Using My "Good Things" Book

Happy New Year! I can't remember the last time I made New Year's resolutions, but this year, I not only made a few, I actually wrote them down. I know myself. If I don't write them down, they'll be history about a week from now. :-)

My resolutions have to do with time management (major) and trying new recipes (minor) and being prepared for Christmas next year (HUGE).

Meantime, I was busy as could be yesterday with a three year old and a sick, teething baby, so I knew better than to try to accomplish anything big. Poor little Avery was already having a rough time - she's cutting her two front teeth - and now the poor little thing has a rotten cold. She's miserable.

Still, I'm feeling an overwhelming need to seriously, truly, clean.this.house.

It's making me crazy, I've let the big cleaning go for so long now. So yesterday I started off slowly.

I walked around my house and grabbed glass things that had accumulated dust. It felt good just to wash those things and watch them dry. I hate the way dust settles on every single surface in your house in the winter when the furnace is running. Dust accumulating on clear glass is a constant reminder that you're not keeping up.


Several of those glass things were full of seashells. Surprise, surprise...I have a lot of seashells around my western Colorado home. LOL Those were covered with dust, too. So I washed every last seashell by hand. Ugh.


Even things stored in closets, like these adorable candle holders Krissy got for me at a candle party, collect dust. These are very sweet - designed to hold tea lights. I washed those, too.

As I was walking down my hallway, I spied my Good Things Book sitting in my bookshelves. You may remember when I first shared my Good Things Book with you, a year and a half ago. Oddly enough, the name of that post was Kool-Aid Pickles and if you read the post, it made sense.


No magazine I read ever goes to the trash until I've gone through it from cover to cover and clipped anything I think is a great idea. Those go into my Good Things Book, in a fun, random way. Since I can't work on this book constantly, I have a folder I stash the good ideas in until I have a chunk of time to sit down and put them into the book.


As with just about everything else I used to do regularly, before I opened an on-line shop, this got a little out of hand, so I decided to do some catching up.


And of course, I found myself leafing through my book - I hadn't opened it in almost a year. This page caught my attention immediately.


I remember falling in love with this seashell centerpiece when I first saw it. I seriously love all things "ocean."

All of a sudden it all clicked.


These candles were sitting on top of a tall dresser in my bedroom. I haven't actually burned them in a long time which is a shame because I seriously love them. I bought these at Pier I, a few years ago. They're Wild Honey and of course Pier I discontinued that scent right after I fell in love with it. They always do. I'm the perfect predictor of what's going to fly with the consumer and what's not. LOL

Anyway....I realized I had all the components to make that seashell centerpiece!


I put my three tall candles on the large clear glass round plate I'd just washed.


I gathered a handful of tiny shells and I realized I have a whole bag of Wild Honey tea lights, which I'd completely forgotten about, since I never use them. Sigh.


So the adorable gift Krissy gave me is out of the closet now. Sweet, sweet, aren't they?


I arranged some of my bigger shells on the glass plate, and....ta da! I have a gorgeous new centerpiece for my dining room table.

This tickled me pink. I love, love my Good Things Book. Someday, when my girls are going through that book, I'm sure one of them will see the photo I clipped from a magazine and think, "Wow. So that's where Mom got that idea."


Rob and I never make big plans for New Year's Day. We'll be just the two of us today. So I plan to cook a roast while he watches football. I love the way a roast makes the house smell when it's in the single digits outside.

And I plan to wash and iron my white cotton eyelet-trimmed sheets today. Because that's one of the things I've let slip. And to me, freshly washed and ironed white cotton eyelet-trimmed sheets are a good thing.

And I plan to continue working on my book until it's all caught up. :-)

Happy New Year to all of you. I'm ready for all the adventure I'm sure 2009 has in store for me! LOL