Eh, never mind

It's too much of a pain to declutter the rooms in order of my previous post's list. And I decided I really don't want to post photos of every room in my house all over the internet. So, never mind. Decluttering is still going on a good clip around here, but I'm too into the process to stop, take photos and write about it. I just want to DO it and get it done.

Yesterday I did a lot in the dining room, pulling out enough books to fill three boxes. Some will go to the homeschool convention to sell at the used book table and some to the regular bookstore and others to friends. Still trying to get the Christmas stuff into the garage. Three bags of RE stuff have been gone through and mostly recycled. I swear, each year I teach, I just have a pile of papers and things left in a bag and I never touch it or go through it again. I just start a new tote bag every year! Not very efficient but then again, I haven't taught the same curriculum two years in a row either. Hmm, that could explain it.

Reading
1) My Daily Bread: A Summary of the Spiritual Life by Anthony J. Paone, S.J.
2) Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
3) still plugging through my third go-through of The Lord of the Rings...got waylaid sometime before Christmas and haven't really picked it back up since
4) the Percy Jackson books--finished No. 3 last night--fun but not great--sort of disturbing when the characters "pray" to their Olympian parents and offer sacrifices at mealtimes. Hmm.

Watching
1) Still trying to get around to watching the end of "Food, Inc." so I can return it to Netflix. Makes you never want to eat again. Or become a farmer and raise your own food.
2) Hoping to see "Fr. Damien of Molokai" this weekend. I think I can squeeze it in the budget!

Listening
1) CDs from Christmas--"Take Me Home" from Celtic Thunder (not as good as the previous CD) and "Celtic Woman" from...duh. We have some of these songs already on the greatest hits album but still nice.
2) Old CDs--Riders in the Sky singing songs from "Woody's Roundup"--still love that yodeling and cowboy music--Ewan likes it too! Take Six's first CD--had it 20 years!--Mary don't you weep, Get away Jordan!, David & Goliath...and the giiiii-ii-ii-ii-ant BOOM! he dropped dead...little David made a....goood shot! Hmm, I wonder if I have Steve Taylor on CD somewhere around here....

Blogging challenge for 2010

Goodbye, 2009! Here we go, into "the future," 2010! Shouldn't we be living on Mars by now?

I've chosen my blogging challenge for the new year and, no surprise, it's the decluttering challenge:

"Declutter and simplify every room in our house aiming towards minimalism, one room per month, taking before and after photos documenting the experience. Conveniently, we have 11 rooms in our house (4 bd, 3ba + LR, DR, KI & den/office) and the other random spaces (halls, linen closet, stairwell) could make up a 12th room."

Good thing I chose that one, because I've already started! Here's the schedule I am proposing (to be modified as necessary):

January: Master Bedroom (aka NW bedroom)
February: SW Bedroom (was Fiona's room)
March: SE Bedroom (was Helena's room)
April: NE Bedroom (was Ellie & Ewan's room)
May: Kids' Bathroom
June: Master Bathroom
July: upstairs hall, linen closet, stairwell
August: Living Room
September: Dining Room
October: Kitchen
November: downstairs bathroom, hall closet, understairs closet, laundry room
December: Office

The "official" name of this challenge is hereforth declared to be:

the 2010 "minimize my home" challenge.

You are welcome to join in the fun~don't forget the before & after photos! Wish me luck!

Happy New Year!

Preparing for Christmas

Finally, we are in the fourth week of Advent! We went to get our tree on Saturday and spent the rest of the evening putting up decorations. The kids made about fifty paper ornaments earlier in the month from old Christmas cards. They look great on the tree! I hung all our angel ornaments on a wreath in the front window; it needs a little something still. Lights or stars or something else.... Sunday evening, Fiona and Helena sang beautifully at the "Readings and Carols" program at St. James. Just a bit of cleaning, cooking and organizing left to do before Christmas. Oh, and perhaps a trip to the religious goods store to replace our Baby Jesus creche figure (at last). After three years, I guess he's found a new home elsewhere. Merry Christmas!

A year of blogging

Several blogs I have enjoyed in the past have become very successful by using the same gimmick: do something, or refrain from doing something, for 365 days, a full calendar year. It's a satisfying venture for both the author and the reader; follow along as the author tries some radical experiment, vicariously experiencing the the ups and downs while knowing that the experiment's conclusion is only 12 months away. Some examples:

• Wear the same outfit everyday for a year - Little Brown Dress
• Cook all of Julia Child's recipes in a year - The Julie/Julia Project
• Use the crockpot 365 days in a row - A Year of Slow Cooking
• Eat nothing but locally-grown foods for one year - The 100-Mile Diet and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
• Buy nothing "Made in China" for a year [a book, not a blog, but should have been!] - Sara Bongiorni
• Buy nothing at all for a year - The Compact
• Live without a car for a year - A Year of Living Car-lessly
• Go without electricity & other mod cons in a city apartment for a year* - No Impact Man
• Eat nothing but bacon for a month - Mystery Science Theater 3000 guy (honorable mention)
• Eat nothing but meat (& water, presumably) for a year - Vihjalmur Stefansson [no blogging in early 20th C., but would have made a good one!]

Search for "A year of" or "A year without" blogs for more examples. I asked my children what I could chronicle in my blog for a year. They came up with "sleep on the floor for a year," "sleep outside for a year" and "sleep in the living room for a year." Is there a message here? I swear, I don't snore! I replied that I wasn't interested in any challenge that would get in the way of family togetherness. (Fiona also offered up the idea of "wearing nothing but dresses for a year" but that didn't quite fulfill my desire for radical change.) Below are my own ideas for a 2010 blog challenge, ranging from mildly challenging to more severely so. Some are things you may do already, others are activities you might never wish to do or hope to try. All have some appeal to me, but not all are realistic to accomplish.

