Deck the Halls with... necklaces?

I tried something different on our tree this year.

A few weeks ago, my friend Susan offered some necklaces to me that she didn’t think she would wear from her late mom’s jewelry collection. One of the ones I selected had a pendant with a pretty red rose on it.

Later I got the idea of using it as Christmas tree ornament. Last week when we decorated our tree I tried it and it did look pretty.

I thought of a few other necklace pendants I have that have sentimental value but I don’t actually wear. So, I put those on the tree as well. I want to get some thin red ribbon to tie them on with because the plane metal hooks don’t look right on them.

Here they are with the red ribbon:

The pendant from Susan's Mom

Here is one that John made when he was little for his Mum

This is from the necklace my Mom wore to our wedding

This is from a necklace that was my Aunt Carolyn's 

Now I am wondering if I might be able to re-purpose some other special things.
I have a large collection of refrigerator magnets I no longer keep on the refrigerator that are nice mementos from special places. And we have lots of shells sitting in bags and boxes that I have thought would make pretty Christmas tree ornaments if I could ever get around to doing something with them.

Later I looked at my refrigerator magnet collection. A few of them might be nice as tree ornaments, but not as many as I expected. They will take a little modification to make them work. I'm not sure they are worth it though. I was surprised at how little sentiment I felt toward them. Maybe it’s time to declutter them. I found a shell that would look pretty. I'll need to have John help drill holes in it to hang it with. I'm not making any promises, though.

This is my favorite Nativity scene. My parents had one like it when I was a kid. 

How is my new water habit?

It’s been 17 days since I posted about trying to drink more water.

It’s been surprisingly easy on most days to drink more than 64 ounces of fluids. In fact, most days I drank a lot more than that.

My average for the last 17 days was 97 oz per day.

It got more difficult to keep to plain water after the first day or two. But tea and coffee count too. I am giving myself grace. After all the point is to stay hydrated not to win an award for asceticism! (I usually stick to decaf or herbal teas and coffee when I have them.) I also drink a little juice with meals.

Busy days are hardest to keep up. That’s not surprising. I already knew that.

My lowest day was 82 oz. That was Thanksgiving Day which was the busiest day. It was over 64 oz. So, I exceeded my goal amount but during the busiest part of the day I didn’t drink much and got kind of parched. I’ve been told by various medical professionals that it is best to spread fluid intake out over the day and not load up a lot at one time to try and catch up. That is definitely a challenge when I’m busy.

I also noticed a pattern. If I don’t drink much one day then I drink a lot the next and then I don’t feel like drinking as much the next, and so on. Maybe that is OK if it isn’t too extreme.

For example, the day after Thanksgiving I drank the most--120 oz. That is a swing of 38 oz from the day before. It is definitely the widest swing from one day to the next. Usually the swings are between 8 and 16 oz which is probably more healthful.

Tracking my fluid intake is easiest when I’m home all day. The system I came up with is:

I fill a collection of 16 oz water bottles with filtered water in the morning and keep them on my counter. As I empty them I put the empties to the right and then when I get up in the morning I note down how much I drank the day before (counting what I drank in the night). Then I refill them and move them over to the left.

This was this morning. The bottles to the right are what I drank yesterday and last night. The bottle to the left was the one I used from to make my hot water this morning.

Here they are  refilled. The bottle on the right is the one I used out of for my hot water this morning. 

When I want some tea or coffee I pour the water from a bottle into my mug and then pour it into the electric kettle to heat. (The missing bottle is in my office where I am working to write this.)

I seem to drink about 5.5 of the bottles of water per day plus about 16 oz juice.

Usually there is one full bottle left for the next day so I can use that for my morning hot water before I count and refill the bottles from the day before.

Days when I am out a lot are definitely trickier. When I go out I usually take water from one of these bottles and then try to remember to put it back if I didn't drink it all. It's not very convenient. I may stop doing that. If I drink other things when I am out I just try to remember to note that down. I keep my notes in Evernote (an app that I have on my computer and phone)

It's been kind of fun to track all this for this short time. I probably won't do it for always. It does help me to remember when I see the visual reminder on the counter. It hasn't been hard to drink more than 64 oz. The trickier thing is to be consistent and spread it out evenly. I can definitely tell that busy days or days when I am out a lot are much harder to drink an adequate and consistent amount.

So it's nice to know that I am drinking enough.

What was disappointing is how little difference it seemed to make in my overall health. I was still having a lot of fatigue and fibromyalgia pain even on days when I was drinking a lot.

I did some research and have a theory. But I'll save that for the next post.