More than a Crock of Old Spoons

Autumn is arriving early this year, the faintest bit of apple in the air, and a sense of time passing every time we mow the yard. The skies in my area have been sullen gray for weeks due to the drifting smoke of the California fires, and have proven to be a subdued backdrop to the school buses that have bloomed everywhere like startling yellow mushrooms. I never rode a bus, and actually walked to school, from elementary to high school, something rarely done nowadays. And along with my 'Dick and Jane' readers, I carried this lunchbox. It is just starting to develop rust on the other side, but overall, it really shows that even as a little girl in knee socks, I did like to take care of my things.

It's another day, and yet again I stand at the sink, up to my elbows in dirty dishes. In fact, it seems that day and dishes are inextricably linked with each other. I don't mind, though.  Of all household tasks, I actually enjoy this more than most; it gives my mind a great opportunity to roam, and my hands keep time with my thoughts in the hot, lemon-scented water. Today, I continue to mull over this little crock of utensils on the counter, and it occurs to me that I received this complete set over 30 years ago. The metal utensils were a wedding gift from my marriage with my previous/late husband and the wooden spoons came from the Dollar Store, bought at a tough time when even some wooden spoons for a buck were a major purchase--and a treat--for me.  Even the whimsical little flower pot that holds them is nearly two decades old, and although I indeed remember who gave it to me, I sadly can't remember what kind of posies it once held.

I like antiques, but many of them I seem to make myself. Yes, I do have carefully selected treasures purchased from actual shops, like my vintage hat collection and some of my books that date back to the 1800s. But many more of my possessions wear the patina of age, simply because it has been a long-held belief of mine that there is great value in holding on to things if they are still serviceable or beautiful, and if they retain a major place in my heart.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm a pack-rat, or in modern terms, a 'hoarder'--not by any stretch of the imagination. Most of my adult years were spent re-locating to different parts of the country, and nothing, absolutely nothing can help in weeding out the unnecessary like having to box and haul.  Many of my items have been donated over the years, and seldom are they ever really missed. I savor the serenity of empty corners and meticulously ordered cupboards.  But I also do not seem to have that craving for newer, better, more. I do not automatically think that replacing equates improving. I am grateful for that blessing, and as such, I cherish what I do choose to keep.

I believe there is an energy to things that have been well used and well preserved. There is a comforting warmth to a wooden spoon that has been darkened and smoothed from years of clopping against mixing bowls of chocolate chip cookie dough. This spoon will feel different in the hand than even the shiniest new plastic one. Every time I pull out that cheese grater, I think of tacos and teen-age sons, and how many bricks of cheese I grated for them over the years in order to fill those growing bodies. The spatulas have tossed thousands of pancakes and folded over as many omelettes, as well as scraped off more than I'd like to count of burned grilled cheese or other assorted mishaps. And how many servings of chili or Campbell's tomato soup that ladle has dished out is anyone's guess.

I believe that much of the problem in our country today is that we have become a throw away society. Until the mid-twentieth century and the advent of the credit card, thrift used to be a primary value, as ingrained in our American consciousness as Detroit automobiles, Coca-Cola, and the Statue of Liberty. We were a nation of factories and manufacturing; we made things, but we were truly strong because we took care of things. We repaired things, mended them, polished them, made them last, and kept them organized. And this kind of attitude pervaded our families as well. I know that there will always be the argument that there were problems back then, too, and there most certainly were.  But overall, it is undeniable that this country was one where sacred marriages weren't trashed by divorce, homes were tidy and steadfast, friends and neighbors were in contact for decades, and children weren't disposed at a daycare.

 Our quest for the shiny new fad has in some ways blinded us to the fact that not everything new is better--in quality, in design, or even in materials. In fact, one could easily argue that many older objects have demonstrated their endurance simply by still being here, intact and useful. 

