Sunday Mornings Around Here

I love Sunday mornings around here.  Especially when I get to watch my baby girl eat her breakfast and sip on a cup of coffee that Reid made for me while he cooks up some grits & eggs. Life ain't all that bad.

She is serious about her food.  Organic banana & organic toasted oats.

Market Saturday

I cook much better (and healthier) during the week when I have a menu planned out.  It makes grocery shopping easier (and cheaper) and I run less of a risk of eating more convenience foods, eating out or buying random ingredients.  These are just several of the many reasons why menu planning is a smart idea.

But the real reason I make a meal plan is because of Reid.  And only on a consistent basis because he told me he thinks it is the ultimate sign of a great wife.  There are a ton of great and valid reasons to make a meal plan for your family.  But if I said those reasons were why I take a little time each weekend to plan out what we're eating I would be telling a bold faced lie.  I do it because my husband, after living as a single adult much longer than I have, loves having the person he gave up bachelorhood for cook for him. (And I am super relieved that things like "looks great in a bikini" or "always has the house spotless" were not at the very top of his "Ideal Traits of a Wife" list.)

So knowing that I make a cute little menu list just for him, he asked me what was for dinner on a night a few weeks ago.  I referred him to the little posted sheet of paper on our fridge.  He told me just to tell him because he hadn't read it yet.  I replied, "But I thought you liked looking at the meal plan."  He said "Oh no, I never look at it.  Just knowing that it's there is all that matters." 

Oh honey...

Anyway, I start off meal planning with the market every Saturday and then plan for the next Monday-Sunday based on what veggies and other goodies I pick up, what we already have in the pantry/fridge and whatever our schedule looks like that week.  If we have a booth set up that day then I send Reid soon after we get there to check out what everyone has or I make him guard the cinnamon rolls (i.e. eat samples) while I go call dibs on what all I want.  I go to the store Monday (or the weekend) and can order off of Augusta or Athens Locally Grown for pick up on Tuesday and Thursday.     

So far this is what I've got to work with this week...

Plenty of buns...actually these aren't ours.  Ours were just kind of rolled out and cut into squares.

Spinach, lettuces and leeks, pastured banty chicken eggs, and pumpkin dog treats (for Myra).

Local honey with the comb in from the Carroll's

My beloved stand mixer died today.  I am pretty sure it is the belt.  I don't know what kind of belt it is but I know it's the belt.  (I told Reid I thought it was a belt and he asked me why I thought that.  I told him because I had heard that sound while driving.  I know very little about engines but I do know the sound the car makes before you look in your rear view window and see a strip of your engine belt bouncing down the road.) 

Anyway, it was somewhat fitting that it bit the dust today since today I finished the last standing order (of 400 burger buns) I had agreed on before we decided to go down to just doing the Washington Farmer's Market and no longer take retail orders.  So either my mixer decided to die right along with my dreams of becoming the next Betty Crocker or because back to back to back batches of a to-capacity heavy yeast dough is a lot to put on a mixer.  Or simply because I have put my Kitchen-aid Professional Model counter top mixer through 2 years of commercial use (I think somewhere on the packaging it said intended for home use only) with another 4 years of heavy use before that (in my home but they probably don't bet on a single twenty something using it quite as much as I did).  All in all, the thing still looks brand new and up until today ran beautifully. (Except for sometimes there was a little pause from when you put it in gear to when it started running, but I was patient.) 

Oh well.  I'm sure we'll find someone who fixes small engines.  And I'm sure it is just a matter of replacing the belt.  (Or time to replace it with a 20 qt capacity floor mixer).  And tomorrow starts the first day of being near completely dedicated to getting the house ready for Sugar Diaper's first birthday anyway.   (Which we still have over 4 months to go but it seems like she shouldn't be older than 4 weeks and I'm starting to get a little nervous about how fast all of this is going by.)

We are about to go to bed after having deer burgers for dinner.  (It's amazing how you can still eat yeast dough even after working with it all day.  The same is not true for foods like meatloaf.) I had intentions all day to post about the plants and all the great help I got from Otter Creek to have "anything pink" ready by early September.  So I took the pictures below...and then went and wrote about my poor mixer instead. 

My latest victims

Myra Louise

Polka Dot Plant on the left and sweet marjoram, dill bouquet, bronze fennel and chives

I really, really hope we get the mixer fixed soon.  I am a much better cook than plant murderer gardener.

State of the House: April 2012

So the last home update involved turning our guest room into a guest room.  And a nursery.

At that point it was our only completely finished room in the house.

And at this point it is our only completely finished room in the house.  (Well the closet isn't finished in that room but that is fixed by cramming stuff into it and shutting the door.  Please do not open closed doors in my house. They are always hiding something.).    

I blame having to share my closet with the AC unit...

So we haven't digressed and made the nursery back into any kind of part project/part storage room.  I think you can call no digression, progress, right? And because of the nursery/guest room, if someone is coming over on short notice now I really only have 3 things I worry about:

1.) Kitchen-no dishes & the main prep table is cleaned off
2.) Bathroom
3.) Tidy up our nursery and if at all possible allow the majority of conversation to take place in this room.

A stylish house guest enjoying our luxurious accommodations.

And Baby Girl enjoying her luxe accommodations.

(**Extra housekeeping hint:  I also always like to leave the vacuum cleaner out and plugged in. If there is time I can clean the floor.  And if there is not time then I still get the benefit of my guest believing that I am about to clean the floor.  Which I usually do.  Or I just sit back and read the latest issue of Southern Living and tell myself I'm not a complete housewife failure because I do make poundcake from scratch and own milk glass as featured in one article of this month's issue.)

Pound cakes I made from scratch for housewife extra credit points

Anyway, we still have a long way to go.  And although the lack of any newly painted room and the still existing "Welcome-to-Shop-n'-Sav-Drop-Ceiling-Tiles, Y'all!" in the main room may speak otherwise, we have made a ton of progress overall on the house.

Still applicable photo taken last year.

Taking a clue from how we go the nursery done, we've trudged forward with the rest of the house. The first step with the nursery was to get rid of anything in the room we didn't want to keep.  The next was to simply get everything OUT.  (Then it was on to prepping for painting, etc, etc. that Reid mainly did.  I was probably watching on while eating ice cream to help contribute to the 75 pounds I gained during pregnancy).  After that the actual "work" went by fairly quickly.  And since I got to go back and start with a completely blank palette, the decorating part was so fun.  (Much, much, much more fun than decorating by trying to see how artfully you can arrange clutter and seven too many pieces of furniture in one room...)

5 pieces of furniture+8 chairs+massive sewing project+baby jumper do not fit in one corner of a home. 

So we have already hauled off a ton of clothes and gadgets that weren't too hard to part with.  We also boxed up a lot for possibly some giant yard sale in the near future.  Then we took more clothes off (mainly my clothes because half my wardrobe fell into the "I wore this in college and it will probably either never fit again and/or never be appropriate for a mother to wear again" pile.) 

Now...with just over 4 months left until Josephine's 1 Year Birthday Party (that I desperately want to have at our house...our painted house...), we are starting on the "pack it all up and get it OUT for now step.

And as soon as I finish this one last big order that I had...

177 down, 223 buns left to go...

These two little boxes are going to be joined by a lot more.

One piece of furniture cleaned out...34 left to go.

  (IMPORTANT:  Offers of babysitting will be accepted on a first come, first serve basis in order to be able to accomplish our 4 month deadline.  And if we do not meet our deadline, offers of having the party at YOUR beautiful home with gorgeous ceilings and painted walls will also gladly be considered.  Thanks!)