On Dancing with Dust Bunnies:

I am not a great house cleaner.

Oh my dishes and food surfaces are quite clean. My bathroom is clean too. The place is vacuumed regularly. And I keep up with the laundry.

But I’m just not a duster.

You see, I have better things to do than to dust clean surfaces just because it is that day of the week to do so.

And once the dust collects I say to myself, ‘Why bother to move it when it will only be back in a few days anyway.’ And with a wood stove it feels like all worlds dust is spawned at my house.

So now it is a week before my guests arrive for the Thanksgiving holiday. And I am tackling all things dusty and even the might be’s.

Music on and armed with my trusty duster rag I go off looking for my well cultured dust bunnies.

I’ve emptied the hutch, where the better everyday dishes are kept for lack of owning any real china, and wash it and them to a shine.

After that the cabinets for pots, pans, canning jars and other food stuffs get a once over.

I’ve taken down all my baskets on my beams and washed them down too. (Yes, you can wash baskets off with a fairly good spray if you dry them fairly fast afterwards.) I hang mine over the wood stove to dry and put them back after the beams were vacuumed.

I am dusting and cleaning every surface I can reach. (Mountain Man handles the highest ones.)

I’m tired after two days of this dusting mania. And I have only gotten two rooms done.

It is a shame that my older, more interesting cobwebs in the corners have been sacrificed for the good of a holiday. But even I don’t want to have them falling in my food. And with all this cleaning ruckus they have gotten a little shaky on their perches.

And so goes my days of late. When you hear a bit of music just think of me as Dancing with Dust Bunnies.

On …Sometimes the Bear Gets You:

I was got by an allergy attack.

Mountain Man and I crashed into each other in the doorway a few days back. And with a cloud of dust and dirt I was struck down. All would have been well had he not come back from the barn after cleaning out a nasty old corner where the old dusty hay was.

My eyes were all red and swollen (No reading, computer or crafting.), and I was all sneezes and miserable for two days.

I’m good if I get to take my meds first, but I wasn’t going any where near the barn while he was working, so I didn’t bother to take any.

So as the saying goes, ‘Sometimes you get the bear, and Sometimes the bear gets you.’

I did find that I can watch quite a few DVD’s in my head while listening to them. Does that mean I watch them too often or that I’m a TV head?

On Dolling Goth?:

The more that I work with my Victorian Dolls and all their stuff, the more I want to make a Goth doll set. House and all.

Yes, I’m Crazy! Its official! If you know me, you know that I have to have more than one ball to juggle in the air. And all the balls are not balls at all. Some can be almost any object.

Its taken me 15 years to get to this point. And here I am thinking of starting a new project from the ground up.

And I am ‘not’ done with the first project yet!

And, Where would I put it! I hardly have room for the ones I have.

Yes, I’m getting closer to the end of the Victorian Doll project and that makes me nuts. Because, if I’m done with the Victorian Dolls, what would I be able to I put my mind to?

My mind says to me, “You know ever so much more about all this stuff so it shouldn’t take half as much time.”

But the rub is, that some of this stuff has taken me that 15 years long to find, collect and make.

And then there is the money issue. Do I start saving now for all the stuff I’ll need to work with. And the cost of everything has gone up over the years. Things I bought at $1 dollar years ago are $5 or $6 dollars now.

Yet, I can’t let go of the notion that I could in fact do it given the time.

A smaller project, maybe? Apartment not a house?

But then my mind goes to a whole Apartment building of Goths. Or better yet an old Victorian mansion of Goth. With Addams’s visiting for fun…

Stop me now or I’ll never be able to stop myself!

And maybe a Mortuary in the basement… With a Cemetery in the side yard… And a Green house full of strange plant life… And the clothing! Oh so many pieces of Gothy clothing…

On Its Raining Again:

Mountain Man had been taking advantage of the nice weather to get a lot of things done around here. I’d been helping, but staying out of the sun as much as possible.

For ten days we had rain free days (First time in over a year.) and it is over. Lovely gray and damp again.

Now that Mountain Man is not as busy he has taken to dancing with me in the kitchen again. Something that strikes him now and again.

The dog, of course, wanted to join into the fun and hopped around down by our feet. What he was thinking that we are doing I couldn’t tell you. But if we are doing it… he wanted to play a part. Silly puppy!

Rainy days are not lost on us. They are days of renewal. Watering plants, rest from fast growth, cooler temperatures for the plants outside.

Tea and books, contemplation and inner growth, slowing down from the rat race, for us inside the house.

My run of making a few things for the doll houses each day is still on.

Baking sheets for cookies and baking pans, (A recycle from old toss away aluminum pie plates). Some knife rests from beads and wire (Small barbell type things for keeping greasy knives from touching and staining your pretty table cloths).

And some muffins from those wooden plugs that cover holes in some furniture so you don’t see the screw holes and/or screw heads. (Their called buttons by the way.) I painted them over in watered down brown paint and used some colored markers to add raisins, cranberries, and blueberries to some of them.

