changes and reality

Another farm is up for sale in our neighborhood. Funny thing is, it hasn't been used as a farm in many, many years, and yet I still think of it as a farm.

I truly understand the hows and whys of such things. I know about the taxes, the upkeep, and the amount of time involved in maintaining a small place (and can't imagine what it would be to do 12x the amount I do now). I know that for such places to remain a farm, someone must be willing to actually...farm.  And most Americans today do not have a love for the soil and a love for plants or farm animals, much less a desire for long, hot, hard working hours with a wild card called nature that can upend it all. So even if I don't like it, I do understand that at some point, farms must be sold, and when that happens, they will grow a development instead of crops.

But what bugs me beyond belief is that there is an old house with lots of character and charm, that would make an awesome home for a small family, that will be torn down. Evidently farm houses are not desirable to developers. Just for once, I'd love to see a developer come in, and build a development around a farm house, leaving a reminder that this area was once a working farm. Smaller houses, mixed with bigger houses, and even some barn-style sheds built on some of the properties. A throwback tribute to the tenant farmers who lived on the land but didn't own it, but without whom the crops would never be planted or harvested. One or two small apartment (as in one or two story) complexes as a modern day reminder of all the migrant workers who keep American in food. (Just google the story of GA and migrant workers...when the economy crashed and people headed back to Mexico, crops were rotting in the field because no American workers would do such hard work. Most Americans quit the job on day two, if they showed up for day two.) You could add a nice house or two for people who like big houses, in memory of the rare plantations, as a way of making a profit, but let most of the houses be smaller, open houses, like the true farm houses. You know, where you're not sure what the purpose of the room was when you walk into the empty house, because the rooms were non-descript so they could be interchangeable. Not that many kids? You've got an office, or a parlor (living room or den, we call them now), or even a library. Have a lot of kids? No problem. Move furniture around, and it's a bedroom. They didn't decorate in those days like we do now. That was for rich, frivolous people. And the kitchen? It's big enough to do farm things...like canning and processing food, with plenty of cabinets for storage. And the porch that connects to the kitchen...ideal for shucking corn or shelling beans and not making a mess in the house. It wouldn't be wanted by today's standards. I get that. This is probably why I could never make a living as a developer. My ideas would not match today's standards at all.

And as much as I hate to see it go, we have a house that works for us and that we've spent hours upon hours working to get it as we want (the yard, not so much the house). Other than the historical aspect of this old house, there's no reason to change the set-up we have. It's not realistic or practical.

I know that change must come. It's inevitable, really. But there's a small part of me that cringes and whispers "NO!"

pumpkins

Pumpkins are EVERYWHERE. As are mums.  And I think they're beautiful. But I've not bought any. Not a one.  And I probably won't.

A few years ago I did buy pumpkins, but I didn't have the heart to throw the insides away, so I made a ton of pumpkin sauce and pumpkin pies.  Okay, maybe not truly a ton, but it seemed like we ate pumpkin pie FOR-EV-ER.  And I can't bring myself to buy a pumpkin and then throw it out. Just when I think I've reasoned with myself enough to do it, I remember two things: Buster and Little Dog. Those dogs will eat or chew on anything. If they see me touch, their mouths or tongue must go to it. Tomatoes, pecans, apples, pears - they've eaten/sampled them all. I can't imagine the dogs treating a pumpkin any different.

I've been amazed to see all the beautiful fall decorations at homes I've visited recently. Even my Mom had me pull out ceramic pumpkins for the table while I was at her house last week. I don't remember her ever decorating for fall before. If I manage to get my one set of fall flowers on the dining room table and my pilgrim people and turkey out and change the yellow flowered towel out of my utensil basket to the squirrel one with a fall background, then I will have accomplished all the decorating that will happen for this season.

But come the last weekend of November, we'll be talking decorations. :)

super cool dishes

Villeroy & Boch make some very interesting dish sets. From Germany, a lot of their settings are contemporary country designs.  Many of them have a rural feel, all of them are very cheerful and airy, and some of them have that European flair to them. I've looked at many sets from gift registeries, but not until this week have I seen a set from them that made me think "Oooh! I really like that! I could see us actually using that!"

I don't think these pictures do the set justice. They yellow is not super bright, but it's not a pale yellow, either. And the flower patterns, diamond patterns, and ink sketched farm scenes are absolutely amazing. (Disclaimer: I'm not crazy about the plate with the horse rider, but the cows, sheep, and harvest scenes are absolutely incredible.)  And unlike my current fine China, they are dishwasher safe, something the sales clerk didn't mention to us when we picked our pattern out. And seeing as I grew up without a dishwasher, it never even crossed my mind to ask about it. (Yeah, I am now a spoiled housewife.)

I don't know why I am so fascinated with dishes or place settings.  I got to visit a tea house twice in Fuquay-Varina, and one of the things I loved the most about it was that they each person at the table had a different place setting. They all somewhat matched (either in color or in style), but each setting was totally different from the next. Somehow I think if I pulled out all my dishes and tried that, it wouldn't work. (Can't you just see a square red & green "Merry Christmas Y'all" with cowboy snowmen next to a fancy blue China plate?)