• Live without the microwave oven for a year
• Make 365 bentos, one for each day of the year
• Pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day for a year
• Go to Mass every day for a year
• Write down prayer petitions and praises every day for a year
• Speak nothing but German every day for a year (I think my children and the folks at church would get tired of this game real quick!)
• Lose X pounds in a year (easier said than done)
• Eat no gluten every day for a year (Wait! I accomplished that one already! ha ha)
• No TV for a year
• Read a book a day for a year
• Write a letter a day for a year (the paper kind you send in the mail, not email!)
• Draw or paint something every day for a year
• Stay within the city limits of Lake Stevens for a year
• Pay off all our credit card debt in one year (by radically changing our diet to beans & rice or similar, forgoing all unnecessary spending and severely curtailing all family fun)
• Declutter and simplify every room in our house aiming towards minimalism, one room per month, taking before and after photos documenting the experience. Conveniently, we have 11 rooms in our house (4 bd, 3ba + LR, DR, KI & den) and the other random spaces (halls, linen closet, stairwell) could make up a 12th room.
  

Which challenge do you think would make the most interesting blog? Being on a minimalism kick right now, I am leaning towards the last challenge, but paying off the debt at the same time would be nice. :) Even if most people don't blog about it, most of us make resolutions for the new year. Best of luck to you as you consider challenges to tackle in 2010!

If you know of any other blogs (or books) with a "a year of/without" theme, I would love to hear about them. Thanks!

* Re: No Impact Man. Colin Beavan's aim was greater than just living without electricity, but it's hard to sum up in one phrase. He gradually worked at reducing his "carbon footprint" by reducing his energy outputs for daily living in many areas. By the end of the year, he used only mass transit or bicycle for transport, bought all food locally at the farmer's market, used only a solar powered laptop and no electricity otherwise. He washed the family's clothes by hand in the bathtub, including the baby's diapers and so on. I haven't cared much for his blog since then, but the year he was actually living the experiment was fascinating!

St. Nicholas Day, 2009

Cleaning the shoes is the first step...

Fiona and Helena also put their wishlists into their shoes. In the morning, they found this....

Candy and a little cloth/wooden doll in small felt stockings for each child! There was also a special procession in honor of St. Nicholas and a blessing for children at Mass at the cathedral today. We also received a beautiful advent calendar published by St. James featuring the east and west facades of the cathedral. It is gorgeous!

Thank you St. Nicholas!

Prepare ye the way of the Lord!

For KK & RF & all other MS fans of the daily bento preview

Back by popular demand...David's lunch. GF spaghetti, Greek yogurt with honey, two apples and cheese. Pretty simple.

This is what happens when you forget your lunch box at work; you get your three-year-old son's box instead.

Family life updates - Nov. 2009

1. We've been down with The Flu--yes, that one. Not as bad as it could have been. Mostly fever, cough, aches, more coughing.... Tylenol and lots of fluids, tissues and cough drops have seen us through. Hopefully we are on the last few days of it.

2. Great Wolf Lodge water park & hotel: lots of fun. Remember to bring Tylenol next time. As I've been told, us middle-aged persons were not made for hurtling through tubes of water at high speed! Wave pool was the best. Kids had a blast.

3. Open Wednesday website here; very cool hand-illustrated weekly lectionary readings and visual reflections on the Gospel.

4. My new Corelle Livingware Classic Cafe Red dishes. Love 'em! Cleaned out the whole dishes cupboard and the top of the fridge for good measure. Started in on the pots and pans cupboard but need some sticky hooks to hang the roasting rack and splatter guard to finish it off.

5. Advent starts this Sunday! Fiona made this very neat Advent wreath with the middle school youth group last week. The logs and greens are gathered from the parish property every year and the youth sell them to parishioners as a fund-raiser.

6. Fiona and I attended the "Medieval Cooking from Primary Sources" class at Falling Leaves Ithra in the Canton of Wyewood over the weekend. The who in the what in the where? It was my first SCA event in a decade, since Fiona was a toddler! We reconstructed a recipe for Pippin Puddings and baked them there on site. Super fun to catch up with friend Anne-Marie and introduce Fiona to the "Current Middle Ages." I think we'll be doing more of it in the future.

7. My brother got married on Oct. 30 to Erin Musolf of the lovely state of Wisconsin. We traveled to San Diego for the wedding, where Ellie was a flower girl for her second time and Fiona and Helena graduated to usher status. It was a very short trip. The only sightseeing we did was Cabrillo National Monument and several stores as we ran around getting our wedding clothes and gifts.

8. I am re-reading "The Lord of the Rings" very slowly. I cannot tell you how relaxing this is in the cold winterish evenings throughout all the little stresses and illnesses we've had lately. I've been at it a couple weeks and I'm only up to "The Council of Elrond." Lovely! The poetry especially is a treat right now. I'm having visions of doing up the bedrooms in a Middle Earth theme. ha ha

9. A Kids Gluten-Free Support Group has started up in the area. I'm going to try and make it to their next meeting in December. It's being held at Pizza Works which sells gf pizza/pasta. We now have four restaurants in the area selling gf pizza and we are by no means in the "big city." Pretty amazing!

10. I watched an entire season of "Dancing with the Stars" for the first time ever thoroughly enjoying all the performances of my childhood heartthrob Donny Osmond! I think he will win it! They would have to get Bruce Boxleitner or Pierce Brosnan on there next for me to watch another season though. :) Or maybe Lynda Carter!

Have a happy Thanksgiving day!