kattitudes

This is an important year. Well, actually, every presidential election is important. We are a democracy, which means that every four years, we (the people) have the unique privilege of getting to argue with our neighbors and strangers across our nation, both in print and online, in the media and through the airwaves, about issues that we each individually hold dear.

Strangely, we seem to have morphed into a nation that does not give a tinker’s damn about the other person’s issue, as long as we can out shout them on our issue.

Usually, I keep most matters of politics out of the blog, but as I age (like fine wines and cheeses) I am getting even more opinionated and I figured that since it is my blog, I might as well go on record.

My record of choice is that we should make a choice. There. How is that for controversial? Actually, I have much more controversial views than that, such as how some of these fellows are downright dangerous to our nation, but that is as common a theme as any that you hear every four years.

When I first started at University, I thought I wanted to be an economist. I loved the theory of how people used money. I thought that was so interesting. But then, I took my first political science class, and I was lost forever. I found my love. The theories of why mankind came together. Why we argue. Why we make the choices we make. What draws us as a community. What draws us into a community. Political theory – I just loved it. Even now, I remember with such fondness how much I enjoyed deciphering for my first time all the texts that students of politics had done a hundred million times before me.

I then became involved in student government and learned a quick lesson in how dirty you must be in order to succeed. Wow. It was more than I could accept, I freely admit to that now. In my experience, there was really no place for honor in politics. Most really did have to sell their soul and at such a little price and young age. But that is another story for another day. Someday I will have to tell that story because it really is an interesting one.

However, my foray into government was on a major scale as my student government (that I did spent a few years in quite successfully) was for a university with a population of some fifty thousand people. Yes, it was indeed a large scale school. My working budget was close to nine million dollars. It was a lot of responsibility. And it gave me an unexpected insight into the personalities that get involved in politics and what they are willing to do and become to be successful.

It is hard to separate all the rhetoric that spews from the candidates mouths. I am honest. If you are not a political junkie, then the machinations and contraptions of the election process can be about as interesting as the Internal Revenue Service.

Even the “easy to read” help-you-pick-your-candidate handouts I have seen are no help because they are usually a boggy mess of information that is too much for this sound bite familiar world. It is no insult. We spend our time thinking about issues, but do not necessarily need to spend fourteen pages evaluating the fine nuances of how a candidate feels about the issue. We want a yes/no answer. Sometimes it is as simple as that.

As a result, I am really liking the oversimplistic quiz that my local news station put together to help you pick your candidate. Just like any other blog quiz, it allows you to choose how strongly you feel on an issue, and matches you with the candidate that most closely lines up with your values.

What I like is that this quiz gives you results for all the candidates (it shows you how closely they relate to your answers by percentage). The quiz also links to all types of additional information on each candidate and their stance on issues, so that if you feel like reading an additional 14 pages to get the detailed nuances of how each individual feels about the matter at hand, that information is available to you right there.

Hopefully, if you are as of yet undecided, this will help make your voting choice much easier. Once that choice is made, it truly is important for you to get out and vote. Our nation is built on our votes. Yes, America will survive if you do not vote. But you have the right to vote. You get to vote because you are an American.

Sometimes it feels like all we get are taxes and tickets and more taxes. Get yourself one of the best benefits of living in America. Take part in the seminal American process. Vote for our leader. Vote for your boss. Say who you want to speak for you so that you can spend the next four years happily able to join in arguments by saying either “hey, I didn’t vote for him/her” or “hey, at least I voted for him/her”.

At this time, I have posted, I believe, all the other Rankin Bass movies (and we know that I absolutely adore them. Just adore them).

As we end our Christmas holiday season, I just cannot let the New Year celebration pass without posting the last of the holiday ensemble: Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.

While we are in the beginning of the year, if you are anything like me, you do not want to take down Christmas. You waited and waited until the last acceptable moment, until you feel like your neighbors are looking in the windows at your Christmas display and laughing.

Or, if you are smart, you go for the full and official twelve days of Christmas. Either way, a lot of people still have their Christmas displays proudly up.

The only reason why I do not is that long ago I set aside New Years Day as the day to take down Christmas. It gave me a goal on the day itself, something easy to work towards that would give me a sense of accomplishment when the day was done.

On New Years Day, I spend the day de-constructing Christmas. And as I did, I thought so much about what I wrote on New Years Eve, about bringing JOY to life by organizing myself. And I found my first (and our first) way.

