October Week One

Welcome!  Willow's Week One of October.  Here is the link to FRIDAY FAVE FIVES.

1.  I have been reading an interesting book.  The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.  It's not as creepy as it sounds.  The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson.  It's not at all creepy or sad.  It's about 'How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter' with a focus on doing it for your family so they don't have to do after you die.  Lots of good thoughts and bits of humor.  I liked this quote: "There must be something wrong with the way I have organized my home if I have to continually mess up the place that I originally worked so hard to decorate and keep orderly."

2.  Fresh tomato sauce.  Yum! Our neighbor gifted us several tomatoes, so The Professor cut them up and added some fresh basil from our garden.  It smelled heavenly as it cooked.  I'm thankful both for the gift of the tomatoes and the sauce they produced.

3.  On Saturday,  I attended a tea party to celebrate the ninety-third (sshhh!) birthday of a neighbor.  It was so much fun, and World's Best Neighbor was there, too. The tea shop provides fancy hats and you get to choose the one you want to wear.  I couldn't decide.  Which one do you like?

4.  Fall weather.  The temperatures have cooled down some (not like in Montana or Canada!) and during our evening walks, we have donned our light jackets.  I know we will get some hot weather and wind (those Santa Ana winds!), but for now, I am thankful for the almost perfect weather.

5.  My granddaughter ZG's thirteenth birthday was this week.   She is growing so tall.  She loves little children.  She actually called me on her birthday!  She's enjoying school (I'm getting As, Meema! she said).  

I've had a great first week of October!  How about you?

Catching Up

I missed last week's FRIDAY FAVE FIVES  Just a really really busy week.  But there were so many blessings in the past two weeks.  What happened?

1.  One day we met our long time friends at Reagan Presidential Library to spend the day touring the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit.  It was wonderful and overwhelming.

2.  While I was waiting in line in the (Ladies Room), a woman looked at me and stated, "I know you!"  She did!  We were friends at church a long time ago.  She recognized me!

3.  AND! She and several friends were at the library celebrating another friend's birthday!  Yes, I know her, too!  What an amazing blessing!

4.  I've been doing a bit of decluttering and passed on several skeins of yarn to my friend who has a weaving studio (here's the link to her facebook page:  Threadbender Textiles).  And she had a bag of sock yarn for me!  I THINK I might have come out ahead of the decluttering, but I'm not quite sure.  But I call it a win-win.

5.  While I was culling my yarn, I found a couple of knitting projects I had forgotten about.  Two hats.   Now I have a couple of projects to finish quickly.  (How do I manage to bury them in a bunch of other yarn?)

Bonus.  I love this quote from Elizabeth Elliot which my pastor's wife posted on facebook: 

 "To pray 'thy will be done', I must be willing, if the answer requires it, that my will be undone."  

TRUTH!

Five Faves and a Bonus

All of a sudden, I realized, "It's time for Friday Fave Fives"!  What happened to the week?  Because it has been a bit unusually warm here, I haven't been paying as much attention to what day it is.  Mostly I've been staying inside enjoying the AC.  However, the week has had many blessings besides the air conditioning.

1.  Lunch with The Professor's sister.  We live in the same town, and sometimes it's just fun to hang out together.  The three of us ate our favorite burrito place after church services on Sunday.  I'm truly blessed to have a fun and witty sister-in-law.

2.  During the summer our church does 'Wednesday Night Dinners'.  We assemble and enjoy a meal together.  Everyone is welcome and there always lots of visitors.  This week, it was Taco Wednesday-the food was fantastic.  And then the evening was topped off by a concert by a local Blue Grass Band Brush Arbor.  It was great!

3.  I was sitting near a mom and her little daughter.  The four year old was mesmerized by my knitting needles.  So I offered to knit her a hat.  She was so cute.  "Any color hat is fine," she said as she smiled shyly.  Finally, she decided that light blue would be fine.  So now I have some light blue yarn and I'll be casting on for a sweet girl's new hat.

4.  I've been trying stay motivated and busy even in the heat.  So I have declared the rest of the summer as 'Focus on One Area' Time as I declutter and clean around the house.  Right now I'm focusing my attention on PAPERS.  I discovered a couple of file folders that could be passed on to the people who will be taking over my classes.  Also, I cleaned up a bunch of random papers on my desk.

