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The Gift Closet

I am a world-class procrastinator, and I am terrible at coming up with presents on a given date, for example CHRISTMAS. This is a lethal combination and leads to a lot of heartburn. I think I’ve come up with a pretty good solution and thought someone else might benefit from it: the Gift Closet!

The Gift Closet sounds magical, but it really isn’t. I’ve just realized in the past few months that this is a real thing for me and not just a weird habit of stockpiling. Here are some kinds of things I keep in there:

  • Cute or interesting items I find when we travel. (For example the lovely cashmere fingerless gloves I bought in Shanghai, or woolens from London.)
  • Great “gifty” items I buy in bulk when they are marked down on sites like Joss & Main–some gorgeous French candles are a great example of those. I’ve pilfered a couple of them but they are so pretty I’m sure it is okay!
  • Handknits that I make for the pure enjoyment of knitting, but with no planned recipient. We can only use so many hats and cowls in my house, you know? I also happen to keep all of my “extra” jams and preserves in there. Ginger-Peach preserves make a great hostess gift.

This crazy closet has really saved me on several occasions, and I’ve found this month that I actually am relying on it. Why?

First, I have great gifts on hand. On. Hand. Like, in my house and I don’t have to order anything or sweat it out that I’ll get time to shop and I’ll actually find something. The gifts are no less great just because I didn’t purchase or make them with the recipient in mind. I chose the gift for them.

I can make things for pure enjoyment and not worry that I won’t make a deadline or that it won’t suit the recipient. No pressure!

Also, I can be really picky about what goes in the closet, choosing the most lovely things and not settling for what is in front of me in the only store I could get to right this second.

It really is a little like shopping a terrific, eclectic boutique stocked only with items you like. How often does that happen?!

You can also expand this idea to keep toys on hand for the last-minute birthday party invitation. It’s a great way to take advantage of fun toys that are on sale. Thinking back, I used to do this a little bit throughout the years. When one of the girls was about five, I found several pop-up tents on the clearance shelf at Target. Awesome gifts for several little girls in the next year or two, and it was totally stress free.

The hardest part for me is actually pulling the trigger and making the purchase. It is a lot easier to leave my handknits in there than it is to fork over my money for an item that has no known recipient. But I’ve benefitted a lot this year from buying ahead, so I’m going to have to get over that and purchase a few new things. I wonder what I’ll come up with?

Do you have anything that helps reduce your stress around gift-giving? Please share!

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Setting my goals

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See that plate? The fact that it is even in my house, much less actually on the bookshelf properly displayed, is thanks to my setting goals for 2014.

At the end of last year I decided that I needed to take a hard look at what I wanted to do. I have a big, busy family and way too many interests of my own. I needed to have some priorities. I needed goals.

Enter Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever program. Introduced last year, it’s a five-day video course on setting and (importantly) actually achieving them. It was the first time I had ever made a list of anything more than resolutions that were put aside by January 15.

I ended up setting seven goals for the year. Some of the goals had several parts but it was all tied together. Limiting the number of goals was one of Michael’s points. Too many, and you can’t focus.

One thing I didn’t do was share my goals with anyone except Bill. That was a mistake. I have this weird idea that if I tell someone my plans, it is like letting air out of a tire and I go all flat on it. Michael swears that accountability and sharing goals is really important. I think I paid the price on this one.

Another place that I kind of fell apart was in regular review of my progress. I had put my goals in Evernote but, try as I might, I just don’t think I’m an Evernote girl.  So after a couple of months I started forgetting to look at it. I did go back and review my goals a couple of weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised!

So without further ado, here are my goals for 2014. I have summarized them, and then said if I hit it or not. The actual goals were pretty detailed, with deadlines and everything:

  1. Make my home finished (by 8/31), decor-wise. I made significant progress that I absolutely would not have otherwise made. And hey, I still have two weeks left in 2014!
  2. Institute a family time every evening when we don’t eat dinner together. We tried this but didn’t love it. What we DID do, though, was institute a firm family dinner on Sunday evenings where we review the week past, look at the upcoming calendar, and set goals for the week. It has turned into a highlight of our week!
  3. Achieve several concrete riding goals, including qualifying for the regional championships in West Palm Beach. Well, Johnni P. the Quarter Horse decided that he really didn’t love dressage. I had to back up and work with my OTTB Dr. Finnegan. He is such a beginner that showing him didn’t happen this year. But I did ride a lot, on a pretty regular schedule, and I don’t feel terrible about missing this goal.
  4. Create photo albums for past years that have been neglected. I only got 2013 done, plus our vacation. The kids absolutely loved it. I should be able to get 2014 together pretty quickly. I do still need to go back and work on earlier years, but seeing the reception that the current photo books got certainly is incentive!
  5. Sew a quilt from scratch. Did it! Love it! Want to make another!
  6. Eat low-carb (like I used to do until it got so boring I couldn’t take it anymore) three days a week. Dead. In. The. Water.
  7. Get a family foundation started. Discovered this wasn’t the best vehicle for our goals! That was kind of cool.

