Category Archives: homemaking

Mrs. Cox Would Be Proud

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Last Monday I started the unplanned project of organizing my desk drawers. (This led to the opening of the paper storage trunk and several other cans of worms.) Between the two desks there are four (large, but shallow) drawers. Since we’ve built the desks, I’ve just been using the drawers as a safe-keeping-dumping-ground for when company came over and when I needed to use the desk top for actual work/craft stuff. Over time, each drawer kind of took on its own personality–there was the mail drawer (letters to be returned, bits of stationery, stamps, the good pens), the coupon drawer (sale ads, weekly inserts from the Sunday paper, store coupons, the random checkbook that I can never find because I use it once a year), the crafting drawer (recently used rubber stamps & inks, all of the other pens, recently purchased washi tapes, random bits of paper, photographs, fancy paperclips) and a relatively empty drawer (where I was keeping stuff for the Election party and Thanksgiving, but now that stuff is in our storage closet and miraculously the drawer hasn’t been overtaken by other stuff).

So on Friday (after procrastinating and getting the rest of the worms in order) I finally finished–the desktop is clear (except the fun stuff) and the drawers are organized. And, not only are the drawers organized, but they are beautiful–I lined them with large sheets of paper from my stash. Spending out=big win.

Meet the newly organized coupon drawer (which also holds some other things I use while I’m at the computer):

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The mail drawer (I am so excited to get some of my favorite stationery out of the second bedroom and into the desk where it’s easy to see!):

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The “extra” drawer after:

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The craft drawer:

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Next I want to hang up the art that is just sitting on the desk top (and in the closet). I’m hesitating because I’m not sure how the vintage time card holder is going to work up there. Any opinions?

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Tiny Plastic Pig

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I had the nicest teacher ever in third grade. Mrs. Cox was so patient and caring, but she was also firm. One morning when I walked into the classroom, I found the entire contents of my desk tossed on the floor and on my desktop sat a tiny plastic pig. I was a very sensitive child–a bit of a goody, goody–so at first I was stunned, then I was saddened by this “mean” act. But when I looked at Mrs. Cox, she was smiling and she said that when desks got this messy it was best to start over. That just made everything better (well, a little bit…to this day I still feel slightly mortified by that moment, even though other students–mostly boys–had pigs on their desks, too). I got to work putting my desk back together and throwing out a ton of old papers and other stuff (I was apparently a hoarder back then, too!). My third grade desk never got that messy again…but I hardly learned my lesson–I am still very messy today.

So on Monday, I pulled out the tiny plastic pig (unfortunately, this is only a metaphor…I really do need a plastic pig) and started dumping everything out of my desk drawers. What you see in the picture above is some of my desktop clutter mixed with the contents of one of the drawers. All week I’ve been working on getting my desk to “perfection” status (all while trying to remember not to let perfect be the enemy of the good!) It’s quite a challenge. Since most of my crafting happens on the desks but most of my craft supplies are in the second bedroom, the process involves a lot of walking around and deciding what should go where…and what should go into the donation pile. In other words, organizing the desk has opened a whole other can of worms that involves the spare room (and somehow the junk drawer in the kitchen). I’m trying to keep my eye on the prize: a neat & tidy & functional work surface.

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We Heart Pistachios

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We eat a lot of pistachios around here. Naoto eats them almost every night when he comes home from work. He should actually be on one of these commercials, except for the fact that most of the time we are eating Trader Joe’s pistachios. When I randomly came across the Joseph Joseph Double Dish on the internet one day (I have no idea where I first saw it), I added it to my gift list. (For the record, the price on Amazon has gone up $10 since I bought mine…what’s up with that?!) I gave the dish to Naoto for his birthday and I think he was impressed!

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It’s a genius design. The top dish holds the pistachios. When you break off the shell, you just drop it down one of the side slots and it falls into the lower bowl–out of sight! It’s perfect for a party because you don’t have to have the unsightly shell bowl on the table, and even better, if you use the dish for olives, no one has to look at each other’s slobbery pits.

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Amazon also suggests using it for edamame, but around here, we would need the jumbo version of the bowl for that to work out.

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new business card stamp!