By taking some extra time (yes, it was a little more involved, but not that much), I organized all my Christmas storage. That is to say, I did this:

Before packing anything away, I put all the storage boxes on the kitchen floor and cleaned off the kitchen table. I then pulled the empty garbage can close and I was ready. I evaluated my Christmas items and broke them down like this:

Christmas tree (each tree got their own ornament box broken down and labeled, so now instead of one huge ornament box, the different trees I put up are pre-segregated into their own boxes and I can put them up as I choose)
house decorations (multiple boxes, divided by size of decorations)
outside decorations
fabric everything (stockings, tree skirt, table linens, costumes etc)
lights

Then, this year, I broke the Christmas display of my entire home down in pieces. I picked one section and put that box on the empty Christmas table. Then, before I started, I created my first piece of JOY by emptying out that storage box of the years of accumulated everything. Old pieces of broken ornaments. Crumpled tissue paper. Rusting metal ornament hangers. Tinsel from a kazillion years ago. Everything – out of the pool. And started over again with a clean storage box so I knew each and every thing that was going into the storage box.

This year, I went with the Flylady admonition – if it did not make me smile, I got rid of it. Period. That is going to be my mantra this year. And no worries. If you are not familiar with Flylady, you will be oh so soon. Anyway, back to it.

I took down the trees and packed them away individually, each tree’s ornaments in their own box. Then, for the first time, I actually taped the boxes shut for my poor Mister, who always wrestles to get these into the attic without disaster. He adores this year already for that addition alone.

Outside decorations finally were segregated into their own box so that I can set that aside on Thanksgiving Day and get it done a little bit sooner than this year (you don’t want to know. Really).

Finally all the house decorations ended up in the same box instead of sprinkled throughout all the boxes as a surprise addition. It wasn’t that my boxes were a mess. It was that at the end of packing, I would push in additional decorations wherever there was room. This time, I just got the extra box I needed and used it to bring JOY to my Christmas decorations and as I am encouraging you – Just Organize Yourself!

Fabric went into a separate box so that I could put the heavy stocking holders in that box in safety. I wanted a box that could safely be moved (or dropped) without anything breaking. I say this because my Mister tripped coming down the stairs this year (he is fine, thank goodness, just stumbled) and dropped the box with the heavy stocking holders in it down the stairs. And as I heard crashing and banging all down the stairs, I thought to myself “hum, as I pack this year, I need to make sure that does not happen again”. So I did.

Planning ahead is a most important part of finding JOY! I have a mental file (as we all do) that runs in my head all the time. I list all types of things, plans, activities, hopes, dreams and occasionally, I remember to do some of the things there.

What I am trying to accomplish this year is making the transition from recognizing when I first approach something that by the time I am finished with it, a change needs to be made. Instead of waiting to act, if I do it NOW when I recognize the need, before I know it, I can tell myself that I have found JOY because I will have Just Organized Yourself. Finally.

I do not need perfection. I already know that. I have talked about that. But disorganization brings disquiet to my life. Disorganization brings discontent. And disorganization brings wasted time, wasted opportunities and in my case, wasted money.

On New Years Eve, I wished for you all to find just one moment of joy and hold on to that memory. My idea was that if you find just one moment, even if you are having trouble finding joy on a regular basis, when you feel that one moment, you get hungry for it. You remember it and you long for it. And you want it and you will find that you are ready to do what you have to in order to recreate it.

My moment of joy was in London. I was prepared for the Christmas season. We were having a true wave of guests coming to visit from America literally week after week after week from October through January with no break between. I was so excited but I knew I needed to be ready as we lived in an oh so small two bedroom home in downtown London. So, starting early that year, I literally went from attic to the cupboard under the stairs in that house. I went through every drawer. I would say I went through every box, but by the time I was finished, there were no boxes. None. I had touched every single possession we owned and every possession we owned lived in its place.

It was incredible. There was no superfluous in the house. Everything we did not need was donated to charity or went to the dump or recycled. By the time our guest season started, there was little for me to do. Even my Mister remembers the JOY with so much fondness. I had so much time every day to fix dinner. Every day I would light the candles in the house and wait for him to come home from his walk off the Tube. I had so. much. free. time. every. day. that I can scarcely describe it. I had nothing to clean because there was nothing to clean. Everything was in its place. I knew where everything was. And I loved everything in my house.

It was a time of perfect peace. My Mister and I both agree that we want the house back to that in the worst way. That is our mutual goal this year. We want that JOY back. It is going to mean some extra work, I admit now. But honestly, in the great scheme of things, I did not spend that much more time yesterday putting away my Christmas display than I did any other year. I was still done at the end of the day. And this time, at the end of the day, my Mister and I sat together and just grinned at each other over the taped and labeled boxes like – well, like kids on Christmas morning.

