I'm back, finally!!!!

I wasn't PLANNING on taking a break from my blog, it just happened that way. Mainly cause of this:

That was the power supply to our router. WAS being the operative word. That's a hole burned in the side of it. Computer equipment doesn't tend to work much after parts get melted. And with Tony out of town for the week, my Internet was out of commission until he got back Monday.

On the other hand, I DID get a lot of relaxing done during my little break, I did go 24 hours without changing out of my jammies. I did eat cheese dip for dinner at least three times. I didn't spend 4 hours a day in my studio, but I came close.

I also cleaned out my fabric closet, which was a far bigger undertaking than I had anticipated. I've been feeling this pull to start working with fabric some more, but I could never bring myself to actually DO it. I'd get some great idea in my head, then go to the fabric closet to choose my materials. I'd usually get as far as opening the closet before all inspiration was gone.

I realized last week that the sheer volume of fabric was overwhelming me, and that most of it was fabric that wasn't useful to me any more. I had thought -stupidly- that I'd spend a few hours pulling stacks of fabric out of closet and culling the pieces that didn't strike my fancy. Yeahhh.... I spent a few hours just getting the fabric out. And once it was out I had no idea how it had all fit in there in the first place! Two days and $50 for plastic tubs later, I'd pulled out enough fabric to fill our yard trash can and gotten everything else put back all nice and tidy. Ahhhh....

And then of course, there was Drunken Bunkin', but you'll have to head over to Denise's blog to read about that...

What will your estate sale be like?

I went out for dinner with Denise tonight. We had a great meal at P.F. Chang's and then for a nightcap we headed to the Office Depot to pick up some book rings for me and to see what kind of badness we could find for our craft stashes.

Somehow during all of this the topic of conversation got around to saving items that might be worth something one day. Which reminded me of a conversation I'd had with my sister about a year ago. She had been to a sale with a particularly large volume of some type of item or another, so much that it had been broken into two sales, and had remarked, "Oh crap, I wonder what MY estate sale will be like!" which totally gave us the sillies thinking about all the strange items we'd squirreled away with some specific purpose in mind.

A year later, this same thought gave Denise and I both the sillies. I had just been telling Denise about this large stack of 1/4" thick industrial felt pads that my sister had rescued from the bottom of some barrel (literally) and my stash of unused medical gauze and tongue depressors. Denise laughed about her stash of picture frames in her garage and her box of dryer lint. What kind of strange individuals might the uninformed outsider think we were?

I suppose it's kind of a take-off on the old "what will people say at your funeral" question, but probably more telling about our quirks and our hoarding habits. So... what will people say about YOUR estate sale? Come on, spill it!

What am I going to do with myself?

Starting today, I'm on vacation. I'm not going anywhere, though, I'm staying right here in my house. Tony and Olivia left this morning to spend a week in Wisconsin with his sister and her family. Goshdarnit, I just had too much school stuff going on to make the trip. So I'm having to stay here in my house all by myself for 7 days. Life really is tough sometimes. :)

The last time they went on a trip like this, I made the mistake of inviting the help of my mother in repainting our bedroom. My mother, bless her heart, thinks every minute of every waking day should be spent doing something productive. So she was over here every day at 7:30 in the morning, and I'd have to kick her out at 8:00 that evening. Not much of a vacation, though we did get the room painted and redecorated.

This time, I've made a point of not making ANY plans. No home improvement projects, no nights out with the girls, nothing. Just me and my jammies and my studio.

So, what are my goals for this week?

1. Go at least 24 hours without leaving the house.
2. Eat cheese dip for dinner at least three times.
3. Spend at least 4 hours of each day in my studio.
4. Make at least 3 projects from my idea journal, and make multiples of them.
5. Post one blog entry per day.

Sounds doable. I think I'll mosey on down the hall to my studio and see what trouble I can find.

Mama's got a brand new bag!!!

In all the chaos of the storm aftermath, I didn't post the most awesomest bag ever that arrived in the mail on Friday - with MY name on it! It was my AREtsy recycled swap from Punkinhead.

How did she know that I needed me a new purse? And how did she know I needed one that was both practical and cute as a button? I've been wearing it around town for the past few days, and I love it, love it, love it!

The long strap allows me to wear it across my chest, with the pouch resting right at my hip. The simple foldover flap makes it easy for me to quickly stash my keys, or easily reach in for my phone. Another benefit of the long strap is that I don't have to take it off when I sit down. I can just sit down with it still strapped across my chest, and just rest the little purse at my side. I'm really bad about walking off without my purse, so this is a huge benefit for me.

And if being practical wasn't good enough, it's cute to boot! It's recycled from a gray wool skirt. The flap has three pleats from the skirt, and it's embellished with lavender zig-zag stitching and stacked shell buttons. We've never met in person, but she nailed my style dead-on.

