I know it’s been a while. November is a traditionally-hectic month for my family. It’s the one time of the year where I’m making preparations for the holidays so that I can enjoy my December without that pressure to get everything done ALL AT ONCE.

So I do my holiday shopping during November, preferably BEFORE Black Friday (when the rest of the known world goes all crazy with the Visa), so at least my non-handmade gifts are all done and wrapped, and just waiting for the Season to arrive.

Whew.

What this also means is that I’m doing a whole lot of Project-ing that I can’t document publically. Unfortunately. Lots of presents on my knitting needles and flying through my sewing machine, and not a single one has a digital picture taken of it. I mean, in this day and age of Google, it’s may be unlikely that a giftie recipient would find it, but you never know.

Now, all excuses for radio silence aside, there’s a Thing that’s been going on here in my crafting room. (And soon to be followed by the rest of the house.) Some will think I’m insane, given the time of year it is. Some would probably be right — it IS insane.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like we have too much stuff. I think I talked about this before. If not here, than on a few of the message boards I’m on. I’m to the point where even my hobbies are starting to make me feel guilty, because there are Far Too Many Projects(tm), and not enough time in the average lifespan to ever get to them all. My biggest offenders? Fiber and books and fabric. And art supplies from my former life as an artist that I can’t let go of. (My life has taken me in an altogether different direction, and now I’m trying to focus more on my home and family rather than a career in general anyway.)

I have this Scarcity Thing(tm) going on. Like, when I find something, I tend to buy as much of it as I can, thinking that someday, I might not have the money or the availability to it. Which is ludicrous, especially when we’re talking about things like sock yarn or spinning fiber. There is a TON of it on etsy alone, not to mention sites like The Loopy Ewe that consistently get in all the yarns I like. (And they’re about to carry spinning fiber, too, if Sheri’s blog is any indication! That noise you just heard? That’s me, falling over with glee.)

So why is it that I feel the need to cocoon myself in a giant puffball of fiber and yarn and fabric and books!? My studio is a huge room — I mean that. We’re talking right around 30 feet x 20 feet. Giant. Humungous. Very, very large. I’m blessed. I know this.

BUT…and this is a big BUT….it’s full. Full of stuff. Granted, some of it is from my other business, which is fiber related, but oh. mah. maude. It’s obscene.

Last night, while lamenting the fact that my house is still, after several months of trying to make healthier, cleaner routines, and cleaning things out several times before, a giant Ball of Chaos and Crazy…I had this sudden, undeniable urge to get rid of ANYTHING that I’m not currently using, do not love, or that I love and won’t use because “it’s too good”. I mean, there are yarns in my stash that I love so much that I don’t want to knit with them, because it might mean that they’re then gone, which, really, is kind of the epitome of Crazy.

With an iron fist, I made a pass-through the stash, culling out anything that’s just slightly not my style anymore. I filled two baskets. I announced to my local stitch & bitch girls that I was having a clear-out sale on December 1st, and that they were invited to paw through the stashness. Energized by the response and the thought of being free (how sad is it that a stashless — or greatly stash-reduced — state would be considered “free”??), I made a second pass, this time with a giant red pen, slashing out the things I love TOO MUCH, and the least favorite of my favorite dyers. (I let myself keep a bunch, but told myself that things? They had to change. And there are some that I, honestly, like better than others, even from my favorites.)

When all was said and done, with my books, my fabrics, my art supplies, my yarns, my fibers for spinning….the pile looked like this:

Forgive the nasty flash picture.  It was midnight by the time I was done.

Two baskets, a rubbermade bin (one of the big ones), a full tabletop (and it’s a 12′ table!), and a spinning wheel.  I kid you not.

Anything that doesn’t sell to the girls will end up going on etsy or ebay.  I’m determined to hold the din of clutter down to a dull roar.  I still have a fair bit left, but the amount that’s left over seems like a walk in the park — carefree, and without guilt.  It’s an amount that makes me a little anxious (what if I run out!? keeps going through my head — a scenario so unlikely that it’s probably MORE likely that I get hit by a bus in my living room.), but it also makes me feel like I COULD go through it all.  That I COULD get everything done.  That I COULD, in theory, knit and spin and make everything I want to make, and still have time left over to play with other stuff.  It makes me undeniably happy.