There was a lot of joy there. And it carried over this morning when my Mister had to go back to work. Already I am ready to tackle another major project, buoyed by the good feelings of yesterday. This might not be a miracle where you live, but trust me. Around here, this counts under the 1862 Goodwill Act of Miracles, Wonders and Phenomenons.

A few hours away from a new year and another new beginning.

The end of the year and the New Year holiday always leaves me so introspective, which is great (as long as maudlin does not creep in there). I find that I spend time evaluating where things are and where I want them to be. Sometimes it is internal and sometimes it is external. Do you do the same?

This year it is a little of both.

I keep wanting to talk about external issues on Kattitudes. I want to talk about my home. There are different thoughts that immediately spring to mind.

First, the positive; what am I doing that makes my residence a home and a place of comfort? Then, the not-so-positive; what am I doing that sabotages that effort, either consciously or subconsciously? I want to talk about that this year.

I have the talents (and obviously you do too, because you are here reading this) to make such beautiful things, which means that you can make beautiful things for your own home.

But when I look around at my home, there are days when I know that my home is not beautiful. Enough said. We all have our reasons. I want to change that this year.

I have a lot of personal introspection that happens during the last week of the year too. I really gave up New Years resolutions. I just do not believe in them anymore. I am a professional procrastinator. And a perfectionist. Combined, the two are a deadly combination.

Over the years, I recognized that within the first two weeks of the New Year, my resolutions were fond memories (at best) and (more often) filed directly into the “save these for whipping posts when you are at your lowest point please”, if you know what I mean.

Not for me. I hit forty this year. That scared me and energized me at the same time. Well, maybe not. That is not the description for which I am looking. Oh, I know. The ticking got louder. Much louder. And some days I cannot hear for the sound. Those are the days that I know that I cannot wait for the start of a new year to change what I want to change and be who I want to be. I just do not have the time anymore.

I have spent and sometimes still spend so much of my life waiting and then racing ahead planning, then waiting and racing that I forget the now. Now is living. Now is being alive. Now is our life. Now is my life.

This is it. This is what we get.

Some think they know for sure, for absolute sure that we get more. Bully for them. I do not.

What I know is that this is what I get and I want to remember it and enjoy at least as much of it as I can. Don’t you?

If you are here, reading this blog, you found it because you have creative skills enough to be searching for how to make something. I know I do. When is the last time I used my skills to make my life beautiful? To make my home beautiful? To make my life full of peace?

When I am full of peace and joy and comfort and cheer, only then I can share that with others.

This year, find peace within yourself. Find peace for the first time or again.

Find joy. Even if for a moment, find a moment to feel joy and remember how good that moment felt.

Give yourself comfort so that you might offer it freely to others.

Bring cheer to yourself every day so that you can fill the life of anyone (or everyone) you meet with cheer.

And with these thoughts, I am slipping away to prepare for the evening. Even though we will not be at our home, I know I will still carry on my father’s tradition, witnessed so long ago as a young girl. His grandmother always slipped away from their festivities at midnight to open a door or window in the home to let out the old year and let in the new. Dad always did as I grew up, and now habits dying hard, out of love, I still will. I doubt that the New Year would overlook my house if I did not, or that the Old Year would fester if I did not let it out, but I would not take the chance, when my family paved the way so well for me.

My wish for all you creative folk is that the new year treats you well. Time can be so cruel.

I have new skills to learn in 2008. I have so many creative skills I have yet to explore fully (having just learned enough to get by literally). I received some amazing crafting gifts for the Christmas holiday, so I am going to be doing an incredible amount of jewelry making in 2008. I am also starting off the year with in depth crochet and cross stitch and menu planning and cooking. Plus I am determined, absolutely determined to teach a class on family budgeting this year, so I am going to be practicing through Kattitudes on that. And back to organizing! We are going to find joy this year, by Just Organizing Yourself (hey, it might be cheesy but if it works that is all that counts). Oh, I have so many plans, but I might as well save that for tomorrow and the next day and the next.

We will talk again in 2008. Best wishes to you in the New Year. May you be healthy and happy and wise.

And of course, as required by Universal Law, I had to get my yearly ick-fest- must- spend- a- few- days- under- the- weather- right- before- the- holiday out of the way before I could actually celebrate Christmas itself.

In fact, I think it is a Christmas tradition as much as Christmas itself. I am required by Universal Law to get sick. There is just not enough eyerolls around to deal with that.

But thank goodness that I get obsessive enough in advance that plenty enough gets done early that by the time we get to this point, I am well into the “meh, if it isn’t done by now, it didn’t really need to get done anyway”.

