For some reason...

I am excited by the beginning of a new year.  It may be because I spent a lot of months during 2012 down in the dumps - whether I was willing to admit it to myself or anyone else - but there you have it.  I've let go of a bunch of old baggage over the past couple of months and well, I feel happier than I have in a long time.  Truly happy.  Less worried about life.  More interested in living and trying new things outside the cocoon of my carefully self-regulated comfort zone.  Tom & Al brought me some cookies (and a lovely gift) just before Christmas, along with this lovely wall decal quote by Emily Dickinson: Dwell in possibilities.  I love it.  I've always loved Emily, mildly depressed spinster poet that she was - and I love these words.  I hung it right where I can see if from my desk.  A timely reminder.

Thanks, guys - I appreciate your thoughtfulness more than I can say.

I'm also excited about my new Jane-a-Day journal.  Jane Austen, another favorite kindred spirit (and spinster, I might add), is the inspiration for this five-year journal, which has an quote from one of her works on each page.  It was a lovely Christmas gift from my friend, Marie, and I am looking forward to daily inspiration from Jane's timeless witticisms. I only hope my comments are as witty.

Thank you, Marie, for thinking of me.

I am looking forward to a happy 2013 - a year in which I vow to speak less and listen more, read fewer books and finish writing one of my own.

And this year, I choose happiness.

We are happy to announce...

that we have adopted a new kitty!  His name is Besito and he is seven years old.  He is a beautiful, sleek black cat and he seems to be adjusting well - so far.  Peter is apparently happy to have a feline playmate and Aggie - well, Aggie doesn't care one way or the other.  She's had cats around all her life and I think she regards them as either siblings or some necessary evil in her little world.

Besito explored the kitchen first and checked out where the daily food and water supply is located.

Then he set off to check out the living room, the bedroom and where to find the litter box.  There has been no hissing, chasing or fighting as of yet.  Hopefully there won't be any at all - we're just a happy little family.

Cats, burning candles and finding your calling...

I know it's sort of silly, but I really like burning scented candles.  For a long time I couldn't burn candles at home because of our herd of overly inquisitive cats.  I couldn't even put a candle in one of those warmers that just melts the wax to release the scent.  I came home one day to find red candle wax all over the wall and poor George's front paws encased in the stuff.  It took a while to get George clean and he wasn't happy about it.  No more candles for me.  I took advantage of being able to enjoy them at the office where Peter was completely oblivious.  He still shows absolutely no interest in a candle at all - and so I am happy to have not only a vanilla candle in the warmer tucked away on the living room bookshelf, but a candle actually burning on my desk for most of the day.  It doesn't take much to please me; I'm simple that way.

Which is not to say that I don't miss the all of the cats, because I do.  Terribly - so much so sometimes that I can hardly bear to think about them and where they all might be now.  These are my grey twinkie boys: Walter Kroncat and Charles Kuralt.  I know that Tim's cat lady friend found a home for Charley, but the last I knew, Walter was still at the farm living in the cow barn with his sister Lucie Bee, Louis XII, Sophie, Ernest Hemingway and my sixteen-year-old Eddie, aka Edward R. Murrow.  I love them all and I hope they know that - but life changes sometimes and there is nothing we can do about it.  It wasn't my decision to split them up and give them away - but I also know that I assign human emotions to them when I am rational enough to know that they are animals and have most likely forgotten all about me.

It doesn't make it hurt any less.

And when life doesn't turn out the way we have hoped it would, we find other ways to occupy our time.  At least I have - and I may have finally found - or rediscovered - my calling.  I recently read that the things we do while we are procrastinating to keep from working are probably the things we are really meant to be doing all along.  The writer of the original thought put it much more eloquently - but that's the gist of it.  I write when I should be working - and I've always dreamed of writing for a living.  For years I've written and edited and torn up my work.  I've started and stopped and started again.  I finally decided over the past couple of weeks that the only way I would ever find out if I could really write fiction was to just throw my words out to the universe and see if anyone bothered to read them.  I've challenged myself to write my first real mystery one day at a time - a chapter at a time for a small but hopefully growing audience.  If my readers want to know how the story ends, then I'll have to write it.  If they hate it, well - that's fine, too.  At least I will have finished the story.  I found this funny photograph today of me with my first typewriter; I must have been about six.  My sister looks stunned - I'm not sure why.  But I was having a good time.  Maybe I knew what my calling was back then - and I somehow lost sight of it along the way.  I've graduated to more sophisticated writing tools over the years, but I'm hoping to rediscover the joy of story-telling.

