domicile

Seize the Day

Forgive the radio silence around here. I've been battling a truly nasty flu since Wednesday of last week and have been struck down hard enough that even the thought of surfing the web has felt overwhelming, let alone trying to form a cohesive thought.

In the meantime, however, I feel compelled to at least try to form a sentence or two in response to an email that found its way to my inbox this afternoon. The email came from my high school and had been sent to alumni to notify us that Marion Jenkins, a woman who had almost certainly taught all those who graduated from Glenlyon Norfolk School English at some point, had passed away. It came as a bit of a shock to me. I don't keep up on much of my high school's news afterall, but strangely I had been thinking of Marion, (though I will always think of her as Mrs. Jenkins), a fair bit lately and had actually been thinking in the back of my mind that I would get in touch with her soon. You see, it looks like this week I will be co-signing my name on a book contract and I had been thinking that, when I finally get through the months of rewrites and edits ahead, a box of real live books will arrive in my life with my name on them. And, while I'll certainly be distributing copies to those near and dear in my daily life, there have been a few people whose influence stretches back a bit more historically. Mrs. Jenkins, the woman who taught me that "anyways" is not a word, is one of the many folks along the way who has inspired my love of language and respect for the written word. While I know that her keen eye for grammar would find many a moment for pause in much of my writing, in particular these off the cuff missives, I would be thrilled to count myself among her previous students to see their name in print on the cover of a real live book jacket and would hope that she too would feel proud of the work she contributed those many years ago to sending me on this journey.

Getting past the flood of memories that email evoked this afternoon, I began to question why I would wait so long to contact her. Why not let her know what I was up to while life was still in progress? Why wait until I felt I had a suitable accomplishment to present? And the more I thought about it, the more foolish it seemed. And so, perhaps a sense of the value in seizing the day will be the final lesson I will add to the others including the rigourous grammar lessons, passion for the classics (including the famed assignment of The Iliad as summer reading), and annual vocabulary workbooks known in their time as "Words Are Important." And, surely when the day finally does arrive that this real live printed book makes its way to my doorstep I will continue to think of her fondly. The email that was sent suggested that donations could be made, in lieu of flowers, to a fund for a book prize in her name at the school, which sounds to me like a smashing idea.

A Welcome Warmth

  hellebore 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

It was a weekend of bike rides and pies. Things were crossed off the sewing to-do list and new buds were fussed over in the garden. Leaves were raked and weeds extracted. There was late night Buffy watching with Miss P and another evening spent playing trains and reading books in bed with a charming 3 year old friend and his snuggly baby brother. Fresh flowers were scattered around the house in vases, while pots of soup simmered on the stove. There were fresh sheets and stolen kisses, kitty snuggles and quiet moments with a friend. It was the kind of weekend where strangers on the bike path, the sidewalk and in grocery store all smile to greet you and where you seem to run into friends out for a stroll wherever you go. It is amazing what just one day of sunshine can do.

Dreaming of a Holiday

There are several reasons why taking a holiday will remain only a dream for a good 6 months+ but for now it is one of my favorite daydreams. The raining sleet today caused Martin to suggest a get away to Costa Rica, I'm daydreaming of Amsteram today and these great Dutch blogs are fueling my fancies.

Now, back to regularly scheduled programming...

Thanks Renee!

Thanks Renee!
Originally uploaded by emira.

Renee, one of my coblogger sover at You Grow Girl and the fabulous author of No Biting Wolfie, sent me the most marvellous door-prize-box-of-goodies which arrived in yesterday's mail. Most of the contents are pictured here save a super fabulous bag screened with a pink tank which Martin declared "much more his style," (just this weekend he made a comment about some of our grocery/shopping/everything bags being a bit too wussy for him). In this box of wonders there were some fabulous fabric remnants, a set of Mr. Sketch sniffy markers (!), and perhaps the crowning glory one of Renee's awesome 2007 calendars (get yours here). The mark of any good calendar for me is always that my birthday month not suck. My birthday is in November, and I don't know if you've noticed but November: almost always sucks. Not much exciting happens that month, and I secretly suspect that most calendar designers leave it for last and kind of wimp out on it. Not Renee though. Each month is truly as fabulous as the next, though I'll admit I've got a wee preference for June based on the pink cupcake alone...

