Lightening our Load

Yesterday I told someone I felt as if a ton of bricks had been lifted from my shoulders. In actuality, it's a ton of books and old sheet music. All of it went to the Goodwill yesterday with the exception of a couple of classic (to me) cookbooks and a few travel guide books. The bookshelves yesterday took less time than the wall unit of the day before. There wasn't much to sort though. We just loaded all of it into shopping bags for donation. 

Today we'll clean out the under-the-stairs closet. I did most of it yesterday. I knew there were a bunch of silver serving pieces...given to us when we had little babies (as if we'd actually use something like that). I'm posting this image, but it isn't ours. I took it from Creative Commons just so you'd have something to look at as I rant on about the silver. But this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

(Image credit: "Silver Tea Set" by Hardgrave Photography is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

And, as you might guess, we'd never used that stuff in the 40 or so years we've owned it. As long as we've lived in this house, it's been shoved to the back of the closet under the stairs. At our previous home, it was located in a similar spot. I've done some reading about vintage silverware, and it seems nobody wants the stuff. I've tried foisting it off onto our kids to no avail. If I'd been smart, I might have done it like Mike's grandmother did: give it for Christmas and then chuckle inside as people oooh and aaaah and say, "Oh, really, you *shouldn't* have!"

Recently, I sold some silverware to Replacements, Ltd., but the rest of this stuff was more of a value mystery. From my reading I've learned that there isn't much market for silver, unless it's sterling silver. Even then, you're probably better melting it down for scrap rather than selling it as is. As for silver plate, it's worth almost nothing.

So that got me curious. With fingers crossed I started rooting around in the closet under the stairs, trying to make my way to the silver serving pieces to get a look at the bottoms. As I got to the narrowest part of the closet, this required crawling on my belly like a snake. As expected, they're silver plate, and of no particular value. I was actually happy to see that because now I figure they're ripe for donation, which is what will happen to all of it today. Yay! Those boat anchors will be leaving the premises just as soon as we've sorted through the rest of the contents of the closet. I know there are vinyl record albums and old candles that belonged to Mike's mom. (She passed away in 1999.) And that's probably all you need to know about our marathon clean-up and clean-out. It's a big job, but I'm so glad to be finally getting it done.

As for the rest of the day, I started out by tracing the shelf and bracket onto the Pieces of the Past stitchery. I can start there this morning.

That white fairy frost background fabric doesn't photograph well, but I wanted to say something about this. When I showed you this picture yesterday, I was thinking it almost looked as if it had been colored. Only the stitching lines were missing. You can kind of see it in the image below.

When I actually traced in the lines, I realized that, in fact, I had done the coloring when I traced the piece originally. It must have been lying on my lightbox, and I colored it in without ever tracing the lines onto the fabric. Duh. Well, it's ready for stitching now, and that will be my next stop of the morning.

The book shelves took less time than expected yesterday, and so I caught up on my housework, and then had some time to spend on my challenge quilt. I've moved it along to where I can see the animal emerging. And that means it's getting to be more fun to work on it. I still need to complete the second ear, and then I'll start working on the body. Here's today's peek:

I know...I'm so mean. Believe me, it hurts me more than it hurts you because I *really* want to show you.

We had a simple dinner planned last night. I had a super yen for potato skins. I make them the same way the Pioneer Woman makes them. You can find her recipe right here. I only make half the recipe, using four potatoes. They aren't hard to make, but they do go in and out of the oven several times, and so it takes a while to make them. We had Carrot Soup with Orange and Tarragon along with them. So yummy, and there's still soup for lunch today.

Now here's something. Do you want to see a bad cat? Look no further than Miss Sadie, former cat of Houdini.

The kitties go out around lunch time each day. They stay out around 20 minutes, and then they're back in. It seems to be enough for them. Then, while I was making dinner, I saw Sadie sitting outside at the glass door. "How did Sadie get out?" I exclaimed. Neither of us had a clue. I had an idea she might have snuck out the front door when we opened it to bring in a package. It didn't seem right though...I would have seen her. Still, I went around the house and checked all the doors and windows. Everything was shut tight.

So fast forward to the evening, and we were downstairs watching TV. Smitty was whining around and going from window to window, looking for Sadie. I had a bad feeling about it, and so I went to hunt that little cat down. I couldn't find her anywhere, and so I went outside to see if she was in her little house on the catio. When I opened the door, she came galloping across the deck! And again...how did she get out? Well...feast your eyes.

The squirrels chewed a hole in the catio fencing large enough to accommodate our little girl's girth. Sadly for Smitty, his king-sized girth could not fit through this hole. And this isn't the first time the squirrels have done this. Mike repaired the fence last year, partially disassembling the catio and putting up all new fencing where the holes were. Within an hour of him finishing the job, they'd chewed two more holes. Little sh*ts. Okay, so when that happened, he put a board to cover up the holes and committed to replacing the fiberglass fencing with metal. Obviously, that job is still on the backburner, but now it's becoming more urgent. Again...sunshine and elbow grease. That's all we need.

It's another gray day here at the Three Cats Ranch. If the forecast is to be believed, the rest of the week will be warmer and much nicer. I'm even planning dinner outside one day this week, so let's just hope that forecast holds.