41 posts tagged “organize”

• the only problem with having my closet now clean and organized is that i find myself wanting to sit in it. for not particular reason. i want to just go in and plop myself in the middle of the floor. just to marvel at the beauty of how being clean and organized really revitalizes me. of course, there is still that half of a shelf and my cd collection that needs to be done. maybe i'll get some of it down tonight.

• we went to cathy's little M's 5yr birthday party yesterday. it was fun! the kids had such a blast. cath had hired a clown. and when the invitation first mentioned about a clown, i was a bit concerned. i have an irrational fear of clowns. not a phobia, per se. but they have always given me the creeps. i was happy with this clown, though. she was whimsical and cute and really knew how to create good chemistry with the kids. and the children did love her! not only did they get a ballon twisted into something they loved, she put on a great magic show that starred a cute rabit in the end. the kids got to sit on a chair have hold the rabbit on their lap for about 30 seconds each. and then, after lunch, each of them got to have their face painted of their choice. chaeli was so crazy about the clown that she said, before going to bed, that she hopes she will meet the clown again someday.

• i'm hungry. it's a weird kind of hunger. i feel like i can eat a lot today. which isn't good, really. because i know that if i allow myself to go nuts, i'll feel like complete crap at the end of the day. but, i have brought some healthy snacks so hopefully, i can stay good.

sometimes i wish i had that magical, twitchy nose like that samantha from bewitched. ah - when t.v. shows were a league of their own. in a good way.

and as much as i wished i had powers to make my closet, or any space in my house, either big or small, become instantly organized and clean in matter of a milli-second, the reality is, of course, that i can't do that. and even if i could, would i really be using my powers just to clean closets?

anyway, this is something i have been wanting to do since september but something always came up. and as we had no plans today, i decided to go for it.

two hours later, i am left with just my cd case and one half of a shelf piled of magazines to go through. and i just can't do anymore. two hours in a closet is enough! i will do that half a shelf and cds another day.

most importantly, i organized all the christmas presents that i bought. yes, that's right. you heard me.

not only do i organize my christmas shopping lists into spreadsheets where there is one spreadsheet for each - my familly, doug's family, doug and chaeli and misc. gift... not only do i create another spreadsheet to correlate with the other four, but this one being by store, either online or off, so i don't end up running all over town, hitting stores more then once... but at some point, i organize my gifts so that all the gifts going to thunderbay are in one or two large shopping bags, and i do the same for presents for chaeli, doug and my own side of the familly.

there is a chaotic period where i shop and just pile everything in the corner of my walk-in closet, still in their bags/boxes.

it was driving me crazy. now, they are all organized. all i need to do is pull them out in the order that they need to be wrapped - doug's family being the front in line.

yup.

i'm psychotic.

actually, the peppermient mocha at starbucks is a tad too sweet for my taste. but i love the minty flavour so it's hard to resist.

the heaven part really isn't just the drink. it's that i took the day off, got the house cleaning done in the morning (so i know it's out of the way for the weekend), gone for a very good, strength-circuit class from hell, had a very yummy turkey sandwich with sparkling water and am now listing to tunes while surfing at starbucks (god bless 2 hour free hotspot a day here).

the mocha latte is my dessert.

and i have about 2.5 hrs more before i have to go pick up little miss.

i'm loving it!

it' not halloween yet and i've finished my christmas shopping. how crazy is that?

i think ensue asked if i'm finishing it earlier and earlier each year. well, i don't think so. :)

but this year, is a bit different. my MIL is coming first weekend in December which means that she will be exchanging the christmas loot when she's here. i needed to get it all done in time to wrap before she comes. and no, i haven't started on the wrapping. SOME needs to be left until after halloween.

i admit that i was disappointed that i couldn't take part in nuit blanche this year. while chinese moon festival and my uncle's birthday were celebrated at my aunt and uncles home on the same nute as nuit blanche, that wasn't the reason why i couldn't go. after all, the dinner party ended around 10pm which would have allowed us to go until around 1am (since it's an all night event). but doug had to do the practical part of his course this weekend and had to be up fairly early. a part of me wondered if i should have gone on my own but no. i had to take care of chaeli on my own the next day. and man - it is not easy doing that when all you want to do is sleep!

next year. it's something i hope to do for sure.