Now, off to finish up her care package which is woefully late already...

Making Your Own Rollerblinds

It just so happens that this weekend, as I took apart the disintegrating old blinds in our basement windows, I paused and decided to keep the basic hardware (the roller bits) thinking to myself that maybe one day I would get fiesty enough to reconstruct them. For surely, I told myself, the internet has some info on how to go about using up some of the many fabric scraps I've got ferreted away and blind hardware to make new blinds. Don't you think? And then, the internet, provided. Thanks Megan!

Inspriration: How To

  new inspiration board at work 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

One of the projects that has been on my mental "to-do" list for months, verging on ages now, has been to make myself some attractive fabric covered pin boards/inspiration boards. I wanted one for my office, as the very industrial and dull bulletin board I had there was overflowing (it was very small) and ideally at least one more for home above my sewing machine/station and possibly another one for the home office so that I could  move some of the fridge clutter of notes/reminders/phone numbers somewhere useful but out of the way of daily clutter. That last one, which is less an inspiration board and more an organizer, is yet to be completed, but on the very last day of the holidays -- new year's day in fact -- I set about ticking this project off my list so that I could start the year with one less acitivity on my mind.

Here's the thing, and perhaps you share it too, despite having read all kinds of references to how to make these things online (the comments on this post at Apartment Therapy were particularly useful), I always felt like there must be some trick to this beyond what I was reading. That is, could it really be as simple as: cut out materials, glue together, hang? Answer: yes. However, it was because I couldn't quite believe that, that I never took the initiative to get going. Silly me.

I wondered for a while about what sort of material to use to form the base of the board. I had heard a number of folks talk about using old bulletin boards and just covering them with fabric, which made sense, but I didn't have any the size I wanted and buying new ones seemed pricey and a bit of a waste frankly. I then thought about wood -- as lordisa knows we've got a fair bit of that around these parts -- but wood would be a bit too hard to stick pins in and too heavy to hang on a wall. That post at Apartment Therapy recomended Homasote, which is a brand name for a paper composite material (considered a "green building material FYI) that is sold in 4x8 ft sheets at hardware stores for about $10 a sheet, which seemed like a fine idea to me. So, I went off to the dreaded Home Depot over the holidays, after checking that my small local hardware store didn't carry it, and after a bit of searching found it. A tip: don't ask for Homasote, no one there seemed to know what that was. Once I described it as "this sound board stuff, made out of pressed paper..." they caught on immediately. But that could have just been the holiday staff at my location. The bonus to getting the stuff at Home Depot is that they'll cut it for you on their very big and rather exacting cutting machine, so I gave them my dimensions and had them turn it into three smaller pieces to make my three boards.

After bringing it home, I still wasn't convinced that the task would be as easy as I had read, but really it was, but because I would have found this very useful, I'll share with you my step-by-step guide:

1. Get your base material. In my case, this paperboard stuff. See above for tips on getting other folks to cut it for you.

2. Choose your fabric. This was tricky. I had originally thought of using Amy Butler's Coriander print, but in the end decided it would be too busy in a large board (mine are about 30 x 60 inches) once I put a bunch of stuff on it. I then tossed around some ivory upholstery fabric I had, which in the end won out for my sewing board, but settled on a brown quilting cotton with little off white dots (I forget the fabric name now, and I threw out the selvedge edge that had it sorry) on it. Strangely enough, my final choice looks kind of like a cork board in colouring, but being a fabric lover, I do appreciate the use of fabric and the patterning. Anyway. In summary: choose your fabric.

3. Iron your fabric. You don't want creases on your board.

4. Lay your cut piece of fibreboard on top of your fabric and measure a few inches around the sides to cut out your fabric. I used about an inch and a half and ended up trimming some off when I was done, but you don't want too little fabric.

