A Time For Everything

I've bought/brought more things into the house this last few weeks than I've purged. But I do think I'm at the end of that project unless I get super cutthroat and I'm not really ready to go down that road just yet.

Someday, just not now.

In other news, I got to meet the Stars new head coach Jim Montgomery. He's fun and personable, unlike many/most NHL coaches. Not only is this his first year with the Stars, it's his first year in the NHL. He hasn't learned to be vague or to bury his personality. He did great things for the team this year, and I was super excited for the opportunity. Honestly, I was surprised more people didn't show up. Their loss!

Photo evidence...





A very good day was had by all.

But I'm collecting way more stuff right now than I'm getting rid of. Easy to do since I haven't gotten rid of anything recently and I keep getting free Stars swag at the watching parties.

I don't know that I'll reach the goal of 100 things like I imagined I would. I mean, individually, yes, I've removed several hundred items from the house, but because I bunched like items together (vases, DVDs, books) , I'm only at 32 things. >>sigh<<

I really thought I could do it, but I'm not as confident now. I might could reach 50 items, but 100 is going to be a stretch unless I decide to get really crazy. But that wasn't the goal. The goal was to get rid of stuff hiding in closets and cabinets that wasn't being used and hadn't been used in a long time, not to strip my house of the things I look at and enjoy having around me.

I definitely need to make another pass through the house, though. I'm sure I can find a few more things that I don't need to keep.

Anyway, it's Friday and I've a short story to whip into shape this weekend. I've done a very bad job this week of making progress. I'm sure you can guess why with one guess.

Hope you have lovely spring weather to enjoy wherever you are.

Regardless of the weather, have a great weekend!!

My tidying process continued this weekend. I purged my closets and drawers of two more garbage bags full of clothes, along with four pair of shoes. One pair went in the trash as they were broken, although I would have kept them otherwise. The other three went into the donation pile.

Along with all the clothes, I purged more books. There are still more books yet to be sorted through, but I'll get there slowly but surely. I also tackled a shelf full of small bins and a plastic chest of drawers and threw out or or put in the donation box everything I didn't need or want.

There will be a trip to the donation station on my agenda for next Saturday.

Writers group meeting went well this past Saturday and the new and improved version of the GetPublished! program now in my hands was well received. I opted to not attend the Stars game Saturday in order to hang out with my writer friends. I see DD everyday and attend most of the games with her. I only get to see my friends generally once a month, so it was no-brainer.

I found some ornament storage containers on clearance for $4.50 each at Walmart yesterday, so taking down the rest of Christmas should happen over the course of the week and into next weekend.

Not much else going on.

Hope you had a good weekend and I hope your week goes well.

Take care!!

So there's a show called "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo"--a young Japanese mother and mogul who helps families de-clutter their homes and lives. I had seen it passing on Netflix, but hadn't quite decided to watch it until a friend of mine mentioned that she'd binged it. Next time I was looking for something to watch...Marie Kondo got the click. Since I have been in a "getting rid of stuff" faze, it seemed like a good choice.




The first aspect of people's lives Marie tackles is clothes. She has the people she's helping take all of their clothes out of closets and drawers and boxes and make a pile on the bed or floor so that an individual can see how much clothing they actually have. Usually it's a lot. Partners make separate piles.

One guy had over 150 pair of shoes, many of which he'd had for over a decade and most of which he'd never worn. It was interesting to see how emotionally invested he was in those shoes. Eventually though, he pared the cache down to under fifty pair.

So anyway...once you've got your clothes in a pile, Marie says to touch each item, one by one, and keep it if it sparks joy within you, while thanking and then putting aside the items not being kept.

While clothing wasn't specifically on my list of things to purge, I do know I've got stuff I don't wear and so I've been pondering the KonMarie method to get rid of anything extraneous. I'd love to get DH going on this process too because I know he has quite a bit of stuff that could be gotten rid of, but that's going to be a challenge, so it'll have to wait--life is still not quite back to normal.

Getting rid of books will be (has been) pretty easy. Since I prefer e-reading and the fact that I can carry 100s of books/stories with me on a phone or a Kindle is wonderful; getting rid of physical books isn't a hardship. I have a few that are sentimental in value, but for the most part, the rest can/will go.

