For about a week now I've been cleaning like crazy. Crazy cleaning means that I'm not just wiping down counters for germs and dusting the spots I've not touched in a long time. This is the deep cleaning with a parental supervisor named organization. With my office, it started with a pile of paperwork, one I haven't touched in months, and it turned into every single pile. Even the year old pile got my thorough attention. Every shelf was sorted for one major factor, HAS IT BEEN USED in the last year. If not, it got chucked! Old phone books, folders that I was "saving", even though they were so ripped and written all over that I'm not sure how I thought I'd be able to save them, and all the old, irrelevant, to-do lists that make up half or more of the piles I had to sort. There was also a great purging of all NON-Essentials. Any hair ties, bobby pins, hats, sunglasses, shoes, jewelry, extra headphones, painting supplies (don't they belong in the garage?), half of the purses that never seem to make it back to the "I'm not using it right now" bag pile (which I'm going to probably cover when we do a sewing room make-over) and so much more. It feels so wonderful as I sit here now with my morning coffee, in my clean, organized office!
The other project that I've started on is linked to one of my Christmas presents. I received a mortar & pestle! It was a last minute addition to my "wish list" and I'm so glad I didn't add it too late. It's been on my home-maker list for a long time to harvest, dry & store all the extra herbs I don't use fresh from the garden. But after getting this wonderful gift that I'd asked for, I realized that I didn't have any spice jars to store them in. My memory & a recent project served me well to remind me of the many baby food jars a friend gave me. They were for a project for my mother in law to hang jars from the bottom of shelves, (screwing the lid to the underside) so that from a wheelchair she could see them and reach them to get to smaller items that were getting lost in drawers.
Jars were no longer an issue as I had about 15 left. I picked out the best 10 and the following photos are of the project that quickly ensued.
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| Prior to receiving this wonderful gift, I had cleaned & laid out oregano trimmings for drying. They dried well and were ready to go as soon as I brought this gift home from my Mom's. A few days later and I unpacked it, cleaned it & used it to grind down my whole leaves. The result was perfect! |
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| Baby food jars, ready to be painted. |
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| I had left over chalk board paint from a recent project for my church, so that meant I didn't have to go to the store. Praise God for small miracles. You know how it is when you really just want to do your project now! Going to the store would take all the project steam to accomplish and there would be nothing left to craft with upon returning home. After pulling out the quart of paint and giving it a good stir, I prepped my jars for painting. Blue painter's tape works the best. I just followed the little glue lines left behind from the labels, because they were pretty evenly spaced for all of the jars. Then I set myself to painting them. |
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| Voila! |
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| The completed project, fresh oregano and all. Now I just have to dry & grind more & different types of herbs. |
Thanks for joining me on this fine New Year's morning!!! I'll see you again soon for many projects to come!
***** Coming Soon! ***** A NEW LOOK for this page!
