Blechitis, with Bright Spots

So I am under the weather again and have spent the whole day in bed, pretty much, albeit surrounded by magazines and paste and scissors and the cat, who has not let me out of his sight all day (It's both flattering and unnerving. The way he stares at me, I sometimes feel that if we were in the wild and he were the size of some of his cousins, he would be wondering if I would make a good dinner).

Claire of Loobylu's post on her "inspiration books" reminded me of our own house book, which we've kept since we moved in here and I thought it would help us bring together our wildly different decorating tastes. I say "we," because even though Al rarely cuts anything out of magazines, he does sketch furniture ideas in here.

The House Book

Claire's post also reminded me of a cut-and-paste book I once kept in which I pasted pictures of clothing I liked (keeping this book definitely helped me develop the little bit of personal style I have, but I threw it out in an (un)inspired desire to "clear out my life" during my move East six years ago and have regretted that ever since).

So I was inspired this week to buy some cheap spiral bound scrapbooks and start some new cut-and-paste books:

A new Fashion Book

A General Inspiration book

Ranging from the pretty...

to the fun and quirky...

A Recipe book

so I can finally sort through all the recipes in the Cooking Light subscription my mom gave us and put the ones that intrigue me together, which I think will make me more likely to try them out than if I have to hunt them down in a magazine. Do you have any idea how many magazines we have in this house? It's quite a high number. The problem is, I subscribe to magazines that I love so much I don't want to throw any issues away. But I think these books will help with at least a few of the accumulated publications around here.


Working on these has been very pleasant and therapeutic and made even today a much better one.