cleaning — Page 3

This and That

November 14, 2018 at 8:58 am by Claudia

Not only are we getting a lot of snow tomorrow, we’re also getting ice Thursday night.

Apparently, our first snowfall won’t be pretty event. I’m already sick of winter and it hasn’t officially begun!

Today will find us moving the A/C units out of the windows, cleaning up the porch, buying salt and getting the snow shovels out of the shed. I have a lot to do today!

This little mustard pot/crock arrived yesterday. It was an impulse buy, but I’m glad I went for it. It’s probably from the late 1800s – early 1900s and it’s got great graphics and an appropriate amount of rust. They don’t make packaging like this anymore, do they?

Since I have a marmalade crock from the British Isles, I figured I needed some sort of crock from France, too.

What else is new? Don is singing in a concert in Manhattan on Sunday evening. It’s to be a concert version of new musical that is in development called Johnny and the Devil’s Box. The music is bluegrass. One of the music directors from Margaritaville is working on it and recommended Don, as well as Don’s co-star, Rema Webb. It’s being done live with an audience with the intention of getting a good recording of the entire score.

I’m still working on Anastasia, but won’t be back there until November 20th. A young Australian pop star is coming in to replace the male lead and we’re working together to get him ready to take over the role at the end of November. Then I have another project starting up in December, a bit of work on a production of A Man for All Seasons. It’s all good.

Okay. Have to get moving. Time for work outside and it’s cold out there!

Happy Wednesday.

Porching and Henry

April 22, 2018 at 9:46 am by Claudia

After a long winter, the last two sunny and warmish days have been most welcome! In the early evening, I sat on the glider with the warmth of the sun on my back and it was heaven. There are no potted plants yet, no hanging plants, no leaves on the trees. But I’ve got my porch back.

I continued to work on cleaning up the porch, sweeping every corner, cleaning off the ‘greenhouse’ sign, cleaning the former kitchen island, which is now…what? potting bench? porch dresser? I’m not sure.

It was already very chippy when we brought it outside, and we covered it with a tarp for the winter, but it’s definitely much chippier than it was. I don’t mind; you know I like that look. At some point, when it gets to be too much, I will probably repaint it with something more durable like porch paint.

I also made some more ‘cleanup’ inroads on the big garden bed. I have yet to clean up the memorial garden bed or the garden beds on the far side of the house, but this week will offer plenty of time to tackle that.

For today, I’ll take it easy. Don is arriving this evening and I don’t want to feel as tired as I have the past two nights when I pick him up at the bus station. Luckily, the weather is supposed to be lovely tomorrow, so he can really enjoy his time here.

I saw a bunny outside the kitchen window this morning. And last night, I ran and grabbed my telephoto lens so I could get a picture of someone dining way over on the other side of the driveway, under the lilac. (Taken from inside the living room or he would have run away.)

That’s our boy!

Happy Sunday.

Organizing

January 28, 2018 at 10:20 am by Claudia

Yours truly here; sore as heck and pretty darned tired after a day spent cleaning out the den closet. The closet had become a black hole where stuff was piled so high that we could barely get the door open and I couldn’t summon up the energy to tunnel down to my toolbox. For over a year, I’ve been thinking that I needed to add inexpensive shelves to one side of the closet because it was clear to me that we needed a vertical solution to the mess.

Once I get an idea in my head, coupled with the energy to take it on, I don’t stop until it’s done. I took everything out of there, sorted through old VHS tapes, CDs, and DVDs, marking some for the Salvation Army, some for our storage space, and the rest for here. I grabbed two unused bins from the shed and filled them with CDs. I folded up the heavy iron CD shelf we were using and which was taking up valuable space. That all went to storage. I saved some CDs that we were likely to want to play. We figure if we really have an itch for anything that isn’t here, we can easily grab it from storage. In other words, if I’ve made a mistake in my keep/store decisions, it can be remedied. We do still listen to CDs. I have a nice Bose CD player and I’m not a big fan of Spotify, or even Pandora, though I do use Pandora occasionally. (I have issues with the way they screw over the recording artists, who see very, very little money from those streaming apps. I like to buy the music directly so that the money goes to the artist.)

Anyway, all that was sorted, two bags were taken to the dump, shelves were purchased at Lowes. I put the shelves together and put everything away and the whole thing is very satisfying. However, that made two days in a row of heavy lifting and my back is complaining today.

The only other thing I did was switch the position of two chairs at the kitchen table. It suddenly struck me that the green Hansel and Gretel chair (that’s what I call it) would look more interesting when viewed from the living room and den. I was right.

Today? A quick visit to the grocery store and rest.

Happy Sunday.

This and That

Porching and Henry

Organizing

claudiahillsparks

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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