yesterday at the farmer's market I picked up some fresh black-eyed peas. They made a nice soup last night loosely based on this epicurious recipe.

I omitted the red wine vinegar becuase I forgot. Instead I just sauteed the onion and garlic, threw in 4-5 chopped up roma tomatoes leftover from sauce making, then dumped in a storebought carton of chicken stock, the black-eyed peas (a regular sized baggie-full), oregano and chili powder, and simmered for maybe an hour. Later it looked too chicken brothy so I threw in some quinoa and that made a very nice mushy soup for an almost fall Sunday evening.

craving the next step:

Pouring over books, photos of beautiful houses painted in bright colours, with kids and dogs running through them.

move to Uruguay?

new home in Astoria

I am not good with liminal times. Everyday I wonder if I should plant seeds for a winter garden.

I like these two hanging lights from Dutch by design, especially the Icarus with it's giant angel wing. Very cool name too. The Delight would make a nice bedside hanging lamp but you have to use an energy efficient bulb. I would want to make sure they had some besides the compact flourescents because you cannot use those with a dimmer, which is a deal breaker in the bedroom.

So far 3 people have been by to see the house. Not that many. Meanwhile I am starting to doubt how badly I want to sell. As autumn approaches my instincts tell me to dig in and get under a blanket for winter. I will not be able to buy a better kitchen for roasting chickens or simmering stock. This is the time of year when Thaddy first came into my life. I remember our first date when I leave the windows open day and night and my feet want slippers in the evening. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. I wonder if I will recognize this feeling in another house.

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.

Thaddy and I have decided to put our house on the market so we can move downtown to be closer to our family and part of a real community. Suburbia has been good to me but I am feeling it's contraints more every day. I am of course obsessed with putting down roots, roots, roots, and I hope the new place will be our family home for good. It should take our current house a good long time to sell but I already have the whole garden planned out for the new house, wherever it may be. I hope we will be there to rake the leaves this Fall and to make eggnog for Christmas but it could take even longer than that. Remind me to be patient.

proof of dorkiness:


kitties love quilts and I love them both!

In other dorky news, I am super excited that I get to stay home from hanging out with friends to instead paint trim in my house and repair the kitchen floor. How to make this weekend complete? Soak some chickpeas for soup.

words of the Pie Queen ring true:

What is this life I'm living here? It feels like I'm just marking time, somehow, waiting for the life I really want to start.

My new favorite thing in the world is this Strawberry Frozen Yogurt from Mr. David Lebovitz's website. It is the most delicious and refreshing, most summeriest, wonderfulest thing in the world. I've made two batches this week with plans for more this weekend. Thinking about doubling the recipe and putting some in little popsicle molds.

This is the abomination pieced together (decided to go with it to be practical, it's my new middle name!). I think the main problem is the small stripe fabric. Any opinions? I was trying to go with a style I am not comfortable with but I think I went too far. I hate that little flowered fabric, I'm actually pissed to have the leftovers in my stash now. Actually something in deep purple would look cool for the small stripe.

I decided to do my sister's wedding quilt like this beautiful and classic squares design instead of that modernist abomination. Well, it's not that bad but just too boring to make. I think the recipients will like this squares design in the pale blue plus cream and beige color scheme I had already planned. But now I will have to scrounge a bunch more creamy-beigey fabrics, looks like she used about 10 in the inspiration piece. Somehow don't have any in my stash, sort of like I never use those colors. . .

Experienced a very unpleasant crafty block this weekend. After getting my crafty room into tip top (well, pretty good) shape on Saturday, I then had trouble crafting anything on Sunday. Here's what happened:

1. I have decided to do this type of modern quilt for my sister's wedding present. The style of her home is very restrained so, to say the least, it is very difficult for me to come up with something which I will be happy to make and that they will be happy to use. The bulk of the quilt will be beige with a larger blue print at the top and a strip of some little flowery stuff separating them. The problem is I hate working with big pieces of fabric. Shouldn't take long to put the top together, but I'm not looking forward to it.

2. I made two skirts and wanted to finish the hems on both this weekend. Unfortunately one is pretty tight and makes an uncute crease at the top of my thighs so I may have to pitch it. (Or I could hold onto it until I lose some weight in my butt, Hah!!!) The other is a half circle skirt in some squirrely fabric with a muslin lining sewn into the side seams. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to hem this thing with the outter and the lining, one keeps bunching when I try to do them together and I can't do them separately because of the side seam situation. Maybe I can get Thad to pin it while I am wearing it but he was busy playing Dungeons and Dragons at the time.

3. My Mom made the brilliant suggestion that I should put a quilt up over the mantel where I need a nice big piece of art but have no budget. Perfect, just my style and free! So I pulled one million scraps out of the scrap bin to make this wall hanging quilt but felt so guilty about the other two projects that I didn't even work on it.

I am feeling rather poorly today because I started a kickboxing class on Wednesday. Of course, I was trying to be tough, but I've kickboxed myself into a state of near total paralysis. Laughing and sneezing are completely of the question.

This past weekend was the first one in a long time that actually felt like it was two full days. I got to work on projects, cuddle with my husband, eat at my favorite restaurant, lounge for hours in front of the tv (the next season of project runway starts next month!), hang out with friends, and oggle kitties. Heavenly! Plus it was nice and hot, ok maybe too hot at 109F, but it felt like a real summer vacation. That's a feeling I've been chasing for months.

Apartment Therapy: Week 3

I ran into a little momentum problem in week three. Since our home started feeling so much better I became less motivated to work on it and more motivated to relax in it. Have to stay focused!

1. Vacuumed all the floors again, so addictive. This makes your home feel so clean and happy.

2. I already have a working system instead of a landing strip so I nixed that idea. Instead I decided to knock down all the cobwebs in the outter entrance to our home, replant the succulents from their broken down plastic pots, and sweep that area and the driveway to cut down on tracking crap into the house. It is very nice now.

3. No repairs were done this week. Minus 16 points!

4. The only subscription we have was a gift from my mother-in-law. I decided to take this to work every month to share on the coffee table in the office instead of letting it languish somewhere because I feel like I should read it.

5. Apply the 80/20 color rule. Yeah . . . this is not really for me. My Apartment Therapy partner (Hi Mom!) commented that I use the 80/20 rule backwards, meaning I have 80% color and 20% neutrals. This is how I like it, it's my personal style. See week two for ambivalence on whether this personal style can be considered stylish or not.

6. This week I made lamburgers with tons of herbs from the garden. They were very delicious and Thad claimed he loved it (his comment was "I love this"). I also made arugula pesto which was quite pungent, but I still ate it all and really enjoyed it.

7. I failed to design an invitation for my housewarming, but I think I'll be doing photo postcards from a service. Does that count?

Since I know at least one of you is into this kind of debauchery, here's another installment of kitty porn.