You Belong in Fall |
 Intelligent, introspective, and quite expressive at times… You appreciate the changes in color, climate, and mood that fall brings Whether you’re carving wacky pumpkins or taking long drives, autumn is a favorite time of year for you |
Exactly what I would have said. Hat tip to KC!
Clutter. Most of us have it. We all hate it. Clutter is a thief that robs of us our peace of mind, our self respect, time with our family and friends, and the enjoyment of our homes. Clutter is just bad.
So what happens when we clear the clutter?
Well to start with, Amy at Between Daydreams shows us some of her newly cleared out spaces and gives us a list of the benefits of decluttering, including having space for more children!
Elizabeth at Frabjous Days is also decluttering in preparation for a new baby. She recently discovered an amazing gift while sorting through old photos.
Divina at The Bean Sprout takes her inspiration from one of my favorite shows, Clean Sweep, and takes a crowded office space and turns it into her favorite room of the house, complete with a reading nook!
Cheryl at My Thoughtful Spot prepares for a new school year by reclaiming her school room closet. Wait until you see the great space she’s created! She’s got some good advice on handling the clutter, too.
Suzanne at Gladdest Hours has been doing some major purging and organizing all over her house this summer. During the process her children made a very insightful observation. I think it’s great that she had involved her children in decluttering and they’ve really gotten into the spirit of it all.
Over at ChezOuiz, cleaning up the kitchen and around the house sent two 30-gallon trashbags full of stuff to the curb and has led to a greater sense of peace and calm! Way to go Ouiz! And check out the way she uses little Rubbermaid containers for her spices – very nice.
Matilda, at Waltzing Matilda (of course), gets rid of the guilt and the clutter by cleaning up what remains of completed projects and turning her bedroom back into a sanctuary for her and her husband to enjoy.
Michelle at Living Waters reflects on how easily things can turn from blessings into clutter. She’s working on making room for a toddler’s fire truck bed.
Maggie of Crafty in Coffeeland has experienced a very stressful year. But she’s ready to Get Back in the Saddle and start getting her house back in order. Her post is a reminder for all of us struggling with clutter that you can eat an elephant, but you’ve got to do it one bite at a time.
And finally, Dawn at By Sun and Candlelight, is just getting started clearing the clutter in what she hopes to be the first of many posts. This time she tackles the front of her refrigerator and that perpetual pile of paper we all know as coupons!
Goodbye clutter! Goodbye guilt! Goodbye stress and embarrassment and discontent! Hello to the calm, functional spaces that our homes are meant to be. Hello to lost treasures found and more time enjoying our families. Hello to lives that are filled with loveliness. Amazing work, ladies!
Part 1 of our Philadelphia adventure is here: Philadelphia
So we were off to a decent start after a rough night. We arrived at the Franklin Institute with enough time to get parking in their lot, pick up our tickets at Will Call and get in line. I am so glad that we got such early tickets because there was absolutely no wait to get in to either the museum or the King Tut exhibit.
The exhibit was amazing! We just wrapped up a year long study of ancient Egypt, which included studying King Tut specificially and watching several documetaries from NetFlix on the discovery of his tomb. Our studies more than prepared us for what we were seeing, and helped me to explain and paraphrase things for Boo and Pumpkin Girl. I was very disappointed that taking pictures was not allowed – we even had to turn off our cell phones and beepers. The ambience of exhibit was carefully constructed with lighting and subtle music. We started off in well lit rooms with treasures of some of Tutankhamun’s ancestors. Displays on the walls helped to establish the political climate that exhisted prior to Tut’s rule and how it effected his reign. This was all familiar to us already which made it even more exciting.
One of my favorite pieces was the coffin of his great-grandmother and her funeral mask. I like her little smile, like she’s just happy to be here.
The next few exhibit rooms were devoted to Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Their treasures were equally beautiful, but then it was time for Tut. The excitement grew as the rooms darkened and the music became more mysterious. We climbed a ramp that led to rooms filled with Tut’s treasures.
It would take me all day to describe everything we saw. Articles that were found on the mummy itself, statues, toys, every day items were all on display. This coffinette, only about 14 inches tall was just exquisite. I could have stayed and looked at it all day. It is inscribed (in hieroglyphics, of course) all over the inside and it once held Tut’s mummified internal organs. Tutankhamun’s famous funeral mask was not included in the exhibit because it is no longer allowed to leave Egypt. I knew this before hand, so we weren’t too disappointed.
Don’t worry, I didn’t take any of these pictures myself.
Two hours later, we were finished with the exhibit. We were all glad that we saw it, all except poor Bip. He was in such a foul mood from having not slept well. He whined through about half the exhibit, not wanting to be in the stroller or in either my sling or Philip’s. He even starting crying until we threatened to stick him in a corner by himself while we finished walking around. Fortunately he didn’t realize we couldn’t actually do that and he quieted down. Eventually he fell asleep in Philip’s sling.