A stressless dinner...

with my friend who normally has me bat crap crazy after an hour - and I have lived to tell the tale.  Will wonders never cease?  This afternoon, Heather called just as I was leaving to go see my tortilleria client.  "Let's eat at Applebee's," she suggested and headed into a ten minute explanation of the limited window of availability in her schedule that evening.  I felt the stress creeping up on me; when you call and invite someone to dinner, do you start the conversation with I have about an hour and fifteen minutes free and expect your friend to agree to rushing through what should be a leisurely meal and uplifting conversation?  Stop, I said to myself, you're expecting a barking dog to behave like something other than a barking dog.  You might recall that I had previously decided to cancel my subscription to this particular acquaintance - more issues than a magazine rack.  Trying to gracefully decline, I explained that I had to see my client (who has legitimate scheduling problems because he is a full time firefighter as well as owning a business that is open seven days a week, twelve hours a day) and that I wasn't sure how long I would be there.  "That's okay, " she said, "I'll go on ahead to the restaurant and you can call me when you leave your client.  I have to be at a meeting at 7:10."  Who parcels out their time in ten-minute increments?  I guess I've gotten used to setting my own hours and knowing better than to cram too much into one day.  I told her I'd call her when I was on my way, secretly hoping it would be just too late to meet for dinner.  Yes, I know.  I'm passive-aggressive.  I had a nice visit with my client, did some paperwork for him, entered some information in his sales tax spreadsheet in ten minutes that would have take him an hour (poor guy!) and by the time we finished up, it was nearly six.  Yes! I thought - I can get out of going to dinner.  I called my friend and she gleefully announced that she was waiting at Applebee's and asked, "What do you want to drink?"  Crap, I thought, I am just not in the mood for this.  My client laughed at the look on my face when I hung up the phone.  "Just go eat dinner and think about the fact that you didn't have to cook it," he reminded me.  And so down the road I went, saying a fervent prayer for patience.  As I parked in front of the the restaurant, I could see Heather waving at me from a table on the patio.  It was a cool, breezy evening; the fresh air will be nice, I told myself.  As I sat down, she looked at her watch and announced, "It's 6:15 - if I leave here by 7:05 I should get there on time."  I exhaled and silently asked for more patience.  The waitress came and took our order and scurried away after being reminded that we were on a tight schedule.  I took Julio's advice and ordered my favorite: Santa Fe Chicken salad.  It's just dinner, I told myself, I have to eat anyway.  Little by little, in the cool evening air, I felt myself start to relax.  We didn't chat about anything in particular; I told her about a little Christmas project I was planning and she offered to contribute.  She told me about leaving a client off her schedule and not realizing it until the next day.  "But I didn't stress out about it," she said.  Which, if you knew Heather, is a serious accomplishment for her.  We ate our dinners and I was amazed to realize that I didn't feel stressed out at all - not like our usual conversations.  Then it hit me - we hadn't talked about taxes or anything of a financial nature - nothing that I had to explain in any detail - which I suddenly understood is just as stressful for my friend as it is for me.  Promptly at seven, Heather declared that she had to get going.  I looked around for our waitress and since my client had inexplicably decided to pay me fifty dollars extra for the month, I decided to pay for dinner.  Heather dashed off to make it to her meeting on time and I asked God to forgive me for my crabby mood.  I finished my tea and signed the check, grateful for a stress-free dinner with my friend and thankful that I hadn't cancelled my subscription.  And I even shared my little windfall with the waitress in the form of a bigger tip than usual.  It is Christmas time after all.

Another craigslist find...

Finally – I am rid of those ugly nightstands.  Yes, I miss the drawer space – and it’s been a bit of a scramble trying to find a place for pajamas, shirts, socks and underwear, but this little table ($25 on craigslist) is so much cuter.  At least I think so – and Tom remarked (bless their hearts, they picked it up for me) that I have finally gotten rid of the last piece of bedroom furniture from my old house - and my old life.  I hadn’t really thought about it until he mentioned it – I mean, I hated the heavy look of the things and the way the top drawers wouldn’t pull all the way out.  Putting things away in the drawers was a pain in the butt – but he’s right.  All the sad reminders of the home we gave up and the life that I thought was so happy are gone.  I no longer have anything in my new home that I don’t like – or that I didn’t specifically choose.  The living room furniture and my desks were at the office, but I picked them out because I liked them – and I still do.  I’m really the only one that spent any amount of time at the office, so there are only those good memories associated with those things.  And – the ugly nightstands went to a good home.  Jonathan’s mother wants to use them in her living room as a television stand.  He’s picking them up this afternoon.
See – we’re all happy with the way things turned out.

