A Lot of Changes in the Air

Happliness!

Happliness!

Like many people in the Northern Hemisphere, I look out my window and try to square the weather (finally winter! real snowfall! yay!) with reality (it’s…spring?).

Spring, of course, is a time of transition. It’s winter when it starts and summer when it ends – just as fall begins with those hot September days and ends with winter holidays welcoming back the light. So I’m trying to be happy that this much needed precipitation is here and hope for a slow enough thaw/melt that the ground is able to absorb the water and renew the earth, trees, groundwater, and so on. I guess another way to say it is that I’m trying to have an “April showers bring May flowers” mindset, starting with “Drab March days make way for those April showers.”  Far less catchy but perhaps as true?

I consider myself a homebody, especially during the darker and colder months, but last night I actually went to two fabulous events: a dinner party involving good friends, a great home brew, and a meal that culminated in a chocolate cake with bacon.  It was so incredibly, wonderfully, fantastically awesome. The host collected a suggested donation per plate to go toward the cause explained in the following paragraph.

The real better than sex cake.

It was even better than it looks, and it looks pretty flippin’ amazing!

Then Boyfriend and I headed over to a fundraising party in honor of a friend who died nearly two years ago. He was only 33 years old when colon cancer took him away from us. A group of us, including Boyfriend and my kidlets, will be doing a walk/run event raising awareness and money. I’ll post about it another time in more detail as the date for the walk approaches. The point for today’s musings is that a great group of friends got together and raised quite a bit of $, and we all had a blast while we were doing it. Boyfriend’s new favorite activity may very well be “Fun-raising.”

Today would have been the 35th birthday of our friend (if I can do basic math correctly). Between that, the two remarkably fun parties I was at with friends last night, the (pseudo)arrival of spring, and two new freelance writing/design projects coming my way within a week (because of my network of friends and family), my mind is definitely occupied with thoughts of renewal, camaraderie, the wonders of chocolate, bacon, and beer, and what seeds I should be starting for transplanting to the veggie garden.

It’s amazing how blessed I am with my amazing, creative, talented children; my kind, supportive, totally sexy boyfriend; and a group of loyal, funny, also creative and talented friends. I’m incredibly grateful for all of them.

Coming soon:

  • A review of the 3rd installment in the Day by Day Armageddon series by J.L. Bourne, Shattered Hourglass;
  • Details about the walk/run event and at least two more fun-raising events;
  • Hopefully, news that I landed the ghostwriting gig;
  • And a post about the WIP I mentioned in my last post, as I actually finished a project! Yay!

For now, off to bring the kiddo’s to their grandparents’ house for spring break. We really will go over some rivers and through the woods, and then 2-3 hours of driving along Lake Superior. This day is perfect for a drive with Mumford and Sons, as well as some quiet time for reflection, planning, and plain old enjoying the spectacular scenery.

Unplanned Break

Some of you may have noticed I haven’t posted in two months. As soon as I was getting a routine down with posting, life up and happened. My new semester started, I was in my first craft fair (more on that soon!), and then the waves of sickness in the house started.
No one wants to hear about someone else’s sickness, so I’m going to skip details. I am only going to say that between my two kids and myself, there has been at least one person sick in my house for nearly a month – and last Monday actually saw all three of us at home, sick.
I’ve gotten an odd amount of organizing done in that time, and I have lots of before pictures. After I figure out what to do with the remnants of the projects I’ll get some after pics to go with them – it doesn’t feel right to post about a project I haven’t quite finished.

Here’s a pic from my library as I think less about the many inches of snow we got here yesterday and more about the warm season ahead, with its gardening and get-togethers.
I’m so ready for spring!

 

 

This is a seriously pink flower!

Soon…

 

Some New Approaches to Life

I’m far from perfect – perhaps that’s why I don’t have New Year’s resolutions. I haven’t bothered thinking I’d follow through with them since I was about ten and I realized I couldn’t even keep a diary for 3 days, much less “be nicer” all year.

