Joyful Abode

This recipe makes me SO happy! It’s super-simple and definitely quick (in a land where making any kind of non-bread-machine-bread seems like a day-long project). Plus, you can vary the toppings to mix it up a bit. One time, I topped it with a pizza seasoning mix I improvised, which made delicious dippable breadsticks. Another time, I put olives and garlic right into the dough, which gave me a delicious delicacy to enjoy by itself. Yum!

So here’s how to do it.

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My Fellow Americans

“A Comedy about Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Two Ex-Presidents”

It’s a fantastic movie with a really quick, witty script. Has anyone in the peanut gallery seen it before?

A few quotes

• Mrs. Kramer: (after Kramer fills a liquor bottle with water to make it seem as if he didn’t have any) “Don’t do that with the liquor, Russ, it’s so George Bush”
• Kramer (commenting when Douglas wants to borrow $5 for a bacon burger): You want five dollars to buy a $1.99 hamburger and you wonder why the Democrats are in trouble?
• Kramer: It’s a kick in the balls. Sorry, sweetheart.
  Mrs. Kramer: Please, I’m a politician’s wife, I have a set of my own.
• Kramer: I was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.
  Douglas: So was Hitler.
  Kramer: Not twice.
• “Hail to the chief, he’s the chief and he needs hailing, he is the chief so everybody hail like crazy.” (Kramer’s lyrics for “Hail to the Chief“)
• “Hail to the chief, if you don’t I’ll have to kill you, I am the chief so you’d better watch your step you bastards.” (Douglas’ lyrics for “Hail to the Chief”)
• Kramer: How’s Mrs. Douglas?
  Douglas: We’re in the middle of a divorce.
  Kramer: Oh yeah, I knew that didn’t I? Yeah, I guess life in the White House put too much of a strain on your marriage.
  Douglas: No, it was being out of the White House that Katherine couldn’t stand.
  Kramer: Well gee, that’s funny, your being out of the White House went over so well with the rest of the country.
  Douglas: Oh yeah, you wanna compare popularity polls?
  Kramer: Yeah, let’s talk about popularity. There was only one assassination attempt on me. You had three.
  Douglas: Two! The woman in Phoenix doesn’t count…she only had a starter pistol.

And speaking of movies… what is your favorite movie to watch on Thanksgiving? Christmas? Or are you movie-free on holidays?

It’s hard to take a family portrait with a self-timer and a dog.
Husband holds dog. I set up camera and click.
I run back to husband and dog. I hold dog’s collar. We try to pose and smile.
Dog decides it’s time for a belly rub!

We eventually got this one, which is pretty good except that Zora’s not looking at the camera.
But why would she? The camera’s just on a bench… no interesting people, no treats, no smells or sounds. The air to her left is much more interesting.

She’s also decided that the back of the couch is a really nice place to rest now and then.

I’m not intending to turn this into one of those dog blogs, but this is all I really had to say today…

…other than that I’ve been rethinking my idea of starting a NavyCDH website (scroll to the end of that post). Sort of. I still want a place to post lesson ideas, things I learn/read that pertain to in-home preschool (or homeschooling), post pictures of our day… so I might just make a separate blog for that. I wonder how hard that would be to keep up with.

I’m trying to think of a good URL for it (any ideas?) and I have a couple in mind… I might just register more than one so I can make sure no one snatches them up, just in case…for later, you know?

Last week I wrote about how we rearranged the living room furniture to make the space flow a bit better. To remind you, this is the “before.”

And this is sort of the after. The little upside-down table was helping to flatten the rug, and the coffee table was obviously not in its final position, but… close enough.

So yesterday, we went about the second stage of our living room makeover. The painting! First, the guy moved all of the furniture into the middle of the room.

Zora says, “Whut???”

Then we set about taping everything off… I did most of the taping, except for the ceiling. Zora was getting really curious at this point!

See my beautiful handiwork?

When the taping was finished, we gated off the kitchen and let Zora watch from the comfort of her little rug.

I went around with a brush, cutting into all the nooks and crannies and around baseboards, doors, window, outlets (the guy did the brushing around the ceiling). Then, the rolling! And more rolling, and more rolling… the whole thing required two full coats, but it was seriously worth it.

We took Zora outside with us while we ate cheeseburgers from the gross burger joint on base and let the paint dry. A couple hours later, with the blue tape removed… check it out!

