Hobbies

I am having fun.

In the last year, I think I’ve rediscovered just about every hobby I left behind in 4th grade. My favorite things to do as a kid: read and write stories, sew and take pictures. I don’t know when I stopped doing most of these things, but it was probably sometime around middle school or high school. (Enter: homework, internet, driver’s license, etc.) Throughout college and grad school, most of my free time was taken up with schoolwork and part-time jobs, and of course, hanging out with friends. Just a few months after I finished grad school, I started coaching training and diverted my free time to getting my business off the ground. I think I have forgotten what it was like to do things just for fun.

It’s a bit like being 12 again, to get lost behind a camera lens, in the whirring of a sewing needle, or watching my thoughts become strung together in a cohesive story as I type.

After our crafts night and spending an obscene amount of time perusing sewing blogs, I felt inspired to revisit my sewing machine. I’ve had that machine since middle school, but in the last 8 years, I think the only thing I’ve actually sewn is a set of curtains that Buddy tore down.

I didn’t really know exactly what I was going to do, but I had some inspiration from Lex’s blog. Matt and I had these bright blue matching t-shirts, the kind you buy at a crafts store, from playing on an softball team last year. I knew we weren’t going to wear them again, so I just started cutting his up and making ruffles out of the scraps. Eventually, I got brave enough to cut the neckline on my t-shirt into a v-neck and re-hem it, and then started laying the ruffles out on it and sewing them down. I was shocked to see it come together – I confess, I love it. Beginner’s luck?

Anyways, here’s the end result. By the way, it’s really hard to take a self-portrait without feeling like a giant goober, so forgive me.

I can’t wait to go home and tear apart something else in my goodwill pile.

Crafty

Last night I had a bunch of my girl friends over for a craft night. I credit my long-held love of crafting to my mom, who kept me and my sister happily entertained with a glue gun, some fabric scraps and a whole bag of sequins and buttons. I remember walking around Jo-Ann Fabric with my mom to pick out fabric for our Halloween costumes, and being enthralled with the rows and rows of different bolts of fabrics and the endless possibilities for their uses. My forays into crafts have been varied in their success and duration. There was even a brief phrase in high school where I was making my own clothes. I’ll ask my mom to kindly burn any photographic evidence of the famous blue fleece pants. (My sister, who back then was a cooler-than-thou Abercrombie wearing, best lunch table sitting 7th grader, still shudders at this memory.)

All that being said, my love for and intentions to complete most projects are often greater than my actual follow through and my success. Despite that, I’ve kept a folder of various magazine tear outs and have been bookmarking blogs for years of things I want to get my hands messy with, and just waited for “the right time” to do them.

You’re inspired aren’t you? Admit it. Fabric will do that to you.

I’ve often thought knitting on a metro commute, or losing track of the hours with nothing more than a glue stick and a foam board made me a little bit, well, frumpy. Uncool. Older than my years. A good friend of mine in college was keen on saying I was “a 30-year-old trapped in a 22-year-old body” and he was right. (Umm, back then, 30 sounded really old.) So it was with a little bit of hesitation that I sent an email to a handful of girl friends inviting them over for a night of glue guns, fabric and learning our way around pinking shears.

I made sure to mention there would be wine.

I was delighted to find that my crafty streak was shared by many of my friends, although it shouldn’t totally surprise me. Many of the girls I have become close to here in Winston, in my “married person life”, share my love of creating things and nurturing our nests – cooking, blogging, photography, getting disproportionately excited about Pottery Barn sale items… you get the idea. Seems we are still in the 30somethings at heart, but now our bodies are catching up.