5. Warm up your hot glue gun and get to work. The trick of this stage is of course getting the fabric stretched over the board in ways that don't warp the print (if you have one) through uneven tightening, but don't leave creases or loose bits of fabric. I wondered for quite a while about glueing the front of the fabric to the board, but because I was using hot glue, which gets fairly hard when dry, I decided to just glue on the back as I wanted to make sure the front was smooth and ready for pins to be placed anywhere. I began by keeping the board laying on top of the fabric, putting a line of hot glue down one of the long sides and pressing my fabric on. From here, I stood the board up so that I could see how even and taught my fabric was and just worked my way from one side to the other, glueing 6" strips while smoothing out the fabric and pulling it along. Hot glue sets quite quickly which means you can't do much in the way of replacing things, but you can move along quickly. I had a few clothes pins on hand to hold things if and where I needed to. Even with a large board like this, I was able to do it mostly on my own, though a few times I asked Martin to come in and give me an extra hand smoothing the fabric just to make sure everything was flat.

5. Afix some hanging things. I used these things (pictured here) that came in an Ikea picture hanging kit I got years ago. They're basically little plastic hooks with a base that had a bunch of tiny little nails in it. I glued them onto the back, then hammered the nails in for extra stability. Because the fibre board is so spongy and frankly a bit crumbly if you're too rough with it, just nailing something on would probably not work -- it would be likely to fall out -- and I'm not sure that glue alone would work either, though if others have had success with something I'd love to hear about it as these are kind of specific little hangers. Really, any kind of tack and glue combo would probably work as the board isn't that heavy so not much weight is going on it. I then, threaded a string through the two hooks and presto! Done.

I think I made two large sized boards in about 2 hours, including much fabric indecision, plenty of ironing and a few episodes of trying to pick hot glue off my finger tips. Not bad.

Keener Bonus:

I also made these rather cute (if I do say so myself) rose push pins with some fabric flowers I had from a past craft project, hot glue and flat-headed thumbtacks (photo here). I only had a few of the flat headed tacks around, though I'll likely get some more and make others another day. The rest of my things I've just put up with pearl headed straight pins from my sewing basket.

Women's Workplace Wednesdays Photos

the whiteboards of doom
Originally uploaded by emira.

Forgive the blatant self promotion post here, but as some of you know, I also run a site on the theme of female entrepreneurs over at BossLady.ca. In the spirit of wanting to debunk myths around women in business and make the many, many female entrepreneurs in this world more visible, I've started up a Flickr Group for women to post images of their workspaces. The catches are as folows: the business must be women owned, and ideally this will become a Wednesday activity just so that I can enjoy the alliterative possibilities. If you're interested, read more about it here at BossLady or over at Flickr.

Back to your regularly scheduled domestic posting soon.

The Bay Leaf Incident

You know how every once in while, just when you think you've reached your height of multi-tasking perfection you'll do something so very dumb that you'll surprise yourself with one mis-step that sends the whole house of cards flying and then you find yourself in tears over a pot of tomato basil sauce? Ok so that last part might be a titch specific, but you know what I mean right?

Here's how it played out this weekend.

On Friday night Martin mentioned to me that a friend of ours was in the salon that morning and that all had agreed that we should make some time to visit soon as it had really been too long. "That's a great idea!" I proclaimed, following it up immediately with, "I'll make a lasagne over the weekend (at least one half of this couple happens to be a fan our family lasagne recipe) and then I can stick it in the freezer so it's ready whenever we can hookup." And, of course, in that moment I began to plot out how I would fit lasagne making into my already fairly packed weekend. Fortunately I love making lasagne and know my recipe nearly by heart at this point. And so, I figured that if I bought a big container of ricotta that would work out well as I needed half a cup for another recipe I was planning to make soon and hate to see things go to waste. Next, I figured that while I was roasting cauliflower for Saturday night's dinner I could pre-roast some peppers, mushrooms and eggplants for the lasagne and stick them in the fridge to use later. As my little mental scheduling machine whirred forward -- and if you doubt that my mind works this way then welcome to the constant "to do" list that is my inner voice -- I thought I could make the tomato sauce on Sunday between getting Miss P and taking her to a matinee. And, provided I remembered I could then stick the spinach I had in the freezer out to defrost while we were at the movie. Then, after we had all had a lovely post movie dinner at home and Martin and Miss P were settled on the couch with some Buffy episodes I would be able to take 15 minutes or so to assemble the lasagne while catching bits of Buffy from the livingroom. Idyllic. And hardly a scheduling imposition.

