My friend Cheryl gave me this little pitcher last week, and it's the perfect size and color to hold the tallest of my johnny-jump-ups, plus a couple straggler pansies and some lemon balm. Thanks again, Cheryl, I love it!
I went to my favorite nursery today and salivated over the herbs. I wasn't in the mood to buy and plant yet, just to look. I've been perusing my herb books and found a few that I'd like to grow, but I'm not sure how far afield I'm going to have to go to find them.
I love thymes, I have several different varieties growing out front, and they're starting to sneak through the rock wall very picturesquely, which is what I was hoping for. I found another variety today that I HAVE to get...it had the happiest green and yellow leaves and a fabulous lemon smell. But it wasn't lemon thyme...I can't remember the name. It was darling.
They also had a gorgeous purple basil and a Greek columnar basil; I think I'm going to get both of those. I planted a plain old basil last year, and it loved the hot, hot sun out front.
Also a bronze fennel that was SO pretty. I've never grown fennel before, and I think this one would make a wonderful contrast to all the green herbs and perennials.
I just wandered along, brushing and stroking and smelling...so much fun. The mints smelled like heaven, and I think I'm going to do some peppermint and something else to contrast with it in one of my flower boxes out back on the deck. They're built into the benches in the seating area, so you have to fill them with something or they're just boxes of dirt, which is hardly an accent. I tried to grow flowers in them last year, and the sun was just so iffy. I wonder if white impatiens and dark green peppermint would do well in the same box. It could look wonderful...theoretically, anyway.
The weather remains cloudy and unsettled-feeling, and my face remains swollen and tender. I'm usually not one to cry for the sun, but I'm missing it!
I think the pollen and weird weather have finally overwhelmed my sinuses--today I feel like I'm breathing through a sandbag placed on my face. I always seem to go along fine in the spring and fall pollen seasons, until one day my nose says, "Okay, that's it, I've had it!" Today may be that day.
I went to the library today and managed to find a few books that looked appealing, but my outstanding overdue fine is such that I couldn't take 'em out. I had 35¢ in cash on me--not quite enough to pay it! Foiled again in my quest for reading material. I started The Great Gatsby last week, but lost the book somehow in the midst of our living room emptying. Can you believe I had four years of high-school English and was an English major in college, and still have never read Gatsby? Shameful!
So I've been contenting myself with a couple gardening books, dreaming about what could be. That's kind of fun, but I'd kill for a really, really good mystery! (So to speak.)
I made another Simply Recipes recipe for dinner yesterday--Chicken Marinara, though I would think of it more as chicken parmesan. It was very delicious, and I served the extra marinara sauce over penne. LOVE that blog.
Many of us are thinking about what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday. I've only been a Virginian for four years, but it was apparent from the start what a special place VT holds in many people's hearts here. I keep thinking about my own college days and how a campus feels like a safe little oasis from the world outside. Seems like there are no safe places anymore. I can't imagine how terrifying yesterday was for the students and professors there. Let's keep them all in our thoughts and prayers.
Ka-POW! Boom boom boom boom BOOM!
Ai-eeeeeee!!!!!
Bambambambambambam!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Auuuugghhhhhh!!!!!
BAM! Ka-POW! BAM!!!!!
p-shing, p-shing, p-shing!
BANG!
Aaahhhhhhhhhh!
RatatatatatatatatatTAT!
Ka-POOOOOWWWWW!!!
Can someone explain to me why men love these kinds of movies?
Just wonderin', while the walls rattle.
Is there anything as wonderful as green leaves and grass in the spring? We're having a rainy day today--the first in ages--and the backyard is so green, it makes me catch my breath every time I walk into the kitchen or dining room and see it through the windows.
I tried to capture some of it through the kitchen window, but it doesn't really convey the GREENness of it all. It's gorgeous.
Yesterday we finished getting the front flower bed weeded and put down some landscape liner in the parts where we won't be planting, at least not anything small. This week I'm hoping we can get some mulch for the whole thing, and then I'll be ready to plant.
Our front bed is huge--it runs across the front of the house and down along the side of the yard, and last year was the "establishing" stage, where we made the rock wall border, filled it with dirt, and added some plants here and there: herbs by the front walkway, perennials here and there, annuals along the front. Nothing except the herbs really looked or did very well.
