Movin' On Up!

I have a new job!

Or at least, for a trial period. But I'm pretty confident that they'll see what an awesome employee I am, and keep me on.

I'm excited because it's actually a job in my field. Not a glamorous job, mind you, or even my ultimate job goal, which is being a professional violinist/violin teacher. This is a secretarial job for a large musical instrument and supply store. But, it's a step closer to where I need to be, and for goodness' sake, I won't be slicing ham all day anymore. Hooray!

Whatsoever a Man Seweth, So Shall He Rip

Today, I finished Present #1 (You know, what I was talking about in the last post). It was frustrating as all get out, because my sewing machine kept inexplicably jamming up and ruining the stitchwork. I'm thinking it was the thread, because the item pictured in the previous post just rolled of the machine without a hitch, but once I changed the thread, everything went to you-know-where. My time was divided yesterday among screaming at my sewing machine, ripping out stitches, and hissing, "...And you'd BETTER use this! A LOT!!!" to the non-present recipient of this particular gift.

But now, it's mostly done, and I'm looking forward to CHANGING THE THREAD moving on to the next project. I've decided to wait until everything is done to show pictures, so that way, the relatives won't be banned from this blog till December 26th.

Not to mention, I would be one angry-looking model right now.

Family Members, Please Do Not Read This!

I am serious, family members! I mean, you COULD read it-- if you wanted to know what you're getting for Christmas. And that's no fun at all! So go to Facebook now and stalk me there. I'll wait a minute for you.

(Are they gone?)

All right! So I was sick for the past few days. The first day, it started as a tickle in my throat. Day Two, My throat was sore as all get out, my joints hurt, and I was dizzy all day. So I read this. Yesterday, I was more mobile, but my throat still hurt like the dickens, and DH and I were sitting there, coughing at each other.

So, what else was there to do but sew?

This year, I'm giving my sisters/sisters-in-law/and maybe other lovely ladies in my life aprons for Christmas. Not your average, run-of-the-mill restaurant apron. We're talking cute aprons! Feminine aprons! Things that make you feel like Snow White in the kitchen!

So, of course, I had to experiment on my first apron. I got the free pattern here.

I'm pretty sure I made The World's Cutest Apron yesterday.

Here's a closeup on the pleats.

Meatloaf was no help at all:

And look at all the useful things you can do in it!

I was thinking of giving this one as gift, but now I'm not so sure. ;-) Be on the lookout for the lowdown on the next apron!

How We (Are Trying To) Do Meals Around Here

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I had fallen off the Homemade Dinner bandwagon. And landed HARD. It was so easy to shirk on making dinner-- I work in a grocery store, for goodness' sake, so there is always something to nibble, just a checkout line away! In the past, I had a system down, in which I made the same dish on the same night of the week: Meatloaf Monday, Baked Potato Thursday, etc. But after about two months of eating the same seven dishes incessantly, and convinced that my husband wasn't thrilled with the arrangement anyways, I needed a break! Then other things happened, and I never got quite back on the square-homemade-dinners bandwagon.

Needless to say, though, this blew the weekly grocery budget off the charts.

The clincher came the other night, when my husband announced that we have a slow leak in the bank account that was directly linked to our poor dining out habits. and THEN he said, "Remember when we used to have the same meals every week? That was sure great!" My jaw hit the floor!

After I put myself back together, I set to work on a new dinner schedule. But this time, the dishes of each weeknight are revolving around ingredients or a type of dish-- not just one particular dish... Although we did keep Baked Potato Thursday, because that's just spud-tacular!

(Sorry; couldn't resist!)

So here's my menu breakdown:

• Monday: casserole/pasta dish
• Tuesday: bean dish
• Wednesday: soup
• Thursday: baked potatoes
• Friday: free (whatever sounds good or is on sale for the week)
• Saturday: freezer/pantry item
• Sunday: spaghetti (or ravioli, etc.)

So this week, it's:

• Monday: Beef Carrot Casserole (my mom's recipe!)
• Tuesday: 3-Bean Casserole
• Wednesday: Lentil Soup (my mom's recipe again! I was feeling a little homesick when I made the list, with Thanksgiving coming and all. :-P)
• Thursday: Baked Potatoes
• Friday: Ham/Veggie Linguine
• Saturday: Chicken Pot Pie (based around some cooked cubed chicken in the freezer that needs to be used)
• Sunday: Spaghetti

It was nice to have a good, homemade meal every night this past week! Really, the hardest part of making a dinner is planning it all out. Give me the recipe and the ingredients, and getting a dinner on the table is a delight!

Well, I have to go-- it seems that a certain casserole is ready to come out of the oven!

