Getting the house ready for our annual carving party is a bit of a pain...but maybe I'm just a baby about it. What it entails on our end (the husband and I,) is cleaning of things that are not taken care of on a regular basis.

Example: Washing all the glasses on the china hutch in the dining room, shampooing carpets, dusting breakable and precious knick knacks. That sort of thing.

These things take time. We're always confused by the amount of dust that has accumulated over the last six months to a year. We stand in awe of the tiny cobwebs on the wings of fairies hanging in the bedroom. We are floored by the amount of dust coming in with the carpet shampoo dirty water.

We are clean people. I swear! But we live in a larger house so that makes for semi-annual tasks such as these to be quite the amount of chores.

I rather wish it looked this beautiful year round, but we're headed into the fall and it makes me miss the bright green of ivy in the spring:

Coupled with this is my upcoming business trip which will land me back home just in time to buy a few gourds and host the party. The poor husband is stuck with all the last minute stuff to do the week before. He can handle it but I feel guilty this year. This is the one party we host without fail - I mean seriously without fail. We held it a week and a half after one of my surgeries one year and a few days after one of my parents became very ill. We love it. It's our annual, "come party with us and feel comfortable in your skin and with your life."

But I want you to be comfortable on a clean carpet with no gigantic dust bunnies hanging off the infrequently used martini glasses, so I should probably get back to work.