Off Topic Until the End :)

Days don't get much better than this! I spent the day with my best friend getting crafty. I have a gelli plate, which is used for making monoprints. In my heart, I know I am an artist -- but I let other things eat away at the precious little free time I have and I don't make creating and playing a priority. My best friend is also very creative, so we try to set aside days to get together and make art. I am participating in an art swap this month, so today's art time was spent layering colors and designs, adding stamped images etc. This is one of the prints I made today

Another thing my friend and I share a love of is eating good food. For lunch we made Caprese Salad, fresh fruit, homemade corn muffins, and I brought fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Alas, I do not have a picture :(

The last thing that made today so good was dinner -- I love to cook! Today is National Cheese Pizza Day, so it was a great excuse to make homemade pizza and try out a new crust recipe. The crust recipe can be found here. It makes two pizzas, which is perfect for us since I am a vegetarian and hubby is a carnivore. Here is a picture of "my" pizza. 

  I topped it with caramelized onions, red bell peppers, olives, mushrooms, fresh mozzarella, cheddar, and Parmesan. It was delicious :) Next time I will raise the oven temp to 500 instead of 450. The crust did not get as brown as I would have liked.

Anyway, good food and good company make for a great day.I hope all of you had one or the other, or ideally, both!

Now onto the real reason for this blog --finding five books was easy today -- I must have been in the right mindset. Each time I grabbed a book, I asked myself, "Why do I have this?  I am sure my library has this? Why haven't I read this ? If I haven't read it, why am I keeping it?" 

Since I made you read about my wonderful day, I am going to cut to the chase and list the books!

1) Adventures  of the Mind from The Saturday Evening Post
2) Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
3) Message From Forever by Marlo Morgan
4) The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
5) The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams (it's an autobiography)

So there you have it -- five books I have had for too too long and not read :(

Thanks for reading; I'll see you tomorrow :)

Penney

Do You Know What Day It Is?

I bet you thought I was going to say "Hump" Day. Fortunately, I was not. It's actually National Eat an Extra Dessert Day -- no joke.  I didn't celebrate, but I did have more than my fair share of homemade rolls at dinner tonight. My name is Penney, and I love carbs! Luckily, my metabolism allows me to eat pretty much whatever I want.

I'm determined to purge A LOT of books from my bookcase. REASON # 1  -- I don't read them. If I had my own classroom, they'd be there. But I don't, and I don't know when I will so...it's time to liquidate my fiber assets. REASON # 2 -- If Powell's buys enough of them, I will have a nice credit built up for Christmas shopping. My 17 year old son loves to read, so I know I can never go wrong with books :) The bonus is that I can use the credit on new or used books. My local bookstore only allows the credit to be used for purchasing used books. Eventually I want to start my own little free library. It is a cool idea; check it out!

Anyway for the next couple weeks I am going to subject myself to the painful torture of choosing books to kick out of the house :( I think I can manage five a day, but it won't be easy!) I just keep reminding myself I can buy them again when I have a classroom (if I still feel the need).

I will try to list titles every day, so you get a glimpse of my reading tastes :)

Today's book list includes:

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern
One Moment, One Morning by Sarah Rayner
The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein
The House I loved by Tatiana De Rosnay
Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand

These titles aren't an accurate indicator of my reading tastes. All these books were given to me, and I kept them because they sounded like something I might enjoy...and did I mention they were free?!? The only thing better than free books is free dessert :)

Anyway, after a week of selecting books, I will enter the ISBNs into Powell's website. If they buy them, I pring out a pre-paid shipping label and send them off! The last time I did a serious purge, I had 175.00 in credit! That's a lot of Christmas shopping!!! One thing I do know is that Powell's rarely takes hardcover books and two of these books are hardcover.

Tomorrow is National Cheese Pizza Day which I will be making for dinner (I already have dough rising in the fridge) and I get to spend the day getting crafty with my BFF :) Click on dough if you want the recipe for the pizza crust.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thursday as well, and I will see you tomorrow night with five more books to release into the wild.

Thanks for reading :)

Penney

Tough Love is the Answer, but...

is it possible to practice Tough Love on yourself?