Ooh, did you notice the curtains changed color? That’s one great thing about having a color palette you really seem to be drawn to over and over…  Terra cotta curtains on a terra cotta wall would look stupid, so we just stuck the former living room curtains in the office, and moved the green office curtains into the living room!

I have to mention that one of my biggest concerns in teaching preschool in my house was keeping my home a sophisticated, adult-looking place… I THINK I’ve managed to do that pretty well.

Here’s the rundown of the cost of our living room makeover:

• Little shelf beside front door: $25
• Rug: $80
• “New” Curtains: $0 (swapped with office curtains)
• Rearranging furniture: $0
• Paint, rollers, brushes, tape: $25

Total: $130

Not bad!

October 11th was the Threefoot Arts Festival downtown, so I scooted into town with my husband, armed with a bit of cash and an excited spirit. I love art shows… going to them, being in them, shopping at them. I don’t love $1 stretchy bracelets, bags of M&Ms labeled “grumpy pills”, and kitschy polymer clay “sculptures.”

Even though there were relatively few artists (compared to what? I guess compared to my expectations), it was great and I’m so glad I went!

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. My absolute favorite artist at the show. I came home with one of his paintings (gorgeous… I’ll have to post a photo of it when we decide where to hang it). His name is Ron Roland and he works in acrylic impasto on birch panels.  He is from New Orleans and now lives in Pensacola, FL. I can’t believe I didn’t run into him at any shows when we lived there!

From his artist statement, he says about his latest series, “I want my paintings to evoke participation. In the Treescape series, I want the viewer to be plunged into the scene by the simple act of viewing. He or she should be compelled and propelled into the painting by the colors and shapes themselves . . . . ” He definitely achieved his goal with me. When I saw his booth, I audibly gasped. Now, I’m not a huge fan of landscapes in general, but he DOES what I LIKE. And in each painting, the little house just completes the scene. It makes me feel like I’m there, going home.

His bright colors are surprisingly not overwhelming, and it’s easy to stare at his paintings for a long time because his lines and shapes lead your eye over the whole thing. His use of thirds (I’m not sure if that’s the “right” word for it… but a lot of his canvasses are divided in thirds vertically, with different horizons, tree lines, etc) and odd numbers creates, for me anyway, a great sense of balance and stability. I love his work. Even if Ron Roland were the only artist at the show, it would’ve been worth the trip.

2. Another artist whose work caught my eye was Charles Crossley. His work depicts the vibrancy and exuberance of American Life, especially in the south. If you take a look at his “subjective abstract” you can see several of his works. I particularly like Coming Together, Living in America, and High Rollers.

3.  Robert M. Holleman creates functional pottery with great shapes and free-form glazing. I loved the swirls of glaze on some of his pieces, and the bold stripes on others. I also particularly liked his bottle-shaped pieces, which unfortunately aren’t in this picture. (They were to the left on a shelf).

4. Steve Windham of Windham’s Woodworks was also exhibiting in style. I love his turned wooden bowls and his wooden spoons and spatulas!

5. I don’t know what it is about wood as a medium, but I love it… maybe it’s its warmth. Another wood artist, Jesse Flowers, had fantastic wood-inlay turned bowls. I wanted to take them all home with me! (Unfortunately, his website doesn’t seem to be working, otherwise I’d have linked to it.)

I’m packaging up all of my new note card sets. The holiday ones have white envelopes, and the Bright Organics have orange, green, and blue envelopes. They’re all packaged in clear boxes, ready for display. I have to put little stickers on the boxes, but that’s about it now!

Some will be going to MAUstudio (which I am VERY excited to soon be a part of!), and the rest will be traveling with me to two holiday sales here in town, and they’ll also be at my open house coming up. I need to update my calendar, eh?

I’m so excited about them! It’s so satisfying to see them all stacked up in their boxes, ready to be sold.

We LOVE this house, don’t get me wrong. It’s big and open and has a fantastic kitchen with a huge walk-in pantry.

The only thing that’s been kind of awkward is the living room/dining room area. It’s basically a long rectangle. On one side, there is a 5 foot wide entrance to the kitchen, and on the other side, there’s the hallway. The living room is carpeted, and the dining room is not.

We like for some manner of flow-age to be able to happen, so when we have dinner parties or game nights, extra chairs can be easily incorporated and everyone can see/talk with/ play games with everyone else, regardless of the room they’re in. Our last house (in Milton, FL) was perfect for this. The kitchen was even part of the action, because it was only separated from the “great room” by a counter/bar, which also offered more seating.