Of course, now I want to play with everything I have left, but THAT kind of pressure I can deal with.  It’s now a reward for housekeeping — do 15 minutes of work, and I get to play for a few minutes, instead of dragging my tail to the studio and wondering where to even start.

I love that.

Two little hints of note:

1.  I found this little tidbit from the Happy Slob about cleaning out your dryer lint-trap, since dryer sheets can actually damage your dryer over time.  Interesting!

and,

2.  If you’re on Ravelry, there’s a group there called “Reclaiming the Home” that’s run by the girl from this site.  She’s doing recaps of the discussion on her blog, and it’s turning into a great resource to read through.  The crock pot recipes have me dancing in the aisles.   It’s actually a discussion on this board that got me going with the stash clearout.

Random aside:  While doing the stash clearout, I also got rid of some old momentos from a previous relationship.  (I’m a widow, now remarried.  Yes, I’m only 36.)  I didn’t even look at them.  Just tossed them in the trash.  It was a giant milestone, since I’ve been lugging them around for ten years.  It was awesome, and added to the feeling of Finally Free.

I’m home alone again at the moment.  J’s been gone for just over a day, and luckily will be back tonight.  Which, of course, means I need to feed him, and I’m just NOW getting my tail into gear.  I’m smelling a grocery-store run in the very near future.

For the record, we’ll be out of town this weekend, so I haven’t wanted to battle the grocery store when we’ll be gone for four days anyway.  Plus, the past two days, we’ve been dealing with a lot of stuff with our little visitor-dog.  Apparently, she’s microchipped, but the owner?  Total garbage.  Said he was coming to get her and didn’t show up, and since she was injured last weekend and needed vet care, this was A Very Bad Thing.  According to the laws of the land, apparently, if we got her vet care, not only would we not be able to recoup our losses if the former owner DID show up, but we’d also be open to being SUED for doing anything to his “property”.

What kind of world is it when you find a creature that needs help, get them help, and lose your pants in a lawsuit?  So not fair.

So we are going through the proper channels to make her ours so this never happens again.  She’s at Animal Control right now, and in five days, we pay the ransom..er…fee, and pick her up again.  Her microchip will read *us* as the owner then, rather than the guy who obviously dumped her off.  At least we’ll know she’s safe.

And it’s another step on the road to becoming a ginormous pack of dogs in general.  Four??  Like I need more dog hair around here.  My husband sheds badly enough….

I’m looking forward to three uninterrupted days in the hotel, though.  I have some knitting I want to get done  (I knit.  A lot.  And I’m a joiner, obviously, so I’ve now joined two different shawl-knitting challenges.  Two.  Because I have eversomuch free time.), and I plan to, well, do some planning.

Over at this new site I found, Reclaiming The Home,  she’s posting her to-do lists.  (She’s also a knitter/creative type.  I like knitters.  And creative types.  They’re just my type of crunchy granola with a side of wool.)  I’m still planning on posting mine over under that “About the Project” link, when I can sit down for three minutes and come up with one.  Possibly tonight.  And there may be a few posts in here tonight, as well, when I can locate the camera cord.  I’ve been a nutjob for work the past two days, and haven’t had much of a chance to do the things that I WANT to do for my home and family.  I really need to re-examine my priorities, I think.

There’s a cold north wind blowing in, so I should let the furchildren inside and close up the house.  (I was airing it out — it gets very musty in here, what with it being a giant metal box and all.), but there will be more later.

I’m really, really enjoying connecting with all these people who value the home and family as much as I do.  I was beginning to feel just a bit like an isolated breed when I started this blog.

The one, singular thing that I did while my husband was gone this past week was to take this wall, above, and turn it from white, pockmarked craziness into a slightly-khaki-tannish bit of loveliness.  That strip at the left, was my test, checking to make sure it wasn’t going to go orange on me, which it didn’t.  In fact, it ended up looking vaguely wonderful:

Granted, there are three more walls to do now, but this one, with the least amount of crap to move out of the way — it’s done.  And it’s not even remotely perfect, nor do I have the curtains sewn for the humongous window yet, but I’m still pleased as punch every time I look at it, and that’s worth it for me.

I think now is as good of a time as any to tell you all about this house, and why it presents such unique challenges, both in decorating and keeping it clean.  Make a cup of coffee or two and have a seat.  It takes some explainin’.