Our craft night was so much fun, and other ideas were tossed around for future projects and activities. I find, with as many bookmarked ideas as I have accumulated over the last ten years or so, that I rarely take the time for myself to do these kinds of things that are fun and relaxing to me, but completely “unproductive.” When it comes down to it, a typical Thursday night with Matt at work I probably would have spent catching up on the laundry or filing the bills or making a grocery list. To carve out the time and invite other people held me accountable to the completion of a project, not just the intention, and was a great way to spend time with some of my favorite people.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, we made fabric covered Easter eggs. I got the idea from it from this blog. It was super simple and I wanted to start off with a project that didn’t involve any sewing or anything intimidating. It took an egg or two before we each got our wrapping methods down, and there were some glue-gun burnt fingers along the way (hope you are recovering, Anne!) but all in all, it was a great success.

More crafts to come? I hope so.

Restored

Oh, weekend.  You could not have gotten here any sooner.  I usually don’t feel that way… my weeks often go by so fast, the Friday afternoon almost catches me off guard.  This was one of those weeks that somewhere around Tuesday I was like a lil kid sitting in my front window just waiting for Friday to show up.  Just one of those weeks.

The weekend ended up being just the perfect blend of social time, me time and house-restoring time.  (And when I say restoring, I do not mean Bob Villa style… I mean restoring order, calmness, sanity and the throw pillows that somehow always seem to end up bunched in one corner of the couch.)

Friday night we had a very casual dinner at La Carreta with Zac + Jamie, and Matt + Donna.  I don’t think I’ve been there since college… but it hadn’t changed a bit.  Same wait staff, same cheap pitchers of margaritas, same never ending chip basket.  After dinner, we went downtown and Donna + I accompanied Jamie on a walk around the art district to complete her night photography assignment.  The boys busied themselves with the drafts at 6th & Vine.  I had taken my camera card out to upload the day before, and for the 2nd time that week, had forgotten to put it back in.  So I’m waiting on you, J-boo, to live vicariously through the awesome night pics you took! 

Saturday was the first hint of our long overdue Spring, and I’m pretty sure all of Winston found a way to be outside.  Matt finally got to crack open the golf bag, and I took Buddy on a long run after getting the house put back to order.  It seems like no matter what we do, sometime around Wednesday or Thursday our house starts to look a little bit like a tornado passed through, dropping Vera Bradleys and junk mail and pocket-sized medical references in every corner.  Thank goodness for Saturdays, and the chance to put it all back together.  (Literally.  My house and my self.)

Saturday night we got together with a bunch of the other Emergency Medicine interns and their wives for a wine and cheese party.  The premise was simple: bring a wine and a cheese to share and sample, but the outcome was superb.  (I think there’s few comestibles I love more than wine and cheese, so I’m fairly easy to please.)  Our hostess, Kim, went out of her way to make some other tapas, including an asparagus-prosciutto combination that Matt and I were still talking about 24 hours later and a fiery Spanish tomato dip called Romesco.  Imagine my envy when Kim described a 2-week cooking experience in Spain she and her mother had attended.  Oh my sweet heavens.  Who wants to send me?  I regret that I didn’t get my camera out, because the food was simply gorgeous.  (It tasted amazing, too, which I suppose is equally as important to non-food bloggers.)  I still feel a little hesitant to whip my camera out and start photographing food in places other than my own kitchen. 

Sunday we headed down to visit with Matt’s family and celebrate the March birthdays, including my mother’s-in-law tomorrow.  Matt’s aunt was in charge of the cooking, which was as delicious, abundant and Southern as any family gathering could hope for.   I consider myself very fortunate to have married into a family that is as loving, welcoming and accepting as the one I was born into.  I know this isn’t always the case, and any time I listen to a girlfriend tell a “mother-in-law” story, I send a little thanks up to my lucky stars for giving me such a wonderful second family. 

Matt’s family lives about 90 minutes west of us, but it doesn’t take 10 minutes of being on the highway before I am sound asleep, every time.  There is something about good food, warm homes and cozy conversations that knocks me out every time. 

It doesn’t take much to put me back together after one of those weeks: a clean home, some yummy food, and time well spent with friends and family.  It’s my very ctrl + alt + delete button that gets me ready for another Monday. 