The Bedroom Mess Monster

All right, it's time to tell you the horrible story about our bedroom, and about my valiant cleaning efforts this past week.

Before marriage, I was always hearing the phrase, "Don't bring baggage with you into the marriage!" I thought to myself, "Great! I don't really have any emotional issues, so I'm just peachy!"

Now, I'm wondering if those advisors were being a little more... literal.

A year and a half ago, my husband and I joined hearts, hands, and lives, as well as all of our random college-life paraphernalia and boxes of junk from our childhood bedrooms. I was suddenly the proud new co-owner of a HUGE Rubbermaid container literally bursting with clothes, a Darth Vader costume, and a large collection of random glass bottles that DH to this day refuses to part with; and DH, I'm sure, felt that he had moved into a Jo-Ann Fabrics store/Obscure-BookWorld.

The Monster was born.

We consolidated our things the best we could as we set up house. We live in a one-bedroom 705-sq. ft. apartment, so our bedroom became a sleeping area, sewing room, library, study area, and general storage area. We crammed everything in as best as we could and went on with life.

Meanwhile, throughout the first eight months or so, our families and friends sent us a large volume of boxes full of goodies as well as random junk. Not quite sure what to do with all this stuff, we stashed it under the bed, promising to "go through it later". Little did we know that we were inadvertently feeding a Monster.

Christmas came and went. Birthdays came and went. The monster under our bed started creeping out and even sprouted a couple of clones in the corner and the closet. We got cats, who spent many delightful hours romping under the bed, pulling things out of boxes and gleefully doing the Monster's bidding.

Finally everything came to a head the other week when I realized that I hated stepping on Christmas ornaments first thing every morning (that's just not quite the way I like to feel the Christmas spirit).

So last week, I just went in and decluttered a corner. Nothing too big. The Monster barely stirred. The next day, I cleaned out my dresser. Again, just a little baby step. The day after that, I sorted through a chest. The past few days, I've been under the bed, just doing one box a day.

Inch by inch, the Monster is shrinking. I have carted out two bags full of trash and a box full of give-away stuff. Sometimes, when I'm going through things, the Monster whispers insidious things in my ear like, "But that was your mom's sweater in high school! Shouldn't you keep it, even though it has a huge tear in the arm?" or, "But you've only had those magazines for a year! Maybe you'll read them next year!" I smile in his direction and chuck the offending item in the trash.

I purposely didn't clean up all the visible mess before starting on the deep-cleaning, because I still need a visual reminder to get some work done, so the bedroom still doesn't look very impressive. I'm still a loooong way off from Martha Stewart clean. However, I have already found many treasures:

• $39 cash
• The tweezers I have been tearing apart the house for
• Nine ponytail elastics (I was down to one)
• This awesome book on homemade stuff (underneath a pile of magazines in a box sent by family)
• Also underneath that pile of magazines, a wedding-gift check for a good sum of money. And it was expired. I wanted to jump in a lake.

So that is what is going on with my bedroom now. I'll keep you posted!

Confessions

Wow! Has it really been three months since I last posted? Sure enough, I have been on Blogger almost daily, reading other blogs and gleaning information and insights into life; but, to be very honest with you, I have not had much material to blog about lately, because...

....My Downright Domestic moments have been few and far between these past few months!

However, that is all changing. Opera is over till January, so there will be no more craziness in that direction for awhile! Also, Adam just turned in his two weeks' notice (school all day + work all night = a questionable academic future), so there won't be any more one-car, schedule-juggling insanity. Of course, on the flip side, this means that I need to somehow squeeze more hours out of my boss, or, preferably, get a better job.

(Honey, you can graduate anytime now!)

Oh yeah, I am SO ready for those days of bon-bons and daytime television. ;-)

Anyways, I have been progressively acting a little more Domestic every week. In a nutshell, I have:

• Baked that infamous artisan bread with great results!
• Decided what I'm making for my womenfolk relatives this Christmas. I'm super excited about this and can't wait to share it with you!
• Accomplished a lot more baking around here-- bringing muffins to work, taking scrumptious pumpkin scones to Sunday School... Adam says I'm already halfway to being a grandma.
• Started tackling the Bedroom Mess Monster. Oh, my word, y'all. I am seeing parts of the bedroom that haven't seen the light of day since we moved in 1 1/2 years ago!
• Last night, I pored over cookbooks and put together a meal plan, in which we eat the same dinner (or loose variation) on the same day of each week (Spaghetti Sunday, Baked Potato Thursday...). This was highly successful in our early marriage, so I'm hoping to be able to implement this again.

So that is what's on my plate right now. I will be keeping this blog updated on all that's going on above, so stay tuned!