Bad Habits And Even Worse Dining Rooms

Just a quick update to let you know that I did not blog myself into the Bermuda Triangle.

I'm here. 


I'm just trying to find Debbie. If anyone sees her, please alert the authorities. She was last spotted sitting beneath a pile of old magazines looking for style inspiration. 

photo credit

Seriously,  I really am trying to find Debbie. I'm trying to discover, or rediscover, my own decorating style. I used to think I knew it, but somewhere along the line I lost my groove. I flumped from trend to trend or didn't update at all.  As a result, some rooms in this house, mainly the downstairs common areas, just don't say, "Debbie" at all.

 What they say, I do not know.

I can't remember the catch phrase of the '90s.

I do remember the color of the 90s, though. It was hunter green. 

Now, hunter green is a perfectly lovely color. It's just that it is not now, nor was it ever,  my color. It just happened to be the favorite trendy color of a very pushy former friend. Perhaps you can relate.

Somehow, during  my season with this woman,  she managed to convince me

that I couldn't make a tasteful decision on my own...

that I needed her help and guidance to decorate my own home, and
that my house needed to look just like her house.  

As the friendship waned, I was left with nothing but some unfortunate upholstery choices and sorry case of decorating insecurity.

But I've been thinking...

I'm always thinking...

In case you haven't heard yet, I'm turning 50 this year. Don't you think it's about time I grew up and got over it?

Yeah, I think so too. 

And so... with no further meandering, I would like to invite you to join me as I make those rooms in my house say, "Debbie" again and rediscover my own personal style.

I'm starting with my dining room.

Want to guess what was the first thing to go?


(really lousy picture... the best I had)


No...
Not the brass light fixture...
nor the valance and sheers...
nor the '80s casual  oak furniture...

Oh, they are all going, but the first thing to go was the hunter green wall. 

We just matched the lower wall to the upper one. It's a color called worn path, and it actually is to my liking,  Lucky for me, the store still had the formula for the color. Since the spaces are divided by molding, any difference in hue is not noticeable at all.

Yeah, I know I could paint the top too. Shhh.

So here we are at step #1.
Room painted. 

...a little tease at the window...

The oak furniture has been moved out. 

I like the look of my recent project against that wall,  

but it doesn't belong to me. 

 It's just squatting there while I'm working on step #2.  If you want a hint, take a look at The List.

Anyway, that's all I've got. In case you're wondering, I'm still working on walls, and I'm still working on dressing Mabel the desk.  They don't call me A-D-Debbie for nothing, you know...

Joining Laura at Decor to Adore for her Fall in Love With Your House  party.

Tootin' the Green Horn

I wasn’t planning to post a tutorial on green smoothies. My plan was just to share it as a simple pleasure, but then two things happened.

First, a few of you asked.

And second,

I woke up this morning with so much energy after better night's sleep than I've had in a while. 

Seriously.  The Great Smoothie Miracle happens that quickly. I always forget how good it feels on the first day of smoothie season. This sort of begs the question why I hiberate for the winter without them? Winter is probably the time that I need the energy the most.

Someone remind me that I said that in October.

So anyway, for those who got past the ewww factor of liquid spinach for breakfast and are interested, here are a few of the things you can expect from this health and beauty makeover.

You will feel...

More energy and a clearer head.

Less hungry, especially for sweets and snacky food.

A craving for more green.

Really, you will. Don't ask me why. I'm not the doctor; I'm just the reporter.  

You will notice…

A huge difference in your skin.

Trust me on this. It only takes about a weekend to see results. What cream works that quickly? None, I tell  you. (And Sharon Kirby, if you want to slather it on your skin, go ahead. It's the stuff spa facials are made of, after all. If it turns you into Shrek, however, don't blame me.)

Stronger and faster growing fingernails.

Healthier hair
Weight loss (unless you insist on a green smoothie with a bagel chaser...)

Improved sleep (unless you live with a buzz saw )

And, um.... a healthier digestive system. Let's just leave it at that.

