express yourself

Labels: cooking, For Sale, Home Sweet Home, ponderings about life

My time at home on maternity leave has whizzed by so far. Today Benjamin is 10 weeks old, so I'm halfway through my leave time. It is interesting how different I am at home than I am at work (at least, how different I feel). I've been puzzled by this for the five years since I first noticed it. It occurred to me the other day when I was taking a walk outside how good I feel when I'm not indoors. Everything about me inside brightens up, my brain is more awake, and I think and see things more, and...I'm just...happier! Maybe that is what is effecting me at work? Until I got my job at the hospital, I had spent every day of my life with a significant portion of my time spent outside. In every school I've been to, I had to go outside to walk from class to class - elementery school, high school, and college. We lived about 12 miles outside of town on 10 acres in the country, so there was always stuff we had or wanted to do outside.

Once I started working at the hospital seven years, I spent every day all day indoors. Being inside all day long, especially when I can't even see through a window, makes me feel like I'm very slowly dying - kind of like a flower wilting due to insufficient water and sunshine intake. Whenever I feel down, I always feel significantly better almost immediately upon walking out the door, no matter the weather. It just feels right.

I must admit that the thought of going back to work really does not thrill me. It's not the work, or the people - I do enjoy it, for what it is - but the whole corporate life, being inside all day, looking at numbers and figures, just does not appeal to me. It is not my passion. It makes me feel like I am missing life instead of living it. It is interesting to me how much women have shunned, some quite emphatically, the stay-at-home lifestyle. Our mothers worked so hard to make it into the "man's" corportate world, to be considered as equals in all ways including the workplace, to be seen as more than "just" a housewife and mother. This subject comes back relatively often in my conversations with my great friend Holly. We love being mothers, wives, and homemakers. I love to spend time with my family, care for my son, be helpmate to my husband, clean the house, cook delicious meals (or try), create beautiful things for the home or as gifts for loved ones, and everything that goes along with all this. I even enjoy laundering and folding my son's little outfits. We eat healthy homecooked meals, spend more time with our family and friends, get more exercise and fresh air, and are more involved in each other's lives. I love this. It makes me feel alive. Now, why haven't I felt this way for the last 7 years in my job? Do I have a bad attitude about my job? Do I need to make better use of my time, be more organized, work harder, or make better choices day-to-day? Or was this job really only meant to be temporary?

All people are made deliciously different. Which is wonderful. It is the spice of life. Some people want to work full-time in a job and setting like mine. But right now, I just can't imagine wanting to do that. And I guess that makes me feel guilty sometimes, like "not everyone gets the priviledge of staying at home to work as a wife and mom, somebody has to work at these places so they can run properly and provide the services the community needs, so I should just work and be grateful about it." But then I think that perhaps some people do not find what I do all day very appealing either. Let's see, today I have done several loads of laundry, washed our dishes, fed and changed my son multiple times, cooked dinner, picked up the house, wrote thank you notes, fed the cat, said hello to a neighbor, taken Ben for a walk outside, and a number of other related tasks. I was on my feet for probably 11 out of the 12 hours of the day. My own meals, personal hygene, and other needs went on hold, as my son's came first. Many folks might find this to be a completely dull life. But I absolutely love it. It makes me happy. It makes me feel at home, that I'm doing what I was made to do. Home, God, family, and creating are my passion. So why do I feel so guilty about it? Its like if I'm happy, then I must be not be doing what I should be doing, because toiling to earn a living shouldn't be fun - treating myself, playing, is fun. Not being productive. Work and fun are mutually exclusive, right?

My heart knows this is emphatically untrue, but my head is having a hard time with it. I seem to be one of those people that is only happy when they are miserable, because I tend to make things so darn difficult. Silly me! I see this is something I'll have to think and write on more over time.

