Stop the Insanity!

I was going to write about my perceptions of a certain situation that seem insane to me, however I had a spectacular disaster while cooking toffee tonight and had to make a second batch. I had planned to be in bed by 1:00, but I still have to chocolatize the toffee. And darn it. I didn't take a picture of my disaster for history, but I am sure I will have more!

Therefore I am not making a big blog entry this evening/morning to preserve my own sanity just a little longer, I hope. Gotta go do some physical tasks and then get my ass in bed!

Sanity today, insanity tomorrow.

The pictures are looking different tonight. I have no idea how this will look when complete. This is a photo essay about my journey toward sanity for the holiday season. Maybe it will help me stop being so overwhelmed. This is an area of the garage BEFORE.

This is where I have been storing all my ingredients, packaging, and everything basically for the business,

I squished this picture somehow. Now I can't get it to unsquish! Same corner.







This is the new home of most of Hope's Homemades equipment, tools and ingredients! My friend Eric used to own a pizza restaurant and is trying to sell some of the equipment. I asked him if he has shelves and he said no, but he had some shelves he had gotten for free at the store - he now works at Kroger - and had never finished assembling them nor used them. Michael and I stopped on the way home tonight and picked them up. I built them! It was not difficult, but was time consuming.


The big white buckets on the side are what my 50 pound orders of whole wheat flour arrived in. I need to give them back so I have transferred much of the flour to the yellow-lidded storage containers. I am searching for something else. Need to fit on the shelves and have tight-fitting lids. These are only 6 qt, however, and I found that doesn't hold a lot of flour. I saw some that were much bigger, stackable, and rectangular, but I have to make sure they are "food grade" before purchase.

The white topped containers are "storage drawers" the kind you can stack up... They have my cake pans and other stuff that doesn't have boxes, but I don't think it should be out in the open, especially in the garage. Eventually, I want to get a storage unit with doors that close so that is less of a worry.

This drawer holds cake decorating supplies and stuff. On the left are some assorted ingredients. If I get any orders for my sale (sigh...) I will have to go shopping! I am getting low.


Baskets all ready to be made into gift baskets! I purchased many second-hand for one or two dollars each.

Nest shelf is catering/serving type stuff. That yellow lidded container is full of baking and candy and nut cups and paper stuff I am afraid will get crushed.

The foil pans have lots of candy bags, twistie ties, stickers, decorations and stuff for the finer points of packaging.
All that stuff is also in sub-containers, usually gallon bags, so it will stay clean.

My boxes of containers and some of my chocolate supply. I will definitely need chocolate soon! I have a triple chocolate cookie recipe I want to try!













LOOK! An empty space! A little sweeping a little table scooting and there will be room for a Christmas tree! YAY!







To be continued tomorrow, I hope, with my tale of my trip to Lafayette and interaction with Mom and Dad. He has gone home, but tomorrow's post will be the "Insanity" portion because of that.

Copy of a post from a BB.

We have had a couple of years where the rule is supposed to be only homemade and second-hand gifts allowed (Except stocking stuffers). It is a very low budget (usually) way to make for a Christmas when things are tight, I haven't had time to do any crafty stuff for Christmas this year because the the business and all of the baking. Also, all the financial investment in that has left me poorer than ever!

I have two projects I would like to finish and that will all the handmade that happens I think. I did find a great gift for Hippie Boy today - a cloth belt, made from hemp fibers. It was on clearance for three dollars - not secondhand, but too good to pass up. He has been wearing a belt he made from a bike inner tube and a buckle from an old belt. He likes it so much, though, he may not like the new one. There may be times that I will have to insist the inner tube belt come off and the purchased belt be worn. Sometimes as a mother, you just have to be cruel like that.

I NEVER know what to get my mom and dad. They don't really have any money, but they always buy too much stuff and have whatever they want anyway because they are hoarders. I have tried to give them stuff that will get "used up" like bath products and the like. Even then, sometimes I will ask my mom why she hasn't used the lotion/gel/body wash/whatever and she will reply something like. "I don't want to use it all up. It was such a nice gift." Then sometime when I go clean their house for them I end up throwing away my gifts because the clutter is out of control again. It is very frustrating.

I DO have a gift for my mother - Earlier this year when I was working in their kitchen I pulled a cord that I thought would turn off the hanging light - turned out the light had no switch and you had to unplug it to turn it off. I have purchased the stuff to make a nifty little hanging light to replace that one, and this one will have a switch!

