Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged bathroom, Do One Thing, liquid soap, postaday2011, redecorating, soap dispenser, Target on March 5, 2011| 3 Comments »
The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.
Day 63: I feel weird that purchasing a soap dispenser at Target makes me so happy, but I’m also sort of glad that something so simple and inexpensive can make my day. It’s complicated.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged barking dog, bathroom, Do One Thing, garage, garage organization, glass pebbles, husband, postaday2011, recipes, redecorating, remodeling, vase, wall hanging on March 4, 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 62: I think we all saw this coming. I decided that, indeed, I hated the vase/glass pebble look I put together recently. The brown pebbles seemed to be the biggest part of the problem, so I ditched them (hopefully, some lucky shopper at the New Leash on Life Market Place has more love for brown than I do) and replaced most of them with some clear pebbles that were hanging out in the garage. It’s still not one of My Favorite Things, but it’s definitely making me happier.
Previously:
Day 56: Planned to move a small shelving unit to a more effective place in the garage. Got hit in the head with an errant surfboard. Yes, a surfboard.
Day 57: Got the husband to help me pick a spot for the wall hanging, since he’s the one who brought it home as part of a package deal when he bought a Volkswagen bus. We didn’t get to hang it, however, since the neighbor’s dog barked from literally 7 a.m. until we fled the house at around 2 to seek peace and quiet in the movie theater.
Day 58: Hung the toilet paper roller AND the towel holder in the downstairs bathroom. Epic.
Day 59: Tossed a pile of recipes that I had cut out from newspapers and magazines. It seems like all people who like to cook have one of these piles of recipes that they go through a couple of times a year, yet never manage to pull anything out and actually make it. Not anymore. They’re in the recycling guy’s hands now.
Day 60: Swept out the garage, or at least the parts I could get to with a broom.
Day 61: Nada. I did schoolwork and worried about my mom and her sick dog.
Posted in Family, tagged dogs, pets, Pomeranian, postaday2011 on March 2, 2011| 1 Comment »
Mom’s Pomeranian, Jay Bear, died tonight. It’s killing me that I can’t get to her without a seven-hour drive that I don’t have time to make, and no amount of money in the world can get me a direct flight to any nearby airport.
He was an intense little dog who made noises like a cat and was scared of flies. He was the first dog that Mom had sans kids, so he was all hers — no co-owners away at college or spending their early working years in a pet-free apartment.
This is the part that makes people swear they’ll never get another pet. This is the part we sort of forget, lest we never again experience the joy that animals bring us.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged postaday2011 on March 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Midterms. I totally forgot that I even HAD a blog until this very moment.
Posted in Eats, tagged baking, food, frozen bread dough, king cake, Mardi Gras, postaday2011, Southern Living, Southern Plate on February 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Mardi Gras is approaching, and I’m craving king cake. Although the king cakes at Publix are looking better than they did a couple of weeks ago, I’m tempted to make my own this year. Only the extremely complicated recipe that my mom culled from Southern Living a couple of decades ago takes the better part of a day to make. It also yields two king cakes, a bonus if everyone in the household works in an office, but about 1.5 king cakes too many if one person works at home with a finicky tabby cat.
I may have found my answer over at Southern Plate, where Christy Jordan has made a perfectly presentable king cake using a roll of frozen bread dough. I don’t know that I can abide hot pink sugar on my king cake, and I may skip the cream cheese filling in favor of my usual buttery cinnamon sugar, but other than those two elements, I think Christy may be my inspiration this year.
Posted in Do One Thing, Home, tagged art, bathroom, Canvas on Demand, cats, Christmas, Do One Thing, Groupon, husband, paperwork, piano bench, plumbing, postaday2011, remodeling, storage on February 24, 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 51: Still recovering, but I did manage to help the husband a little as he hooked up the drain pipe in the downstairs bathroom.
Day 52: The problem with hidden, built-in storage is that you store stuff in it and then forget all about it. Sometime before Christmas, I had stashed some paperwork in the piano bench while doing a quick pre-guest pickup in the living room. I remembered the paperwork only last week, when I went crazy trying to find a form that, oddly, I hadn’t seen since before Christmas. Today, I got most of the stash out of the bench and filed it away upstairs.
Day 53: I have a unique wall hanging that I’ll write more about later, but today I did an epic amount of research on the best way to hang it, since right now it’s just a folded piece of fabric in the closet. I’ve come to a final decision, and it doesn’t involve going back to the seamstress that made me feel bad for not knowing what kind of seam allowance I wanted.
