A little less talk and a lot more action

I had BIG plans today, plans for cleaning out & straightening up the garage and patio. But they are going to remain in the planning stage today I am afraid. The wind is out of control. I know you are thinking you pansy go work in the wind. Well unless you have ever lived in or visited West Texas, then you have no idea what I am talking about! I don't mean a breeze or a little gust now and then, no it would be better described as a constant gale force gust!!!

Any sweeping and tidying up of the patio today would result in me sweeping while a tornado of dust swirled around me! Not pleasant. Better luck tomorrow I guess. I could go work on the garage but I would have to keep the door shut.

All of this is in preparation for a ha-yuge party we are having next weekend for the Marine. He ships out on March 10th for boot camp, so next weekend is our last hoo-rah for a while with him. The party is going to be outside and in the barn, thank goodness but again in West Texas the weather is completely unpredictable...so it could snow, ice, come a dust storm... you never know. Which means I need to have the house ha-yuge party ready in case a weather related plan B is needed.

Yikes. Do you do this when you are having a party...go into a whirlwind over drive mode? All of a sudden instead of just cleaning all of these ideas sprout in my brain, like....I need to organize my messy drawer full of recipes, I am going to clean out every cabinet in the house, make some curtains, plant an entire garden, re-arrange furniture, make chair covers in the dining room....on and on the ridiculousness goes!

Oh and add to that list organize the pantry. LOOK at this pantry! Cripes! Isn't that awesome! Saves $ too I bet because she always knows what she has. Unlike my pantry with the 4 bags of egg noodles and 2 extra bags of flour because I can't see what I have in that disheveled mess!

I know there is no possible way to accomplish that in a week and most importantly no one at the party is going to care about the state of my recipe drawer! I think as I start a "house wide party prep cleaning mission" my brain just goes into overdrive! So I have started a list of the things I want to do AFTER the party at a more leisurely rate.

Here is what I DID start this morning.
Uh-huh, sure enough I took a baby step and started my toxin free cleaning! Club Soda as window cleaner. Worked like a charm and cheap too. Club Soda is like $.50 a bottle!

Our new barstools arrived from JC Penney! I think I have aired my frustration with my barstools before...so here is the short version. When we bought our house we excitedly purchased 3 bar stools for the bar in the kitchen. We had not had a bar before and were pleased as punch with the thought of a bar to sit at in the kitchen. After a few months we wondered why the barstool situation was so uncomfortable....and then figured out that our "bar" was counter height and our stools were bar height. Leaving approx. 3" inches of clearance for your thighs and sitting up way too high to comfortably eat.

Very sad because they are nice heavy barstools and they match our breakfast table. I did eventually go back to the store where we bought them to see if they could order just the counter height bases for our stools. They contacted the manufacturer who said no they do not sell just the bases. Which I believe to be hogwash, of course they could sell just the bases, if they wanted to be kind and customer service oriented!


Those are the old barstools, nice sure, but useless to us. They never got sat in except by blonde rascal who could comfortably fit of course. I got tired of having barstools just to look at them, so I found some on JC Penney's website that I liked and ordered them.

I put the old ones on Craig's List and didn't get a response so I took them to a furniture consignment place. Keep your fingers crossed that those suckers will sell!

Here are the new ones

Do ya like them? I think they "say pull up a chair and visit a while" much more than those other bulky ill-fitting ones did! I am looking forward to eating breakfast there, chatting on the phone, making my grocery list...it has instantly gone from wasted to usable space.

Before I took that picture I cleaned the kitchen, take a good look since it does not look like this too often! Notice the sparkly clean club soda window!!!


Hubs and I rented 3:10 to Yuma last night. It was good. I actually stayed awake. Russell Crowe without his accent was kind of weird.

I have Chicken Spaghetti made and ready to slip in the oven for dinner so I guess I better get back to party prepping the house!