May Appear Closer Than They Are

Cline Christmas

Figuring out how to balance two family Christmases, separated by 700 miles, is a difficult task to begin with, but the addition of a less than traditional emergency room work schedule adds just another wrinkle. I think it’s safe to say rare will be the year that we actually celebrate Christmas on the 25th, from this point forward. Fortunately, we were able to work out an early Christmas with Matt’s family traveling up to see us on Sunday – which meant, my first time hosting an official holiday! With the in-laws! Ok, I say that as if the underlying message is “pressure’s on!” but truth be told, my fam-in-law are the sweetest, kindest people ever and even if I burnt the entire meal, they’d probably be all “But your napkins rings look perfect!” (And I’m not just saying that because my dad-in-law reads this. Hi Dad!)

I had fun planning the menu, trying to do a fairly traditional holiday dinner, but not get too in over my head. My favorite thing to make was the homemade yeast rolls. They were super easy, but I felt very Pioneer Woman tossing flour all over the place and pounding rolls into little balls to drop into a big ol’ greasy pan. I won’t go all play by play of the food on you here (holding myself back) but the rest of the meal was quite scrumpty too.

Okay, wait indulge me one more… for my male readers… I’ll mention the meat. My first time making a prime rib! It was perfect. I got a little nervous when I realized my meat thermometer, which has worked faithfully for four years, broke. TODAY. Of all days. Couldn’t have broken when it was just me and Matt and I might be worried about a little trichinosis from undercooked bbq, ooooh no, thermometer you had to break on my very first Holiday Dinner with The In Laws. (Well… at least my napkin rings were pretty, right?) Without any other choice, I just followed the timing and temperature in my recipe (from Everyday Food) and prayed for the best. I breathed a sigh of a relief when Matt started carving and the meat was not still moo-ing. Not moo-ing, and very very tasty. Success! Thank you oven gods!

After we ate, we gathered together to exchange presents and even Buddy was able to get in the goods. (Look at that tongue… Micah knows the way to a puppy dog’s heart.)

I ran into a little snafu handling Matt’s gift. I had gotten him part of one of those heavy duty Craftsmen tool chest, which was very kindly loaded into *his* trunk by the Sears sales guy. I got home and went to get it out to wrap and it, um, well… looks like I need to go back to doing some 30-Day Shred. Couldn’t even move the darn thing. Soooo I wrapped it right in the trunk and prayed that he would have no reason to go into his trunk for the next 2 days. When it came time for unwrapping his gift, I forced my family to tromp out to the garage together. Nothing like the smell of gasoline to get you in a festive mood, right?

We so enjoyed hosting our family… although I must say, I have a whole new appreciation for all that my grandmothers, aunts and mother who have hosted many a holiday (or other family gathering) have gone through before me. The time it takes to get the meal ready, your house all spiffy and smelling nice, and the insane timing of cooking everything…good grief. It’s enough to make a girl put Papa J’s on her speed dial. So if I haven’t said it before, here’s another resounding thank you to all the “been there, done that” women in my families. But I understand why we do it – it is so worth it to have your family gathered around a meal you made, relaxing in your home that you take care of, and appreciating their time together. Maybe the novelty of this will wear off after I’ve done it year after year, but as for now, as 1950s as this might sound, I truly do enjoy homemaking. (Though I hesitate to put this in print…I have a feeling someone might reference this post when I complain the next time I have to vacuum up dog hair tumbleweeds.)

On that lovely note, I leave you with this… Merry Christmas, from the Cline family. May your meat be cooked, your presents clock in at less than 75 pounds and your family be together this holiday season!

Traditions

What are the holidays for if not shaking the dust off the favorite family traditions? In our family, for instance, a favorite tradition of ours is that someone (Katie*) will always get mad while we’re playing card games and storm off crying. See? Now that’s what family is all about.

This year for Thanksgiving we had some new family traditions brought into the mix, as well as revisiting some old ones. For the first time ever, we didn’t celebrate the holidays at home; my parents and brother actually flew to NC for a below-the-mason-dixon line Thanksgiving. Much to my father’s chagrin, there were no coon skin hats or sawed off shotguns involved.