Day 54: Admittedly, I spent what little organizational time I had today coloring paper balloon cutouts for a failed cat photo shoot.
Day 55: I finally redeemed a Groupon I purchased in December for a 16-by-20-inch gallery wrap from Canvas on Demand. I had narrowed my choices down to two photographs when I discovered that the site offered personalized customer service interaction that helped me choose the winner. Now I’ve got two weeks to decide where to hang it.
Posted in Cats, Photographs, tagged balloons, cats, DIY photo backdrop, dreamscape, photography, Photojojo, postaday2011, Yang on February 23, 2011| 3 Comments »
When Photojojo suggested this awesome photo project yesterday, I knew I had to try it. What’s more awesome than a cat dreamscape? Yang even looks an awful lot like the cat in the photos. And he sleeps, like, ALL THE TIME.
I chose the cat-gets-carried-away-by-balloons DIY backdrop. I dutifully printed out a few balloons from a coloring pages site and went to work with my colored pencils. I carefully cut out the balloons and taped a piece of string to the back of each one.
I quietly approached Yang, who was sleeping next to the dresser, on which I planned to stand to get the extreme vertical angle needed for this shot. I spread out the balloons in what I thought might be a float-away formation and gently tucked the ends of the strings under a paw.
Things immediately went awry. Never underestimate the instinct or muscle memory of a 14-year-old cat.
Yang woke up with a start, stood up and pounced on the middle of the strings, biting and batting the whole way.
I had no choice but to play chase-the-string with him for the next 10 minutes.
The balloons and their strings are now safely ensconced in an office drawer.
I face a creative dilemma: scuba-diving cat or cat holding an umbrella and being swept away in a rainstorm? I wonder which is less swat-worthy.
Posted in Eats, tagged cilantro, Costco, Earth Fare, food, kitchen, pine nuts, postaday2011, quinoa, recipes, red quinoa, superfood, toasted pine nuts on February 22, 2011| 9 Comments »
About 10 years ago, my husband brought home a small bag of quinoa from the local health food store. I don’t remember if he called it a superfood, but he did note that it was packed with fiber AND protein, making it a rare grain indeed.
The problem was that we had no idea how to make it edible. We learned the mechanics of making quinoa pretty quickly: Rinse it thoroughly before cooking, and then simmer it like you would rice.
Our cooked quinoa was bland, however. We added broth. We salted. We oversalted. We added herbs. We added spices.
We gave up.
Fast forward to 2008. Quinoa is officially a superfood, and recipes abound. It’s also more readily available, so no more trekking to the health food store for expensive 8-ounce bags of grain.
I finally got my act together with quinoa last year, after I found a couple of basic recipes and started experimenting.
My first discovery: You REALLY need a well-made strainer with tiny holes to properly rinse the grains. Covering the quinoa with water and then pouring it off just makes a huge mess, no matter how careful you are. Just pour the dry quinoa into the strainer and turn on the tap for a minute or so, making sure the water runs over all the grains.
I adapted a Rachael Ray recipe as my go-to quinoa dish, cutting it in half and making a few tweaks. The original calls for a blend of cilantro, basil and parsley. I NEVER have parsley in the house, and I rarely have cilantro AND basil. Her recipe also called for a mixture of black olives and green olives; the husband determined that he preferred the dish with green olives only.
Splurge for the pine nuts: They MAKE this dish. I toast mine in a skillet over low heat until they’re slightly fragrant and starting to tan and I’m a little freaked out that I might burn them. So they’re probably under-toasted, but delicious nonetheless.
I get most of my quinoa at Costco, which sells it in 4-pound bags, and augment it with a pricier red quinoa from the bulk bins at Earth Fare. I don’t think the red quinoa changes the taste much, but it does make the dish more colorful.
The husband prefers quinoa as the base for chicken, but I eat the leftovers meat-free.
Quinoa with Herbs and Olives
(Adapted from Rachael Ray’s Quinoa with Herbs and Mixed Olives)
In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook just until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add the quinoa and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Stir in 1 1/8 cups water, season with salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat, cover and simmer until the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let the quinoa stand for 5 minutes. Add the olives, pine nuts and herbs and toss with a fork to combine. Season with salt to taste.
Entirely Adequate 