Can you tell I love my new bag? I think I'll call it my Punkinpurse.

24 hours...

Tonight in the greater Little Rock area, the big news is that there was a tornado last night. The bigger news in this part of town is that it came through our neighborhood.

I'm happy to say that we, along with all of our loved ones, are all safe and sound, and our house has sustained no damage. A few blocks away and it's a different story. There were trees down all through our neighborhood and many of the streets were not passable this morning.

This is what it looked like throughout the much of my neighborhood. I'm not sure exactly where this was taken, but this is what much of the neighborhood looked like when I went out for coffee this morning. (Power was out and I needed my caffeine! Apparently half of Little Rock had the same idea, cause you wouldn't believe the lines!)

My mother-in-law lives just 5 blocks away and she ended up with a tree across her driveway, a busted skylight, a collapsed lean to and back porch, and a bicycle planted on top of her roof. Next door to her, my 93-year-old grandmother was home when the tornado passed over her house. A large tree very narrowly missed her house and the glass of her patio doors was broken. She rode out the storm in a chair in the bathtub, with a pillow placed around her head. Her garden shed was thrown against her house her house, an transformer came down into her backyard, and my trampoline from my mother-in-law's house ended up over the fence in my grandmother's yard. Across the street, we found the glass garden globe that had been in her front yard. It was strangely unbroken.

It took until 6:00 tonight to get power back, so I spent much of the day hanging out with my sister, my dad, or my mom. Generally, I was a ho for anyone with electricity running to their house. Tonight, the heat is on and I sit in my warm house and I'm typing this blog post, and it's hard to believe that last night was truly less than 24 hours ago. And, but for the storm tracking a few city blocks our direction, how many other possible endings there could have been for that evening.

We have much to be thankful for.

This one's for you, Punkinhead...

Okay, I can't believe I'm about to tell this embarassing story about myself out here on the Internet. But I've never been one for putting my best foot forward, so here goes...

So it's well known amongst my friends that housecleaning is NOT my strong suit. In fact, just last week I needed to use the large vacuum cleaner (not the stick vac, which is my bestest cleaning friend) for an emergency cleaning situation which involved scooping up some dead bugs off of the floor. Gotta love springtime in the south. Now, I'm not one for picking up bugs in my little hands, even with a huge wad of toilet paper, and I had tired of waiting for dear hubby to do this nasty chore for me. So out came the big red mama vacuum. I drag it out and realize that -oh crap- I'm going to have to put an ATTACHMENT on this thing. So I start tugging and pulling at random parts of the vacuum cause I don't actually know which parts are the core machine and which parts are the attachments stuck around the base.

After much tugging and pulling, I have enough of the right kind of pieces to suck the little dead guys up. Now I've got to turn it on. After a quick once-over I locate the power button, and push it. Nothing happens. I turn it off and turn it on again. Still nothing. Nada. Then it dawns on me that, like most electrical equipment, it must plugged into a wall socket for it to work. Yep, stay-at-home mommy Anne did not know how to use her vacuum cleaner.

BUT that's not the embarassing story I was here to tell. That was just the warm up, so maybe you'd understand exactly how nasty our bathroom floor was yesterday morning. Cause I HADN'T taken the big red mama vacuum in there. And the bug man was coming that day. And so because I didn't want him to see the dirty bathroom, I spent about 30 minutes on my hands and knees on the floor gathering up all the dustbunnies and throwing away all stray Hershey miniature wrappers and any other strangeness left strewn on the floor behind my 4-year-old. With my daughter's help, we got it all done with about 20 minutes to spare before the appointment. Yay for us, right????

Yeah, NOT. Because it was about an hour after the bug man left that I needed to use my nice, clean bathroom. The one I had hurriedly cleaned lest my bug man know exactly how dirty my house usually is. So one with the nice white tiles and dusted baseboards. Only to find that sweet little girl had needed to use the potty and not flushed. Number TWO. And of course, it was the master bathroom so I'm sure the guy thought it was I who had not flushed. I was mortified.

Dude... Good thing the tiles were clean, right???

Throwing in the towel

I've been a while coming to this decision, but I've realized that I'm going to take a permanent break from my crafting. It just doesn't bring me the same joy that I feel when I look around my house and see the floors are clean, the dishes are washed, the laundry is folded, and a balanced supper waiting in the fridge. Frankly, I need to quit spending so much time focused on paper and scissors, and more on the really important things in life.

I wish everyone well with their creative endeavors. I'll be checking in every now and then, in between my soap operas and my yoga classes.

Oh yeah, and one more thing - APRIL FOOLS' DAY!!!! Although that should have been obvious from the references to the clean house...