Big project: painting the garage

 Well, this is not a reveal.

It is, however, a stopping point as of last Wednesday.  By Thursday morning I knew I had hit a wall.  I had gotten a little over half of the garage painted, and that also involved moving things off shelves, patching holes, painting, moving things back, and cleaning/storing my tools for the day.  Its a mess out there and I still have a ways to go.  I am committed to finishing this up, but I had to take a break.  Because along with it being physically challenging, it was mentally taxing.  The weather has been perfect here for painting, though.

Along the way, I managed to purge even more stuff.  (The Habitat Restore people probably thought I was off-loading stolen goods.)  Scout also came and got the last of the things for his apartment.  When Bubbie moves it will be that much more empty!  Its going to be the culmination of almost four years of trying to manage "the stuff" and make my home reflect my own philosophy, wishes, and values.  Its been both thrilling and terrifying, satisfying and exhausting. 

 And bittersweet to say the least.

So I have to rest a bit before I go back to it...

Gina

5 thing Friday - sewing chair, yarn, art show, dinner, nude

 I've been putting a few finishing touches on my craft space and hanging out in there from time to time, mostly putseying.

Instead of ordering the pink chair, I went and bought $6 worth of floofy pink fabric and re-covered the seat of the chair Scout left behind. (maybe my last purchase ever at Joann's...)

It kind of looks like a pink towel?  Super soft and comfy though.  And not permanent if he ever wants this chair back.

I also made a wall hanging for a few dollars.  

Not the same color of pink, but that's OK.  It was fun to do.  It was a practice piece - I would like to make one a little larger with an actual branch.

One day last week I picked up a sammie and drove to a pretty local park to eat lunch.

It was still chilly out, so I just opened the sunroof and enjoyed my lunch semi-al fresco.

Then I drove to BFE South Austin to see an interactive art installation called Mesmerize. Can you believe the difference in weather from one part of town to another? Weird.

It was fun to walk around, but also very strange.  I'm not entirely sure about the dream message the artists were trying to convey.  Anyhow, I left the house and peopled.  Go me.

Easy dinner one night: mini meatloaf wrapped in bacon, some frozen broccoli florets with butter, half of a frozen twice baked potato.  It cooked all together for about 45 minutes and was pretty tasty.  However, I am still struggling with wanting to prepare a meal at all.

One of the frames I emptied of family portraits is now home to this nude line drawing, which hangs in my office.  I'm envisioning a gallery wall of sorts in here, and this is my first piece to hang.  It was $23, and I love it in this frame.  And now the big family portraits are all safely stored away.

Gina

Little project - handling spare keys

 My  "junk drawer" in the kitchen is actually more like a kitchen office drawer.

There is a heavy wad of keys in here that feels hard to grab and look through.  Too many keychain and dangles for one thing.  And if you were in a hurry it would be hard to place your hands on the exact key you needed.

This is where everyone looks for spare keys, so it needs to stay.  I ordered some plastic key tags to try to make some sense of them.

Instead of the flimsy label paper they come with, I used card stock.  But other than that, I have no complaints.  I have spares for a couple of the kids' cars and apartments, not to mention my own.  I saved the extra tags to use in another way. And for $4, I'm happy with the way they work.

I was left with a pile of random keychains and fobs that will get put elsewhere, and a ring of keys that will be so much easier to flip through to find the right key.

(I used these notebook rings in my closet to hang purses, also)

I still have ziploc of "indeterminant keys" (so named by The Girl) in the top of my toolbox with a note to recycle them in 2028.  I figure I have until then to decide if I need them.  Have you organized your keys?  Could you (or someone) easily grab up the set of spares if there were an emergency?

Gina

5 thing Friday - cooking, thrift finds, shopping, Valentine's Day, painting plans

I've been making a loose menu for the week just to be sure I buy the ingredients I need. 

I am getting a little weary of my tried and true salad with protein routine, though.  We've had cold weather which calls for something a little more comforting.  This week I tossed some things together in my mini crockpot for a grown up version of Pork and Beans Soup: Cannelini beans, pulled pork, some frozen stock, a dash of this, a dab of that.  Served with cornbread, it was really good, but alas, still involved a bit of effort in the kitchen.

Stopping by my favorite tiny Goodwill, I found two books, these scroll-y plaques, and a frame I'm going to use in the garage. Four dollars and change.  I haven't decided where to hang the plaques, so I found a space to keep them for now on one of my bedroom walls and they are kinda looking just right there.  Might leave them.

I found the new blackberry Dr. Pepper Zero and bought two so I could use the $1 off coupon, which seems ridiculous but I am fixed for soda for a few months. Ha!  My grocery cart looks so different now than it did when I was feeding other humans. A lot of what I buy isn't even food, its all the other stuff you need: personal care items, household supplies, and lots of etc.  The life of a single woman who is struggling to cook.