At long last...

my little round table with the sewing machine base is out of the middle of my living room and in the bedroom - isn't it perfect there?  It's exactly right with my antique iron bed.  I was going to have the Salvation Army pick up the old nightstand but as it turns out one of my clients' mother would like it to use as a TV stand - so it's going to a good home.  I thought I had found the perfect small oak three-drawer chest for the other side of the bed, but alas - already sold.  Those $50 craigslist bargains go fast!  I'll just keep looking - one will turn up.

I really do like the old desk in the living room where the round table was previously.  More space for my reading stack and a place for my fan.  As you can see, Aggie has rearranged the sofa to her liking, although I must have put those small pillows up on the back at some point - she is not nearly that tidy.  I keep telling myself that one day I finally get things just the way I want them in this new space - but I've lived here for a year already.  I suppose that anywhere we live is always a work in progress.  Isn't it?

The table switch...

is half finished.  I moved the round Singer sewing table and replaced it with the antique mission library table.  I decided that the change would give me some extra room for books and my fan - which had taken up residence at the dining room table.  Can you tell I don't entertain much?  I think my friend Richard and I ate at the dining room table about a year ago when I first moved in (I was thrilled to actually have my table at home!) and then Ariela, the kids and I snacked at the table once while Marco was working putting the shelves in my lanai closet.  Everyone knows women enjoy watching men work.  Anyhow, my next project is dragging one of those ugly nightstands out of the bedroom (I've already relocated the two drawers full of stuff) and getting someone to take it away.  Then I have to somehow maneuver the round table into the bedroom where I am sure it will look fantastic next to my old black iron bed.  I just need to work up the ambition, energy and strength to move the stuff.  Wish me luck!

At long last...

I have finally finished organizing my closet!  I have sorted, debated, pared down and donated until I have crammed every last pair of shoes and handbag into this 216 cubic foot little room.  As you can see, I am not a clothes horse (anymore!) and most everything I own is made of denim.  Or cotton at the very least.  No non-natural fibers here, thank you.  I am now ashamed to admit that I once owned ninety, yes 90, pairs of shoes.  I'm down to under twenty five - and none of them have heels.  In fact, I don't even have to tie most of them.  I know there are lots of handbags in there, but the vast majority of them are years old.  Like old friends, I just can't part with them.

Mostly Vera Bradley, a couple of Brightons, two vintage D&B, three well-worn Coach classics and a few others, which I write about occasionally on my purse blog.  Yes, I'm still looking for the ultimate handbag!  I really feel like I have accomplished something here - and if you had seen the mess I started with, you'd agree.  And it's only taken me a little over a month...

And I helped!

Change is good...

Well, how do you like that - I had a tag on my blog that said I needed to refresh my Cutest Blog on the Block background or it would disappear on Friday.  So I've changed again - temporarily.  All the more reason I need to get with it and make my own busy bee blog layout.  Yes, I guess change is good.
And this is sort of cute for a quick re-do, if I don't say so myself.

At home in my office...

Finally!  I've gotten my home office put together - and it only took me two weeks.  I'm using my desk and computer extension for work and the second desk as a craft credenza.  This was a serious consolidation project, let me tell you.  Fortunately, my enormous printer/scanner/fax fit inside the computer extension so I had more desk space to work with.  The only thing I'm not pleased about is the cable/VOIP modem disaster to the left of my monitor, which you cannot see in this photo - thank goodness!  One of my clients is a cable guy and he has promised to come and make it disappear for me.  Honestly, I should take a picture of it - it looks like a construction demolition site wired to blow up - there is wire everywhere - all hooked together with hideous black cable ties.  But I digress...

 There's my favorite lamp - and as you can see, we are heavy on the Mary Engelbreit in this space.

I got my wall shelves all put together - more ME and my scaled-down collection of Boyd's Bears.  I kept my tea-drinking girls and, of course, the bumblebee and sunflower gang.  My clients get a kick out of the ME print on the bottom which says: "We don't care how they do it in New York."  And we don't.

