday Fives

In an effort to reflect more positively on what I accomplish and to plan goals more reasonably, I'm going to start writing out My Friday Fives.

Fox and Puffballs--my favorite so far!

1. Used and reviewed the gluten free sugar cookie mix I got from the Amazon Vine program.  
2. Cleaned the living room of cobwebs, as well as the living room ceiling fan--and decorated it with Washi Tape.
3. Reorganized my embroidery floss into my own system.  I'm hopeful this will work better for me! 
4. Caulked around the backstop of the tub.
   It's not pretty. . . it's not even homely (!) but it will do.  (I hope!)
5. Completed the July portion of the  The Frosted Pumpkin's Woodland Sampler.

1. Received many, MANY books in the mail this week!
2. Received several gifts of home-grown veggies: tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and peppers.  I am so blessed!
3.  I got four new, fantastic body sprays from Hip Hop Candy: Unicorn Poo, Angel Bunny, Frosted Cupcake and Sugared Bamboo.  I just adore all their fragrances--I go around spraying myself with different ones all through the day. 
4.  St. John asked for a belly rub for the first time!
5. Better electrical wiring, thanks to my husband and his friend!  Now I can use the chest freezer we bought with our income tax return!

Two ARCs from Amazon Vine and
15 vintage mysteries that were pretty much stolen from an ebay seller.

I am the half proud, half embarrassed owner of 36 cheesy romantic suspense novels by Emilie Loring. (Another shamefully cheap deal from ebay.)  Loring was one of my favorites when I was a young teen, and I've been going through a phase of wanting to read the things I enjoyed so much during my young days. Of course, the true mystery of these books will be whether or not I will admit it on here when I read one!

1. Use and review the gluten free sugar cookie mix I got from the Amazon Vine program.  Accomplished!
2. Return to taking my photos every day.
   I have really done poorly with my photos over the past few months.  Last year, I achieved nearly one photo a day.  This year, my inspiration has been much lower.  
3. Caulk around the tub.
   Accomplished! 
4. Dust away the cobwebs in the living room.
   Accomplished!
5. Complete the second week of The Frosted Pumpkin's Summer Sampler.
   The July portion of their Woodland Sampler came, and I finished it first.

1. Find a home for the things that got stacked up on the chest freezer when the electricity went funky and the freezer was out of service. (Isn't it funny how any unused space becomes a place for stacking homeless objects?!?!)
2. Read at least half of one of the ARCs I need to review.
   Accomplished!  Completed and reviewed one both of the books. (second review) 
3. Return to taking my photos every day.  Trying this one again.  Photo-taking brings me joy; I want to reignite that spark.
4. Sort through the box of things that I found in the cupboard above the refrigerator (that belong to my mother-in-law from when she lived in this house a loooong time ago).
   Woot!  Done!
5. Sort through the coats for keepers and donations.

1. books
2. good doctors
3. medication that works
4. rainy days
5. electricity

Cookies and Tapes

I can mark off two things from this week's to-do list, and it's only Tuesday!

Yesterday, I tested and reviewed Pamela's Gluten Free Sugar Cookie Mix for the Amazon Vine Program.

I followed the directions explicitly and made the bar cookies. They were much more like shortbread in both taste and texture.  I was wowed by the biscuit mix by Pamela's that I tested, but these I could take or leave.  I scored the mix a 3 out of 5. If I am going buy a packaged mix for a sweet treat, I'll stick to Namaste brand brownie mix.  Those are quite yummy.

They make a great photo, though!

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Today, I swept the cobweb colony out of the corners of the living room, cleaned the ceiling fan and decorated it with Washi tape.  It looks as awesome as the bedroom!

 I used these three.  The bottom two are from Target; I prefer to use my Target Washi on big household projects because I know I can replace it easily.

The top one is Martha Stewart's Paper Tape.  Let me tell you a little about Martha Stewart's Paper Tape.

It is terrible.

First off, this is not Washi tape.  It doesn't say it is, and that is the one thing in it's favor.  But, naturally one assumes it is as many Washi tapes are referred to as "paper tape".

Well, this one is not.

