Is this destiny or a boot in the butt to get going...?

Wow - talk about motivation. I previously posted about wanting to redecorate the house this year. No, let me rephrase that. I previously posted about the fact that I AM GOING TO redecorate my house this year. 2009 will be the year of the Home. Twenty years without any serious redecorating, with the exception of paint, is just waayyy too long, and I'm am tired of my house looking tired. My biggest stumbling block is the actual creative thought process needed to redecorate. Just the thought of coming up with the RIGHT color combinations makes me panic, nevermind choosing furniture that looks right together or window treatments. I told Jeff the only way MY redecorating was going to be worth the money HE is going to spend is if I collect books and magazines with photos of rooms I like, and copy those room elements. (I'm not kidding.) Now here's the destiny part... Last night I received email that I'd won another giveaway -- more than $350 worth of interior decorating books!! I was on HouseDesignFind.com last November, looking at different designs, and stumbled on their giveaway. Of course, I entered. I seem to have a lucky streak going with giveaways (I've won FIVE in the past three months!). I completely forgot about it, and was just totally blown away when I got their email yesterday. Wooo Hooo! Talk about great timing! Click on their link and you can see the books I won. Good stuff! Now we'll see if it's really destiny. I've also been entering a giveaway of a $5000 gift certificate to a local furniture store... It was over on December 31st, but they haven't posted a winner and today is the first day the entry blank wasn't on the web page...so... keep your fingers crossed! This is what I want:

That's how it's made

The holidays are over - except I still haven't taken my tree or room decorations down and honestly, there are still three presents under the tree for the grandchild who apparently has the "gimme" chromosome missing from his DNA. There were five, but he opened two more yesterday. Funny kid. So life gets back to normal as of today. Back to my daily To Do lists, back to my frugal spending, back to my housework and staying up with the laundry -- all things that have taken a backseat to my whining about the holidays. Grocery shopping today, so for the first time I got to print my shopping list from my voice-activated shopping list maker thingie. My question is: Who put NIPPLES on my shopping list??? Geesh... A conversation with Brayden while he played with PlayDoh (and you can see this in the video below -- but this is a translation for you. And 'scuse the drool -- he's getting some heavy duty teeth in, apparently!) B: I've been working on this for a long time. Me: Yes you have B: This is a Air... Me: An air? B: A air gishener. Me: An air freshener? B: A air queshener Me: (laughing) B: A air squishener Me: An air conditioner? B: Yeah, an air conditioner. Me: That's a lot of work - to make an air conditioner out of playdoh. B: What am I making? Me: What are you making? B: A circle. Me: OK, a circle. B: I'm doing it on both sides. Can you do that? Me: Yes, I can do that. B: See that little star right there? That's how I move it (the playdoh roller in his hand). B: I've been working on this? Me: Yes, a long time. B: Where's my bellybutton? Me: ??? B: My bellybutton is going to turn into a circle. ... That's how it's made. Lordy, what would I do without this child to make me laugh???

It's a new year, a new beginning, a new start. Love it, love it, love it. 2008 was filled with babysitting, babysitting and more babysitting. Some weeks a bit too much babysitting, despite how much I absolutely love my grandson's company. 2008 was the frustrating election year because I wasn't crazy about either candidate. Now we all hope the best man won. 2008 was NOT a year of quilting, but was the year of a lot of reading, writing, blogging, pondering and list making. 2008 was the year of winning GiveAways -- I won four! And it was a year of making connections through blogging - Jan, Dixie, Tipper, Tina - new friends, though I wish they lived around the corner and could drop by for coffee now and then. (Oh wait - Tina DOES live around the corner -- let's get together for coffee!) 2008 was the year my husband worked too many hours -- but then again, so was 2006 and 2007. However, at the end of 2008 a tiny light appeared at the end of that tunnel, and hopefully 2009 will see an end to his 80 and 90 hour work weeks. I'd like to have him around for another 20 or 30 years, so this is important to me. Thank you to the new boss who is making this "hope" become a reality. 2009. Who knows what it will bring? I have plans for this to be the year of updating our house. I have plans for this to be the year of sewing and quilting to "cozy up" our home. I have plans to start doing a little pre-school homeschooling with my grandson (who, at the age of 3, is quite desperate to understand what these letters and numbers are all about). I have hopes of a two week vacation, heading out to Colorado to visit my son and daughter in law, and then heading to one of the most spectacular places on earth - Utah. I have hopes of a trip to New Hampshire for a good long visit with family and friends. I also have plans to be a better, more friendly neighbor. (I made a point yesterday of visiting with several neighbors to wish them a Happy New Year. Even my tree-cutting neighbor. I believe that grudge has been buried.) I have hopes of connecting more with my family -- my sisters, Gail and Sarah; my step-mother, Barbara; my niece, Bridget; my sister-in-law Wendy. These people are important to me and I need to do a better job showing them. Same for my BFF's Tricia and Paul (and his wife Jean). I love these people. I want make an effort to spend more time with them, though all of them (ALL of them!) live so far away. I have the eternal hope of being better organized. This will be the year of the Mother of All Yard Sales (in mid-May). Junk, begone! Clutter, out! Function over form! Simplify, simplify, simplify. In light of the upcoming house transformation, I have decided to "repurpose" the room I currently use as my office because it has transformed into the landing zone for all things that do not have a home. I am going to change the room into a small sitting room/library. Paperwork will go to my husband to file (he is MUCH better at it than I am!), and I will get a wireless notebook to replace my clunky desktop PC. Simplify simplify simplify. 2008 was a good year. We have a lot to be thankful for in this family. My son and daughter-in-law have turned their finances around, and both have very positive outlooks for their careers. My daughter is an extraordinary mother to my grandson, has made her health a priority in her life, continues to hold down a job of great responsibility, and continues to be financially independent. Her divorce will be final this month and we will all celebrate having a horrible man out of our lives completely (Thank you to a court system who understands that sometimes a father does not deserve Visitation of any kind!). My grandson thrives (despite his father's malevolent actions). At almost-three, Brayden now holds extensive conversations with me that include things like discussing the fact that his belly button is a circle. He is well-behaved and shows great empathy towards others' feelings. He adds so much joy and laughter to our lives. I am blessed to have him live so close to me. We all have hopes, we all have dreams, and Lord knows, I have lists for 2009. Every day is a new day, a new beginning. We can't change what happened yesterday, but we can learn from it, and move forward. Happy happy New Year.

