Running All Around My Brain

This time of year is when I attempt to declutter the house and plan what to do with hopeless patches of green that we loosely refer to as the yard.

Today's project: the spousal unit's closet. It's a nightmare because it's the closet we throw stuff in when people show up unexpectedly and then we just ignore the piles of crap until we start looking for something we haven't seen in a while and think, "maybe we threw it in there". So far I've filled up two garbage bags and am in the process of emptying out a huge rubbermaid bucket tote I shoved in there a while back. I had high hopes of running across my Beatrix Potter Quaker chart but it wasn't in that particular bucket. I found more jeans the kids have outgrown for a denim throw I plan to make one day. I still have the other half of the floor of his closet to clean, this is a project that takes baby steps. If I work longer than 30 minutes at a time I get overwhelmed. I still can't figure out how we accumulate so much junk. Well I do, I'm a magazine whore and those create piles everywhere and I hate throwing them out because you never know when you have to look something up in a back issue of Mary Englebreit's Home Companion. Although the one I really wanted to save, there was a quilt I wanted to attempt to copy, I can't find. It's probably hanging out with Beatrix Potter laughing at me.

I've also been trying to plan the backyard. From pictures you can tell we have very little grass up near the house so I'm thinking about extending the patio using those large square stones. I have to get the grill off the patio and I'm thinking three rows of three stones will be perfect for that and then six rows of three on the other side and I can get the patio table off the porch. That way when we open the back doors we won't bang against chairs or the grill. I'm sure my neighbors appreciate that at 4 am when I'm letting the dogs out.

We're going to build a raised bed for a garden this weekend. Last year I did the container garden thing and my tomatoes would only get so big so we're going to put a raised bed on the south side of the house. I don't think it'll look tacky. Once it's nice and green and leafy it'll be pretty. We enjoyed home grown tomatoes last summer. Didn't have a large crop but made some killer bruschetta a couple of times. I'm going to try Square Foot Gardening this year. We're going to try watermelons again but a smaller kind instead of the congo watermelons we planted last year, very unsuccessful, we'll go with something that's not supposed to get 30lbs in size. I want to plant my herbs in big pots and set them around my extended patio created by the stones I mentioned above. Yes, I do understand that these plans are primed for disaster but I want to make the backyard a sanctuary. We're also going to put up some privacy fencing between the houses on either side of us. I've been pricing it and think we can do it pretty cheap to just connect us up on either side. We'll have to build our own gate unless Home Depot has premade gates, Lowes doesn't.

We have these new kids that have moved in and they are making me nuts. Don't get me wrong I don't mind other people's kids, but if I'm outside they are in my face talking to me constantly. Now they have started ringing the bell and wanting to tortureplay with the cats, they want me to bring the puppy out, I want to say go bother your own mom. So a fence it is and I'll never have to go out in the front yard again. The one girl is also clumsy and has fallen off the swing in my backyard twice. That's all I need a kid getting hurt on our swing. Although this little girl told me that I really should give them our swing because she doesn't have one. What is up with that? Every time she comes around my house into the backyard I'm sitting in the swing. I believe that means we use it! Anyway, I have plans for the backyard to make it a nice place to hang out expand the patio on the cheap and be able to leave my back doors open and the dogs can stay out as much as they want.

No stitching news, I worked a little this weekend on that BBD freebie, First Offerings.

We did watch a lot of movies this weekend. We watched The Departed-brutal. We also watched Snakes on a Plane. How good would that movie be in 3-D? We screamed all the way through it and kept pulling our feet off the floor on to the couch, lots of fun. We also watched Stranger than Fiction with Will Ferrell. I loved this movie and Rumor Has It with Jennifer Anniston and Kevin Costner, very enjoyable. We wasted Sunday finishing up season 1 of Dawson's Creek and starting season 2. Yes, our weekend was as lazy as you're thinking. Sometimes you just have to lay around on the couch and let all your brain cells chill for a while.

I started reading The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan and I can't get into it. I should have never read the acknowledgements before finishing the book. It has really taken some of the magic from the story. Sometimes I just don't need to know the backstory. Let me just enjoy this work of fiction and not know the author's journey. Sometimes too much information is too much information.