Under Construction

Domesticity

I'm not a SAHM but I'm playing one this week. I know it probably gets tedious if you do it week after week and I certainly know it's exhausting but oh my goodness it is so. much. fun! 

Biscuit and I have been living it up and I've gotten completely domesticated.  My first day off, I made a pie during breakfast.  Then I bought and hung a clothesline (and wrote about it over here because I was so excited--I am very easily entertained). I also bought Biscuit sheets for her big girl bed (at the thrift store so they are hanging out to dry). Let's sort of skip over the part where it seems I bought the wrong size of sheets.  They work okay anyway.

Then Tuesday I had to go back to work. Blah blah blah. But Tuesday night was our family date with another family (they cook for us every other Tuesday. Apparently we are good company even though all we ever do is bring ice cream to go with the homemade pie our hosts provide. Wow, I feel like a schmuck writing that but they are very nice and feed us very well twice a month. And they have very cute kids who play chase with Biscuit so she is guaranteed to sleep). ANYWAY in addition to being good cooks they also have a hyper productive peach tree so I suggested we make JAM!

Today (another day off, woohoo) Donna (generous hostess with the mostess) showed up with a FIVE GALLON BUCKET full of peaches (no photo but I swear it was full) and we made 30+ jars of jam in 5 peach related flavors.

(I call this "Jam Still Life") tee hee hee

Tonight we did a jammy taste test, here are the results:
Peach/Plum (using way overripe Santa Rosa plums): Overall best jam
Peach/Blueberry: Mr. H's favorite, tasted sort of like strawberry
Peach/Ginger: Not gingery enough for me
Peach/Peach: Too sweet
Sugar free Peach: quite tart but loads of flavor

Jam making=domestic fun (and very messy kitchen). I highly recommend it.

I'll close with an image that proves I was far to busy making jam to properly put my daughter down for a nap in her big girl bed

I guess she rocked herself to sleep after her story. She slept like this for 2 hours ;)

P.S. I was excited to see the Silhouette Tutorial made it over to the CRAFT blog. That was cool! Thanks for the mention, CRAFT.

I guess she was tired

Today Biscuit took a FOUR hour nap which left us plenty of time to:
Eat the most yummy lunch ever:

Fresh tomatoes and cheese curd from the farmers market mixed with basil from our garden, olive oil, salt, pepper and a dash of balsamic vinegar. Yum! Nectarine from the farmers market. Beer. Sourdough bread from, you guessed it, the farmers market. And two bite sized cookies, one lemon, one lime, from this book.

With our tummies full we tackled the installation of the desk Mr. H recently finished and turned this:

Into this:

Yes, I still need to clean it up a bit. I don't think the can of white lithium grease needs to stay on the window sill.

Then the nap continued and I had time to catch up on some trashy television (If you must know, it was E True Hollywood Story--The Mickey Mouse Club)

Unrelated to the super-nap but related to finishing the living room remodel, I wanted to show the project finished last weekend.  Just before the Christmas party Mr. H and I went nuts and got a TON done in the living room including partially installing the entertainment center. Then, for six months, it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

Again, a little more clean up is required.

Last week I spent three days in San Francisco on a work trip. Sorry for the lack of blogging but in between sessions I was busy enjoying the city and trying to get work done remotely.  It's a crazy month at work; I'll check in here when I can.  Hope you are having a great weekend!

Planning

Planning to have friends over for dinner tomorrow (I should do this more often).
Step 1

Step 10ish (from Barefoot in Paris)

Maybe step 20ish should be cleaning my house!

Also, planning to get my act together with Etsy.

My business card stamp came in the mail so I can make business cards out of recycled paper (in this case an outdated brochure from work). Speaking of which, does anyone know a place to get big stacks of paper cut? I know Kinkos does it (for $1.25 PER CUT!) so I'm looking for something a bit more affordable.  If nothing else, I can spend a few fine evenings with my papercutter. I guess now I just need to have an actual business to have cards for!

Some days this is as good as it gets

Have I mentioned we're project people?  We're good at projects. We like projects. We aren't so good at the daily maintenance kind of crap. 

Last weekend I unclogged the dishwasher drain just so I could accomplish a house project that would last for more than, oh, 60 minutes. I figure an hour is about the staying power for any of my usual home chores. Dishes, laundry, cleaning always undone in a matter of minutes.

And cleaning isn't exactly our specialty. We once stripped our bathroom down to the studs and remodeled it to the tune of thousands of dollars and weeks of work just to remove a really disgusting smell (that turned out to be from a molding cup of coffee left in the vanity by the previous owner--don't even get me started on that!)

So when our kitchen looks like this:

I consider it a major accomplishment (That is a clean kitchen by the way. I know, not Martha Stewart clean, but the dishes are done and the counters are wiped and the dinner leftovers are put away so it's clean!)

Um, try not to look at the random crap on the bar--I'm not thaaat good.

Now that you've seen our kitchen, you can understand why a complete kitchen remodel is the next project on the list. Ripping out the counters totally beats scrubbing the grout!

If you know a good kitchen designer in Sacramento please let me know ASAP. We need a professional to moderate our "where the heck should we put the stove/oven" debate. We can only agree that where it is now SUCKS.

The ugly cabinets and nasty tile will be gone soon.  Wish us luck.

2721

Is anyone else enjoying 3191?  It's a project between good friends on opposite coasts, 3191 miles apart, who take a photo every morning and post them side by side.  They will do this every day for a year. 