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I’ve been wanting new business cards since I changed blogs last spring. I didn’t need them…it’s not like I have a business or anything…but I wanted a little something to stick in letters (and Christmas cards) to spread the word about the ol’ blog and my new-ish cell phone number (I’ve hidden the last few digits). I thought a stamp would be fun because I can change up the inks and the paper with my mood (which changes often, though grey always seems to be in season around here).

In my months (I don’t take decisions lightly) of scouring the internet for options, I was happy to find Ampersandity again. I love Cathie Hong’s work and we have an address stamp done in her calligraphy. (I actually won it, and she uses it on her site as an example stamp.) I love the blend of her calligraphy and the sans serif typeface and I love the dots…the dots pretty much sealed the deal for me. I’ve already purchased some peacock, paper bag and gravel business cards to get me started.

Fun times will be happening tonight while I stamp up some business cards and Christmas cards (because that stamp just arrived, too!) Never mind the fact that the house is a mess and the Christmas decorations are still strewn about…paper projects are priorities!

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calm & bright

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I pushed my Edgar Allan Poe candle to the side table to make room for my favorite candle of all time–the Paddywax Woodland candle. Hands down, the best winter-smelling candle of all time (especially if you love real pine-y scents, as opposed to Pine-Sol pine-ish scents). Placed next to my bowl of silver, gold and pearly Christmas balls, it brings a bit of Christmas to the coffee table. And, I am not lying when I tell you that the living room is the only place of calm and bright in this Christmas house…the rest of the place is a complete, dusty disaster thanks to the end of the bathroom project and the temporary relocation of ourselves and an entire closet of stuff.

This weekend we are painting the bathroom, and hopefully we (well, I) will be cleaning and making our home presentable again. I’m looking forward to the normal life the end of construction promises! Normal things like searching for the missing Christmas decorations and not sleeping in the guest room and playing fetch with Presley without feeling like a crazy cat lady in front of the contractors… And, we have a turkey hanging out in the freezer begging to be cooked up for a mini-Friendsgiving/Friendtsmas…or something like that…plenty of time to decorate and enjoy more Christmas cheer, right?

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shiny & bright (& leaning to the right)

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Our tree is up and I’ve stopped moving the ornaments around (for now)! It’s slightly less crooked from this angle (the front angle), but from the side you can tell it is leaning into the room. As long as it leans (and doesn’t topple), I’m good.

This year we chose a White Pine. It has long, soft needles and it doesn’t seem to shed as much as our other favorite choice, the Fraser Fir. Unfortunately, I bought our new lights last year with the skinnier Fraser Fir, and I think I need at least one more strand to brighten this fluffy tree up a bit…maybe next year. For now, it’s providing the required Christmas glow of the season…

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the stockings were hung…

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…on the liquor cabinet with care…

The tree is done, but I’m still fussing with it…I ran out of ornaments, so when I say I’m fussing, I’m pretty much just moving ornaments around on the tree. It’s a total waste of time. I don’t think this tree is bigger than trees we’ve had in the past, but for some reason, I feel like it needs more ornaments…it’s probably just me being all perfectionist with my crooked tree.

In other news, the bathroom is speeding right along! Tomorrow, the sanding of the drywall begins…the messy job. I’ve been holding back on the Christmas decorating because everything will be covered in dust. After tomorrow, I can go to town with my cleaning and decorating (in that order…must. clean. first!) I feel behind…but that’s nothing new around here.

And, Presley could use a new stocking, don’t you think? A little felt one that matches ours better…must think about that…

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Beep, Beep from the Tree-Mobile

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We got our tree Saturday! It was almost sixty degrees outside and we bought it from the Menards (home improvement store) parking lot…it wasn’t exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, but we got the job done.

When I was a kid, we always got a real tree. We bought ours each year at a Christmas tree farm. It was always freezing and the child-me felt like it took forever to find the perfect one. Conditioned to be tree-choosy, I used to make poor Naoto hold up dozens of trees each year for full inspection. I’d be cold, he’d be cranky…it wasn’t fun. So for the past few years, we’ve grabbed one, gave it a once-over, and as long as it was green and had branches, we bought it. And bonus points for the year we decided to stick it in the back seat instead of tying it to the roof of the car. I highly recommend the back seat method…it works for trees up to seven feet (even taller if you’re driving something larger than a Corolla!)

