Holiday Spirit

Here it is December, just a little more than a week before Christmas and I have no holiday spirit. I usually love Christmas, but this year just can't seem to get into it.  What is wrong with me? Hopefully this coming week my holiday spirit will find its way back to me.

China Night

 One of the nice things of being near a college campus is the wide variety of events that take place. One of these events was the 1st Annual China Night put on the Confucius Institute and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association.

The night started off with a yummy dinner that included:
Crispy Chicken-really good flavor
Fish Balls-wasn't so fond of these
Tofu and vegetables-tofu was a little over done, but still had great flavor
Green Beans and ground pork-really delicious!
Fried rice or steamed rice-I went with the fried rice and it was yummy!

We were then given different cultural performances. It is fun to get a brief immersion into a culture like this.

Dance: Song of Autumn Colors. Beautifully choreographed and danced by several young women.
Sorry the picture isn't the greatest, I couldn't get my phone to focus for some reason and wish I had a video.

Song-Male Solo- A song about the artisan who makes the famous blue porcelain. I apparently deleted the short video on accident.

Peking Opera Singing- Apparently this is where men sing in crazy high voices. Not sure I would pay to see this if I went to China, but also not closing the door on the thought either.

Chinese Traditional Fashion Show-featured the young women in different styles of dresses-sorry no pictures my seat didn't provide the best shot of the runway and all you would have seen were their heads.

Song-Female Solo- She sang "My Heart will Go On" from Titanic. Apparently anything that is Hollywood is extremely popular over there.

Dragon dance-Started off with no music, but then the music kicked in. No video as they didn't really do anything, but here are some pictures of the dragon. They aren't the greatest. Sorry!

So there is a brief view of China Night. There were kinks that need to be worked out, but the students did a wonderful job putting it together and I hope they hold more in the future. Looking forward to Taste of Nepal and India Nite. We missed Africa Night this year :(

Hallway

 We have a long hallway in our house and one side is by the stairs that go to the basement, so there is a nice shelf. However this shelf tends to get rather cluttered with whatever we put on it as we walk by. It has been bothering me for quite some time, as I have always felt that you see it when you walk in the front door and having it all cluttered just isn't a good impression. Now my thinking is probably off because our living room is much more noticeable than the hallway wall/shelf, but don't get me started on the living room at the moment, that will be a future post.

Before-this is the little wall/shelf before I tackled it. See just a hodge-podge of clutter. And yes there is still painters tape on the area, even though we have lived in the house 3 years, sad I know.

After-here is the same location after I tackled it. The project maybe took 20 minutes tops. I am really happy with it and love the feeling I get when walking by. It is truly mind blowing how having an organized spot can make you feel, it is like a breath of fresh air. I am hoping to get rid of the little basket all the way at the end, tonight. I removed the majority of the painters tape, fresh tape will have to be applied when I finally get around to tackling the painting of the trim.

So I needed to find another location or option for my little mail station that was at the end of the hallway by the kitchen. The original container was just holding envelopes and stamps really and didn't need to be as big and cumbersome as it was. I found these at Staples and decided to give them a try.They are little wall mountable pockets really. I got a double one like the one pictured and a small one. They were so simple to install and so far think they will work better then the container I was using originally. The best part I was able to use 40% off coupons for every item I purchased that was part of the Martha Stewart Home Office with Avery line. I watched my total drop like $10.00, that makes me happy!

From Staples Website

Mine- the wall will eventually be a different color so right now they kind of blend in.
I put these just inside the kitchen next to our pantry.

So just a small update on my progress in trying to tame the clutter and chaos in an effort to make my home, inviting, warm, and organized.

Update 11/01/2013

I have managed to keep the hallway shelf clean for over a month now!!!  

Family Room Update

Okay, so been awhile since I have posted about working on the Family Room downstairs. Truth is haven't been able to work on it like I had hoped. We have had a co-worker staying with us for the last couple of months. They finally were able to get a place of their own, now hopefully they are able to get the last bit of their stuff here shortly.

Anyway, on Saturday I decided to tackle my craft desk. It is a big metal desk that wasn't being used for the purposes I had planned for it, it was being used as a great device to collect crap. Well I decided that I had had enough of the so called crap collecting desk and decided to do something about it.

In one of my previous posts I made a note about all the empty plastic bins I had cleaned out, well put some of them to use, well technically just one but it has lots of little organizing bins inside it holding things. All of my craft stuff from the desk fit into a Rubber Maid Drawer, now I am not that crafty so I don't have a ton of stuff. This is mainly foam brushes, some glitter (for a project I never started), some paper punches and rubber stamps (which honestly I should just get rid of). I need one more drawer to hold the other bin of craft stuff that is currently upstairs in a plastic bin under the guest bed, but baby steps Heather, baby steps.

