End of week three

Who knew that I would be better at  getting rid of stuff than I was at making stuff?

This afternoon I will fill a bag with the 10 items for this week. (It's a sad commentary on my house that I am not having any trouble meeting my 10 item quota. )  I am doing better in that area than I am on making things.

On the craft front, I have been spinning the hair from my 2 Shetland Sheepdogs almost every day.
The weather has been most cooperative and so the screened porch is a delight during most of the day. My spinning production has improved since I have put the bag of dog hair and the spindle next to my favorite chair on the porch and spin when I let the dogs out to go potty. It has confused the dogs no end. Conner will walk by and smell the spindle and just stand and look at it. I guess he is trying to figure out how he can be in his own skin and yet have part of him on "that wooden thing". Nah, that would be giving Conner more alert brain cells than he has.  Allie tends to ignore the entire spinning process. This could be a result of trying to put her nose in the spokes of a spinning wheel when I first got her. Maybe she has just decided to stay away from anything that goes around, including the hand spindles.

One thing that can really eat up the time is Pinterest.  It is great fun looking at all the various ideas. I have now posted so many that I will need an army of crafters to get it all done. If you haven't found Pinterest, be sure to check it out. You too can become addicted.  Guess that  would make  me an enabler.

Days 1-3 creativity

Well, I thought this project was going to take one day but I really underestimated the time needed. However it's done and I am pretty pleased with the finished product.

I made Halloween cards. To me there is something so satisfying about working with paper and a glue stick. Maybe it takes me back to 1st grade and that fabulous paste that came in jars. It smelled great (well, not perfume great, but still a good smell.) It was fun to put it on your fingers and then let it dry. Peeling it off with your fingerprints on it was most entertaining. (Please tell me other people did this. I have always been fairly easy to entertain but I really don't think I was the only one.) A little bit of it didn't taste too badly either.

I still have to tweak the cards but it was a fun start and felt great to be creating something.

Rock and Roll, High School, and old bladders

This post should have been published in 2009 but somehow didn't so here it is a few years late.

Went back to my old High School tonight for the first time in 48 years. There was a concert to raise money for the 2 radio stations at the school.

The concert was awesome and worth every penny (dollar) of the ticket price. It was 3 hours of great entertainment, both new songs and some old rock classics. If you are a performer, you better know your lyrics when the audience is singing along with you.

The opening act was a classmate and it was wonderful to see him on stage. His style of music has changed over the years but he is still as good and funny as we remembered him being.

We were in the balcony which doesn't have any bathrooms on that floor. Not a problem when you are a teenager but quite a problem over 40 years later. It's not nice to take comfort in the fact that you weren't one of those who had to make the up and down trip twice but sometimes in life you take comfort in what you can.

Anyway, the company was good and the music made us all feel young again, even if just for a few hours. It also reminded me how very, very glad I am to be the age I am. I am also grateful for having grown up in the time that I did. (Ok, now that did sound like an old person's comment. It's the truth however.)

Really, a year?

Well, as hard as it is for me to believe an entire year plus a few days has passed since I wrote the last post. I know you have suffered greatly missing my ramblings.

A lot has happened, almost all of it very positive but I won't bore you with all the details. A quick summary is that I made a major move and have rejoiced everyday since. When you have great peace after making a decision, it is almost always the right one. At least it seems to be that way for me.

Now, 12 months later I find that I really STILL haven't gotten rid of enough stuff. It is so much easier to acquire things than it  is to get rid of them. Why don't they teach that in schools? It would be a fabulous and much needed lesson that would certainly come in handy later in life.

All of which brings me to a challenge I am setting for myself. For the next year I am going to work toward 2 goals.

The first goal is to create something every day. Whether it is a card, a collage, a knitted washcloth, or finishing a larger project, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I exercise my creative side daily, not weekly, not sporadically, but daily. I'm depending on my friends to hold me accountable--- and join me in this endeavor if you wish. Birds of a feather and all that.

The second part is to get rid of the clutter. I recently took a carload of family stuff to my son with the understanding that he is free to toss whatever he wants. Getting it in the car was the easy part. Letting    go of ownership and, yes, guardianship, was harder but very, very freeing.  

Yesterday I came across a blog which talks about getting rid of ten items each week.. Well, as sometimes happens, I read it at an impressionable moment and immediately got rid of ten items from my closet. Put them in a bag and the bag in my car. That was so much fun, and painless, I now have a second bag in the car waiting for the trip to a local charity.

So, the second part of my one year challenge is to get rid of 10 items each week.  That's 520 things that will go away. Ok, that large a number sounds overwhelming so I am going to only think of the ten each week. Just those ten not the big number, definitely not the big number.

You are welcome to join me in this adventure also--double dog dare you.