Home Improvements!

We have unofficially designated summer as home improvement time. This summer, we decided the most pressing item was the ceilings. The popcorn spray throughout the house is peeling, so we're having it all scraped off, sanded down, and repainted.


And since that is a totally boring home improvement, and we had to call a painting company anyway, we're also getting new walls in the bathroom. Right now, they're some sort of weird tile board with an even weirder chair rail slapped right in the middle of the wall.


The tile board is coming down, our wonderful contractors will repair any damaged sheet rock, and then they will repaint! I picked out a new shower curtain and paint color today. My paint color is the second one from the top in the photo.


They're coming to work on the house while we're away on vacation, so I'll post the "after" pics when we get back!

And just for fun, here's the guest room bed with all of the stuff emptied out from the bathroom cabinets, as well as all the "knick-knacks and valuables" from the living room and kitchen.


More posts on the way soon, I promise, and perhaps some of a personal rather than organizational nature. :)

The Many Faces of Scratchy Pendleton

Here's what Scratchy looked like until this morning:


Here's what he looks like now:


It was time for the springtime shave, avoiding weeks of ferocious shedding and painful clump-pulling. Unfortunately, spring weather is still a few weeks away, so I think we have an indoor cat on our hands. He's real pitiful walking around the house shivering.

They left his fluffy head, fluffy tail, and fluffy feet. I like his fluffy feet the best:


Ty asked the vet how old he is and what kind of cat he might be. I don't think they know how old he is, but he got the "senior cat" treatment. The vet says he's probably a smoke Persian, smoke being the coloring that causes him to turn white when shaven.


Still the same old Scratchy.

Christmas and Twitter

Ok, my Twitter news is older and less exciting... I am now a Tweeter. I am libpendragon, so come find me, and follow me if you desire.

Now for the fun stuff -- Christmas! I'm not a huge decorator, but I do enjoy decorative touches, and having a Christmas tree is one of my chief joys of the season. Our Christmas tree growing up was always a hodge-podge of hand-made items, gift ornaments from friends and family, or ornaments commemorating special events or places, all topped off with colored lights that complemented the hodge-podge nicely. One year, I remember Mom mentioned trying to have a themed tree, and I was so disappointed at the thought of not getting out all of the ornaments, I felt like Christmas wouldn't even be Christmas. (We never did do a themed tree, and I was totally ok with that.)

So, when I moved out, I decorated my tree the same way. The hodge-podge was a little less busy, but I still had my varied and highly significant ornament collection, and I had my colored lights. Apparently, people have really strong feelings about colored lights, and I just never knew. I've never lived with anyone but my immediate family who didn't think they were completely tacky. So, the years I had roommates, no colored lights for me. Sad sad sad.

Last year, I decorated a tree for the first time as an old married lady. I busted out my colored lights with gusto. My husband hated them. I was sad, but they stayed up anyway, since we didn't have any others. Then, we went to a party, and I saw the best Christmas lights ever. They're from WalMart, and they switch back and forth from colored to white. I wasted no time this year, and as soon as the garden department underwent its tranformation to Consumer Christmas Central, I bought three strings. And now they're on my tree.

And that is the Christmas light saga. Now, I have my colored lights, and Tyler has his white lights, and I am happy, and while he may not be ecstatic, he does hate them less than the old ones.


And my favorite decoration aside from the tree is my nativity scene from Mom. I added the angel and the tea light holder myself.


Merry Christmas! (Brought to you by a completely indulgent blog post, but that's ok.)

What to Do with a Windfall

Sometimes, life just brings nice surprises with it.

Friday morning, I got up as usual, exercised, took my shower, and was getting ready for work when Tyler came out of the bedroom and notified me that my phone had been ringing. No one I know calls me (ever), let alone before 6:30 in the morning, so I was worried. I checked my voicemail to discover that school was delayed for two hours due to snow... Snow?!

Yep. For the first time ever since I've lived here, we got snow before Thanksgiving. (We've also had near-record-breaking cold weather here lately, which is extremely unpleasant.)