One thing that is funny is to see how life interferes and makes some goals really crucial, and others completely irrelevant. Really important decisions presented themselves which weren’t even hinted at last New Year’s Day. (New house, I’m looking at you!)

So, am I doing this again? I think so! Michael Hyatt has completely revamped the course and is offering the VIP course to those of us who did it last year at a significant discount. I learned a lot about myself and I am game to try again, and this time to complete even more goals.

So what about you? Do you make resolutions? Goals? And do you keep them, and let them really change your life? Or are they made and then forgotten? I’d love to know what you think.

 

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A little knitting, a little reading

Linking up with Ginny’s Wednesday Yarn Along link party.

I’m knitting a little, as always, and reading! I read an actual book!

Here’s my latest on the needles:

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It’s the Cafe Au Lait Tam, out of the most beautiful blue beaded Tilli Thomas Flurries yarn. I don’t even know if they still make it! It is such a lovely merino, really almost a roving with a string of glass beads alongside. I still think I want this hat even though Paige is convinced that it will be hers!

I just finished this:

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Magical, indeed! I cannot wait to write more about this book. Marie has a disarming, charming style and just makes you want to start putting your things in order.

Confession time: my sewing room is a nightmare, and I have a room downstairs that is virtually unusable because of JUNK. I am looking forward to implementing her ideas and reclaiming my space. I can’t recommend the book as a how-to just yet, because I haven’t “tidied up” yet. I can say, though, that it’s a fun book to read.

I think I’ll be working on this in January. I’ll blog more about it when I get down to work!

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Five-minute prompt: Prepare

I discovered “Five-Minute Fridays” back when I was doing the 31-days blog challenge. The prompt, just one word, is posted and then I write about that word for five minutes. (I even set a timer!)

Well, it isn’t Friday, but I did think I’d hop in with this. Maybe it will make you think about Advent and preparations.

The word:  PREPARE

I saw this week’s work and immediately thought of Advent, that season that is supposed to be so full of reflection and peace but is more often (at least for me( frantic and stressful. Something I heard in the Daily  Audio Bible readings this week had me thinking about Advent, too. Here we are in the season of preparation, because that’s what Advent is. We prepare for the arrival of the Christ-child, God made flesh. We prepare our homes and hearts as we remember the Baby’s arrival. And then the church calendar has us off and running through Jesus’ life, so that somehow four months or so after we have prepared for the arrival of a little Divine Baby we are back at the foot of a cross, watching that same God-made-flesh crucified. And it is confusing to do this every year.

But we know that the cross isn’t the end, and neither is the time of Jesus’ ascension. He is coming back and we have to prepare for that as well.

So what I was thinking is that this season of preparation, these short four weeks, are really just a reminder of Jesus’ return on a day we don’t know, a reminder to be ready and always preparing.

So the candles, and the trees and carols and presents, they are reminders to prepare ourselves, and the world around us, because a Baby came two thousand years ago in a little town. And a King will return on a day that only He knows.

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Truth? Lies? And writing is not easy.

Writing clearly and succinctly is very hard. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

I have another post drafted, but it had gotten too long and ponderous. Then I saw this posted at Maggie’s Farm today. It comes close to the point I had been trying to make.

It’s this:

The UVA gang-rape scandal, which turns out to be at a minimum mostly untrue, and possibly completely false, has put that school into a turmoil and dominated media time in the past few weeks. The “fact” of the rape, not the fabrication, is what has been taking up the attention. There are a couple of other college rapes that have added fuel to the fire, even though they might be false, too. The accused in all these cases are young white men.

A couple of months ago a horrific story came out in the UK. In the small town of Rotherham, there was a ring of Pakistini men raping and enslaving English girls. Fourteen hundred of them over twenty years. 1,400. Think about that. Even the police were aware of it. It splashed into the newspapers and since then has hardly made a ripple. That this happened is an absolute fact. The criminals are Pakistini Muslims. There has been virtually no mention of this crime in any newspapers since mid-September.

Why? What is gained by screaming over what becomes nothing? And ignoring the genuine crime that was committed in England? Why can’t we talk about who the criminals are? What is going on?

What are we missing when we don’t confront real evil?

Go read the article. This is linked inside the Maggie’s Farm post and in particular is quite good.

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Horsey update.

November was a whirlwind, with not one but two horse shows, including their first recognized show. Let me explain: the girls do a kind of riding called Eventing (or 3-day eventing). It’s an English discipline, really more like a triathlon for horses. In the short format there are three events that make up the competition; they are dressage, stadium jumping and cross-country jumping. If you mess up enough in one event, you get eliminated from the entire competition, so one of our goals is always to finish!