The exhibited conveniently deposited us right into the Tut gift shop. We spent a small fortune, mostly because I couldn’t leave without a hardcover copy of the exhibit catalog. By then Bip was awake and hungry, so we went down to the museum cafeteria, where we spent another small fortune. Actually, it wasn’t that bad and I was able to find something non-fried, yet tasty for myself.
After spending a little more time in the rest of the museum, we took off for New Jersey to see my friend Carol. There we were in NJ and I didn’t make one Sopranos joke. Nope, I made three. Just couldn’t help it. We had a great time and Carol made us her famous chicken parmesan for dinner. Yum! Our children had fun playing together and somehow Boo got attacked by a sprinkler and ended up soaking wet. Fortunately, this was after dinner and we had already planned to put the kids in their pajamas for the ride home.
Our ride home was uneventful, which is always a good thing!
We headed up to Philadelphia the other day to see the King Tut exhibition. We got ourselves 9 am timed-entry tickets, so we decided to take the 3 hour trip the night before. The original plan was to meet up with my friend Carol, spend the afternoon with her family, let her feed us, then go to our cheap airport hotel for the night. Except I didn’t bother telling Carol until like 3 days before and she was way too busy to have us over. Hmph. So we came up with the alternate plan of going to the Academy of Natural Sciences for the afternoon.
It was a great plan, but we failed to account for not knowing our way around Philadelphia and needing to find parking. We located the museum ok, thanks mostly to our GPS. Finding parking was an entirely different story. Parking lots wanted $5 for the first 20 minutes and almost $15 for 2 hours. Ouch. Then as we were wandering around, someone pulled out of a metered space on the street! Yay us! We took our time unloading the children and stroller from the car and then we realized that our meter was out of order! Sweet! The meter maid that was walking along let us know that we still had to comply with the 2 hour limit, which was just fine with us. So off to the museum!
It was a great museum with lots of hands on stuff for the kids and a live animal demonstration. Boo and Pumpkin even got to participate in an archaeological dig for dinosaurs.
The highlight for me was the live butterfly exhibit. I got lots of good pictures.
I liked this Owl Eye butterfly having a snack on a banana.(above)
They were very proud of this Queen Alexandra Bird Wing butterfly which had just come out of the cocoon the day before. These butterflies can have a wingspan of up to 1 foot. I happened to get this picture before I even knew what kind of butterfly it was.
One landed on me!
We got back to our car just as our 2 hours of free parking were up. My stomach was rebelling against the Taco Bell we’d eaten for lunch en route, so we decided to head for our hotel earlier than planned. I was a bit hesitant about our hotel. It was cheap and near the airport, which made it pretty close to where we needed to be in the morning. It had the usual free continental breakfast, but no pool. Reviews for it and other hotels near it said that the neighborhood wasn’t the best, but the hotel fine. I just didn’t want to be stuck in the hotel with 3 active kids with nothing to do so we had planned on eating an early dinner downtown. But with the parking what it was and having to move the car anyway, plus my touchy stomach, we thought we’d just go to the hotel. We hoped we’d spot some family friendly place to eat along the way.
Well, like the free parking spot earlier, the hotel was a great surprise. The area was far from questionable, in fact there was nothing at all down this particular street but other hotels. Well, that and a Ruby Tuesdays! Our hotel was big, bright and clean and had interior hallways. Our room had two queen size beds and a window seat. We were very pleased. Dinner at Ruby Tuesdays was nice, then we came back, watched a couple of episodes of the Brady Bunch on our portable DVD player, then we all went to bed early. It was a good thing, too, because Bip didn’t sleep well at all. He was up all night. Ug. It was a l-o-n-g night and I was just praying I wouldn’t wake up with a sleep deprivation headache. The only cure for those is more sleep. I woke up fine, if just a little groggy and we managed to get our crew out the door by 8:15 to make it to the Franklin Institute by 9.
Next time: King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs
Did we spend more money at the museum cafeteria or the gift store? Did we get kicked out of the exhibit for taking pictures? Who started to cry? Did my friend Carol ever manage to make time to see us? Who ended up soaking wet from head to foot by the end of the day? Tune in tomorrow to find out!
Standing at the top of the stairs in front of the Franklin Institute
The Loveliness of Clearing the Clutter will be hosted here on August 6th. If you’d like to participate, just write a post to your blog about clearing out the clutter. I’d like to receive entries by August 4th. Email the link to your specific post to justlorri at gmail dot com. Make sure you get both r’s in my name. You can also leave a link in the comments of this post. Either way, I’ll email you back to confirm that I got it. If you don’t hear back from me by August 5th, then I probably didn’t get it.