Enter the strawberry. Don't ask me why in the world a jar shaped like a strawberry the size of a soccer ball appeals to me, but when I saw it, I knew it belonged in my kitchen. I don't collect strawberries, and didn't particulally need a cookie jar. But the thing just makes me happy. Every time I see it in my kitchen, it makes me smile. Happily, the price was within my budget, so I purchaed it. And now it is in my kitchen and makes me smile every day. That's all. And I'll just leave it at that!

Except of course for the usual photo of Ben.

Sigh. I am happy.

Labels: baby, Home Sweet Home, ponderings about life

Day number 2 in my first official week as full-time wife and mom and everything that goes along with that. We had a lovely day, full of feeding, playing, and cleaning. I don't mean that to sound as sarcastic as it does in print - really, it was a very nice day. See, while caring for Ben, I am also attempting to tackle the unpacking from a month long road trip, plus finding homes for the fifty trillion wonderful gifts we received from a couple baby showers. Ben received all really nice thoughtful gifts, but then you get it all home and realize once you've cut off the tags, washed all the clothes, broken down the boxes, and saved all the ribbons, you have to then put all the stuff away, which of course means rearranging everything else to make homes for all the new stuff. A lot of work, but kind of fun too. I still think I've made a bigger mess than I've cleaned up, but I suppose it is always worse before it is better.

So what do I do when I have piles and piles of stuff accumulated on every possible surface? I hang a shelf. Then arrange pretty things on it. I find the whole house environment, as well as my day spent tackling it, is rather worthwhile when at the end of it you have something lovely to look at. My mother-in-law picked up this shelf at a garage sale for $5, then my mom refinished it. It is hanging in the kitchen right at eye level when you walk in the back door, and has a few of my treasures on it.

The top shelf has some of the Portmerion dishes I picked up from the factory where they make it in England, a place called Stoke-on-Trent (I'm sure I butchered the spelling). They have a shop full of "seconds," where if one little tendril of one little leaf isn't perfectly straight, they mark it down considerably. They had some marked down even more with flaws that were more noticable - those they send to America, as they say we don't know any better. And usually we don't. Anyway, the second shelf has a few of my peach lustre Fire King cups and saucers. Don't ask me where I picked up a liking for this set, but it struck my fancy about a year ago. I had a mind to pick up some black dishes then have a festive set to work with in the fall. The bottom shelf has three pink depression tumblers I got on sale at an antique store during our recent (well, only) trip to Fort Collins, CO. I don't even collect Depression glass, but they were SO pretty on their shelf, they looked like they belonged on a cover of a magazine - like on a white wicker table and chair set out in the garden with a pitcher of pink lemonade with fresh mint inside. The cup and saucer is the Autumn pattern of Royal Daulton's Brambly Hedge - the illustrations look just like Beatrix Potter, but I don't think they're related at all. I absolutely love it. This cup I found for $10 at the Goodwill, of all places. Then the covered glass dish thingy was a gift from my mom - I threw her a tea party last year for her birthday, where she and a bunch of her friends drove up and when antiquing for the day while I prepared their meal. She came home with this for me, which I typically keep full of some kind of candy.

So that's the story behind my shelf. I'm not sure that anyone really cares what each item on my shelf is or where it comes from, but it felt good to tell it anyway. I only arranged all that stuff on here because I thought it looked good, but as I got to writing about it, I realized each piece has a personal story and memory. I tend to not like decorations for the simple sake of decorations, I like them to mean something to me in some way. I didn't think I was being that meaningful when I put the shelf together, but now that I think about it, there's a lot of memories on there. Maybe that will inspire me in some way tomorrow when I start tackling the dishes with a sink whose hot water nozzle won't turn off (if you can even get it on in the first place). Again. Sigh.

Labels: Home Sweet Home, Thrifted (and Other) Treasures

This is the view out my window right now:

Labels: Home Sweet Home

The view out my front door today. It was so lovely I had to snap a photo.



