Look what showed up on my doorstep the other day! Another littel jewel from Etsy. This time from Ivan and Lucy. And surprise of surprises, they live in my town. What a coincidence!
Let’s unwrap our package. Here’s the envelope that arrived just one day after I paid for it.
The box prettily tied with a bow.
The unveiling.
My new little pendant called appropriately enough…
TIME FLIES!
Isn’t it cuuuuuuuute? I feel so special and can’t wait to wear it!
…and isn’t it gorgeous?
I spent an interesting and tiring last four days down in South Louisiana with Bayou Woman. Here is a pic of the little cottage.
Being charter members of a little-known organization called WAT, we spent those four days cleaning up years of neglect inflicted on the house to uncover not just yucky stuff but also buried treasure like this antique cypress bead-board panelling.
In the process of removing the loverly blue panelling:
Isn’t it beautiful? What were they thinking?
A bedroom before:
And after:
It wasn’t an easy job, especially the faceoff with the mice. No pictures there, but here is the bathroom floor which had to come out.
And with some help from a friend, this is what it looked like when I headed back up north Sunday afternoon.
Amazingly, after four days of what was intense work for me, I wasn’t sore, I slept well in a strange bed, and ended up with just a few nicks on my hands. The little cypress cottage is coming back to life with a little tender loving care and a lot of hard work. Stay tuned for further updates.
Looks like my lifestyle is in style. Simplicity, that is. Less is more. My humble abode is my castle. My car is serviceable and that’s enough for me. You know what I mean.
According to this article in USA Today, people are beginning to cut back in a big way. Evidently, now the Joneses will be trying to downsize their consumption. Gone are the lattes, the lunches out, the gym membership, outings to the movies. The Joneses are cutting back, doing with less, or doing without. I’m not sure what to make of it – can the economy handle less consumption, or will it lead us more quickly into a recession?
Who started all this less is more, reduce, reuse, recycle nonsense anyway? It all sounds really good until it catches on and creates a ripple effect that brings the economy to a standstill. More people buying less stuff = less need for production of said stuff = layoffs = even more people buying less stuff…. You get the picture. It’s a downward spiral.
When the economy is based on consumers consuming, what happens when they stop? I shudder to think of it. Tell me what you think.
These two grammar faux pas drive me absolutely bonkers.
Please try to remember that when you are talking about yourself as the object of the sentence, the correct word is me. If I say, “It might just be you and I”, one quick way to check if that is right is to remove the other person from the sentence. Would you say, “It might just be I”? No, you would say, “It might just be me.”
If you have trouble knowing if the phrase is the object of the sentence, try this – “The card was signed by my husband and I.” “The card was signed by I.” Wrong. “The card was signed by my husband and me.” Practice this until you can do it on the fly. It will take you a fraction of a nano second to run the sentence through your mind without the other person in it. Then you will know whether I or me makes sense.
Next up is the phrase that I hear all the time – I could care less. Well, if you could care less that means that you do care to some degree. The correct way to say that you don’t care about something is – I couldn’t care less.
Whose next? 
irrevocable.
How do you pronounce it? I have to admit that I have doubted that I was pronouncing it correctly. I began this post not knowing which was the correct pronunciation – irre voke able or ir rev ocable. I have heard more than one person use the first pronunciation which makes perfect sense when you consider that the root word is revoke. And it always made me wonder if I was pronouncing it wrong. Well, I wonder no more.
According to Dictionary.com, the correct pronunciation is the second one, i-rev-uh-kuh-buhl. Now I can breathe easy, since uh, you know, I use this word every day.
“Your bedtime is irrevocable.”
“Your father’s and my decision to make you wait until you’re 35 to get married is irrevocable.”
“We’re having cabbage casserole for supper. It’s irrevocable.”
“Time to get up. Irrevocable.”
“Ir rev uh cuh bull!”
(Speaking of cabbage casserole, psst, BW where’s that recipe?)
Today’s word, or rather words, are yea and yeah. Easily confused by lots of people, yet two very different words.
Use yea when you are excited about something.
“We’re going on vacation.” “Yea!”
Use yeah as slang for yes.
“Can you work through your lunch hour?” “Yeah.”
Coming soon – another much-maligned word or phrase simply because it warms my nerdy soul.
Get Rid of that Clinging Thing (and no, I’m not talking about your kids)
If you are suffering from static cling and there’s no Bounce or Static Guard in sight, put a little lotion on your hands and rub it up and down your legs lightly (or whichever other place is clingy). We’re not talking a bunch of lotion here. Just skim it over your stockings, socks, bare legs, whatever, and that static cling will disappear like magic!
The Package
What a pretty little bag it is in!
With a little heart-shaped mirror, princess stickers, and a note
How sweet is this? Awwwww
I felt so special
The Unveiling
Aren’t they gorgeous?
I felt so special opening a blah manila envelope to find my purchase so lovingly gift-boxed and wrapped. Even though I had bought it for myself, I felt like I had received a gift. Who thinks I will be shopping at Tilley’s Jewels again?
I post the following photos, not to humiliate one of my family members, but to illustrate why I taught my children to do laundry at the tender ages of 10 and 8.
Child slave labor? They might say so. I called it Mom slave labor when I came to the realization that I was washing clean clothes.
Did you get that?
CLEAN clothes, as in clothes that had been washed and dried once and not yet worn again.
I protested such detestable treatment. But I didnt’ get mad, I got even. I was done. No longer would I do my children’s laundry. They would learn to do it themselves.
They learned quickly, and I was amazed at how the amount of dirty laundry they generated shrank. They didn’t want to wash clean clothes, either. Now 17 and 16, they still do their own laundry. Gypsy has such a conglomeration of can-be-dried, can’t-be-dried clothes, I’m afraid I would ruin that favorite top that can’t be replaced. Occasionally, I’ll help Fiddler out when he’s extremely busy.
I’m proud of my children. They’ve never once complained about having to do their own laundry. And now they’ve been doing it so long that it’s just part of their routine. Wish I could say the same about keeping their rooms clean, but as they say, that’s a topic for another post.