In truth I love making lasagne. I love each of the steps: roasting the veggies to their mouthwatering, pliable best; simmering the tomato sauce with just a hit of left over red wine to bring depth to the tomatoes and adding in some frozen basil puree from the summer garden; and, finally, assembling it all into pans (I typically make two small pans) to freeze and pull out for a decadent buy oh so nummy meal at a later date with next to no effort. Delightful.

And, this would all have happened so beautifully last night had I not been riding the wave of my effortless productivity and unthinking pulled out the hand blender to puree the tomato sauce without removing the two large bay leaves lurking beneath the tomatoes. I started this trick of using a handblender on the tomato sauce back when I first started cooking for Miss P, who would become suspect of things like visible oniony bits and other suspicious agents in her food, while she seems to have (mostly) outgrown that, a smoother tomato sauce does make for a very nice lasagne. And so, puree I did. With aplomb one might say until a skeletal remain of a bay leaf floated up to the surface and the reality of what I had done hit my square between the eyes prompting a unceasing flow of tears and personal admonishments to wail from the kitchen in the direction of my contented Buffy watchers in the livingroom. Poor souls. And, so it was that I then found myself in Safeway (my most hated of grocery stores for the record) at 9pm staring dumbfoundedly at the produce guy who had just explained to me that they were out of garlic, but that "they did have some garlic powder in Aisle 8" (or something). My gobsmacked, tearstained face did not seem to move him to find any spare garlic stashed in the produce storage and so I trolled the corner groceries until I found some. And, finally at 10:30, after making a new (slightly less lovingly simmered) batch of tomato sauce finshed compiling my lasagnes.

Coming in to bring me a hotwater bottle and see how I was doing, Martin commented that the Bay Leaf Incident would surely go down in the family history.

300 Thread Count

See how they match his eyes...
Originally uploaded by emira.

Among the gifts we were very lucky to receive this year was this awesome set of Jonathan Adler sheets. We loved the print but hadn't paid attention to the fabric details beyond the 100% cotton part (I am dead set against polyblend sheets). When we got them home, gave them a wash and put them on the bed we were pretty happy with how great they looked -- and they'll hopefully help inspire us to finish our somewhat ambitious new bedroom furniture project -- but we weren't prepared for the yumminess of 300 thread count cotton. Oh. My. Goodness. Divine. The only drawback is that I'm now finding it particularly tricky to get out of bed in the morning.

My No-Name Dutch Oven

  My lovely dutch oven 
  Originally uploaded by emira.

I caved and bought a "no-name" brand dutch oven on the after xmas sales for $60 (at Capital Iron in Victoria BC if you're interested). I really wanted to hold out for a Le Creuset one and was tormenting myself with the kiwi colour versus the powder blue. I even tried to talk myself into buying one at the 20% off sale at a kitchen boutique store in Victoria but at $300 I just couldn't do it (even at $240 with the discount). There are too  many other things to pay for yet -- like the new cupboards to house this lovely enameled cast iron vixen.

I've wanted a dutch oven for ages. Years. A lifetime it seems. And now that we've bought a place and aren't likely to need to move such a fixture -- during the student and move-once-a-year apartment days a 10lb pot didn't seem like a wise choice -- I've really been hankering for one. Especially with winter here. Even more so with the No Knead Bread Internet Event of 2006. I've yet to christen it, but with the cold, wet weather set in here I think that a hearty batch of Pasta E Fagioli (veggie version) is in order so it should be put to some serious simmering soon. In the meantime, I admire it on the shelf with glee.