It's really all the miscellaneous stuff that I'm going to struggle with because I love my stuff...all my collections and fandom oddities that I've accumulated over the years. But Ms. Kondo isn't about getting rid of ALL your stuff. Just the stuff that no longer sparks the joy it once might have. That's easy and fair enough.

I promised an update today on my quest to get rid of 100 things, so here it is...

On Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, I worked my way through three drawers of a dresser in my office. The contents were mostly craft related with a handful of other random items thrown in for whatever reason.

I was pretty ruthless and realistic about the stuff. All I kept was anything cross stitching related. Business cards were relocated. Sewing stuff was put in a box for a friend I mentioned a while back. All other random crafty things were put into the donation box.

Contents of the top draw...all that I kept were the rolls of Aida cloth, the white box in the center, and the two post cards at the bottom. Everything else was given or thrown away.

Contents of the middle drawer...everything given or thrown away except for that little stationary set on the left. I thought it would be good fro writing notes to my Grandma.

 The bottom drawer "before"...

Contents of the bottom drawer...the fabric and the patterns went into a box for my friend. The cross stitch related items went into one of the other two drawers. A few things went into the donation box or the trash. See below what's left in the drawer now.

Marie Kondo is all about using small boxes for sorting and organizing small items within drawers. I took her method to heart as you can see. I used to use plastic shoe box containers a lot to keep things like batteries and light bulbs sorted. I've gotten away from it as a general practice, but the clean lines of sorted possessions is speaking to me again. Here I used empty boxes from 12-packs of Ramen Soup. I had one sitting around and pulled the other one out of the cabinet, leaving the packages of soup in a stack.

I guess I just have to classify everything I got rid of as two items: one of miscellany and one of sewing stuff. That puts at me at thirty-two items. :0)

Have a great weekend, y'all.

I'm still making progress and I'm still ahead in the weeks vs. things tally.

Last week, I gave away a travel mug, a 3x5 card file thingy with cards in it, as well as a little accordionated coupon organizer keeper, and a tiny little glass candle holder with three tealights. The Rubbermaid deviled egg keeper also went, along with some more actual Tupperware. Also an old Easter basket and some plastic eggs.



I also got the back patio a bit tidied up as well, threw away a bunch of stuff that had just been piled up and looking a hot mess for years. Literally. And you know how I hate that word. The lawn guy came yesterday and he bagged leaves for me. Now I just have to pull the large weed/plant thing growing in the little planter area next to the bird bath. Things are starting to look tidier and it feels good.

And I have to decide what to do with my Chinese wisteria that only bloomed profusely the first year I had it. When it was small. I planted it and gave it a lattice and it spends more time growing its vines than it does blooming. So I have to read up on how to make it bloom better. ...reading.. ...reading... Okay...root pruning and some phosphate fertilizer to balance out too much nitrogen intake. I'll see what I can do.

Well, I hope your week is going well. T-minus FOUR days until I can hug Sonshine.

Have a great rest of the week.

My head has big plans, but my body is saying, "whoa, girl, slow down!!"

This 100 Things Challenge has jump started my desire to fix things up. Not that I have the money or probably the long-term energy to do much, but it's there.

The back yard needs a good, thorough going over and that's probably the least expensive thing I can get away with doing. The old gray mare, aka, my back yard of old, ain't what she used to be.

Remember this:




Taking care of the yard is more elbow grease than cash or, at most, a couple of extra twenties to the lawn guy even though things won't look like ^^that^^ again.

The shed is another disaster area, and I can only do so much in there. Most of that stuff belongs to DH and he needs to decide what to do with it. For now, I can clean up...like get rid of the dead leaves and cull through some random other stuff.

As for my 100 Things Challenge, which I didn't post much about last week, and for which I'm a few weeks ahead on... I cleaned out an old dresser in the garage that had been relegated to random storage and cleaned out another half a dozen+ things. Those things include some strings of Christmas lights and a couple of Christmas garland swags, a couple of 8x10 picture frames, a random assortment of craft stuff, a bunch of old ink pads from back in my rubber stamping days, a dozen empty candle jars, sewing machines that I'm selling to a friend, and some random sewing projects.