5.  The sweetest part of going through the papers was rereading a bunch of cards and notes from my students.  I know I don't 'need' to keep them, but reading them gives me great joy, so I keep them.  If you had been  a little bird in the window, you would have heard me saying, "Awwww."  And "Ohhhh, sweet."  And "Sniff, sniff."  I think I'll keep them forever.

A little bonus--my milkweed plants have been thriving, which is a good thing since this week the monarch caterpillars are back in force--I counted nineteen of them on my four plants.  Fortunately there are adequate leaves for those ravenous things to consume and they have been doing just that.  The milkweed doesn't LOOK like it's thriving, but I know that as soon as the caterpillars depart and make their cocoons, the plants will put out more new leaves.  I spotted one butterfly hatched out already.  I love hosting the monarchs in my garden!

Routine Week

Having been home in our own place for a full week, I am beginning to feel rested and centered again.  Life takes on its usual routine which can be so very comforting.  It's also great to be back on my usual Friday Fave Five schedule (thanks to Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for hosting).

1. We visited a new Wednesday farmers market in town because the market was closed on Saturday for our Camarillo Fiesta Days which is held in the same place.  Some of the Saturday vendors were there and greeted us like long lost friends.  Sprouts, carrots, lettuce, broccoli were bought (and consumed).

2. We have resumed our big clear out and declutter which we began before we left on our road trip.  We've pulled out bags of stuff--clothes, old towels, and the like.  Oh, it makes me happy to have more open space in closets and drawers.

3. Part of the clear out included our storage shed.  We finally made the decision to let go of our back packing packs.  We haven't used them for years.  I listed them along with some quart canning jars and a lovely solid wood quilt rack on a local resource exchange site.  Today they are gone, and I'm $60.00 richer.  I love the double win--declutter and get cash for it.  And the buyers were thrilled to get a good deal.

4. This week on Bastille Day was our wedding anniversary.  When you've been married as long as we have, you don't need all the fuss (we never did; we're quiet people), so we drove up to Santa Barbara and visited the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens.  We've been there before but wanted to stroll again through the native California garden along the famous Mission Creek.  In fact, we bought ourselves an anniversary present:  a year membership to the garden so we can visit as often as we want.

5. Back to our anniversary---I am a most blessed woman.  We have had a wonderful and long marriage.  We both possess a refined sense of adventure and that has worked well for us--we've lived in crazy places and done crazy things.  We share the same goals to live as true Christians and share the same beliefs.  Sometimes people ask us for advice for a successful marriage.  We have two suggestions.  1) Don't take everything seriously.  Laugh a lot.  Like every day.  2) Don't make everything a hill to die on.  It is guaranteed that if everything is so important that you make it a hill to die on, you will die on a hill.  Give a little, or a lot.  Choose your battles.  Happy Anniversary to The Professor and me!

A fun snapshot.  I was trying to photograph the wild flowers as we were driving through Cimarron Canyon in New Mexico.  What I got was a surprise.  Prairie dogs...do you see them?

Clearing Out

I mentioned last Friday that I have been cleaning out stuff from the house.  I'm on a roll!  More things are boxed up to be dropped off at the thrift store.  This includes, yes, another set of dishes.

Why would a wannabe minimalist have yet another set of china?  Well, the story behind this set is that it too was a wedding gift.  I used these dishes (white stoneware) until we moved across the Pacific Ocean to the end of the world.  It's a bad idea to move breakable china that far.  So I loaned the dishes to a friend to use.  Twelve years later, when we returned the final time from Indonesia, my friend told me she had given the dishes away.  No big deal.  Except.  About six years ago, she found them in her attic and returned them to me!  My younger daughter took them, used them happily.  But now she has moved across the US and elected to not take them.  Back those dishes came to me.  I don't need them.  I don't have room in my little place.  So those dishes are history.  And I'm OK with that.

Then there are the other things-- a few knick knacks, a few books, some yarn that I will never knit into anything.

One other item that is leaving is a wooden quilt rack.  Back in the day when I lived in Oregon and had a business that involved displaying handspun yarn and other fiber related items in a pleasing fashion, I used the quilt rack to hang those things on.  But I don't have a useful reason to keep the rack now.  It has simply been in the way in the guest room.  After advertising it for sale on a local resource exchange, I have a buyer.

What amazes me is although I have been decluttering and decluttering on a mostly consistent basis, there is still so much stuff around.  Obviously, I still have a ways to go to be comfortable with how much I've cleared out.