Project Amaryllis, day 1

This year, I'm giving a few of my friends and family some really cool Amaryllis for Christmas (shush - don't tell!) They take 6 to 8 weeks to bloom, so you have to start them early if you want them to be ready around the holidays.

I shopped for the bulbs online and found some great varieties - some of them extraordinary for their color, and some for their size. They arrived on Wednesday, and I've been itching to get them going.

Last night I went to the garden store and bought the pots and potting soil, soaked the bulbs, and planted them all. This morning I set them up in my front window, which faces South and gets good sun.

Here's a shot of how they look now - not much going on yet. :-)

I'll post periodic updates so you can watch 'em grow!!

did it

Remember the hemming and hawing about whether to assemble the crib?

Well, in a pique of nesting, I spent the weekend doing a bunch of stuff around the house, including - YES! - la crib.

You can also see in this shot the lovely new "Vanilla Ice Cream" color on the walls, a nice contrast to what used to be there, a color I call "Drecky Blue".

goodness from the kitchen

On my recent trip, I got to spend a couple days with my wonderful friend Clare, who lives on Big Table Farm in Oregon.

She and her hubby Brian are serious foodies, and I always eat well when I’m with them.

This time, I was bowled over by their homemade granola, which Brian adapted from a Mother Earth News recipe. It has become at staple at Big Table Farm, and for good reason.

After watching Clare prepare it (and begging for the recipe) I adapted it further (added a few tweaks of my own) and cranked out a batch tonight.

As chance would have it, Clare called when I was making it and she was making it too!! So we decided to document our respective cooking sessions and post the results. To see her version (with more entertaining photos, I must say, click here.) Fun fun.

If I do say so myself, it is scrumptious.

Here’s how I make it:

Highly-Derivative and Soon-To-Be-Famous Homemade Granola

Dry ingredients:

2 ½ Cup Rolled Oats
½ Cup Wheat Germ
¼ Cup Sesame Seeds
½ Cup Slivered Almonds
½ Cup Shredded Coconut
¼ Cup Flax Seed
½ Cup Raw Sunflower Seeds
1 Cup Raisins and/or other dried fruits

Wet ingredients:

4 Tbsp. Butter
¼ Cup Dark Brown Sugar
½ Cup Honey
½ Cup Molasses
½ Cup Peanut Butter
1 Tbsp. Dried Orange Peel
2 teas. Vanilla Extract

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.


Spread the dry ingredients, except the raisins, evenly on a 9” x 12” baking sheet. Bake for 20–30 minutes, stirring occasionally. (This is what mine looked like when I took it out after about 25 minutes - lightly toasted. Bake longer for really crispy granola.)



Meanwhile, heat the wet ingredients, except the vanilla extract, in a small saucepan, allowing the mixture to simmer until the dry ingredients are ready to come out of the oven.




Remove the oat mixture from the oven (leave the oven on), add the raisins or other dried fruit, stir well. Remove the honey/molasses mixture from the heat, stir in the vanilla extract, then pour the hot liquid over the oat mixture and stir until all the dry ingredients are well coated.



Press the granola firmly into the bottom of a greased 8” x 8” pan, and place in the still-warm oven to bake for 20 minutes. (An 8x8 pan makes bars about 1 inch thick - for thinner bars, use a larger pan.)



Remove the granola from the oven, and immediately score it (make indentations where you will break it apart into bars when it is cool) while it is still hot.

Once the granola is completely cool, remove from pan, break into pieces, and store in an air-tight container at room temperature.

Enjoy!!

painters

OK, now that the health crisis is over, I can give you all the scoop on the painters:

They are painting the formerly vomitous sage green kitchen cabinets a nice bright clean white. Which, unlike the green, will not clash violently with the multi-colored (but pretty cool) darkish granite countertops. And makes my itty bitty kitchen feel a LOT bigger.

They are painting the two formerly fugly baby-blue bedrooms a lovely color called Vanilla Ice Cream which is actually more soothing than vanilla ice cream in real life, which is hard because vanilla ice cream is perhaps one of the most soothing things there is. Anyway, this color looks really beautiful against the bright white trim, and will make an almost-neutral backdrop for whatever decorating direction I decide to go with for Sprout's room...

They have already painted the other room ("den"? "TV room"? don't have a name for this room), which was formerly a wan watered-down- green-tea kind of color a rich saturated color called Concord Ivory, from Benjamin Moore's Historical Colors palette. (I sound like an ad.) Anyway, "Concord Ivory" is a terrible name, because it is nothing like an ivory color. Think deep straw gold, but more ochre than that. And less gross than that sounds. Actually quite nice and warm and cozy, which was the goal, as this room faces north and is kind of low on natural light.

This is an extraordinarily boring post without any pictures, so I'll cease and desist now.
I'll post photos, after I get home next week and when they are all done with this painting extravaganza.

ack!

I was just writing an email responding to a very nice brunch invite, and realized that I've lost my mind. I found myself explaining the following situation:

I'm leaving early Sunday morning for a 10 day business trip, and I haven't done laundry or paid bills or done a dish or anything else domestic in - oh, about a year.

So, in order to avoid packing a bunch of dirty clothes and/or having the utilities shut off for nonpayment while I'm gone, I MUST get a bunch of that stuff done on Saturday before I leave. And, of course, since I've waited so long, it will likely take me all day.

So, what would any reasonable person do in this situation?

They would do what I did: schedule painters to show up at the house at 9:00 Sat morning.

To paint. Inside the house.

All day.

out of sight, out of mind.

Went to IKEA today for a bit o' shopping.

That, in and of itself, is not very newsworthy. What is perhaps newsworthy about today's outing is what I bought: a crib for Sprout!