Above are two tea cups given to us by our adopted English 'grandmother'. The cups are authentic English bone china, but the reminder of this sweet lady's hug and smile far exceeds any antique show pedigree. And because they are so precious to us, they are not packed away in some dark cupboard, and they make regular appearances on the breakfast table, filled with piping hot green tea. Irreplaceable they may be, but precious things tenderly used remind us of the fragile blessing found in each single moment, and I am grateful for every sip.

As a homemaker, I am also a caretaker, taking care of the things that help to take care of us. It's a delicate balance.  I am surrounded by things that mean so much to me, because they have been loved and used and yes--shared, many of them laden with memory.  However, my home will not ever be a museum, a chilly place where objects are exalted over people. Even the most treasured things are still just things. They can never be more valuable than the loving, beating hearts around us. If something gets accidentally broken or stained, that's part of life, too, but at least it was enjoyed and well-used.

"Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without" were the bywords of Americans fighting their way through the dust and deprivation of the Great Depression, and indeed, that philosophy not only helped them survive, it strengthened them into victors during World War II, and the most prosperous country on Earth during the nifty 50s.  Wouldn't it be amazing if our society applied this perspective to our modern consumerist age, to our blizzard of credit card debt?

Just a thought.      

    

We bought a house; God gave us a home

June is upon us, with its symphonies of birdsong and the iris promenading in their purple ballgowns. It's hard for me to believe as I type this, gazing occasionally out through the open front door at the expanse of brilliantly green grass and blooming trees, that so much could happen in a year.  Only twelve short months ago, we decided to buy our first house, an 800 foot 'shack', as some close to us called it. Not only was it so tiny that people walking by often did not realize that a house was even on the grounds, but it had been a rough rental property where at one point, according to our neighbors, TEN men had been camped out at the same time. The house took your breath away with the reek of cat urine, and had been completely gutted and painted by the landlord in order for it to be put on the market. Only twelve short months ago, we took a deep breath, kept the strait-jackets in reserve in case of emergency, and took ownership of what seemed to be nothing but problems disguised as a mortgage.  

 I remember pacing in this kitchen, trying not to explode into total hysteria, because the movers could not fit all of our boxes into the house. I have moved many times in my life, and you would never have guessed by the utter chaos around us that every box had been carefully labeled corresponding to the room in which it belonged. It seemed that the second we entered this house, nothing went according to plan. Things were far more filthy than we would have imagined after a fresh paint job, and there was no room for ANYTHING. Flowers on the far right in the above picture were a housewarming gift from the banker and the realtor, but I quickly began to wonder if we were celebrating making the mistake of our lives.

 

And how wonderful it is that I was so completely wrong. After days of thorough cleaning, and weeks of getting the rodents permanently out, the kitchen was the first pleasant surprise. Understand, we kind of bought the house without really looking at it, because the price was right in this over-inflated market; we had received a home-buying grant for this part of town; and most importantly, the house sat on two lots, which had great potential for ministry. So all I really knew about the kitchen was that it was the size of a shoebox and full of mice droppings. I discovered that most of the cupboards were the sturdy 1930s originals and the storage was simply unbelievable. My grandmother's entire heirloom set of china is in those drawers and the upper cabinets hold everything from an ice cream maker to all of my plastic containers. The cabinets and drawers are deep and high, spacious enough to hold pots and pans, table linens, and even all of my Christmas china. I still can't believe after all the years of having to lug out my Christmas china every December, now it's just sitting right there on the shelf. I even have a drawer or two with little or nothing in them, and I have all the tools and gadgets of a very serious cook.

We also learned that a little bit of paint could pack a HUGE punch. Best thrifty hint ever: we used the sample jars that they sell at paint stores and used them to paint accent walls. For the kitchen,I wanted a yellow so buttery, it looked like it was fattening. This room actually used took two sample jars, because I loved the main accent wall so much I kind of went crazy painting accent panels on the cupboards and trim.

I believe the red cabinet handles may be original. We bought an antique folding table for this room, an extravagance, I know, but it was the only size table that would work. Our ancestors indeed know how to live in small places.