This year, I can see that we've created something. The perennials that turned up their toes for me last summer are coming back, and the perennial herbs have been in full leaf for at least a month. The pansies I put in last fall are blooming their hearts out, and there's definitely a plan in sight. I can see where to go from here. It's so satisfying, after mostly muddling around cluelessly last summer and ending up with not much of anything to show for it.
And now it's raining, and everything will be even better for it. And I can sort of see what needs to go into the bare spots. A fabulous feeling.
Today I'm washing towels, and putting away the last of the stuff we had to move out to have the carpets cleaned, and I also baked some oatmeal cookies from this recipe at Simply Recipes. I used dried cherries instead of raisins, almonds instead of walnuts, and added a little almond extract to the dough. They're delicious! Todd is working industriously in the garage, humming away with Barenaked Ladies. It's a good day to stay inside and be comfortable.
Happy birthday to my sweet sister-in-law, Tracy--it was great chatting with you today! I'm glad you were born and found your way into our family!
There's a phenomenon that happens once or twice a year in the scrapbooking world. A phenomenon that reduces otherwise normal women to the level of desperate junkies on the prowl for a fix.
Yes, Target has document boxes in the Dollar Spot again.
What is a document box, you ask? It's a shallow, transparent, hinged plastic box with a clasp, big enough to hold a small stack of 8.5x11 papers.
But that's not what scrappers use them for. It just so happens that document boxes are the perfect size to hold foam stamps, acrylic stamps, acrylic mounts, unmounted stamps, and...well, I don't know what-all other uses there are, since I just put stamps in mine. Often foam stamp sets, in particular, come in unwieldy packages that require jigsaw-puzzle skills to cram all the stamps back in. Document boxes store flat and you just pop one open, pick your stamp, use it, put it back and move on with your life. Convenient and cheap, is there any better combination?
So once or twice a year, Target puts these in their Dollar Spot and then the hysteria begins on the scrapbooking message boards. Which stores have them? Does X store have them yet? Has anybody spotted them in Cleveland yet? Or Grand Rapids?
They usually come out with the back-to-school stuff, but this year Target decided to put them out in the post-Easter products. Probably because some number-cruncher somewhere noticed that they fly out of the stores in the fall, so maybe they should put them out more often.
I noted with interest the first sighting of the boxes on the Two Peas board, a couple days ago, since I have several sets of stamps that I bought since the last time the boxes were out, and I could use some more boxes.
My friend Cheryl snapped into action, checking the Targets in Williamsburg and here in Newport News yesterday, but didn't have any luck. Today I had to go up to Williamsburg, and dropped by the Target, and--there they were. Fifteen left, and I bought 'em all.
Oh yes, that's what makes these buggers so elusive. Even if your store does get them in, you have to be there right after they hit the shelves, or someone will come in and buy them all, and then you're just out of luck. Like all the Williamsburg scrappers who will show up at Target today. Heh heh.
Many people buy them and sell 'em on Ebay at an inflated rate, which I find to be disgusting behavior. Me, I got five for me and ten for Cheryl. I'm generous like that!
Now I have thirty-one wonderful document boxes stacked neatly in the closet, with all my foam stamps tucked inside. And I can retire from the hunt, rest assured that my document box needs have been met until next time. Ahh.
Did you ever have one of those weeks where you seem destined to look like a total idiot everywhere you go?
That's totally the kind of week I'm having. That's all I have to say about that.
The carpet cleaners have come and gone, and the carpet looks much better. Much cleaner, anyway. Now I'm going to tape off the trim in the living room and paint it while I have an empty room. Can I get a *groan*? I hate to paint. But the trim is sadly in need of a couple nice fresh white coats. I might do the dining room, too, if I get a big blast of mojo.
And then we get to move all the stuff back in. I'm going to weed it out as I move it...there are lots of old catalogs and magazines that need to go, and Todd has a whole mess of mags and booklets that he needs to put elsewhere. I'm also going to pare down the books, AND I think I may take some of our lesser-loved DVDs and put them in a CD holder booklet so their cases aren't taking up room on the shelves. I might try to get rid of a few, too, if Todd will let me.
