♪Oh The Weather Outside Is Weather...♪

I have been crafting up a storm and the man has been baking cookies fresh for Thing 1's lunches... peanut butter oatmeal. Yum!  Cookies make the house warm and it smells like the holidays already!  Generally I am ALL about making room for Thanksgiving so it doesn't feel like the redheaded stepchild of the holiday season, but this year man, it just seems like we need the OOMPH into Christmas.  Luckily for me, I have never had decorations for Thanksgiving and the stores decided to lump Halloween and Thanksgiving together this year.  Amazingly enough, I now have Thanksgiving décor due to the storewide "fall" clearances that did the lumping together! Haha!

 Ma and her man are doing well...we like him.  He might be around for Thanksgiving... hope so... he's fun.  It's going to be a small Thanksgiving this year, much like Christmas.  I'm just glad I finished shopping already.  I get to sit back and enjoy now.  Generally, what we do is take the Friday after Thanksgiving to decorate like so many people I'm sure do.  This year, I'm jumping the gun...and get this...at the request of Choners...he is usually VERY adamant about giving Turkey Day it's due.  Well, this year, he wants his cake and he's going to eat it too... Next Monday, whether the big one goes to day care or not, we are doing our Christmas décor.  It's something to pass the time and we might have Knott's plans on Saturday... but until that is certain I don't want to make any plans in stone.  So I say, the general idea will be to get out the Christmas awesomeness for Monday... and if Thing 1 goes, she will come home to a winter wonderland in the house :)  Also, I am planning on lights outside this year! Shhh, don't tell Mister... 

This weekend is family weekend, we're gonna see a lot of his family :)  I say his family, but they're really OUR family...It's funny, I just wanted to specify WHICH side of the family, mine or his...  I could say The Brown side...  But really, that doesn't help... us Irish have been known to have the fever.  So both sides are relatively brown.. hehehe...

Tuesday is Christmas pictures... I have been saying, I want to make more image heavy posts, but I haven't yet.  I think because I don't plan them THAT far ahead... so it's hard to do.  Also, I love my camera.  I love it SO much I'm afraid to leave the house with it...  I know.. shut up...  I got a filter for it to protect the lens so perhaps I would feel better about letting it bang around my back pack...  wrapped in a scarf...  and maybe a sweater.

Next years tax return already has a portion dedicated to my new lens.  My cousin Ace is in "the business" and he helped me out HUGE on shopping around for my next lens purchase... And the more Choni is working on his film project the more I think he will probably want to use the Nikon for projects...  A new lens wouldn't hurt!  Ace said that my camera body and specs are great, I should be getting great results when I put the new lens on ...next year...

I am LOVING the weather...cold. I love cold.  Snuggles, soup, hot cocoa, coffee NOT for my morning commute... aaaahhhh... Blankets on the couches... I LOVE blankets...  kid snuggles...  and when the decorations go up...the soft warm glow of the tree...  oh yeah... that's the stuff....

Today is my last work day of November and I start my staycation... Thing 1 asked if I had any time off that overlapped HER time off...so I made some... cause sometimes, you just have to.  I hope this allergy/cold thing goes away... Maybe with a little help from my friends Alka Seltzer and Nyquil... 

Too bad there's not a way to make people leave comments... I want comments...

A Soon-to-be Former Hoardita...

Many who know me well could classify me as a mediochre grade hoarder.  I am well aware of this fact.  But as all hoarders will, I defent my piles of crap.  They are collectables, they are sentimentality incarnate...  "I'm going to use that!" or "I know what I want to do with that, I just can't do that right now..."...  the latter actually DOES happen though...

And what's more fantastic about my hoarding? 

My hubby...

I have all this stuff in our house and I am married to man with a photographic memory.  That being said, when I am racking my brain for a How To Use something I often turn to my voice of reason...which is OUTSIDE of my head...thank GOD...

I was going through a moment recently (still going through it actually) and I wanted to toss the CRAP... and for some reason my sights got set on my crafting stuff...  That day it was crap and it was in my way...it must be expunged! 

But then came hubby...and he said "Cleaning's nice and all, I'm a big believer in it, but you're gonna regret this someday soon..."  I set my sights on something else and left the crafts alone.

When Harley lost her first tooth last summer we all were thinking "Woo hoo!!"  But my Woo Hoo turned into uh-oh when my fourth dimensional thinking kicked into gear in a way I couldn't explain if I tried...  When that happens, it's like "Inception" basically...  So I went from, "Aww my baby lost her first tooth" to "do I give her a quarter? a dollar? a half dollar? where the hell is she going to spend a half dollar and what if she thinks it is cool and wants to keep it and doesn't want to spend it and her piggy bank hole will not support a half dollar and what if she loses it under pillow in her room and her room is a mess and then I have to go in there undetected after she's asleep and play needle in the haystack in her room and it's gonna be dark and the baby will be sleeping and there wont' be any way that I can get in there and rummage under her pillow and her piles of blankets for a little tiny puppy tooth and how the hell did my mom do this for two kids two years apart and slip in and out of our rooms undetected and be so ninja and..."

LIGHT BULB

We had pillows...we had tooth fairy pillows...little tiny heart shaped white lacey pillows with little tiny white lacey pockets to hold said treasure post tooth pick up... the dollar.  I caved and went dollar.  Inflation ya know? 

A pillow was a must...  A MUST... so I said all that to say this...



Side 2...One Ruffle... I know...



Side 1 The Pocket Side



Because I am a hoarder, I was able to go into a pile of my crapting and pull out the goodies needed to perform a miracle in thirty minutes.  I made a tooth fairy pillow that was able to go under the bed THAT night and ta-da!  was replaced with a crispy folded dollar bill ...  Thing 1 was so pleased with her new pillow she started working on her second tooth...which came out soon after... Now she is NOT pleased because her teeth are in a falling out holding pattern it seems.  OH well... 

I am STILL looking for areas to thin.  It's odd owning our own house now.  We aren't moving anywhere any time soon and when we would be not so much packing up things, but putting them away is when we do the really big CLEAN.  There are gems I am finding myself needing to hold onto, for now.  I have a box of oil paints that were my Gma Mary's and they've lost their viscosity and I don't like oil painting...GARBAGE!  It feels good to clean and organize and empty drawers!!  I can't wait til we can NOT feel the need so much anymore... One day... but not today ...