Here, I am, realizing that it is indeed possible to be horrified and elated at the same time. We literally had to climb over boxes to get through our front parlor, and our couch barely fit into the largest room. I still marvel at the fact that we slept in this house the very first night, but we did. (How did I even get sheets on the bed?)  We had moved from a 1979 mobile home, and had always been minimalists. It was quite the shock to be stuck in an avalanche of our few belongings! 

According to plan, we did wind up making this room a 'parlor' and a formal office space, but to our chagrin, realized that the adjoining room, which we intended for a family room, would have to be our bedroom instead. The downstairs stair case was simply too narrow to bring our bed down!
 

Below is the same point where I was standing--roughly--in the previous photo with the mountains of boxes. The main thing we did in this room was to paint an accent wall a soft, mauvy beige. This is a color that is quite accurate to the 1930s color palette, and even hearkens back to the Victorian era.

The entry way going downstairs was actually the first area we got done, only because we discovered that one particular bookcase fit there perfectly. The artworks in that corner are still some of my very favorites, created by artist friends who mean a great deal to me.

We had quite the adventure in the bathroom. It didn't need much initial work, but when I was painting it on a steamy July day, the toilet erupted with an exploding geyser of water rising UP through the bowl. I'd never seen anything like that--except at Old Faithful. After calling the water company in record time, I discovered that they were testing the water main...and attempting to give me heart failure. 

But on to more pleasant things...Here I went with another very pale, delicate yellow, and an additional color that is a little light brown, purple, beige combo, a color that just always makes me think of doilies and grandma's house. Someday, we hope to get the dingy, paint-spattered vinyl flooring replaced but that, unfortunately, is at the bottom at the list for now. (Oh, and I should mention that this room was so small, an entire paint sample jar pretty much covered it..)

Dear husband read online that in houses of the 1930s, they liked a color palette that was cool, like soft blues, violets, and lavenders. We kind of combined all three and painted one accent wall this lovely enigmatic gray and lilac. Moving a queen sized bed and and one bureau in order to paint, in a room where there is hardly room to walk around the bed was, however, far from lovely. In fact, the bureau that you see got wedged in sideways into our tiny clothes closet, because I had the brainy idea that it might fit in there. It didn't, and to this day, I look at the gashes in the closet casing and wonder how in the world we got it loose and back out. It had to have been that prayer we quickly said, when fifteen minutes had gone by and despite our groans and sweat, it was as stuck as stuck could be...and then suddenly after the prayer, it popped right back out. God cares about even the tiniest details in our lives.

But even now I love to look at this wall the moment I open my eyes in the morning. I believe the color makes the room look a bit bigger, and it makes me feel cool and calm. Dave's uncle, who helped us with much of the handyman work declared it 'the color of a Pennsylvania sky,' and as a former resident of that fair state, I'm inclined to agree.
 

And so now, let me take you downstairs, or as I referred to it then, the 'dungeon of all dungeons.'

Yes, this decrepit cell was supposed to be our laundry room. The washer and dryer that the seller assured us were functional were simply a repository for caked dirt, grease and hair, as well as other substances I'd rather not think about. After a full day meticulously trying to scrub out the crud, I discovered that no matter of persuasion or button pounding could get the dirty hunk of metal to work. After clearing out a full trash bag's worth of fast food wrappers and cigarette butts behind the dryer (nice), I bravely turned it on only to discover an odor that smelled like the prelude to a house fire mixed with skunk. And yes, all this escaped our inspector. After a few weeks of $15 a pop at the laundromat, we decided that a new washer and dryer on sale would actually save us money, and greatly please the lady of the house. The appliances were carted out and up the narrow stairs, and we thought things were rolling along, until it was called to our attention that the sewer needed to be completely overhauled. Pipes were so caked with rust that the slightest bit of movement could completely break them open, spilling out some particularly nasty contents. The floor drain was also completely unusable and hadn't been clear for probably decades. The floor drain had to be redrilled, and new master pipes put in place.