I just want to have a paper- and pile-free home. No clutter! Is it possible? I used to be pretty good at it, but we seem to be getting more cluttered over the years.
(PeeWee's Playhouse, anyone?)
I think I mentioned before that I'm working on turning my scraproom into more of a computer/sitting room, and I'm looking for furniture to accomplish this.
What I really wanted was a comfy chair to sit in and read or sew, especially late at night when I can't sleep. One night a month or so ago we stopped by a few furniture stores just to look. The first one we went to had a couch covered in this fantastic floral fabric. A chair sat next to it that was the exact style I had in mind. Of course, this store was by far the most expensive furniture store I'd ever been in. Which isn't saying too much, but still...
We went to a few more stores, and then I hit several thrift stores, and I was planning to also go to some auctions and sales this spring and summer to see what I could find.
But I just couldn't get that fabric out of my mind. It was PERFECT for my study.
Last week I went back to see if it was as great as I remembered, and it was. Long story short (too late, you say?)--I ordered the chair I loved with the fabric I loved. And it wasn't near as expensive as I feared--the fabric was marked down and the chair was on sale. My allowance will be in arrears for a few months, but I think it will be worth it.
The saleslady printed me a copy of what it will look like, so that's what's in the picture. The arms will be different, because I changed my mind on that, and the color is brighter, but it's a good general idea. It will be about a month before I can get it, and I am DYING to have it, so I can curl up in it and relax in my study!
Now I can get a coordinating fabric to cover my thrift shop ottoman, and to make curtains, and it will all be perfectly girly, which apparently is something I'm morphing into in my middle age. Go figure!
I'm so excited...!
I had lunch with my friend Cheryl today and bestowed upon her a 2-foot-tall stack of stamping and scrapbooking magazines that I had to clean out in my ongoing Purge of the Scraproom. And we laughed at how magazines take over your life and how we should never buy any more, and then I went to Barnes and Noble and bought two magazines.
However, they were home and garden magazines, which doesn't count, since my previous problem was with hobby magazines. Right?
Also, I don't hoard home mags the way I did hobby mags. So it's all good. Yep, I don't have a problem at all.
Anyway, one of the mags I got was Romantic Homes, which seems to have taken an interesting turn recently. I used to pick it up and flip through it, and it always seemed to be all big curtain swags and floral wallpaper, but I've gotten the last couple issues, and they are really wonderful and more updated and simple.
They have a French editor who writes very peculiarly-worded articles (she has a little essay on the page I linked that is much better written) , but the pictures are pure eye candy. So check it out!
The weather is so ideal this week--cool but sunny, very refreshing. I got all my hair chopped off last week--seriously, like six inches gone--and it feels great to have a light and airy head to go with the springtime breeze. It's been years since I had my hair so short, and it's very layered so I can pull out bits with hair putty and make it look sort of tousled. I have no feminine hair skills, but I can just about manage the hair putty thing.
Now I have to go empty out the living room and dining room so the carpet cleaners can work tomorrow. They're doing the LR, the DR, and the stairs. I've taken a solemn vow never, ever to buy a house from a dog owner again...the previous owner had several dogs, and being a guy, never cleaned up after them, and the spots where they would apparently sit and shed or pee or just emanate doggy odors are just...NASTY. When the air is dry and the windows are shut, the smell isn't too bad, but when the air gets moist and the windows and doors are open--ugh.
Ideally, we'd replace the carpet, but till we can come up with that chunk of change, I'm hoping the carpet guys can at least knock down the aroma a little. We had them cleaned before we moved in, but not realizing the extent of the pet odor problem, we didn't have them do a pet treatment. Tomorrow, I will.
This is part of the reason I have a less-than-warm attitude toward most canines and their owners. Not all, but most!
Off to move books and breakables, wish me luck.
I updated my book blog today. I have GOT to go to the library and find something fun to read!
I just wanted to announce that I've been feeling much better the past few days. I stopped taking both medications that were supposed to make me feel better but just made me feel dead, and now that they're out of my system, I feel alive again. Maybe I'm just not meant for better living through chemistry.
