I am obsessed with having a place where I belong. I want a home where I wake up every morning and think yes, this is it, what a beautiful place. Now I will grow something in the garden or make dinner or a quilt or a fire. I will belong there always and years from now remember things as they happen there. Now where is this place, should I make it myself or take over someone else's memories? It must be in a location close to my family and under a lot of trees. A small orchard would not hurt. Am I asking too much? Perhaps the orchard is a bit much.

we had a good salad on the weekend which I will record here for posterity. It included:

1 heart of romaine, chopped
1 shallot chopped up very fine
1 lemon cucumber from the garden
some of orangette's red wine vinaigrette
1 can of tuna packed in olive oil
tons of chopped up cilantro and salt & freshly ground pepper

Apparently tuna and cilantro love each other. This was the perfect salad for coming home from a week of wedding festivities on a day when we had neglected to eat breakfast: light and nutritious but substantial.

raped by color = scientific proof

The New York Times has an article on how color in the home can make you happy:

"a maximalist, color-saturated approach to interiors is a secret to happiness — maybe even the secret"

it goes to the root and makes hair grow

Well the realtor's list was not bad at all. I love his outlook on how people buy houses and hope to god he is right. His take on the craptastic backyard: people want something of their own to personalize when they buy a house, so they will like an unfinished pit of a backyard. Handy for us because our backyard is just such an unfinished pit. The most daunting of the tasks is to clean up the garage, but we would've had to do that to move anyway.

I have started to keep a journal where I can write down my little ideas about our new home and dream away to my heart's content. This has kept me from trolling the house listings so I don't get my heart broken by falling in love with something we can't buy until we get an offer.

In minorly related news I love these coffee cozies popping up here and there. Something similar is what is needed for my kitchenaid. Of course I have to wait to see how we will decorate the new hypothetical kitchen before I can make one. You see how sick I am?

We have chosen a realtor to help us on our journey. He won my heart forever by telling me our home has "pizzaz." I also really like how every time he talks about how we will handle offers he says "when we get an offer, and we will, . . ." to reassure me that it will indeed sell, we will really get offer(s). Tomorrow we get the to-do list for everything that we should do to get the house ready to show people. I am braced.