This was a bit of a complication, because on top of just being noisy, dirty, expensive work, we had just had a tile floor custom laid. The tile was a top priority, since the cement floor was crumbling and constantly dusty, not a good thing for my asthmatic lungs. The tile floor was laid by one of my favorite people, a man who's heart is as strong as his work ethic. He lugged bag after bag of cement down the steps without complaint and managed to make a semi-smooth, level floor from a surface of nothing but hills and valleys.

I absolutely adore this room, because I have never really had a bonafide laundry room before. A little bright white paint and some vivid art work helped brighten up a windowless corner.  It used to seem a lot more spacious, but a local alley cat adopted us, and that is her kennel (with her four-week-old kittens) that you see in the foreground. No, she isn't the best thing for my asthma, but she does decrease my stress, so I figure that it balances out.

And last but not least, is our family room and mini library. The only thing I did in here was to paint the far left wall a yummy caramel color. It took us an entire afternoon to arrange the furniture in here; it was like playing a Herculean Jenga game with enormous puzzle pieces.The space is so small that we can confidently say that this is the only way that all these components will fit. Thank God, they did!

This is where we kick back and occasionally tube out. The chair you see directly was a garage sale find for $20.

 And just off of this family room is our tiny library. This is quite a multi-functional space, since it is a private worship area for my husband, (an Anglican priest), his dressing area, a space for his religious books, and also for my collection of domestic and home management books. We loaded nearly 500 books down the steep stairs to get this task accomplished. I adore the scent of books, and turning that printed page, but wow did that love leave me nursing my sore back and leg muscles.

   

This is just a fraction of our books, however. Dear husband still has five large boxes in our shed. There are also other full bookshelves throughout the house. The piles of notebooks are all from his seminary work, and their are many of his civic awards on the walls and shelves.

There is still so much to do, but it is dizzying to see how far we've come. The Christian mindset is one of redemption--that nothing should go to waste, and that all people are made in His image and thus are valuable and paid for with the most costly of price. This view extends to things like homes as well, that we are encouraged to live our best lives and see the possibilities in even the most humble of circumstances. Sometimes a bit of heavenly glory can be found somewhere where the floors might be uneven and the windows leak.

'Bloom Where You're Planted' really is a profound saying.

 I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be.

Raggedy cookbooks

My first--and still old standby--Better Homes and Gardens, given to me as a wedding gift in 1984. It looks like it might have survived an earthquake or an attack of savage dogs, when in actuality all it had to endure was a painfully insecure teenage cook who learned through a rollercoaster ride of flops, of sawdust cakes and bread like a brick and stew where the carrots still crunched like orange rocks. My sons took their Crayolas to this book, and although I was mad at the time, now those are the pages that make me want to hold their little hands again. Half of the pages in the book have fallen out and most are bumpy with dishwater stains and all manner of mystery food splotches. The book is open to Blonde Brownies, which I have probably made at least a hundred times in my life, and I see I have marked 'Toffee Bars' as 'good', but I've made them so many times that I certainly don't need that reminder anymore. 

The book above is a 1960s version of Better Homes and Gardens, which I ordered used from Amazon. It is a treasure trove of 1970s memorabilia, since the owner, a "Mrs. David E. Hoover" who inscribed the front cover with a flourish, collected magazine recipes and meticulously added them to her cookbook. She most definitely did NOT allow her sons to color all over the 'egg' section, and her book has nary a water stain.

Hints and tips from a Mom

Advice I would want my children to remember I gave them:

1. Always dress up when you are going to do something that you are a bit anxious about, like taking a test, and of course, a job interview should be a foregone conclusion. Knowing that you look your best will make you feel more confident and focused.

2. Your home speaks volumes about you. Keep it neat and tidy, and don't make it just a place to in which to eat and to crash out. Home can be your place of total replenishment, if you let it be.

