Six Impossible Things

When Alice in Wonderland came out, we went to see it the very first day. In costumes. Of course.

One of my favorite parts of the movie came directly from a line in the book,"Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."



It rang true because I've often found myself giving up before even starting, with the excuse that it could never work, so I shouldn't waste my time trying.



So I came home from the movie with the idea for these journals, as a daily challenge to believe in six impossible things and stretch our minds a bit.



I added several of my favorite quotes throughout.



I do know that over time, and honestly with the help of this blog, I've learned to reevaluate all the can'ts in my life and persevere with the seemingly impossible (and oftentimes ridiculous).

Things like...

Can I make a chocolate house with stained glass windows lit from the inside?

(Heck ya!)

Is it remotely possible to carve my own face (curly hair, glasses and all) on a pumpkin?

(You betcha!)

Will I be able to cross the finish line after completing the Warrior Dash, a competition that involves crawling through mud and over walls and jumping through fire at the end?

(I guess we'll have to just wait and see!) BTW, if you listen to this loud enough, you can hear my crazy chuckling after I haul my butt up and over that thing.

So won't you join me in challenging those things that we label as impossible?

Because who's to say what is possible?

And wouldn't our lives be bigger (and infinitely more interesting) if we could learn to believe in and strive towards the impossible?

Imagine what we could achieve.

UPDATE- I made it! Click here to see pics from the day.

Getting Ready for Holiday Cooking

We do a lot more cooking this time of year (doesn't everybody?) and I just realized that the week before Thanksgiving was a crucial time to stock up on spices.

Over the last few years, as I learned to cook different types of food, my spice selection has grown. Some of these I use only occasionally and since spices tend to loose their flavor over time, I buy small amounts of them. I find most of them in the bulk section at Vitamin Cottage.

Since they don't come in their own little jars, I eventually got tired of a bunch of little baggies in my cupboard. So, I searched around for smallish jars to do this with.



Partly I do this is for organization, partly because I love the way the spices look, especially the whole ones. Sometimes I'm actually inspired to cook something just from looking in here.

You may have noticed that the middle group of containers are different. I bought those about 5 years ago and glued magnets to the back of them myself. Since then, the market caught up with my wishes and made better ones, with magnets already attached. I found these at Cost Plus World Market. They are so great. And they're only 2 bucks a piece. The strips of metal came from a trip that Jenny took to IKEA. They were cheap too (if you don't count the cost of Jenny's plane ticket).

I like being able to store the majority of my spices as the whole seeds (or pods or whatever) and only grind enough for a couple months worth of use. They tend to keep their flavor longer that way. But, on the other hand, I hate it when I need something for a recipe and I have to get out the spice grinder. So it's a fine line between not having enough and having too much.

I would like to mention my favorite tip for the spice grinder. Martha once suggested cleaning your spice grinder by running it with stale bread. That worked fine, but I prefer to use white rice. It seems to clean better and also, you can leave it sitting in the grinder between uses, so it can absorb odors and sort of cut down on the mingling of smells.

One final note if you plan to do this. Make sure that if you attach your metal to the inside of the cabinet door like I've done, to allow enough room for the jars to fit between the shelves in the cabinet when the door is closed.

From Miss Thomson's "Laughing Monster" series

This is kind-of a repost for those of you that read both this blog and my Yahoo 360. Sorry, but I do love these monsters and Blogger lets me put more pictures in. My absolute favorite is this tiny guy that has all that huge laughter coming out of him. So very symbolic.


This balloon monster is great too.

Recently, I've been going through boxes and boxes out of storage and decided to sort out all of the artwork and pictures that the kids have done. I'm bummed that I didn't do a better job marking the date on these guys, but I'm just grateful that they didn't end up in the trash. Not that I regularly throw away the kids art, it's just that if it gets left out, eventually it gets pretty beat up and not really recognizable as art anymore. For some reason, the fridge is especially hard on them. Luckily, I put these away in the box while they still looked fairly good.



Joey did these when she was about 4 or so. For months she would draw these monster/ameoba beings and I really love them. I love the different colors and shapes and designs.



This one, with the curly dialog bubble is especially cool. It's weird how she was able to convey so much meaning by wrapping it around. Like it was just going on and on and on.



And this one makes me think of Nelson on the Simpsons, "HA, HA."

One of these days, I might get these printed onto some t-shirts for her, but for now, they're safely tucked away into her box of artwork.

Meaningful Objectives

So, I'm currently (not, like, right this moment- as you'll read- but just in general) reading through an organizational book that is supposed to help me figure out my priorities and organize my time so that I can accomplish the most important things in my life, my Meaningful Objectives.

So, what is it that I decide to do as I am half way through this potentially life-changing book? I decide to open a shop on Etsy. That shouldn't take long, no more than 20 minutes. OK, so it was more like 3 hours, what with the PayPal account and the banner and then, of course, I've got to list something. I can't just have an empty shop sitting there with nothing for sale. OK, it's gotten pretty late, so I guess it's time for bed. I'll read the book tomorrow.

So far, this is the stage I've gotten to in the book... take all the papers you own and dump them in one box. "Check. I can do that. What's next? Oh, now I'm supposed to GO THROUGH that box and organize everything in it. Hmmm, I wonder what my favorite sellers have in their shops on Etsy today?" Two hours later and I'm thinking to myself, "You know, I've always wanted to start a blog. Well, what's stopping me." Apparently nothing. So, that is why I'm writing this right now.

Clearly, I will go to any lengths to avoid getting organized.

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Key Words & Phrases-
Procrastination, Papers, Organizing