2013 House Projects...

So far, I'm still keen on the Apartment Therapy January cure.  It's been fun reading people's Cure diaries after the first week and their lists of projects.  It really does make the month-long project sound possible as long as I stay grounded in the reality of my busy schedule and not even try to take on too much.

Keeping up with the home cure task list, I think I've decided what piece of art to frame.  Besides, Michael's is having a huge framing sale...

Here's the Cure task update and report:

Yesterday's task - plan a party for the end of the month
For this weekend - deep clean the kitchen, plan and cook a meal, buy flowers

Report:

I started thinking about my annual valentine-making party yesterday.  I think I skipped having one last year due to my outrageous travel schedule.  This year it will likely be a small evening event, so all two of you who are reading this, let me know if you want to come.

A deep kitchen cleaning is long overdue.  The oven has had a can of oven cleaner sitting next to it for a couple of weeks now.  I am frightened of the space between the refrigerator and the wall.

Here's the big list of house projects for the year:

Front Porch

Hang original front door

Add window boxes or shelves for summer plants

Move empty pots and soil to the backyard

Replace non-functional doorbell

Living Room/Entry

Organize landing strip; file or recycle all papers

Finish tacking up sofa skirts

Alter window seat cushion covers so that they fit properly

Make a designated space for purse and work bag

Dining Room

Paint small patch of wall under the thermostat

Inventory the corner cabinet

Label all china cases with permanent marker

Kitchen

Repair water damaged ceiling

Re-think spice shelf solution so that there is room for all of the spices

Organize the loose recipes into a box, book, or electronic resource

Organize party planning recipes and ideas

Re-pot the Christmas cacti

Paint kitchen cabinets

Clean oven

Laundry Room

Re-hang clothes drying rack

Corral the endless supply of plastic grocery bags

Repair washer hot water supply

Garden

Stabilize wisteria trellises

Prune roses and hydrangeas

Create a garden care list

Create outdoor storage for mower, potting soil, pots and tools

2nd Floor Parlour

Repair radiator

Repair bay window roof

Repair ceiling

Freecycle telephone table

Office

File or shred all of the papers!

Create a full inventory and index of dance books

De-clutter the doorway shelves

Repair water-damaged walls

Craft Room

Streamline craft room storage

Paint and hang wood shelves

Continue to make stamp drawer maps to enable quick clean-up of stamps

Create zones for different items

Move outbox to another area of the house

Put everything away

Bathroom

Wash shower curtain and liner

Wash mold from ceiling

Repair water-damaged ceiling

Re-paint peeling areas

De-clutter the cabinets

Repair the sink drain/stopper

Bedroom

Keep dresser and trunk clutter free

Repair damaged ceiling

Review scarves and only keep the few I wear; create new scarf storage

Third Floor

Repair hallway roof

Replace damaged hallway ceiling

Keep guest beds made and covered with king size sheets to keep clean

And this month's special focus project:  the Craft Room!!!!

In a future post, I will share the scary "before" pictures with you...

Five minutes a day...

Every January the design blogs I read are full of hope and resolutions and solutions to help you freshen and reclaim your living space.  They take advantage of the new year as a time of beginnings to help motivate people to do what they should be doing all of the time.  This is not new.  And, I pretty much buy into this philosophy, at least in intention.

The creator of ApartmentTherapy wrote a book around the idea of a home cure, saying that you could take control of your living space and transform it into what you want it to be, or at least begin the process, over the course of a month.  They've created steps, and daily tasks toward this goal to make it be manageable, and possible, and encourage folks to join the Cure through their website to create a support network for participants, and induce some accountability.