That puts me at twenty-two things now. :0)

I even took the latest pile to the donation station.


Gas is under $2 in many places across North Texas. My local Quick Trip is at $1.95. It's funny that this happened because a mere week ago or so I was thinking that I'd never see gas under $2 again. Low and behold!




So DD and I watched the original Yours, Mine, and Ours yesterday. The oldest  child in the film looked but especially sounded so familiar to me, so I looked him up and it turned out to be a very young Tim Matheson.



Some might remember him from The Virginian, Bonanza, or Leave It To Beaver. Possible as the voice of Johnny Quest. Some might remember him from The West Wing, Burn Notice, or Hart of Dixie.

Anyway, once I figured out the voice, I couldn't help grinning every time young "Mike Beardsley" was on screen.


Also Saturn has been visible here in North Texas. I spotted it to the east both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

How was your weekend??

So, on Monday, I shared a picture of my car full of stuff that I took to a donation center. A lot of that stuff had been piled up before I started this 100 Things Challenge, especially the bags of clothes, but can you believe that I've only culled TEN things from my house during the course of the challenge so far???

Yup. Only ten...because I've lumped like things together: cups and glasses, DVDs, curtains and tablecloths, board games. If I counted each item individually, I'd probably be well over 200, but that seemed sorta like cheating so I didn't.

TEN THINGS

Seems a bit paltry, but I shall persevere.

Next items to go: all the tote bags I don't use and won't work for groceries, a rather large bubba keg, a DVD player, and a Dance Dance Revolution mat.

Now we're up to FOURTEEN!!

Go, Jen, go!!

I had thought to post some other stuff, but there's not much going on because of the holiday, so I will sign off now.

Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with those nearest and dearest to you. But if you can't be with those folks, then I hope you're with the next best thing, whatever that means for you.

I do still have to work today, tomorrow, and Wednesday, but I image it'll be fairly slow since I bet many of our clients will also be slow and / or have shut down their offices for one or more days. Which is good because I have a couple of projects to work on. I had a really good weekend though--

As I mentioned Friday, I went to a Stars game. The antics to get there as early as possible were Keystone Cop-worthy, but DD and I made it in time to score a pair of tickets to a game in January that I don't already have (partial-season) tickets to, so YAY! Also, the Stars won against a really good team in which there was only one goal--ours in overtime--and three fights and a ton of penalty minutes during regulation play. They also won Sunday afternoon's game which I did not attend as it was in New York. :0)

While watching Sunday's game on TV, I wrapped what Christmas presents I have and placed them under my new tree with colored lights.

It's been a while since I've had colored lights on a tree and it takes me back to my childhood when we always had colored lights.

At this point, the poor tree only has two ornaments and only because one never got put away last year and I came across it in a drawer when I was looking for something else and the other is an ornament I made for Sonshine a few years ago and kept hanging in my office for some reason.

I didn't make the trek out to the shed this weekend to find the rest, but that'll happen sometime between now and next Monday.

What I did do this weekend was load up all those "things" I've been clearing out the house and staging in the garage into the car and take them to a local donation spot. Man--that felt really good.


Getting rid of stuff is rather addicting. One hallway closet is pretty much purged now. Remember I said I'd gone green and was using tote bags now instead of plastic store bags? Yeah, I went through the rest of the tote bags I had--(I'm a tote bag ho.)--and picked out the best ones for holding groceries and, with three exceptions, got rid of the rest of them since I can only use so many tote bags and have my favorites. The other hall closet needs to be culled still, but, honestly, there isn't much left in there either.

I had to start a new pile in the garage, however. :0)

Lunch on Saturday with my dear friend, N, was delightful as usual. And she made me this--which was perfect even though she didn't know about the hockey tree when she chose designed the pattern...



I also got to visit with DH's family on Saturday and specifically with that family member with the medical issues and she's better. There's a ways to go and hurdles to surmount, but she's better. If you're the praying sort, please lift her up.

