February 16, 2013

Rangoli - Colors of India

This looks like an awesome and fun cultural event, and it's FREE!  Tomorrow, beginning at 1 pm in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

ISA in collaboration with the India Cultural Association (ICA) of Central Iowa is organizing an Indian bazaar reminiscient of village fairs in India. Journey through India’s culture through live Bollywood and classical dances, Fashion shows with traditional Indian costumes, Mehndi/Henna application, display of ethnic arts and crafts, ancient and modern Indian architecture, live and recorded music performance and for your palette, tasty Indian snacks for a nominal charge!  Admission to the event is free!

I apologize for not keeping up as well with my calendar.  If you need a good place to look for fun free events, you can check The Patch.  These are a growing collection of sites, and I notice more cities included all the time. 

40 Days, Revisited

I apologize for not finding a lot of time to post lately.  I will have to make some time soon.  In the meantime, I am again doing a 40 day purge challenge in my house for Lent.  You can click the 40 days link to read more of what I did the last time that I did this.

Our work and school schedules don't allow for a lot of time each day, so we are using the weekends to catch up on everything.  This time my children are old enough to get to help me.  (Lucky them!)

Today, we started on all of the kitchen cabinets.  We have pretty minimal cupboard space, so I have to be very choosy about what I keep.

The tupperware/storage containers seem to be the part that really gets out of hand, so I put my kids to work sorting.  I filled a kitchen garbage bag (no picture of my trash can, sorry) with mismatched lids and containers, then cut back to almost nothing for our keep pile.

In the toss pile, I made a bag with clean food containers and lids--this will go to our church.  They serve a community meal, and they use the food containers to package up leftovers to send home with people.



The rest of the containers will go to our food pantry or the clothing closet in town.  They are good containers with matching lids, and someone will get use from them.






That is our first three bags, and the kids are out in the yard picking up all sorts of garbage that has collected in our yard over the winter.  It never ceases to amaze me how much shows up when the snow melts away.

Just like last time, I will keep a tally.

Trash: 2
Donate: 2

4

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1 bag of clothes from each of us, divided:

Consignment store for the best ones, 1 bag.
Clothing closet donation for still nice clothes, 2 bags.
One bag of clothing that isn't good enough for donation: USagain bin.  Read the link for more information, but this is a for profit organization that takes anything you donate.

Trash: 2
Donate: 5
Sell: 1

8

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2 bags of wire hangers from the dry cleaners/uniforms, sent back to where they came.

Trash: 2
Donate: 5
Sell: 1
Other: 2

10
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Kids' room cleanout: one bag of less important artwork to the trash, one bag of toys for donation and one for consignment.

Trash: 3
Donate: 6
Sell: 2
Other: 2

13

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Surprise snow day cleaning: sorted a huge tub of outgrown clothes in the laundry room, stored by size for future wearing, one garbage bag for the clothing closet, one tub for the consignment store, one bag for the USagain bin.

In kids' room, toys and books for donation.  One bag of books to donate to the library, one bag of toys to donate to the clothing closet, one bag of toys for consignment.

Cleanout of fridge, freezer, and pantry: one bag of outdated food.

Trash: 4
Donate: 10
Sell: 4
Other: 2

 20 --we're halfway there, on February 27.  It's the 15th day of Lent!

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One bag filled with grocery bags, recycled at the store.

21