About three years ago, I mentioned to a few people that I needed some good kitchen knives. The next Christmas was . . . very sharp. I got knives from my dad, my in-laws and FirstHusband.
Great knives – every one. Especially my favorite – the ceramic knife FirstHusband got me. (second from the left). The problem was that they didn’t match.
Then, walking through Bed, Bath & Beyond one day, FirstHusband found THIS:
Looks like a plain old knife block. Look closer.
It’s called a “Kapoosh ” (amazon product link) and it holds any knife, no matter the size.
To clean it, you just remove all the knives, turn it upside down and the plastic part comes completely out. I just wipe it down, fan it out and pop it back in. Kapoosh!
I’ve been tagged for a “little known facts about me” meme by Debbie over at Midnight Musings. I haven’t added to my “little known facts page” (upper right corner) in quite a while, so this is good prompting. I’ve been doing a little recipe research/menu planning lately, so I’ll get some food facts out of the way first.
1. I like “clean” food. Not really a “sauce” person. Especially sweet sauces. Or thick sauces. FirstHusband is a sauce man.
2. I almost ALWAYS order salad with dressing on the side. I don’t care for salad soup, where there’s a puddle of salad dressing at the bottom of the bowl when I’m finished. Instead, I dip my fork in the little bowl of dressing before using it to stab some salad. At home, I can measure and add just the right amount , so it’s no big deal.
3. I love mushrooms. In anything. Cooked or raw.
4. I hate salmon. I went to London on an MBA class trip and was inundated with salmon everywhere we went. My classmates were convinced I would like it if I tried it baked. or grilled. or smoked. or poached. or whatever. I finally said, “How much salmon do I have to try before you all believe I DON’T LIKE SALMON?”
5. Sometimes, when we go out to dinner, I ask FirstHusband to “surprise me” and place my order for me. When I’ve made enough decisions for the day – or maybe for the week – and I just don’t want to make even one more, no matter how small, he graciously does this for me. Knowing my anti-sauce, anti-salmon, dressing on the side and mushroom preferences, among other things, he always does a GREAT job.
6. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a vocalist, but I’ve been too lazy to post any clips. Well, I finally took the time to figure out how to capture video from my antiquated camcorder, convert it to the “right” format and upload it to youtube. FavoriteSon was the camera man and he’s new at it, so we’ll cut him a break. I cut the beginning of this song because there was a dad/kid dispute near the camera which was louder than the music. This is Mary Did You Know, performed by me on Christmas Eve.
My daughter and I also performed a duet, singing Away in a Manger. She sang the first verse, we sang the second together and I sang the third verse alone. Two things of note. First, when she leaned over and whispered into my ear, JUST before we started singing the second verse, she whispered, “I accidentally farted.” (NOBODY tell her I posted that!!!) Secondly, notice her sneaky grin at the end of the song on the last few notes – JUST before she “bunny eared” me.
This last song is one of my favorites, Breath of Heaven, originally made popular by Amy Grant, but more recently by Nicol Sponberg, formerly of the group Selah. My camera man had a little trouble in the beginning, was too shy to tell a guy in a suit that he was blocking the camera in the middle and the tape ran out at the end.
7. I’ve probably mentioned that I also do a little public speaking, but until last year, I didn’t have a recording of any of my presentations. (And I didn’t know anything about uploading videos to youtube). This was recorded last May at a Mother’s Day Brunch. Please forgive the quality of the video, the lighting was not conducive to videotaping, but the audio guy did a great job!
So, Debbie, THANK YOU for the meme tag. It prompted me to FINALLY do this! I was recently asked if I had any recordings of my work and I knew I needed to get that May 2007 video up on youtube, but I was just dragging my feet. done. It’s after 1:00 a.m. – Kristin – are you up?
That would be the raccoon who took down all my bird feeders last night. And the night before.
Here’s the backyard scene on Thursday night:
We call this the “Love Tree” because the boy squirrels like to relentlessly chase the (seemingly) ONE girl squirrel in this tree during mating season. From left to right, we have a sunflower filled bird feeder, a suet feeder, a bird bath, another suet feeder, a safflower filled bird feeder and a thistle sock. On the tree itself is a squirrel feeder which gets filled either with sunflower seeds or cracked corn. I use a lot of safflower because the squirrels and the blackbirds don’t like it. Something about it being bitter. Good. We have a red wing blackbird community behind our house and they can be pretty territorial sometimes. The bullies.
In the winter, we usually put out corn for the deer – in containers on the ground. We live in a subdivision, but our house is in the back of the neighborhood and there’s a river just past a pond and an embankment behind our house. After Hurricane Charley, the fence was down for about a year and during the winter months, the deer used to come into our yard almost every night. When they started nudging the bird feeders, we bought a 50 pound bag of cracked corn and put it out every night and they left my bird feeders alone. The same with the squirrels and the raccoons. When there’s corn, nobody messes with the bird feeders and the deer don’t eat my roses – which are in the flowerbed lining the porch.
Obviously I haven’t gotten the corn yet this season, because this is what the ground under the Love Tree looked like this morning.
And the proof that the culprit is a raccoon? Found in the (no longer needed) sandbox sand we dumped in the yard to fill a low spot.
Little creep. I’m off to buy a 50 pound bag of cracked corn. And more safflower seeds. And more suet.
So why am I NESTING? I’ve had this massive surge of momentum and have been clearing out and re-organizing for weeks. I’ve even been . . . decorating.
I don’t decorate so much.
Not in the traditional sense of the word. My method of decorating is seriously pragmatic and often involves shelving and containers (square, of course).
Merchandising a shelf? I don’t think so. I would have to later dust the “merchandise.”
