Day Six Hundred and Eighty-Five

And that's Item #8 in the bag!  Well, in the tummies, if I'm going to be entirely accurate.

Last Christmas my mom gave my sister and me the two-volume hardcover anniversary edition of Julia Child's "The Art of French Cooking", which was responsible for this bit of deliciousness.  The Christmas before that, though, she gave us both another lovely cookbook called "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day."  She was making her own bread out of dough stored in a plastic crock in her refrigerator, and it looked easy and tasted delicious.

So, naturally, I forgot about it for an entire year.

Then last year at New Year's, my sister made focaccia bread from the same recipe book, and it turned out she'd been making fabulous bread of all sorts ever since she got the book.  I got inspired - I can do this!  I did a little research on wheat flour and bought a big plastic container and earmarked a few interesting recipes.  I was ready to go!

And forgot about it for another four months.

Finally, though, I got myself pulled together and made this focaccia bread, topped with olive oil, rosemary, and coarse kosher salt.  It was beyond delicious, and I have no idea why I promptly put the recipe book back in the cupboard and forgot to ever make it again.  Hmmm ... come to think of it, I've got a little time this afternoon ...

Day Six Hundred and Eighty-Four

Dude, seriously?  684 days?  That's a long time!

Cool.

I wasn't sure how many of these I'd already posted, so I just grabbed everything that was in my "finished to give away" basket and took a picture.  Looking back through the blog, it looks like you've seen the green scarf, the brown scarf, and the stripy hat, but the blue hat and the baby booties are new.  Since taking this picture, I've also made two slightly goofy-looking hats with floppy brims which you will probably NOT see modeled, unless I end up in an appropriately goofy mood some time between now and when I mail them off to the "chemo caps" organization I found online.

This brings the total up to 12/20 - I should be able to make 8 more things in a little less than a year, I think!

Day Six Hundred and Seventy-Eight

See, I told you I was going to get caught up!

Here are a few more for the Windows & Doors (and occasionally Stairs) project.

Stairs leading from High Street down to Pringle Park - from a trip with the kids to downtown Salem.

 

Stairs near City Hall, Salem, OR.

Stairs leading from the Frank Manor House (now part of the Lewis & Clark College campus) down to the reflecting pool.

Gated doorway to a second-floor apartment in downtown Salem, OR.

Looking through facing windows in the dovecote at Lewis & Clark College.

Side view of the Frank Manor House at Lewis & Clark.

Day Six Hundred and Seventy-Seven

Whoops ... looks like I missed Day 600 too.

But I'm still here! I haven't forgotten about it! And if you're reading this (all three of you), then you haven't forgotten about it either.

I've done a few more things on the list since I last posted, and I'll catch up on those in the next few weeks. Here's one from back in March - not for St. Patrick's Day or anything, but because I had a lovely conversation with my grandparents and came home with a new recipe. The actual intent had been to fill in a few gaps on my grandmother's family tree, but Grandpa sat down and told me a few stories as well. He learned this recipe from his mother, whose parents had immigrated to Canada from Ireland before she was born.

Grandpa's Irish Stew

about 1 lb. stew beef (cubed lean steak or roast)
"a little bit of grease"
1 medium onion
1 lb. of carrots
salt, pepper, and powdered garlic
2 potatoes
1/4 to 1/3 c. flour, depending on how thick you like your stew

Braise beef in grease of your choice on low heat for at least one hour.  Don't overcook, but braise until tender, which might take up to half a day.  If you start the meat in a large pot, this is a one-dish recipe.

Chop carrots into 1" pieces, and dice onion finely.

Add carrots and onions to cooked meat, and season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste.

1 hour before soup is to be served, cube potatoes and add to pot.  Add some water so that the potatoes can cook - Grandpa didn't say how much, just "add water as you go."  Bring to a boil, and let it simmer for about an hour.  Mix 1/4 to 1/3 c. flour with enough water to make a thin paste.  Stir it into the stew.  When it boils and thickens, it is ready to serve.

I served it with my favorite homemade buttered biscuits (which of course have no calories at all) and a glass of cold milk.  I think the only way it could have felt more like childhood is if my sister was kicking me under the table!

Day Five Hundred and Fifty-One

Whoops ... looks like I missed Day 500!  I didn't forget about the blog, but I did get a little stalled out.  Several of the items left on the list are quite large, or expensive, or not-bloody-likely (e.g., learn French).  I have gotten a few more done in the last two months, though, and here is one of them for your entertainment.  Item #73 (get all the paperwork off of the office floor) is finished!

Now, please understand that I could have taken the easy route through the truck-sized loophole I left for myself.  I could have gotten it off the floor by putting it willy-nilly into a cardboard box and carefully balancing the box on top of a bookshelf.  (I am guessing that my mother is probably remembering similar incidents in my childhood, in which a room was magically "cleaned" in five minutes, but the closet door was bulging suspiciously.)  I could have "gotten it off the floor" by buying a new file cabinet and putting things into folders with helpfully ambiguous labels like "Financial Stuff - before 2000" - "Financial Stuff - after 2000" - "Insurance Papers" - "Receipts" - "Medical" - "Important Documents" - "To Be Filed" - "Miscellaneous" - "?????"

