Yesterday I began a glass totem to put near Teeger's grave. I plan to have a solar light in the top of it. I didn't have the right color glass globs to decorate it (I wanted orange like his eyes) but remember that I HAVE glass beads. So I used them. Today I will work more on it and possibly finish it. I can use a solar light that I already have, by stealing it from the garden. I posted the above on my 10 minute blog. I still can't get peoples comments to embed under my posts (so you don't have to click on the comments link). Oh well. I'll just use it as an inspiration and craft diary for me! Sorry that some are having financial troubles. I hope that your situations improve very soon! I am very fortunate at the moment. But one reason I want to tame the chaos in our house is so that we can rent a room or 2 again if we need to. (We live near a teaching hospital and can get very nice people doing internships for 6 to 8 weeks at a time.) I've thought about doing it again to create some cash to help dfosterd so i don't feel resentful when I pay for medications (no health insurance) or car repairs. Here is a link that might be useful: 10 Minutes Each Day Blog

Randy, Well, our PWG's have been talking about how it is much warmer than usual during the day (and sometimes at night), so I don't have a bone to pick with them over that. However, most of them keep mentioning how it is 'a little dry'. A little? We've had 22" of rain and ought to have had 32" by now and we are a 'little' dry? Now that the pastures have begun burning somewhere in southern OK/northern TX on a daily basis, the PWGs are finally beginning to talk about it being 'very dry'. Hello! Where have they been all year long??? I've already been out doing firescaping this AM. It is a gorgeous morning and we are going to be in the mid- to upper-80s this afternoon. I guess we have a few 'hot' days left before the next cold front arrives later in the week. It is still warm enough at night that the frogs are croaking from twilight on. I love autumn and wish it would last forever. I'm not much of a winter girl, although I do like snow. (Snow, by the way, hardly ever falls here so that's probably why I love it so.....because we don't have it but once every 3 or 4 years.) And, half the time, what we call snow is really a winter mix of sleet, freezing rain and some grainy snow pellets. REAL snow without sleet or frozen rain mixed in is fairly rare here where I live. Dawn

I ditto trying not to get overwhelmed and just toss stuff out randomly. Try to identify those things, or categories, or activities, that are no longer "you" and those will be the easiest starting points. Or, pull out all the items in a certain category and, if you're like a lot of collectors, some will represent the "early" you and some will be your more advanced tastes, or better quality, or something. So some combination of approaches like that can help you get started. Also, it's not unusual to weed out a few things at one level and then weeks or months later have the focus and confidence to go further. Give yourself time to make those discernments. Another good approach for some people is to take everything out of the shelf, or cabenet, and then put half (or less) back. In the meantime, you don't actually ahve to toss out what you've deleted, but maybe put it in a box. Then look at it later and see if you think you really still need those things. If the changes you're making include bringing fewer items into the house, you'll find that if you are patient and persistent, you'll make real progress and yet not feel like you might be throwing away something you really love. I actually started a thing-out, thing-in journal "list" so that I could see if I was sabotaging myself by acquiring new things as fast as I got rid of other things. It is helpful in keeping me honest about where my problems lie. I also find some of my most satisfying de-cluttering comes at the end of an "era" or phase of project, or life--such as, as kids grow and you finally realize that certain items are now too juvenile, or when I have the guts to admit that I'm not going to actually DO a certain project or that if I ever do, I can always get the things I need then, or maybe a cooking phase that now is too complicated, or clothing styles, or whatever. And you have to be able to realize that you may have just made some shopping mistakes, and keeping the things now out of guilt won't help you or anyone else. Forgive and move on!

Wow, I know about hoarding old appliances. My mom (an 82-year-old widow)has four refrigerators. One in the house, three in the garage. One is totally broken, the other two plugged in and running. The story of the broken one is amusing: she had these three refigerators plugged in in the garage and running. She used them for her "extra" stuff. Sh'ed buy stuff on sale and keep it either in the fridge or freezer compartments. She even bought extra Valentine chocolates. Anyway, one month her electric bill was over $700. Wow! My brother came over, did some scouting around and found one of the garage fridges (with a huge freezer) was running constantly. The thermostat had broken and it just never shut off. He unplugged it and emptied it, found all kinds of old stuff, even an eight- year- old frozen chicken! Yuck! But my mom didn't want him to throw out the darned refrigerator because the town had to be called and she'd have to pay to get the thing hauled away. And so it sits in her garage, just a pile of broken metal. She also had an ugly old hutch in the kitchen. I mean, she bought it for cheap about thirty years ago. It was all ugly and the fake-wood veneer was severly chipped off from various dings and general use. She had my brother put it in the living room,tipped on it's side. Now it's just a plain eyesore. I dread the day she passes away, we'll have to deal with her fourty years of accumulations. But that will be another post/ rant...