Last week and on the weekend I made some pillows for the futon. My theory was that if the futon was more comfortable we would start using that room more and improve the flow of our home. I was right! We flop on the futon constantly since the pillows came and Thad even napped on the futon this weekend. There actually may be a couple too many. As you can see, he is rather surrounded.

Apartment Therapy: Week 2

This week I finished doing the grout on the kitchen counter! A mere one year after remodeling the kitchen and tiling the counters, but running out of grout and the store running out of the right color of grout, only 1 linear foot from being done, I am finished! This is a wonderful weight to have off of my shoulders. Here's the rest of week 2:

1. Fix one thing yourself, this is my grouting triumph.

2. Clean the whole kitchen. I got rid of two big grocery bags of food (crappy crap) and pulled two big bags of cookware type stuff out for goodwill. Hung up an upside down flute holder for our tall champagne glasses and reorganized a lot of stuff off of the counter so there is more space and less clutter. Still waiting on a few more repairs to the kitchen since this was a big remodel with a lot of little loose ends left.

3. Bought a big Brita water filter dispenser. Nice to drink out of, but we'll see how much I like filling it.

4. Cleared off outdoor table which was in the kitchen area and moved to outside. Now that it is in business we have eaten a few meals on it.

5. Have not had much use for the outbox. I just put it wherever it goes including in the trash or goodwill pile.

6. I cooked this warm chicken salad this week and we loved it. Good for me too because I pretty much never cook meat.

7. I have chosen 7/14/2006 for the housewarming, but not quite decided what kind of party it should be yet.

A couple of things left out this week, but I'm kind of ok with that. Still very happy with the program. I will not be doing much of the style stuff because I already have a very strong style that I'm happy with, whether it's good or bad is another story . . .

what would make me happy:

affogato
bossa nova music
going in water
being tan
getting rid of lump in tummy
relaxing
true love cafe
hair cut
good book
trip to tahiti
exfoliation

seems like I could manage a few of these this summer

Apartment Therapy Week 1 is complete!

Here's what I did, or how I earned the nickname Crapsterminator:

1. Made a complete list of repairs. This is the part of the program I am most afraid of since our remodeling never really gets finished: a lot of loose ends here.

2. Vacuumed and mopped all the floors including busting out the vaccuum attachments to get in corners and under things. This felt very refreshing when complete.

3. Instead of removing one item, we took two big loads to the dump! We also cleaned up the porch including removing all spiders and their webs. This has been awesome. For my offering to the world I put an old butcher block cart out on the street and it was taken by the next day. I offered and the world accepted! Then the world gave us two more gifts: 2 donation pick ups in one week. I put out almost all of my books yesterday and have a big trashbag to fill for pickup tomorrow.

4. Bought two bunches of white Gladioulus that look stunning.

5. I sat on the futon in the outer kitchen area. This made me realize that this space is very important for my goal of entertaining. Since I don't have a budget right now to buy better seating, I think I will make a bunch of throw pillows to make the futon much more comfortable to sit in.

6. I didn't need to get earth friendly cleaning products since that is already what we use with the exception of bleach for mildewy shower grout.

It was a great start to the project and I feel very energized.

Recent Favorites:

Apartment Therapy the book - we will be doing the "cure" starting this week!
Strauss Family Creamery Plain Whole Milk Yogurt - "tastes like pudding"
Red Wine-Mustard Vinaigrette - perfect for warm weather salads
Veggie plants from the Tomato Man
In My Kitchen Garden blog, very inspirational!
I like this Rebecca Normal Silver jewelry

Update: Sacramento Region's Bike Commute month. So far I have commuted a total of 21 miles or a total of 7 days home and back. I am aware that it doesn't sound very impressive but I live in SUV central, it's very subversive!

This is a great page about raising chickens, including about butchering! I do not think I have the guts for this but I wish I did. The girls are here! Eggs should start coming in October.

Now that I have upgraded to flickr pro I just don't know if you guys will be able to handle the cuteness in my life! I am truly blessed. Cheesy but true.

By popular demand! Ok, only one person asked. This is the baby Wesley Snipes (some people call him DAYWALKA). Actually he's about a year now but we still call him the baby and he still acts like it. He prefers sparkle balls to the Total Gym but my sister thinks he bears quite a resemblance to the movie star Wesley Snipes. He is easily one of the cutest cats you will ever see. Please note the white puffball on his tail.


This is a more accurate representation of Wesley Snipes' head. He has a very small head.