I am into my cruising into the holidays and loving it stretch. I love this part. The build up. My sister will be here early tomorrow morning. We spend the day cruising around getting the last few little diddle things – just enjoying the crazed atmosphere of the neighborhood. We always save Christmas Eve to get our stocking stuffers together. We will make one last run to the grocery store for the diddley snacky things we think we might want, but the big run gets done this afternoon (should have been finished Friday, but there was that whole sicky thing to deal with).

I will look through my arsenal and see if there are a few treats left to post or a few movies left to enjoy. There might be a quick gift or two to pump out if you are in need, but at this point, it is all about the enjoyment.

Sit back (or lean forward if you are that type of personality) and just breathe in the vapors. This is the good part. Enjoy the ride. Christmas is upon us. Savor it for all you are worth. These are the moments upon which memories are made. Make them good ones.

I just love the simplicity of a gift like this. And when I say simplicity, I mean wow. Wow, this takes a few minutes and the ability to install a snap in a ribbon.

This is a watch face that can be purchased at a thousand different craft or jewelry supply stores online or at your local malls or shopping areas. You can find the watch face findings literally in every craft supply store under the sun. Every one, bar none. And the same with the eyelet snap (and for the record, if you like the jeweled part, you will be looking for a rhinestone snap).

That is all this is.

A beautiful velvet ribbon this time.

An eyelet snap.

A watch face.

As an interesting variation, a second piece of velvet ribbon was used to make a bow, and then sewn onto the first ribbon as a permanent decoration. If you liked the idea, you could sew it on using regular thread, or if you were not sure, you could sew it on using a snap which means you could take it off or leave it on according to how you felt that day.

If you decided to use a snap, I would provide a decorative button or something along those lines with an additional snap on it to cover the empty snap on the ribbon, if that makes sense to you. Something so as not to just leave an empty snap sitting on the velvet ribbon all day.

Anyway, it would not take that long to put together some really spectacular watches for gifts for all your girlfriends. You could make a gift of one watch face with multiple ribbon watchbands so that your friend could change the band as her mood changes.

What a neat idea for a friend that changes her clothes as often as she changes her mind! And since you only need enough ribbon to go around a wrist, the cost would be minimal, which is perfect for our budget conscious Christmas plans.

If you are gifting jewelry for Christmas this year, so many searches have happened on my blog for wire wrapping briolettes. I think that the briolettes are starting to get a little dated, and that is perfectly fine. They are still gorgeous stones without a doubt, but I also think that it is time to start expanding a little from the standard single briolette on a strand and hold the catsup, no mustard, if you know what I mean.

Even this minor variation is a nice change. The three briolettes are in the same color family, but vary enough in the size to make the visual punch capture your eye immediately.

One other distinction about this particular piece is that the wire wrap is not obsessively neat. There is an artistic messiness to the wrap job, as if to emphasis that a real live person or artist did this work, rather than a machine in the outbacks of some factory somewhere.

So, do not be afraid of making your jewelry look a little funky and a little off the track unusual. It is that unusual look that makes your pieces memorable and makes people really search through the jewelry box to find that “really neat piece that Cousin Susie made for me that one year”.

Very interesting 1936 Fleischer Studios cartoon that is often considered a Christmas cartoon. Not a particularly funny cartoon (as was often the case then), but very memorable.

Classic Christmas cartoon (I think 1936 definitely qualifies as a classic) from Max and Dave Fleischer. If you remember Betty Boop (or if you even know who Betty Boop was), the character Grampy was a part of the Betty Boop cartoons. It is a pretty ancient reference, but enjoyable nonetheless.

And there is something about the vintage and antiquities that makes Christmas time so memorable for me. And part of those vintage and antiquities is the motion picture and animation industry, particularly as we get more advanced in our animation and motion picture industries. So, as a result, enjoy this Christmas blast from the very past.

This just cracks me up! I used to look for a fireplace in all my apartments. Then I got married and the Mister and I bought a house.

And we bought a house in the deep South where (while some people do have fireplaces) most of us get stuck with gas fireplaces and electric fireplaces. I guess developers steered clear of putting in actual places of burning fire in their houses because it is so danged hot around here, the thought of adding more heat to an already depressingly hot season just seemed impossible.

That leaves us forlorn without the snap, crackle and pop of a real fire come the cold winter nights when you want to gather around the Christmas tree and look at the twinkling of the lights on the tree and watch the magic of the lights in the fireplace.

I miss those things.

And since I missed them …. I went to go find them.

God bless Al Gore and his invention, the internet (yes, my tongue is planted firmly in cheek, peoples). For without Al Gore and his internetual invention, I never could have found this: