who has the best husband in the world? I DO! here he is trying to unclog our kitchen sink in the snow. now all the northerners will say, “so what”, but here in texas where it snows once a year…this is a whole different story. 

he still had to call the plumber. apparently, everyone’s kitchen sink is clogged this week, not from potato peelings (which is NOT the reason mine is clogged…i know better), but from the freeze. 

and yes, that’s a very dirty window. was hoping for new windows for better insulation, but we are still in the negotiating stage between me and my financial consultant/husband. i will most likely be washing old windows in the spring.

husband scott still gets an award for being the best husband in the world.

this is how i feel right now. i have house guests coming next week and it is going to take at least 2 days to clean up the guest room aka the-throw-everything-in-until-you-have-time-to-put-it-away-room. i don’t feel like getting organized or neat, yet, if i don’t i will continue to feel (in by brain/body) like this room. there’s always tomorrow, right?

right now, i prefer to dream about home improvement projects (not cleaning projects).

i have a nice growing list of what i want to do and must present it to the husband in as enticing a package as possible. wish me luck!

after the wedding, which turned out to be perfect for daughter michelle. now i am a mother-in-law and my daughter has a different last name…so weird!

well, since it has been nearly a year since i cleaned up the house…with all the wedding preparations that needed to be done, i needed to clean up before christmas decorations could come out. (this is a silly post since i have already put up all the christmas decorations back up where they belong.)

anyhoo, i cleaned the house and got the magic eraser and it really does work.

here is the ‘before’ photo of my wall. there are tons of examples of this on all my walls. i love matte paint on the walls, but it is so hard to clean. and where do these marks come from?

i used the magic eraser on it and …

ta da! it’s gone. just like that. it doesn’t require lots of scrubbing and removing the paint to get the mark off the wall! it’s magic!

too bad magic eraser doesn’t work on oil paint stains on carpeting (sigh).

We had a garage sale last weekend. When I set up everything the night before, I was embarrassed at all the clothes we were selling…they weren’t ALL my clothes…but it was more than I want to see. The sad thing about it is that my closet is really still full. Right now, I cannot add another thing in my closet…unless I take something out.
Anyways…see the ladder in the photo? It was extended the length of the garage and was filled with clothes. People came and bought and bought and bought. I mean, when the most expensive item is $6, a lot gets carted away. What I couldn’t believe was that I still bagged up 10(!) garbage bags of clothes for the Goodwill to pick up! I have decided I need to purchase more thoughtfully and not to impulse buy. I think that is my biggest bugga boo…impulse buy. Do you do that?

But even as I type these words…I keepnthinking about those J Crew boots (sigh).

reminder to myself - always keep a clean house because you never know when you will get a letter from a realtor looking for a house for a client who is willing to pay twice the price we paid. today, i got a call to see our house tomorrow!!! what!?!!! my house is embarrassingly filthy. so what can you do from 4:00pm till bedtime? pick up and vacuum. no dusting, no cleaning of bathtubs or toilets, no mopping, not getting dust bunnies (big HUGE dust bunnies) from under the sofas. whew!! what a mess.

i seriously doubt it will come to an offer, but this was a wake up. i mean, suppose someone wanted to come by and chat? i would have to say…”uhhhhhhhh, let’s meet at starbucks!”

after our little time out in san antonio, i am going to do a thorough spring cleaning.

it’s time to get organized. it’s time to scrub the house. it’s time to lose weight and get fit. the wedding is in 7 months, my dress must be fitted in june, and i turn 53 in may. no more blog watching. no more procrastinations. as jane lynch sang tonight, “don’t just stand there. let’s get to it. strike a pose. there’s nothing to it.vogue…vogue…vogue!”

jason's room

i have a memory of how a bad day ended up being a good day. i was walking home from high school (i lived 2 blocks away) and i had had a terrible day at school. i could not remember what had happened now thirty plus years ago. anyway, as i approached the house, i remembered thinking to myself, “great. i didn’t make my bed.” when i am depressed, nothing depresses me more than going home to a mess. so, as i climbed the stairs to my room, i thought that the first thing i was going to see was my messy room. when i entered my room, not only was my bed made and my room cleaned up, but mom had bought me a blouse and had laid it on my bed. i can still remember how elated i was, and even that the blouse was long sleeved crisp white cotton with teeny little cherries printed on it. thanks to my mom for lifting up my spirits without even knowing it.

jason couldn’t sleep the other night. i remember when i was in college, i couldn’t sleep if my room was a mess and it NEVER looked like the following photos. i didn’t arrange any of the things in the before photos. this is how jason lives. you will see a lot of food that he leaves where he puts it down when he is finished eating. his room will look like this in just a week or 2. this reminds me of an oprah show about this woman who lived in a mess like this, (except she had dogs that poohed everywhere), and oprah kept saying that there must be more going on than just being messy. so i wonder, as a worrier, is there more to this or is he just a teenager?

before

after

before

after

before…note that the dr pepper is leaking out of the cup because it has been sitting there for a while.

after…i couldn’t get the dr pepper stain out. i will be painting his furniture sometime.

before

after

before