I love the cleanup after Christmas. I read somewhere yesterday that there is something so comforting about decorating the house for Christmas, but there is such a breath of fresh air with putting it all away and starting fresh. That’s exactly how I feel. I am in ultimate nesting mode as I’ve been cleaning up & cleaning out. One of the big things I’m working on getting rolling is cleaning out 40 spaces in my house. More on that in a future post, though — I’m making my list of 40 places as we speak. We’ll see if I make it to 40!

Simon and I have been talking about things we want to do to our house, such as switching out the light fixtures, adding wood floors in the downstairs, etc. It’s fun to dream big with him and I am definitely in the mood to invest in our house.

I got a new lens off of eBay and I’m learning my way around it, hence these random photos.  As I was shooting these, I was struck by how much Jude resembles Simon. He’s going to have S’s long, lean legs (LUCKY!!!!).  I shot these photos as I was cleaning out some of his clothes that he’s outgrown. He found his OU football jersey and was so happy to know that I wasn’t putting it away. His Papa Mike was smart to buy it for him several sizes too large so he could get a lot of wear out of it.

My husband is so cute. When he’s not wearing his glasses, they’re loosely slung onto his lampshade on the bedside table. This photo screams Simon to me.

This photo makes me laugh. That’s Big Bear in the windowseat below. Big Bear came from the State Fair or Six Flags or something back in appx. 1982. My sister and brother won it and brought it home for me when I was a baby. Now Jude lugs it around the house. Lately Big Bear likes to take a little nap in the windowseat overlooking the culdesac. Wouldn’t you love to curl up there? I sure love it.

Little goober.

Have you met Chi-Chi? He’s our chihuahua. We love him because we don’t have to worry about feeding him, letting him out, or cleaning up after him. Heck, all we have to do is change his batteries. 🙂

Speaking of housecleaning, I’ve cleaned up the categories here at Pencil Shavings. You can view posts according to their category up on the top. I was feeling overwhelmed by dozens of categories, and realized that I was truly only posting about a handful of categories. So I needed to pare it down.

Finally, I’m putting a hold on all paper products at the shop for at least the next month. Definitely until after Alt Summit later this month. Everything else will be available, but I needed to tone stuff down while things here in the real world are a wee bit stressful. Mom’s still in the hospital and will most likely be there for quite some time. After being discharged, the plan is for her to go to a rehab facility (sounds so Hollywood! hehe) to work on building her strength back up. She’s still pretty knocked out on pain meds and is looooooopy. I’m not going to lie – I feel stressed out of my gourd and so I’m wanting to simplify as much as possible for awhile.

What are you doing to get settled into the new year?