Once upon a time I was happy to see the seasons change.  Something happened somewhere, I'm not sure what, and now all I wanna do is scream when I see yellow leaves on my lawn.  NO!  I'M NOT READY!  Because you know how much that helps.  Obviously not so happy about seasons changing anymore.

Nonetheless I've been reading about lists of things to do now that it's Fall.  I imagine I need to suck it up and make my own list, dang it.

• Insulate the attic.
• Keep walking past the fall decor displays.
• Wonder why Target doesn't have Halloween stuff out yet.
• Plant new shade perennial garden.
• Make a pot roast.
• Start shopping for cardigans that go past my elbows.
• Refinish the landing at the back door.
• Remember how cute my brown "suede" boots are.
• Unhook the sump pump hoses.
• Look in my fall decorations tub so I will remember I already have a lot of pumpkins.
• Swing by Carol Widman's Candy to see if she's making caramel apples yet.
• Break out my collection of scarves and wraps.
• Make that good looking apple crisp in the October issue of Cooks Illustrated.
• Start stalking the produce section for Honeycrisps on sale.

It looks like I will be quite busy for a while.

Number of days left until Daylight Savings Time ends:  41.  Oh.  Well.  That's not so bad.

This recipe is based on Blueberry Buckle Muffins from the book, "Granny's Muffin House". It's all muffins, all the time. Let's commence with the muffinness. ... << MORE >>

In the 20 some years I've been banging around my house painting, hanging wallpaper, stripping wallpaper and applying various chemicals to various surfaces, I didn't know what I was doing is "refreshing".  I knew it wasn't as grand as remodeling, that's for sure. 

The latest has been our upstairs bath.  It's the standard old house bath, a toilet, sink, claw foot tub and a window for ventilation.  A sad excuse for ventilation when it's -20 outside, by the way.  We use it pretty much as a powder room, our main bathroom is elsewhere.  Elsewhere is the basement, it's another story.

When we first looked at our house I peeked into the bathroom and saw yellow & orange wallpaper, bright yellow trim and a sparrow.  I backed out in a hurry and demanded my husband take a look.  Sure enough, there was a live bird sitting on the shelf.  We left the house emphatically not interested.  Now that we've been here the aforementioned 20 some years, the bathroom has been refreshed twice and neither time has involved birds.  Of any kind.

We lived with the yellow bathroom for a while.  In 1990 I was motivated to wallpaper the bathroom in a lovely blue and tan faux marble pattern before I started a new job.  In the last few years it's floated across my brain that that wallpaper might be a bit dated.  Two years ago I picked new paint colors.  Then this spring I read this blog http://www.myfavoriteandmybest.com/ and her opinion of faux marble wallpaper.  You'll note Jenny is blunt in her opinions.  She doesn't like faux marble.  It became clear to me that a change was imperative.  To make it interesting I have time because of my husband's recovery and no money.  Well.  I adjusted my color choices to be the same as leftover paint in the basement and commenced.

Here is before:









Here's the after:



This one shows the "Boston Tea Party" ceiling and the super cute blue vintage light fixture.  The husband found it at a rummage sale a lifetime ago.



Does it look like all I did was change the towels?  How disheartening.







Here's what we did:

Removed wallpaper and gobs of wallpaper paste from upper walls. 
Painted upper and lower walls, and the ceiling.
Darkened the chair rail.
Repainted the mirror frame.
Edited, added and rearranged art.  We have oil paintings in our bathroom for cryin' out loud!  The art has become a mix of vintage and contemporary local art.
Got new towels.

The cost?  Negligible.  Seriously.

It has taken me quite a while to get used to the new look.  It took me even longer to post because the new look I found kind of jarring barely registers on the photos.  Clearly, I am not a photographer of note.  I eventually fell in love with the bathroom, I'm happy when I see it.  It feels quite a bit more fresh, and God knows you want a fresh bathroom.

Number of times I've straightened the hand towels since finishing the refresh - COUNTLESS!  sigh.

The other night I was standing around my yard looking at this:
 



Specifically, all those daylilies.  They're ditch lilies.  When we bought our house there was a pile of bricks against a precarious picket fence with daylilies growing out of it.  That was written correctly, the daylilies were growing out of the brick pile.  We used the bricks to edge all the flower beds and threw away a garbage can full of daylilies.  There were more, and I planted some of them under this hideous tree.  I'm sick of 'em.

The tree stays.

My thought was to go back to one of our local nurseries and snap up a bunch of shade perennials at 50% off.  I'm going to cut back swathes of the daylies and spray them with Round Up.  Digging them up would be a ton of fun (snort!) but I'm sure I'd never get them all so will opt for the spray.  This time.

Then I happened to turn around and see this:



Oh yeah, I have three overly full shade perennial gardens.  My little penny pinching brain finally kicked in, I've got LOTS of plant material I can use for no money.  Yahoo! 

The plan was to cut and spray the daylilies this afternoon.  However, it was 90 degrees and super windy so I read a smarmy novel instead, with a promise to myself to do it this evening.  This evening it happens to be raining.  And I'm blogging.

Tomorrow I will cut and spray the daylilies.  In a couple of weeks I'll start splitting and planting the hostas, iris, what have you in my newly uncovered ground.  It'll be pretty ugly this year, but wait til next year...

Number of days since we've had a decent rain in Fargo:  15

Or revolution, or something.  I started this blog because it seemed interesting to share the foibles of living an organized life when it hurts a little to be organized.  I've drifted off topic many times, or so I thought, when I blogged about other things that interest me, like food or gardening.  And honestly?  It's hard to blog about just one thing.  So I'm not going to blog about just one thing, I'm going to blog about all the things that interest me. 