But if you're in the market for a nice set of dishes, Villery & Boch is a company whose designs are worth considering.

not for me

While shopping Monday (yeah, you can tell I've not been "out" in a while), I saw something that totally baffled me, but it also made my head turn - metal dishes in the high dollar section of Belks.

The brand name is Wilton Armetale, and according to the website, it's an "alternative metal" that you can take from the fridge to the stove to the table. What caught my eye, not shown online or in this picture, was their egg platter.  I cannot even begin to fathom going to all the trouble of making deviled eggs, only to put them on a metal platter. I'd use a flat dish where the eggs slide around all over the place before I resorted to metal.

I suppose for people who like the look of silver but hate polishing silver this would be a nice alternative. I imagine that people who are wanting the antique look would find this very fitting in their kitchen, as it does look quite cheap in real life. I don't know if it's dishwasher safe. I can think of several ladies who could buy this and use it in their homes and I would walk in and think "Wow. This looks nice."  Of course, those same ladies can also make burlap look nice.  Go figure.

But I'm not one of them. And even if I did like this and it wasn't out of my price range, if I tried to use it, people would come in and think "Mm.  She's mixing Dollar Tree and Belks again.  Poor gal has no fashion sense whatsoever."  They would never realize these cheap looking dishes ARE Belk dishes.  I just don't have that knack for decorating.

I did see some dishes that I really liked. I told Bobby if we were getting married now and having to register for stuff all over again, those would be the dishes we'd go with (as opposed to what we have, which I still like very much). I'll post those tomorrow. But even those dishes would make my poor mother shake her head and sigh "ohhh Ruthie, no."

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

decorations, 2

 Several years ago my parents gave me a table set of blue candle holders with a matching fruit bowl. I used them for a little while, then they went in the China cabinet. While at JoAnns, I found these silver candles on clearance, and decided it would match the set perfectly. I already had the silver leaves from last year, but after fitting them in the bowl realized there wasn't enough. So I headed to Michael's, only to discover silver is not the "in" color this year and I was stuck with what I had.

So I added toile and hershey's kisses to cover up the empty spots. I told Bobby I  knew a silver table runner would match this and make it look more magazine-y, but my grandmother made this, and it seemed stupid to buy something I don't really need when I have something I already like. It's not often I take the tablecloth and pads off the dining room table anyway, so there's really no point in buying something extra. I think my grandmother would be proud.

One week ago today I came home from the grocery store, opened the deep freeze, and found water flowing off the lid and all the "frost"/ice in chunks on top of the food. Thankfully Bobby was home, and he called his Mom to make room in her freezer while I started sorted thawed, partially thawed, and still frozen into piles. The next morning I began the arduous task of searching for a new freezer, as well as attempting to move the chest out and clean.

The broken chest

11 years of dust bunnies underneath it

and the new freezer in place!

I broke tradition by going with an upright freezer. Everyone I know has always had a chest freezer. They hold more food, for one thing. But I decided since it was just the two of us, that wasn't a concern. Also, I'm tired of bending double and having the blood run to my head for forty-five minutes every year while I empty the freezer to defrost and clean it. Those days are now gone. So our 3/4 full chest freezer totally filled up the upright, but I can now tell exactly what we have without having to shove half the contents of the freezer around looking for an item. I also think it will help somewhat in using the older stuff first.

Now if I can just figure out how to keep the field rats out of my garden, I'll be happy.

a Monday surprise

Coming in from the grocery store (and in a hurry, of course), I quickly grabbed the bag of meats to throw in the freezer and was greeted with a gush of water off the freezer lid and all the ice from the sides in large chunks inside the box. Our freezer had died, and foods were in sundry states of meltdown. Thankfully my mother-in-law had just enough room in her larger freezer, so I loaded up every laundry basket I had and hauled everything not melted to her house. The semi-melted food piled up the refrigerator (looks like we'll be eating vegetable soup this week!) and three poor little bags didn't make it. They probably needed to be thrown out anyway, but the other was a bag of bread rolls from my month-long experiment with friendship bread starter. Let's just say the chickens will be nicely fed tomorrow.

Meanwhile, we've got some decisions to make about a replacement freezer. Do we upgrade, downsize, or revolutionize? More to come.

why math is important

About two weeks ago a certain kindergarten teacher passed off to me a little ziploc bag full of ooey-gooey starter. I came home, googled the directions and sundry recipes for it, and the process began. By day ten I was debating whether or not this Friendship bread stuff was really a very friendly thing. But the end of day ten, I realized one very important thing: MATH is important!

