Easter Time

Ham is baking nicely in the oven, spuds are peeled and are in a nice milk bath with some onions and have just joined the ham. Easter supper is under construction. Just for me, I have some nice tossed salad and for dessert there will be ice cream. I even splurged and bought a chuck of real on the bone ham. So yummy. I love ham and scalloped potatoes. Its the meal one should have at Easter in my mind anyway. I'm cooking I may as well cook what I want.

I am currently on days off. I have the whole entire next week off and I have many many many things to do. What will actually get done is hard to say but I have a list for just in case I get spurred into action. I was going to paint my bedroom but if I put that off for a bit, The Banker, Teddy Bear and Kit Kat will help, so that got shelved for the moment. Second on the list is cleaning out the shed. I can do that a bit at a time so I am thinking tomorrow I will jump on that band wagon.

I FINALLY got the last of the Christmas decorations hauled to the basement. Its only Easter time, what was the rush? In taking them down, I got the puppet boxes up and now those little critters are contained. They are not in several little bags all over the living room

Production is coming along quite nicely. I am very pleased with the pace of it all. I have two more dinosaurs to make and I will have all I need of them. I can move onto porcupines.

I want to start a quilt and I want to work on my craft room. I have enough to keep me busy over the next week, that is for sure. I also need to get the tires changed out on the car. I can hear my poor credit card whimpering as I type this.

I went to the doctor for my regular three month tune up. He agreed with me that my wrist does not need to be operated on at this time. I will put it to the test with a quilt soon but for now its vastly better than it was. Very little numbness in the fingers at all. Everything else was fine. He looked at my throat and then told that my throat would feel sore and that the soreness would effect the sound of my voice. Can we all say Captain Obvious??? He gave me a prescription for amoxicillin which I never filled. May as well take skittles as that stuff. I am over it almost anyway. I have my voice back and my throat is no longer sore as of today so I am happy about that.

I have done a very little scrapbooking today. worked on the mountain of laundry I had piled up. Towels, sheets, blankets, my clothes. I am down to just two loads left to do. I have made puppets and watched tv. Its been quiet but that's how it goes.

Tomorrow I may start the shed and then on Tuesday The Banker and I are doing one of our fun shopping days. The upstairs bathroom is going to get a good cleaning and the red spare room is getting put back together.

For now I have a lovely supper to consume and some tv to watch. Happy Easter one and all.

Toodles,
Linda

Ramblings

Its been a while but then I have been sick AGAIN and I a rightly and mightily fed up with feeling sick and tired. Cold and chest congestion/infection this time. Dry cough which not only annoying its so frustrating|!! Bought drugs that promised to help with it all but they have done little or nothing but take my money and fill me with false hope. SO I feel miserable, drag myself to work as much as I can because I have already received two "non disciplinary" warnings about taking sick time. Don'r get me started on that topic. I can rant for days but since there is some disbelief as to the validity of my sick time I will force myself to work if I possibly can. Its the principle of the thing.

I had a heart stopping moment in the last couple of weeks. I went and changed the table cloth in the dining room and in the process revealed this:

My heart tried to stop. I thought it was paint but afer I started to breath again I think it was a water mark. I set to work on it with Murphy's oil soap, lemon oil and this cloth I bought nearly 30 years ago for just thing purpose and was on its last legs, called a Miracle cloth. I finished its life off but it helped.

I could scratch through the mark with my nails so applied one of my Euro scrubbers to the spot and worked and worked and worked.

Those scratches are from me. It took a lot of elbow grease but in the end I got it to look like this

Not the best but decidedly better than it started out. The table needs to be refinished badly. I wish the Historian was here, he did such a good job of those things but he's not, Maybe I will take a crack at it one of these days. I am just glad its as good as it is. My Miracle cloth is done so I don't know what I will do if I end up in this mess again.

