Sapheyerblu Review

Archive for December, 2009

Is your Christmas tree up yet?  Ours isn’t.  We haven’t even thought about getting our things out to get things ready for Christmas yet.  Though he loves this time of year, my hubby hates to go in the back and dig the tree out of storage.  We used to get a real tree every year, but got to a point where we just couldn’t afford it anymore.  My parents gave us their big artificial tree about 8 years ago as they didn’t have the room to put it up anymore, and with my dad being in a wheelchair, it was hard for them to put it up and decorate it.

Actually, I’ve enjoyed having an artificial tree these past few years.  I think of it as my part for the Go Green movement.  I try to be ecologically minded, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds.  With an artificial tree, I know that somewhere out there is a live tree that will get to see another year because I didn’t want to have it cut down just so I could have a real tree in my home for a few weeks.  Although I do miss the smell of a fresh Christmas tree, I don’t miss having to vacuum up all the dropped needles from my carpets.

I am hoping to have my tree up and ready to go in the next few days.  It will all depend on how energetic my hubby feels and whether I can convince him to dig the tree out of storage.  Not his favorite job, but once he’s got the tree set up, his job is over.  The kids and I will do all the decorating.  Even though they’re both teenagers now, they still enjoy putting the decorations on the tree.  At least now they can reach all the way to the top.  LOL

I have always been a history buff.  Oddly though, not all history interests me.  I’m an ancient history fanatic, and the further back in time we go, the better I like it.  My biggest dream is to some day get to go to the British Isles and see some of the most historic places for myself.  Of course, I’d love to see Stonehenge, but there are so many other stone henges around the British Isles and most people don’t even realize that.

I’d also love to go to Malta.  I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother was a big fan of the movie “The Maltese Falcon”.  Honestly, to this day I’ve never seen the movie.  But I was shocked to find out that the island of Malta is thought to have been one of the first bases of civilization in Europe.  Some of the ruins they’ve found on the island date back to more than 5,000 years BC.  They’ve also found tons of little statutettes that resemble a woman’s figure.  Because of this, many scholars have thought that it was a matriarchal society.  In other words, women ran the show in those days, but this is just a hypothosis.

While looking for more information on ancient “stuff”, I did run across a pretty cool new site.  It’s called the Virtual Museum, and it’s filled with pictures and information about hundreds of societies that flurished across Europe since the dawn of time.  Some of the objects are deemed to be more than 40,000 years old.  However, the site is rather new and there is still alot of work being done.  But it’s still a pretty cool place to check out.  Especially if you’re like me and don’t see yourself getting to Europe anytime soon.  So, for now I’ll just bookmark this site and live vicariously though it.  I have no life. 

I totally refuse to grow up, and tonight I even proved that to myself.  My daughter came into my room here a couple hours ago and told me that all the Pixar short films was on ABC family.  So, I flipped the channel over and watched the first couple of short flix.  The next thing I knew is that I’d sat here for a full 2 hours watching the entire show.  But, I can’t help it.  I love those kinds of movies.  I think I saw the movie Cars like a dozen times.

Being a mom, I’ve been subjected to kids movies for most of the past 20 years.  But, my kids have gotten to a point where they’ve kind of grown out of this movie niche, but I still love them.  I remember when the movie “James and the Giant Peach” first came out on VHS.  My son had gotten it for his birthday or Christmas, or something like that.  He and his little sister watched that movie over and over again.  I can still almost recite the entire thing by heart.  It was a great movie, though.

Ironically, I’m not the only one in our family who enjoys these computer animated, made-for-kids type movies.  My mother-in-law is the same way.  Whenever another of these types of movies comes out, she always asks my kids if they want to see it.  Not because she wants to be the sweet grandmotherly type (which she is anyway), but because she doens’t want to look silly going to see the movie by herself.  I’ve told her more than once that I’d be more than happy to go with her, but she just thinks we’d both look weird.  LOL

My theory?  When you stop enjoying the sillier things in life, it’s time to give up the ghost.

Happy December 1st.  Yeah, I know.  Most of you are thinking, “ok, what’s so great about today”???  Well nothing really, except that I am smoke free for one whole month today.  I quit smoking on the 1st of November, but didn’t tell a lot of people in case I failed.  Now, a month later, I feel comfortable enough to tell everyone.  I had been a smoker for almost 30 years and I had actually quit 3 times before.  I quit smoking both times I got pregnant, but started up again as soon as my kids were weened.  I also quit a few years back, but ended up gaining about 50 pounds in the process and started smoking out of depression again.  This time, however, I was ready.  I honestly believe that if you’re not ready in both your heart and your mind, you won’t quit.

Anyway, that’s not really what I wanted to write about here today.  I wanted to talk about the little challenge that I’m taking on this month.  I joined the NaNoWriMo challenge last month, but didn’t get very far.  Then, I found a site that is dedicated to NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month.  Although this usually takes place in the month of November, they also have it set up so that you can work the challenge on any given month of the year.  I’m going to try and complete the challenge for the month of December.  Like I don’t have enough other things to do this month.  LOL

Why did I choose December?  Mainly to see if I can do this in the busiest month of the year.  Not only am I in the process of getting things ready for Christmas, a couple friends and I are in the process of opening up our own store.  Not only will it be online, but it will be a real shop right here in our little town.  The name of the shop is Calico Acres Thrifts and Gifts.  It’s going to be a classy thrift shop and a place for us to sell our handmade craft items.  I personally do quilts and quilt pillows.  Once we get our poop in a group, I’ll post the link to the site.  We already own the domain name, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.

Then, on top of all that, I’m still ghost writing for another blogger.  As of right now, there’s only one client, but that’s ok.  Sometimes, it’s better to only work for one person than a bunch of people.  You don’t get quite as confused with the orders.  LOL.  With all of this, I’m really hoping that I’ll have enough fodder to gab about for the whole month of December.  I don’t know how it will work out, but let’s all go along for the ride.  If nothing else, someone is sure to get a good laugh out of all this at my expense.  LOL

Ciao for Now,
Christine