The directions are simple for day ten: Add 1 c milk, 1 c flour, 1 c sugar, stir. Pour out 3 cups into containers to give friends (or to make bread), and keep the last cup to continue the yeast process. Simple, right? That means you'll have four containers after everything is said and done. One for the starter, one for my cinnamon rolls, one for bread. So somewhere in my warped thinking, that equaled four. (Yes, I may have two bachelors and an associates degree, but I'm NOT smarter than a fifth grader!) As it comes time to knead the cinnamon rolls, the goop is still, well, goop. Then I realized what I had done, and by that time the mixture was added and there was no choice but to DOUBLE the recipe. Do you have any idea how many cinnamon rolls that makes? (three 13x9 pan fulls, in case you don't). Thankfully we had little friends over that night, as well as Mrs. Bryan. That took care of half a pan. I froze the rest, though I'm not totally sure why. After all, they were okay. Not great, not ooh-aah make you want to swallow your tongue delicious, just okay. But either way, they are now taking up space in my freezer.

So now today, ten days out, is round 2. Three loaves of sourdough bread are rising (one cup of goop will make three small loaves of bread), as well as rolls for church on Sunday. I'm not sure how well sourdough rolls will turn out, but hopefully okay. If not, then my chickens are going to have a lot of time-intensive food to eat. I've also got my starter put back as well as a bag to give to a friend. (Am I nice friend to give someone more work to do or what?)

AND I found a recipe on-line that uses the batter that is for plain white bread, as well as an apple bread. Maybe I should be more specific: a recipe that uses normal ingredients (NOT pudding mix!) Do people really think the Amish use pudding mixes? I like pudding mixes, don't get me wrong, but why would I waste time making homemade bread from yeast only to throw a sugar induced pudding mix into it?

I'm not sure how many more weeks I'll keep this up. Bread machine bread is good, and it's much more time convenient. There's also yeast packets that you can use to make your own bread that doesn't require stirring and mixing for ten days before baking. Has anyone else tried this friendship bread?

big pillows

We took advantage of all the Christmas sales and got a comforter for our bed that we've been looking at for some time. When I pulled it out of the bag, it came with pillow shams and a bedskirt! The bedskirt we can't put on, but I debated whether or not to get two more pillows for the shams. You know, you look at all the pictures in the magazines and the bed is always covered in pillows. It looks nice and comfy and fluffy and pretty. But why? I mean, why go to all the trouble of fluffing the pillows and propping them up and then taking them back off to go to bed every single morning and night? Other than the fact it makes the room look neater, I'm not sure I even understand the point of making up the bed.

In the third house I lived in as a child, any dolls or stuff animals we owned (I shared a room with my 2 sisters) had to fit either on top of our dresser or on our bed. That meant every morning and night a host of my younger sister's dolls and all my stuffed animals made the trip from bed to floor and back again. Except for once when we were made and we put everything on our older sister's bed, but that's another story. I never understood why my sister kept wanting more dolls, and can't say I was all that happy for her whenever she got them for Christmas or birthdays. In my mind it was just one more thing to do every day.

Some mornings I look at the bed and think the matching shams on a spare set of pillows would like nice, but then I think "WHY?" Am I the only one too practical for my own good out here?

oh my....

When I had my painting fiasco a few weeks ago (where what should have been a 2 day job turned into a week long nightmare), I used some of the extra orangey-brown paint on one section of the kitchen wall. Yes, just one section. The backsplash area behind the stove was absolutely atrocious and no amount of cleaning was helping, so it went from white to dark. When I pulled the tape away from the outlets and wall edges, it also pulled some of the tape away. :O(
I've briefly looked at the tiles in Lowe's, quickly trashed the advertisements claiming tile is out and tin is in (not for my kitchen!!!) and even briefly entertained the thought of painting something on paper for directly over the stove, covering it with Plexiglas, and then just touching up all the edges with the dark paint. But while we were at the Southern Home Shows, I saw these custom tiles a family makes. The husband creates the ceramic tiles, the wife paints them, then he refires them to finish them. Of course, custom tiles aren't cheap. I looked online at other companies, and the more I saw the more ideas I had. I might still check out wall paper murals, though Bobby's not crazy about anything behind the stove that could be a fire hazard (such as a painting, etc).

They had many tiles like this one. They also had pigs, cows, horses, and just about anything you could imagine.

This is one of their larger works that is embossed (where parts stand out like a sculpture). They had a whole section on display at the show that were small tiles of the vegetables only. (One 4" tile would be a yellow bell pepper, one would be a tomato, two would make up a carrot, or corn, etc). But if you're putting them together, she can do a display such as the one above.

These two I found online by two other companies. While I love the historic kitchen one, (and the brown baskets would match the brown wall on the sides), I think it might be a bit much. And I LOVE the realistic painting of the tomatoes.

Realistically, unless I buy tiles at Lowe's and paint them myself (which wouldn't look anywhere as lovely as these), it will be several years down the road before this home project could be accomplished. I get to fill in at my old job 2 days a week for a few weeks this next month, and a small part of me would love to put that income towards this project, but my head reminds me there are other priorities demanding it. Maybe by the time I finally decide what I want, it'll be time to start!