I fulfilled a dream to day. For some time now I have been in hot pursuit of a Christmas decoration that I wanted in the worst way and now I have one. I picked him up today

Having this little guy makes me happier than I can possibly tell you. He need some paint touch ups but that is nothing. He is going to look so cute sitting by my front step next year. It will be amazing.
I am also impressed that I only bought one of them. The lady had four but I fought my natural instincts and just took one. One is all I need. I have to stop doing that buy in bunches thing that I love to do.

Not much else going on here.  I have been spending most of my time trying to kick this bug out of my system which means I sleep as much as I can. My oldest nephew is in the hospital at the moment and I am sending all sorts of good wishes his way. Just want him healthy and back on his feet again.

Teddy Bear and I went to the new Beauty and the Beast movie. We loved it. So nice to lose yourself in a fairy tail once in a while. Puppets are still in production and I am still trying to get the house in shape. You know same old same old.

Toodles
Linda

Weekly Roundup.

I have had a lovely week. I recovered from whatever it was that knocked me off my feet for those three days last week and I am feeling my old self again. I am glad, I am not a fan of being unable to do for myself.

I had a lovely suprise this past week. A dear former co-worker took the time on her way to her home town with her kids to stop in and say "hi". We had a great working relationship and I really missed her when she left. So easy to work with and we really got on well as a team. I knew she was talking her kids to see where she grew up but I never dreamed she would be stopping in.

She brought me flowers!! I was so touched. It was so nice to see her, even if it was just for a brief visit.

Tulips  I love tulips. This was how they looked on Friday and this morning they looked like this

Its the first day of spring and these little beauties made it all the more real. 

I also got some very good news from home, made me extremely happen and took a worry off my mind. That's all I 'm sayin' cause its private but it sure made my day!! 

I finally got some things done that I have been avoiding around the place. I managed to cut the bed spread I bought to cover the chair Desi likes to sleep in in half. Now I have two to cover the chair. One to be on it and one to be in the wash. It is just another of those little jobs that I avoid and yet are no big deal. I also hung up my "S" which has been hanging around since before Christmas. Honestly I wonder at myself sometimes.

I think I have finally got on top of the magazine situation in this house. I sorted them most of Saturday but that is such slow going. I cannot just recycle them, I have to look through them and well you know..........Squirrel!! At long last I have caught up. Recycled those that needed to go, passed on those that I could and kept a very very few. 

I made soup, the best dang cauliflower soup I have ever made. I want to drink the entire pot of it non stop!! So yummy and I don't often say that about my cooking. I made pudding, I roasted a pork tenderloin. In other words I am on top of things for lunches next week. Another thing that is rare in this house. I am usually floundering.

I got  to have afternoon tea with the Hostess on Saturday!! Its always fun to see her. We get together and have a great chat now and then, I find in some way she always challenges me to do better. In a nice way , its not pushy,  just gentle incentive to work at something that will better me. We also share a lot of the same beliefs. That is wonderful, I can say stuff and she does not look at me like I am off my meds. 

So another week begins. Not sure what will happen but I can say that the puppets are still coming along nicely. 

This time round its Cows and then pigs but I have to get some pink yarn. Oh darn, I have to go to the craft store yet again!!

Toodles,

Linda

March is NOT my Favourite

I just dawned on me that I did not post last week. You would think that when you only post once per week you could manage to get it done. 'Parently not.

I cannot remember what I did last weekend. I worked on the puppets, the house and mostly I think I just took it easy. I got some paperwork done and that is all that is coming to my mind. My never ending adventure packed life is hard to keep track of at times. ( insert big eye roll here)

We had a bugger of a storm here this week. We did not have it as bad a some people got. One of the guys from our office was stuck on the highway home for 16 hours.It was a mess.

A tiny bit of it tried to get into the house to get warm. When I saw this I was sure the back door would be blocked but it wasn't. My back path was snowed in but not horribly, Thank goodness I have been parking the car at the front of the house.