So… this was the first arrangement of our living room. a few feet to the right of the window is the front door. Then, on the wall to the right of this photo, we had the school cubbies/bulletin board, etc (second picture). Then we decided to move the TV console to the area between the window and the front door (flat against the wall). Zora’s crate went in the corner in this photo, with a wicker storage box for more school stuff beside it. That worked well to better utilize the space, but the couch’s position really cut the living room off from the dining room.

So today we sacrificed our coat closet, and moved the couch in front of it.Our TV console went where the school stuff used to be (I love that since we don’t have cable, we have more flexibility in furniture placement.), and the school stuff moved to the area between the window and the front door. This really worked well to allow flow from the living room to the dining room and vice versa. However, because the couch wasn’t visually dividing the living room from the hallway, it looked kinda weird. We decided that a rug would help to better define the living room (and also be prettier than the industrial carpet in our house).

Armed with Bed Bath and Beyond coupons, a list, and paint chips (remember we’re planning on painting too?), we headed to BB&B and Lowe’s. (The crossed out thing on the list is drop cloths… we figured we could just use the tarps we already have.)

The rug is wrinkly though, from being rolled up, so we’re trying to flatten it now with the school table. Zora is really intrigued by it. It makes the floor soft! She lay on it for a while just enjoying its plushness.

This is where the school stuff used to be. We moved the airplane picture (a T-34 turbomentor) from the dining room to in here… and where it WAS in the dining room, we’re going to put framed pictures of our families in a wall-collagey type thing. That’s what the picture frame set on our list was for. Right now they’re on our island/buffet in mis-matched frames (which has been bugging me), and a lot of the pictures are really outdated. So I sent out an email to lots of family members requesting current photos. It’ll be nice to have the wall-o-photos of people we love, all in matching frames.

And this picture frame is exactly where it was before, but it was all alone before. The wall shelf thingy helps to make it more of a focal point, I think. Plus I got a yummy spiced pumpkin scented Yankee candle. It was a good excuse to get a new candle, right?

So here’s the room as it is right now (well, we did move the coffee table back in front of the couch). This room is going to be painted the terra-cotta color that was in the paint chips above (the middle shade, not the light one). We’ll paint next weekend! The green color is for the dining room (just 1 wall in the dining room, plus the adjoining wall that points into the kitchen).

Also on the list I posted above was a hook thingy for Zora’s leashes. We found one and put it up near the back door, and hung my new painting above it (which I bought at the art show I meant to write about 2 weeks ago). I wonder what my preschoolers will think of the new setup and the new rug tomorrow! I’m looking forward to their reactions.

It’s exciting to get everything really well positioned and decorated! I am hosting the spouse club meeting in a couple of weeks, then having an Joyful Abode open house the next weekend, and after that is Thanksgiving (where we invite everyone we know so anyone who doesn’t have family coming or isn’t traveling can come and have a family dinner here).

I have an issue.

Sometimes I’ll start something, work on it with huge amounts of gusto and zest, and then right before I finish whatever it is, I stop. And I can’t go any further. I have a draft of a post I wrote TWO WEEKS AGO just rotting away in my wordpress admin page… Why?

Is it because I feel like a post has to be “finished” and polished before I can publish it? Is it perfectionism? Maybe I’m afraid it won’t be up to par? Or maybe it’s one of those stupid-sounding “fear of success” things. ha.

Or is it procrastination? … Usually if you’re procrastinating, you busy yourself with other things, right? Well I’ve been super-busy making stuff lately.

I have a stack of brand new baby blankies I haven’t photographed for the shop yet.

I have a WHOLE LOT of aprons that haven’t been photographed… granted, I’ve tried to photograph them, but it hasn’t worked out in my favor (or in the aprons’ favor).

So what is my roadblock? I guess I need to figure out what it is before I can climb over it, right?

In either case, I think participating in NaBloPoMo this year will help me out. That stands for National Blog Posting Month, and the idea is that you post something on your blog every day in the month of November, even if it’s just one sentence or a picture.

I also came up with another couple exercises I need to try, to see if I can work through this habit - whether it’s procrastination or perfectionism.

1. Write up a daily/weekly schedule. Include house chores, business chores, crafting goals, etc. Put input in comments for me, por favor!
2. Aim to have new items added to the shop every month (maybe on a certain date, like the 1st of every month).
3. A little art project I won’t share with you right now. haha. But it’s sort of a daily crafting thing that I came up with, with a theme.

What do you think? What’s my problem, and how can I work through it?