Here's how I make mine:

 Keep bananas in the freezer.
Freezing them really makes a difference.
I usually chop mine and flash freeze for about an hour before storing them.

 Start with about a cup of fresh or canned fruit.
(Not the bananas...)
It can be any yellow or green kind you like or a combination.

I say canned because my favorite is pineapple, and fresh pineapple is expensive around here. I usually buy one of those huge cans of pineapple (in juice) and keep it in a container in the refrigerator.

Blend it up until smooth.
It should not look like this

If it does, add splashes of juice until it looks like this

It probably goes without saying that you want to use juice with no sugars or additives, but I’ll say it anyway.

Then add a big handful of greens (spinach, collards, kale...)

Add it gradually by pulsing.

Then, blend.

Now add frozen bananas.

The freezing intensifies the sweetness. (They’re really good for just a quick nibble when you want something sweet, too.) I usually put between ½ to 1 whole banana. Basically just throw in a palm full of slices. 

And whirl again...

Then add about 2 teaspoons of honey or sweetener.

I used to use Splenda here,
but GNEE at Singing with Birds has introduced me to this healthier option.

At this point, you can sample it and add anything else you might like to doctor it up like teaspoons of preserves or marmalade or more fruit.

 Then add some ice cubes
until it is the thickness you want.

It should pour like a milk shake.

And ta da!

This is really enough for two, but lucky me… I’m home alone.

It will actually keep in the fridge for up to two days. They say you can just give it a quick shake the next day. I've never tried that since I lack the self-control to keep a smoothie overnight.

I'm going to try today.

And that's it.
Really, try it.

As for me, I'm taking my well rested, energetic, younger looking, smoothie self on a Great Pink Adventure to what is dubbed the Pinkest Party on Earth.

I'll be back later to yak all about it.

Simply Green

Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!

I had another simple pleasure planned this week, but then I looked at a calendar and changed my mind. I couldn’t neglect the most festive Thursday of the year. So today, in celebration of the greenest day on the calendar, I'm sharing my greenest simple pleasure, the green smoothie.

I first heard about green smoothies a few years ago somewhere out in Cyber Land. I clicked a link and discovered a woman gushing about her incredible health and beauty makeover and extolling the virtues of drinking spinach for breakfast.

Now, I'm not at all a fan of cooked or canned spinach. Call me crazy, but I have a personal aversion to anything that resembles sewage.  Fresh spinach, however, I can handle. Plus, the words beauty makeover kind of sucked me in so I decided to dub it an adventure and give it a try.

It was delicious.

OK, it wasn't immediately delicous. Cyber woman made  hers with water, spinach and bananas. One sip, and I knew it was a project that needed some tweaking.  I replaced the water with ice and a splash of juice, and I froze the bananas. I also threw in some other fruit for good measure.

And then, I added a little sweetener. Yeah,I know that kind of negates the healthy part.

And then, it was delicious. Seriously, you can't taste the green part at all.

Over the years, it has become a little hobby for me to create new green concoctions. It's kind of like those My Favorite Cookies that I've yakked about before.

I've made them with spinach, with collard greens, and kale. (I once tried to use mustard greens because no one warned me that the mustard in the name is not just figurative. I wouldn't recommend it.) I've used pineapples, peaches, pears, and even apples.  The man of the house likes his with a little orange marmalade mixed in.

For aesthetic purposes, I stick with green or yellow fruits. Whirring in something like strawberries might sound like a good idea, but they just turn it into a brown smoothie. Then, you have that whole sewage issue going on.

Green smoothies, of course, are not a winter treat. I enjoy them through the spring and summer and then on no certain day in October, I pretty much send the blender into hibernation. Because I’m the kind of gal who likes tradition, I always open green smoothie season on St. Patrick’s Day.

And that's what I did this morning.
I feel thinner already.

Making green smoothies is this week's simple pleasure.