And that, my friends, is all for today. Have a wonderful day and a wonderful week and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

And, surprisingly, I'm not talking about the Stars. :0) Although there is a game tonight and I will be there and I will be wearing green.

But I'm talking about the environment... This past Sunday, I took tote bags with me to the grocery store and used those for toting home my food stuffs. It was a little bit of a challenge to utilize the bags in the sizes I had. I mean, you do your own scanning and bagging for long enough, you develop a system and preference on how to sort and bag the groceries in those store-provided bags. It'll probably take me a week or two to get a new order to things and I might need to dig around the closet to see what other sizes and shapes I have to trade out with and see what happens. :0)

Speaking of the closet, as promised on Wednesday, I did remember to find the next 100 Things Challenge item. Which turned out to be a couple of boxes of DVDs that no one has touched in a couple of years. I also found a box of VHS tapes, but those are going straight into the trash.

I culled carefully through the titles and pulled DH's favorites for him to take down to the fireworks store to keep there. Many of these are not available on Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix Amazon Prime, I finally got around to watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and it was wonderful. From Wiki: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an American period comedy-drama web television series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, that premiered on March 17, 2017. The series stars Rachel Brosnahan as the titular Miriam "Midge" Maisel, a housewife in 1958 New York City who discovers she has a knack for stand-up comedy.


What they don't say in that succinct write-up is that she'd been supporting her husband for years in his attempt to be a standup comedian and one night he completely bombs and when they get home, he walks out. She gets stupidly drunk and ends up at the club in her peignoir (wearing a coat though) and gives a hilarious drunken monologue.

Once DD and I binged through the eight eps of the first season of that, we started on Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, another Amazon Prime original. From Wiki: Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, or simply Jack Ryan, is an American action political thriller web television series, based on characters from the fictional "Ryanverse" created by Tom Clancy.


 If you've seen The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, and/or A Clear and Present Danger, then you should be familiar with Jack Ryan. This series serves as a sort of per-cursor to Jack Ryan's roles in those films but set in the present day (cell phones were not a thing in 90, 92, or 94). I've not seen the more recent offerings of The Sum of All Fears (02) or Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (14).

Aside from the premises and plots of the new original series on both Netflix and Amazon Prime that I've watched, one of the things that intrigues (not the right word) me is the format of eight (Mrs. Maisel and Jack Ryan) or thirteen (Grace & Frankie and The Ranch on Netflix) episodes per season.

As a viewer in general, I'd like more of the shows I enjoy. But as a fan of actors, I think it's a great opportunity for them to be able to do other projects rather than being tied to one show for years on end--like Ellen Pompeo in Grey's Anatomy and Mark Harmon from the original NCIS series.

And that's about all I have to ramble on about today. Hope you have a great weekend--

Since I was a supporting author and had my own events to attend, I didn't have as many opportunities to see other people's stuff. I did attend the Featured Authors Signing to scope out some of this year's swag. It was a lot of the same. Some people had So. Much. Stuff.

This is my haul...




I saw a lot of goodie bags... (not pictured) Just cellophane with candy and maybe a pen and notepad or something. Which is all well and good, but people have such different taste in candy. Or they don't like chocolate. Or are allergic to nuts. Or don't like caramel. I don't know. It seems like a waste to me.

Books are given away as prizes in almost every workshop and reading and q&a session. I came home with a handful this year. I definitely want to read two of them. I haven't read the back cover blurbs of the others yet. They'll all be donated to the library at some point because I keep very few physical books these days.

I did notice, though, that rainbow anything was very popular, so my brain is whirring... I'm thinking small little cross stitch something or others. Heigh ho, heigh ho, off to Pinterest I go. I'll let you know what I come with later.

On the 100 Things Challenge front, I cleaned out the glass and mug cabinet and am getting rid of this:



Making progress. A trip to the donation station is in order soon.

Have a great rest of your week.

One week and one day until I head east for my conference. I have a lot to get done this week...

Mostly packing. Hang on while I go grab my suitcase...Okay. Loaded into the car. The rest is making sure everything I need for the author signing and the author lounges is ready to go.

As I've mentioned before, at last year's conference I saw a lot of physical books, but no easy mechanism for e-book readers like me to get to the retailer of choice for any given book one might have wanted to purchase. My brilliant idea was to create QR codes for each book for each retailer. Which I have done.