Dad is a different story. I don't know if he can even read now, after the stroke. Maybe I will break down and go buy a DVD of some adventure or mystery movie. I looked for used movies and stuff today, but didn't see anything good. Maybe in the $5.00 bin at Wal-Mart it can happen.

Not too much time left and I have been working, eating, and sleeping at all the wrong times. I don't know if I will be able to do my norm. I guess my family will have to accept that the norm may either be changing or that it just can't happen this year.

I do wish I had my big Christmas tree out. I have out three of my little ones and I gave the medium one to Mom and Dad so they would have one easily. The corner where I put my tree, however, is filled with boxes and crates of ingredients and packaging and baskets for gift baskets, etc. Also the tree is in a back corner of the garage buried behind bicycles and furniture I intend to reupholster (daughter of hoarders, remember) and all kinds of crap and I can't get to it. Michael has been SO busy that he hasn't really had time to help like he normally would.

Part of Michael's busy is college application forms and essays and STUFF. We already have a good acceptance to IU with a $9000 a year merit scholarship for four years so he has his "fall-back" school. He applied early decision to a tiny, expensive school near Philadelphia. If he gets accepted there he is contracted to go. They swear if they accept you they make it possible financially for you to attend. We'll see....

I have written much more than I intended and really off topic. Sorry. I probably ought to copy this to my blog. I did write some today about my emotional difficulties with shopping, but I have been neglecting both my blog and my regular writing lately.

Unsettled...

Searching for a blog title I considered: depressed. sad, crisis, lonely and a lot of other negative mood descriptors. I don't really think I am enough of one thing to settle on a word, therefore I am unsettled.

I had a good start to the day, took the bread I had made for Gillian over to the church for the event. When I took it in the kitchen the women receiving it said something like, "What is that? Oh look! Go bring that other one back in and put this out instead!" I felt very flattered - AND I had been sure to put some business cards in the the basket, discreetly tucked under the edge of the napkin!

Heather left last night so I could have some time with a friend who has an odd schedule this morning - that was also lovely. He had to go to the IU game, though so we had a time limit, kind of a bummer.

After he left I decided I would go to Opp House and look for baskets for Christmas orders and maybe for some Christmas gifts to give also. Once I got out into the world, however, I was HYP-NO-TIZED again. I ended up Opportunity House, Lowe's T.J. Maxx, Michael's and Goodwill. I did get some nice baskets, a PERFECT gift for Michael for $3. some cooking stuff for the business and a few other little things. I was just in this lonely, scared, robotic mood, however. I went over eight hours without eating....I just now ate something for the first time since about 11:00 this morning. Also no beverage, no peeing, no talking.... just in some trance-like state and feeling quite bizarre. My house is messy and I have done nothing on my list and I think part of staying out like that was avoidance of the reality that I now face. I need to clean my house, do some business work, and I really, really, REALLY want to bring in the Christmas tree and get it put together and also try some new recipes. I found a vegan Mexican wedding cake, and I need to try another variation of truffles. I'm just all blah! I want to sleep and that is all. I need to do it today, however as tomorrow I am supposed to go to Lafayette and then go get Michael.

I called my friend Eric before I came home to see if he wanted to out and quickly get something to eat with me. He was already out and about doing HIS shopping, however, I read on FB when I checked in. I sent him a message asking him if he would give me some shelves he has that I want and if he would bring them over and put them together. If he would I would have the motivation to clean and be productive and make something and he could taste test in exchange! If I got the shelves I could get all the Hope's Homemades supplies out of the corner where my Christmas tree is supposed to go and get moving on it!

I did talk to Emily for a little bit. I called from TJ Maxx and told her I was having a shopping crisis, which is a part of me she understands or at least recognizes is very strong. She talked to me through her entire dinner break at work and it helped. I am sad, though because she probably will go up to Scott's family again for Christmas.

Gloom, despair and agony on me. Deep-down depression, excessive misery. If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Gloom despair and agony on me. Now imagine some stupid Hee-Haw joke by Buck Owens!

I am going to go do SOMETHING now. Maybe I'll call Eric again.

I can't believe it.