****

Sharing with Dayle at A Collection of This and That

Please join us for more simple pleasures. 

Life Unplugged

It’s 6:00 in the morning, and I’m already home alone.  The husband left for another busy week of business, and here I sit with my cup of coffee and trusty electronic companions.  You see, almost as much as I fear the darkness, I loathe the silence. 

I like a little noise around me, even if it’s of the technological sort.  

Blogland, however, has a way of making me rethink things.

On Friday, one of my favorite bloggers, Gayle at Solitary Moments, spoke of an uninvited season of low tech living when she moved back home to live with her very low tech mom and dad.  What she reaped in that season of simplicity was a harvest of restoration. To read the entire inspirational story, click HERE.

I thought about Gayle’s post on and off all weekend. I thought about the amount of silence that is filled around my place with artificial noise.

My days begin to the sound of the morning news over my first cup of coffee.   

I sit here in the den until I’m fully tanked. Then I leave the television running all day long for no other reason than background noise as I meander about the place.  If I go upstairs for any length of time, I click on the television in the bedroom as well.  I rarely if ever sit down to watch the television, but it’s always there, wokking in my ear even as I plop down in front of that other electronic playmate called the computer.

Artificial noise follows me on the road, too.  Ebenezer is well stocked with CDs for singing and tuned to talk radio when I feel like a little company.

Lots of noise.  

At night, I set my sleep timer and fall asleep, generally to the noise of the news. In the morning, I start the whole thing all over again.    

Pondering Gayle’s post, I wondered how well I would survive the low tech lifestyle for a season.  I have a feeling that I wouldn’t fare so well. Forget the season… I’m not sure that I could survive it even for a day.  

So I’m putting myself to the test, and I'm such an over achiever that I'll try it not for one day, but for two.  Impressed, aren't you?

For the next 48 hours,

all most of my technology will GO. 

I’m calling this adventure 
in "The Year of  Go",

Life Unplugged.

I’m unplugging my televisions…

And I’m unplugging my computer…

And I’m even turning off my cell phone. I’m going to trust God that my girls will reach me just fine the old fashioned way… which come to think of it, isn’t all that old fashioned at all.

And while I’m at it, I’m unplugging my microwave and the convenience of the millisecond meal-for-one that has somehow become a mainstay of this empty nest. I’m not unplugging my refrigerator or stove, however.

I said I was adventurous, not crazy.  

So here I go. We’ll see how this down time fills up. And then, I’ll come on back to yak all about it.

Until then… 

Simply Empowered

I started the year with a commitment to GO.

 

I dubbed 2011 the year to step out of my box and go out of my comfort zone into unfamiliar territory. I even asked God to nudge me, so to speak, into areas which stretched me beyond where I like to be.

I’m not sure I expected Him to answer me so readily and so literally, but He did.

Have I mentioned that I’m afraid of the dark?  Well, I am.  For no small reason have I earned the title baby of the family.  I blame my overactive imagination. In 49 years, I have never… not one single time… allowed myself to be caught alone in the darkness.

So you can imagine my comfort level when The Great Ice Storm Adventure left me without power just as the blue hour was stealing the last bit of daylight from the sky.

I waited for a little while, hoping that it would rally as it had the other fourteen times it had gone out that day.

It showed no gumption whatsoever.

There I was, sitting home alone, in the dark, with the woods still crackle- popping around me.  In response, I did what any normal 49 year old mother of two would do; I called my mom. There wasn’t a single thing the Duchess could do for me since she lives over an icy river and through a piney stick woods, but I called nonetheless. 

I also called the husband in Atlanta.

And both of my daughters at school.  

All four had the great privilege of talking Debbie off the ledge. All four gave me the same sage advice.

Light some candles.

Well, thanks.

I rounded up every candle in this house, large or small and gathered them to illuminate the living room. Now folks, there’s a name for a dark room illuminated with candles.

Spooky.  

Honestly, there is little comfort in sitting in a room
which looks like the set of a horror movie. 

