I like stuff!

I like stuff. Pretty things. Art. Sculptures. Handmade things. Colorful things. I'm not a packrat and I don't like clutter, but I love our things. Above, some of my favorites, the bedspread we bought at a bazaar in Istanbul, the mask from the trip to Venice when Jim asked me to marry him, the cat marionette Alexandra got us on a trip to Prague. I added my dogs in because they're old and lie around kind of like stuff, and because they're high on my list of favorites. The husky is my baby, Shilo, who we refer to as our "downstairs neighbor" because she NEVER comes upstairs to be with us in the studio. She is getting kind of tubby in her old age and occasionally goes on hunger strikes holding out for cookies. She would like her food bowl to be filled with crumbled cookies and nothing else. (Mentioning hunger strikes reminds me of the time my brother Alex went on one -- he was twelve and I was eleven and we were in Mallorca and he saw a sword in a shop but my parents wouldn't buy it for him so he went on a hunger strike for three or four days. My parents eventually gave in and bought the sword, only to learn at hotel check-out that Alex had been buying mini-pizzas on room service the whole time.) The brown dog is Leroy, my step-son, who isn't really happy unless he has some sort of physical contact with a human. That can be his paw overlapping your shoe, or his head on your knee, or any kind of touch.

Until very recently, Alexandra professed an aversion to "stuff." She wanted to be able to pick up and move like a leaf on the wind. I don't want that. I'm a nester. I get it from my mom who has made such a beautiful home, filled with orchids and art and color. I want to be surrounded by beautiful things I love, that remind me of friends and travels. Right now I'm craving a larger "nest." When we bought our little cottage we predicted it would be a five-year house, and it's been five years almost exactly and I'm starting to get an itch to move on, to expand into a bigger nest, paint new walls red and lime green and yellow. I LOVE looking at houses. Old houses. I'm not a big fan of new houses.

I got tagged by Meg (More to Me -- I still haven't figured out links!) today, and the topic is: 5 Food Challenges for 06. Well, I had to think hard about this, because I'm happy to say I tackled my big food challenges last year and am actively maintaining them, and feeling really good about it. So I'll say what those were/are, and then think up some new ones for this year:
1) Try more new recipes -- healthy ones only. I got a number of low-cal cookbooks and tried to make several new things a week. It was fun, and it taught me how to put together low-cal meals where I didn't feel the lack of anything.
2) Buy fresh fruit and veggies in large quantities, no matter what they cost. It is expensive to eat fresh & organic produce all year, but it's completely worth it to me to spend $4 on a carton of blueberries in February.
3) Substitute fruit & vegetables for carbs at meals. Instead of rice or potatoes: acorn squash or green beans or butternut squash fries or fruit salad. Instead of pasta: spaghetti squash. I've really gone crazy over squash this year!
4) Deny myself nothing. That is, I know I must have sweets, so I found things I can have, like Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches. I have sweets every day.
Now, new ones for this year:
1) Barbecue more in the summer.
2) Continue to try new recipes.
3) I would say, learn moderation with chocolate, but that's absurd and will never happen. I ask Jim to hide chocolate from me, and I know I will always have to. I know an old man who gets his neighbor lady to keep his Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches in her freezer so he has to ask her when he wants one -- otherwise he'd eat them all at once. Me, too, with chocolate. Another reason why we need a bigger house: Jim will eventually run out of chocolate hiding places!
I tag: Alexandra & Claudia & Shannon (sentimental) -- because she cracked me up figuring out how many Crispy Cremes she could eat in a day if she wasted no calories on anything else!