We are avid recyclers in our home.  There are some things, however, that are just not that convenient or easy to do.  Things like light bulbs, electronics, batteries, and composting, are all in my "more difficult" category at the moment.  

I came across this website today that could be an awesome tool for anyone in the U.S. that wants to do more.  Earth911 allows you to enter your zip code and it will give you listings for all your recycling needs - from car batteries to cardboard.  So if you're like me and have a stash of used batteries somewhere - add dumping them responsibly to your spring cleaning to do's and let this website help you!

I'm curious to see how it'll be in Germany.  I would LOVE it if they had some sort of community compost.

I hope you had a good weekend!  

Ours was pretty uneventful.  It was thankfully really pretty here and I spent most of the weekend doing stuff around the house.  I took General on a couple well deserved long walks and took myself on a couple runs.  

We're still in move limbo - not knowing our exact plans - so I spent some serious time starting to organize our basement into "move" and "storage".  I think its my way of coping with this feeling of having so much to do, but none of it I can just get done.

I have not been doing very well with my German lessons.  Its something I feel like you have to be in the right mood to do and I haven't been very good about doing it lately.  I'm going to do a couple lessons after this post - I promise!

I've been voraciously reading a book that a friend recommended to me.  Its called Fall of Giants by Ken Follett.  It tells a serious of stories surrounding World War I.  It sort of reminds me of Downton Abbey, the way it paints a picture from all angles - plus its during that era.  Its not the type of book I typically read, but I'm glad she recommended it, because I'm really enjoying it.

Its a quiet morning here, but its supposed to snow tonight... grumble grumble.  Hope you have a good rest of your week!

Friends may have a reunion season in 2014.  Fingers crossed!!

Click above to see the clip.

Not Christmas, unfortunately, but Moving time!  This upcoming move to Germany will be our 3rd major move since we've been married.  I learn more with each move, but each has its own learning curve.  

First, some news, we have decided to move a little earlier than we had initially thought.  Originally we thought we'd be there by end of August, now we're targeting beginning of July.  *gulp*

Although I anticipate this move being a cake walk compared to Kuwait, there always seems to be more uncertainty involved with these moves than I would prefer.  For example, with approximately only 10 weeks to go, we still don't have answers to a lot of the major questions like when exactly we are moving, when exactly will our stuff get picked up, when exactly will we be traveling to see family beforehand, those among a couple dozen more planning tid-bits would be nice to get nailed down soon.

In the meantime though, while plans are still forming, I'm starting to take small steps where I can to further simplify our life and make us more moving-friendly.  

Our move to Kuwait was such a whirlwind and since we were married less than 2 months beforehand, we didn't have a lot of time to merge and purge our stuff.  Most just went into storage or with us to Kuwait to be dealt with at a later time.  

With each move we get a little more stream-lined, however during our time in Colorado I made it my goal to really get things in order.  It was the first time all of our stuff was in one spot.  I've purged a great deal and tried to keep things organized and simple, but there is always more that can be done.  

My tasks at the moment are to go through all of the drawers and bins in our house and sort through all the miscellaneous items.  I went through our spices tonight to combine, toss, and decide what should be kept.  I also rinsed and cleaned some gardening pots that I unfortunately wont be using this spring and grouped and stacked all of those.  Small potatoes, I know.

As time starts to get a little closer, I'll start separating things into "Storage" and "Germany" piles, since we wont be bringing everything, but it's a little early for that just yet.

It brings a whole new meaning to Spring Cleaning!  I'll just keep the image above in mind to keep me sane!

I discovered two cool websites recently that I thought were pretty handy.  You know those simple ideas that make such sense, you wonder why hadn't anyone thought of them before?  I thought I'd share in case you're in the dark on these nuances like me!

First, I discovered a site called Doodle today where you can schedule an event and poll attendee's on different items, such as "Which date works best for all?", "What time works best", etc.  Wouldn't this be handy for planning wedding showers, bachelorette parties, and baby showers where you have to email people you don't know very well?  I thought so.

WeddingSnap is the modern day version of putting disposable cameras on the table at your wedding reception.  Its a smart phone app that lets you upload any photos you take during the wedding to a cloud website so that you, and any of the other wedding attendees (including the bride and groom!) can see the wedding from all points of view.  How cool?  No more burning each other CD's or sending a dozen emails!  I wish we had this during my wedding.  Part of the fun of seeing photos my friends took was seeing my wedding from their point of view.  Plus you never can be everywhere at once and someone may catch something that you totally missed!

I've not been very good at blogging lately!

The above photo is from my weekend in Virginia.  I went to visit with friends and had a great, low-key weekend.

I was unfortunately greeted with snow when I came back to Denver, but it's probably good it wasn't beautiful outside because it would have made it harder to focus on the mounds of stuff I need to get through.  I plan on locking myself in my office this week and only coming up for air to walk the dog (and maybe run myself!).  

Have a good week!  Only 3 more days until the weekend!