However, as I read so many entries, posts, updates, and whatever-elses about resolutions, I have been thinking about some of what MIGHT be called resolutions…if I could keep them. I’m fairly certain ‘good things’ is copyrighted by Martha Stewart, so I guess I’ll call them …

Things I’m trying (but don’t need to feel guilty about when I forget to try from time to time). Wait, that’s a horrible acronym.

Well, I guess the best way to put it would be to call them ‘approaches.’  Here are some of the recent approaches to life I’ve adopted.

Approach #1:

It’s OK that my house is messy. I’m still trying to organize it and keep it cleaner, but I have lots of other stuff going on, too. So cut the guilt and/or stress about it.

One of the approaches I’ve adopted is to be sure that I always put away at least one more thing than I took out. This is the sort of sustainable small change I can implement and remember. I’ve been trying this out for a few months now, and I’ll admit it would be going better if I remembered more frequently than ‘most of the time.’  Overall, though, it’s a low-key approach that keeps me tidier than doing nothing for long bouts followed by hours of tedious cleaning.

Approach #2:

Do the stuff I keep wanting to do and have no reason not to do. This means: trying for my crafty biz (seriously, if I had just one hour a week back from what I was spending online, loving other people’s shops, I’d have a decent little biz going right now), posting to the blog, doing things like going to the zoo or trying some of those DIY things on Pinterest.

Again, so far – going swimmingly. I’m posting to this blog fairly regularly, even though I never quite seem to have the pics I want ready or the little tutorials I have started are never quite finished… Because I got sick of waiting for that RIGHT TIME and the PERFECT POST.  I hopped online and in less than a week, I have a registered LLC, a federal tax ID, a state tax ID, and I’m scheduled to be in a craft fair on February 2nd.

One of the cutest ‘exhibits’ at the Minnesota Zoo yesterday. (There was a bit more snow yesterday…) (Photo boosted from MN Zoo website and not my work!)

Walked around the Minnesota Zoo yesterday with the kiddos and the boyfriend, and we all had a great time looking at the critters…including the tiger cubs and leopard cubs. SO. CUTE.

I hung the paper snowflakes on the mural of birch trees on my kitchen wall. I like them more than the beautiful matched-set glass ornaments I bought last year. Not bad for a few sheets of copy paper.

I hung the paper snowflakes on the mural of birch trees on my kitchen wall. I like them more than the beautiful matched-set glass ornaments I bought last year. Not bad for a few sheets of copy paper.

I cut out a bunch of paper snowflakes since I’d been wandering through Pinterest and came across some tuts for it and remembered how fun it was in elementary school…  It’s still fun. Lots of fun. 🙂  Wonderfully inexpensive Christmas / winter holiday decorations, and I get to keep them up at least through March if I don’t get sick of them first.

If only geometry class had been this pretty...

If only geometry class had been this pretty…

I also made a craft stick snowflake since I’d seen those around the ‘net as well, and then at my local art supply store. I meant to put glitter on it, but got busy with life and wound up hanging it as it was. I still think it’s pretty, as plain as it is. I plan to make more, though perhaps not ’til next year at this point. Putting this together brought me to appreciate geometric fabric designs much more, and makes me think I may need to play with some hexagon patterns soon.

Approach #3:

Eat the way I want to be eating more frequently.

I made a commitment to eating non-GMO, and while my store/co-op purchases are reflecting that, my lifestyle isn’t. I order pizza at least once a week from the local franchise…so tasty…and not a single ingredient I’d look at twice in the store. I find that I eat foods I crossed off of my list a long time ago much too often, and I get ill from them more easily lately.

I made beans and rice for dinner this evening. As we all know, it’s cheap, relatively healthy, and totally unglamorous. It tasted so good! And it honestly was easier than getting in my car, hopping on the freeway, and driving to and from the nearest drive-thru tex-mex place. I added a can of refried beans and a can of diced tomatoes to some still-hot rice (two cups dry), some chili powder, cumin, and salt, and that was it. We all added a dab of sour cream and a few dashes of hot sauce, and we all loved it.  Hurray for healthy(ish) cheap food!

And, this means breakfast tomorrow is cheap and easy. Leftover beans and rice + scrambled eggs = awesome!