Neither medication was keeping me alive or anything like that, so don't anybody worry that I'll be keeling over shortly!
We woke up to about 1/2" of snow over everything this morning--the first snow of the winter and we don't get it till Easter. Go figure. It's mostly melted now, but boy was it cold and breezy today. Wussy little me was whimpering all day.
We spent this morning being fiscally responsible, as Todd did the taxes and I brought our bank accounts up to date. Each of us at our computers, being industrious--it was quite impressive.
Then we went out and drove around looking at the blooming dogwoods and the redbuds and enjoying all the lovely green leaves. We stopped at the Yorktown Victory Center which we've never been to before, and took in as much as we could before closing, which wasn't much. The people that run this place and the Jamestown center put a tremendous amount of thought into it--it's truly impressive. Jamestown has a re-created Indian village, a replica of the Jamestown settlement, and reproductions of the ships the English came over in, complete with tons of re-enactors. Yorktown's site is smaller, but there is a small replica village with re-enactors in costume.
Outside the "kitchen" building, they had a huge vegetable and herb garden, with lots of stuff coming up already: peas, onions, sage, leaf lettuce and spinach. I'm so excited to plant my new herbs this spring, but seeing the veggies, especially the leaf lettuce, made me pine for a vegetable garden of my own. It would be hard to find a good spot for it in our shady back yard, but oh, how I want one. There is nothing better than a salad full of stuff out of your own garden.
They had an herb called burnet there, which I've heard of, but never seen before. I rubbed the leaves, but there was no smell. Sounds like it might be good in salads, and it was a pretty plant. I want to try some new herbs this year--tarragon, for sure, and I don't know what else.
Flowers are hard for me to grow, especially annuals. I never seem to get the spot just right, or I over- or under-water them, or maybe they just hate me, I don't know. But herbs are the darlingest things--they almost always grow beautifully, and it's easy to find lots of info about the best spots for them. And they smell good, and they're useful if you feel like using them, but you can just enjoy them if you want to. I adore growing herbs!
Speaking of flowers, I saw the most GORGEOUS planters in downtown Yorktown--two huge cement urns on either side of a store doorway, and they were planted with yellow pansies, red geraniums, and what else? A clumpy white flower that has been blooming in my garden for a couple months, and whose name I can't remember--candytuft? And there was something blue, too, maybe blue pansies. Anyway, it was stunning--so bright and colorful. I'm craving flowers and colors like candy right now. Just gotta wait till the snow is done!
...I spotted this at Two Peas and literally laughed myself to tears:
This is another fave that a certain Pea puts in her signature line every year. It always makes me laugh, every time I see it:
I'm using my blog to host a couple pictures so I can post them over at Two Peas. There's a thread about showing the oldest picture you have.
The top picture is my great-great grandmother on my mother's side, with her two sisters. (Great-great Grandma is the one on the left.) I believe this was taken in the late 1860s.
The bottom picture is my great-great-great grandparents on my father's side, and it's a metal tintype with the color painted on. I think this one is also from the 1860s.
I have lots and lots of old pictures, but I think these two are the very oldest.
Still not feeling great...it's getting tiresome. Some of it is "lady parts" trouble, which is particularly fun. I've been growling at Todd for having the good foresight to be born as a dude.
So there's just not much to update here, because I simply haven't been doing much. Let's see...I finally got my Target hutch and table set up, and they look nice. Then I sweet-talked Todd into getting me a new keyboard and mouse (both wireless) and a flat monitor. So I'm stylin' now.
I have a mountain of stuff to haul off to the local charity shop, and the house is a disaster area because Todd's been painting the stairway, which requires lots of plastic sheets and equipment sitting about. Also, to round out our conspicuous consumption for the month, Todd found a 37" flat-screen TV at an excellent price a couple weeks ago, and so that necessitated tearing our whole living room apart and rearranging it, and there are still miscellaneous piles sitting around after that.
Then Todd got under the house last weekend and wired up his surround sound speakers (the wires run under the floor so I don't have to look at them), so he finally has the home theater he's been pining for. The guy is as happy as a pig in poop...he watched Return of the Jedi on Sunday night and almost shook the house down.
