RISE AND SHINE, PEOPLE!

God Save the Queen, I have SO FREAKING MUCH to do this week, and it's going to be AWESOME!  More details after this little gem...

... I think that about the birds outside, too!!!

So, CGtY is officially 5, which means she's promoted herself in her make believe play to CEO and Supreme Ruler of DisneyPrincessBarbieFairyLand.  She's a gracious monarch, though.  She lets me be  in charge of the Mermaids, and CGtE is now the Head of the Department of Entertainment (a promotion from last year's Lead Servant and Scapegoat).  He and I can't help but agree that the pay is lousy (we are rewarded for our loyalty with more and bigger messes to clean up), but the creative license perks are pretty sweet (I can make the Mermaids stage a rebellion and flood DisneyPrincessBarbieFairyLand unless Her Majesty meets their demands.  Like, eating all of her dinner or getting her pajamas on, say.)  Her subjects (who, among the masses, include Cinderella, Rapunzel, Merida, 5 of those Ty animals with the freakishly big eyes, and about a dozen Littlest Pet Shop critters that hurt worse than Legos when I step on them in the dark) adore her and have good cause to place their (inanimate) faith in her ability to rule; there hasn't been a flood yet.  Unless you count the bathtub, which we don't- that's Her Majesty treating them all to a vacation at the beach.

Anyway, yeah, back to my metric ton of stuff to do this week:

Tomorrow is a full day of finishing the Spring Cleaning.  Every blessed thing in the house has been disturbed, dusted, wiped down, disinfected and rearranged.  I wish I had taken a photo of the area under the stairs before I redid it, to show the difference.  It looks amazing now!  I still have the dining room and downstairs bathroom to complete, as well as detail mopping the kitchen.  (Detail mopping- on my knees with a cloth and bucket, a la Cinderella.  Good time for prayer and worship, that!)
Aside from those couple of things, most of the stuff was done last week and just needs "touchups".  Well, except for my room, which always needs to be done- but no one is going to see it, as it's in a permanent state of reinvention so it doesn't really figure in.  And I'll have to repeatedly pick up the trail of toys that the CGs strew behind them as they go.  Cleaning a house with young kids in it is like trying to file and organize papers on a desk while a fan blows on them.  Or brushing your teeth while you are eating Oreos. Ok, no, ew.  The first thing.  The second one may be an effective analogy, but it's still a really gross mental image!

Tuesday evening, some friends of ours will be visiting from Leeds, UK.  I can't wait to see them!  It's going to be fantastic!  Later in the week I'm going to be meeting another friend I haven't seen in a long while for a late dinner, so I'm looking forward to that as well.  Nothing is better than good food and good friends gathering to visit! :)

Also this week, I've got to solidify my posts for the Annual A-Z!  I'm doing a "Snail Mail" theme (well, of course I am!  What else would it have been!) and I still have to come up with a few of the trickier ones.  You know.  Q, V, X, Y.  Surprisingly, U, W and Z were all easy ones.

Lucy Jane has been hibernating for too long and has to get busy on some stock pieces for the upcoming Hydrangea Fest!  Only 8 ish weeks to go!  Yikes!  More giraffes and hippos and sea turtles and stuff to make.  The CGs think it's done by magic.  Oh, they've seen the machine going, and they have seen the process from start to finish.  But usually the main work is done while they are at school or asleep, so one minute it's a pile of fabric and then >POOF!< there is a shelf full of cuddly plush animals (that, ironically and maddeningly, they are not allowed to touch and/or play with! LOL!)  I'm making them some of their own.  CGtE hasn't decided what he wants yet, but CGtY is painstakingly choosing the fabric for her custom unicorn.  Someone made a comment somewhere- the cobbler's children being barefoot... or something along those lines. Well, fine.  Now my CGs will own Lucy Jane made Funky Friends.  I can't wait to show Pauline (the pattern maker) when I get them done. :)
(Just so we are clear, it's not as if the CGs don't have a bunch of loved plushies already.  They do.  But somehow my love of sewing Funky Friends and my compulsory need to be a sometimes indulgent parent seem to have collided.)

And I'm working on my backlog of letters to answer.  I have it down to around 30 now.  This past week was awesome and brought letters in from as far away as Hungary, plus a stack from all around the US.  I am loving the new friendships I have made through LetterMo, and the continued correspondence from long-established pen friends.  It's a wonderful and important part of my daily life to send and receive letters!

Then Friday I'm hosting a 31 Gifts party!  I LOVE 31 stuff.  I have a demi purse in "peacock paisley" (now retired, sadly) that I use ALL the time, but I have my eye on that Cindy design, and that drool-inducing Organista bag... !

Ok... I've rambled on long enough!  Time to crash in the bed and tackle that list of awesomeness in the morning at 6 a.m.!  Goodnight, my dears!