Sugaring has begun!

Never Say Never

I'm so weak.  I can't believe I caved like that!  Okay, I guess I should explain.

Almost two years ago a couple of my craftier friends asked me to join a social media site that they were using to get and share ideas for crafts, decorating, and all kinds of other stuff.  I had heard of it before, but I didn't see the benefit, and wasn't interested in having "one more website" to suck away my free time.  I was perfectly happy with *just* Facebook.

More and more of my friends and family use the site, and their cool finds keep popping up on Facebook, but still I held firm.  I did explored it a little bit, and I've used several ideas that I found there, but I've managed to stay on the outside looking in; borrowing ideas, but not "getting involved"...until this last weekend.

I don't know what came over me.  I was frustrated with my "system" for storing photos of ideas that I would like to try (creative storage, decorating, beading projects, stamping projects, etc.).  Some of my photos are printed and stored in a 3-ring binder...that I never look at and am loathe to update.  Some of my pictures are collected in Microsoft Word documents stored on my computer and never to be looked at again because they aren't organized.  And some photos are just stored as .jpg files...unlikely to be of any use because they aren't sorted in any kind of order or grouped with any logic.

I thought I would use a service that I'm already connected to; Shutterfly or Picasa, but something was missing - it was too...complicated.  And they really couldn't do what I was wanting to do.  So I researched photo storage and tools for organizing ideas.  Eventually I was brought back to the very site I had been resisting.

I was reluctant, but I typed in my standard bum e-mail address (it's legit, but goes directly to "trash") and registered.  I browsed around for awhile and the more I looked, the more I liked.  Eventually, I was pinning things on my own board...I was in.

It's been a few days now and I have pinned so much that one can only come to the conclusion that I am...a junkie.  But my inspirational photos are getting organized for the first time in twelve years, maybe even in my entire life.  They are organized in such a way that I can SEE them, be INSPIRED by them, and USE them.  Collecting photos for ideas and inspiration is no longer a wasted effort leading to more junk to organize.  It's just a website, and it's almost better than Facebook because there are no conversations.  I can search for ideas, pin my own, and go back to whatever I was doing.  It's much easier to not get sucked in by Pinterest than it is to not get sucked in by some waste-of-time conversation on Facebook.  It's a thin line, but so far I have managed to stay back from it.

If you'd like to see what I've been up to, visit me at Pinterest.

Merry Christmas to me!

For Christmas this year I received a new sewing cabinet. (Thank you, Mom!)  It took several hours to assemble and required more than two hands along the way, and part of it was damaged during transport and had to be reshipped, but it is amazingly spacious.

I was able to move nearly ALL of my sewing supplies from their plastic storage bins to the drawers and spaces provided in the cabinet.  When not in use, the cabinet closes up to about the size of a large cedar chest (only a little taller) and, with its large casters, I am able to roll it out of the way when I'm not sewing.

In the process of filling the cabinet I was able to reorganize some of my other crafting supplies and the fabric that I have accumulated in hopes of sewing.  Now, with this new sewing space, I am organized and ready to get [back to] sewing...right after a little tropical vacation.

I think I'm a junkie

When we moved into our new house almost six year ago (I know, can you believe it?!) we unpacked boxes and put things away not yet knowing for sure how we would actually use some of our spaces.  For the most part it was about practicality and common sense, and to this day most things are just as we placed them in 2007.  Over the years I have arranged and rearranged more heavily used spaces to accommodate changes (like reorganizing the pantry to more easily access the things we use often and store more remotely those things that are used less often), but many areas remain unchanged.

One area was due for a change.  The kids' bathroom was originally organized based on a three-year-old Katherine in the midst of her mischief-making season so many things were stored way overhead.  Over the years that storage space has become disorganized, messy, and chaotic.  I finally decided to tackle it.  In doing so I found that we had multiples of many things because I couldn't find one (of whatever) when I needed it so I bought more.

It didn't take long, but the results are nice.  Everybody can find what they need, both kids have some space for their own stuff, and I have consolidated stuff so that "like is stored with like".  Now it's much easier to find what we need when we need it.  Swept up in the euphoria of having a clean and organized space, I did the same thing in the master bathroom.  (photo - kids' bathroom storage)

That was the easy part.  What really got me going in my latest organizing kick is the desire to make my laundry room more inviting.  I don't mean "inviting" as in "come in and sit a spell", although I will never turn down help with folding laundry.  I just wanted this functional space that spend quite some time in each week to LOOK a little functional and a little more visually appealing.

Here's what I started with.

