Thinking Thursday

I took this picture this morning, and the lighting was terrible.  Of course it did not help that the wall was pink, 
and her sweater was the same color.  Totally washed her out and cast a pink shadow all over her.  
Applied a few actions in photoshop and decided to turn it into a b&w, and this is what I got.  
You can see the before picture here.

Things that made me happy today

- Woke up with great looking hair (LOL)

- sending my child to school on the bus
- Spending the day with my daughter

- Listening to "Santa Claus is coming to Town" over and over again.
- Setting up my budget and finances for 2010
- Reading a magazine
- Potato soup to warm my soul
- getting the kids to bed on time.
- blogging

I've been on such blogroll over the last few days, that I seriously had to think about what I was going to write about today.  No new finds.  No new inspiration.  Most likely because I finally took a sewing day yesterday, and tried my best to stay away from the computer.

Spent a bit of time thinking about things that would make me happy.  I want to make sure that when something really horrible hits, I remember what I am grateful for.  If I could

- keep the house clutter-free by spending an hour picking up things

- give myself an hour for sewing each day,

- budget my expenses

- find a new recipe once a week,

then I could keep myself pretty happy.  Keeping the house clutter-free has been pretty easy this year, since I spent most of last year reorganizing closets, rooms and spaces.  It makes a huge difference.  I do have a few closets (linen-closet, hubby's closet) to reorganize, but once they are done, I will be happy.  As a matter of fact, one of the tasks that I must complete is getting rid of my husbands suits.  It is such a shame, because they are still in excellent condition.  However, since the company has gone to casual attire, he rarely has any need for his suits.  Does anyone know where they may be put to good use?  I hate to give them to goodwill.  I once heard about a company that helps people get ready for interviews.  They dress their clients, and prepare them for the big day.  I guess I need to google.

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Trial Tuesday

Things that made me happy today.....

- talking to my hubby on the phone

- finding a way to manage my life

- discovering that a hat keeps me warm

- finding an hour to trace patterns

So......my hubby's company has offered him a new position this year in Dallas, Texas.  Under normal circumstances, I would be jumping up and down.  This is one of the only cities that we were seriously thinking about retiring in.  We really don't know much about the US, however we have both been there, and professionally and personally it would be a good decision.  We were planning on investing in a nice house, and retiring in it.  That was our plan.

As my mom would say, tough luck has hit us again.  The housing market in Florida is just terrible.  So, we are due to lose about $60k on this house.  Needless to say, that has me very anxious at the moment, and I refuse to take such a big hit.  I just cannot justify losing that much money.  Unlike so many others, we actually paid a large sum of this house off, so foreclosure and other options dont make much sense.  So, our options are few and none of them are good.

1.)  We either extend his year in Kuwait with another year, in the hopes that things get a bit better,

2.) We rent our house, and then rent in Dallas, which could mean losing even more money, or

3.) send him to Dallas alone, and keep the family in Florida.

Whichever way we look at it, the options are terrible.  We were told that we would get a Choice assignment if he does a hardship tour, and were hoping to get an overseas assignment.  This way we would have no housing expenses.  For some reason, nothing is available so Dallas is what we got.

If we do rent a place in Dallas, it will be very small, which means most of our furniture and goods are going to go into storage.  That just makes me feel very strange.  No sewing room.  No guest room.  Oh, how I hate life sometimes.  I know that we should consider ourselves very lucky, because so many people have been hit way harder then us.  However, nothing makes me feel better knowing that we just stepped back 15 years all because of some money hungry selfish you-know-whats.

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Sluggish...........

Have you ever woken up and felt like you were moving along like a slug?  Slowly creeping out of bed, but not exactly thinking clearly.  Getting nowhere fast.  Well, that is pretty much my feeling for today.  I woke up late, got out of bed late, and stayed in my pajamas way too long.

It started a few weeks ago, when my computer gave me problems.  I recently purchased Photoshop for the computer, and combined with the amount of pictures I have been taking, the computer has slowed down so much that I finally reached the maximium output of this thing.  So, in every free moment I had, I did my research.  Is the program that has caused all this mess?  Is it my pictures?  I moved them all over to an external hard-drive.  Well, I will just upgrade.  If I need more memory and a bigger hard drive then I will buy them.  HA.  No go.  My motherboard/processor cannot handle all this new fangled stuff, so now I am looking at purchasing a new computer.  I have a computer friend, so I called him.  He spends all day repairing PC's, and his recommendation - buy a Mac.  Great.  I did not need to hear this, even though I had already checked out their site.  I know that with all the images I process - both embroidery and camera images that it was inevitable that when I ask what I should buy, everyone would recommend the same thing. 

My brain needs time to take all this in, and process this.  Do I really want a 1500 dollar gift for Christmas?Is it a good investment?  I could not get my mind off of this important decision, when it suddenly occurred to me that my husbands old store carried Imacs.  He was just given a 20percent gift certificate for his 20 years in the service, so that could give me a $300 savings plus no tax.  That makes everything a little better.   But only a little.

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