Brenda's beautiful Christmas tree

Yesterday I wrote about my struggle with my Christmas tree. Just to put things in perspective, here is a look at my friend Brenda and her Christmas tree.

That is Brenda's tree up above!

At first when I saw that picture in my photos from last week, I did not look closely and I thought it was my tree. I thought to myself, I should not be so hard on myself. Look at my tree, it looks good!

Then I realized it was Brenda's tree.

Everyone needs a Brenda in your life to give you something to strive for. Brenda has put in years as an interior designer, working for Ethan Allen and other places. Her house is perfect. Brenda and I met when she was an Etsy customer. She purchased a print to go in an AirBnB her son was running, and then she framed it beautifully and also framed my little signed notes for the picture and put them on a table by the print. I went over to see the setup. I thought I was dreaming! Anyway that was how we met.

Now I just look agog at everything Brenda does. She has beautiful candles that are fake but do not look it. They are on a timer so they go on every day at the same time. Probably the timer makes allowances for sunset and sunrise. I would not be surprised!

Brenda had a few of us over for a tree-trimming party the other day. The ornaments were impeccably laid out. There was a bowl full of hooks -- no scrabbling in the corners of the old cardboard boxes that hold normal people's ornaments. And there was this buffet. 

Here is Brenda putting the star atop the tree as Ryan watches critically to make sure it is not off in any way.

The beautiful people by the buffet. Notice the wreath in the back window.

I give you Brenda, left, and me, right, enjoying the occasion. Did I mention she had the most delicious red wine?

Whenever I see Brenda I get the urge to do what motivation guru Brian Tracy always says to do when you want to reach a goal. You map out piece by piece what it would take for you to reach that goal, which in my case is to live in an environment like Brenda's.

Every journey starts with a single step, however. And I took that step yesterday.

The tree is up. The lights are on! It was a struggle but still.

I am on my way!

The pants reuse project

At Mass today we were advised that it is better if ladies not wear pants. They are unfeminine. They lead to various ills.

End result, as we say here in Buffalo, I have a couple of boxes' worth of pants and jeans I need to reuse.

This is not the end of the world for me, far from it. I only wear pants about once a year anyway. For some other ladies it is a much greater sacrifice.

But for some reason I have ended up with a lot of pants. I just took a whole bunch of them to Amvets last week because I got skinny enough for them to fit me, only to realize that I did not like how they looked. I hate when that happens!

I am not in love with jeans because I find them hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Plus I just have problems wearing pants. I do not have things that go with them. I have trouble putting an outfit together involving them. Now, take away my maxidresses, and we would have a problem. But as things are, I can live with this.

The only question facing me is, what to do with these pants? I cannot exactly throw them out.

And so I have come up with a catalog of things I want to make with them.

One is rag curtains, for my back porch.

You can get away with stuff out on a porch that would look really weird inside the house! So that is where my new rag curtains will go.

And there is that awesome wine bag at the top of this post that I found in this list of crafts you can make from jeans.

People make this unbelievably professional-looking things. I need something simple because I have a lot of other things going on.

However another thing on my list is an artist's bag. I will have to invent this because I have not found a picture of one. There are tote bag ideas out there I can adapt.

So ... curtains, wine bag, artist's bag. Also I want a sketchbook cover. I can craft that to match my artist's bag.

It is going to be no picnic at first to start cutting up my pants. But once I get going I will be all right with it. Other gals at church are going through the same thing. We are thinking we will have a contest for the best reuse.

Cushions are a no-brainer. I can use those on the porch.

Those two look a little advanced for me but I can manage something. Howard gave me a sewing machine once and we also have a dandy ornate early 20th century Singer.

I am thinking of making the porch a theme of this project. I need to furnish it somehow now that it is all renovated and ready to go.

Oh! And a bulletin board. You can cover some kind of board with the fabric from your pants.

Jeoffry has no problem re-purposing a pair of shorts.

One way or another I, too, will make use of these garments.

I cannot part with them!

The Comfy Chair

Remember Monty Python and "The Comfy Chair"?

I asked that of Pennario once and he was not amused. Pennario did not care for Monty Python. But I remember the Comfy Chair very fondly. My dad and I used to laugh about it.

Anyway, I purchased a comfy chair at a garage sale a week ago. Never use the word "bought" when you can use the word "purchased," you know? I, ahem, purchased this chair with the help of my friend Lizzie. She spotted it and then she talked it down from $70 to $25 and then she schlepped it to my house in her gigantic SUV and then she helped me move it in. Everyone should have a friend like Lizzie but alas few people do. She can solve every problem you have in life.