Last night I made a soup that I was immensely proud of while cooking. It included:

Homemade chicken stock that I made using the leftovers of an organic free range bird that we roasted;
Ranchogordo flageolet beans which I made on the weekend and have been loving this week;
zucchini that came in the box last week from Capay which I caramelized for maximum flavor;
rosemary from my garden

I think you see where I'm going with this. Could the ingredients be anymore fresh or local, should I not feel like an extreme goddess of the hearth?

It tasted like you took your Thanksgiving stuffing with a ton of gravy on top and whizzed it up in the food processor and ate it as a soup. And not in a good way. It was edible, but pretty gross. And for the warmest day of the year so far it was not exactly refreshing.

Very nice Spring weekend, we:

Painted my new room 'manilla tint' sounds horrifying but it looks like pure sunshine mixed with butter.

Shelled, and shelled again, and ate fava beans. Yum.

Tried to get chickens two more times to make a total of three. I don't remember this being so difficult before. Also, apparently you cannot arrive two hours late to an auction and expect to win anything.

Made the heaviest doorstop of an attempt at sourdough bread ever.

Planted berrgarten sage, golden sage, chives, italian parsley, fernleaf dill (sorry Julie), and only one sweet basil plant.

Used my thriving mint to make a spritzer. It was very spritzy.

How wonderful:

Between the overripe berries, the outdoor showers, the droning of the bees, the wisteria-covered arbor at sunset--are we really going to pretend that gardening is not an inherently lascivious activity?

Notmartha bought a house and I am jealous. Even though we are really settling into our space and have some fun projects coming up I can't help but envy that feeling of liminal stage and extreme clean slate.

In other news May is the month of the Eat Local Challenge and the Sacramento Region's Bike Commute month. I am declaring it my own little hippy party month.

We need some chickens. The City Chicken is the best info I've found so far about how to have chickens in the city/suburb. I love the chicken trailers, perfect for five chickens or less in a mild environment like the Sacramento area.

Now that it's Spring we will have:

special cake held on outstretched hands.
barbeques at dusk with that cut grass smell
shiny eyed snuggles in the grey when the day has plenty of time
good showers after getting very dirty planting
smooth sheets, not fuzzy anymore
strawberries soon
sandals and no socks

I got a KitchenAid as a wedding present! In color Ice, as in bling bling! But I don't want to be ostentations, nor do I want it getting dirty while it sits out on the counter ready to make cookies at a moment's notice (did I mention I'm getting fat). So I'm thinking it needs a cover. I was planning on sewing, but look how cute is this little rainbow knitted number. For a teapot of course, but same basic idea.

And speaking of unctuous potions, I've really been enjoying Luckyscent. You can buy samples of most of the perfumes and I got the coconut body scrub which is incredible. Also they recently opened a store called Scent Bar! Now why didn't I think of that name? Oh wait, I did.

I've been getting a tad fat lately and I'm really enjoying it. After all of the wedding stress and wedding working out I now have the luxury of becoming quite fat and lazy. My bottom is always big so I don't notice that too much but my belly and breasts are growing. Between you and me I think I'm pretending that I'm pregnant, that's what you do after you get married right? And pregnant people are entitled to lay around eating rich foods and slathering their round bodies in unctuous potions, no?

this is one of my favorite feelings and something I think about constantly with my own home:

Everything soft and gradual. And the rain falling down. And strangely, my sheets and covers even felt like Swedish ones. Sheets and covers always feel a specific way to me in Sweden. It’s like they’re all some uniform weight and texture there, that they are not here. My body feels different under them. I had shaved my legs recently and the smoothness felt different. I felt a bit like a child. Protected and calm, the way I felt at my grandparents’.

I think back to my friends’ houses when I was little and even friends’ houses now. They all have such a specific feel to them. It's neat how everyone's space has its own feeling. And it’s not that I would choose to furnish my house the way my grandparents did. But I still loved the feeling of their house because it felt like them. It was filled with them. I’m sure sights, smells etc. will remind me of them and the feeling in their house, like the way my room reminded me last night.

this is nice:

I'm calling my theory the Goldilocks Theory, in honor of that other searching girl, and it's about finding a thing, a size, that is just right for you. Whether it's a house, a yard, a city, a store, a group of friends, a number of blogs, a job, an amount of work, a number of emails you can answer well, a number of handbags, a number of new product lines for spring, even when people are yelling at you for more, and for more faster. There's just got to be a size, a pace, a place that's "just right," within all these genres, don't you think? And if we try to find the things that are just right, do you think that adds up to happiness and peace?
I'm not sure. I might just pretend that it does and see what happens.

Good to remember when you feel like a lot of things went wrong.