Other than that, the most exciting thing that's happened is that after years of dreadful haircuts, Todd finally bought a clipper at Wal-Mart and decreed that I'm in charge of his hair from now on. I gave him his first coif on Friday, and managed to shave a bald patch over his left ear, which required him to find specialized seating positions (left side to the wall) during his business trip to Atlanta on Monday. I'm SUCH a good wife.
The trees are blooming their hearts out, and it's such a pleasure to see them. I can't wait for some green leaves to follow!
We're having a very spring-like day here today--warm and breezy and sunny. I've got the windows open, trying to blow out the winter stuffies.
I started taking birth control pills a couple weeks ago, and I think they are making me very sick to my stomach, compounded by my seasonal allergy post-nasal drip. So I've been laying low in between bouts of gagging and occasional throw-ups. It's delightful.
Also, our Internet has been in and out for several days. So I'm here and doing good, just nauseated and occasionally incommunicado. I'll post again when I'm feeling a little less yakky!
I found this picture at a thrift store on Monday--three bucks. I just love it, it's some amateur little oil painting that someone masking-taped into a cheap frame, but look how nice it looks against my teal study walls!
Why do I itch all over today? I feel prickly all over my skin. Do I need a lotion bath or something?
My Target desk and hutch came today, huzzah! Now everybody needs to post a comment and tell my DH to get my old countertop torn down so I can put these together and start whipping this study back into shape!
I love thrifty finds, and screw-it-together furniture seems so...soulless...but honestly, I could look for months for something like this at sales and thrift stores before I found what I was looking for. So, soulless and quick it is.
I am, however, scouting the thrifts for an armchair of some sort for my study. Something comfy, maybe overstuffed, or maybe a little more structured. Not formal, more cottagey.
I found a little ottoman that should be easy to slipcover yesterday, plus a funny little table with a magazine rack built in that I'm going to paint white and put my teal lamp on. So that's done. I just need the countertop down, the computer table moved, and a chair to sit in, and I'll be almost there!
Then I want to slipcover my office chair, put up curtains of some sort...and then one room in this house, at least, will be done.
I'm doing a little housecleaning on my blogs today, and I added a new blog, too. It's called Nose in a Book, and it will become my new book journal, as the old-style (paper) book journal I started for 2007 is already showing signs of not being sufficient to hold all the books I read in a year. Besides, blogging about books will be more fun.
I have another blog, called Fresh Sweet Corn, that I started last summer when I thought I was going to be cooking lots and becoming a foodie blogger. Well, there are lots of foodie bloggers out there who are far, far, far more qualified than I...and yet, I still harbor the idea that my kitchen will suddenly become so alluring that I'll start concocting wonderful yummy things and writing about them all.
Well, a girl can dream. In the meantime, I am going to try to start updating that blog more often, which will mean cooking more often, so do check it out on occasion, if you'd like.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Simply Recipes is one of my very favorite blogs--easy to look at, well-written, entertaining--and oh yes, excellent recipes to boot! Elise, the blog creator, was interviewed on her local NPR station the other day. Here's the link to her post about it, and from there, you can navigate to the broadcast and find her spot. It's about 1/3 of the way through.
It was so fun to hear her voice and find out a little bit about her, and she mentioned something that I think about a lot: how our parents and grandparents carry around so much knowledge and experience with them that we younger folk often don't pay attention to until at some point in our lives we wish to have it.
I commented on her blog that I have a very vivid memory of my grandpa and my dad butchering chickens in my grandparents' yard, and then wandering down to the basement and watching my grandma and my mom plucking the birds and taking out their guts and whatnot. I remember being amazed when they opened one of the birds, and there was an egg intact inside of her. Talk about fresh!
Anyway, I would have no clue, none, about how to butcher a bird. No desire, either. I get yicked out handling grocery store chicken with the skin still on it.
But there are other skills, less gross skills, that I just never got passed along to me. I guess because by the time the 70s and 80s rolled around, they weren't skills that people needed to get through life. But how convenient it would be to be able to sew, or crochet, or make yeast bread, or...any of the other myriads of things I don't know how to do. Seems like the older folks in my family know at least a million things that I don't.
Of course, I can blog. But that doesn't seem like a good skill trade-off!
