Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged alabama, baking, cabinet organization, cabinets, challenge, Do One Thing, guest room, hair bands, kitchen cabinets, Mobile, New Year, New Year's resolution, nightstand, organization, postaday2011, resolutions, small loaf pans, storage on January 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 13: Reorganized a particularly troublesome kitchen cabinet area. My house in Mobile, Alabama, had laughably little cabinet space, so I’m still getting used to maximizing the larger space I have now. I have this obsessive desire to keep all the baking items (mixer, cake pans, muffin tins, etc.) close together, but that just doesn’t work. I accept this limitation, and now I can reach the small loaf pans without interference.
Day 14: Cleaned out a box of hair accessories that was mysteriously stored in the nightstand in the guest room. Discovered that elasticized hair bands deteriorate and lose their stretch when stored in stupid places for long periods of time.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged A New Leash on Life, bad habits, challenge, clutter, decluttering, Do One Thing, home, New Leash on Life Marketplace, New Year, New Year's resolution, office, resolutions on January 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 8: I have this bad habit of decluttering and then leaving the box of decluttered items in the house for weeks, turning it into clutter.
But not this time. I brought last week’s New Year decluttering remnants to the New Leash on Life Marketplace this afternoon. They can sell it faster, and I have a cleaner home office sooner.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged challenge, Do One Thing, kitchen, New Year's resolution, pantry, postaday2011, Pylones, resolution, Stack, stacking wine bottles, storage, wine, wine pyramid, Wine Stack, wine storage on January 8, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 7: You can see why I had to have the Stack. Look at this perfect pyramid of wine.
Because I’m storing the wine in the pantry, I’m getting twice as much work out of the Stack, using the two halves of the device to secure two wine stacks against two cabinet walls. Better utilization of the pantry space enabled me to liberate four forgotten bottles of wine from the stairwell closet today, which led to all sorts of afternoon organizational maneuvers.
The Stack appears to have originated from an Australian company called Make My Day.
The Stack in its original packaging.
Electric Reindeer, proof that I will bring cheap, hilariously named wine to your party.
Two halves of the Stack.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged challenge, decluttering, Do One Thing, home, magazines, New Year's resolution, office, recycling, resolutions, travel on January 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 6: I decimated a pile of travel magazines taking up space in my home office. The recycling bin is going to be heavy next week.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged bathroom, challenge, contractors, countertop, decluttering, Do One Thing, faucets, granite, home, home improvement, New Year's resolution, postaday2011, remodeling, resolutions, shelves, vanity on January 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 4 saw the decluttering of one small shelf. Baby steps, people.
Part of Day 5 was spent waiting on the contractors to install a granite countertop in the downstairs bathroom, and the rest of it was spent obsessing about said installation and trying to pick out a faucet. Home improvement: It counts.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, Travel, tagged baking, challenge, Christmas, Do One Thing, holidays, husband, junk, kitchen, marriage, New Year's resolution, New York City, pantry, piano bench, postaday2011, Pylones, resolution, stacking wine bottles, storage, travel, vacation, wine, wine pyramid, wine racks, Wine Stack, wine storage on January 4, 2011| 1 Comment »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 2: I labored over whether I should include purchases in this challenge. As the sole board member, I voted “yes.”
When we were in New York City in early December, I saw this nifty little device in Pylones that allows you to stack up to 10 bottles of wine safely and efficiently. I realize that other people have wine racks on their countertops and walls and even on top of their kitchen cabinets, but proper wine storage demands protection from light and temperature variations. Thus, most of our everyday wine (“everyday wine” … we sound so sophisticated) is stored in the bottom of the pantry, far away from the stove and other sources of heat.
The bottles, however, tend to arrange themselves in a mishmash, no matter how carefully they’re initially placed. Any stacking at all requires something extremely heavy and unneeded to prevent rolling, and unstacked bottles rolling around on their sides waste a tremendous amount of vertical cabinet space.
Thus, when I saw the incredibly neat pyramid of wine bottles enabled by the Wine Stack, I pointed it out as just the thing we needed to fix the wine problem back home. My husband looked at it and declared that we would definitely figure something out when we got back.