Not sure I will bother to shovel this. My shoveling boys have not been around so I think I will leave this. I did get the front done so I could get to my car. It was about the same mess. Got to work on Tuesday, got there inspite of the roads being either glare ice or covered with sizable snowbanks. Got from the car to the sidewalk on the ice without landing on my butt. I saved the face plant for the sidewalk in front of the building. Went down like a swan. Falling is not the problem, getting up is. So I floundered about in the snow like a bogged down hippo. Don't get me wrong I had help. People rushed to be of assistance which touches my heart. Such brave souls, I am not easy to pick up. My other fear of a falling is yanking some good Samaritan off their feet and hurting them as they try to get me back on my feet. I was very close to the steps so I flopped about for a bit and got a hold of the hand rail. With that and the helpers I managed to get to my feet with all but my dignity intact.

The next day I came down with a very lovely case of the flu. The whole lovely yucky mess of it. Stayed home, close to the facilities for the next three days. Its just today that I can eat and feel like doing something. I had to cancel my hair cut, my doctor's appointment, paint night and I even missed out on No Cook. I had toyed with the idea of meeting them for the after coffee but once it came time top go, it just seemed too much like work to get ready to go. I was in bed by 8:30 on Friday night. Woke up around 10 and then was awake until going on 5:00 am. Not a happy camper, I hate when that happens but I have slept so much the last three days I was probably slept out. I am very happy to announce that I am feeling much better today. 

Lucy and I watched movies while I was in bed. She was fascinated with the tv for awhile and then she flipped into "my human is watching tv in bed and I am a cat " mode and most of the movies looked like this for me.

. 

or this

Why they do this I have no idea but they all do it. Brats.

So I am better, on the mend, however you want to put it. I even managed to go out today and do some errands. A desperate need for kitty litter will make you move. That an another 50% off coupon from the craft store. There have been three in the last little while. Three trips to the store and I got this:

and then this to add to my collection in the punch buggy:

The  Punch Buggy is what is what I call this

I crack myself up!! I have come to the conclusion that I have more punches than I need so I am stopping. Today I got stuffing for the puppets with my coupon. I have all the bags I need and I have been really watching the sales so I have not paid full price for much of the puppet materials. I am making an effort to save where I can. More of an effort I should say. love those coupons.

Puppies and Kitties are in production at the moment. On schedule so far.

Today I am missing my Dad. 38 years have gone by since I got that awful phone call to tell me he was gone. I miss him. I will always miss him.  I wish he was still here although I know he would be very old. I would still love to talk to him, get some advice, just spend a few more minutes with him. He was gone before I got enough time with him and I so regret that. Sigh. 

Toodles

Linda

My Current Public Enemy Number One

Do you have something that drives you up a wall, makes you crazy and just seems to be determined to make your life a complete misery?? I do and I have done battle with it/them for years and I am 'bout to my breaking point.

What is it that has pushed me to the brink?? Lunch containers. Little plastic or glass or whatever they are made of containers to put your choice of luncheon food into. I have for years been in pursuit of the perfect set of containers and the end result is I have a ton of them and very few are actually the right sizes. If they are the right sizes the lids disappear into some black hole in my house. If I have the lid, the base is no where to be found. Amazingly the wrong sized ones are always right there, easy access.

Don't tell me to store the lids in a basket, or store them together or buy the ones that the lids snap on the bottoms so they are always together. I have tried every storage method I can think f  and I am fixin' to snap myself. The little bastards are livin' a life of their own when I am not looking. ARRRRGH!!!! My collection has now exploded out of the container cupboard and are taking over the laundry room. I hate them.

This morning I went in search of a container to put my yogurt in. All sorts of bottoms in the basket and not a lid in sight. I put them away together, I swear to goodness I do. I think they are like lemmings and leap to their death behind the deep freeze. They know that is not getting moved anytime soon because its a pain to do it. They are back there laughing at me. I can almost hear them.

I am to the point where I want to hurl them all out each and everyone but that would mean I would have to start all over again . I could give  up eating lunch I suppose. Yeah that is not going to happen anytime soon either.  I am defeated by little lumps of plastic.