Washi tape, for the uninitiated, is like masking tape.  It is pliable, it is transparent, it can be pulled up and restuck numerous times, and it can be written on. Masking tape is my go-to item and I use it all over the house, from cross-stitching to labeling boxes to holding cords up in the kitchen.  Love the stuff.

Washi tape is masking tape wearing a frilly dress.  It has all of masking tape's excellent qualities, plus exquisite beauty.  You can use it for pretty crafts as well as practical things.

Martha Stewart's Paper Tape is not any of those things mentioned.  Well, it's pretty, but that's it.

It has the texture of wax paper and so is too slick to be written on.

It has been my experience that Washi tapes sticks to everything perfectly, even after several reuses, except sawdusty wood (and a little wood glue fixed that).  This paper tape doesn't stick well the first time; you can forget a second time.  

Worst of all, this paper tape doesn't want to smooth out well.  It could just be my rolls, but it is pushed out on the roll at the top and bottom--yes, on the roll, before I even got it OFF the roll--and when I go to use it the top and bottom tend to curl up.

It has been a dismal disappointment.  Avoid it, but rush out to Target and buy as much of their tape as you can get your hands on and enjoy taping your entire house--like me!

My Friday Fives

In an effort to reflect more positively on what I accomplish and to plan goals more reasonably, I'm going to start writing out My Friday Fives.

1. Finished shelving all our books on our new bookshelves.
2. Decorated my side of the bedroom shelves with Washi (like I did our hall shelves); will finish his side next week.
3. Cleaned up the hallway (though doing so created some temporary mess in other places :p).
4. Hung up a new shower curtain.
5. Finished the first week of The Frosted Pumpkin's Summer Sampler.

I love the colors they chose, muted yet bright at the same time.  I'm glad I chose the beige Aida; it really brings the colors alive.

It's a super hard choice, but I think the kawaii guitar is my favorite from this week, mainly because I loved making his little strings.

1. SIX thunderstorms in five hours on Thursday evening.  It was lovely!
2. Won a fantastically cheap lot of vintage mysteries on ebay.
3. Won another fantastically cheap lot of vintage books on ebay.
4. Had my husband home on Monday; we celebrated our excellent dentist appointments with a Chick-fil-a milkshake. :)
5. Helped St. John catch bugs in the living room.

1. Use and review the gluten free sugar cookie mix I got from the Amazon Vine program.
2. Return to taking my photos every day.
3. Caulk around the tub. 
4. Dust the cobwebs in the living room.
5. Complete the second week of The Frosted Pumpkin's Summer Sampler.

MishMash

My husband has been off for a few days, which has been nice.  We've been out to eat, spent some evenings outside (when the whether permitted), took a trip to the hobby store, and have nearly completed the bookshelves in our bedroom.  They'll be like the ones in the hall, only shorter, and on each side of the bed.  I"m so pleased with them!  Once his shelves are up, I plan to decorate them Washi like I did the ones in the hall.  It adds such a great finishing touch.

My side is up and about half way filled.  I have to wait to see what will need to be added to my side once we fill up his.  I don't think his side will hold much more than his Civil War and WWII  nonfiction.  I thought I had a lot more history/nonfiction that I do in my topics of interests (but I have been doing a lot more purging, due to space issues).  If this works out well, I'll be able to fill up some of the gaps in my information gathering!

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More lovely uses for Washi...  After I did the spring cleaning in the bedroom (cleaning the ceiling fan just fascinated the cats) I decorated the fan with these:

 I like how it looks spinning and still.  I feel so ridiculously happy when I see it; can't explain it.  Washi just fills me with a giddy since of delight.  I'll probably have to do the rest of the ceiling fans, too.

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St. John is nine months now.  Time has gone by so quickly!  He didn't seem to grow much this month, and now I'm worried that he might stay a runtling, despite my attempts at good nutrition.  He is extremely long, has big feet, and his tail is huge, but he's not bulking out any.

(Excuse my messy self, but we were having a stay-at-home day.)

