washing rocks and other nonsense...

I am deep into "spring cleaning" mode, and it occurred to me as I was washing ROCKS that I may be just a teeny bit weird!  But then my kids walked in from school and Loch said, "oh, good thing you are washing those rocks, they were getting dusty"... I thought to myself either I'm not weird, or I'm warping my kids since they apparently see nothing wrong with it!

Truth be told, they are actually the rocks from a vase of water that had evaporated so they were scummy and needed it.  I have an obsession with rocks, they are everywhere in my house, in vases, scattered on bookshelves, I even have a couple of slabs of slate that are on my coffee table.  So my rocks are my chotzkies.

one can never have too many rocks!

I am officially caught up reading all your blogs, that took some time but it looks like you all had wonderful holidays from the photos I saw!

Since getting a dirty look from the mailman with my "hold mail" stack of seed catalogs upon our return, I have been pretty anxious to get planning and ordering for the Spring Garden.  Slight problem:  whenever I have a project that I LIKE doing, such as garden planning, sewing or the like, I need for my "space" to be uncluttered and pleasing when I begin.  So.... I started by rearranging the living room and then that morphed into tossing huge amounts of "stuff".  I only have one bedroom left, but that is the one that is destined to become both a sewing space AND office AND my bedroom - so now I am going to start tackling that tonight and hope that then I will be able to start my garden planning.  The joys of less than 1000 sq ft...

So let's review:  I can't seem to plan my garden unless my bedroom is clean??  yep, wierd...

Good news from the week since we returned:

1.  I got the other side of the duplex rented.  I'm sure you can imagine what a stress this has been, not too many people are looking to move during the holidays/middle of winter.  Since we are a one-income family, I was not looking forward to carrying 2 mortgages with no rental income.  Our new renter is a really nice single military gal with a 6 year old boy and an Australian Cattle Dog - how perfect is that?  My boys will love having someone their age next door and we are overjoyed about the dog, LOL... that's the one herding dog breed we haven't had and we only allow ourselves 2 dogs at at time!  If you come for a visit, beware of the ankle biters circling you!  Seriously, we are very lucky to have found such a nice person as a tenant and are looking forward to moving day in February.

2.  I got a new "old skool" washing machine!  Hubby ripped apart the LG front loader as soon as we got in from vacation and he easily found the problem:  needs a new bearing and spider shaft.  I researched online and found that the bearings are only 19.95 but are terminally backordered because this is a huge problem with this machine, and the spider shaft is 104.95, yikes!  Under normal circumstances, I would order the parts and fix the darn thing but we decided that $125 is too much to spend on fixing it AGAIN, and we were spending $15 a week at the expensive laundromat.  This is the 3rd time the LG has needed fixing, and no guarantee that it won't take a dive yet again, since that seems to be a common theme with these washers.  I am now the proud new owner of a $299.00 basic super capacity top loader no-funny-business-no-digital washer.  It has pretty much been running all week, I love the loud sound of it, it means it's working!

Scheduled for the rest of the week:  finish cleaning bedroom, come up with a plan for a sewing space, try to repurpose some things for craft storage, write Loch's packages for school next year (he is eligible for 2 gifted schools, so he needs a separate app for each, ugh!), write down some goals for the next year, and get to those seed catalogs before they start reproducing!  Oh shoot, the mail is here again...

I also wanted to thank Apple Pie Gal for the wonderful gift that was waiting for me when we got home! She and a few others have been huge inspirations for me to get moving on my desire to sew - apparently she is bribing me over to the dark side with temptations of fabric creations :)  ...

She obviously remembers my massive influx of peppers last summer!  A cute pepper coffee sleeve, and a  perfect patriotic little wallet!  I know just what I'm going to put in it too... that is going to be my new "sewing purse", where I will keep my craft store rewards cards and sewing stash money!  Hubby is cringing now!

p.s.  I am loving reading everyone's seed orders this year, it's keeping me motivated and it looks like it's going to be another fun garden year watching everyone's harvests!