Tomorrow is the last day of the year and we don’t have any plans to celebrate it.
Growing up in Brazil, my family always followed some of the many traditions surrounding this date. We weren’t as die hard as some folks who try to follow as many of the rituals as possible but it was always fun to do a few of them (wear new white clothes, new underwear, jump waves, kiss someone of the opposite sex).
Here’s a list of some of the Brazilian rituals for welcoming the new year.
Jumping waves
To celebrate Iemanja, the sea goddess, you jump seven waves at midnight and walk out of the water backwards (so as not to turn your back to the sea).
White clothes
This is also in honor of Iemanja. Tradition calls for new, white clothes, to be worn on New Year’s Eve.
Eat certain foods for prosperity
Eat a pomegranate and save seven seeds in your wallet or a spoonful of lentils, ditto or seven grapes. Never tried this one but I have friends who swear by it.
Kiss someone of the opposite (or the same) sex
This supposedly helps you attract new love or keep the one you have.
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Wear new underwear
This one has all kinds of rules surrounding which color to wear:
I also miss our coffeemaker. See, a couple of weeks ago, it broke down in a freakish way. The used grounds container somehow got dislodged and the machine detected it. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of making espresso and it went a bit crazy. The blade thingy would not go back up. So we had to send it in to have it fixed.
I can’t wait to have it back. I don’t know how much longer I can go without…
I’m a big believer in outsourcing chores whenever possible. Life is just too short!
My latest discovery is that the same dry cleaners that have kiosks at work, also pick up and deliver your clothes at your home. For free!
I had my first pick-up yesterday and not a minute too soon. Our washer broke the next day so now I’ll have them lander our clothes too while we wait for our repair appointment.
I’ve always been extremely organized but over the last couple of years, things somehow got out of control and my closets were beyond messy. I decided it was time to take action! My closets are now organized (albeit not nearly as nice as the one pictured above). I also managed to donate nine (yep, I said nine) large bags of clothes, shoes, etc.
This process reminded me of a few of my favorite organizing items:
Hangers
Nothing drives me crazier than mismatched and/or cheap hangers. For tops, I like the wood hangers from Target. They’re cheap but well made. For pants, I love the non-slip friction hangers and can’t imagine how I ever managed without those.
Shelf Dividers These will keep your sweaters from toppling over. They’re also great for linen closets. Mine are made of wire but I really like the look of these acrylic ones.
Purse Organizer I’ve tried many solutions for storing handbags but this is the best one I have found. Works for all sizes and keeps them nice and neat.
Jewelry
For jewelry, nothing beats a tie rack for hanging necklaces and lots of drawers for smaller items.
Shoes
I haven’t found a great solution for shoes yet. My only strategy is to post polaroids of the shoes outside of the boxes. Takes some work but it looks cool and makes finding your shoes much easier!
I decided to switch from Blogger. Maybe one day I’ll get around to moving my posts dating back to 2000 to this new one. In the meantime, I’ll try really, really hard to post more regularly.
If you have a dog like ours who manages to destroy every toy in 5 minutes, there’s nothing better than sheepskin toys.
Duncan has had his sheepskin “bone” since he was a puppy and it’s still completely intact. For xmas, we got him a bunch more sheepskin toys and he seems to love them as much as his bone pillow.
Since buying the house a couple of years ago, we’ve been slowly replacing some of the appliances. Now is time for a new fridge. Ours is about 7 years old based on our estimates. It’s been having too many problems lately and the icemaker is broken, for the second time.
I was very hopeful thinking that newer models would have better designs in the interior and more space. Nope. Turns out that most fridges still have crappy “usable space”. That means we’re still undecided on which model to get.
LG LFX25980
We like the look of the French Door models.
Unfortunately, they seem to have the least amount of interior space.
I also wonder how practical it would be to have a drawer for your freezer items. It just seems like everything would get piled on top of each other.
LG LSC27950
This is currently one of the top contenders. The icemaker is on the door (inside the freezer) which frees up freezer shelf space.
On the other hand, it has this silly soda can rack on the door that holds something like 5 cans. Such a waste of space. I wonder what kind of research they did to decide on *that* feature.
Jumping waves
Eat certain foods for prosperity
Wear new underwear
I’m a big believer in outsourcing chores whenever possible. Life is just too short!
I’ve always been extremely organized but over the last couple of years, things somehow got out of control and my closets were beyond messy. I decided it was time to take action! My closets are now organized (albeit not nearly as nice as the one pictured above). I also managed to donate nine (yep, I said nine) large bags of clothes, shoes, etc.
Hangers
Purse Organizer
Jewelry
Shoes
Since buying the house a couple of years ago, we’ve been slowly replacing some of the appliances. Now is time for a new fridge. Ours is about 7 years old based on our estimates. It’s been having too many problems lately and the icemaker is broken, for the second time.
LG 
LG 
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