As you can tell, he has no trouble wearing his harness/leash.  He even climbs up and down trees wearing it (he is the only cat I have encountered that knows how to come down a tree) and jumps from one tree to the next like a squirrel.  He also jumps and runs after bugs, bees and leaves.  I have to stay on my toes and anticipate his next move when we're out for a "walk".  I think I'm the one that gets the most exercise from our daily adventures!

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Last week, I Finished the June firefly from the Frosted Pumpkin's Woodland Sampler.  It's super cute.  I used Krenik gold floss for the sparklies.

I forgot to post a photo when I finished the May gnome, so here he is.  I also used the Krenik gold for his belt buckle.

Looking Back on a Good Week

It's been another good week. I'm starting to feel like I can accomplish things in the house!

Monday:
I did the grocery shopping and took the books and cds to the used bookstore.  Remember how I speculated that I'd come home with as many as I took to sell?  Well. . . . I didn't bring back quite that many.

I'm really excited with my finds.  I've been on a cozy mystery kick, and some of them are hard to find at the library.  Most of these authors are new to me, but if I don't like them I can always trade them in for more.  Golly, I love books!

I also started pulling our books out of the various bookshelves and sorting them in the living room floor.  I'm sorting by alphabetical, nonfiction and devotional/Bible study.  My husband is going to build us some sturdier, taller shelves (maybe this weekend) and I plan to put the fiction in alphabetical order (like mine always were until I married and didn't take the time to merge our two groups) and the nonfiction in Dewey decimal order.  I get tired of not being able to find the book I'm looking for amongst all the other books.  I'm super excited to do this, being a book nerd and all.  I'm also sorting out the short stories to put in a separate section if they are by multiple authors.  I'm going to break with the Dewey and put plays and poetry in with fiction, though, because to my mind they are fiction and should not be in the nonfiction.  I've always struggled with that!  The devotional books will stay in my bedroom bookshelves, but I'll be sure that I have them all in there, as sometimes they get scattered.  I'll probably put my husband's Civil War books in his bedroom bookshelf, if there is room.  That is his special area of interest, and I want to be sure they are readily available to him to browse and admire.

Tuesday:
Can I admit that I don't remember anything at all about Tuesday?!  I think that must be when I caught up on all the dishes left over from the weekend (we don't have an automatic dishwasher).  Yes, I think that was it, and I made chili too.  I really like to put grated cheese on tortilla chips, melt it in the toaster oven, and then spread my homemade chili over top.  Super yummy.  And super messy!  I can't believe how easy chili is to make.  I created my own recipe:
saute garlic and onions in olive oil
add 1 large can of crushed tomatoes
and 2 cans of beans (I prefer black beans, but sometimes I put in a can of Great Northerns with the black)\
and 1 1/2 tablespoons of cumin
and 1 1/2 teaspoons of chili powder
plus salt and pepper to taste
Simmer until the flavors blend and voilà.  

Oh, yes, I just remembered!  On Tuesday, I made a new covering for our front door. St. John broke the blinds some time ago, and I had covered the panes with scrapbook paper for privacy.  It looked terrible, but it was all I could do at the time.  

I made a sort of fake stained glass to cover our door.  It looks silly, but it also looks happy, so I don't mind.  I put a sheet of wax paper across each pane.  Then I took another sheet of wax paper and taped on shapes from scrapbook paper and put it across the pane (so that the shapes were sandwiched between the wax paper sheets).  You can see the tape from the inside, and if I were to make it better and fancier, I'd buy contact paper to sandwich them in between so there wouldn't be any tape.  But, it provides color and privacy, so I don't care that it looks childish.  My husband gave me a huge compliment, saying it looked hippie-ish, so that means he doesn't mind it too badly either. :)

Wednesday:
Wednesday was a good and busy day.  Noon Communion, followed by lunch with Mom at Chick-fil-a (one of the only two fast places a person with Celiac can have fries).  Then she and I went to Joann craft store and I scored an amazing deal!   I got an $80 OttLite full sprectrum desk lamp for $19.99! It was marked down to $39; when it rang up even cheaper, I went back and got another! I am SOOOO excited!  After that, we parted ways and I went to Sam's and Big Lots.  On my way home, I texted my husband that I would pick up his perscription at Walgreens, but he didn't hear the text and headed that way too.  I pulled in behind him in the drive-through! Imagine my surprise when he got out of the work truck (which I never recognize) and came up to my window!  Surprise meetings with him always make my day!

