Every morning my Twitter feed is filled with ideas for holiday baking, holiday decorating, holiday entertaining, some of the ideas more useful than others. This morning, I was intrigued by a link that promised to show how to wrap irregularly shaped gifts. It is fantastic, and I spent much of the morning wrapping irregularly shaped gifts. I even used this method to wrap regularly shaped gifts. I had an unfortunate episode yesterday involving advice I found online, so the fact that I was willing to try anything new today is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
I even was inspired to create my own variation on the idea, which was to paper-punch two holes in the top to close the package. This is not a post about how to wrap gifts. It is a post to announce that the Academy of Vintage Christmas Ornaments Arts and Sciences Awards are on hiatus this year. The founder may have a statement on that tomorrow, the traditional day of the awards. The founder is feeling a little frazzled this year, as am I.
At every step this holiday season, I have found a way to make a simple task more complicated. I wanted to decorate my kitchen for the holidays, but first I decided to tear out a built-in piece of furniture. Wall patching, sanding and painting ensued.
Instead of merely decorating the dining room, I decided it needed to be rearranged, and a heavy piece of furniture removed, and I needed to find new homes for the items stored inside the heavy piece of furniture, and there were quite a few of them.
Instead of buying people simple gifts (gift cards) they certainly would like (cash), I thought of complicated schemes, one of which involves a belt sander. (I can't say any more just now, as the gift has not yet been given. Although the sound of the belt sander surely has them curious.)
Instead of merely vacuuming my carpet yesterday, I followed some advice I read online about cleaning for the holidays, which recommended sprinkling your carpet with baking soda to freshen it up. It seemed harmless enough, but at some point I realized the baking soda was not so much freshening up an area rug but becoming embedded in it, and the best course of action seemed to be to drag the area rug outside to try to beat the baking soda out of it, which left a trail of baking soda through the house, and particles floating through the air, much like snowflakes, but smaller and less attractive, and there was snow on the porch, and the rug got some snow on it as I beat the living daylights out of it, and as I dragged it back into the house, the snow melted into the trail of baking soda and left an unfortunate residue on the hardwood.
Although I do not believe the carpet cleaning went as intended, the area rug is fresh and bright, all of the surfaces that had been dusted once were dusted a second time to remove a light coating of bicarbonate of soda, and the hardwood floors were scrubbed. My house has never been so clean, and for that, I suppose, I should thank the baking soda.
I wish you well as we head into these next few chaotic days. As for me, I need to get back to the belt sander.
