Unfinished projects in progress

I've heard before that unfinished projects and/or responsibilities are one of the biggest contributing factors to stress in ones life. I've found this to be true. When I procrastinate a task, that means all of the time up until I actually do the task will be contaminated by negative thoughts- especially if the task is visible- like on the kitchen table. I think of tasks like fruit, and my brain is the fruit bowl- if I get too many fruits in the bowl, I won't be able to eat them all before one of them rots. And once one fruit rots, it ruins all the other fruit too. All that is to say, that I have an unusually high amount of unfinished projects around the house right now. I've been very "nesty" lately- probably because I don't have any firm exciting goals for my life right now, so I'm just enjoying being at home.

The beer cap wall is coming along slowly but surely. I glue a handful of caps on every night or so. But I should also point out that the pantry next to the wall is cleaner than in the last picture.

This is a horse named Penny that I'm in the process of painting. My father in law, Gary, is going to build a pole and base for the horse when I'm done painting it.

I started painting stripes for my living room a couple months ago... And that's an extremely tedious task. Definitely a fruit I need to get out of the bowl, as it is polluting all my other thoughts every time I am in the living room.

Oh but I would like to also talk about the paint. I didn't choose the color by meticulously examining paint chips. No. I have been saving every bit of left over latex paint I've ever had ever since we got our first home ten years ago- it really adds up. And people told me I needed to throw all the cans away because you can't store them (its against the storage rules) but I really just wanted to hold onto them. So I packed them all (like 30 big cans of paint) into boxes and labeled the boxes "zip ties", which was code word for paint cans. I think I was trying to think of a code word and just looked up and happened to see a zip tie. I thought that if for any reason, the POD company looked through our stuff to make sure we were following the rules, they'd be like "wow they have a lot of zip ties" but I wouldn't get in trouble for storing the paint. ANYWAYS- for my living room walls I poured all the paint together to make two colors- the pinkish clay color, and the purply blue color. It felt like I was leaving the color of our living room in fates hands, so this was the color it was meant to be.

But I need to get it done, knock it out, pronto, stripey stripey, get going!

Oh ok, this here is a project in Rockets room. Back when we were trying to sell the old house, I had to do a lot of work and neglected the kids a lot, and then when we were showing the house, it was super inconvenient for them to have to keep their rooms clean and whatnot, and I felt a lot of unnecessary guilt for abusing them in that way. So I promised both kids that as soon as we got into the new house, I would paint a mural of whatever their hearts desired onto their bedroom wall. Rockets heart desired a periodic table. This is the project I will work on, probably, when I'm done with this blog post, because its the most fun unfinished project. I haven't even started Roxanne's mural yet.

OK now this... this isn't so much an unfinished project as it is just being well prepared for the future! I don't ever use my muffin tins for making muffins. So I used a white board marker and labeled each pod with a different letter- except M and W are the same (since you can just invert one to make the other) and I combined X and Z because there's not many of those. And then I cut out letters in cool fonts when I find them in magazines and put them in their proper pod. I categorized this as an "unfinished project" because I haven't actually used the letters for anything yet, but I never know when I might need to be prepared to write a ransom note.

Actually, the kids want to make buttons for their classmates for valentines day and spell their names with magazine letters, and this will help it go faster. The good thing about changing schools is that we can recycle some of our old tricks with the new classmates- making buttons would have been "so last year" at the old school (since that's what they passed out last year).

The thing is, cutting out letters is so freaking addicting, once I start, I can't stop! I used up all our magazines yesterday and then was in the kitchen and noticed that the "Rosarita" refried beans had a really cool font on the can's label, so a actually cut the letters off that label, and that might have been going too far. I have way more letters than i need, but I think the letters will come in handy for something else too.

Ok so I was going to confess something to you, but then I felt like I was divulging too much, and it made me feel really embarrassed. So I'm going to just tell it in a really vague way. There is this thing... that I've been procrastinating for about 4 years now. It makes me feel really really horrible. It's a really rotten fruit in my head- like beyond rotten. And the more I put it off, the more difficult it is to do. And no one is holding me accountable for it... except my conscience. And now writing it down here is like pulling the rotten fruit out and squishing the rotten juice all over everything else. EW!

I just wanted to say that so that I could end my blog on a bad note. That way next time I post something it will automatically sounds like an improvement. Now for a day of finishing...