I love the "do one thing every day" ideas and I have a best friend on the opposite coast  (2721 miles by Google maps) but when I told her about this idea I believe her response was, "you know I'm not going to take a photo every day, right?"  Right. Me either. I'm not a morning person.

But, it's fun to see what Mav and Stephanie are up to (lots of oatmeal eating).  What struck me today was how both of them use such beautiful objects in their everyday lives.  Handmade ceramic bowls for oatmeal, beautiful linens on the table, embroidered pillow cases. The kind of things I would think too precious for everyday use. 

I got an email from my mother-in-law yesterday.  She's been feeling a bit under the weather and has been laying low and doing some sewing. I gave her this book for Christmas and I guess she's putting it to use. I hope she doesn't mind my posting this great excerpt from her email.

"I have copied more embroidery patterns onto dish towels than tastefully possible.  Everything has a flower, bird, teapot, fruit...some with a rhyme - some no rhythm.  Unfortunately, as I told you earlier, you will probably have to be the recipient of some of these...just take them with a smile and say "nice"....I had bought a lot of flannel last year, so I'm making more pillow cases (probably will  have embroidery on them too)." 

So when those beautifully tea potted and fruited tea towels come my way, not only will I smile and say, "nice" I'll hang one on the stove and start putting it to good use. Just like the great yo-yo pillow  she made us for Christmas. (sorry for the bad photo, it's much nicer in person).  Keep on sewing, Jan. Your projects will always have a good home with us.

It's almost playtime

In the living room, we started with this. And then this (over Christmas). What I wanted was a comfortable room with hardwood floors, a TV watching space, a desk, and a nice play space for Biscuit.  I also wanted some extra seating and storage and thought an under the window bench would fill the bill.

A trip to Ikea yielded this (Ivar TV stand with casters):

And some paint* and a cushion completed the look:

So here's the almost complete play area including a painted magnetic board so we stop spending so much time on the dirty kitchen floor (Biscuit loves magnet toys).

*A note on paint.  In the last 10 years I have TWICE painted my bedroom dayglo green in the effort to achieve a "bright and cheerful" look. I've finally learned my lesson about choosing paint from the little paint chips at the store.

I don't have the patience for test swatches on the walls so now I go with the combos suggested in the free books in the paint department.  Our living room is from the "sporty" collection at Ace Hardware.  The booklet suggests four colors that coordinate and who am I to argue with the experts?  We used the orange and cream on the walls and planned to use the blue and green as accents. When we got the turquoise rug the blue wasn't going to work so I bought the green paint.  Turns out "puke" is a fitting description of the color. It is really gross.  Luckily the cushion covers some of it and, as Mr. H pointed out, it really does play nicely with the orange and cream.

P.S. The cushion is the project that required THREE trips to the fabric store over the weekend.  Stay tuned tomorrow for news on my revolutionary cushion-making discoveries.

Channeling Betty Crocker

Or maybe Clotilde Dusoulier? I was on a cooking kick. And by that I mean I cooked actual food for dinner 3 nights in a row and even coordinated a side dish! I consider myself very picky about choosing nutritious food for Biscuit but when it comes to Mr. H and I, I'm not sure what we eat most of the time and if we do eat dinner it's usually at 10 pm.

But in the past week I've made meatloaf (recipe in the January Country Living) with mashed potatoes and green onion fritters (saw those on Rachael Ray).  Then Cauliflower Cheese Soup* with Dried Pear and Cheese Scones (from Chocolate and Zucchini).  I was having so much fun cooking that I started thinking about New Year's resolutions along the lines of "cook my way through the Enchanted Broccoli Forest Cookbook" or "try 3 new recipes from every magazine I receive."  My hopes were high.  And then I remembered that I was on vacation last week. Hmm, maybe that had something to do with the time available for made-from-scratch side dishes.

Anyway, while on this cooking kick I was at the Farmer's Market and bought beautiful chard as well as cool looking oyster mushrooms and some really spicy jalapeno cheddar cheese.  I had in mind to make a frittata since we have learned that frittata and quiche are pretty much Biscuit's favorite foods** (minus the jalapeno cheese for her).  I was quite pleased with my "local food" meal (just saw Michael Pollan speak, Omnivore's Dilemma). [Have you read Stephanie's post this week on this topic?  My thoughts exactly]

So I had my local, small producer meal, except the eggs which were, unfortunately, from some giant egg producer place.  Thinking about my frittata I was feeling bad for the chickens (I'm not a vegetarian so you'd think I'd worry about the cows but I am currently worrying about the egg laying hens) Then  I realized that we could have hens and gather eggs in our own yard. Our neighbor has hens and even a rooster so it must be legal. Umm, but Mr. H thought it was a really bad idea.  The poop. The hassle.  The bird flu (not really, I know).  And then, in an unfortunate twist of fate, Dirty Jobs (have you seen this tv show?) aired a whole segment on the people who 'sex' chicks. It was really quite disguisting and affirming of Mr. H's fears of mess and hassle (but confirming my thought that you could order just hens sans roosters).

Until further notice eggs will be procured at the local grocery store. 

*Quick note on the soup.  Two weeks ago at the Farmer's Market I saw lots of cauliflower and resolved to find a yummy sounding recipe for cauliflower.  Found the recipe, went back to the Farmer's Market, chose and paid for cauliflower and potatoes for soup, turned to deal with fussy baby, apparently left cauliflower and potatoes with the seller.  Fortunatley did get home with head (my own, not head of cauliflower) and with Biscuit.  Rebought cauliflower at the grocery store.

**She barfed up the entire fritatta.  Mmm, not so good looking the second time around. She still doesn't chew much.