02/18/2004: "Time to clean"

I am the worst ever when it comes to keeping the house clean when I'm on a hot streak creatively speaking. The past few weeks have been amazingly productive for me, but other things have suffered because of it. Tonight I officially used my last clean dish so I'm going to listen to some of the CDs you bloggers have sent me while I do the dishes.

Here's a photo of what my kitchen sink looks like at present. grrr. Does anyone have a trick that will help me stay motivated to clean brushes right away, as opposed to coating them with dish detergent and letting them sit developing a thick gunge until it take 30 minutes to clean each one?

On another note, I got a cute Valentine from fellow blogger Jessamyn who has a personal site and also does the librarian.net site, one of the only library related sites I visit regularly. She made this using a stamp she made from wine corks.

valentine (13k image)

I always plan on sending out valentines day cards to friends but I always realize what day it is well after the fact. I'm thinking of making some Juneau/Douglas holliday cards this year to send out to people, do a couple different design and then have zazzle.com print them up for me. If I start planning to do it now, perhaps I'll get it done in time.

A friend I've made in Rhode Island is a face painter has inspired me to learn how to do face painting. I have been looking for ways to do local volunteer work and from what she tells me it really makes kids happy. I went ahead and bought a couple intro books on it from Amazon today, next payday I'll buy a starter paint kit from snazaroo.com which is a site she recommends for good nontoxic face paints.

Today I went online at juneau.org to see what kinds of potential volunteer options are out there. So far I've found Big Brother's Big Sisters and the Gastineau Humane Society. It could be fun to paint cat and dog faces on kids who come in to visit the animals at the pound. I'm going to check into it after I've practiced a bit.