3. Read a book. And not just some cheap best-seller either. Read something non-fiction, where you actually learn something.

4. Say 'thank you' often and write thank you notes.  Have a 'thank you' attitude towards life in general.

5. One of the most frugal things a household can do is to keep their refrigerator clean and eat as many leftovers as possible. 

6. When you get paid, immediately write out a budget and 'spend' every dollar. In other words, every bit of your money should be designated, for bills, groceries, savings, etc.  Even 'fun' money should go into its own fund.

7. Don't call people or disturb them during the hours between 5:00 and 7:00. I know it's become acceptable, but I believe the world would be a better place if we could unplug and actually sit down to dinner with our families on a regular basis.

8. A man cannot serve two masters, and debt is a second master, which keeps you from living your best life.

9. Don't follow what everyone else does. If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you jump off too?


I'm sure there will be more to come...as I love to give advice...whether wanted or not. :)  


(Image: "Armchair Lady" pastel on paper, Cory Jaeger-Kenat, 2000.)

Today I am grateful for...

Today I am grateful for:
1. A shepherd's pie ready to go into the oven. Just need to grate the cheese to melt on the top.

2. Finishing the last stitch on the second baby quilt. Now I start to learn to knit!!

3. Record low temperatures in my part of the woods, which means that the car won't start, which means that I get to hibernate and do some much needed maintenance on my website and photograph my artworks in this great white winter light.

4. The new book I ordered, "The Drama of the Gifted Child" came today!

5. The new munchkin grandgirls, who showed up early to the party, but sure are beautiful and healthy.

6. New inspirations: a concept for my own art gallery on our future property, and fresh ideas about our future house. I've even had a new burst of insight into creating miniature paintings!

7. It's Friday--enough said.

8. That I'm starting to finally figure out how to take a good photograph of my art...after over a decade! grr!

9. The delight of watching Olivia De Havilland in "To Each His Own" and Norma Shearer in "Marie Antoinette" back to back on TCM today. Both are Academy Award winners and truly deserve the honor.

10.Steaming hot cocoa.

A new painting and really cheapy casserole

Well, folks, da-ta-ta-da, it's finished...
My first experiment with the painting style known as "trompe l'oeil", the French phrase for "fool the eye." Really fantastic, seasoned trompe l'oeil artists can create works that give the viewer such a convincing sense of reality that one feels as if the objects can just be pulled off the shelves. I'm not at that level yet, but I am fascinated by the pursuit of making things come alive in a very different reality through paint.

The first baby quilt for Twin A (we thought about calling them Twin 1 and Twin 2, but it just sounded somehow wrong) is finished, and I will be displaying it just as soon as I can. I have this REALLY annoying character flaw (among many) and this is that I don't ever remember to bring a camera to ANYTHING! So, here I am at the baby shower for my first granddaughters, and of course, no camera. My daughter-in-law has promised me pictures though, thank God one of us has a practical head on her shoulders...I figure that I put well over 100 hours into it, but it was well worth the time.

I am the casserole queen, perhaps not the prestigious title in the world, but at least I'm the queen of somethin'! Tonight's offering is one of my favorites...one of those "throw whatever's in the fridge and hope for the best" recipes. Tonight I sauteed some onions, some diced celery, and a chicken breast together. I added a can of cream of mushroom soup, and about a half cup of my homemade refrigerator salsa, which I admit is heavy on the cilantro. I added some chili powder to taste, some pepper, some parsley, and some powdered garlic, as well as some leftover rice. Popped it into the oven at 325, and I'll top it with some leftover cheddar cheese as it begins to bake.

Nothing else much to report, except that I'm still in the midst of my homemade Women's Studies plan. The book I'm reading right now is not the most stimulating one I've read, but it is a basic, nuts and bolts view of the history of women's rights. It's entitled "Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement". The thing that strikes me as I read about Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, among many others is that so few of these women were ever working class housewives. They appeared to have come mostly from privileged families. I find it interesting that they were so passionately against a lifestyle for women that in many ways they really didn't live. And I also think that in an age before the washing machine and the electric range...well, somebody had to do these tasks for them, and most likely it was a poor servant class of women. But I'm only partly through the book, so perhaps this observation will change.