I could have done that, but for once I decided to actually buckle down and do it right, in a more permanent way.  I am a little embarrassed to post this, but here is a picture of the rather dire corner that prompted me to put this item on the list in the first place:

Yes, it really looked that bad.  Every day.  All the time.  And I just walked around it because it made me tired to even THINK about dealing with it.  Not one of my finer moments.


In the process of repainting this room, a lot of the stuff in that corner got moved around, the papers were separated from the toys, and some of it was given to Goodwill.  (There were candle holders under there!  Who knew?!)  There were still a LOT of papers, though, and I took a deep breath and decided, in for a penny, in for a pound, and grabbed the overflowing box that had 16 years' worth of tax returns in it - every receipt, every utility bill from the years when I had a home office, every pay stub, ALL of it.  It was all organized, but much of it was no longer necessary.  So I put this excellent article by Liz Weston of MSN Money up on my computer screen for reference, turned on season two of "Monk" on Netflix Instant Viewing in the main window, made a pot of good strong tea, and set to work:

It wasn't pretty for a while.  But I did it.  All of my paperwork, both business and personal (old cards and letters, recital programs, etc.) now fits into the file drawer in my desk and the two-drawer filing cabinet next to it.  Everything else was recycled or shredded and will be hauled away tomorrow.  I put it all in a big bag, pictured below with a soda can next to it for scale.  (Also, you can see the new paint!  What do you think?)

So if you ever wondered what 15 years of paperwork looks like, now you know:

It looks like a cross between Jabba the Hutt and a coconut macaroon!

Day Four Hundred and Eighty-One

Item #82 is officially started!

Day Four Hundred and Sixty-Six

I rarely steal from myself quite this blatantly, but my Facebook posts pretty well summed up this drama so I am going to put them here and let them speak for themselves.  Every year since my children were born, I've made them a pair of Christmas pajamas, usually from matching fabrics, the same as my mother did for my sister and me when we were small.  The idea is that they can open ONE present on Christmas Eve (which always, amazingly, just happens to be the pajamas), and then they can wear the present to bed and wake up on Christmas morning in their new jammies.

I forget, EVERY YEAR, that I do not in fact have until Christmas Day to finish them.  They have to be finished on Christmas Eve, and for some reason this always takes me by surprise.

Last year's Christmas jammies turned into such a saga that I had people asking me in the middle of December if I was going to post running commentary about them again.  I tell myself that it is because last year's posts brought so much laughter and joy into people's lives.  I suspect, however, that it actually has more to do with the number of friends I have who appreciate a good dose of holiday schadenfreude, which says something about my sewing - and probably something about my friends.

December 22 at 6:52 p.m. - Christmas pajamas for the kids.  Red-and-black plaid.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

December 22 at 9:22 p.m. - Christmas pajama update: When you're making two pajama tops and you notice that you have made precisely the same error not once, not twice, but FOUR times, where part of the front doesn't quiiiiiite line up with the back ... check the pattern before you just trim that bit to line up neatly. It is JUST POSSIBLE that you'll need that extra bit of material for the neck binding.

December 22 at 11:13 p.m. - Plaid. Why'd it have to be plaid?

December 23 at 12:23 a.m. - If you are a creature with one head, one arm, and two torsos, I have a pajama top for you. SIGH. I am going to bed now. (On the bright side, the plaids lined up.)

December 23 at 6:10 p.m. (This accompanied the picture that is posted below on Day 461.) - On the positive side, I now have an iron-clad excuse to watch another episode of MI-5 while I rip out the seam that made this garment suitable only for aliens! (whistling "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life")

December 23 at 10:47 p.m. - Christmas Pajama Update (since I know you were all waiting with bated breath): I narrowly avoided making pajama pants for a creature with two very skinny torsos and two (possibly four) legs. I am sure there will be some disappointed little aliens somewhere out there on Christmas morning.

December 23 at 11:53 p.m. - Good quality loose leaf tea (decaf, sadly), crackers, double Gloucester, and a bit of Cotswold cheese. It may not HELP me sew Pajama Pants For Humans, but it certainly can't hurt.

December 24 at 12:15 a.m. - Do you think that anyone will notice if the fronts of the pajamas are inside out? That frazzly-edged connecting seam between the plaid and the black accent material isn't THAT noticeable, is it? It is? I was afraid of that. (Here is me not chopping them into tiny bits with my lovely sharp scissors, hurrah me!)

December 24 at 1:54 a.m. - We will all pretend that I did not just sew the entire waistband of Peter's pajama pants using the random spool of thread I'd been using up on another section for basting thread that would be removed. PINK thread, did I mention that? Aaaaand that's my cue to go to bed.

December 24 at 7:31 p.m. (since I had forgotten that we had a 2-hour family event an hour's drive away) - I don't believe in jinxes. But I am starting to think that if I post ONE MORE WORD about these dratted pajamas on Facebook, I will discover that I have made a pair of jammie pants suitable only for a three-headed octopus.

And finally, after far too much ripping-out and sewing-back-together ...

December 24 at 9:56 p.m. - Imported British tea, crackers, Double Gloucester, Stilton, white Irish Cheddar, kids in jammies (with proper number of heads, legs, and arms), and Polar Express. Quite nice. (I mean the jammies have the proper number of appendages, not the children. Well, the children do too, I suppose, but I hoped that was a given.)