I need to grit my teeth, get rid of the ones I do not use or that are just not the right size. The means I need to do battle not only with them but with my "oh my goodness, I may need this at some point in the future, I need to keep it". I am a my own worst enemy. I will do it though, and soon. I am fed up to the back teeth with seeing stupid plastic containers all over and yet never the right ones.

ok, moving on!!

I managed to get some more organizing done in the craft room. I swapped out some of the smaller plastic containers for bigger ones and purged out half a garbage bag of junk from the top half of the cupboard in the craft room

Before

After

There is now a spot to store my scrapbooking paper that is not on the floor of the craft room or on top of the boxes. I got rid of a ton of little bottles of craft paint that have been dried out for years. Things were put into boxes with other things that are similar. I will go through it again as I work my way around the room and thin it down even more. I need to go though my old sewing patterns and get rid of the ones I will never sew with again. It feels good to get this done. 

I emptied all of these:

Some I will use in other places in the house. One of them will be used to house my upholstery staplers and staples. One of them will be for my lovely new power drill (if it fits)  and the drill bits. Another for paint brushes to keep them from getting their bristles all bent up. The ones I can't use Teddy Bear and KitKat will take off my hands.

I am also purging some of the boxes I have just here and there. Stuff gets put into theses little cardboard boxes with out me really knowing its happening. Next thing I know I need something and then I don't know where it is. The boxes get shoved into this room and then it just all adds to the mess. My Mom tried her best to teach me to put things away when I drag them out, or put it where I would go looking for it. I never really learned that lesson. Not because of any failure on her part, just shear stubbornness on mine.  I am still trying to overcome this part of my nature,  at this point in my life. 

I do think as long as I keep trying, I am ok. Its the day I give up that I really have a problem!!

Toodles

Linda

Well That Did Not Go as Planned

So I took two vacation days this week and I had a great "to do" list made up. I was going to get some of the things done that I have been putting off, Things were going to happen, stuff was going to be accomplished. You know where this is going don't you? Not everything got done. In fact precious little on the list got crossed off. It the same old story over and over again. I am sure you are tired of it, I know that I sure am. But not tired enough to make the changes required.

It was Valentines Day last week. Mostly it does not bother me, but this year I have to admit I was feeling a tad sorry for myself. So I did what I usually do, I threw food at the problem. (Yes I have issues don't judge). I bought myself my all time favourite ice cream:

Expensive and oh so good and in trying to enjoy it, I ended up in a wrestling match with two furry little brats.

Ice Cream? Mama got ice cream? Share??

Ice Cream? Share? I love  Ice Cream!!!

I did not share. I am not sure chocolate is good for cats. Had it been vanilla they would have got to have a taste but no chocolate for the brats. Its not good for them or for me for that matter but I would get over it. We had quite the tussle but I won the day. 

So back to my days off. I did manage to get the kitchen and the living room sort of whipped into shape yet again. At least now someone could stop in with out me having to cringe. I made some more puppets and am currently three puppets ahead of schedule. I organized my yarn stash. Now all the puppet yarn is in one container, the dish cloth yarn in another and the odd bits in a third place. I emptied three baskets in the process which frees up some floor space in the living room. So nice to have the yarn together, makes it easier for me to know what I have and if  I need to hit the craft store.

 I did some scrapbooking, not something that was desperately in need of doing but its fun and I am easily distracted. So I can happily say this is 99.9% finished.

Just a few more pictures and some journaling and I can put it to bed. I also added some wedding pages to the Maritime album. Someone drew it to my attention that I needed to have some wedding pics in with the trip pictures. The Pilot and The Teacher getting hitched was the main reason I went down east in the first place after all. So I did that as well.

Oh yes fun  fact number 112, apparently my wrist does not like my lovely new wrist brace:

I have been very care to keep the brace clean and keep my wrist clean and dry but this happened anyway. Soooo incredibly itchy. I have managed to reverse it and still wear the brace. Strips of flannelette around my wrist has fixed the problem. Thank goodness!!  I have to wear the dang thing because The best thing ever is that this week I managed to hem a pair of pants. That act in itself was not impressive but I did it by hand!!

