Jenyfer Matthews

Not even a MOUSE!

I have seen neither ears nor tail of my mouse visitor, dead or alive. (Yes, I choose to continue to think of it as a “mouse” though a few people have suggested that it sounded too large to be a mouse – I don’t wish to follow that train of thought!) My holiday wish is that s/he has vacated the premises never to return.

I hope that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you have a wonderful weekend full of joyful surprises.

Apparently my standards of clean with regard to my home are fairly high, judging only on the last several homes I’ve moved into. If my mother were alive, she’d shake her head in amazement because I’m sure she despaired of me when I was a teen living in her house. I never left dishes sitting around, but my room was pretty cluttered to say the least. (My own turnaround gives me some small hope for my own children’s habits!)

When I first move into a house, I have to give it a thorough cleaning. However it may degenerate after that initial cleaning is beside the point because at least by then it is my dirt (I’m sure all the former tenants of my homes have felt the same, ha ha). I know that I’m totally settled in and comfortable in a new place when I’m willing to walk around barefoot.

Not that I actually go barefoot that often, but it’s the idea of it. When we lived in Cairo, I made everyone take their shoes off at the door to try and keep from tracking so much dirt and muck off the streets into the house. People are constantly spitting and sometimes worse out in the open, so it just pays not to wear your shoes in the house. I typically would switch my outside shoes for flip-flops in the house. I don’t like walking on grit and the floors seemed always to be covered in sand.

When we moved into our house in Michigan, I wore flip-flops around because the house wasn’t clean. I washed the walls, had the carpets professionally cleaned, and was just about approaching the point when I might have gone barefoot when the weather turned cold and I switched to slippers. After yesterday, I not only don’t wish to go barefoot, but I don’t even want to take a shower. I may in fact switch to wearing workboots.

I saw a mouse in my kitchen.

It was early in the morning and I had just gotten up to make the children’s lunches for school. All the lights in the kitchen were out so I flipped them on and made my tea and booted up my computer. I had completed packing lunches and was sitting and looking at my email when I thought I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. I turned to look and saw nothing so returned to my email. A few moments later I heard an odd noise. I looked up and saw the mouse sitting on the back burner of my stove eating something.

Never have I wished more for a remote control gas stove so I could have fried his little furry butt!

I saw the mouse clearly from across the room. I couldn’t see its body because it was behind a lunch bag, but its head seemed pretty big and it didn’t seem particularly worried about my presence as I stood up and walked around to the stairwell to call my husband upstairs. I opened the front door, somehow thinking that I would shoo it out of the kitchen and that maybe it would be scared enough to just run outside.

My husband came upstairs and he looked in the kitchen to see the mouse licking a smudge of peanut butter off a piece of paper I had just pulled off a fresh jar in the process of making lunches. When the mouse noticed my husband, he dove behind the stove. My husband pulled the stove out at my direction, me still hoping to scare it out. Not even banging the stove with a broom handle produced results so the mouse was either hunkered down or gone. I did the only thing that I could do and went straight to the store and bought some “mouse chow”, aka rodentcide on my receipt. I put some behind the stove and under the sink, but concentrated mostly on the garage which is probably where the furry beast got in.

What am I, the Pied Piper? The mechanic just pulled a second wad of mouse nest out of the AC vents in my car, which I had chosen to believe was a leftover from the country mouse I spotted in my engine as I was leaving Minnesota this summer. I’m really hoping that it is the cold weather that brought the mouse inside because I haven’t seen any evidence whatsoever of gnawing or droppings. Maybe my banging on the stove with the broom will have given it the message that it isn’t welcome!?

There’s no way I’m going barefoot now – though it’s not as if I plan to step on a mouse either!!!

I went grocery shopping today, because it’s my habit. Usually after having the family home all weekend, our cupboards are bare by Monday. I got home and realized the error of that assumption when I had very little room to put anything away. My husband went shopping yesterday and I guess I wasn’t paying attention to how much he got! Oh well – if we get snowed in this month, we won’t starve!

I once read an article in which Nora Roberts, an author I love, said she started writing while stuck at home on a snow day with her two small children. Another interview I read last week said she writes a book every 45 days. EVERY 45 DAYS. That rate does explain her prodigious output, but it also makes me feel like a real slacker. Even when I’m actually working at writing industriously, I can’t write nearly that fast. I know it’s not constructive to compare myself to someone who is apparently one of the fastest and most successful writers on the planet, but every 45 days…amazing. And something to think about.