See, we don’t own this house.  We also don’t rent it.

No, we’re not squatters.  Though it feels that way sometimes.

J’s job is for his parents.  They own several businesses, for one of which he works.  The shop is connected to this monstrosity of a house, which his father built with his own two hands.  That part, the “own two hands” part, is fairly self-evident, by the way half of it’s not even remotely done, despite the fact that they lived here as a family for almost seven years.  His father is notorious for having resentments attached to good intentions — he meant to get back to whatever it is, but ended up being angry when anyone mentioned it, so nobody did.  And as a result, there are only two working lights in the ceiling of my studio (which used to be the kids’ playroom).  The bathroom lighting upstairs didn’t work.  Large portions of the infrastructure were salvaged (because his father is also notoriously cheap on things that he really shouldn’t be — like heating and electrical work.  Yipes.).  There’s no insurance on the house or its contents, because it’s so badly made that insurance companies won’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole.

It is, for the most part, an industrial building, also.  To see it from the outside, you’d never know that people live here.  The grounds, because of his father’s hoarding problem, look like a junkyard.  So when I tell people I live in a junkyard, I’m only half-kidding.  I’ll get pictures.  It’s kind of scary.

Before we moved in — they gave it to us to use, citing it as “company housing”, which amuses me on a lot of different levels — the house had stood largely un-manned for nearly twenty years.  And it showed.  I’ve mentioned the in-laws’ hoarding problems before, but seriously?  This entire house, which is almost five THOUSAND square feet (seriously), was entirely filled with boxes of trash.  The garage and most of the closets still *are*, in fact.  We rented a 25′ dumpster when his mother and I were trying to clean out all the stuff that they’d “stored” here, and we filled it three times.   Things like four or five old, broken television sets, a broken laserdisk player, old and broken furniture, two couches where an entire legion of mice had lived in the twenty years of vacancy….  it was unhealthy, to say the least, and downright scary.

In the nearly three years we’ve been here,  his parents have touched nothing that they left in our closets and garage.  (Which is, I kid you not, FULL.  FULL OF THEIR STUFF.)  They have added to it several times, but have never touched a single thing they left here. And a few times, they’ve even discussed charging us rent when the propane bills were too high.  (Understand, because of the salvaged furnace, which is an industrial-grade furnace that the FIL took from a demolished building, with a “last inspected”date of 1952, we don’t control how much heat it puts out.  We often joke that we have two settings — Arctic or Hellfire.  There’s no inbetween.)  When we mentioned having the building inspector come look at it to be rental-friendly, they backed off quickly.  (It’s never been inspected.)

No less than three times per year, on average, they tell us they are selling the shop and that we have to move.  This is roughly around the time I get fired up to do something with the place.  We painted the kitchen, for instance, and the next day, the shop was closing and omgwhereareyougoingtolivenow?!?  I think they have a radar for home improvement.  (Of course, they’re not selling the shop, because then they’d have to deal with all the stuff they’ve got stored here — not just in our house, but on all the grounds and in the shop, which is two-and-a-half the square footage of the house, and every bit as packed-tight with crap.)

So the house is in a state of sad disrepair, and we’re half-scared to do anything with it.  It needs new carpets, for sure.  It needs a coat of paint.  It needs ceiling repair in some places.  The fireplace, which is gorgeous by the way, needs extensive cleaning and repair.  The water is so bad that it turns everything from steel to porcelain to skin a nasty shade of orange, but they don’t want to upgrade the well.  (Which, by the way, was also salvaged.)  The back yard is scary, and we have mice in the winter, mosquitos in the summer.

All in all, it’s a giant, festering hole of suck.  And it’s HUGE.  Way more than we would need, if my husband hadn’t inherited the must-own-everything gene from his parents.  (That’s a rant for another day, though.)

I’m not whining about having a home, and a home, virtually, for free.  I know there are people with less, and I’m profoundly grateful for the fact that there’s a roof overhead, even if it’s a roof that’s crumbling and is constantly in danger of being taken away at his parents’ whim.  But it does lend a kind of uncertainty to my days that is unsettling.

There is much, much work to be done to the house.  And I’m now to a point where I just don’t care anymore if it’s not here tomorrow.  I need to bring some stability to my own days — to make my surroundings a warm, welcoming place for both visitors and for my family.

