Projects – Valerie's Voice

Another Frigid Afternoon

With temperatures predicted to dip way below zero (15 to 25 degrees below) over the weekend we decided it might be a good time to find a project to work on inside our warm house.

The one that came to mind was…photos! The ever-looming photos, a project we kept saying we’ll work on when we retire – even after we were retired.

But, at last, the timing felt right.

Since 1982 (when our first son was born) I dutifully put photos in albums in chronological order. I have several mismatched albums of all different sizes, one for each year, through the kids high school years. Then digital cameras became the norm and now photos are stored on the computer.

But still we had a few photos printed, plus my mom had duplicates of our sons that she gave back to us, and Gary’s sister gave us back all the photos we gave her of the kids when they were growing up, and there were stray photos for various reasons in different areas of the house and some old, framed photos to take out of the frame, some very old black and white photos that date way back etc., etc., etc. We had a lot of organizing to do.

So we set up our six-foot folding table in a downstairs room, unfolded two folding chairs, found archival pens, extra envelopes, a scissors, notepad and pen, and started in. We brought everything to the central work station. working diligently for several hours the first day. We stopped for lunch and a quick walk in the subzero temperatures, and then back at it. (Won’t the kids be glad someday!)

Our mismatched photo albums in chronological order.

The next day we started in again and did get the organizing done, cleaned off the shelf area in the closet where the albums are kept, and put the albums back in place.

Our next step is to go through each album and weed out the unwanted/not-so-good pictures…and who knows, maybe even combine a few albums together?

The next steps may be more enjoyable. However, there are still many hours left on this project…but the weather forecast is for continued cold temperatures for a few more days, so that will be a helpful motivator.

And then there are the slides………

Stone Apron

We always enjoy our trips to Lake Superior. We never grow tired of sitting on the rocks, watching the waves roll in. Or crash in…depending on the weather.

And I seem to always get caught up in looking at the rocks…large and small, that roll onto shore with the waves. I love how the rocks feel so smooth after years and years of tumbling in the water. I like their colors too.

For years we had a great spot, near a cabin we rented, where we could collect fairly large stones and brought them home; a few each year. We used them to line our back garden.

Lake Superior rocks lining our garden in the back.

I also have accumulated smaller rocks that I pocketed here and there. They were adding up so I started to place them around our front flowers, but due to some work we had done recently we had to remove them. I took the smooth stones and created a new apron for our shed.

The original shed apron was a conglomeration of pieces of limestone and other rocks I’ve found in the area. Over the years I just started putting them by the door of the shed and it eventually formed an apron. I liked the idea and decided to pull out all the old mismatched rocks and remake the apron with our pretty Lake Superior Rocks.

The new stone apron. This will grow larger as more rocks are collected!

It was a fun project and I was pleased with the result.

Spices

We all organize our kitchens in a way that makes sense to us. Then, when another person comes to spend time in your kitchen you realize some things could be different… better, even.

When my daughter-in-love started sharing our kitchen one of the areas we found that needed improvement were my spices…they were a mess. (I guess I knew that but it was blatantly obvious when she started using them!) We made a trip to Just Food Coop to re-fresh spices that I had, and to buy a few new spices. She’s a wonderful cook, and wanted some additional spices.

We decided now was the time to clean up and organize my spices.

I don’t have an extra drawer in my kitchen for spices. I was using a plastic container to store my spice jars. I had a counter-top, revolving spice rack on the storage shelf in the basement, so I brought it upstairs, washed it off, and ordered new spice jars with labels.

It took a couple of days…to clean out the spice jars and let them dry overnight…and transfer the spices from the old jars to the new…then wash up the old jars to reuse for the extra spices over and above the 16 in the counter-top rack. They are the less-used spices. I put them back into the cupboard, but in a more organized way.

Newly redone revolving spice rack on the counter. Spices in alpha order, of course.

Now the project is complete. It was fun, and satisfying.