After procrastinating for something like a month, I finally got started on the refinishing of the last dresser today. In the end I stripped it all down and sanded it thoroughly in preparation for an application of Danish oil. I didn’t want to try and mess around with a separate stain and finishing topcoat. The Danish oil is “one-step” in so far as it can contain a stain color and it soaks into the wood and dries, giving it some protection against moisture with a more natural satin-finish look. At least that’s what I’m going for, and if it works it will blend with the other dresser we have quite nicely (when it arrives). I’ll let you know how it goes.

Speaking of our things, last week we got an email from the moving company in Egypt saying that our shipment had arrived and that we should contact the local movers on this end who will be delivering our things to us. I did that, and the local movers said that they had not received any paperwork so as far as they were concerned the shipment was not here. Okay. Today I got a phone call from the local movers today saying that our shipment has in fact arrived, but that the paperwork does not list their name as a receiver so they are having trouble claiming it for us. Great – you know how I love a delay. Taking a deep breath and hoping for the best is as much as I can do at this point.

Seems odd to think that this time last year I was preparing to go visit my friend in Cologne, Germany and shopping in the Christmas markets there. It’s slightly more exotic than Target!

I am happy to say that I am mostly done with shopping and decorating. I was debating the merits of real vs. artificial trees. I love a real tree but they are messy and I wondered how my allergy prone daughter would deal with a real tree in the house. The fake trees are more convenient and tidier, but the ones I like best are way $$$. As a stop-gap, I bought two 48″ prelit tinsel trees, one green and one silver. They are shiny and tacky but they make me ridiculously happy. I may just run with them and wait and see if I can get a satisfying fake tree on clearance after Christmas!

There is probably a cheesy fake tree in our shipment – if it ever arrives…

Better do it yourself, as the saying goes. Too true.

It’s been that kind of day. The kind of day you spend running around from place to place and still feeling like you aren’t getting much done.

After much errand running in the morning, the landlord’s son came by to replace a unit in the horribly inadequate track lighting fixture in the kitchen (it’s so bad, I have a lamp on my counter). In the process of working on the fixture, he switched off the breaker (after shocking himself) which in turn zapped the configuration of my wireless router and in turn cut off my internet.

Any other plans I had for the afternoon were put on hold as I set about trying to get the router back up and running. I finally broke down and called my internet provider. After going through all the same steps with an automated system, I got on with a live person who told me that they didn’t support my particular router and the best they could suggest was that I either hook my computer directly to the modem with a cable or I get them to come and install a new modem with a built in router. Um…huh? I got this router as part of my sign-up “bonus” and two months later they tell me they don’t support it? Not only that, but I have to pay them a new installation fee plus a monthly rental fee on a new modem.

I don’t think so.

I let them set up an appointment for the installation but when we got off the phone I went back to work and successfully reconfigured my router myself. Ha!

So, I don’t have much to show for my time today but I do at least have internet – and a way to waste MORE time! (Why doesn’t sitting on the internet feel like a waste of time they way running errands does??)

I also have an appointment to get new tires on my car in two weeks. If the two days of snow this week are an indication of how the city will maintain the streets here in the winter, I am going to need all the traction I can get!

We had our first big snow fall yesterday afternoon and evening. It wasn’t sticking when I went to bed, but we woke up this this lovely scene. (Click any image to enlarge)

I got up early on purpose because I wasn’t sure whether or not the driveway would require shoveling. My husband decided he and his AWD Subaru were just fine to get out, but what about me and my little VW? Doubtful. I got out the new, handy-dandy, ergonomic shovel.

I look happy don’t it? That was my first five minutes. It became less fun as I discovered that it was about 4 inches of light fluffy snow on top of a layer of slush.

Now I know why the schools gave us a two hour delay – so I would have time to clear my driveway.

I thought the basketball hoop full of snow was funny when I saw it outside. So glad all that didn’t fall on my head as I was passing by with the shovel!!