I spend so much time being disgusted with myself because I have so much crap stuff, yet I spend an equal amount of time justifying why I should/need to keep all the stuff. As I thought about this absurd paradox, Tough Love popped into my head. I need to be firm rigid when I am purging! It's the only way I will ever get through this project and rid myself of excess belongings. Ha Ha, I wonder if there are "clutter coaches"...maybe after I complete this project I will promote myself as a clutter coach and help other people declutter. On top of the mental wrestling match, it seems more difficult to decide on items to purge :(

Before I get into what I got rid of today, I want to mention a book I am reading. Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. My copy is from 1992 -- I bought it at a garage sale for .50. I had been reading a copy checked out from my library, but there was no way I could do the exercises within the time constraints of the loan period. I am currently on the exercise associated with chapter 2...keeping a record (for 30 days) of every cent that comes in and goes out. Knowing that I have to write it down helps me work harder at resisting things I might normally not resist -- like coffee from an espresso stand ( my biggest weakness).

Today's purge wasn't too difficult...I had been given a Christmas themed gift box that was cute, but not my style at all. It got added to the bag of rub-ons. I also had a shopping bag full of various ribbons and trims ( more card making supplies). The bag did not have a home, so it got moved around the dining room and drove me decidedly crazy. Tonight I tackled it head-on. I gleaned a small amount of ribbon for my stash and am giving the rest to my local thrift store. I'll probably make that trip tomorrow since I am busy Thursday and Friday. Also, once its out of the house it can longer tempt me ;)

Thanks for reading, and I'll be back tomorrow!

Penney

It's All About Your State of Mind

My suspicion that purging has everything to do with my state of mind has been undeniably confirmed this evening. *sigh* Today was one of those days when there is more to be done than time to do it in. In cases like this, I shrug my shoulders, do what I can, and know the remainder of the work will patiently wait for me. I did get the yard mowed, which makes me very happy ( I love to mow, and I love when my grass is short and tidy). Our yard is quite large -- approximately a half acre -- and most of it is grass. I am working on changing that gradually. This year I added a perennial bed out front and two raised beds in the back. I plan to add six more raised beds by next spring, so I can grow colossal amounts of vegetables!!!

Anyway...back to the state of mind line of thought. We had dinner out tonight in honor of my daughter's 19th birthday. By the time we got home it was 10:00 p.m., and the last thing I wanted to do was scrounge five items to purge. I was able to justify keeping every item I considered, and I was getting cranky with myself. It's only day two and already I am losing the battle. So I stopped my half-hearted attempts and thought about why tonight the selection process seemed so difficult. It didn't take long to figure out that fatigue, the late night, and general laziness on my part were working against the greater good of my project. At this realization I marched myself back over to my bookcase and began perusing my teaching books with a more critical eye and honest heart.

Books are especially difficult for me to part with -- I love having overflowing bookcases -- books are security, intelligence, learning, and passion -- as long as I have books, I have access to these ideas. I always think to myself I should get rid of that book, I haven't touched it since I was in grad school! And then the other voice pipes up you should keep that book because it is a valuable resource and during your teaching career you never know when you might need to reference it. Reality check time...I can count the number of times I have gone back to my teaching books on one hand and have fingers left over.

So, I chose the least current, least relevant to my content area, and least read during my schooling. Voila! I had five books in less than five minutes :)

Purging is an intensely mental and emotional experience which can cause physical discomfort as well. The intensity of feeling causes me to wonder how I got to this place, how material things became so important, and how I might lessen their hold on me.

Good night and thanks for reading :)

Penelope

Trying Again...

I totally dropped the ball this summer. All my good intentions fell by the wayside as soon as the first rays of warm sunshine graced my backyard and lured me away from my computer. Unfortunately, not blogging has affected my purging -- I didn't realize how the blog was keeping me accountable. Knowing I had readers and followers pushed me to find five things a day to get rid of, and it felt so good every time I took a bag to the thrift store or cleared a surface I hadn't seen for a while. The weather is still gorgeous here (Washington), but the school year is getting ready to start and the clutter is starting to make me a little crazy.