The “recognized” show just means that the show is sanctioned by the United States Eventing Association, and the riders can accumulate points on the way to awards and eligibility for championships. Until last month we had only been to “schooling” shows, which are intended as practice for the recognized shows, a place to make mistakes or try moving up a level with the stakes a little lower. You still get ribbons, but they are smaller, and you also don’t get points or eligibility for championships.

Okay, enough education. Now to the shows. The first was at Bouckeart Farm in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia. It’s a gorgeous place to show, but on this day we thought we were going to freeze! November in Georgia can be 30 degrees or 80–so I guess that we should be happy that our cold day was only windy and not wet.

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Paige approaching the last jump on cross-country.
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Blue ribbon girl!
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Blue ribbon pony!

Paige has been working so hard on her dressage, and it was really gratifying that she came out of that part of the competition tied for first! She loves to jump and then turned in a beautiful stadium jumping round, no time faults or jumping penalties. Finally she went out and looked like a pro on cross-country. I was so proud. She took first by one second over the second place rider.

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I love shots like this. Darcy and Sandra are planning her stadium jumping round.
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Darcy and Syd on cross-country.

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Darcy had a good dressage round but was in the middle of the pack coming out of her dressage (they compete in different divisions). She also turned in a clean jumping round and then a really lovely cross-country course. Her solid jumping brought her up to third place in her division, quite respectable.

Two weeks later we packed up and headed to Augusta for the Pine Top Horse Trials. These took place over two days instead of one, so the pace was more relaxed. The courses themselves, though, were definitely harder! Since this was both girls’ first recognized show, our goal was merely to finish. We saw plenty of riders get eliminated, so this isn’t as low of a bar as it sounds.

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Paige at dressage.
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Bailey taking a stadium jump rather awkwardly!
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Away they go! Paige and Bailey over the first jump on cross-country.
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Darcy and Syd at dressage. Their judge said they were “workmanlike.” That cracked us up because it is so true!
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Darcy and Syd over the last stadium jump. They had a couple of penalties but finished this round.
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Syd bringing Darcy over the last cross-country jump. He had one refusal but finished in good shape otherwise. It just cost her points, but didn’t affect her finishing.

It’s always awesome when we finish, even better when we finish in the ribbons. Both girls got a ribbon and are ready to look for the next show. Unfortunately it’s the end of the season and we are looking to get back to it in February or possibly March. Time for a little rest and fun.

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It’s always good to win a ribbon to bring home!
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Cookie Day! And the best brownie recipe ever.

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A really good day’s work!

What a welcome surprise. I found myself with an entire day–no kidding–in which everything that I had scheduled fell through. In other words, an empty calendar. And an empty house for the morning. A Christmas miracle. So I put my time to good, high-calorie, high-fat use and made Christmas cookies!

Last year I may have made one batch of Christmas cookies, and possibly one pan of special Christmas brownies, so this was a real coup. Spritz and the brownies are must-haves. I also made molasses cookies from Bill’s Grandma Helen’s recipe, and tried new recipes for lemon drops and vanilla icebox cookies. A little something for everyone.

I did get some help–Paige came home mid-morning and she was kind enough to make the brownies. They turned out great. My only complaint is that she cut them too big! They are so dense that I like them not much bigger than the pecan half on top, like a piece of fudge. She said that was entirely too small, and made them much bigger. I see half-brownies in my future!

My new recipes came from this book:

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This little magazine has lots of great-sounding recipes, and I’m a sucker for a new cookbook. I’ve bought several of these magazine-style books from America’s Test Kitchen and they’ve become staples at my house.

Would you like a recipe? The brownie recipe is so rich we really do only make it at Christmas and possible on very special occasions. I remember her making these when we lived in Minesota, because she would store them out on the sunporch and we would eat them frozen! That means the recipe is at least 35 or 40 years old. While I’m sure it isn’t original, it is truly from my mom, Diane; so even though it say’s “Mom” on my recipe card, we’ll change the name here.

Diane’s Awesome Christmas Brownies

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 16 oz. can Hershey’s syrup

4 eggs

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

Nuts, if desired

Preheat oven to 350. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the remaining ingredients and mix very well–about four minutes. Spread in a 13×9 pan and bake about 25 minutes. Cool slightly and frost with this:

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup milk

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Boil first three ingredients together for one minute. Remove from heat. Add chocolate chips and stir until smooth. Immediately spread on brownies.

Cut very small–I like to put a pecan half on the top of each one. I also like to store them in the fridge or freezer and eat them cold. Enjoy! And…do you have a tried and true Christmas recipe? Please share!

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Creative Accounting, 12/3

Here we go, a summary of the (more) creative things I’ve been working on since the last time I posted a “Creative Accounting” back on October 20.