I'm also reading "The American Woman's Home" by Catherine Beecher. Her sister was the famed Harriet Beecher Stowe of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" fame. Catherine Beecher was the Martha Stewart of her age. She wrote many books on how to effectively manage a home of the time, and was instrumental in developing further education for women and training teachers to move to the West. She was an anti-feminist, believing strongly that the most important job for women was to create stable, productive, loving homes in our country as a springboard to create good citizens. Despite this arguably antiquated stance, much of her advice is strangely pertinent even today. Just goes to show that women are women-- whether they're in hoop skirts or blue jeans. I'm looking forward to putting together a review of her book in the near future.

(Image: "Aunt Ethel's Shelf" Acrylic on Canvas, Cory Jaeger-Kenat, 2010.) 

Projects!

In the last couple of years, I've started to reframe my concept of home. I'm starting to think of it as a production center--rather than a consumption center. This is slow going, because I grew up like so many of us out there, in a suburban wonderland where milk and meat and cheese magically came into the world encased in cellophane. The ironic thing is this: my parents and extended family come from a strong farming background. My mom is an expert gardener and my dad the consummate repair man and carpenter, who by his own admission, "can fix anything but a broken heart." I think as kids, my brother and I were far more interested in Scooby Doo and riding banana-seat bikes than hoeing weeds, and our parents just didn't seem to be bothered by that. After all, we were children of the 60s and 70s. We watched movies about starships and figured the cars we would drive would look a lot like George Jetson's. And weren't they going to build us Rosie the Robot Maids, ready to serve at our beck and call? It hardly seemed like churning butter was very compatible with being part of the Brady Bunch.

So...here are some of my projects in action. Right now, I'm harvesting  tomatoes. Yes, those misshapen things ARE tomatoes, and tasty ones at that. But I have no idea, why they look like pears with these long peaked tails...I have been reading about ripening green tomatoes in the house. It sounds like one effective method is putting them in a single layer in a darker area of a room, covered with a couple of sheets of newspaper. Fingers crossed, I plan to do that in a week or so, once I gather all the green ones.





We are thrilled to announce that hubby and I are going to be grandparents for the first time!! I had my boys as a teenage mom, and although I wouldn't trade a moment, it was a rather bumpy road. Blessedly, my son and his lovely bride are not following my example. I've been working on this quilt, the image based on a childhood toy of my son's. Imagine my surprise when that same son called with the news that it isn't one grandbaby, but two! TWINS! So, needless to say, I'm hustling to get this puppy done and start right away on another one. There's just something so sweet about thinking about these lovely children and stitching, one stitch at a time.



It's not finished, not by a long shot. But this is my first adventure into trompe l'oeil, a form of painting that focuses on illusion and still life. You literally can create any fantasy environment on your walls, using some of these techniques. I hope to get this piece completed within the next couple of weeks. The little figures on the top shelf will be the little figures on a wedding cake, and a china cup and saucer will be added. I don't care for the salt and pepper shakers behind the apron, and will be changing them. Also there will be either some fresh flowers or some vegetables draping from the bottom level of the glass platter. The color balance will also be refined and changed. My paintings go through so much in process that I'm always hesitant to show them before they're finished--because this work will look very different once it's done. But it's been so fun--I just couldn't resist giving you a sneak peek. 

So, what are we really saying?

Type in the words "retro housewife" on youtube, and you might be in for a surprise. There are a plethora of homemade videos out there, mostly lampooning the June Cleaver-in-pearls-and-an apron-waiting-at-the-door-with-the-pipe-and-slippers image we so associate, for good or ill, with post-War America.

