Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The “Monica Closet”

A couple months ago I was watching Mother Angelica on EWTN while ironing. I don’t recall the exact point of her message (not good I know) but she talked about how most of the viewers probably have drawers in their home that they aren’t even sure what is inside them but yet they are full. Her point had something to do with not sharing our abundances or the meaning of a true sacrifice versus giving of our abundance or something really meaningful like that (which I didn’t quite retain) but it made me think of my “Monica Closet.” If you don’t know what a “Monica Closet” is, well, it’s a reference to Monica’s catch-all closet on the show, "Friends". Yep that’s right. I just referenced Mother Angelica’s show and Friends back to back. Anyhoo, thanks to the help of a couple very generous friends, (one who painted and one who sat my 2 year old), I finally tackled my Monica Closet. When I have been asked whether I have such a closet I usually say, “Ahhh, there’s this spot in my basement but no, not really.” Lies lies lies! My laundry area of my basement has been such a dark secret. It’s been my dumping ground and it’d held junk that I couldn’t part with but knew that I should and who knows what else. Basically, it’s the spot of my house that I go to other people’s home to “fix.” Things finally got cleaned out, the walls were scrubbed and it is painted a bright white. No more Monica Closet. No more, “don’t look in there!” moments. No more feeling like I am holding onto material things unnecessarily. No more living with a dark secret. It feels good spiritually and intellectually.

Now I know I should have taken true “before” pictures with my big mess in it and I would have except I just um forgot, eh hem. Here is a picture taken while I was in the midst of emptying the room and an after picture (with a chaise lounge in it that my step-mom is coming to pick up soon). I ran out of tiles to finish the black and white floor, but hope to get to that soon. It was difficult to get a good picture of such a long room but if you are so interested perhaps you can get the jist.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

February 2010 Menu




Anyone who ever visits here probably wondered if I was ever coming back. Yes I love doing this little blog. I will be back. The Holiday Season and my 3 little ones tugged at my time. Admittedly I did not enter this past holy season prepared as I would have liked. This doesn’t happen every year for me. This year will be better. I will be done with the gifting ideas by Halloween so I can truly enjoy the season. While I was gone I put together this Februrary menu with all new recipes which I am excited about. Being a bit lazy with it, however, in putting it together, I basically sat down with my latest copy of CL magazine, (heard they were nitpickedty about copyright rules on blogs and such but I know you can figure it out), and used all their recipes because everything looked so yummy.