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Those pillows? Done! I like them, don’t love them, because I think they are too small. But I loved making the patches and think they would make a great quilt. I do love the colors and prints together, even though they may look too busy to some eyes. I’m a sucker for AMH prints.

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In my last post I mentioned an Alabama Chanin patch I was sewing. Here is a skirt panel I’ve finished the reverse applique´on. The other three panels don’t have as much embellishing and so they should be straightforward to put together. (The AMH Lemon Drop tunic? Dead in the water right now!)

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Bippity boppity boo:  I finished this fairy godmother robe for Paige in two looooong evenings of work. It started with 18 yards of sparkle satin! The longest steps were the cutting at the beginning and hemming at the end. We both loved how it turned out and she looked adorable in it for her middle school drama showcase.

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I finished the hat that I was working on six weeks ago and sent it to its recipient, but neglected to take a picture. I hope it is keeping his ears warm–he’s serving in a really cold place right now. Here is another hat I’ve just started, a little lacey tam in a lovely blue merino wool embellished with glass beads. Paige also thinks she’s laid claim to this, but we may fight over it.

In the cooking department, I made this:

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If you follow me on Instagram, you know this was the world’s ugliest pie that I had made for Thanksgiving. I couldn’t possibly serve that one, so I made a second (beautiful) pie on Thanksgiving morning. Because I needed one more thing to stress about with 29 people coming over for dinner! Anyway, this one did taste almost as delicious as the beautiful one. So, yay! Two apple pies.

I am not dumb enough to try to knit or sew anything for someone’s Christmas present, although I’m not above making some jelly or preserves. But I have plenty of time this month at wrestling matches to get some serious knitting or hand-sewing in. We’ll see what I get done.

Are you working on anything fun? Or a never-ending project that doesn’t want to get finished? Share it!

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Hurtling into December

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That picture was from Christmas 2004. Nothing like a ten-year-old snapshot to give me a little perspective!

“I’m going to slow down this year, do less, and enjoy the season.” Have you ever said this to yourself right around Thanksgiving? I do. Every year! I’m certain I said it back in 2004, and I think I’ve said it a couple of times this year.

I’m not sure how it happens but every year it seems like it doesn’t happen, in spite of my best efforts. We were crazy-busy or out of town over Thanksgiving (at a wonderful horse show–I’ll post on that soon) and we arrived home late Sunday. Not only were there no Christmas decorations up, I still had a refrigerator full of Thanksgiving leftovers we’d barely been able to enjoy, and I was behind on just regular living activities, even grocery shopping! I have now succeeded in getting the Thanksgiving/fall things put away, but I don’t even have our Advent calendar up, and it is December 2.

I’m only observing what is the normal level of chaos around here–we have evening activities almost every night for the next two weeks, and at least four days of wrestling in the next ten. It probably isn’t much different than anyone else’s craziness. I officially bowed out of a horse show today when I realized that it was on the only empty Saturday between now and Christmas. Probably one of the sanest decisions I’ve made in a while.

I’ve already decided that the tree doesn’t have to be up for it to feel Christmas-y. I’m hoping to get the mantle decorated tomorrow, and maybe get our Christmas dishes out. That actually takes about three minutes because I know exactly where they are!

On the plus side:  not only do I know what I’m wearing to Bill’s company party next weekend, I have already purchased it. It is sitting in my closet just waiting for me to put it on, and it is super-cute. Given that my normal pattern is to (a) make a desperation run to Atlanta the morning of the party and try to find something, anything, that I like, or (b) scrounge in my closet for something acceptable, this is an unbelievable coup for me.

And I AM piling up the magazines and making lists to do some serious cyber-shopping on Saturday while I sit at a wrestling meet. The great thing about these meets is that if you bring something to do, you can get a LOT done while you sit on those bleachers. Not cookies or wrapping, but knitting or ordering or addressing Christmas cards. The wrestling matches don’t last that long!

What are you doing to slow the season? Are you ahead of the game this year? I would love to know how to avoid this–but I don’t really see a way around it until I don’t have wrestlers and football players and singers and guitarists and trombone players and riders and acolytes in my home, and I can’t bear the thought of that.

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Every day is better than never.

Well, darn.

I spent all of October writing faithfully each and every day, and I enjoyed the process. I even decided to keep blogging! But of course, blogging every day is just so, well, extreme.  Who needs to do that?

Apparently I do. I found during November that I have a hard time deciding that something is blog-worthy. I overthink things. And then days pass with no post because nothing rises to the level of blog-worthiness. Inertia, in other words.

So I’m going to set my blog back in motion because I like that kind of inertia better. I hope I will occasionally write something of interest. I’m looking forward to seeing where I end up!

So, tonight I am just waking the blog up after its little nap. I’m off to watch “Elf” with my family and get firmly in the Christmas spirit. See you tomorrow!