Our New Year's Day 2011.

We had a great New Year's Day ... by cleaning, organizing and working all day long!

It was finally warm enough for Mike to drain our pool. It had frozen over and the ice was about 8" frozen thick on top. Unbelievably it was in the 50's yesterday so he drilled through the ice to get the machine set up to drain some of the water off.

He also worked on the addition. When the weather gets cold outside he moves inside to work on the room upstairs. He's working now to frame in the bathroom, shower, etc.

Griffin and I worked on taking down our Christmas decorations and undecorating the Christmas tree.

I also decided Saturday is going to be my new clothes washing day (it was Sunday). I'm always rushing to get the laundry done by the end of the day on Sunday. I figured if I change it to Saturday the things I do not get done then I can finish up on Sunday without rushing. Brilliant, right? =)

In an effort to start living by my "one little word" simplify, I decided to tackle the pantry.


As you can see it was a mess. That empty shelf you see was actually full I had already taken everything out. It was very disorganized, nothing was together in categories and our cereal and chips were taking over!


I literally threw out two garbage bags of stuff that we will not use or it had passed it's expiration date. I organized, categorized and got those cereals and chips under control.

Whew ... that feels better!

We also ate our traditional black eyed peas ...


In southern households it's a southern tradition to always eat black eyed peas on New Year's Day to bring luck and prosperity throughout the year ahead.

We always start with a bit of rice in the bowl, topped with black eyed peas, than fried okra and finally a little bit of chopped onion. Mike also made fried corn bread (hoe cakes) and we had ham.

2011 has started our wonderfully ... I'm so looking forward to a wonderful new year!