But despite the new locale, many traditions were kept in place. For instance, Michael turned everyone out and played video games for 12 hours straight and Katie sat on the couch and read. No one said family togetherness had to involve interacting with each other, did they?

My Fam: Social Butterflies.

On Thursday, the family had their “traditional” turkey meal down at Katie’s house in Charlotte while Matt and I spent Thanksgiving with his family in High Point. On Friday, my family descended upon our house for extravagant meal #2. (#3 for Matt + I, if you were counting. My skinny jeans certainly were.) Dad and I went and picked out a tenderloin together, which he and Matt did on the grill. I made a yummy warm spinach salad from Ellie Krieger’s cookbook and stovetop green beans with glazed pecans. Not sure whether those count as Yankee beans or not… stovetop = Yankee, but the involvement of butter + pecans = southern. Could it be that I finally found the green beans that please everyone? We’ll just have to call them Yankee Belle beans. After a near miss when we thought Teeter had run out of canned pumpkins, Dad made his traditional pumpkin pie which coincidentally I am having for breakfast today. Highly nutritious.

I will desperately try to refrain from posting pictures of everything I ate all weekend. I’m prone to do that, you know.

You’ll have spinach and you’ll like it, gosh darn it.

Saturday my mom and I got our hands messy making our family’s traditional cut out Christmas cookies. This is my Grandma Claffey’s recipe that my mom has been making ever since I can remember. However, this year I implemented a new change: I made Mom switch from margarine to butter. I think she was a little nervous, since she’s probably been making them exactly as Grandma’s recipe calls for, oh, 31 years and hey, it would kinda suck to mess up 4 dozen cookies just because I’m a little bit afraid of trans fat. (Ok, a lot bit afraid.) Fortunately, for me and everyone else’s arteries, they were delicious with butter.

I mean, it’s butter. You can’t go wrong, right?

My mom would probably like me to point out that after cutting out the first two dozen, I went and took a nap on the couch while she finished up the last two and then frosted all of them.

Moms are champs, aren’t they?

My brother, Mom and I went to see Precious on Saturday night. (Katie had taken Dad back down to Charlotte for a flight to Florida for a golf trip and Matt was on call.) Precious was INCREDIBLE. I don’t think I can do it justice to describe it, so I’ll just leave at this: go see it. Don’t expect to feel warm n’ fuzzy after leaving it, but expect to be powerfully moved. Maybe the best film I’ve seen in 2009. Don’t tell Edward and Bella.

On Sunday I took the remainder of the fam back down to Charlotte, and Mom, Katie and I went shopping at Trader Joe’s. Not having a Trader Joe’s is one of two faults I consider Winston-Salem to have. (The other is Willard’s cabs.) I loaded up on Prosecco (duh), dried every-kinda-fruit-imaginable, tons of fish, tubs of hummus and the best roasted balsamic butter veggies in. the. world. Not kidding. (PS, I like food. Did you notice?) The rest of Sunday I spent sitting in traffic on I-85 and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

It was SUCH a great weekend having time to spend with both of our families. My favorite parts of the weekend were having Matt’s family over before we went to the big lunch and just having some quieter time with them, waking up every morning to have coffee with my momma and dragging my sister out to the field behind our house to do a photo shoot so I could practice using different camera settings. (She won’t let me post the pictures, but I might anyways. I’ll wait a day or two to see if she reads this.) The weekend went by so fast, but I have a feeling December is going to slip right on past us and we’ll be packing for Rochester before I know it! The holidays seem to do that to ya – take forever to get here, then just whoosh right on by. What’s with that?

The Holidays: Party Naps Recommended.

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Green

Clearly my proclivity to dry cleaning and hair dye should be a dead give away that I’m not exactly a poster girl for Green Living, but I have been trying to figure out little ways here and there to start being a little more kind to the environment. From a selfish perspective, I totally believe that the amount of chemicals and fakey-fake stuff we use in our lives (and our foods) has to negatively impact our health, so I’m all for trying out products with friendlier ingredients.