It will not be an easy task.  And I’m sure that the minute I invest in, say, a chimney sweep (chimney services technician, I think they’re calling them now), they’ll be all fired up about selling the place.  But I need this for me and for my husband.   I need to have a base from which to work, and to feel like we can grow our family without the threat of mouse poo or strange rot.  And if that eventually means that we have to leave here to find it?  Well, I’ll have this experience behind me, and I’ll have things cleared out to the point where it should be easy(easier) to pare down further if the situation demands it.

I’ll do a house tour over the next few weeks.  Show you what it really looks like inside, and what I want to do with it.  I’ll be formulating a Plan of Attack.  I’ll update the “About The Project” page when I’ve got a room plan formulated.

It’s time to stop living with someone else’s instability.  It’s my job to create new stability for my family, no matter where we might be.

Well, that kind of sucked.

The very second my husband went out of town, my voice started acting wonky. And since my other job requires my voice, I had a little bit of an inner squee, thinking that I’d have lots of time to work on the house. I mean, after all, you can’t have wife-guilt if you literally can’t do your job-for-pay, right?

Trouble is, the laryngitis came with some friends — fever and congestion — who were very bad houseguests and caused me to lie about, snuffly and whining, all by myself, for most of the duration my husband was gone.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men, blah blah blah. Sigh.

However (!!), I did get one wall of the studio painted, which will probably eventually become a playroom for the kids if my ovaries would just stop with the nonsense, and I survived. There were days I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to, but the virus-laden bus that appears to have hit me also appears to have moved on to the next lucky recipient of it’s mucous-filled joy. Whew.

So I promised a couple of book reviews, and since I was down for the count when I should have been writing them, I figured I’d do those now, and take some pictures of the New Wall when I get some curtains sewn for the window. (This week. Or bust.)

(put behind a cut, since they got a little longer than intended…)

(more…)

I wish I had fabulous pictures for you today, but out where we live, there’s been a string of dreary days with very little sun and torrential rains, and my camera…? Does not like flash. Turns a perfectly lovely picture into a washed-out, overexposed bit of digital celluloid. So rather than scare you with flash-ridden ghouliness, I decided to forego the photo-ing until later today, when we’re supposed to see a bit of blue sky. I, for one, can’t wait. And to say thank you for reading ginormous blocks of text, I’ve got a recipe for you, below.

This whole week has been about trying to find a routine that works for ME. One that can give me some stability and is healthier than the stay-up-until-dawn type of a routine I had before. I realized I can’t take care of my family and my house when I have no energy as a result of the poor habits I’ve cultivated, and the artificial caffeine-laden energy peters out so quickly that I was spending much of my life in a haze.

And I’m fully proud to say that I believe I might have done it. I’m in bed no later than 11 most nights. (Last night was an anomaly, but my husband had a performance and didn’t get home until 1:30. But it was the exception rather than the rule.) I’m up no later than 6:30. The first few days, I was a little bleary-eyed in the morning (and found myself cursing that giant yellow hurty-orb in the sky for being so bright), but by Friday, I was bounding out of bed like the morning person I used to be.

As a result of all the new energy (and the amazing new vacuum, which I’m still loving, by the way), my house is cleaner than it’s been in the last year. Seriously. There’s a long way to go with it, but my carpets are the colors that the factories intended, instead of being grey-brown with dirt and dog-hair, and I can’t tell you how many dishes I’ve done. There’s less clutter because I’m throwing things out, and our bills got paid on time because I knew where they were.

It was made a little more complicated, however, by two things:

First, we woke up on a very rainy Saturday to find a new dog by our door. She’s small and adorable and well-trained, which, to me, says she’s somebody’s pet. We put up signs, checked her to see if she’s microchipped, and called to notify all the area pet shelters. Nobody has claimed her, though, and after ten days, she becomes ours if we want her. Because, you know, what I really need is more dog hair. But she loves us, and the other dogs are starting to love her, playing with her and nuzzling her, and while we don’t NEED another dog, this one sort of found us, so I think we might be stuck with her. And by “stuck”, I really mean, “OMG SO CUTE! MINEMINEMINE!”. Unless her real owners show up. I’d rather see her happy.

Oh, wait!  I have the picture of her we used on the Found Dog posters…lemme find it….

Aha!