Although I think the Cure is a great idea, I haven't been ready to commit to the online deal.  Still, I'm following with interest, and even trying to play along a bit.  I forget exactly what day they're on, but the major steps so far seem to have been:

1. Go through your living space and make a list of all of the projects that need doing.  It needn't be exhaustive.  Stick to 3-5 projects per room.
2. Create an Outbox, or a place for the things you're considering donating or trashing to live.  Consider your outbox as a waiting room.  You are not committing to get rid of anything in there, but simply creating an area where things will live while you're considering their fate.
3. Buy flowers for yourself and your house.  Do this every Friday so you can enjoy them all weekend.  You and your house deserve it.
4. Sweep and mop your floors.  Do a thorough job.  Move the furniture.  Vacuum the rugs.  You will feel better.
5. From your list, pick ONE project you will work on this month.  
6. Frame a piece of artwork you've been wanting to hang for a while.  You could do this yourself, or have it professionally done.  Don't put it off any more.

My progress...

1. List made.  Man, it's long.  And not do-able in one year, most likely.  Long.
2. I love my outbox!!!  I've had one for a while.  It's not in the right place in my house, but the instant I get the notion that something can go, I try and put it in that area right away.  Chances are, I will never miss whatever that item is.
3. I didn't buy flowers last Friday because I knew I was going away for the weekend.  This weekend I will for sure.  Flowers are something I love, but a treat I rarely afford myself because it seems far too extravagant.  But Produce Junction will sell me something lovely for less than $5.
4. Okay, I haven't done this step at all.  But I agree that it's a good idea.
5. I picked my one item!  Ack!
6. This one just appeared today.  I did trim and frame my January calendar page, but I don't think that counts.  This is a good idea though.  I will have to consider...

In my next post I'll share with you my LONG house project list along with my project of choice and the scary "before" pictures.

Let me know if you want to play too.  I'd be delighted be a part of a not-necessarily-published-on-the-internet support system!

Ring in the new...

I am generally not a believer in new year’s resolutions.  While January does feel like a time of new beginnings, if the desired change is real, you can start at any time.  What I am a believer in is lists, calendars, and schedules.  I use these devices to get me where I need to go, and more importantly, help me take care of the things I need to.

About a year ago, I divided my to-do list into long-term projects and short-term projects.  I typed up the long-term list, printed it, put it in a pocket in my notebook, and avoided looking at it.  Looking back at it now is difficult because most of the items remain:  I still need to repair the roof and fix the water damaged ceilings, organize my office, de-clutter the craft room, compile a garden plant and care list, and on and on and on…

More successful is my short-term list, which is edited and added to almost daily.  Some items should stay on there for life:  do laundry, fold laundry, go to the library, write x dance program, but they don’t.  The act of writing, crossing off, and re-writing is to me a sign of progress, of life humming along, and things, if slowly, getting done

Making an annual resolution makes no sense to me, and the notion that I will get through everything on my short-term to-do list is not in any way based in the reality of my life.  Instead I would love to be able to point to something meaty that I accomplished once a month, something that’s been lingering on one of these interminable lists for far too long.  I hope to use this space to report on my results at the end of each month.  I actually didn’t wait for New Year’s, but started in December…

December 2012:  Eat gluten-free

It feels odd to say this out loud because eating gluten-free, while a health necessity for many seems to be trendy for the rest, and the last thing I am is trendy.  But I was curious to find out if cutting out wheat, i.e., bread, cookies, cake, and anything made with wheat flour or wheat-based anything, made a difference to my weight, skin, outlook, and general well-being. 

After a month, the jury is still out.  I’ve avoided wheat (except for those latkes at Chanukah, which have some flour in them), but not all products made in factories and on machinery where wheat is handled.  Yes, I have lost some of the weight I had lost and then regained.  I think I feel better, but it’s unclear if avoiding wheat is the cause of either of these results. 

Eating gluten-free is annoying and hard.  I miss not thinking about my food.  But that’s part of the point.  I like knowing that I can do this.  I can be mindful of what I eat, and make conscious choices and small changes, and more importantly stick to it.  It’s a(nother) start down a road I want to travel, and only a start.  I’ll keep this up for several months to truly evaluate whether it makes a difference to my overall well-being, or not, and what, if anything needs to change next.  Wish me luck.  And don’t mock me if I end up shopping at the Co-op sometimes.

What are your new year’s projects?

A new page in the calendar...

Having worked recently on a website I'll share with you shortly, the notion of posting to this blog floated to the top of my list.  I think I still have very little to say that's meaningful, but to distract you from that, I'll try and post some pretty pictures...