If you don’t have a blog, but you have some before and after pictures that you’d like to contribute, you can email those to me and I’ll include them in the Fair.
Please feel free to spread the word about this Fair – the more the merrier! The only restrictions are that your post is Rated G and that it does relate to the theme. Please email me with any questions.
Also, the Loveliness of the Seashore Fair is up at A Wink and A Smile. Grab yourself some ice tea and go check it out!
And just for the record, here are the remaining summer Loveliness Fairs:
*Edited to add – All comments on my blog that contain links automatically get held for moderation. Don’t worry if your comment doesn’t immediately appear, I will see it and approve it!
It’s a paper model of Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany!
Wait, it gets better!
I bought the model about 4 years ago at Seoul Tower in South Korea. They had several completed models on display and the kits for sale. I can’t even remember what I paid for it. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to it, but in the process of de-cluttering, I got tired of seeing the box. I opened it up, looked at the instructions and my heart sank- they were all in Korean! But the parts were all labeled in English – A1, B1, etc. I could see from the pictures that I was supposed to take part A1, fold it and glue it to look like the example, then do the same for A2 and A3. At the end, A1 is glued to A2 and each tab and slot were also labeled in English. Tab 1 goes into slot 1 and so on. Just like Lego instructions. It was a little more complicated with the lights, but I got them working. The whole kit was so well made, with the precision and attention to detail that is so common with Asian made products (like my children, LOL!), that I hardly needed any glue. It only took me one weekend, working mostly in the evenings during movie time or after the children went to bed. I’d like to get an acrylic case made for it to keep out the dust.
One hot October day in 1999, we took our oldest child, then not quite 1 year old, to the beach for the first time. I grew up in Santa Barbara, just a mile from the beach. Then I grew up and married a soldier and moved away. The Army doesn’t put a lot of it’s bases near the ocean, and it was something I had started to miss.
I love the way the fog rolls in during the late afternoon and doesn’t burn off again until mid-morning of the next day. I love the smell of the ocean. I love sound of the foghorns. I like sleeping with the window open all summer…and having to close it in the hours before dawn because it has gotten too cold.
We moved back to the California coast for one short year while Philip taught ROTC at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Summers were cold where we lived, just 2 blocks from the beach. I remember taking Boo to the pier at Pismo Beach and it being so cold that he had to wear a hat. We felt bad for the poor tourists, hoping for a sun-filled summer vacation, only to experience a cold, damp, foggy beach.
The heat wave came in October. We were out taking a walk and it was all of 80 degrees. We decided to introduce Boo to the ocean, so we turned down the street towards Oceana Dunes. He was a little unsure of the wet sand under his feet and the waves lapping against his legs. He like it best when I was holding him.
This was before we had a digital camera, so while the scans of the pictures aren’t the best, I hope they still convey the beauty of the day.
my love as deep;
the more I give to thee,
the more I have,
for both are infinite.”
William Shakespeare
Lorri and Boo, Oceana Dunes, CA
October 1999
Considering that we live in Washington, DC, we have a shocking amount of wildlife in our neighborhood. Besides the usual birds and squirrels, we’ve got ducks and geese. And we’ve actually got a lot of bunnies. Our first year here we had one bunny that lived in our backyard, but now it seems like there are bunnies everywhere. Apparently they’ve been breeding like, well like rabbits.
Any given day we’ll find a bunny in our yard. One morning I opened the dining room window to find this little critter enjoying a rest after his breakfast.
We’re having a drought here -almost 8 inches short of our normal rainfall and right on the edge of water rationing. Most of the grass is dead and crunchy, but our yard enjoys shade for most of the day. Our grass has remained green which must be why it’s turned into a bunny meeting ground.
A couple of days ago we spotted 2 bunnies in our yard, facing off against each other.
As we got closer, we saw a third bunny, snuggled up in the grass. The first two were obviously arguing over the cute girl bunny waiting over by the flowers. They actually got into a fight.
The third bunny ran off before I could get a picture of her and one of the others ran after her, leaving this guy all alone.
It’s getting to be pretty common to walk out to get into the car and find a bunny sitting there. As long as we’re quiet enough, they’ll just there until we start the engine. Except when Bip tries to catch them. He can’t help himself, they are so cute and fluffy.
And the first award goes to…
My friend Shanti, who regales us with her Adventures in Paradise. I could go on and on about how cool she is – she’s petite and in the Navy and she so totally ROCKS! And she’s a knitter, too. Check out these pictures of just one day on the job with her.
Shanti may now sport this very lovely button on her blog and award it to 5 other Rockin’ Girl Bloggers as she sees fit.
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