Note: This may be one of the dorkiest entrees I’ve ever written, but the best part of writing a blog is I’m author, editor and publisher. Woo.

The good thing about shopping at Wally-world is that it makes going green affordable – many of the regular cleaning products I buy now offer “green” products that are negligible in their price differences. Are they really better for the environment? I don’t know. As adamant as I am about food label reading, the whole “factual” realm of green products vs. the “you’re a big fat sucker for marketing” realm still eludes me. But, it makes the ego feel good to use them, doesn’t it?

WELL. Not if the end result is crappy. I bought Palmolive Eco dishwasher soap and was all “woohoo, I’m nice to the Earth.” HARUMPH. My warmnfuzzy feelings were short lived.

See that label? Cleans to A Sparkly Shine?
FORESHADOWING, PEOPLE, I’M FORESHADOWING…

For weeks, I kept pulling spotty glasses and silverware out of my dishwasher, and couldn’t figure out why. I finally realized it had started when I bought the new cleaner. I was home in Rochester and watched my mom pull a less than sparkly cup out of the dishwasher and lament over how their water seemed to be dirty… I looked under her sink and TA DA! Eco friendly dish cleaner letting her down too. A quick google search proves I’m not crazy – by and large, a healthy dose of white film seems to be the norm for other Palmolive Eco users out there.

Oh, hey house guests, welcome.
Don’t mind our gross dinnerware.

So, I’m going back to the Cascade that pollutes our oceans and streams, until someone can point me in the direction of a dishwasher soap that is nice to Mother Earth AND makes my dishes sparkly clean. Yea, I said it. COME AND GET ME, EPA. Ok, really, please don’t? But, is it too much to ask that a product that is eco-kind also works really good? Green homemaking FAIL.

HIP, HIP

It’s amazing how owning a house pretty much automatically doubles your to do list. Not that I can really complain – after doing most of the initial unpacking, I will confess that much of the follow up: picture hanging, landscaping, furniture building, has been the undertakings of Dr. C. (In my defense, I do not create the Honey Do List. Most of these projects are generated by the taskmaster himself.)

This weekend, after my flurry of productivity yesterday (you know, the ironing) Matt took on a tremendous Home Improvement Project: the big wall. We’ve been staring at this big, blank wall for 2 months trying to figure out what we could put up After a few unsuccessful go-rounds trying to find just the right thing on the interwebs, we ended up in Pottery Barn one night last week and the set of shelves came home with us.

I knew that this was a task I would be minimally involved in as it required measuring things, staying focused on one task at a time and heights. Not three of my fortes. I tried my best to be handy including standing at the bottom of the ladder handing up levels, drills, Coors Lights, nails, and holding the dust buster under the drill holes. However, there is one thing I have learned from past Home Improvement Projects and it is this:

So, although I was quite minimally involved in the actual doings of the project, the end result is so fantastic that I thought it warranted a post. We didn’t really know what we were going to put on the shelves, but it all came together in 3 different color schemes, which I love. So far, our house has mostly features the palates of Taupe, Brown, Natural and Cocoa, so this is a good addition. Hooray for Color! The only thing we purchased was the skinny painting from HomeGoods and the bamboo plant from World Market. It’s green and I can’t kill it! Yessss! Then I found the perfect colored candles at good ol’ Wally-World and the tableau is complete. (They even smell good, which wafts down right where you walk into the living room.)

End Result!
(The green from Bethpage compliments the bamboo nicely, don’t you think?)