The baker's rack is finally arranged to my liking with most of my Longaberger May baskets - the rest are in use in the kitchen in one way or another.  More Mary!

Here you can see that I've replaced the dining room light fixture - it was okay, but not really me - with one of my pendant lights that match the kitchen lamp and the living room floor lamp.  The other pendant light is in the kitchen in place of one really hideous fluorescent light fixture.  The purple lights go well with my purple-framed May basket poster and beehive cross-stitch.  The other lamp on my desk is mainly red - but I like it, so there.

My craft credenza faces the living room window - all the better to converse with Aggie while she's trying to nap in the sunny spot.  I was glad there was room for my Cricut and

all of my stamping supplies.  The bottom right cupboard is chock full of these lovely yellow storage boxes and the left hand drawers are full of embossing powder, tools, glue and paper.  Like I said, serious downsizing!

 

 Almost forgot - here's the view from the kitchen - and my window on the world.

Some people...

just don't have a filter in their brains to regulate what potentially hurtful things they say to other people.  Whatever comes into their minds just comes right out of their mouths.  Actually, I know several people like that.  But tonight I was talking to Tim's aunt in Pennsylvania who, for some inexplicable reason, said to me, "Hey, did you hear that Tim's getting married?"  I replied, "Tim who?"  She hesitated a minute.  "You know, your Tim."  Notice her brain made her hesitate only after she had let the cat out the bag, so to speak.  Needless to say, I was taken aback because I am not sure how he can marry someone else when he is still legally married to me, but I am in uncharted waters here.  I've only been married once, so this whole divorce thing is new to me.  I haven't seen nor have I signed any papers.  When I had collected myself, I asked who he was marrying.  "Oh, someone in Erie," she told me.  I asked where she had gotten her information.  She said that her cousin had told her - the same cousin (and her husband) that Tim stayed with when he first went to work in Erie almost two years ago.  When she realized that I was shocked, she apologized and said that she thought I knew.  I mean, who would bother to tell me?  It's true - the wife is always the last to know.  I also thought I was all cried out and that nothing that happened would hurt me anymore, but I was wrong.  It isn't that I held out any hope of Tim wanting to come back, or that I even want him to, it's just that I thought he might have the decency to tell me to my face that he really does want a divorce and that he has found someone else.  Men just don't get it - we may not want to hear the truth if a pair of jeans really does make our butts look fat - but we actually do want to hear the truth about what's really going on in a relationship.

Isn't it strange...

how satisfying being able to cram a whole bunch of rubber stamping supplies into one small cupboard can be?  This spot is originally where the color laser printer was going until I had an epiphany and passed it along to Richard.  This would have been wasted space - but thanks to these lovely (and cheap inexpensive!) storage boxes of various sizes from Wal-Mart, I have stored patterned paper, card-making supplies, ribbon, envelopes, Cricut cartridges (out with those bulky boxes!) and the stamps I use most in about nine cubic feet.  Now the top of the craft desk, which I will photograph tomorrow, won't be an eyesore right behind my work desk!  I love organizing - too bad I don't really like organizing other people's junk.  I have two more bags of stuff for Goodwill, a box of school supplies and stuff for Ariela's kids and two big bags of trash.  And - I am proud of myself - the boxes Al & Tom brought over from the office yesterday are all empty save one.  I haven't quite figured out where to put my flatbed scanner yet.  It's fairly compact - it stands up - and I like it for scanning photos.  That's another project I am going to undertake this summer: scanning two big boxes of photos so I don't have to keep everything.  I know, I know - I will keep the oldest ones, but Christmas tree pictures and stuff like that I am going to scan and store digitally for posterity.  Not like I have anyone who will care, but still.  Less is more, less is more...

Finally found it...

The elusive camera cable!  Al & Tom picked up my desk chair at the office today, along with several crates of files and other essentials for me.  I spent three hours yesterday morning sitting in a hard oak chair while I gave a QuickBooks lesson - not a good thing.  Anyhow, I've been unpacking and organizing (between phone calls, clients and a quick trip to the office) and there it was - in a box with some other cables that I have not a clue what to do with - the cable for my Canon PowerShot.  Yippee!  I had arranged my collection of Longaberger May baskets on my baker's rack and moved it to the wall beside the entry.  As you can see, I need to chant less is more, less is more just a little bit more.  I actually got sort of used to the spareness of my first apartment; it was very Zen with not much stuff.  Why, it was practically Japanese by my usual clutter standards!  But I digress...  I'm not sure about the lamp; I have to live with it for a few days.  It's the cutest little Mary Engelbreit lamp - an eBay find - but the shade is wrong.  Yes, the cats ate the original shade - story of my life!  I really want to put my candle warmer where the lamp is so that it smells nice when people walk in the front door.  Guess I'll be arranging and re-arranging this weekend! 