You can't eat happiness

You can't eat happiness. You can't buy it. You can't wear it. You can't drive it, or drink it, or sell it, or steal it. You can't lock it away. You can't negotiate for it. You can't win it, you can't marry it, you can't inherit it, you can't cheat it. You can't smoke it, or inject it, or rent it or borrow it. You can't campaign for it or beg for it, or talk other people into giving you theirs. You can live happiness. You can create it. You can be it. You can give it to others. You can enjoy it. You can share it. You can claim it. You can have as much as you wish. You can enjoy it as much as you want, at any time, under any circumstance. You can work with it, play with it, worship, travel, eat, and sleep with it. Happiness is yours to live and yours to give, if only you will. It comes from the inside, and the best way to experience it is to get it flowing out. Forget about trying and striving to get happy. Just decide to be happy, and happiness is yours. From the Daily Motivator

The Tree Men Episode

As evidenced in a past post about a controversy with my neighbor over cutting trees down on my property without permission (he didn't -- but he would have if I hadn't been home to catch him), I do not like people cutting down my trees. Period. If you want to elevate my blood pressure, send me skitting across my yard ranting and raving and waving my hands in the air, the simplest way to accomplish this is to walk across my yard with a chainsaw in hand. I *do* understand, however, why the power company (Duke Energy) needs to cut branches away from the power lines. Every five years or so they drive in with their big trucks and their crews armed with chainsaws, hard hats and orange vests, and they butcher my trees. Although it pains me to the core, I understand it... I look the other way, turn the radio up, and ignore them. Until yesterday... I won't go into the unnecessary cutting of ENTIRE TREES when 9/10ths of the tree was growing AWAY from the power lines. (Sob) I won't embarrass myself by telling you that I was, indeed, in my yard flailing my arms around trying to get one idiot's tree cutter's attention before he completely destroyed one of the few full shade trees we have on the south side of the yard. What was once a 30 foot beauty is now a 12 foot stump. And suffice to say he completely ignored me and destroyed the tree anyway. MY tree. Now MY ridiculous, branchless 12 foot stump. In the back of our yard, we have a creek. If you're from New England, it's called a stream. In Ohio, it's a creek. The creek is not much more than a foot deep in it's deepest spots, but does have some wonderful little rock-formed waterfalls that make pleasant little creek-like sounds. So we built a little sitting area next to the creek, complete with a little deck and benches. From the deck there is about a 9 or 10 foot drop down to the creek. It's not so pretty in the winter months, but in the Spring, Summer and Fall when the leaves are lush and green, it is a rather nice, peaceful place to sit and read a book or watch Brayden throw rocks in the water. Now my restful little place looks like this: If you look in the far right hand corner of the deck, follow that tree up -- see? No branches left anywhere. It's a 12 foot stump. That group of neanderthals tree trimmers pulled the benches off the deck, then proceeded to butcher my trees, letting everything land in the creek and on my deck... and left it there. The branches you see on the deck are the entire top of the tree that used to stand to the right of the deck. Branches and trees fill the entire space from the deck across the entire creek.. a distance of about 15 to 20 feet. I'm not a happy camper today. It was a bit of relief to hear from two other neighbors that they are not happy campers either. Both are complaining about trees taken down that were not in any way growing towards the power lines. They, however, did get the trees that were cut cleaned up. My To Do List for today looks like this: 1. Call Duke Energy. Duke Energy's Tree Trimming Class Update: I called, they came back, the trees and limbs are gone (oh, and they cut down a few more while they were here just for giggles and grins, I guess), though the benches remain in the yard. That's OK, I can put the benches back myself.

The world's best job

I'm babysitting today -- well, for the afternoon. Since I spent most of my morning yelling at the tree guys (I'll save that for another post), I don't have time to blog today. But I know you, like me, need a smile. So here's a video for you. This is Matt. He gets PAID to go around the world -- yes, the WORLD -- to do this. I love it. I think I need to find a sponsor. Do you think someone would pay to have me make the bed, cook dinner, or clean the toilets...hmmm.... Probably not. Too bad I can't dance like Matt. Well, I can - but that job's already taken. Lucky Matt!