Thanks For Helping Me Dejunk!

I really have been bitten by the nesting bug. Or the cabin fever bug. Or something. But I've been trying to get some long-standing projects and back-of-the-mind annoyances cleared out of my life, and this past week was actually able to do some of it. And it really feels good! Here's the list:

• Kitchen. It needed just a good, good scrub-down. I watched a show the other night where a couple was looking for a new home and one of the houses they looked at had a kitchen with a tile countertop. The wife was oohing and aaahing over that tile. I just wanted to tell her, "Oh, hunny. No. Run from that tile countertop. You don't want it. Trust me." But then, grout is my arch-nemesis. Seriously. Give me a sleek surface that you can tell when you've cleaned it. Otherwise, visions of that lady on the TV commercial, rubbing a raw chicken around the place, stalk and torment me. Anyway, the kitchen and its nasty uncleanable grout got a good deep cleaning. And it made the whole house feel better. Plus, I cleaned out the cleaning product cabinet and got some Febreze so I can at least pretend to be a streamlined and super cleaner like Barb. That makes me feel better already, too!
  
• Laundry.
• Laundry.
• Laundry. I had a nifty system all worked out so it didn't pile up on me like this, but the daily maintenance habits have fallen by the wayside lately, so it was catch up time again!
• In conjunction with the laundry, I organized the boys clothes into a GREAT hand-me-down system (about which I will blog later) so that they are wearing the most correct size of things and the worn-out or too small stuff has been tossed, given or stored for #3. That is a thrill. You don't even know the warm fuzzy feeling it gives me.
• Menu, Grocery Shopping and Homecooked Meals. Every day this week. We've been flying by the seat of our nauseated pants and just eating what we had or what we could without losing it, so it was time to put some actual, organized nutrition on the table. This week I also tried something I've been wanting to do for a long time: Leftover Makeovers. This is when you make something yummy and different from leftovers instead of just microwaving the exact thing you had the night before. So this week, I made pork tenderloin with apricot sauce first. Then from the leftover meat I made chili verde on a different night and then BBQ sandwiches on another night. Quite tasty, quite a variety, and quite economical.
  
• Our room. Painted! I never knew that yellow could be tired, but that's what it was, on our walls, long before we even moved in (a year ago). Finally, we got the paint and made the time and it's so fresh! and clean! and actual-home looking! I still have some art to put up and things to pull together, so I'll post "before and after" later. It just makes me happy to walk in there!
• Sciatica. It has set in with a vengeance already, so it is now one of my daily to-do's to take a load off my butt nerve and rest a bit. Luckily, David had some snow days off last week and President's Day yesterday, so he painted all the trim in our room and ran interference with the boys. Almost makes me want to be partly crippled on a permanent basis.
• Blogging. I got all the little notes out of my little notebook (yes, I keep one) and put them into blog posts. And a few pictures, too, so the fruits of my camera can be shared with everyone. Feels great! I got most of my haunting little miscellaneous thoughts and Code Yellow moments caught up and posted.
  
• Blogging some more. I even managed to blog around a bit and do more commenting than I have in a long, long time. And meet some new blogs that I've had on a list for a while. Very nice.

Which brings me to the award for the very cool weekend readers who helped me dejunk - or as my husband says, "empty the dumptruck of my brain" - by commenting on all five posts from late Saturday night. It's fun to dejunk, but it's even funner to get feedback on it. Makes me want to do it more frequently. Or at least keep up on my posting. So, for your visits and comments, here is

(....drrrrrummmmrolllll....)

The "I helped Code Yellow dejunk" award. Custom designed by one of my favorite bloggers, photoshopper extraordinaire, the most pop-culturally savvy American I know, the Super Happy Girl herself, No Cool Story of More Cowbell. (Winners, feel free to save the image to your own hard drive and post it in your sidebar.)

In fact, No Cool Story is the first winner (I gotta think up something a little extra for the girl who not only won the award, but um, made the award for me when I couldn't figure it out). The other deserving winners are:

An Ordinary Mom

Pam of Yes, I'm JUST a Mom

Katrina of Callapidder Days

Lauren of Baseballs and Bows

Morning Glory of Seeds From My Garden.

I'm also extending an honorable mention to Angela, Megachick, and Liz, who came, saw and said something about some of my dejunking extravaganza as well.

All of these women have suhweet blogs, by the way, so if you haven't become acquainted with them, get outta here right now, and go read about something more interesting than my housekeeping woes!

Although you really ought to at least take a peek at my multi-tasker and the adorability factor at our house in general, if you haven't already.

Huge thank you, once again, people. My days are a little more under control now and it's good to know you're hanging with me. Happy Monday!