Happy Wife, Happy Life

This week was crappy for no apparent reason. Like, the kind of week where you’re almost trying to FIND something to pinpoint those AGGGH BLACCCH EEEKFF feelings on, because heaven knows you’re not going to be the girl who’s just complaining for no reason at all, right? Right. I don’t know what it was, the alignment of the stars, the extra half hour of sleep stolen each morning by my new furry, four-legged personal trainer, the stress of a brand-new group of 40 newbies staring eagerly at me wondering how I am magically going to make them lose weight, the fact that I still had a suitcase sitting on the bedroom floor from a vacation a week ago or WHAT. But all week long, I felt tired, I felt cranky and I felt … undeserving of those feelings. Like, who am I to feel that way when the list of blessings definitely outweighs any for-real negatives in my life? That’s so strange to feel that way – undeserving of the right to be cranky. But until I sat down to pour my heart and soul out to the internets, I didn’t even realize that sentiment was underlying that craptastic funk I was in all week. I mean, why can’t I have a week where I’m just feeling shitty for no good reason at all?

I can hear myself telling any of my coaching clients right now: it’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. Apparently, I’m taking my role as the positivity police a little toooooo seriously if I won’t even let myself have a B.B. King kind of week. But whatever, it’s come and gone, and I’m feeling just fine and dandy and actually pretty darn accomplished after 3 hours of ironing. (Yes, 3 HOURS. We’ll get to that.) Actually, you know what I think was the root cause of all this internal foot stomping? I don’t think I’ve had a day where I really could iron since April 29th: closing day. We closed, we packed up, we moved, we unpacked, we unpacked some more, we hosted family, celebrated a graduation, packed up our bags, flew to the Dominican, (ok don’t pity me too much here), came home, unpacked, got a dog, realized said dog had some major behavioral issues, went home to Lincolnton, went to work again, went home to Rochester, went back to work again and WOW. Ok, blogging epiphany. While the last 8 weeks have been chock full of really super duper awesome stuff….

I am le tired. And I want a nap.

So this weekend, we originally planned to go to the mountains. And while I know I would be happily hiking along a huge staircase of boulders in Julian Price right now, or maybe sipping a cold brewski out of a mason jar at The Woodlands, I am really really happy to be sitting in my bonus room with a sleeping dog at my feet, a sleeping hubby in front of the TV, a big pile of ironing done, and no where to go. Staycation, yes please.

This morning, I switched out my winter and summer clothes – a task that led to me accumulating a pile of ironing about 3 feet high. I really avoid ironing at all costs – in fact most of the time, I just take it to the dry cleaners and pay $2 to get it pressed. I’m a firm believer in outsourcing. But this was probably about 20 items, so I figured I better just tackle it. I loaded up my computer with some TV I’ve wanted to catch up on – 3 episodes of Cook Yourself Thin, the season finale of The Office and 3 coaching vlogs I follow. It took me 3 hours and 60 oz of distilled water to get through that pile. No joke. And once I was on a role, I decided to iron the curtains that we need to hang in our guest room and the linen napkins I haven’t used since Valentine’s Day because they got too wrinkly after I washed them. All in all, 23 items ironed. I guarantee that’s more ironing than I have done in our entire marriage.

After I ironed, I sat down and made the first meal plan I’ve made in probably 2 months (formerly an Every Saturday Morning tradition) which now means I have a humongous Harris Teeter trip on my hands. Our house is clean, the laundry is done, the dog is snoring… it feels so good to have my house right again.

When my home is happy, I am happy.

Meal Plan for the Week:

Sunday: Flat Iron Steak with Pimiento Cheese Mashed Potatoes, Sauteed Spinach and Onions, and Green Salad (No recipes, just basics)
Monday: Everday Food’s Pork Satay with Peanut Sauce and Lo Mein Noodles
Tuesday: Cook Yourself Thin’s Pasta Bake
Wednesday: Cook Yourself Thin’s Quesadillas (If I can keep my hands off the wholly guacamole until then.)
Thursday: Sushi (picked up from Fresh Market) and Cook Yourself Thin’s Spring Rolls
Friday: Leftovers or Grilled Chicken Salad

If any of the recipes are worth repeating, I’ll post them on megeats.

We is moved!

