Time for Spring Flowers?

We have a few inches of snow on the ground, so I hadn't even thought about checking the gardens for the inital sprouts of flowers until I got a gardening newsletter yesterday.

Things are coming up a bit later than in the past two years.

Mar. 12, 2011

Feb. 17, 2012

Mar. 11, 2012

 

Mar. 8, 2013

 After looking at photos, they're about a month behind 2012. I heard on the news yesterday that a year ago, it was 74 degrees. No wonder things were sprouting in February that year.

Mar. 11, 2012

 

Mar. 8, 2013

I think it will be a while before the main garden out in the middle of the yard sees much growth. But with the rain we're supposed to get the next couple of days, most of it will melt and things will just take off.

House Organizing - Kitchen

One of the projects I'm working on in 2013 is organizing my house. I don't have a lot of stuff (at least I don't think I do), and for the most part, things are were they belong. But I found a website that I'm hoping will help me re-organize/declutter some areas of the house. 

Each day there is an assignment that you're supposed to spend up to 15 minutes on. Sometimes I can do the day's task in just a couple minutes and others it might take me more than 15. Also, if I don't have enough time on a particular day, I'll do another day's task and come back to that one, most often on a weekend.

 

I like having the list at a glance, so I printed the monthly calendar and put it on the frig. You can see there were a few days last month that I skipped. Those were days that I either hadn't gotten to yet or didn't need to do because I don't have that area in my house...like a pantry or organizing toys. 

 

The kitchen was a huge area last month. I had a junk drawer that had accumulated way too much stuff. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

 This is what it looks like now. I had actually organized it once and then decided a few days later that I still wasn't happy with it so I cleaned it again.

Another day it was time for cookbooks so that's when I tackled that and the other half of the drawer that had become full of junk. 

Much better. I moved the container from the drawer mentioned earlier into this one. 

Ever since I moved into this house, I haven't been happy with the drawer space in the kitchen. I just put stuff where it fit and never got around to moving it. The silverware and cooking utensils were all in one drawer. So on the day that the task was to organize the cookbooks, I was able to clear a drawer out by moving them elsewhere. I'm not a big cookbook user so all the extras didn't need to be taking up prime real estate in a drawer.

I bought a few organization dividers to help keep things looking neat.

And then last but not least, I moved the towels/dishcloths into the old cookbook drawer which was bigger and was finally able to separate the cooking utensils into two drawers.

 

After a couple weeks, I'm now used to where I moved things and don't open the wrong drawer first.

New Storage Bench

I had an old desk in my sunroom that was just the right size for my laptop. But lately it seems to have found a new home on the coffee table in another room, so I decided to free up some space for a new storage bench. I had quite the time finding what I wanted. I visited furniture stores around town, but they didn't have anything. I finally found what I was looking for at Home Depot. It's very sturdy and the cushion came with it.

I guess I only got one picture of "before." It took a bit longer to put together than I had hoped. The back piece had tracks that it needed to slide into and it wasn't fitting so I had to go back a couple of steps and do some adjusting. 

 

I found a couple of pretty boxes for one side and two cloth bins for the other. I moved the desk to the basement with the rest of my office stuff. Right now I only have one of the storage boxes filled, but I'm working on organizing and moving things around in the house so I'm sure it won't take long to fill them. The extra seating is nice too since it's right inside the back door. 

 

Goodbye 2012

2012 is coming to a close. I'm having my usual low-key night watching New Year's Rockin' Eve Celebrates Dick Clark.

 

 Blessings for a wonderful 2013.

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas.

 

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:11

Hawk

A couple weeks ago, I happened to look outside and saw this huge bird. As I was trying to get the first picture from inside the house, it moved and I only got the tail.

Then it went further into the yard.  I think it was a Cooper's Hawk. 

All I know is that it was huge, and there wasn't any other wildlife around...

...except this squirrel that I saw in the tree next to the feeders. He wasn't moving at all and didn't for several minutes even after the hawk flew away.

 

Blizzard of 2012

Our first major snowfall of the season dumped over a foot of wet, heavy snow on Central Iowa. What a beautiful sight! The not-so-wonderful part of it is that it started as what I like to call thick rain and now everything has a sheet of ice on it.

Schools were closed. Businesses were closed. Interstates were closed. 

I was one of the lucky ones that didn't lose power. There was only one time throughout the day that it flickered, but that was it. 

The spiral tree didn't survive the weight of the snow. It had one section of lights that wasn't working so I'm okay with losing it. I'm just glad I hadn't gotten around to putting a new one out yet.

 

The trees are really weighted down. This evergreen usually reaches almost to the house. I only lost a few small branches from the front trees. 

Schools were closed again today, but work was open. 

Enjoy the white Christmas!