Things I'm currently obsessed with . . .

I've been known to be a little OCD - sometimes more than others. Lately I've been noticing some of the things that I've become a little obsessive over. I don't think there's anything too weird . . . but I could be wrong.

#1 - Foaming Soap - Grandma Merry introduced me to foaming soap and she was convinced that it lasted longer and was just better. I wasn't truly convinced until I realized that Annie was using four squirts of the other stuff and standing in front of the sink for an hour trying to rinse it off. With foaming soap, you actually start the hand washing process before you turn on the water - and it cuts my scrubbing-off-dried-caked-on-soap time in half. I had a house full of preschoolers who didn't need more than one squirt a piece to get their very dirty hands clean - it just fills up your hand. I'm literally in love. I also love that you can make your own foaming soap by using 1/3 regular soap and filling up the rest of the container with water, so it also appeals to the cheapskate in me. My one problem? You can't find pretty containers that also foam - I've resorted to taking off the labels off of some Dial containers that aren't terribly ugly. It works.

#2 - Nice sheets. What more in a good night's sleep do you need than 100% cotton, at least 400 thread count (My favorites right now are 600), and forget the Egyptian cotton - it feels too much like gauze. I like the crispness of Sateen. If they are on sale - that's a major bonus. TJ Maxx and Tuesday Morning always have really nice sheets for a lot less than you can find them at Bed Bath and Beyond. And we found some really nice sheets at Target last year at Christmastime - if I remember they were $14 for the fitted and $14 for the top sheet. $30 for great King Sized sheets!! Ahhh - sleep.

#3 - Cloth Napkins. This has been an obsession for a little while. I've stopped buying them because I literally do not have any more room. I love how inexpensive they are to keep up, I love that I never have to buy them again and I love how they dress up a normal dinner table. I also love that Annie already knows how to put a napkin in her lap (it's hard to do with a paper napkin). I love my collection - I have really old ones, some hand-woven napkins I got from Grandma Franck, crisp white ones with a little embroidered fleur-de-lis, yellow and red checked ones that look like a picnic, there's ones that look like Winter and Fall - I still have and use the ones I got from my wedding (thanks Grandma Livingston!!). I just get happy thinking about them. Weird, huh?

#4 - Ribbon. I can't resist the cheap thrill I get when I see a new ribbon I don't currently own. I used to make Annie's bows out of them, but she now has so many bows that I can't see any reason to make another. Plus, she doesn't like them in her hair except on Sundays now. Now I just organize my precious ribbons by color and admire them. I use them in my scrapbooking pages a lot, but not enough to ever diminish my supply. They are so pretty just sitting there, waiting to be used.

#5 - Keeping my stovetop and sink clean. I don't know what happened to me when we moved into this house, but for some reason I cannot stand to see my pretty ceramic-topped stove covered in gunk. I use the special ceramic cleaner a couple times a week and I get a little miffed if something drops on the eye while I'm cooking. With my sink - I actually thought that there was something wrong with it. It got so that I thought my sink was scratching (it's a black cast iron sink with an enamel finish). I called the manufacturer and they sent me a special "sink cleaner." I was so excited! It makes my sink pristine. I can't go to bed without my sink being completely cleared and washed.