I will subbing day-to-day again this year, so I should be able to keep up on the blog and decluttering. 

Finding and purging five items a day from my house was my own take on the book 365 A Daily Creativity Journal written by Noah Scalin. His blog features other people's 365 projects. The idea is to commit to something for a 365 consecutive days in order to break through self-imposed mental and physical barriers. I wanted my project to be something that would challenge me, but also be rewarding. Although my first attempt lasted less than a month, it was quite rewarding! I was able to share what I no longer wanted and needed with people who had a need or want for it. I still have a few packages to mail out, but it will happen.Today will be my "day 1" of attempt #2. The purpose of the blog is to document the year-long project.

This time I plan to do things a little differently. I will still purge five items a day, but I am no longer going to offer them to my readers and followers, only because postage can be a little outrageous for some things! I am going to try and sell what I can and the rest will go on Freecycle or to my local thrift shops.

Well, with all that drivel out of the way, let me tell what I am purging today! Several months ago, a friend of mine was selling her home and moving into a 5th wheel. She had even more crafting supplies than I do, and needed to seriously downsize her stash. I ended up buying two big plastic bags full of miscellaneous papercrafting goodies.  I finally got around to sorting through the bags and gleaning what I wanted ( I was very restrained!!) and bagging up the remainder to get rid of. I am not a big fan of rub-ons, so that it was I am purging today. A big grocery bag about half-full of new, unused rub-ons and mini-albums! I am going to try my local buy/sell/trade Facebook group first, then maybe Craigslist. I am not trying to make a fortune off of them, but I think it would be interesting to put the money in a separate account and see how much I make in a year.

I hope those of you who read and followed my blog previously, will join me on the second attempt of my creative journey. The encouragement I received last time was greatly appreciated!

Until tomorrow...

Penelope

Ooops! Yesterday was Monday

Having summers off tends to make all the days blur together. The only thing that helps (somewhat) is that my husband works Monday-Friday. So, I apologize for not blogging yesterday, but I did purge an excess of five items. I have had two reusable grocery bags 3/4 full of scrapbooking magazines sitting in my dining room since February-ish waiting to go to the free shelves at the library. It felt good to lug them into the library and imagine another crafter/scrapbooker having Christmas in July.

The older I get, the more I value my time. If I could get away with not working at all I would, but the federal government wants me to pay them back for my education :/ I am working toward being more frugal -- thinking about my purchases before I make them, making do with what I have instead of making an excuse to buy more, and lots of self-reflection. Consumerism is an easy trap to fall into, and a difficult hole to crawl out of.

As the new school year approaches, my status as a substitute affords me some freedom in my work schedule. Ideally, I'd like to sub three days a week, keep my side job cleaning, and have three days off. Peace of mind is priceless, and I don't feel like I have any when I am working six days a week.

Today's purge is clothing -- I still have too much, and the lack of space in my closet is stressing me out!

So, from my closet and to the local thrift store:

1)  A pencil skirt I wore once
2) A long-sleeved knit pullover purchased secondhand and never worn.
3) A long-sleeved brown patterned button up shirt
4) A long-sleeved white button up shirt
5) A very nice black hooded winter coat that was a hand-me-down from my side job.


See you tomorrow :)

It's Been a Long Time...

School was out about a month ago, and I wanted to start blogging the day after the last day of school...but it seemed like there was always something pulling me away from my computer :( However, I am finally at a place where I can slow down a bit and begin purging and blogging again. I am especially looking forward to getting back to decluttering five items ( or more to make up for lost time) a day.

I will begin purging again on Monday, July 15, 2013. After all the months of not purging, I feel like I am starting anew and it is not a pleasant feeling. It a sense it feels like I have gone backwards because I am not constantly looking around the house for I can and need to get rid of. I am hoping it will be like riding a bike -- once you have it down, it's not difficult to get back in the seat and get moving :)

I know I still owe some people some things -- I still have the items and the recipient's info and plan to get them mailed out soon.

I hope those of you following my blog can forgive me my long absence and rejoin me on my journey to purge unnecessary stuff from my life and my home!

Penelope