And to intentionally make this post imperfect and to bring up some procrastinatey things…

Here are some skeleton key napkins I made for myself. I thought they turned out really well, and planned to make a few more sets in different colors for the shop, but haven’t gotten around to it. Nor have I posted them here. So here they are. Do you think anyone would like to buy them if I made them?

Here are some chocolate dark-chocolate-chip muffins I made a lonnnnnnnng time ago. I took pictures, edited them, and got ready to write the recipe and my post, but I didn’t. It’s another one rotting away in my wordpress queue. What is wrong with me?!?! How can I keep these delicious things to myself!?

Another secret I’ve been unintentionally keeping? Homemade focaccia that only takes a couple hours and one bowl. It’s super easy and pretty darned yummy. We liked dipping “stick” shaped pieces in marinara sauce. mmmmm. Make me write the recipe down for you, please!!!

And the worst one???

I took some photos of my craft show essentials (this is just one of several photos) LAST SPRING… as in either February or March of 2008. Now if I could find my list that is on paper (I think I have an idea of where it is), I could write the craft show essential checklist. We’re coming up on a year for this one, folks.

Added: The sick part? I just went back and proofread this post before I could hit “Publish.” Something is really not firing in my brain, I guess.

Well, they’re here! After long hours with a pencil, then a pen in hand. Then, you know… a mouse.

My brand new notecard sets! Let me introduce you!

This is my holiday note set. It includes 4 cards each of 3 different designs (12 cards and envelopes in all). $10 for the set.

The first design is “bird tree”… a little stack of birds holding ornaments in their beaks makes for a sweet little tree!

Next is “Over the River and Through the Woods”… Well, my grandparents’ houses aren’t snowy at Christmas. In fact, one of my grandmothers actually DOES live over the river and through the woods of Columbia, SC. Here’s my little tribute.
Last is “a partridge in a pear tree”… and I’m sure you can see why!

The next set, Bright Organics, includes 3 flat notes each of 4 designs (12 cards total) and are paired with bright envelopes. Right now they’re on sale for $10 (regular price for these is $12) so get yours while they’re hot!

And I’m pretty sure these cards don’t need any fancy explanation.

I hope you like them!  Let me know what you think. And I hope this makes up for my little absense from the blog.

By the way… I think I’m going to give NaBloPoMo a try this year. I think I did it successfully last year, and it’ll hopefully get me back in the blogging groove again.

I just realized I’ve been REALLY bad at this blogging thing lately…

It’s not that I don’t have things to write about, or that I don’t want to, or that I’m not thinking about it. It’s just that when I sit down to write lately, my mind goes blank and I don’t know what to type… and then I have to go draw or sew or something. It’s like the entire left side of my brain (that’s logic, right?) has shut down in favor of the more artsy right side.

I’ve gotten my Military training aircraft holiday cards designed, and they’re in the shop now!

So what’ve I been doing?

• Drawing and designing. I have TWO new notecard sets that will debut tomorrow in my shop. One is a holiday set and the other is all-occasion. Keep an eye out for that!
• Sewing! I’m making a new line of smaller, more affordable baby blankets. These would be perfect for snuggling or dragging around as a “lovie.”
• Planning an open house! I’ve never had one before and I am quite excited. I’ll have to write later about all the details.
• Applying for two craft shows that happen in November. It’s kind of a stab in the dark, but hopefully they’ll be good. The general wisdom is to attend a show one year, and then if you think it’s a good fit, to apply for the next year. As the wife of a student Naval Aviator, that’s not really possible at this stage… so I’m taking a chance.
• Preparing to paint. Just two walls, but I’m excited because I think it will really warm up the place, as long as we pick the right colors. So I’ve got paint chips all over the walls, and I’ve been writing notes in pencil beside them throughout the day. “9:00 am - Looks great!… 1:30pm - Baby poo color” etc.
• Teaching my preschoolers. We have a lot of fun. This week they’ve been learning the /k/ sound (for letter C) and the /m/ sound. We’ve also done some cooking… we cook every Wednesday. Much fun.
• Playing with my adorable dog.

So… Are you ready for the new notecards? Too bad! You’ll just have to wait till tomorrow. Unless you’re on my mailing list (signup on the left side of the page), in which case you’ll see them tonight AND get a coupon code! If you’re not on the list and you want to make sure to get the insider info and coupons next time, make sure to sign up now!

But I’ll give you something else. I’ve been working on making my product images a little cleaner. Check it out… what do you think?