I should have picked up the Wine Stack and carried it to the register, but what I didn’t realize at the time (yep, still learning after 15 years) was that his comment could be translated as follows: “I do not recognize this wine problem you describe; therefore, I shall forget this discussion in approximately 3 minutes.”
So, when I was trying to put the pantry in order last week after a round of holiday baking, I mentioned this solution we were going to figure out. The husband paused for a couple of seconds, and said, “I guess we should have bought one of those wine things while we were in New York.”
Sigh.
I ordered my Wine Stack on Sunday night, and I’m counting it as my second Do One Thing act of the year.
Day 3: I cleared off the piano bench, a hotspot for downstairs junk like books, magazines, gloves and scarves. Every house has a spot like this. Of course, now that I’ve swept it clean, I need to maintain a subresolution of keeping it clean.
Posted in Eats, Family, Home, Uncategorized, tagged bread, burgers, cats, Christmas, cooking, Costco, Earth Fare, family, flattery, food, Foreman Grill, George Foreman grill, grilled cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, Havarti, holidays, honey mustard, hot dogs, husband, lunch, mother, olive bread, panini, panini maker, PB&J, postaday2011, sandwiches, waffle maker on January 3, 2011| 2 Comments »
In cooking, imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. I love it when someone else tries to replicate one of my dishes. I love it even more when that someone is my mother.
The husband and I have owned a George Foreman Grill for the better part of our marriage. (Actually, we’re on our second grill. The cats broke the first one about 10 years ago.) We used to cook burgers on it; its sole use lately has been to sear the occasional hot dog.
Last year, I saw a couple of comments on food blogs recommending the Foreman Grill as a fast, cheap panini maker. It makes sense: The device is, after all, simply two heavy sheets of metal that press together.
I made grilled cheese sandwiches with it. Blah. The only bread I tend to keep around is some brand or another of wheat bread, the kind that doesn’t go bad in four days since I don’t actually EAT bread every day, and the husband tends to like a PB&J on the weekends. It didn’t grill very well, Foreman Grill or not, partially because it didn’t really fit on the grill (it’s a smaller model).
Enter Earth Fare. Heading to the checkout one day, I saw a display of bread that stopped me in my tracks, bread that looked like it had been freshly made just to fit on the Foreman Grill.
I made an experimental sandwich when I got home, smearing honey mustard on two slices and bundling a small bundle of ham and cheese in between. Best panini ever.
When Mom was here for Christmas, the only kind of bread Earth Fare had left was two loaves speckled with pieces of olives. Best panini ever. (And I realize I have to stop saying that or my credibility is going to be shot.)
For lunch today, I grilled the last two pieces with a couple of slices of Havarti from Costco. Perfection.
More perfection: Mom texted me yesterday to let me know she had switched the plates out on her waffle maker to make sandwiches like mine. Ingenious.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Christmas, Home, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged accessories, animal rescue, cats, Christmas, Christmas tree, collection, decorating, fireplace, golden, Hipstamatic, holidays, home, Huntsville, iPhone, mantel, New Leash on Life, New Leash on Life Marketplace, photograph, sparkly on December 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I have a ramshackle collection of holiday decorating accessories — when you don’t put up a tree due to extraordinarily inquisitive cats, you make do with whatever fits on the fireplace mantel. You also don’t buy many new items, since that mantel’s not getting any bigger.
I couldn’t let this golden burst of sparkle sit on the shelf, however, when I found it at the New Leash on Life Marketplace today. Only 25 cents, too, since all Christmas items were half off.
I’m not entirely sure it’s going back in the Christmas box after the holidays are over.
Posted in As Pictured Below, Home, Huntsville, Photographs, tagged alabama, alice in wonderland, animals, caterpillar, Huntsville, iPhone, photograph, sidewalk, TiltShift Generator, TiltShiftGen, wildlife on December 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I found this little guy (or girl) traversing my front sidewalk today. Given the usual behavior of caterpillars and beetles in my front yard, I expect him to be in my kitchen tomorrow morning, ready to scare the sleepy out of me at 5:45 a.m.
He could at least stay for a chat, a la Alice in Wonderland.
Entirely Adequate 