anyway, despite the disppointment, it was a wonderful weekend. chaeli stayed at my parents' place on friday night so the anal nerd in me spent friday night cleaning the house and reorganizing chaeli's summer to fall/winter wardrobe. just as i suspected, the pile of 'too small' clothes was three times bigger then the pile of clothes that fits her. but most of them were mix-matches of tops and bottoms that didn't all go well together. geez - that kid sprout up big time this year.

i also went through her huge pile of books on her night stand, which was so huge that half of it was on the floor underneath the little table. her usual bookshelf, which is very small and a part of her closet) was jammed pack. i had to put some of the bigger books on the very top shelf. i'm going to have to invest in a kid's book shelf to put her books away in. while i have no issues deciding on toys to give away, ones that she's outgrown, i have a pretty huge issue with getting rid of books. i do have a small pile of maybe 8 books i'm prepared to donate to her school, but that's about it. she's got so much more that i didn't even make 1/8th of a dent.

doug came home just near the end of my organizing and cleaning. we decided to head out for a late dinner at a local vietnamese restaurant. i had the lemongrass, grilled chicken, rice, shredded pork and fried egg. doug has his usuall vermecelli with an assortment of goodies in it - vietnamese spring roll, beef roll and shrimp paste on sugar cane. we shared a cold spring roll appetizer and some spicy, fried squid appetizer. what i love about vietnamese food is that it's so affordable. with all that we ordered, it only came to $35 after tips and tax.

saturday morning, i headed off to another power-pump class, making it the first time i've done three in a week. it was at 9:30am which helped getting my butt out of bed early. as usual, the class was great, though this instructor probably would not be considered my favourite one of those i've tried. she wasn't bad but her program was a bit too repetitive. not enough was mixed up which made it easier, i felt. i compensated by adding more weights to my routine.

afterwards, i headed up too shop for chaeli's fall/winter wardrobe. while i was at the mall, i also bought some stocking stuffer items for christmas. i was able to get everything done before 1pm which was nice - i had a few hours to relax and unwind before going over to my aunt's place.

dinner was great, as usual. my doctor and his wife joined the party as well and we had such a great night laughing and chatting away. the food was fabulous though i wasn't able to really dive into it as my appetite has shrunken. it was good, though. at one point, i was able to stop and remind myself that i was satisfied. that any more eating would have just been out of habit and pleasure. but that i would suffer later by being overly-stuffed. so rather having more steak or pasta, i opted to having a couple more of the grilled portebello mushrooms (which were just amazing, anyway, but light).

it's weird to be happy about something like this. except that it's been well over a year (maybe two?) where i wanted to replace our really ugly napkin holder. it was this tacky, silver holder in a shame of a napkin, folded over with a bow on one side. it didn't even hold the napkins very well because the height was just half the size it was suppose to me. all the napkins, then, would flop over. and then when we would take one out, the whole pile would come out at the same time, for whatever reason. probably because they were all bent over.

it was so ugly that i can't even bother to take a photo of it.

anyway, i finally got around to replacing it yesterday with one that takes up little room, works and is, if i do say so mysefl, very pretty. :)

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the forecast is showing rain all weekend. which is fine. i was looking forward to going but only if the weather was going to cooperate. i'm also looking forward to just hanging out at home.

i have some organizing to do - namely, my closet. i want to sort, chuck and clean in preparations for christmas (where i store my shopping items, wrapping paper and craft items). right now, it's just a big mess and i'm actually dying to tackle this project. just so i can feel the relief - 'ahhh! that's much better!'

doug and i also want to go so G.I. Joe. we would get babysitting for chaeli but she says she wants to watch it too. well, she lived through transformers (both movies) without even flinching. i'm sure this pg-rated, action movie will be just fine.

i wanted to invite cathy and her family over but it looks like her little girl has come down with something. still, i'll probably give them a shout tomorrow to see if they would be up for take-out at our place.

rainy weekends do spoil the outdoor fun but there's always so much to do at home that i'm sure we won't be bored.

with all the stress i've been going through lately, i've actually gotten to a point in my life where i realize that eating healthy (along with my weekly workout regimen) is even more important then ever.

after all, junk food/empty calories will just heighten my stressful state. or at the least, give me low energy.

tonight, i've packed a "snack kit" for work. it contains some spicy hummus, a baby cucumber, one medium size whole wheat pita bread, some cubed goat feta and yogurt.