Sometimes it's a good thing just to mess with your stuff.

An Occurrence at...

Shanghai Express...  Bet you thought I was going to say Owl Creek Bridge.  Alas, no - I'm sure that movie can be rented somewhere (the story is much better!), but tonight after a dinner of take-out sesame chicken, Aggie and I are going to watch Gregory Peck in Old Gringo, the fictional tale of writer Ambrose Bierce's last days in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.  It has Jimmy Smits (as General Arroyo) and Jane Fonda (as spinster Harriet Winslow).  Pancho Villa is only a minor character, apparently.  They don't make actors like Gregory Peck anymore, I'll say that.  Now we just have movie stars and publicity hounds for the most part.  Oh, for the days of Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda and John Wayne.  I even miss Steve McQueen.  I wonder if Paul Newman has staged any plays on the great soundstage in the sky...  I know, I know, I can get the DVDs.  After all, a classic is a classic and worthy of watching over and over again.

And...  I just finished indexing the posts on my blog. 

An OCD dream!

Breaking up is hard to do...

even if it is with just an office space.  Wasn't it pretty?  This was taken shortly after we moved in three years ago - and I made a few changes after that - but I loved it.  Unfortunately, life throws us curve balls and it's time to keep going in the same direction, but with less overhead.  My internet and phone have been transferred to my apartment, so the only thing left in the office is the stuff to go into my storage closet and some of my files.  I am so thankful for my friends who have helped me pack and hauled my junk and really made this move easy for me.  Oh - and we had a great indoor yard sale on Saturday - we sold most of the stuff left in the office and made a decent amount of money - thanks to Ariela's hard work.

I am counting my many blessings!

It's closet day!

And no, this isn't my closet - yet...  Ariela and Marco are stopping by the office on the way to my house to pick up a van-load of stuff to put into my new closet shelves.  We are adding two shelves to the entry closet, with enough room underneath for my rolling carts of rubber stamps and craft supplies.  The rest of the closet will hold my office supplies and bins of seasonal decorations.  Marco is installing two long shelves in my bedroom closet for clothing bins and shoe boxes.  I had the Salvation Army take away my huge dresser, so I'm paring down the clothes I never wear.  I have a bad habit of wearing the same jeans and shirts over and over again because they're the ones in the dryer...  Anyhow, I have sorted out many more bags of stuff at home for our indoor garage sale at the office next week as well as several bags of clothes and shoes for donating to Goodwill.  Next week, Marco is going to move the wire shelves from the back room at the office to the huge storage closet on my lanai, where I will have plenty of room for Christmas decorations and other stuff I don't know what to do with, but can't make myself sell or give away.  I keep chanting: less is more, less is more...  I've even made room for my bins of fabric on the laundry closet shelf.  As I may have said before, I love it when a plan comes together! 

I promise to post actual photos of the finished masterpiece!

Sorting stuff...

I've been in the back room at the office all day sorting through boxes of stuff.  Tim is coming to fix my network meltdown again tonight and he says he is going to take his stuff back to Tampa with him so his old boss can ship it up to Pennsylvania for him.  We'll see about that - it's been months since I cleared out the storage unit.  My network died again - it was fine when I left on Friday but when I stopped by on Sunday to pick up some baskets to take home - no internet, no nothing.  I'm just not a techie and repairing a network setup is simply beyond me.  Needless to say, I am finding other work to do that does not require an internet connection.  I found some old pictures and a lot of other crap I just pitched out, but I scanned this picture of me and my dad.  I must have been about four because there's no sign of my sister in the picture.  She showed up when I was almost five and I had to stop telling people that my stuffed monkey, Zippy, was my sister who looked just like my daddy.