Before Picture: Here is the desk in its prime of being a crap collector. Majority of the baskets on top were re-purposed a few weeks ago in the linen closet. See the white bin on the right? That is now where everything that is craft related is stored.

After Picture: Here is the desk, clean drawers and all. Not much else changed around the area right now so just a picture of the desk. I know real impressive huh?! Anyway desk is for sale at the moment if anyone wants it, or depending on how desperate I get to wanting it out of the Family Room it will be donated here shortly (which is the more likely outcome).

So overall, making some slow progress, but it is progress. I know once the desk is gone I will have an open spot and not sure what to do with it, but I will tackle that challenge when it comes. Now just need somewhere to store the Baha'i bins that are currently hiding in the corner, oh and get the On Demand Water Heater installed.

Friendship

Had a rough day yesterday when a friend of mine decided they were unsure they wanted to remain friends.  So just posting this as a reminder to myself that friends can come and go. I will always treasure the memories I made with them and hope we can work out our differences.

And because I LOVE Winne the Pooh, this is is to bring a smile to my face and to say thank you to my friends (you know who you are). I love you guys and though we aren't close in miles, you are always beside me and for that I am forever thankful. Thank you for for being my Christopher Robin when the world goes all funny shaped.

Body Issues

So I have never been super active, never liked sports. I preferred to be singing or playing a musical instrument. However I think this has also affected how I view exercise. I have always had curves, only those curves now aren't just curves, they are more like overall roundness. I guess in a sense I am unhappy with my body shape.

Don't get me wrong, I am still confident in who I am, I like myself, but I also know myself could be better. I sit at a desk for 8 hours a day and head home to cook dinner and whatnot, exercise isn't on my mind. I did really good at walking for awhile then Moscow got rain for 3 weeks and walking in the rain and cold just isn't fun and now I am having trouble starting up again. The University has a very nice recreation center I could use, but I am intimidated sadly enough. I don't look like the people who use the rec. center. I am not a stick figure. I know this is sad, but it is the truth.

The rheumatic fever has caused me to be tired almost every evening and all I want to do is sleep. I know that my body is still healing and it needs time to be able to do that and that I can't over do activity. I also know that rheumatic fever can cause heart issues. Exercising won't prevent any rheumatic fever heart disease issues unfortunately, but exercise can help strengthen my heart. Exercising could also help the joints as one of the side effects of rheumatic fever is joint pain and stiffness. Now I have been lucky and have been unaffected by the joint pain like I experienced when I was diagnosed, however it has started to come back just a little bit. Exercising won't take away the inflammation that might be in the joints, but hopefully it can help with range of motion.

So I have decided to reactivate my rec. center membership and use my lunch hour to go ride the bicycle. I chose the bicycle, because just gotta start somewhere. I am out of shape, gotta build up. I also chose the bicycle because I can read while riding, and hopefully reading a book will help motivate me.

I am going to try it for awhile and see how I do. I know there are so many benefits to exercise, I have a degree in Sports Science, I KNOW the benefits. But why can't I seem to do it? I want Jason to be happy when he sees me and not see me as a blob ( he hasn't called me a blob, that is how I feel). I want to go shopping and be able to buy clothes that actually look good on, not clothes that cover up my muffin top or saddle bags.

I just want to feel attractive.  So I am asking for help. Help keep me accountable. I am taking a big step and posting a picture of me as I am now. Wait....can't do it. No! I have to, I can't continue to look like this. Here goes......

So the plan is in a couple of months to take another photo and hopefully there will be some progress. Now I just have to push publish.

Family Room

So I have had issues with the family room for quite some time. When we moved into the house, we literally moved into the basement while we worked to make the upstairs livable. After we got the upstairs squared away the family room has just been kind of forgotten about.

I decided to tackle the family room project one weekend and try to make progress on having the room feel friendlier, more comfortable, an improvement from what it was, whatever. I just wanted to do something! It is a long way from being where I want it but I have made some progress....I think. Below are pictures of the what I hope is progress. I have done some more work on it here and there. I will take pictures and post those soon.

Before moving the freezer and luggage

Before moving the bookcases

Freezer in new location-where bookcases used to be

Bookcases where freezer and luggage use to be

 Still have a pile of boxes (seen in the first picture off to the side) that need to be gone through. Most of the stuff needs to go into the garage. But yeah don't get me started on the garage subject  :)  The luggage made it into the closet under the stairs, which yes added to the pile of boxes to be gone through. However there was success, see the empty bins in the new freezer picture, those use to all be FULL!  My craft desk is also mainly full with empty baskets and containers, that is progress right? Don't want to get rid of those containers yet, so they are taking up space, but I will get through those eventually too.

I am making progress, I hope. Still have a long way to go, but eventually I will get there.