Wait ... What happened?

Two days of no blogging???  So much for the 2012 goal of blogging every day! Well - it's a goal, not a mandate. Tuesday I fell asleep on the floor while stretching the kinks out of my back. Carpet. Padding. Concrete. Definitely not the most comfortable place to sleep - I must've been awfully tired! Wednesday - I simply forgot I was suppose to blog!  So here I am on Thursday!

So where was I? Oh yes. The top is together, waiting for borders/backing/binding. The house is still being ripped apart at the seams, but is looking good! Nothing like a nail gun going all day to keep you awake!

Yesterday I spent the vast majority of the day planning travel - California/Seattle, and France/Italy. That was fun! I'm going to dive into Rosetta Stone Italian and see if I can converse while we're there. Anybody know anyone I can practice with? If I pick up Italian OK, I'll give French a try.

So I've been listening to music (rather than books) on my walk for the last few days and wow did my time decrease! I went from 2:20 for 7 miles to just under 2 hours!!! I'm amazed! (and happy). I thought I was walking faster, but was shocked to see how much faster. So I went from a 20 minute mile to a 17 minute mile just by changing what I listen to. Lesson learned!

And that's pretty much what I've been up to! Thanks for stopping by!

Friday notes - nothing interesting

I'm so tired tonight that I wasn't sure I'd have the energy to write a post! I have been sewing and listening to music all day. There was a really TERRIFIC Sade CD - old - that I found hidden in the dust bunnies the other day when I decluttered there. It is most certainly among the best music of my listening day. The second best was (ready for this?) Englebert. (Humperdink. Remember him?) Funny how some of these old CDs are still just as enjoyable today.

I'm working on another quilt already. No pics till next week though: sneak peeks r-not-us!!

Only 6 days into the new year and I'm already discovering which of my new goals/resolutions are interesting to me and which are going to get tossed. In my Morning Pages I wrote "it's a goal, not a mandate" - remember that, everyone! Tossing goals with no remorse is also one of the good things about getting older. Realizing that there's a whole lot more time behind me than there is ahead of me is very freeing, so when you see me stopping some of my goals you'll know why; not enough time to keep doing  things I'm not passionate about.

I'm still passionate about "gettin' ridda stuff", though. I'm finding myself replacing a lot of the daily tasks on the 'official' declutter calendar with tasks of my own because the task of the day is either already done, or is not applicable to my household. This works! I had already decluttered the kitchen cabinets and have a "donation station", so I've been replacing those kind of tasks. It really does feel great to get rid of stuff that bogs down your brain just because you know it's there.

And I'm incredibly passionate about quilting. I envisioned retirement as follows: wake up "whenever", have coffee while I do my Morning Pages, go downstairs to sew and sew till it's time to go to bed. (Yes, I enjoy it that much!). Reality, of course, is drastically different and I find I have only a few hours to sew on any given day. Of course this is a lot more than I had when I was working, so that's a good thing.

So for another week or so, I'll continue to see if the passionate parts develop as they have this past week, then I'll make some tweaks to my 2012 goals/resolutions list. Life is good!

Thanks for stopping by!

Gettin' ridda StUFF

Wow, what a day! Stuff flew outta my house like cats running away from a sprinkler! I put a bunch of big items up on Freecycle and they were picked up today. I had other stuff for friends, and delivered all of that. So much room in my house now! (More room for fabric!!!!!) (kidding!)

All the plants had to be covered or brought in - hard freeze in northeast Florida tonight. I have two humongo ponderosa lemons still green and growing, so I covered the tree (bush) well and will hope for the best.

My sewing day consisted of finishing all the small 9-patches for the purple quilt I posted yesterday.

Wowza, the purple is so dark you can hardly tell it's purple! I listened to a bunch of good music while sewing - Lou Rawls, Johnny Mathis, Mariah Carey - old stuff, but great stuff! Before I knew it, all those little 9-patches were done - all 80 of 'em. Sometimes I forget how music can move me. Tomorrow I work on the bigger 9-patches (shown above, unsewn).

The photo prompt for today is "light": here's what I chose. (all taken with the phone).

Looking down at the candle - I think this looks cool!

Plain ol' lens

Plain ol' lens

Hipstamatic Roboto Glimmer Lens

 Hipstamatic Lucifer 6 Lens

I seriously wanted to photograph Luke Skywalker's light saber, but since I'm not consuming - and I don't know anyone with one laying around - I went for this "light" instead. I guess that means I won't be photo'ing Darth Vader for the "dark" prompt, either, but that tells you how my mind works. I also thought of Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter, but don't you think Dumbledore would better represent "light" than would Harry?

I almost - ALMOST- bought a Noro knitting book from Amazon but caught myself before proceeding to check-out. Cheesus, it would've been pretty funny if the un-consumer part of my resolve pooped out after only one day! And seriously, I already have more knitting books than I'll use (of course that has nothing to do with the price of eggs....)

The decluttering calendar is current (and then some, after today!). It's really so easy just doing one small task each day. Who knew? Of course it's been exactly 2 days. By the end of day 3 I may weaken!

Yummy steak for dinner. 6 minutes on the George (Forman Grill - too cold to cook out!). I love good meals that can be prepared fast.

So that was the day for Star Date -311004.87. How was yours?

Thanks for stopping by!

Number One

Well, I said I wanted to blog every day this year so I better get going!  I did finalize my 2012 goals/resolutions this morning after I finished Morning Pages. Forget the moon - I shot for Jupiter! Go big or go home, right?  The two biggies are (1) to become the un-consumer, which leads to #2 -  make a quilt a week for the year.

OOOOO. EM. GEE!  Did I really just put that out here to the blogosphere????  I did. Now I'm accountable.

I'm also doing a couple of photo challenges (in an effort to improve my photography) and a year-long de-clutter "challenge" (no further explanation needed!). Since I'll be traveling so much this year, I'm doubling up on the de-clutter challenge. It's really kind of awesome - just do a little every day.  (Find the clutter challenge here.)

Today's photo prompt was "street". I took these with my phone on my morning walk (no sunglasses needed this morning! The fog was pea-soup thick!!) Here's the first pic:

And here are a couple more (same view, same time), playing with Hipstamatic lenses.  I have no idea what I'm doing but intend to learn! I like this app so far. Lots of funky stuff to play with.

Here's the start of this weeks' quilt (also taken with the phone). This quilt is very purple!!!!!

I also downloaded the Camwow app - look at this funky stuff!
Here's the "original" (all these following were taken with my Ipad)

And here are just a few of CamWow's effects, still taking the same pic:

I love this sepia one!!!  The app is free; I think I'll pay the $1.99 to get rid of the watermark - it's fun and crazy!

So there's a part of julian date 2012001. Lots of sewing, music listening, and now I'm watching "The Dark Knight" as I blog away. It was a good day - I hope yours was too.

Thanks for stopping by!