It's That Time of Year Again

I sit here on this beautiful Halloween afternoon and I reflect on the past few months and the few months upcoming.  It is an amazing time in my life and a time of a lot of changes and milestones.  Halloween also usually marks the kickoff of the holiday season to me.

I suppose the biggest and most important thing that has happened is that Jim and I are now expectant grandparents.  We already have 'gear' in our garage.....the base for a car seat in our car and a high chair for our little granddaughter to use when she is old enough to join us at the table.  We have 2 books:  "How to Babysit a Grandmother" and "How to Babysit a Grandfather."  These books are awesome!  Trina brought them over to us the day after we learned we were going to be grandparents.  It brought such smiles to our faces!  We had to 'hide' them back in our bedroom because Madeline and Eric hadn't told anyone else yet and they wanted to wait awhile.  Now, however, the books are in my family room in plain view!  I have a couple of items that my friend, Beth, gave me.  I can hardly wait to hold little Hannah in my arms!

Another big milestone is that Mom has moved in with us.  I hope she has always known she was welcome.  It is nice having her here as we can see her every day and check on her often.  I tell her she is less trouble than my cat, Leo!  She really just does her own thing and so far so good!  We just have to finish the job of getting all of the stuff out of her apartment at Stratford Court.  We have things all lined up, so I am hoping by Thanksgiving it will all be completed.

It might not seem like a milestone to many people, but to me this was huge......Madeline helped me reorganize my craft room.  It is ALMOST finished!  It feels good to have it organized and it makes me more excited about crafting.....I know what I have and where to locate it!  Madeline also helped me get Mom's room ready for her move in.  Madeline is good at organizing and working quickly!  Sometimes it just helps to have someone give me a little kick start to gets things going.  I can always count on my daughter to do that for me.

 Madeline and Eric bought a house and got all moved in.  They are settled and have Hannah's room all fixed up.  It is adorable and we all enjoyed helping them paint and get moved in.  Many hands make light work.  It is such a pleasure seeing the two of them enjoying being homeowners and working so hard to make their house their home. 

Joseph and Ashley moved into their own apartment and they seem really happy to have their own place.  Jimmy let them take the cats, Rory and Tiger, since Ashely had become so attached to them.  They took a few things of Mom's and so did Jimmy and Madeline and Eric.  Now everyone has a little something of hers.  I have grown to learn that through all these moves and packing and unpacking and storing and shifting and rearranging, you just can't keep EVERYTHING!  I am so sentimental, I have trouble parting with stuff.  That is when I need Madeline, or my sister-in-law, Linda, to help me realize that I don't need to keep it all.  After this current move, I hope to finally get things the  way I want them and I hope to finally feel 'settled.'  I also look forward to parking my car in the garage yet again!

Porter is in his second year at NYU and I think he has found that he is 'home.'  I imagine Porter will stay in New York indefinitely.  Although he is far away, I am glad he is happy and thriving.  That is all that really matters.  I know Bob is probably very lonely, but I am sure he is feeling that same way.  He wants Porter to be happy.  Being separated from your children is tough.  I have done it!  I feel so thankful that all my crew is here now.....hopefully to stay.

There are so many exciting things happening this time of year!  I just look at my calendar for that day.  I don't even try to look ahead because every single square has something written in it.....some have more than one thing!  But that is okay. 
I love working part-time at the Lighthouse.  It is a great atmosphere and it keeps me super busy!  I know it isn't something I will be able to do for a long long time, but for now, it is working for me.  I imagine when Hannah comes into this world, my world is going to change!  When everyone you meet tells you how wonderful it is to be a grandmother, I can't help but believe that it is true.  I know how I am already feeling about it and she isn't even here yet!

Gina, Eric's aunt, and her two lovely daughters are hosting a shower for Madeline in a few weeks.  I look forward to going to my daughter's first ever baby shower!  It is so sweet of Gina to do this for her, and I know it will be a blast! 
Alicia, Madeline's dear friend, wanted to host a shower for Madeline and asked me if I would like to join her.  Of course, I am always up for a party to host, so I said yes!  Right before Christmas we are hosting a shower at my house for Madeline AND Eric!  We decided that the guys always get left out so we are having a co-ed baby shower/Christmas party in their honor.

Trina and I are hosting our 3rd craft party also in December.  This time we will be having it at Trina's house.  We are making fabric Christmas trees....the ones that my cousin, Ellen, and I made in Kentucky this summer when I visited her.  They are so much fun to make.  I have already made 3.   For the craft party, I like to make the food....and also the co-ed shower.  I  will be hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas, so my desk looks like a caterer's desk!  I have a legal pad with all sorts of menu ideas and shopping lists planned out.  I do love the planning and the cooking, so I am excited about all these events!  I did pass on the bridge Christmas luncheon to my friend, Harriet.  I decided everyone was probably sick of coming to my house, and I knew she would be the perfect hostess for it!  She and her husband always decorate their house so festively for the holidays.

I am excited to have Bob and Porter come here for Thanksgiving.  It is always one of the best times of the year.  We have so much fun!  In fact, I will probably have this blog printed into a book (the 3rd time!) and give them to everyone on Thanksgiving.  I did that 2 years in a row, but I skipped last year.  I just haven't been writing enough.  This book will be shorter than the previous 2, but it is still something traditional that I have enjoyed doing.