I’m thinking that the Thanksgiving holiday just might derail me there. Having guests for a few days changes things as it pulls you off of schedule. But I wouldn’t mind. And I might just get me back to some knitting again.

On Thanksgiving Memories:

Thanksgiving is coming here in the USA in two weeks time.

The Halloween stuff gets toned down a bit and some replaced with ‘Turkeys’ and ‘Horns of Plenty.’

A good family holiday. I like cooking for a group. It is not like it used to be at my Grandmothers house when I was a kid. (There would be up to 28 people at the tables groaning with food.) Family is further a field and the cost of travel is getting greater.

Grandma would be cooking and baking for days. We would go over so early in the morning it would still be dark out. Pealing potatoes and preparing other veggies while the turkey-bird was already cooking in the oven.

We kids would go for a morning nap, and/or a long walk with Grandpa, and/or just watch the only, at that time, ‘Macy’s’ Parade in New York City on the Television while the food cooked and the feast would begin when the other relatives arrived. Some years we kids had a small play or poem to entertain the adults with.

When Grandma gave the word we all crammed ourselves around the lined up tables that went from the dinning room through the arch and into the living room. We ate and enjoyed each others company for hours.

Clean up commenced for the women while the men watched sports on TV and talked. And when the clean up was done we started in on leftovers until it was time to go home.

We were ever so thankful on those days gone by. Family, friends, health and happiness. It was enough for us.

I have to get my shopping done so my little thanksgiving feast will be just as good as my Grandma’s. My mom and her friend will be with us this year. But even if I was by myself I’d be thankful. I have a good little life.

On Please Stand By:

Because I’m not standing at the moment. Nor have I gotten anything of note done.

I hurt my foot. Pulled a muscle in it and my heal hurts like the dickens.

So, I got caught up in video games and trolling the web while sitting around all day.

I did make a few small things for the doll houses, but your tired if hearing about that, Right?

I got through two Farm Frenzy games and played around with a few others.

I hope to be back to my real life by tomorrow.

On Grandma Candy Memories:

When I was a little girl. Way back in the day. My grandmother had a large conch shell candy dish on a lace doily that she crocheted on the table in the parlor. There was her Ebony Elephant collection on the shelf watching over the parlor and her things therein.

We would try to sneak a piece of candy now and then. She would always know what we were up to and call out from the kitchen to leave the candy alone.















I came across a small conch shell and made it a candy dish for one of my doll houses. It sat empty for months in the middle of the table on a hand made lace doily.

Picture frames, an elephant statue and a crystal ball on a black velvet pillow, along with a card to read palms with ring it.















Today I sifted through my miss matched, broken and malformed beads picking just the right sizes.

I cut up pieces of used, put still useful, tissue paper and cut them in almost inch squares.

Twisting them carefully around the beads I made candy for the dish.















I filled it with the butterscotch candy and left the taffy for another day.

My Grandmother would have like my project if she was still alive. And the fact that my sweet memories of her home are much of what I pull ideas from for the doll houses.

On Lost in a Little World:

Yesterday I was doing a rewrite on one of the books I’m writing for the dolls and I was at it until the wee hours of the morning. I surprised myself at how the time flew by.

You see, at first there was only one house and one story. Then when I made the other house I felt that whoever got each house after I’m gone should have the story that went with the dolls living there. So I pulled the story apart and did a dove tail thing with them and made it two stories.

The problem was that the story to the house with the older young women was, well I’ll say it, duller. It needed punching up a bit. That was what the rewrite was all about.















And today I was making more doll house stuff. Namely kitchen things. Wooden boxes like you get produce in. Finding old fashion labels on the internet small enough to print, cut out, and paste on the little glass jars and boxes of food stuff. I fixed a handle on a pot that hangs in the one kitchen fire place. And made plans to make a dry sink.



























Let me just say that the inventory list for all this stuff is over 20 typed pages and growing. Yes, even I can’t keep it all straight without a list and most all of it came from my head and hands.

I am felling really good about getting back at this project. Too long left to collect dust.

Not that I lacked enthusiasm. It was more of a over whelmed feeling. Kinda’ like ‘Too big to ever accomplish, and that is scary.’ kind of thing.

I mean, who makes the dolls, all their clothing, houses and makes and collects all their stuff… Writes books about their lives… And stages all the illustrations… Plus takes all the pictures for it over fifteen years?

A bit of a dizzy lady that has too much time on her hands and likes to be creative and to keep busy. That’s who!

On Catching Up With Others:

I spent my computer time today in catching up with my emails and reading the blogs I missed.

I’m still not done, but I’m closer. So many blogs, so little time to comment!

Not much going on here. I have a cold, but I’m fighting it. ‘I will not be taken down with it.’ I have things to do.

I’m glad to be back here with you.