So, having already awoken and performed necessary morning routines, I was faced with a windfall of approximately two hours. Incidentally, these originally-scheduled two hours were some I had not been looking forward to, so I was ecstatic.

Windfalls in any form are always welcome of course. If you get an unexpected monetary bonus for example, you can save it, spend it on something fun, or use it to pay a bill that you otherwise couldn't have paid. (You'd be surprised how many times in my poorer days I ended up with a "windfall" just when I needed it.)

The same goes for a time windfall. You really can't save it up as such, but you can certainly spend it on something fun, or use it to get something done that you had been behind on. The last two weeks have been a little nutty around our house, so I opted for cleaning the kitchen (a chore long overdue) after taking a little bit of time to relax and eat a nice breakfast.

Today was an example of a major time windfall, but these little extras come around more than you might imagine. Examples include canceled meetings, arriving somewhere early, getting something done more quickly than projected, or even sitting in a traffic jam.

What are some of the ways you use you time windfalls wisely? For some of these scenarios, I can't wait to get a new iPhone in February so I can keep up with Google Reader and various other time-spenders no matter where my time windfall happens.

Huge Update and Excuses Post

I know the point of blogging is to do it regularly and not just come back every couple of months with a huge and overwhelming update and excuses for why I haven't posted lately. That being said, here comes your huge and overwhelming update and excuses from me, hopefully within the realm of subjects covered by this blog, such as librarianship and organization.

Here's the result of our October home project, which was basically carving a pumpkin:


We also planted pansies and ornamental cabbage (which, as it turns out, is the only other thing besides pansies that survives the winter), but I don't have pictures because the leaves all fell down this weekend, and the yard is therefore unsightly.

During the last couple of days of October, I was able to attend the North Carolina School Library Media Association Conference in Winston-Salem. I wasn't as excited about this conference as I have been in years past, and I wish now that I had worked up a presentation on my rockin' media schedule that includes time for kids to choose projects like a news blog and a TV show to work on during the school week. It probably would have been way more interesting than some of the ones I went to. And now, I have to wait until 2010 to do it because next year, we're all going to the ALA Conference instead, since it's in Charlotte.

A couple of highlights of the conference were meeting authors:

Joyce Moyer Hostetter talked about her book Blue, which I loved, and she gave a little preview of the sequel coming out in May called Comfort. If you have an interest at all in WWII-era historical fiction or just in a really wonderful piece of North Caroline literature, I recommend Blue. But read it in private because you'll cry big ugly tears. And the symbolism rocks, just as a side note from someone who loves to see figurative language used well in children's literature.

Author-illustrator Melanie Watt is just the cutest shy little French Canadian ever. She talked about her book Scaredy Squirrel, which was a smash hit with the kids last year. And again, the book was a decent metaphor or allegory or something cool like that.

Ok, now completely off the topic of anything blog-related, here is one of my recent fun trips:

A week ago, Ty and I drove up to Stone Mountain, NC, for our autumn hike. We were sore for a few days afterward, but it was worth it.

And with all of those marvelous things under my belt for October and November, I am now moving into Christmas gifting mode. I'm trying to make a bunch of gifts this year, so I'll try to keep a photo log of it all and post after Christmas, so as not to ruin any surprises. Suffice it to say, I will have to have very busy fingers for the next few weeks.

Good luck to all the NaNoWriMo-ers out there! Sometime, I might try to write a children's book in November, but not until I get a good idea for one. :)

Getting Ready for Autumn Gardening

My summer garden went rather well and was fun. Around the beginning of May, we pulled up the pansies (that survived all winter!), and I planted petunias and marigolds. Tyler planted vegetables in the big garden, and he sprayed out an area for me to plant an herb garden. Today is beautiful and breezy, and I can feel fall coming on. In another month or so (maybe sooner), I'll have to pull up and trim back the summer plants and get the autumn garden ready to go.

At the moment, the brick planter by the front door is brimming with pink petunias, which kind of clash with the house, but I don't care. I think these may last a while yet. However, if I was going to pull them up, I think I might replace them with three or four chrysanthemums in different colors. I already bought one chrysanthemum, but it got run over by a wayward soccer ball at our last cookout and hasn't been doing real well. It may recover, but for now, no blossoms.