I think that is the longest I have gone without blogging for years, except the one time when Ann P. Actually called to make sure I was alive. I remember that was five days, and I think I have equaled that. I know it was over a year ago because I did Blog 365 this year. Well this year is like "Business 365" and feels like "Work 24/7"

So Sunday was the last day I blogged... since then:

Monday: Deanna was in town and killed her battery, so after work I went and jump started her car. She asked if she could buy some pretzels and toffee SO after that I went home and made pretzels and toffee. Making the caramel for the pretzels it started to burn so I had to call Amber with a caramel crisis! She walked me through it, while paralleling my activities in Utah - minus the caramel crisis. Phew! Thanks Amber!

Tuesday: Lia Sophia party. Not a lot of people came, but it was really fun and we talked and ate and had a great time. I went to bed on the couch at 11:00, got up at 1:00 and went to real bed, so slept almost like a normal person.

Wednesday: Michael's winter concert. Very nice. Very long. I LOVE Jane to death, but she talks a lot during concerts and they have ended up with all these silly things they do at each concert. The winter concert includes a "Section decorating contest" which has evolved into full-fledged skits, costumes, etc... and takes for freakin' EVER.

Thursday: Well, that's tonight, right after work, took Michael to cello lesson, while he was there I went to Target to get medicine and look at holiday stuff. Was HYP-NO-TIZED by the Christmas stuff, gift wrap, tags, decor, etc.... Funny thing is I seriously don't have ONE Christmas present for anybody yet, except for a few stocking stuffers I have bought at Dollar Tree and such over the past few months! I don't have money to buy any either! I have one more pay day before Christmas, on the 19th. Maybe I can Goodwill and Opportunity House up some decent gifts.
After we (Heather is still here) picked up Michael I had to go to Hobby Lobby, which I hate, and buy peppermint oil and am looking for a holly leaf shaped cookie cutter. I want to make a bundt or tube cake and make it like a wreath and cut fondant holly leaves and use cinnamon candies for the berries. I am getting little orders at a time, but nobody has made any official orders for my roadside stand set for next Saturday. I am totally freaked. I realized I had not set a deadline for orders so I set it for the 16th and put that on my FB page for the business. I will do a reminder email a couple of days before that. I would like to do one right away, but I don't want to email people to death or they will hate me. I need to do one that says, "Please. I am desperate. I have spent hundreds of dollars and need to at least recoup the cost of my material goods soon." I don't even care about profit right now, just little things like paying the electric bill and stuff...

I have registered Hope's Homemades with the state now as an LLC, so it's official, I am a business. As a single member LLC, I am still really a sole proprietorship and can include my taxes on my personal taxes, instead of having a separate Identity number. I need to start a bank account next, now that the LLC is registered. Joey is going to buy my web domain and set up a basic website for me as soon as finals are over. He has this hangup about finishing his MBA or something. Sheesh!

Well, it's 11:16 and I have "bed by midnight" on the list and I better get to finishing the list or THAT will never happen!

Tomorrow I only have to bake one loaf of bread after work and it's an easy one - beer bread. I am going to make it with sparkling apple juice and add dried apples and some spices. I think it will be good. I have never done it before. I probably ought to make two so I can taste one and make sure it's decent before I sell it Saturday morning! Or maybe I'll make one mini-muffin I can taste to make sure....

Okay off to do dishes next!

Sushi to go.

Carol said, "Hope, Anne and the other kids LOVED the sushi cupcakes! They were so special, and tasty too. Thanks so much for being so creative with cupcakes!"

Michael and I went to a cello recital tonight at IU. Jordan Enzinger, who went to Michael's school
earned his performance diploma. He performed the Devorak cello concerto, among other things. It was magnificent. Juli, Jordan's mom, was Michael's first teacher and is the Assistant Director his his orchestra now. It was a good place to be.

A miracle has just ocurred!

I love the wasabe in the sauce cups. I am going to put these in Chinese take-out trays that I use for my cookies for delivery tomorrow. I have paper cups for the wasabe and paper wrapped chopsticks. I also want to cut some paper into that green "grass" stuff they always put in there.

The smaller style is almond pound cake inside. My God it was good.

The larger style is a recipe called "decadent chocolate cake" I think it only had half a cup of flour in it.
Here's the effect for photography tonight. For purists: I know those are Korean chopsticks, but they are pretty in pictures.


I actually completed a project before midnight!

I told Michael, "Maybe you will actually wake up to a clean kitchen in the morning." He replied, I'd rather wake up to a mother who has had a good night's' sleep." I did NOT have a nap today, so maybe that will help so quickly I will post the photos.


Must go try to be in bed soon.