So, each year our tree is less than perfect, but I think that makes it more charming, right? When we put our tree up this time, we noticed that it looks straight from the front of the room, but it’s leaning desperately to the right if you look at it from the side…as long as it doesn’t topple over (crossing fingers) I’m going to be okay with a leaning tree. (If I keep lowering my standards, I’ll be satisfied with using a fallen pine branch for a Christmas tree by 2015!)

I tossed the lights on the tree on Saturday and I’m working on the ornaments today, so hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow with some pictures of the finished tree. It is almost seventy degrees here today, so I’m going to have to really imagine those snowy scenes from the Christmas music!

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my mom’s twinkie cake

When Hostess filed for bankruptcy the week of Thanksgiving (which, for the record, is very sad to me…even though I have probably only eaten five Twinkies in my whole life and even though hopefully some other brand might buy the product rights and the Twinkie may make its comeback in the future), I joked to my mom that she should bring her Twinkie cake for Thanksgiving dessert. I know, I know…we followed our completely traditional Thanksgiving meal with something completely nontraditional…it was delicious!

This is one of those old-school recipes that I loved as a child. Ahhh…the innocence of childhood…when I didn’t realize that blue can of Crisco was filled with artery-clogging hydrogenated oil…sigh…Now, as a semi-responsible adult, I am a label reader and I manage to talk myself out of many treats that list hydrogenated oil in the ingredients. I make an occasional exception (Chewy Sweettarts are one.) and to me, this Twinkie cake is one of the best exceptions.

This recipe comes from my mom’s recipe box, and her recipe says it comes from her mom’s kitchen. (We all have these recipe cards in our recipe boxes.) I’m sure my grandmother found the recipe somewhere else, maybe from one of those church cookbooks where recipes get passed around to all of the members of the tiny, small-town congregation. And, I should also say that this cake isn’t meant to be one of those fake-out recipes…it doesn’t taste exactly like a Twinkie. It lacks the weird sponginess and the sugary, light and fluffy filling. The cake (from a box-mix) is dense and moist and the filling is rich and creamy. It has the spirit of a Twinkie, but it is decidedly homemade (and delicious.)

 

Twinkie Cake

Box of Yellow cake mix
Prepare cake per directions.
Bake in jelly roll pan
Cool

For the filling:

5 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk
Cook over low heat until thick like paste.  Cool

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oleo*
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Crisco
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat well. Cream together until fluffy.
Add the thick flour & milk mixture once cooled. Beat again until fluffy.

Slice cooled cake in half. Spread fluffy filling on half & then put remaining half on top.
Refrigerate. ENJOY!!

If you’d like to make a HoHo cake, use chocolate cake mix instead.

In spite of the fact that my dad ate three (!!!) pieces on Thanksgiving, we still had some cake leftover for Naoto & I to enjoy over the weekend. mmmm…

 

*oleo=margarine

 

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the season of Turkey leftovers…

We cook a fifteen pound bird for Thanksgiving dinner, and since we were only feeding five people, we had some a lot of leftovers. On Saturday night, we made Mexican turkey soup, a modified Ina Garten–better known as the Barefoot Contessa–recipe. It was the perfect recipe for our leftovers because we got to use up the rest of the turkey and the leftover celery and carrots from the dressing.

Mexican Turkey Soup-

original recipe here, or it can be found in Barefoot Contessa At Home.

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups onions, chopped

1 cup celery, chopped

4 large garlic cloves, chopped

2.5 quarts chicken stock (or turkey stock if you made some)

28oz whole tomatoes, crushed

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon coriander

1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

leftover turkey (Ina’s recipe calls for 2 whole chicken breasts, we used about 4 cups of turkey)

salt & pepper to taste

In a Dutch oven, cook your carrots and celery in the olive oil for about 10 minutes, then add the garlic and cook for another 30 seconds. (Please don’t burn the garlic.) Then add the stock, the can of tomatoes, cumin, coriander, cilantro and leftover turkey. Bring everything to a boil, then cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

We garnished our soup with store-bought tortilla chips and fresh avocado and finished everything off with a squeeze of lime. The lime makes the soup.

You can also top the soup with shredded cheddar or sour cream.

Either way, don’t forget about the lime.

 

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