I chose this one because it's obviously made by young people who very likely have never even seen an episode of "Leave It to Beaver." And the narrative in the video is taken from an actual 1950s era article, which I believe comes from "Good Housekeeping" and made the email rounds a few years ago. It's a list of tips advising women how best to run their households, and (*gasp*) "serve" their husbands. The clip is a strange mixture of cute and cuttingly sarcastic, a brew of the Greatest Generation meets the college Goth. You can almost hear these kids waxing indignant whenever the camera is shut off, declaring "Can you believe that people EVER lived like this?"

Don't get me wrong. There were gender roles in the 1950s that needed a bit of a stretch. Repression and perfection were the order of those days...but my theory is that it was more to be found as a message in the media than in those actual suburban neighborhoods. And the video did make me chuckle. But it also made me think.

What's the hidden things that are being mocked here? Could it be a well-ordered home? A woman who cares enough about her husband to cook his favorite thing for dinner? The very concept of giving to others? Could one even say that it was mocking of women/wives/mothers in general?

Caitlin Flanagan, in her insightful and controversial book "To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Your Inner Housewife", comments about this same narrative:

"[It] advises the housewife to prepare for husband's arrival at the end of the day: to have dinner ready, to minimize household noise and clutter, to avoid assaulting her man with a litany of domestic problems and disappointments, and to inquire about his day. There was a sense back in those innocent years that a day at the office was a tiring event that required a bit of recuperation: a cold drink, a sympathetic companion, a decent meal--all of which, I suspect, functioned as a sexual tonic."

Tonight I'll have homemade Chicken Parmesan waiting on the table when Dave comes home. Our evenings are cozily predictable, marked by good conversation about daily adventures, favorite books, and curling up on the couch. My husband works a dangerous job, and to me, it is a special occasion every time he walks through the door. He even says, "Honey, I'm home!" If he wore slippers or smoked a pipe, I'd bring them to him in a heartbeat.

Things my mother taught me

It's a brilliant winter morning with only a dusting of snow. I don't have a cleaning job today, so I'm able to work in the studio...yippee! Got a new painting loaded on the Loud Colors website called "Cocktails and Salmon Colored Roses". It always feels so good to finish a painting. I keep looking at it, thinking I should tweak it some more, but sometimes I just get tired of being so darned perfectionistic. Besides, the woman in the work looks kinda quirky and kinda tragic, and the whole feeling of the piece is pretty and expressionistic at the same time. Does everything I do have to be so controlled, for Heaven's sake? I certainly hope not! Just got an email from a patron and I think two more small works have just sold.

On Thursdays, my husband's workout partner comes over for dinner. So after making the bed and putting away last night's dishes, (and tearing myself away from Facebook) I'm busy making cranberry meatballs, rice, and chopping up the last half of the remaining cabbage in the fridge for coleslaw. Oops-- out of chili sauce for the meatballs, so I'll just have to use ketchup. Improvised on the brown sugar, too, using white sugar with a small pouring of molasses. Nearly out of onion too, so dried minced onion went into the meatballs, and the remaining fresh onion will go into the coleslaw. I've never really thought a recipe should be followed like it's another Commandment--and besides I'm allergic to grocery stores(!) Tossed the meatballs into the crock pot to cook while I answer a few things on the computer, write out an invoice, and jot down my thoughts on this blog.

Puttering around in my kitchen makes me think about some of the things I learned from my mom (which is amazing because I avoided housework like the plague when I was a kid.)

1. Focus on the corners when you clean a floor--the middle will take care of itself.
2. Use what you have.
3. Don't add salt to your dishes--people use salt shakers often without even tasting the food, anyway.
4. Wash your dishes as you cook.
5. Figure out dessert and plan the rest of the meal around that.
6. If you don't cook enough, there will always be food left over--because everyone is afraid to eat too much.
7. Tea pretty much makes the day go round.

Well, I'm back to the easel. Catch you later.

(Image: "Cocktails and Salmon Roses" Acrylic on Canvas, Cory Jaeger-Kenat, 2010.)