For Valentine's Day, I treated myself to a ribeye, peppers and onions, a salad with Ancho dressing and candied pecans, and this triple chocolate layer cake.  I have had way too much sugar the last week or so and I totally get it having an addictive effect on your body.  But this was a perfectly lovely Valentine's Day.  I might even had had a dark beer.

This week I bopped over to Home Depot to peruse their Oops paint and low and behold, found a 5 gallon bucket of white paint for the garage project with the girly name of Chantilly Lace.  (the roller you see pictured was 1 cent!)  Next week I have Monday off so I figure I may as well get started on this, weather permitting.  Happy Weekend,

Gina

Little project: sewing room

 I am enjoying a slower pace for the rest of February and making space to be creative.  About two weeks after Scout moved out, I made that room into a sewing room/crafts room.  Its still in progress, but here is where I started:

The light in here looks yellowy, so I may look for daylight bulbs.  The shelves are not all that useful except to place things, so I set some odds and ends mementos on them:

The space underneath will be where I set up my ironing board when I need to use it.

When I was switching out the closet contents, I decided to remove all of the family portraits from frames and store them another way.  Underneath one I found this mid 90s poster print from our first home.  I forgot I had left it behind the portrait.  It felt like a full circle moment, so I decided to use it in here.

I used the rest of the gold spray paint from this project to take the frame from silver to gold, cleaned up the glass, and re-hung the print.

The ironing board is behind the open closet door.  I plan to leave the closet door open so I can access the contents of my craft and sewing supplies. 

The sewing table is a folding table we had up in the barn at Highlands.  It got a good scrubbing.  Scout left this chair, so I claimed it, for now.  I want to order this pretty pink office chair eventually.

Other than the future chair purchase*, I spent zero dollars on this room.  It has a lot of potential space for me to spread out and enjoy some peaceful creativity.

Its going to be a nice place to get started.

Gina

*I think I might be able to find a pretty pink boucle fabric to update this chair, though.

Cleaning up my blog

The past couple of weeks has been spent in introspection and journaling.  Over the past three years, I have shifted the focus from caring for a husband and family to discovering what I want and finding my voice as a single woman. Its not an impossible task, just a big one.  But a necessary step in working through the past so I can move confidently into the future. 

 To that end, I have cleaned up a bunch of blog posts and deleted a lot of others.  Reading through some of my old posts, I saw where I was: 

*tired/grouchy/resentful

*way too busy

*focused on everyone but myself

*handling more than my fair share

*not giving myself grace

Its was hard to read the truth of some of the posts and I didn't want to leave that as a legacy for my kids someday.  I don't want them to feel like all of that hard work and effort didn't mean something to me - it absolutely did.  But reading them now brought me some perspective and I found I could easily let them go.  So I went from around 2300 to just over 1800 posts.  I did the same with my other blog, Its Just Me, Gina.  That's the beauty of an on-line journal, I guess.  

All that to say - I will be back to blogging next week, after I do a little more blog spring cleaning.  Have a great rest of your week!

Gina

5 thing Friday - planners, wreath, purging piles, sheets, rotisserie chicken

Last week I pulled down the box full of planners I store in my closet, just to have a look through them.

And I thought "What if I didn't keep these?  What bad thing would happen?"  And I had another epiphany:  holding onto these planners is like holding onto the past.

I sat in my office with the recycle bin and shredder on one side and the planners on the other side.  (Some of the planners had info in them that needed to be shredded.)

RIP planners from 1992 to 2023.  I actually might have shed a tear.  Looking back through them one last time I thought about how different my life is now, in both little and big ways.

The comically large wreath on my door.  It didn't seem this huge in the store; it is a big pop of color, for sure. I just wanted something colorful, on sale, with no crafting on my part. I got it.

Another round of purging and more things I don't want.   I reserved a bulky pick up with City of Austin and got Bubbie to help me haul it all to the street.

buh. bye.

  In another donation pile I still have: a steel table, BBQ charcoal, a microwave, camp coffee pot, and a silver tray.  I don't want money for them.  I simply want them out of my life. I'm going to find people to offer those to.

I bought myself some new flannel sheets.  They are silky soft and soothing, the perfect color, and were on sale.  We are currently experiencing warm weather in Austin, but I know that February usually brings us a bit of icy weather.  I will be snug and ready.

What's the first thing you do when you bring home a rotisserie chicken?  I eat the drums almost immediately!  Then I portion and store the rest, making stock with the bones.  HEB now has these for $4.97 and I had to grab one up for some easy meals.  Next week I will not post menus, and I am figuring it all out.  I feel like a college kid who just got her first kitchen - what do I feel like eating?  Besides rotisserie chicken, that is!

Gina