But let me get to the point.

My new chair became the focus of a story by my colleague Susan Martin in Sunday's Buffalo News!

I am nameless in the story but the picture of the chair ran big and now that it has been published I do not think anyone would mind if I bragged on my Web log that it is my chair.

Everything that is in the story was true. I could not move the chair into the chaotic sun room and so I cleaned the chaotic sun room. I weeded out the record collection which was multiplying like the bishop's weed. There is a pile of really nice records earmarked now for my brother George. And there is a box devoted just to Leonard Pennario records I have purchased on eBay and wherever. And there is a box of junk records headed to Goodwill. I did all this in addition to getting in four hours a day on the book project.

Now you can move and breathe now in the sun room. You can open windows. You can sit in the comfy chair! Here is the chair that touched off this revolution.

And here is the restroom, I mean the rest of the room.

Ha, ha! With anyone else that would be this huge mess, with the cardboard boxes and everything. And on the couch is a pile of plastic record sleeves I meant to throw out. But anyway, for me this is serious progress.

Howard admired the chair because who could not.

It is as most excellent chair for when you want to put your feet up and listen to a Leonard Pennario record or to someone playing the upright piano, or when you want to read a magazine or say a rosary or have a glass of wine or pray to one or another of an array of nearby saints....

... or simply think about life.

I am laughing looking at The News' Web site. In the paper the picture is in black and white and it is cropped. But in the online edition it is in color and you can see the Infant of Prague as well as a little more of my religious paraphernalia. That is too funny. There are no secrets here in Buffalo!

Anyway. Cheers to my chair.

It was a wonderful and productive purchase!

Green Day

This weekend, going garage sale-ing, I garage saled down to my very last dime! It was literally true. By the end of the day I was borrowing from my friend Lizzie.

Lizzie and I are a garage-sale team and every week one of us goes broke and ends up borrowing from the other. Last time she borrowed from me and this weekend I borrowed from her.

One prize purchase was a set of 1970s curtains which I talked down from $3 to $1. I drive a hard bargain! I haggle like a Moroccan in the square. They are, or were, bathroom curtains. We know that because they came with a shower curtain in the same pattern, green and yellow and white.

But now they are office curtains! There they are up above, in their glory, next to the Leonard Pennario desk.

They will stop prying eyes from intruding on my work!

I like hanging curtains like that, one panel a window, bohemian style. And the curtains feel like summer. They are very clean and they smell good and waft around in the breeze.

I think I will use the shower curtain as a tablecloth.

We also went to a Plant Sale and the proprietor took us into his backyard to show us his koi pond.

It is amazing, this koi pond in this little Kenmore back yard! Here is a closeup.

Such a wonderful day of going through people's stuff and admiring things and just going where the day leads you. All these shades of green and yellow.

And the blossoms were out.

Here are my saints in the morning sunlight.

It is spring at last!

Curtains

I have this plan to get curtains in the kitchen, such as the ones picture up above, instead of the blinds that are there.

The blinds have been there as long as I have had the house and they are really dirty from having been in the kitchen so long, with the kind of cooking I do. They cannot be cleaned. I have tried.

So I thought, curtains. I really do not need blinds, you know? I would rather have half-curtains that would block out the sight of me from outside but still let in the light from the higher panes. They would brighten up the kitchen.

Howard said: "But the neighbors would still be able to see you."

I said: "How?"

He said, "Well, from the upper floors." Meaning, if they went upstairs and looked down, maybe they could see me.

I said, "Well, they can knock themselves out."

If it is worth running upstairs to get a glimpse of me listening to Leonard Pennario and stirring things with wooden spoons and swearing at my back issues of Cooking Blight, so be it. I still want curtains.

With that in mind I went to Kmart after work. I got those springy curtain rods that fit the windows without you having to screw them in. I am not a hardware store person. Kmart is a whole other story I will have to get into another time.

After Kmart I went to Amvets all bright and hopeful that I would find cute vintage curtains.

Alas, no luck. They had tons of bath stuff, such as those furry covers that fit over your toilet, haha. But no kitchen curtains that I could find. Darn, and I had such an image of cute curtains with geese and strawberries and rolling pins and whatever. Oh well. Perhaps I will learn to make my own curtains. Meanwhile I did get a great deal on a Food and Wine cookbook that I love. It is Food and Wine Herbs and Spices!

Already I have made a recipe out of that book. I made Cod and Potatoes With Thyme.

Still with dirty blinds.

Great things take time!