Now I get to assemble book covers, back cover blurbs, and said QR codes into a document for each book and print everything out and put into a folder so that people can browse and hopefully buy.

I also have to prepare work for me being gone and do a bunch of stuff in advance of being gone.

In other news, I was given the go ahead by DH to buy my first Stars jersey.


I must say, it was a difficult decision...John Klingberg or Alexander Radulov. You can see who won. One down, three to go: Radulov, Mattias Janmark, and Tyler Seguin.

This week's 100 Things Giveaway includes board games, scarves, and some more Tupperware.

On the cross stitching front, I finished the gifts I was making for gal I said got me into hockey. I enjoyed the author Q&A at the bookstore and then delivered her gifts and wished her well. Then I thought I could turn my attention full time to the latest sampler I designed--remember the "Sunday Project" I talked about a while back? I was all excited about it becoming my primary project. But as I was happily stitching away yesterday, I remembered a sampler I want to stitch for my older daughter for Christmas. And so, the Sunday Project remains the Sunday Project. :0)



Hope you had a great weekend. Catch you Wednesday.

This week's purge includes a spool holder and vases.


Who doesn't have a collection of vases in the closet?? There were three others I'd already hauled to the garage before remembering to get the photographic evidence. I will keep one just so's we have one. DD did bring home a bouquet from a student just the other day. But we don't have enough of those in our lives to warrant storing six vases. Bye bye!

On a quick side note...book two was approved overnight for physical copies--woo hoo!!! I have a ordered a singer author copy of each to make sure they look okay still. If they do, I will order a batch of each for my conference. Keep your fingers crossed please.

Have a great week. Mine is looking up, now that the first hurdle of the book issue has been jumped.

Into the giveaway box this week goes an assortment of tablecloths, table runners and curtains/sheers.

I'm counting this collectively as the third thing.





Hope you had a lovely weekend. I had a good time at writers group and even more lovely time at the meeting after the meeting even though we were missing a couple of peeps.

Have a great week--see you Wednesday.

I had a great weekend. How about you?

My writer friends came over for a day of sprinting (writing in sprints, not running). In between, as we are wont to do, we chatted.

One friend said she enjoyed coming to my house because she liked that I put my stuff out to be enjoyed even though it's not what one might call "decorator approved," if you will.

For example...

The kitchen wall with my decorative Christmas dishes that stay in place all year round rather than hiding them away in a closet.

Or the fall paper chain that DD and I put together several autumns ago, but that still loops across my front window.


Now, my office, which I shared a few weeks ago is a mish mash of my collections and fandom treasures and is another story altogether. I keep that kind of thing contained mostly to my personal space. :0)

As conversations wound around, another friend mentioned a 1000 item giveaway challenge that she and her husband had embarked upon. I'm not a minimalist by any means as my office can attest to, but I know I have a lot of stuff that I never use anymore. I've been meaning to go through closets and cabinets and the garage and start downsizing if you will.

I didn't find anything about the 1000 thing except for radio stations giving away money (yes, please!) but I did come across a blog about 100 things. So using that as a framework, I'm going to challenge myself to get rid of 100 things in however long it takes.

Also, the original challenge from Dave Bruno is to get down to 100 things, but that's unlikely for me at the moment. So instead, we'll just get rid of 100 things for now. And maybe, someday, I'll try for 100 more.

So my challenge is to clean out a drawer or a closet or a shelf in a closet or whatever at some point during the week and move it to the Goodwill pile in the garage or to throw it out. Hopefully, most of the stuff will be in good enough condition to give away rather than needing to be thrown away.

I'll report here with a picture at some point and we'll see how things go.

One of my first challenges is the baker's rack in the garage that holds a lot of appliances and bake ware and other random kitchen items. There are a couple of things on the floor I'd like to get off of the floor. So finding space for those items is number one.


The top shelf is now mostly clear. Since I don't eat cereal anymore, I'm passing along all my Tupperware cereal keepers as well as a produce/salad spinner.



What about you? Are you up for getting rid of a thing or two you don't use??