I knew I shouldn't have complained...

about the heat yesterday.  Karma - it bites you in the butt every time.  I came into the office this morning and it was eighty-three (count them!) degrees in here.  I had left the air conditioning set at seventy-eight when I left the office yesterday since I am trying to conserve on the electric bill and when I opened the door this morning, it was like a heat wave!  I immediately turned on the big floor fan and went to check the thermostat.  Yikes!  I called my AC guy post haste and he was here within an hour; he diagnosed the problem as most likely being the capacitor - whatever that does (I know Tim replaced the capacitor on the AC unit at our old house on more than one occasion).  He said it would be about $135 - which isn't bad; I knew I was taking a chance when I got the used unit.  In the meantime, Petey isn't speaking to me and I can't blame him.  I'm burning up and I don't have fur and a base body temperature of one-hundred-and two degrees - my poor little gingersnap guy!

Well, thank You, Lord - it was just the capacitor and Jason, the super-hero AC guy, has it up and cooling again already!  He was referred to me by one of my clients and he has been great.  But I am still hot and in my book, that is as good an excuse as any to blow this popstand and do something infinitely more fun that mundane paperwork and sitting here waiting for the phone to ring.  I have pictures to hang at home and a window to measure for a curtain rod.  I put my new pillow covers on my living room pillows, and I took a picture, but I have left my camera at home for the past week.  It might be a Freudian thing because I am completely horrified at how pink floral and green gingham patchwork pillows look on my brown leather sofa.  I am hoping that the matching valance I am going to make will help pull it all together.  If not, well, I'm not out anything but my time because I've had the fabrics I used for about ten years.  Ten years - no kidding.  My name is Dawn and I am a closet fabric-a-holic.  I am powerless over a fabric sale.  I've been known to buy entire bolts of Mary Engelbreit fabric at WalMart when it's marked down to $1 a yard.  I mean, it's such a deal...  And look at the money I saved over the regular price.  It's a disease.

To clip or not to clip...

that is the question.  Okay, Hamlet never subscribed to Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion, but I have lovingly perused, pondered and preserved every issue ever printed and well, my desk drawers are full of them.  I really have nowhere to put these magazines, and in keeping with my new less is more philosophy of life, I am considering looking through them one last time and saving only the articles and photographs that inspire me.  I have a style notebook that I've been saving magazine articles and pictures in for years (thank you, Alexandra Stoddard!) and I think it's time that MEHC went the way of all of the Southern Living and Country Home magazines.

What do you all think?

Churros and losing one's way...

My dear friend Ariela stopped by this morning with a piping hot bag of homemade churros - such a nice surprise and a delicious treat!  She used Paula Deen's recipe with a hint of orange zest and the flavor was excellent.  She said that she made the first batch when the kids were home and Baby ate them as fast as they came out of the fryer.  I can see that - he's a real pill.  I would have been right there with him.  We had a nice visit and a blackened tilapia caesar salad for lunch.  With raspberry vinaigrette - yum!

I know it sounds like I'm food-obsessed - but it's so nice to actually have someone to have a meal with.  Aggie is good company, but not much of a conversationalist over dinner.  And cooking for one and a little dog isn't a whole lot of fun; I end up with a lot of leftovers and by the time I finish them off, I'm sick of whatever it was I made.  I spent four days eating yellow rice last week.

And finally, I think I've really discovered the root of my blue funk of the last several days.  Being upset about my mother-in-law's passing started it, but I realized in looking around my space at home (and the office, to some degree) that I really have lost my way over the past year or so.  Probably longer than that, if I were willing to admit it to myself.  I used to be more together and my home was a real reflection of my creative self - and since moving from my house to the condo, I've never really settled in and made the space my own.  More than once, Ariela and I have talked about how much I miss the way my home used to be; we met after I had essentially given up on trying to be the Martha Stewart magazine-ready version of me.  Part of the problem was that I was living under the assumption that it was merely a stopover on the way to our new home in Pennsylvania, but it's been more than that.  I've stopped doing a lot of the little things I used to do that made me who I am.  I've been remiss in sending birthday cards to family and friends, I have let my sewing and crafting pretty much go by the wayside and I haven't put my personal stamp on my surroundings at all.  Sure, my stuff is there - but I haven't made a point of hanging artwork or making window treatments.  I don't even bake things for people the way I used to.  And I miss those things - I really do.  So I've made myself a list of all those things I want to accomplish over the next couple of weeks - mainly in the time it takes me to get the office moved home.  And the words of a sweet friend encourage me; Ariela simply said, "I will help you." 

And I know she will.