New chair for my studio, picked up yesterday for $35. It has been in my favorite antique store since we moved here in the spring, so I took that as a sign that it was meant to be mine.

Labels: Home Sweet Home

I can hardy believe it has been a month since I blogged last - I'm so bad!! Today I am recovering from a wonderful but long weekend of planning, cooking, entertaining, and merrymaking. I hosted a somewhat formal high tea party in honor of my mother - the party was her birthday present promised three years ago, and it has taken this long to finally happen! That said, it ended up being fortunate timing, as she is also officially retired as of two days ago. So, we celebrated her birthday and retirement with much mirth, shopping, and tea drinking!

My mother drove up from her house in Union, WA, along with 6 of her family and friends, to my home in Snohomish. After stuffing themselves silly with freshly cooked crepes (the first I've made!) with local strawberries and homemade Devonshire cream, they were off to the town to enjoy some shopping down the street full of lovely local businesses selling antiques, country home furnishings, tea things, fancy candies, and more.

This is the first official entertaining we have done since we moved into our home 2 ½ months ago. It was a ton of hard work preparing for it, as little did we know when we moved in how absolutely filthy this house is. It was built in 1900 and appears have been lacking its share of TLC for quite some time. For instance, the kitchen floor is the original kind of linoleum that requires a good waxing to keep clean. I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the life out of it, doing 2 ½ foot sections at a time because the water got black so quickly. I rinsed three times then wiped with a hot wet towel, and I was still bringing up dirt! I quit only because I ran out of comet! That is the kind of filth we are dealing with. I shudder to think of my little 11 month old sweet goddaughter crawling around on there. As soon as I have the energy, I will be down there scrubbing again until I can safely eat off of it, then I'll find me some old-fashioned floor wax and get it protected before it blackens again. Now that was the kitchen floor only - I haven't even mentioned the blinds, the wood molding, the stairs, the windows, the garden...!

My sister and her family stayed with us for the weekend, and it was really a blast, despite the work. It was such a joy to have room for two extra adults and two energetic boys! My sister was a lifesaver, helping me with the cooking and coaching me through one crisis after another. Expanding the store and hosting a party for 14 people at the same time is something I will never do again, however I will say that my party was on the calendar first. :) And also - thanks to dearest Holly too, for helping me out so much, making me sit down to eat and drink some water, and giving me one of those "are you really OK" hugs as only the closest of friends can do.

When it was all said and done, everyone seemed to have a truly wonderful time. My menu - cranberry orange scones with Devonshire cream, lemon curd, and local honey; Ham, leek, and three cheese quiche; Chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons; Fresh fruit salad, mixed greens with pesto vinaigrette; chicken salad sandwiches with toasted almonds; mini Caprese sandwiches, which consisted of fresh whole-milk mozzarella cheese, a slice of tomato, a fresh basil leaf, salt & pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, a spot of balsamic vinegar on slices of baguette fresh from the over that morning. I tried two new kinds of loose leaf tea, from the Tea Everything store down the street - a Queen Mary black tea, and a Cranberry Cream flavored black tea. They were huge hits, especially the cranberry, which is good because a bundle of it was their parting gift.

The tablecloth I bought on ebay ended up being BRIGHT yellow. To her credit, the seller did describe it as bright yellow, although in the photo is was a luscious pale buttery yellow, which is what I was hoping for. Oh well, an artist can make something beautiful from most any color, so I paired the bright yellow with deep purple as well as some orange. It ended up being very summery and nice, who knew?

Today Chris is at the store finishing up our lovely back patio - putting in the cement blocks around the edge, building in the waterfall - this place is going to be so relaxing and pleasant when they are finished! I however have rented 6 movies and plan on doing nothing today but watching them, eating leftover scones, picking up a bit, and thinking about how I'm going to wash the dishes for a party of 14 people with no hot water in the kitchen (please note that I also do not have a dishwasher)....

Labels: cooking, Home Sweet Home