They are almost exclusively domestic things.  Ok, they are exclusively domestic things.  No fashion, no politics.  Maybe some fashion some times, but it will be pretty lame.  I promise.

Here are my categories:

Food - I have the patience of a two year old on a sugar bender.  I want food that is made from scratch and I want it NOW.  I will share my ways.

Gardening - The gardening season here in the North is short.  Bear with me.  I like flowers.

Housekeeping - My house is small and easy for me to clean myself, so I do.  I like it because I am inordinately fond of my house.  It's kind of weird.

Refreshing - Refreshing of spaces, that's what you do when you paint, re-arrange furniture, swap out old things for new.  Remodeling?  Way too much work.

Organizing -  The grease that keeps the rest of my likes humming along.  I can do none of the things I like without being organized.  Unless I want to be really, really crabby because it will not go well.  No one wants that.

Follow along if you like, share my blog with your friends.  I'll be getting back to one of my other favorite things, writing.

Number of recipes I will blog about in the near future:  4

What?  It's a start...

That's what my blogging home page said when I started this entry.  That was five days ago. Hmm.  Well.

Anyhow.  Last night I read an article written by Sheryl Seyfert for the Spring 2008 issue of Creative LIving entitled "Mess Appeal Embrace Dosprder - There's Creativity In It."  I gotta say, I found it really interesting.  The article was based on the author's interviews with Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman regarding their book 'A Perfect Mess:  The Hidden Benefits of Disorder".  In their book, which I haven't read, the authors promote messiness.  They say the American obsession with being organized is flawed, that a little mess is a good thing.

It just so happens I agree, sort of.  My stand on the whole issue is it's none of my business how organized or disorganized any single American is.  My concerns are with myself, and the hardy soul who hires me to help them.  My clients hire me to get them to a level of organization they are comfortable with and can maintain.  They hire me because they need help, and I can be that help.  It's very, very personal.

The gist of Abrahamson and Freedman's thinking seems to be people are usually organized to a level that is comfortable, but often feel pressure from family, friends, even society at large, to become "organized", a vague ideal that very few of us reach.

If that sounds familiar, it is.  We get the same sort of message regarding our physical appearance, parenting, and lawns.  Just to mention a few. 

To heck with all that.  If you're happy with your organizational systems I wish you the fortitude to tell your critics to take a hike.  I don't care what your systems look like.  If you're happy, I'm happy.  This is, after all, the good old USA, we get to pick how we live.  If you're not happy, we should talk.

Life with freedom of choice is bliss.

Wednesday is a great day to reflect on what's good in our lives, isn't it?

Today I'm grateful for:

• The "free" printer that came with our last computer purchase.
• Love, and the people who share it.
• Vitamin C drops.
• Caller ID.
• Herberger's sale prices on bath towels.
• LIttle white dogs that aren't mine but will cuddle with me anyway.
• A decent nights sleep.
• My husband.
• Surprises.

What are you grateful for today?

These last weeks have been quiet around our house, sort of.  Quiet because my husband is still recovering at home, which means I'm at home a lot too.  Not that I wouldn't rather be organizing for the masses!

Anyway.

Apparently I don't have the chops to relax with a book for days on end.  I get distracted by all the projects that slowly come to me as I'm sitting in my chair mulling over the rightness of things in our house.  Or wrongness, most of the time.

Every project begins the same way, I start price shopping and budgeting.  Unfortunately, due to a lack of income due to a lack of work, the budget is pretty much non-existent.  The good news is I've been able to move forward on all my projects because, get this, I"ve already got the stuff!  How cool is that!

My imagination is telling me you're asking "how does an organizer have a bunch of stuff laying around?"  Aha!  Good question!  The trick is doing the same thing I've done before, only different.

In other words, the paint I used in our living room is going up in our bathroom.  I love the color combo in our living room, parchment color walls with a light blue ceiling.  In our bathroom the leftover blue paint is going on the walls and the parchment on the ceiling.  My husband forces me to take good care of my paint brushes and rollers, so no equipment outlay.  Isn't he the clever one?

This has been the theme for every project taken on.  Having no budget forces me to think more creatively and use up what's sitting around.  I have to say, I might not be good at relaxing for days, but I'm awesome at little projects that cost next to nothing.

Life with a pretty bathroom is bliss.

Tricky Duck Tip:  When shopping for party supplies, be careful of buying holiday themed cute things.  Only buy long lasting holiday themed items if you will ABSOLUTELY use them year after year.  And you have room to store them.

It's been a while friends, I apologize.

Today I'm grateful for:

Ibuprofen - this gardening business is starting to hurt.
Mosquito spray - thank God.
The competent phone repair guy from 702.
Peanut butter toast.
Clearance prices on garden plants.
Vitamin C drops.
WOW.
Jennifer Cruisie.
Felco and their pruner, it made today's work much easier.

What are you grateful for today?

Here I am, at my computer, waiting for my car to be repaired.  When it's done we'll be hitting the road for Minneapolis and one more visit to the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic.  If you're wondering how my husband is doing, well, he seems better.  Still recovering, but better.  The true measure is in the labs they take at the clinic, so we'll see if things are going as well as we think.

So.  Anyway.

I would imagine you're visiting in hope of getting some good organizing info.  It would be awesome if I had some ready, instead of just swirling half complete in my brain.  The only excuse I will offer is it's summer and I am spending a delicious amount of time gardening.  Organizing will commence on Wednesday.  In the meantime I will give you this:



Life in the garden is bliss.

Tricky Duck Tip:  Take time to smell the roses, but be careful of the thorns.  Especially if your rose is a William Baffin. 

PS.  I took those cute rag baskets from this post: A Little Bit Country  back to the store.  To make up for losing out on the cuteness I picked up a wonderful new skirt.  Come my Wednesday appointment I will be decked out in said skirt.  Not a bad trade.