it's missing fruit but i just went through my fridge and there's no fresh fruit at the moment. but... progress takes time. by next weekend, i'll have introduced more fresh fruit.

i'm hoping that this well-prepared snack kit will solve the problem of the mid-afternoon vending mahcine, hunger attack. to be honest, i don't even like what the vending machine has to offer. but it's there. it's easy. yet half an hour later, i honestly do not feel satisfied. if anything, i feel a bit gross.

so lets hope i have a healthy food day tomorrow.

my weekend (actually, OUR weekend), was so lazy and laid back that i actually feel like i need to get productive as soon as possible before my brain melts.

i think i needed this weekend though. while i spent it with doug, chaeli and just a little bit with my aunt and uncle (who are pretty laid back people), it felt good to be away from... people.

in fact, i'm not looking forward to being around people tomorrow. yes, i want to do work and be productive, i just hope i don't get too many interruptions.

it's going to be one of those 'i'm plugged to my mp3 player as a way to tell you nicely that i don't really want to talk to you' sort of day.

(on a side note, i've also been watching so many high school musical dvd's that i can confirm that i didn't like the 2nd one but loved the first and last one - how sad is that?)

this weekend was suppose to be a relaxing, do-nothing, type weekend.

when will i ever learn that in my world, that rarely exisits?

it started off with my mom and dad coming back with chaeli way earlier then expected friday night. by the time they left and we got chaeli off to bed, it was almost 11pm! i was just too tired to start cleaning the house then.

saturday morning arrived and after a slow start where we eased ourself in, doug and i started the house-cleaning process after brunch. it only took us an hour and a half. i must admit that having doug help is definitely easier - it just gets the process done that much faster.

when we finished, i still had an hour to shower, get myself and chaeli dressed, before heading out to the movie theatre.

then on sunday morning, we ended up getting together with my friend and her two kids whom were visiting from washington d.c. they were only in town until tuesday so sunday morning was the only chance we had to see them. chaeli had a blast playing with the two kids. and we had a great lunch together at a near-by chinese restaurant that opened a year ago - doug and i haven't had a chance to give it a go up until then. afterwards, we took the kids to a place similar to chuckie cheese for them to run around in the indoor playground for half an hour.

good times.

anyway, as for the movie...

chaeli had been bugging us for weeks to take her to see transformers - revenge of the fallen. when the movie came out on wednesday, she was quite anxious that we were going to miss our change in seeing it in the theatres. i tried to explain to her that it would take awhile before this movie, a sure-box office hit, to leave the theaters. she didn't quite understand and since both doug and i were excited to see this movie, it didn't take much convincing to take her to see it.

sometimes, my own kid amazes me. it was a 2.5 hours movie and because it was the first weekend, we went in to grab our seats early. she was pretty much sitting in that seat for a good three hours. granted, she was starting to get a little tired and restless by the last 30-35 minutes but she hung on until the end.

and, there were a few scarier scenes compared to the first movie but the girl didn't even flinch. she just sat there, totally engrossed with her favourite robots.

[note the below does not give away the storyline at all - but does critique on the style of the movie]

as for me, i loved it but i think the first is my fave. this one was a bit too long and while i had no issues with the more complex plot, others seemed to be critisized the movie for it. i do, however, have a problem with the introduction of too many new characters at once, which is what they did with the robots (only one new human character was introduced). with the additional robots, there were the twin autobots whom reminded me of jar jar of star wars.

the intention was for comic relief which just didn't seem to work for me. plus, i counted seven comic relief type characters and for me, that's just way too many.

in addition, the introduction of these new robot characters took away from the overall, character development that i would have liked to have seen - not just with the humans but with the autobots.

one critique from the last movie was that not enough emphasis was placed on the robots and too much was placed on the humans.

it was obvious that to compensate for this, they just decided to add more robots - both on the autobots and the decepticons side. but... what happened was far less interactions between robots. while some of the main autobots were still there like ratchett and ironhide, we rarely got a chance to hear them speak. they were there more just for the fighting. only optimus prime and bumblebee had most of the dialogue, as did some of the decepticons.

the focus was still mainly on the humans. so i don't know why they thought that just by adding more robots would help. it didn't. it so did not make it any better. i would have rather had them stick to the way they had it in the first movie.

having said that, i still really enjoyed the movie but more as an action type movie only. and the special effects had me mesmerized.