Just popping in...

to let you know I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth!  I've been cleaning out some of the "black holes" in our house. I just finished the room over the garage that I use for a sewing room and for storage. I got rid of so much stuff-I'm rather proud of myself! I unpacked every box of books and stacked them in the loft for us to go through. I have a huge stack to donate to the library, so now it's my better half's turn. It will probably be a while before he goes through them. He's been  busy building fence on our property in preparation for getting a couple of calves to raise for beef.  A chicken coop and chickens come next and then a good clean out of the garden! We learned a lot from our "test garden" last year-mainly that we will do raised beds this year and do a better job of planning. We just put things in the ground last year and ended up with a big, overgrown mess. Live and learn. These city folks may get the hang of this yet!

My next "black hole" will be the closet under the stairs. I'm almost afraid to think about what's in there, but with tornado season coming up I need to get it cleaned out. It's our safe place or as I like to call it, "the 'fraidy hole". (I can just see us frantically trying to pull and push boxes out of the way so we can crawl in if a bad storm comes up!)  It feels really good to be down-sizing what we have. I spent a lot of time going through 60 years of my parents belongings when they died and I don't want to do that to our kids. Plus, 20 years from now when we move to a smaller place we'll only have 20 years of stuff to go through!

Here We Go Again

How did this month slip by so quickly? It's more than half over! Usually January seems to last for 6 weeks, but not this year. That's not what my post title eludes to however. It's a presidential election year and the ads have begun. (Actually they began last year, but that's another rant for another time.) Unfortunately what this does for me is make me sick of all the candidates long before it's time to vote and I suspect I'm not the only one. If nothing else, it does make for some funny memes-possibly one of the only bright spots in the whole thing!

Back to Normal

...or something vaguely resembling it! We're back from our trip-enjoyed seeing our extended family so much. My mom-in-law and husband's siblings live in New Mexico and our sister-in-law and her family drove up from Houston. Lots of laughter and hugs and way too much good food!

Unfortunately, neither our son (snowed in and sick family) or our daughter (had a chest cold which after we left, turned out to be pneumonia) were able to make it. (Snow is now melted and everyone on the mend.)

I don't like to make New Year's resolutions, it always feels like I'm setting myself up for failure. I do have some things I'd like to accomplish this year and I plan to work on those, but no self-recriminations if I don't get around to everything. (Except for losing some weight. I really have to work on that this year!) Do you make New Year's resolutions?