Greetings from the Great White North

I know that it isn't news, but Paris with snow is just too pretty. We woke up this morning to gray skies and a fresh coat of powdery white snow all over everything. There are still a few stray flakes falling and I might take the girls out later, bundled up like little Eskimo babies, to play for a bit. With all the cold weather that we've been having, the snow has stuck around for three or four days, but every single time that I go outside, I love it all over again. No wonder Ella keeps asking me if we are going to have Christmas again- it does feel like Christmas when it looks like this.

I've been out and about, braving the cold, because I had to do a bit of sale shopping for the girls. I'll admit it- I did crack and buy blouses for the girls from Chloe. They are sooo sweet that I couldn't resist. Give me some credit though, since I didn't buy the matching jeans, which was a real struggle. Everything is just so freaking cute when it is miniaturized like that!

Usually, my really big splurge in the sales is on lingerie. This year, I can't bear the idea of standing around naked in a drafty shop, trying to pick out bras. I suppose since the sales go for 5 weeks, there is a chance that the weather might improve (I'm not counting on it...) and I'll be re-motivated, but until then, I'll just stick to what I've got. And since our lovely cleaner organized my entire closet while I was away in Wisconsin, I can actually see what I've got. She arranged my lingerie drawers by color, with everything neatly folded up. Its like Victoria's Secret in there, if Victoria's Secret abandoned its love affair with neon colors and scratchy polyester lace. I admit that I've been spoiled by French lingerie and a husband willing to support my habit- I even worked with a lingerie designer for awhile, in my misspent youth ( job title: Muse. I can't believe I'm even admitting something so embarrassing). Anyways- the drawers had been a complete mess, and since I was pregnant and too fat to wear most of the things for about a year, I had sort of forgotten what all was there. Now, its up to me to do a bit of a clean out to actually make room for some new additions.

Actually, although I haven't made it to me closet yet, I've been a very busy bee this week, going through the girls toy boxes and cupboards. I had already started my clean-out when I read this blog post, but I was still inspired by the idea of oosouji. I get motivated every year in January to attack all the disorganization that starts to clutter up the corners and closets- out of sight but not out of my mind. I called it my Very Early Spring Cleaning. Glad to finally have a proper name for it. I even dragged the whole family out to Ikea last sunday so that we could try and find some new toy storage solution. We didn't really find anything, but couldn't bear having braved those crowds only to come home empty-handed so we now have an Expedit unit (dark finish) pushed in to the garbage chute closet out in the hallway; I think we would actually be happy if someone just stole it so we didn't have to deal with it. I'm sort of over flat-pack furniture and it does seem anti-oosouji, if I could coin a phrase, to be bringing cheap furniture into our house when I'm trying to empty out the place and streamline in every other sense.

I'll probably try and hang on to it for a few more weeks until our new living room media unit is installed and I have a better idea about how much extra storage we need. Although the computer images that the designer showed us were incredibly realistic looking, I can't wait to see it actually here. I asked for three big deep drawers across the front and I'm hoping that it will add lots of storage, but as I'm mentally making the list of what I'm going to shove in this unit, I realize that I might be overestimating the space available. Doesn't matter, because at the very least, it will finally give me a new desk where I can put the computer. Currently, we have it balanced on the corner of a bench, underneath the tele, so that we can hook it up for watching I-tunes downloads on the big screen, and I type while sitting in a child sized Phillipe Starck Ghost chair. Everytime Georgia comes toddling up to bang on all the keys she can reach before I neutralize her, I do the countdown in my head 'Only 28 more days til delivery, only 28 more days til delivery, ...