The service manager of the dealership where I had my car serviced recently told me that my tire tread was at about 60%. I asked him if that was good enough for winter. His response: “You’ll find out the first time it snows.” Guess I’m about to find out because it’s time for school!

Once upon a time, when I was living in the United Arab Emirates, I had a friend who was a bit older than me and also a quilter. We frequently took fabric shopping trips together, talked on the phone daily, and met once a week at her house for our local quilting group. We were as close as we could be so when one day, out of the blue, she attacked me with an accusation of taking shortcuts in my quilting and doing shoddy work it really stung. She was going through a lot in her own life at the time and was under a lot of stress, but her hurtful comments were enough to damage our friendship enough that it never recovered.

Though she and I are no longer in contact, I still think of her every time I am working on a project and I think of a way to make it easier – am I taking a shortcut that will ultimately compromise the integrity of the end product?

I have to admit that on this particular project, the answer is probably YES.

I recently visited a blog where the writer challenged all the readers to make an apron. I have never been much of an apron wearer and have only more recently become interested in vintage aprons. But I got sucked in so what could I do but figure out how to make an apron?

I have a sewing machine but it hasn’t been used in 12+ years and probably needs some attention (my Bernina is on a ship en route – I hope!). Given the fact that I am much more likely to toss a dish towel over my shoulder while I’m cooking (in order to wipe my hands a hundred times) it was a natural choice to choose to make a dish towel apron. It didn’t hurt that I happen to have a stack of vintage dish towels from my antique mall shopping sprees this spring. I used an apron from my grandmother as a pattern:

This apron is in such good condition that I doubt my grandmother ever wore it either!

I folded in some pleats, bought some ribbon, and tacked on a tie – voila!

Turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself.

I don’t know if you can see it in the picture, but I added some rick-rack to the tie just for you, Susan

So what do you think? Shortcut or not, did I do okay?

When I was young, some of my favorite books were the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When my family took road trips – usually from Louisiana up to Wisconsin / Minnesota – I used to look out of the window and imagine how it would be to travel by covered wagon and live out on the grassland.

I used to have an obsession with hoop skirts too. I sometimes think I was born out of my time. A homesteader without a homestead. Then I go stay in the country and realize I like modern city conveniences just fine!

Maybe it was that early influence that has me trying things like making jam and cooking from scratch. I hate to waste anything. One of my closest friends regularly tells me I must have lived through the Depression. Whatever it is, I usually think I’m just being smart.

This weekend I decided that I wasn’t going to let the pumpkins I bought as Halloween decorations go to waste. There were three that didn’t get carved that I decided to convert into pulp for muffins, pancakes, and pies.

I read about it first, I went into this knowing that jack-o-lantern pumpkins were not necessarily the optimal pumpkins to make into smush. I did it anyway. There is so much sugar in muffins that surely it won’t really matter? I doubt the children will notice.

Smart or not, I stared with the largest pumpkin first.

He looks pretty cheerful lying there, doesn’t he? I had to use the largest baking sheet I had. I put the other half in the crock pot, on a suggestion I saw on the web.

Looks really gruesome after an hour in the oven at 425F, doesn’t he? Great thing about the blistered skin is that it peeled right off!

This isn’t all of the pumpkin puree I “harvested” – I ended up taking some pieces out of the crock pot and putting them in the oven because baking it was faster. NOTE: This picture does not show all of my measuring cups – I have a bit of a problem in that area…

(Please don’t judge my cramped kitchen!!!)

I ended up getting nearly 10 cups of pumpkin puree out of this particular pumpkin!

Did I let the seeds go to waste? Not on your life!

I have two more pumpkins to process. I’m planning on making pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin muffins soon and possibly some soup, but I think that before I bake anymore pumpkins I need to aquire a chest freezer…

You might remember that I bought a couple of dressers at a garage sale in the middle of October. I haven’t mentioned them lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on them.

I stripped them both, but then decided to work on this one first because it was a more straightforward project: painting.

(Click any image to enlarge)

I did not buy this one for it’s beautiful paint job or the one odd knob – I bought it because it was actually made of wood and I could see potential.

The first thing I did was strip it of all that old, gloopy paint. A long-time friend advised me to just rough sand it and paint over it, especially since I was just going to paint again anyway, but I wanted to start with a clean slate.