This is the one I bought - it's simple, but still a tiny bit girly (see the curvy end bits. But it is not, you know, foofey. Or over-the-top girly. For Pete's sake, people, it's basically a prison device for children - how girly do you want it to be?

I'm kind of freaked out by some of the girl's rooms I've seen in catalogs and magazines lately. I refuse to have an all-pink girly-girl disney princess room. That much pink, or pretty much any amount of pastel, makes me want to projectile vomit. And I think we can all agree that only one member of a family should be expected to be capable of projectile vomiting at any time.

So, anyway, I've been thinking that Sprouty's room will be mostly white, but maybe with a nice shot of bright orange here and there. Not sure about that, but if I still to white furniture, it gives me lots of flexibility on the design.

Anyway, the point, is: Yikes! I actually bought my first real kid thing!

I mean, I've bought a few items of clothing, but those can be put away (and after a quick wash, they have been) so they are out of sight. And out of sight is out of mind. And that is kind of nice in a way - this wait time is so long that I can (almost) go for several days without thinking about it much.

But, now I have a big box full o' crib in my bedroom. Once I assemble this bad boy, there is going to be constant visual reminder of my wait.

Should I leave it in the box?

flowers, part 2

just another quick peek at the continuing loveliness provided by Clare's gift of flowers...

a bit better

OK, remember when I was whining about the unpacking process (or lack of unpacking)? And my second bedroom looked like this?


I am pleased to announce that I have made a dent in the unpacking. (This is not to say that I'm all unpacked. Far from it.)

But, I made have made a dent. A dent has been made. I have dented.

And I am all about celebrating the little things. Like making a dent. Here's the same room now, still depressingly blue, but a bit better:



You can't get a good look at the light fixure in the "before" photo. So, you'll have to trust me when I tell you that it was a rusted dim nasty thing. So I replaced it with this bit of girly glamour...

desk diary

JunieB describes the general state of her house and it sounds just like mine!

For example, here is what is currently gracing the top of my desk (excluding standard computer equipment and desk supplies):

· My iPod & charger

· A card reader that I use to transfer photos from camera to ‘puter

· A ziploc back filled with the documentation for my new hard drive

· A giant stack of bills and paperwork that I recently swept off the dining room table after letting them pile up for 3 weeks, and put here so I will deal with them. Because clearly that is working.

· A roll of blue painter’s tape

· A purple flash drive that my sister left here. I always find random bits of flotsam after she has been here. Cracks me up.

· The cap to a long-gone bottle of Pellegrino

· 9 lightbulbs in their packages

· A box-cutter

· A CD with the backup of my 2006 Quicken file

· A Vincent Longo cheek and lip stain in “My Sunshine” (which the Sephora site will tell you is a "deep warm red" color and this is a lie!!! It is orange. ORANGE, I tell you.)

· A complete set of photocopies of my dog’s vet records.

· The fabric tie that used to be attached to my seat cushion. It was tied to the back of the chair to, you know, keep the cushion in place. That worked for about 2 milliseconds before ripping right out.

So - what’s on your desk right now?

No cheating! Tell us the whole dirty truth.

Camellia japonica

*edited to replace crappy out-of-focus shot with better photo* (I know, it doesn't really matter, but I can't help myself.)

This afternoon I was throwing the ball in my back yard for India, my dog. She's not much of a retriever, but loves the attention, and likes to run around a bit (before collapsing on the grass, rolling over, and presenting her belly for a rub, which is kind of - in her opinion - the whole point of the exercise).

Anyway, while I was scratching her belly, I looked left and gasped right out loud.

I had seen it before - one of two camellia bushes in my new back yard. But since it wasn't blooming yet, I didn't know what color it would be.


Turns out, the blooms are a lovely dark pink, with yellow in the middle. I cut a few, and plopped one in a pretty blue bowl that Clare gave me.

Perfection.

fleurs

My wonderful friend Clare gave me a super-cool Christmas gift -- one that takes months to fully receive.

On her dime, I get to march down to the local flower shop and get some fresh flowers 3 different times over the course of the next several months. How great is that??

So, last week, I went in and saw that they had potted bulbs in addition to cut flowers. I'm in a Spring-better-get-here-soon mood, so I bought a pot of bulbs that had sprouted, but not flowered yet.

I stuck it on my front step, and it has gone nuts... here's what it looked like yesterday. Gorgeous.

Thanks, Clare!!!

goodbye to nasty

Well, I'm filthy and kind of sweaty and my neck hurts, but I am very happy.

Why, you might ask?

Because I've just finished putting two coats of primer over the walls of my hallway - previously a sickly nasty green that looked a lot like dried split-pea soup. (See exhibit A, at left: a photo I snapped on move-in day.)

The hallway doesn't have any windows, so needs all the light it can get... that dark color was a major bummer.

The new color will be a lovely very pale yellow - a Benjamin Moore shade called Filtered Sunlight.

I love it so!! And so does the fabulous Clare, which makes me happy, as I will think of her whenever I see it.

I can't wait!

But, I'm too pooped to do any more tonight, and the primer's got to dry. So, I probably won't get the new color on until next weekend.

In the meantime, I can look at this tinted primer coat, which is uneven and weird, but still about a thousand times better than the green... don't you agree?

it's like camping. but not as fun.

Apparently, I have way WAY too many clothes.

And a grand total of 8 linear feet of rod space in the whole freakin' house. No big walk-in closet into which I can unpack my clothes.

The second bedroom is basically acting as a closet right now, until I (1) buy a dresser, and (2) get rid of about 75% of my clothes.

In the meantime, most of my wardrobe will continue to live in those little Tupperware bins...