Is it Christmas Yet?

With the cool nip of fall in the morning air, a sudden urge to create takes over my being and I find my days turning into flights of fancy driven by compulsion.

Between fits of binge cooking for a week in advance, then spring cleaning on a weekly basis for some reason, I'm also feeling the deadline of Christmas fastly approaching, so I'm forced to address my mountain of sewing tasks that I have all but forgotten during those long & lazy warm summer months.

With eight children, and now three of them with significant others and my first grandchild on the way, my normally daunting tasks have exploded this year into herculean proportions! So it's off to sew, but I have a few other interests to occupy my down time such as: cabinetry, candle making and jewelry crafts, so idle hands will not be an issue this year! (Pray for me).

Cabinetry you ask, well, new grand child needs dressers, and the kids like their furnishing in the Log Cabin motif, so how much wood can this old woodchuck chuck? A four drawer and a three drawer chest of drawers worth, that's how much! In my living room no less. Did I mention it was getting colder, so the non heated detached garage is just out of the question.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that 10K bug? Well, turns out I've signed up for two more 5K events and I'm going to do two half marathons in 2011. I have two certain friends to thank for this new found self imposed bench marking, and you know who you are!

See you in the funny papers~

Here's What's Cookin!

Weather is about to change and I have seized the opportunity to dust-off the ole crock pot. A petite rump roast, that I dry aged for three days in a savory rub, went in and I covered that with petite red potatoes, carrots, yellow onion coarsely chopped and celery. (Someone went to the farm this week). Had some leftover purple pole beans that I threw in for good measure and poured in an organic low-sodium beef broth and seasoned with a blend of magic herbs & spices then called it good! It smells divine throughout the house right now. (She says as her stomach growls in anticipation).

Yet another child's birthday tomorrow and I should be cleaning house, but I finished a great book last night and I'm clamoring for more, so I've opted to go to the library instead. (Shame on me, I know). Well, I'll make the cheesecake tonight, sew some communion cloths for the church and make the beds. If I have any times left, I'll vacuum and clean the toilet. That should be semi-productive enough for one fine fall crisp day. I've already completed two loads of laundry,washed the dishes, cleaned the counter tops and wrapped the presents. Sounds like something, but we all know it was piddly.

Back to the salt mines~

What's Up!

Well, completed my FIRST EVER 10K Sunday in Astoria, Oregon, thanks to some very supportive friends. It was fantastic and I hated it, and I loved it, and I never want to do it again, and now I think I might want to do several more. Well, as you can see, I'm a woman in transition at the moment. I would never have thought that I would ever do something like that in my life and now I find myself setting the bar a little higher for my next go around.

These days find me sewing more, which is fantastic, but generating less corporate structured outputs, which is disheartening. I truly love to work, but at the moment, I just have to reorganize my environment to suit my drive and passion without receiving a salary for it.

There just never seems to be enough hours in the day or enough energy to stay up all night anymore, so I took a nod from a dear friend and started listening to books during my chores and workouts. Great fun, but with only limited title options, so this won't last long. In five weeks I will have exhausted the entire library's selection. What to do, what to do?

My hopes are to look back on this in one year and know that I have completed at least two more events and have lost 60 more pounds. Fingers crossed! (Twenty-three-pounds and counting!)