Some time about mid-summer, not having my calendar pages for the next year becomes intolerable.  So I haunt Staples until the Day Runner Month-at-a-Time refills are in, and once purchased, begin filling in many of the little boxes.

But then, sometime about October, the blog posts about wall calendars begin appearing, and I start planning my purchases.

Here are the calendars I know will grace my walls this year:

The Collectible Teapot.  I've purchased these every year since the late 90s.  These are the only calendars I can't bear to recycle at the end of the year.  This one lives in my kitchen.

This is a new purchase this year.  It will hang in the bedroom.  I think the cover shot is the best one in the calendar, but it will be fun to see the others each month.  I also might need that dress.

This one is a mini-calendar for my office.  Every year when I see this line of calendars in the store, the images are drool-worthy.  My kitchen does not look like this.

This calendar was an impulse buy from Once Upon A Paper.  It came in the form of a digital download - a 32-page PDF that has the calendar formatted in about 4 ways for your printing pleasure.  Each month is a tree in a similar format to the image above.  I've printed out two months per 8.5x11 page on white card stock, and then an 11x17 poster size for work.  Beautiful!


Which calendars are destined for your walls in 2013?

Fabulous!

A post-it note desk top!

From Soup Studio Design

Tea party!

After many false starts, Jennifer and I threw our first small tea party on a snowy Saturday. Jennifer provided the sweets; I contributed the savouries and scones. It was a great chance to use some of my hidden, stored, and packed away tableware, some of it for the first time!

The tea table at a glance:



Even though there were only six of us and an extra leaf in the table, there was not an extra inch of room for anything! The teapots were on the breakfront.

I used a mix of china, which is not the norm for me - a set of cups and saucers that are a favorite gift from my college friends, a sugar and creamer set that matched the tea plates, and a honey pot from another set altogether.



The savouries included three kinds of sandwiches and a board of Manchego cheese served with homemade quince jam and paté served with sliced baguette. Yum! And check out those cinnamon chip scones. I served those with Devonshire cream.



And every tea has its princess! Joy fit the bill nicely. She even brought her own tiara!



I hope this tea is only the first of many. See all of you for tea in the Spring??

Stories from the corner cabinet...

So Jennifer and I are throwing a tea party tomorrow. I've wanted to do this for a long time, and it's finally happening. We're doing it at my house, because I have all of the things!!

So, I knew it was finally time to unpack my floral teacups that Mom so carefully packed up for me when I moved out of my apartment (almost 4 years ago!!!!!!!!) I got the box out of the corner cabinet on Wednesday and unpacked it last night...

I love to go to flea markets when I can and look for china things - serving pieces. A bunch of years ago, at a flea market in Fitler Square, downtown in Phila, I bought the sugar and creamer for $6. This set off my little sugar and creamer set obsession, but that's another story... It turns out that when this set of china was produced, the sugar and creamer sat on a little tray (as pictured).



It became my mission to find the tray, and so I trolled Ebay, and about a year or so ago, I found the tray and bought it.

By this time, of course, I had lost track of the sugar and creamer. I knew I had them in the house and I was sure I put them away in frustration when I couldn't find the tray. Ever since I bought the tray, I have been searching all of my cabinets for the place I stashed the sugar and creamer. They were gone. My biggest fear was that I somehow decided to give up on the tray, and to give the sugar and creamer away. It didn't sound like me, but you never know...

Fast forward to last night and the great teacup unpacking moment...

I had forgotten that when Mom packed up the teacups, there were other things in that box. It was like unpacking a treasure chest. The teacups and saucers were there, all intact. There were also some loose pieces of the Japanese tableware I like (See this post...). One of those small bowls was broken - split in half - but I think I can carefully glue it back together and all will be well. And, guess what was also in the box???

Yes, there they were, the Adderley sugar and creamer, all wrapped up and undisturbed. Apparently, it was only an illusion of mine that they had ever been loose in the house, but it was never true until now. Today they sit, clean and beautiful, on their tray in the dining room, waiting for their first tea party in years!!!!