Wednesday night I did some more furniture shifting.  When we moved my desk, I found a cache of lost kitty toys.

Every one of those was under that desk!  I thought the stove and refrigerator was the only kitty toy black hole!

Thursday:
Goodness, that was just yesterday!
I found a wonderful spring cleaning list, broken down into easy daily tasks and started doing it.  Yesterday was the stove and microwave.  I couldn't believe how nice the oven door looked when I was done!

I found the list here at Organize and Decorate Everything.  I get overwhelmed very quickly with large tasks, which has been the problem getting the house organized.  Having it broken down so nicely is great!  

I also made my homemade macaroni and cheese (a staple in my house).  I like to add broccoli to it and lately  I've been adding green peas also.  Quite yummy.

I made butter mints last night, too, but again that recipe didn't turn out quite right.  I'll have to try a different one.  This one, with sweetened condensed milk, just doesn't work well for me.

Today:
Today I cleaned out the fridge, and since I don't have a dishwasher, I started on tomorrow's spring cleaning chore and cleaned some of the cabinet doors.  


Here is my current work in progress, though I've not done much this week.

The Frosted Pumpkin did a Fruit of the Month sampler a few years ago.  I bought it, but had not completed it.  I've decided to do each fruit separately  so they can be displayed during the month.  Plus, I can put them on varying pastel colors, depending on what looks best with that fruit.  This is the May lemon, being worked on pink Aida.

Goodbye TV! Hello Strawberry Cobbler!

Had an amazingly productive afternoon/evening.  I packed up our television, video/DVD players and all the remotes and my husband removed them to the basement.  Then I packed up all the VHS movies we still have left (some I just couldn't part with, as they are no longer available, like my trio of Jane Austen social history films), alphabetized them, put them in boxes and made a list for the top of the box as to what movies were inside the box.

How much better the living room looks with all that gone!

Neither my husband or I were television watchers when we were married, and neither of us had cable.  I hadn't had cable since I moved out on my own; I only watched public television.  He had discarded his when he began playing computer games more than watching  shows.  As a result, we've never been a television family.  We've never had cable, or even had it hooked up to an antenna.  When I would hear about something good produced by public television, I'd make a note and check for it at the library.

We used to watch a DVD or video on the weekends, in the early years of our marriage, but we dropped that rather soon.  We'd rather play a game together or read together.

We do have Amazon Prime (have had it since it's earliest inception) and that has expanded to include streaming shows.  All the public television shows/movies I would be interested in are there, and I have caught up on the new Doctor Who (I am proud to state I have been a fan since the 80's, and frankly still prefer the crappy sets of my youth) and some of the newer Austen adaptations (most of which have been terrible) while cross stitching.

So, it finally occurred to me, as I wrestled with moving the living room furniture once again, that we just didn't need the television and accouterments   I can't remember the last time either of us used it.  Wait, yes I can; I had a sleepless night last spring and watched Far From the Madd'ing Crowd from start to finish.  Again, I'll say how much nicer the living room looks without it!

Since I was in the spring cleaning mode, I also culled our computer games and our music CDs.  They are boxed and labeled like the videos, the CD player will be joining the television in the basement, while a select few (mostly Baroque and jazz) are now stored next to my computer.  I have a milk crate full to go to the used book/music store this week, which means I'll probably come home with another shelf full of books from the credit.

I have culled my books so often over the last three years, that only a skeleton crew remain.  Which means that we still have about 8 full bookcases, one of which is the entire hall wall.  We were literally stepping over piles of books when I started culling.  I hate to get rid of books, but I'm trying to make our home more organized, and to make some space, I'm having to do so.  Of course, the fact that I just keep on bringing in more doesn't help a lot. . .

Now, after I did all that, I made two strawberry cobblers with some berries that weren't good for eating.  They turned out great, and we had huge helpings.  I'm getting braver in the kitchen! :)