Second, our oven broke. It was bad timing — right as I was getting into a routine of making our dinners instead of buying the pre-packaged crap, and baking more than buying a lot of high-fructose-corn-syruppy stuff. I ended up getting intimately acquainted with my crock-pot. Like, to the point where I may never go back to a regular oven. (I will, once it’s fixed, but I’m hyperbolic in my love for this week’s crock recipes.) There’s something fabulous about being able to throw in five or six ingredients and some baking potatoes, and walking away to do whatever you need to for the next seven hours while your kitchen slowly fills with the smell of dinner cooking without you involved.

And with that, a little recipe for you.

Easiest Meatloaf Ever
(makes enough for 4, easily)

2 lbs ground beef
1 packet of onion soup mix
1 packet of ranch dressing mix, your favorite
1 cup bread crumbs
2 eggs
1/2 c. ketchup

Mix everything together in a gallon-sized baggie or a bowl. (If it’s in a freezer baggie, you can totally freeze it for a later date.) Really knead it around so it’s all combined well. Form it into a loaf shape, put in the crock pot with several baking potatoes and carrots arranged around the meat loaf. Cook on low for 7 hours, or until no longer pink.

See what I mean? EASY. And it’s moist — much more moist than any baked meatloaf I’ve had. I love that.

This next week, I’m going to be finishing up the basic cleaning of the rat-trap we’ve been existing in and doing some decorating while my husband’s away on business for most of the week.  (I’m going to be alone for the first time, really, since before we got married.  He went away once, for one night.  This time, it’s *five*.  I may have a meltdown, or I may end up getting a lot done.  We’ll see.)  If I do, there will be pictures.   Hopefully, he’ll approve.

I have a love/hate relationship with Flylady.

On one hand, I’m a giant slob.  Or, at least, I have been a slob in my life.  I’m more of a Recovering Slob now.  (And one that’s been thrown into a five thousand square foot house full of dirt, no less.  It’s got the potential for a bad, bad situation. )  And if there’s one thing that Flylady knows how to do, it’s speak directly to the heart of all the Slobs in the world, mystically telling them that their lives will be a zillion times better if they just buck up and clean for a few minutes a day.

Some of her mailings and key phrases have wormed their way into brain, and come out at the weirdest times.  “Done is better than perfect” comes up a lot in work, where my extreme perfectionism makes deadlines one of those things that fly right by my head, often, for instance.  Or the whole idea that “housework done incorrectly still blesses your family”.  That kind of thing.

I am, at this moment, wearing shoes.  That’s totally a Flylady creation, because I think I was barefoot from the age of eight until the year 2000.  And I’m not all that young, so that’s a long time.

The cloying sweetness gets to me every so often.  The relentless barrage of exceedingly happy people who are just THRILLED to go clean their bathrooms gets to me a lot.  And the way she’s veered a bit off-topic, branching out and bringing in tons of “experts” to talk about everything from child-rearing to how to dress to weight loss…well, that’s where she kind of lost me.

Part of the reason I like her program, however, is probably that my mom?  Totally did Flylady before there *was* a Flylady.  She had different parts of the housekeeping that she did on different days, and she never, ever left a dish in the sink overnight.  She was a bit obsessive about it, actually.  But I can say without hesitation that waking up to get water in the morning from the tap to take with my morning vitamin, and seeing nothing other than (slightly-chipped) white porcelain?  Kind of nice.  Strange how that works.

Before I started with The Project, I tried to do the clear sink thing every day.  My husband is a very early riser, though, and by the time I would get up in the morning, the sink would be relatively full of dishes that he’d worked his magic upon while making breakfast.  Not that I resent that much.  (Ahem.  I’m TRYING not to resent it, at least.  There were days…)  But I kind of gave that up when things got all crazy around here and I lost sight of my housewifely status.  My sink was nothing short of buried under bowls and silverware.

Today, I set the timer for 15 minutes and stuck it to the stove-front.  (Another Flylady thing.)  Every time I went downstairs to reboot the laundry (yet another reference), I’d hit “start” and would get through as many as I could.  I’d put away the drip-dried ones from the last batch (NOT a Flylady thing, since she advocates drying them by hand and putting them away…the horror!), and get through a stack of them, which I’d leave to dry.

