Happy Halloween 2013

Shifu would like to wish everyone a happy and safe Halloween!

Seize the Weekend

With apologies to Laura and Duke for stealing their blog titles...it was too good to pass up!

Anyway, remember all that whining I did back in September about NEEEEEEDing a vacation? Well, I really did need one and I knew there was no way I was getting a full week, traditional vacation so I was feeling kinda desperate...until I rearranged my definition of vacation and figured out how to Seize The Weekend. I decided 2 or 3 days was way better than no days and decided to make plans for a mini-vacation.

We weren't going to be able to go far but then I remembered that with just a 3 hour drive, we could find ourselves in a whole new world.

I would love to go on an African safari one day. I've been obsessed with explorers Martin and Osa Johnson for years and I would love to travel to some of the places that they captured on film in the '20s and '30s but while that experience may be a few years down the road, luckily for me I can catch a glimpse of safari life at Safari West in Sonoma, California.

We booked the whole package - tent cabin, bbq dinner and vehicle safari the next morning. I had been dreaming about this place for a couple of years now and I was super excited to finally get to see it in person. I am happy to say that it lived up to and exceeded my every expectation. It was so much fun and I really felt like we'd wandered into another world. After 2 days, I felt refreshed and ready to get back to real life.



the view from our tent cabin

 

nighttime on the Sonoma Serengeti

 

Now, Wasn't That Fun?  Yes, indeedy!

Vacation

I. Need. A. Vacation. Seriously.

I don't see one in my future this year but that doesn't stop me from wanting one so badly that it's practically all I think about.

I just want to go somewhere warm, preferably with a beach, but I'd settle for anywhere that the air conditioning doesn't need to be fixed (or if it does, it isn't my problem) and my schedule is my own.

I'm not going to get this, I'm going to get up tomorrow morning and head off to work and keep working on the Fall Festival (from hell) event that's coming up in October. Then I'll get off work and do 2 or 3 or 20 errands on the way home until it's time to fix dinner and do laundry and clean up the kitchen. And in my spare time I'll do my duties for the 2 boards of directors that I serve on and, in addition, try to read up on Medicare so that I don't let another open enrollment period go by without getting my mother's situation straightened out and I'll waste time worrying about other things I don't control.

But all the time, I'll be wishing I could go on vacation, dreaming of a beach and maybe a tropical drink...or four.

Half way there

 We're half way there
Livin' on a prayer
Take my hand and we'll make it - I swear
Livin' on a prayer

Bon Jovi



I love the new kitchen...still hate DIY

The Art of Unpacking

There are so many blog posts and articles out there about how to pack for a trip. Clearly I need to read a couple on how to unpack.

Here is my suitcase - a full 3 weeks after returning home from Las Vegas

oops

In my defense, these are all summery clothes which are never worn here at home so after taking out the things that really needed to be washed it was easy to put it over in a corner of my spare room and forget about it. Ok, there's really no defense for this but I figured I'd give it a shot.

I wish I could say that I emptied out the suitcase after taking this picture but that wouldn't be 100% truthful...it wouldn't even be 1% truthful.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow.

Signs of the Apocalypse

There used to be a running joke on '50s and '60s sitcoms about the hard-working husband coming home, late at night, and tripping over a new/moved piece of furniture in the living room because his stay-at-home wife had been redecorating...again. Apparently women like to move furniture around all the time and/or get new stuff as often as possible. It was used as a plot device on at least 3 "I Love Lucy" episodes that I can think of, probably more.

I must have been hiding behind the door of heaven when that gene was handed out because I almost never move furniture once I've placed it and I don't buy new stuff until the old stuff falls apart. So Mr. French considers it a sign of the apocalypse if I suddenly start dreaming about redecorating.

Consider yourself warned.

I blame Pinterest. After days of looking at cute living rooms, adorable kitchens and fabulous yards, I look at my own house and go "bleck." It's not that I want new furniture, it's just that I want my house to look like the pictures that I have been pinning - cozy, stylish and, I don't know, just different somehow, like the house of a grown-up.