I have not been able to hold a fine needle since Christmas, so I take this as a wonderful sign. My fingers and thumb are still numb and tingly but they are getting better. Made me do the drunken monkey dance of joy let me tell you.

So that was my week in a nutshell. Not quite what I had planned but that's ok. I may not have done all the chores but I did some fun stuff too. The Banker and I  had a lovely breakfast out. We did No Cook as usual. Kit Kat, The Sailor and I went to see the movie, The Great Wall, then out for coffee afterward. We ran into Teddy Bear and a friend of hers and ended up having coffee together. Today Teddy Bear brought me a coffee this afternoon. She stores Christmas and Birthday gifts over here, far from curious little eyes and this safe storage usually gets me a coffee delivery. It was lovely. Birthday Twin and I have been texting up a storm, like we do when we are both at home.

I am trying not to think of work tomorrow. I am concentrating on the fact the house smells of roast chicken and I have the entire evening ahead of me to work on more puppets.

Toodles

Linda

Quiet Weekend

Pot of homemade chicken soup simmering on the stove, the cats are snoozing, first load of laundry chugging away in the machine, dish washer emptied and loaded again, puppet production is on schedule so  all is well with the world. At least my little corner of it. Its been a lovely quiet weekend.

I have been home most of the weekend. I finally got the last of the Christmas stuff put away. I figured it was time since it is almost Valentine's day. I am not sure what is up with me lately but I sure do not do things like I used to. I just don't seem to care like I should. Oh well I am working on it. Christmas is away and I spent most of this weekend puttering around the house, putting lots of things away and straightening up others. I have done a lot and I have a lot more to do.

I realized last weekend that I needed a container for the infamous circle punches. As always my first thought is to head to the store and buy something. I am trying to reverse that habit, so I try to make myself think about what I need before I spend money that I should not. Shop the house before I shop the store. It was because of this that I remembered these

These two containers had been stuffed full of old crochet cotton. What to do with the crochet cotton, it has to go somewhere so I can put the punches in their new home. More thinking,  which made me remember this:

The Banker was getting rid of this container sometime ago, so I took it and I stuffed a bit of material into it just for the time being. Now it looks like this:

I found a new spot for the material and the crochet cotton fits perfectly. Because this is a narrow container it stands on end and slides into the spot the other two containers came out of with no problem. Hidden away in the craft room.

The circle punches have a proper container AND now I have an empty one as well just waiting to be the home for something in the future These containers have handles in the top so they are perfect for scrapbooking equipment.  All this without spending a dime !! Using things that I already have in the house!! When I take the time to think this stuff out and it works out like this it makes me so very happy. I am the first to admit, I think to buy something far to quickly. Gotta tighten the purse strings so I can get to Scotland. Small triumphs!!!

I have two days off this week. It will work out to a total of five with the long weekend. I have plans to do some things I have been putting off and to get some organizing done in the craft room. Maybe I will finish the 2016 scrapbook and get some pages added to my New Brunswick book. I already have a "to do" list made for those days. I have Teddy Bear's chairs to recover and a lampshade to recover and the list goes on and on. 

Craft sale prep is chugging along nicely. I have the little brown paper shopping bags purchased for putting the puppets into when they are purchased. Those 50% off coupons at the local craft store made that happen. I think I will get a couple of bundles if smaller ones for the people that will just buy dish cloths. I am making a point of taking advantage of those really good coupons when they come up. Giving those pennies all the pinches I can. 

So I am looking foreward to only three days of work this week. To having five days off and getting some things done around the house. I have not done much this week. Sort of just gave myself some days to do nothing, but now that needs to change. 

Now I need to change out the laundry and get back to puppets. I am one puppet ahead of schedule and I want to keep going. My fingers are still numb so I watch that I don't over do it but I need to work on them as much as I can since I am committed to the sale this fall. 

Hope you weekend is going well wherever you are.

Toodles

Linda