It’s official! We are homeowners! Yipee!! Mortgage Payment!

The move went pretty much as perfectly as one could hope for – which was a nice counterbalance to the day of fun I had waiting on the Time Warner installation and dealing with the customer service reps the completely apathetic worker who pretended to sympathize with me. I already devoted about 230 tweets to this subject so I’ll move on. Maybe.

Friday our team of movers showed up – BJ & Minez – and we went to dinner and then sat around and stared at each other. Boy, life without a TV, huh? The boys, including Z and my father-in-law, were pretty frickin amazing as far as a moving crew goes. Hubby had the truck in the driveway by 9, it was loaded by 10:30, at the new house and empty by 12:30. Cap it off with a visit by the ice cream truck chiming it’s merry little bells down the street (PUSH POP!!! what what), and it was pretty much the most efficient and wonderful moving experience ever. Also, no TVs were dropped this time.

The moving crew, big fans of the now EMPTY truck.

Ice Cream Truck? Seriously? Best neighborhood ever.

What it took to move us: 26 foot truck, 2 CRV (full of clothing, pillows, camera, banana bread, etc, all things I did not trust to go into said truck), an Accord with all paintings, pics, mirrors in backseat, and a pick-up truck with our elliptical and lawn mower.

PS, there’s just TWO of us. Yea.

And the pathetic thing is, I didn’t feel like we own a lot of stuff until this move. I’m the queen of ebaying, and I’m constantly paring down my closets and warding off the accumulation of excess clutter. Yet, it took no less than 4 vehicles to transport just the two of us across town. What gives?

On a related note, see my ebay store! New and exciting stuff being posted by the minute! Eh?

After we moved in and chowed down on push pops, the boys went back to the old house to do some cleaning. Minez will forever hold a special place in my heart for cleaning the laundry room floor where the washer & dyer were located. While they were gone, my in-laws went to town unpacking the kitchen while I finished the rest of the boxes in the downstairs. By 7 pm, we had burgers on the grill, friends showing up with wine & guacamole, and the downstairs kind of looked like humans could live there. Nothing like having guests over on the first day to send you into an unpacking flurry.

You have to prioritize the order you unpack things.
Sheets & towels can wait.

I think I was on an adrenaline high, because I even made the most obscenely organized kitchen-overflow closet. If Williams-Sonoma had a 8×3 foot store, it would look exactly like my closet. I can’t wait for Jamie, queen bee organization, to see it. (Yes, J, your approval on my closet space means a lot to me.) Last night, we sat on our back deck listening to the nothing-ness of living out in the country. I have come a long way, baby! From the shock trauma center in Baltimore, to the sounds of the cityscape in DC, to the rush of I-40 in our old house to…. CRICKETS. I can hear crickets. Awesome. We just keep looking around the place going “this is ours? Seriously? We get to keep it??”

My little slice of heaven, with some really fugly patio furniture, unfortch.

The only downside is that I find myself not wanting to be at work because there’s about a zillion home projects I want to tackle while I still have the motivation of novetly. Including our bonus room.

Overheard on moving day: “Where does this go?” “Um, I don’t know, put it in the bonus room.”

Yea, that room. Sigh.

Any Given Sunday

After getting back from my in-law’s house, I threw myself into a flurry of housekeeping – I cleaned both bathrooms (tubs), cleaned up the kitchen (including the dreaded microwave wipe down, ugh), did dishes, mopped the kitchens and bathrooms, finished folding and put up laundry, washed and changed the sheets, dusted, vacuumed, and made pesto and banana bread (needed to use up parsley and overriped banans, respectively.) By the time I finished it was 7:45 and the Duke/Wake game was on so I watched that while reading food logs and then went to bed. A bit exhausting, but there’s just such a good feeling like looking around your house and seeing everything in it’s place.

Too bad it never seems to last more than 24 hours. As I was talking to my mom last night and reporting on my day, she paused before saying “Didn’t you do the exact same thing last Sunday?” Sigh.