The trick now is to take it one project at a time. I've already identified things I want to do in the living room - new cushions for the wicker couches, new rug, repaint the dining table and chairs - as well as a big re-do for the kitchen cabinets. I've even got Frenchie on board with the whole idea of starting to repaint those cabinets this coming weekend. Being a lazy sort, I've never really wanted to tackle anything like this but now I'm raring to go, wishing it were Friday already. Weird and kind of scary.

I'll take pictures of the "before" this week so that we have documentation of this once in a lifetime moment. Trust me, neither one of us are big do-it-yourself-ers so this might be a one time thing. Let's hope our enthusiasm lasts long enough to do all the cabinets.


rustic new handle

I've already taken the first step. The other day I realized that our drawer pulls were different. We had 2 that had rustic handles just like the one to the left and all the rest were booooooring (see below). I think the rustic ones are actually originals that somebody never got around to replacing with the boring ones.  Lucky for me, I LOVE the originals. They have that cottage-y look that I'm going for so I went to the local hardware store yesterday and found the one in the picture. It's an almost perfect match for the ones I have at home and Mr. F loves them too (which is unusual because we have very dissimilar taste


boring old handle

usually) so he was on board with my idea of replacing all the boring handles with these cool ones. Then HE came up with the idea of repainting all the cabinet doors white. They are orange now, well, more of a soft peach color which is also the same color as our kitchen walls...and ceiling. It's like being inside a giant pumpkin. There's just too much of it so painting the cabinet doors white would help a lot.

We're also going to look for rustic-looking hinges for the cabinets but that's the lowest priority, if we can't find that it's ok as long as we have the new handles.

Wish us luck...well, actually, wish me luck. Mr. F is a perfectionist so I know it'll look amazing and perfect when it's finished but I just hope I'm not finished right along with it. Hopefully it'll be one of those projects that goes smoothly and has us saying "why didn't we do this sooner?"

Famous last words?

Saving the best for last

Yesterday was not the most awesome day I’ve ever had. Oh sure, I was able to identify at least 3 moments, maybe more, but they all fell into a category I like to call “awesome-lite” revolving around food and the brief appearance of the sun. Our original plans didn't quite work out and we were spending the day at home. Quite frankly, I was rather bored by the afternoon, so bored that somehow cleaning up the clutter on my bathroom floor started to look like a good way to spend some time. Yeah, that’s how bored I was.

Actually, it was rather nice to clean up the assorted magazines and crap that accumulated over the weeks days. I even took the time to straighten out a couple of bathroom rugs that had ended up on top of each other, moving the purple one off of the green one and over to its rightful place in front of the sink.

After such an eventful day, it was finally time for bed…oh wait, I need to put in a little backstory here.

3 years ago Mr. French and I took an awesome trip (really, really awesome) to South Dakota. Of course we visited the Laura Ingalls stuff in DeSmet but then we drove west through the Badlands out to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore. It was his first visit and I hadn’t been since I was a kid so it was really like seeing it for the first time.

While there I got a special gift as a souvenir of the trip. I love Black Hills Gold especially their Dakota Rose designs so when I saw these earrings, I had to have them. I have 2 holes in each ear so I’ve worn these earrings non-stop since I got them in August of 2010.

Until last week.

One day last week, finally back at home after a busy afternoon of running around Carmel at car events and work, I reached up to my right ear and discovered that one of my beloved earrings was missing. Of course I searched everywhere I’d just been in the house but couldn’t turn up the missing earring so I assumed I’d lost it while running around and that it would be gone forever. I was pretty bummed about it even though at least I still had the one.

Ok, back to my original story.

Last night I was getting ready for bed, washing my face in the bathroom and, weirdo that I am, enjoying the bareness of my floor now that it was devoid of all the magazines and books (I like to read when I’m in there, what can I say?) when I looked down at a sparkly object on the green rug…remember, the one that had been buried under the purple rug?

My heart caught in my throat…could it be? I hardly dared to hope but yes, it was my earring! It must have come out when I was towel drying my hair earlier in the week and I just hadn’t noticed. My long, lost, beloved earring had returned to the fold.

One truly awesome moment right at the end of an ordinary day.

Smile