The front walk flower beds are housing marigolds at the moment, but they are a little past their peak. Still blossoming, but definitely not as prolific lately, some of the plants have started to die one branch at a time. I guess pansies are the best option for winter flowers in the beds, but I may check into some other options too. Any reader suggestions? Especially if you live in my area, what flowers work well in the fall and winter? I'd like to try something new and interesting if I can.

The herb garden is probably ripe for harvest, but I've never had one before, so I'm not sure. Any tips from my herb gardening friends? Left to right (but pretty hard to distinguish), I have chives (potted), parsley, oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme, and purple basil. We've had fun using these in our cooking over the summer. Tyler is much better at incorporating them on the fly, but I will use them when recipes call for them too. I think what I need to do with these is clip them back and dry the harvested herbs so that they can come back next year. They should all come back except the chives and parsley. The basil definitely will. It's already trying to take over the world. I wouldn't be surprised if it came back well before true spring, in fact.

Here's my wish list for my autumn yard:

• two rocking chairs or a glider for the front porch
  
• plant stand/table for the front porch (great place for a jack-o-lantern!)
• chrysanthemums galore
• something other than pansies for the flower beds
  
• a wheelbarrow (because it would be fun to haul dead plants to the compost pile in that instead of carrying them because it just seems more garden-y)

What are your autumn plans?

September Home Projects: Making it Pretty

I just got a raise for finishing my master's degree. Yay! So I have re-vamped my budget to include a small amount for home improvement expenses every month -- little things like decorations and organizing stuff. So, here are my projects for September:


Curtains!!! I have been lamenting our lack of bedroom window treatment ever since I moved into my husband's former bachelor pad in June of 2007. I finally decided what I wanted and bought these, along with a tension rod, at Target. It's hard to see in the picture, but the curtains have burgundy stripes that pick up the comforter.


I made the tie-backs myself using a pattern from Crochet Pattern Central (suggested by Kimberly). Of these I am inordinately proud.


My other main purchase of the month was a wreath to signify the advent of autumn. It's about a million degrees outside today, but the wreath gives me hope.


And this is an example of closet shopping. Since I finally moved the huge, heavy, largely-decorative chess set off the kitchen table, we can theoretically eat there now. In the spirit of autumn, I pulled my autumnal table cloth down from the cabinet from which it had not emerged since I put it there more than a year ago. Now the kitchen is festive.

And so, today I am enjoying my freshly cleaned and updated house, freshly husband-mowed lawn, and not-at-all-fall-like weather.

Ty says he's going to fix the drywall in the laundry closet this week, and then we're tearing down popcorn ceilings, so look for some seriously nasty photo-journaling coming soon on that.

Before there was Internet, there were ghosts in them hills.

I came home tonight after dinner with some friends to find Tyler on the deck smoking a long-awaited cigar. He told me about a ghostly-sounding creature he had been listening to in the wooded hills behind our house. We live out a little ways in the country, and we see deer and turkeys pretty regularly, and Scratchy (pictured right) has made friends with a very ugly herd of possums with whom he shares his cat food.

But this creature was no possum. Tyler described the sound it made and then told me about how the creature had come right up to the split rail fence below the deck and shrieked, and all the neighborhood dogs went nuts, and Scratchy wanted to go in the house. As a point of information, Scratchy is fierce and not easily frightened. He stares down the Doberman from up the road on a fairly regular basis.

I was a little creeped out and worried that a mountain lion might be stalking us or something. Except normally when animals stalk you, they don't shriek. So, I got on the trusty internet and found two animals that make shrieking noises and live in rural North Carolina: pumas and red foxes. And apparently, pumas don't often shriek, but female red foxes do it a lot during mating season.

So, then, I found this on YouTube, and Tyler confirmed that was the sound he heard. Scary scary. And it's back. I just went outside with him and heard it. Good thing we have Internet, or we'd be sitting by the door with a shotgun...