Tag: christmas | Kimberussell.com

Christmas 2017

Dec 29 2017

I kinda whiffed on Christmas this year. While I started planning in October as usual, this year I:

> Didn’t bake a lot of cookies at all, and the ones I did make weren’t all that great.
> Bought my last gift the day before Christmas Eve which is VERY late for me.
> Forgot to write out the family cards altogether. I have them! They’re still in the Hallmark bag.
> Didn’t get the regular cards in the mail until Christmas Eve.
> Didn’t even bother putting out the Christmas village.

But you know what? In the end, none of that mattered. We all had a lovely time, and I gave and received great gifts.

WM got me an Amazon Spot so I can be surveilled while I sleep! I love it. The alarm is great, I love having music in the bedroom while I fold clothes, Alexa gives me the news when I wake up, and the footprint is tiny!

Mom bought me a sewing machine, which I plan on using to make pillows, cushions, and curtains for the house. John & Kristen & Favorite Kid got me a 23 and Me ancestry test! My spit is currently winging its way to the lab as I type. And books are always a welcome gift!

I’m off from work this week, and am taking time to exhale. WM is repairing and painting the downstairs bathroom that became pretty torn up while we were using it as a kennel for young Murphy during the day. We’re going with an Adventureland theme. (Not kidding.) I’m slowly getting back in front of the clutter that accrued while I was worried about work and worried about Christmas. I also gave in and put plastic over the living room windows because NJ is currently a frozen hellscape.

149 days ’til Memorial Day,

Currently, slacking edition

Oct 29 2017

SLACKING on this blog. Seriously, Kim, get over your post-vacation funk and get it together.

Painting my future craft room. Finally. I went to Lowes with the sunbeam paint swatch in hand. Dumped painting supplies in the cart. Wheeled it over to the paint department, where I didn’t see any Glidden paint. I went to the paint desk – “Do you not sell Glidden anymore?” ANNNND was told that paint chip came from Home Depot. Yay me! Rather than go to another home improvement store, I picked a color that almost matched Sunbeam called Maybe Maui and called it good.

It’s not as yellow as it looks here. I hope.

Yesterday I cued up the 80s channel on Amazon Music (KIM PRIME!) and got to work. I taped off the edges, cut them in, broke out the roller, and painted my heart out. This morning, I opened the door and … it looked awful. I dragged the equipment back out, cued up the 90s station and put on another coat. It looks better now and next weekend I’ll move everything back in.

Everytime I paint something I remember that I hate painting. Really I do.

Watching Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel. Judge away. They’re filled with strong, career-minded women who, in the face of a handsome man and a Christmas tree farm, give up their promotions/faraway careers to move back to the homestead. But there’s always a happy ending and I need that.

Propagating cuttings from a mostly-dead plant I came across at work. We’ll see if I can work some magic.

Grow, my pretties…

Losing at Words with Friends. But…BUT! I’m improving that win/loss percentage.

Don’t call it a comeback. No, really, don’t.

***
Tomorrow I work from home (LOVING the one-day-a-week work from home gig) and I have to get a flu shot. #excitement

Throwback Thursday: December 1973

Oct 01 2015

Rabbit rabbit! I’m glad it’s October because September well and truly sucked. Yuck.

No date on the back of this one, but I’m positive it’s Christmas 1973. This is an actual Polaroid picture. For the younger readers, this is what Instagram is trying to emulate.

All those gifts are for meeeee!

I’m 15 months old and barely standing. The story goes that I was held back from walking until the folks could get carpet installed. But I know me, so I’m going to chalk that up to laziness/clumsiness.

Items of note:

Bells tied to the baby shoes.

You can barely see the terrifying unpadded 1970s-era high chair in the background.

The dress is likely handmade. Not because of a twee pinterest-maker wannabe desire, but because it was the 70s and that’s what working class families did.

I've been blogging for over 15 years and I'm apparently one of the few over-40 female bloggers who haven't sold out to THE MAN yet; hence this blog remains quirky, homespun and unprofitable. No big.

~~Wife. Dog lover. Slob.~~ I live in Southern New Jersey with my husband WM, and our dogs Ollie and Murphy. I work a fun (really!) office job in Philadelphia. So if you're looking for a childless, slightly round, marginally boring GenX woman's blog to follow, you've come to the right place! :)

Follow me! (not literally, please)

Kimberly's bookshelf: read

The Awakening

by Kate Chopin

Welp, that ended abruptly. The version I have includes additional short stories, which I thought were part of the book, so when this story ended, I thought the second half of the book would be the others' responses to ... the events that...

tagged: fiction, women, and own-ebook

We Should All Be Feminists

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

So very good. Beautifully written, and really hits home. It was refreshing to read about feminism in a viewpoint other than that of my white, middle-aged, ladyfriends. :) Every middleschooler should be issued a copy of it. It was supe...

tagged: nonfiction, borrowed-from-library, and women

Hidden Figures

by Margot Lee Shetterly

tagged: nonfiction, history, and women

Tag - christmas