After a little measuring and planning I came up with a design that could BE functional but LOOK attractive...ahhh form AND function.

Here's what I came up with.

Above the washer and dryer, the canvas baskets each hold cleaning supplies, laundry supplies, and other random household items.  It's all the same stuff that was there before, but now it's easier to look at AND I have some empty baskets now where I didn't have any empty shelf space before.

On the other wall I had stored all the master bedroom bedding, beach towels, and some random supplies.  I was able to move the beach towels to the other side (since I had so much new-found space) and now each basket holds a complete set of bedding (fitted sheet, pillow cases, and "bettwäsche").

Each basket is labeled so that it's clear what is inside even without being able to see the contents.  I ran ribbon across the front of the wire racks to camouflage the racks and provide a splash of (changeable) color in this all-white room.  I visited Pinterest and found some creative ideas for storing liquid laundry supplies.  Now they are easily accessible and look a little nicer in the space.  We'll see how the spouts on these drink dispensing jugs hold up to the thick laundry soap and softener, and the corrosive nature of bleach.

Doing laundry is still one of those chores that doesn't rise to the top of my "favorite chores" list, but at least now it's more fun to look in and see my organized space.

For the past several weeks I have been working on entering my vast collection of recipes - some "favorites and some "want to try" - into a recipe database. Yesterday, I finished the first "wave" of recipes - my file folders filled with "want to try" recipes. Once I finished that I was ready to begin my next recipe project - entering in the recipes from my Grandmother's recipe box.

This box has roughly three hundred recipe cards in it (I'm guessing probably more.  I'm just too lazy to count each card since I will, over time, access each and every one of them.  THEN I can tell you exactly how many there are.).  I expect it will take me quite some time to get them all entered into my database (with pictures scanned of the card itself), but I'm twenty cards into the project and already having fun.

This index card has the recipe for Butterscotch Ice Box Cookies. It's just one of the many recipe cards in my grandmother's recipe box, yet it holds so much information and history. The fact that they're called "ice box" cookies already indicates their age, and my grandmother, who always had a refrigerator from the time she went out on her own, grew up with an ice box.  In fact, my great grandmother didn't replace her ice box with a refrigerator until around 1950, and only then because it was getting more and more difficult to get ice.  After all, the ice box still worked (sure, what's to break on a box that holds ice cubes?), and apparently she was quite frugal.

The card itself is tattered, yellowed, and has food splatters on it attesting to its age and "favorite" status among the recipes.

The date, "5-22-43", carries with it a sort of Pandora's box of historical information;

• the first US jet fighter was air tested on this day
• Stalin disbanded Komintern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comintern in English, or in German here http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kommunistische_Internationale) which was an international communist organization dating back to 1919
• the German submarine U-569 was sunk by US Avenger aircraft in the mid Atlantic and its crew sent to a POW camp in Perthshire Scotland
• newspaper headlines are filled with war news like "Allies Down 285 Planes Blasting at Italy", and "USAAF Smashes U-Boat Bases in Reich"

And (my maternal grandmother) a young wife from central Illinois (living alone in Virginia at the time, I believe) writes down recipes from her mother while her husband is serving in the US Navy aboard a small battleship converted into a "flat top". He is now aboard the USS Card.  Only two weeks before he would have been on the carrier USS Lexington in the Battle of the Coral Sea where "Lady Lex" was hit.  Because of the flames, the US Navy would "scuttle" her before nightfall, but not before getting as many men off the ship as they could.

I would later hear from my grandfather how he helped move the wounded from the sinking Lex to the rescue ship.  He was one of the last able-bodied sailors to leave the Lex and board the rescue vessel.  Men, trapped below deck on the burning, sinking Lexington, sent final messages to their families by way of the ship's radioman.  Such a sober task. Such a haunting thought.

Now aboard the Card, my grandfather was on the flagship of a hunter-killer group formed to hunt German subs; a task it and its crew did quite well, apparently.

So much rich history wrapped up in one 3x5 recipe card!

Gingerbread!

My first official holiday baking is now complete. I quintupled my gingerbread recipe so that I could make two gingerbread house forms, a Christmas tree, and lots of gingerbread men and snowflakes.

Perhaps tomorrow we can do some assembling of the houses and tree.

Ready for Thanksgiving

Grainy rolls, plain rolls, seedy rolls, and cornbread, brownies, and poppyseed lemon cake. It's been a long day in the kitchen, but I made it. Tomorrow I will make the green bean casserole.

Now, where are my elastic waisted skirts?