I did however simply paint over the ugly drawer colors. Who paints the insides of drawers? Especially alternating ugly colors??

Don’t they look pretty and fresh? I told my friend that I was still planning to put shelf liner in the drawers. She recommended I think about seeing a therapist.

My initial plan was to paint the dresser white, then go back over with a pale, minty green for that shabby chic look. As it turns out, I am much too uptight to do shabby chic. The white looked nice so I stuck with that.

It looks even better than I imagined it would. (And yes, I noticed that gap at the top on the left side and pounded it together after I took this picture!)

Aren’t the new knobs lovely? (They cost more than the dresser did!)

I do need to figure out how to trim the bolts a bit.

If you were to compare my painting style to a famous artist, my style would likely be closer to Gaugin or Pollack than Monet. As much as I am free with the criticism of other people’s painting, it isn’t as easy as it looks. I learned the hard way that horizontal surfaces are “easier” to paint than vertical and that it is much better to do many thin layers than trying to rush things with thicker applications.

Just look what happens when you try to hurry:

I could strip that off and start over, but since 1) it is on the side(s) and 2) I have two more dressers to refurbish, I’m just going to call that paint drool my interpretation of shabby chic and move along…

Just how much I have to do today, that is!

In addition to the usual housework and shopping / errand running, I have to finish up the Halloween decorations. I’ve been thinking all month about buying pumpkins but was holding off because I was warned about ravenous squirrels roaming the neighborhood who make short work of pumpkins. So I waited… and almost waited so long there weren’t any pumpkins at the store! I did finally find a few yesterday – phew! What’s Halloween without a few jack-o-lanterns?

I also foolishly volunteered to help with my son’s class party this afternoon because I somehow thought that life might be a little calmer by now! HA!

After school, it will be rush rush rush helping the kids to get themselves costumed up for their first real, genuine, American trick-or-treat. I am actually pretty excited for them. I’ve done my best to give them the Halloween experience while we were living abroad and of course they never knew what they were missing, but I did. So glad that they can have the real thing while they are both young enough to participate and old enough to remember!

Happy Halloween!

I admit it: I have a slight addiction to purses. It first became apparent to me when we moved from our first apartment to our second in Cairo. I had way more purses tucked away in my wardrobe than I thought I did.

Looking back, I know how it started. For years and years I had a standard black leather purse and a standard brown leather purse and that was it. As a student and then a first-time-working person, I didn’t have much money for frivolous things like purses. Years later, when our financial status started to improve, I started to buy a new purse here and there – always with the rationalization “I don’t have any cute purses!”

Now I have almost nothing but cute purses. I have backpack purses in wine and teal printed with elephants that I bought on a trip to Cambodia, a couple of avocado green purses, a giraffe print purse with red trim, an eggplant colored purse, an aqua blue purse, a red patent leather purse my husband bought me in Italy, a couple of straw purses, big purses, tiny purses, evening purses, and… well, you get the idea.

It’s absurd really – I don’t even like to change my purse. I hate to move everything from one to the other and I’m always rushing around so much that I rarely leave myself time to switch purses. Once I put my stuff in a purse it usually stays there for a few months.

Absurd.

I have recently come to realize I have a similar problem with boots. I love boots but I don’t own so many for a couple of reasons. One is that there is no real winter in the Middle East so I didn’t really need boots there. Also, I’m fairly picky about my boots; I want real leather but I wasn’t about to pay real leather $$$ prices to walk everywhere through the trash on Cairo streets. I have a couple of pairs of leather anklets in brown and black but I’ve been looking for taller boots for some time now.

There are things that attract me to boots as well. I love silver studs. And fringe. A fellow soccer mom wore some cowboy style boots in a dull copper finish to a game last Saturday and I nearly swooned. (The above elements need not be included on the same boot!) I adore my new red cowboy boots so much I almost hate to wear them anywhere lest I scuff them.

I didn’t realize how transparent I am with regard to my love of boots until my friend saw these at a thrift store and bought them for me:

Every girl should have a friend who would get her such wonderful boots – did you see the fringe??? – but let’s face it: you wouldn’t look at these boots and buy them for just anyone, would you? I think she’s got my number. I haven’t worn them yet because it’s been wet and they are suede but I like just having them.

Which is of course how I ended up with so many purses…