I do love having Christmas at my house.  It is such a wonderful family time of the year, and having everyone around is worth the so-called trouble!  The older I get, the less I worry over it, and the easier it is, almost.  I guess I have just done it all so many times that it comes naturally.  The worst part, though, about doing it as you get older is that it does sort of tire you out more than it used to.  But I always have helpers and since I worry less about it, it all evens out!

My next birthday will be a big one.  It's one of those 'decade birthdays.'  I will be 60!  I sometimes can't imagine that I could possibly be that old, but then I think of all my memories, and I can realize it.  I just like to live by my Daddy's rule.....you're only as old as you feel.
Although my body often feels old, my mind and my spirit don't!  So I'm going to keep plugging along and I am going to continue enjoying my memories and, God willing,  I'm going to keep creating them.

The Pink Room

With all the moving and transitions our family has had in the past few years, sometimes I don't seem to know which end is up!  My car hasn't been in the garage in over 3 years because the garage is now a storage unit.  But I am not complaining.  This has been a very interesting time in life and with these transitions came some wonderful things.  First, Mom moved to Florida.  I can't imagine now life without her living here!  Madeline left Philadelphia after 5 years and came back to Florida as an engaged woman.  She is now a happily married expectant woman!  Jimmy moved into a condo nearby and Joseph and Ashley decided to stay here and live in Florida rather than Tennessee where they had been for so many years.  Needless to say, the mess in the garage and the constant shifting of boxes and moving pieces here and there is a small price to pay for having all my kids and my mother within a 5 mile radius of me! 

When Madeline got married and moved out, we gave her the furniture from her room.  We now had an empty room that became storage as well.  I had intended to re-create the bedroom of my youth in that room by putting the twin beds that I slept in as a child and painting the walls pink.  I thought that would be a great memory for me. 

One day we were emptying the storage unit and moving some furniture to Madeline and Eric's townhouse and then we moved the rest of the stuff to our garage and to Madeline's old bedroom.  We knew we wanted to sell some of the stuff, disperse some to everyone, and ultimately use some of it.  We figured if it was all at our house we could better go through it and decide what was what.  So, we closed our account with the storage unit and suddenly 2780 Hyde Park Place was THE storage place.  In the moving process, Madeline saw the old Victorian loveseat from Mom's living room on Lynhurst Lane in Shelby.  She was oohing and ahhing over it and saying she wish she had a place for it, knowing that she didn't have a place nor did it suit the décor that she and Eric have.  I am not kidding when I say I had totally forgotten that piece.  I didn't realize we had even moved it from Shelby to Florida.  The discovery of this love seat started a total re-thinking of what to do with Madeline's old room!

I decided to make the room a sitting room that would serve no purpose other than to look pretty and to allow me to use some of the pieces from Mom's that I couldn't bear to get rid of but that had no place in any other room in my house.  Hence, the new sitting room.  I had intended to paint the room pink when I was going to re-create my old bedroom from childhood, since that was the color of my room, of course!  The sitting room would be fine to be pink as it suited the furniture I was about to put in there.  We now just call this lovely, useless room The Pink Room!  (or sometimes Leo's room since he loves to sleep on the floor in there!)

I realized one day that the pieces I decided to put in there were quite eclectic and from several different rooms from Mom's house.  Imagine if you will, an antique marble-topped chest from her family room, two floral chairs from her guest room, an end table from her master bedroom, the huge sideboard from her dining room, the Victorian loveseat from her living room, and the carved screen from her living room.  There is even a little throwrug that was from......get this.....her bathroom!  There is a wooden wastebasket that had been in another of her spare bedrooms, and lamps from upstairs, the guest room and somewhere else I can't even remember!  There are white birds from her living room mantle, an oriental stature from her spare room bath, some small porecelain boxes from her powder room, a charger plate from her guest room, and a handcrafted stool from her bedroom.  The needlepoint pillows on the loveseat were actually in Mom's living room and her breakfast room!The pictures on the wall are from her master bathroom, her spare bedroom, her living room and out of a cabinet or drawer!  There is also a picture from her master bedroom and a small mirror from her upstairs.  Almost every room in Mom's house is represented in this one little room.  Amazing really! If I were reading this I would be throwing up my hands saying that it must look atrocious!  But in fact, it is very lovely and it makes me smile when I go in there.

It was fun putting this room together.  It even gave me a better place to put my cherished porcelain clock that Jessie gave me.  It looks amazing in this room.  I was able to leave the same carpet and window treatments that were already in there and voila!  Instant sitting room!

I am holding on to these prized possessions thinking that maybe one day one of my children will have the type of house that would accommodate these pieces, and if not, I will simply continue to enjoy my little pink sitting room!  The light in there is great and I have decided it would be a great place to sit and read or cross-stitch.  In reality, come January, I imagine there will be a pack n' play set up in the middle of the room and a diaper changing pad on the Victorian loveseat!  But that's okay.  My granddaughter will love it and she may be the one who in actuality ends up using this furniture in HER house one day.

Whatever the purpose of the room... or what we call the room... or what pieces are actually in the room.... I actually can conjure up a lot of memories from this!





By Ginger Spangler (hanging in entrance to The Pink Room)



Screen and LoveSeat



Marble topped chest



SideBoard, etc.



floral chairs and end table