Welcome Year of the Snake...hssss and Happy Chinese New Year to you all! It's going to be a good one d.v. I am happy because for once, I'm ready for it. Snake years are good for us Roosters. I haven't been blogging for at least a week because I've had the sleeves rolled up and was getting down and dirty in the basement. What was I doing down there? Apart from listening out for ghosts, and playing with Tessa our cat, I was painting and gobbling up the last of my de-cluttering projects. I had boxes of stuff going back to my first days in Canada some 20 years ago! It's amazing the kind of treasures I found. They say de-cluttering is the luckiest thing you can do. Guess what? I proved them right.
I found this little card Claudia made for me for Mother's Day several years ago. It had 3 coins lovingly attached to bring me luck. I put it into the prosperity section of the house, as determined by a Feng Shui expert I consulted when we moved into our home. Lo and behold! next thing I found was a receipt for a fire guard I had returned to a shop 3 years ago. I had lost the receipt, and never heard back from the shop. They had to sell it before they would return my money. Now that I had the receipt, I phoned them and they gave me the happy news they owed me $90 - not bad!! I duly went down to the shop and collected my cheque. Had I not found that lost receipt, this 'lucky' money would not have come my way!
As a result of zoning in on the clutter, I now have the basement all organised. I got rid of tons of papers I had been hoarding. I divided all the papers I decided to keep into folders. Plastic bins house my greeting cards for every occasion. Now I just need the occasion! Well Valentine's Day is coming up and I warned Kevin to check our stationery shop in the basement first! Sounds weird I know. Months ago a Carlton cards store was closing in my local mall. They were selling off all their cards for 10c each - ridiculously cheap. I stocked up - even got Valentine cards!
So between the jigs and the reels I'm feeling as light as a feather now that I've offloaded all that clutter. Swear to God nothing beats that feeling.
We had a cluster of stuff to celebrate between Chinese New Year, Family Day long weekend, Valentine's Day - not forgetting Pancake Tuesday tomorrow, and then on Wednesday the start of Lent... I am gobbling up all the chocolate I can find before Wednesday as I am truly determined to go off chocolate for Lent this year. Will I do it? Watch this page!!
To welcome the Chinese New Year we ordered in a delicious chinese takeaway. I went down to 'Holiday Hall' in the basement to find suitable decorations. 'Holiday Hall' is where I house all my decorations for every occasion - Easter, St. Patrick's Day, birthdays, St. Valentine's Day, Halloween and Christmas - easily my favourite room in the house!! I store the odd candy in there too...
I didn't have any Chinese New Year stuff in there so I had to implement... found a snake from my St. Patrick's stuff (remember St. Patrick drove the snakes away from Ireland?). Next I found some glittery Christmas stuff which looked nice on the table, and then some festive Chinese feng shui type table lights - two long black trays, each of which housed 5 red votive candles. They looked amazing on each end of the table. I had to take the holly surrounds away to make it look less Christmassy.
I got some specially produced 'year of the snake' belgian chocolates from Purdy's and served them up on a richly coloured burgundy China pedestal dish. I put Mr. Snake into the bowl and he looked pretty amazing slithering all the way down to the table. The end result was worthy of the 'Year of the Snake' and hissing awesome - even if I say so myself!!
We went to see that new movie 'Quartet' which everybody is talking about around here. It has a star cast including Maggie Smith, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly. Must say, Kevin and I both found it sort of depressing...wont give the story away. Let you decide for yourselves. Funny moments provided by Billy Connolly who looked remarkably well.
Today, we are going to see another movie - Long Weekend is to be celebrated!! It's a thriller this time and called 'Side Effects'. I feel it will be good. It is lashing rain outside and we've been working hard all weekend long - so Time to rolax, chill out and get mellow - Life is for celebrating and enjoying...
Choo Choo for now and Happy Valentine's Day!
Patricia xxx
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