But then…

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I decided that it really wasn’t worth all the dread and drama. In fact, when I stopped hyperventilating long enough to look around me, it was fine, almost cozy. And somewhere in the middle of it all, I decided to take my little candle and venture about the house to find things to occupy my mind in the darkness.

I gathered up some hoarded magazines and used the time for a sort and purge. Then, I took my candle back into the darkness to find my reading glasses because I got sidetracked by the cover stories which had kept me from tossing them away to begin with.

I stayed downstairs in that living room for hours before blowing out the candles and heading upstairs to the darkness called my bedroom. It was while I was carrying that little light of mine that I heard a quiet blowing sound.

Like music to the ears.

(By the way, it's hard to do the happy dance while holding a lighted taper.)

Now, if you’re thinking that the sound of that power returning is this week’s simple pleasure, you would be wrong. While I did enjoy the simple blessing of the amenity that I too often take for granted, it wasn’t the return of the power that gave me my greatest pleasure this week.

It was knowing that I had stared down a 49 year old monster and lived to tell the tale.

Facing my fear  is this week’s simple pleasure.

*****

Sharing this with Dayle at
A Collection of This and That
For her Simple Pleasures party.
Head on over to enjoy other simple pleasures.

On Your Mark...Get Set...

I started 2010 with a plan. My theme color was orange, and my motto was Do The Next Thing inspired by Elisabeth Elliot’s poem of the same name.  

It was great.

However, as 2010 wound to a close, I found myself with neither color nor theme nor inspiration for the coming year. I have decided that being without inspiration is just about one of the worst places to be. 

What to do...

I considered all options on the color wheel. Since pink is my official favorite color, it seemed a logical choice. I even auditioned several shades of pink to shake things up a bit. I tried out magenta. I tossed around fuchsia. (It’s probably no surprise that I tend to gravitate toward the hot shades.)  My daughters thought that I had settled on raspberry and were surprised on New Year’s Day when I revealed that it, too, had been tossed in the reject pile.

I gave myself a deadline of January 5^th to work this color theme out because I’m odd like that.

And then yesterday morning,  it just sort of hit me. And folks, when you know… you just know.  I could hardly wait to wake the girls and tell them.  I’m sure they could hardly sleep for the want of knowing.

My theme color this year is green.

Not sage or emerald or mint.

Just simply green.

I chose it because

green means GO.  

See, I’m a lousy gardener with a legendary brown thumb, but even I know that you stunt growth when you refuse to pull up weeds, thin out plants, and lop off the dead heads.

I have a lot of dead heads around here, 

and they need to go. 

In this post, I set a deadline of December 18^th 2011 to use or lose some inventory lying dormant in my nooks and crannies.  I’ll yak about plans and progress at a later time, but for now, I’ll just say that after a full year, I’m finally ready for some of it to just go.

As in

Out. The. Door.

Some intangibles need to go as well. You see, the husband and I are the ultimate Cling Ons. We cling to toxic situations and even relationships long past their expiration dates. With very little encouragement, we can even deceive ourselves into calling it being “steadfast”.

As if…

We gnaw away like dogs on bones, often getting so consumed with our gnarling that we ignore the Hand that’s trying to feed us.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe God won’t fix what’s broken because He really just wants us to let go?  

If I’m reluctant to step away, I’m downright remedial when it comes to stepping out. Oh, I’m a well documented adventure seeker.  It’s just that those adventures never step too far out of the box or off the beaten path.

‘Cause I’m a scaredy cat, you know…

So this year, I will go.

Of course, the fact that I have no clue where it is I’m supposed to be going is a bit of a problem, but work with me here. I only know that I am determined to step out of my comfort zone to try that which is uncomfortable or even a little scary.

Maybe even carrots.  

And once I do, I hope see some new growth around here which, coincidentally, is also represented by the color green.  

See how it all ties in together? 

2011...
The year of green.


Go Debbie...
Go Debbie...
Go Debbie...