Somehow, my entire sink is clear.  Not clean yet, mind you.  But clear.  I can see stainless steel.  (Kind of.  We have the world’s worst water — well water on ancient pipes, which make everything that touches it kind of yellow-orange-rust over time, including skin and hair.  I know, it’s gross.  There’s nothing we can do about it.  Country living at its finest.)

Tomorrow, my extraneous-from-the-necessary project around here is to shine it.  Give it a good ‘ol Flylady shining.  It won’t ever look new again, but it won’t be orange, either.  It requires chemical assistance, though, so I tend to put it off as long as possible.  (We’re talking harsh chemicals that make my lungs hurt.  It’s the only thing that works on the type of rust we’ve got here, though.  And, trust me, I’ve tried everything.)

And better yet, this Project is starting to show some buds of fruit:  My husband was visibly more relaxed when he came in from work today than he has been in recent weeks/months.  It was like he was happier coming home, when the house wasn’t in a state of extreme, insane chaos.  Which stands to reason, but sometimes, it takes an iron-covered brick upside the head to get me to see the obvious.

I’m on my way to getting the base cleaning done so that maintenance can start occuring.  From there, it’s a matter of finding a schedule that works for me, and digging in on making our house here a home.  Clearing away the dirt and debris and detritus is helping immensely — both in my attitude and in my inspiration.

So maybe I do understand the people on the Flylady lists who are immensely excited to clean their bathrooms.  At least I understand a little bit.

In an attempt to keep up my momentum today, I waited until J got home from work and went to Target to pick up a new vaccuum cleaner. Ours was eaten about a month ago by the Demons Of Dog Hair, and upon the recommendation of several of my cleaner friends, I’d decided to splurge a bit in the vaccuum department and get something that was made for The Pet Hair Of Dooom (insert ominous-sounding music here).

I’d thought I’d pick up a different model of Dyson, one of the upper-level, sell-your-kidney-to-science-to-pay-for-it models, but when I got to the store, they were running a promotion on the little baby pictured above. It’s not top of the line, but it’s still a Dyson (and has a five-year warranty), and it’s PINK. Not only am I kind of a fan of pink, but Dyson is donating $40 to the Breast Cancer Reasearch Fund with every purchase. So I’m getting rid of my dog hair AND I’m helping women everywhere to have healthier breasts. I’m all for healthy breasts, since my own aren’t so healthy. (That’s a story for another day, though.)

Of course, I immediately came home, assembled it, and started vacuuming everything in the house. No surface with dust or hair is now safe — it even has an attachment that will work to brush and vacuum the dog hair…directly off the dog. This makes me happier than I really want to admit to anyone other than y’all. (I just keep imagining there are a handful of close friends out there reading this with me. So I’m talking to you.)

Also in the wifely “Exceedingly Geeky But Happy” department of purchasing, I thought I’d spend my 30% off coupon at Borders bookstore on another knitting book (my library is insane…), but I thought I’d look through the domestic arts types of sections in an attempt to further this Wife Project a little. Normally, I hit the magazines and the crafty-type area, and maybe get some coffee, but I found the cookbook sections today.

As I wandered into the aisle, my eye caught something a few shelves down that made me squeal a little. I wish I could say it had been an under the breath kind of squeal, too…but it wasn’t. I scared people in the diet section, the next aisle over.

What I found was this:

The Cooky Book, by the Betty Crocker Editors.

Seriously.

When I was growing up, my mom had this book.  The original, 1973 version, with the color inserts and the vintagey-looking recipes with the letterpress-type flourishes and illustrations and all.  I used to sit there at the kitchen table — the impeccably clean and dressed kitchen table, with its matching placemats and seasonal floral arrangements and not a speck of dust on the counters — and go through this book page by page, picking the things I would bake as soon as my mom would help me.  Our family’s favorite EVER sugar cookie recipe comes from this book, which I’d thought was out of print.  Apparently, the Betty Crocker folks brought it back this year, and is publishing it in its original form.  It even looks the same on the inside!

I beat tracks getting to the counter, clutching it to my chest like I’d found an abandoned puppy or something, and paid so quickly that I forgot to use my coupon.

I’m forseeing lots of cookys (sic) in my near future.  Which, of course, won’t help with the getting-in-shape part of my goals, but will definitely help me get in the kitchen more often, and has that whole Fifties Housewife feel about it.

I’ll make sure to take pictures.  If I’m not too busy baking or vacuuming, that is.