Here’s a little sampling of what I’ve been up to:
Clearing Land. I can’t say weeding because I believe when the “weeds” completely obscure the ground and have grown higher than my waist, it constitutes land clearing. The word “weeding” just doesn’t cover it. I haven’t actually tackled these cornstalks yet. They grew from the droppings of my neighbor’s bird feeder, which was attached to our shared fence.
I wish I had taken pictures of this area before, but here’s a mid point:
This is a strip of . . . flowerbed? that runs along the back of our porch. I moved the grill and the smoker from the patio to this area because the basketball hoop is on the patio and the grill has been taking the brunt of all missed shots and rebounds for years. Notice the broken handle on the grill?
This flowerbed strip connects to a handmade paved area which, for years has been the home of a big red, crab sandbox. That picture above? This is the “before” shot.
We convinced PinkGirl to allow the pitiful, hole in the bottom, bent in half, faded sandbox to find a new home at the county dump – in exchange for a fire pit. FirstHusband found one he liked and it just so happened to be on clearance at Target for $55.00. He hasn’t put it together yet.
While I was clearing land, FirstHusband, FavoriteSon and PinkGirl built a “clubhouse” atop her swing set:
I’ve also begun purging the back porch of stuff and trash. This area was HORRIBLE. You know that tagline above? “I breathe, therefore I organize?” Yeh. Well, it appears I haven’t been breathing on the back porch for months. I didn’t take a picture of the before, but here’s the work in progress:
Pay no attention the pile of junk behind the dried out, $5, garage sale teak screen that I should oil up. Definitely do not step behind the screen, lest you perish in a freak junk avalanche.
I bought the furniture at a local thrift store about 10 years ago have have been through a number of foam pieces, covered with a bunch of different materials, including bedsheets. The foam just completely deteriorates in the Florida sun (even though it’s on a covered, screen porch). It’s never been all that comfortable either. And the cats have ruined a few pieces as well. For some reason, they prefer foam to cat litter.
The new cushions are a salvage. At the end of the Whale of a Sale this year, there were a few couches that didn’t sell and the charity pickup didn’t take. I stuffed my van with all the cushions before they were sacrificed to the dumpster gods. I took the denim covers off of the couch cushions to wash them and sliced off an extra curved, corner type piece from the foam cushion with an electric knife. I couldn’t figure what to do with the extra fabric on the cover, but in the end, I just tucked it around to the side. Now I have to figure out what to do about the chair cushions. I bought some slipcovers at Target a few years ago and I’m hoping to use the material to make covers for the chairs. I’m also hoping the cats don’t ruin the sofa cushions. I covered them with a tarp and found cat urine on the tarp the next day. The litter box had also been used, so maybe there’s hope. I’m going to be safe and either keep the cushions covered up or store them in a box when not in use.
There’s also a rocker, but my dad took it home to paint it. He’s going to paint all the pieces for me. I’ll post photos when the rocker comes home.
I’ve also been painting my bedroom. A few years ago (okay, four years ago), we had the ceilings repaired after Hurricaine Charlie. We supplemented the insurance money and switched from popcorn ceilings to an orange peel texture. That left the top of the walls white. I picked a paint color and started painting. Never finished.
Then, the next year, we had to get the house re-piped. Holes had to be cut, patched and re-textured. That left big white patches on the walls. I tried to color match the paint from the year before – THREE times. No luck. The manufacturer had changed the base color. So my room has been 5 different colors with a white “border” at the top for THREE years. A giant ladder has served as a towel rack in my master bedroom for three years. Not kidding. Last summer, I finally picked a new manufacturer (Behr – I LOVE Behr) and a new color. By December, I still hadn’t started painting.
One night after Christmas, around 7 p.m., I pulled a box out from under the bed and it got stuck. I took a look and discovered all the supports had collapsed. FirstHusband tried to straighted them, but in the end we had to take the bed apart. That’s when it turned into a scene from “If you Give a Mouse a Cookie.” I said, “You know, since we have the bed apart, we really should paint.” By 10:00 p.m., my room looked like this:
Even though FirstHusband tripped and fell carrying an open can of paint, we were able to put the bed back together by 1:00 a.m. He decided to sacrifice his body and not the carpet – and he did a pretty good job. He only spilled a little bit, but gashed his knee. PinkGirl was very brave and bandaged him up like a little nurse, while I kept painting. Then he did a great job cleaning the paint spatters off the carpet, followed by cleaning up the blood that soaked through the bandage while cleaning paint splatters.
The area below is where the wall was cut open and patched the most. A beautiful sweater chest is supposed to go here. This started as the “purge” waiting pile. Over the last year, I put everything from upstairs that is to be given to charity HERE. In my room. Then, I just started throwing other things on the pile, like luggage from a trip, boxes, towels.
The sweater chest? It was next to my bed, suffering the same fate.
Now, the sweater chest is back where it’s supposed to be and stuff is either put away or boxed up and lining the hallway for a trip downstairs.
I’m almost done. I doubt I’ll finish this weekend. Friday night our family is going to a Magic game, Saturday, FavoriteSon has two basketball games, Saturday evening, FirstHusband and I are going out with friends. Sunday, we hope to take down the Christmas tree.
Oh, and just before I started all this? I made an appointment with my doctor to have my blood tested because I was exhausted.Sure enough. Iron stores down again, back on a supplement. And if you’ll notice – in the post that link goes to – back in February, I wrote:
“I took my first iron pill yesterday. Why don’t I feel better yet? How long is this going to take? I need to finish painting the bedroom and the lawn needs mowed.”
paint the bedroom. lawn. February. see? WAY over due.
I’ve been up to much more – but if I wait to post this before I finish listing everything, it will be ANOTHER week.
