I am up, up and awaaaay this morning. I am flying home to see my family.
I am always sad when Mr. Michie doesn’t get to come with me, but there is a certain tiny little person that I will be getting to visit with and I am sure she will keep me more than happy and occupied!
Well we were up early yesterday morning, moving the last few items out of the way for the washing machine repairman.
It appears that he has fixed it! He replaced the pump and the drainage hose. I ran a vinegar rinse through the machine last night on hot and then tried a drying cycle and knock on wood it all worked fine.
So Mr. Michie ordered us some Chinese food for dinner and I spent the next 2 hours putting our kitchen back again. The floor was all sticky where he had been working, so I mopped and cleaned and wiped and danced around to music.
I put my first load of laundry in this morning, so fingers crossed all will go well! We are very lucky to have a compact washer/dryer, but I will say, using the giant queen bee tumble dryer at the the laundromat was a real treat. ALL of my laundry was dried in 30 minutes, folded and when I got home put away, no laundry baskets hanging around our bedroom for 1/2 the week or the drying rack having to be up. It was like we suddenly had this gigantic space upstairs and I loved every minute of it. Oh well, its back to business!
Well, I was going to share my weekend with you yesterday, but after my day in the cupboard, I just couldn’t.
It was my date night this weekend and I took Mr. Michie to the movies! It was so much FUN! I can’t tell you the last time we went to a movie in the evening, we are usually afternoon movie goers.
We saw OZ. We both really enjoyed it, I thought they did a nice tie in of the elements, the costumes were beautiful and I only wish she was real because the little girl the “wizard” helps save in China Town, I could just take home with me, she was so cute!
We grabbed some breakfast before going grocery shopping on Saturday morning:
Then I spent the rest of Saturday preparing Sunday’s lunch. I made my Nana’s macaroni salad, my dad’s green bean salad and homemade yeast rolls.
On Sunday we baked a ham and I tried a new peach cobbler recipe. It was delicious! I made a few changes, by adding some cinnamon and a little bit if lemon zest to the peaches, like I would do if I was making a pie.
I have been reading a series of books at the moment that take place in the South (The Caster Chronicles) and after reading what Amma has been cooking, I was hankering after a little Southern Home-style dinner myself. There was even sweet tea to boot!
I’ve been doing some major “Spring Cleaning” in the cottage, with still more do. We are normally very good about recycling, reusing and donating things to the charity shop, but this year we have truly taken a more minimalistic approach to heart and are trying to get rid of the things we don’t really need. Paring down in order to be better organised and our home a more relaxing environment in that it will be a little more devoid of clutter, but still cozy.
I am also taking this idea into my blog. I have a few things I have been working on behind the scenes with a lot of help at times of Mr. Michie, if I couldn’t quite get a css code right. I am going to be paring down, streamlining and doing a little de-cluttering.
Stick with me, there are some BIG changes to come and I will be telling you more as I get closer to unveiling my plans.
As it seems is always the way, we have come to the end of our week off and I am now finally starting to wind down and fully relax and tomorrow we go back to work, you just have to have a sense of humor about these things.
It was snowing when I woke up yesterday morning and after getting showered and dressed we walked the long way round to the grocery store. We bundled up and just took our time. It was beautiful and quiet as the snow fell around us. We even got to see a train rumble along below us as we stood on the bridge. I love trains.
We made homemade macaroni and cheese for lunch yesterday and just stayed cozy with blankets, copious amounts of tea and candles lit here and there. We each read and did a little work. I decided on the first tiny stuffed animal I am going to make for a special little person and so I washed my fabric in preparation for that.
It was just a nice mellow day. We ate leftover homemade pizza from dinner on Friday night. I made that wonderful crust again from Annie’s Eats and Mr. Michie made his wonderful pesto again (the one he made for me on Valentine’s) and he smeared that on our crust, with diced tomatoes and cheese, it was delicious. We also watched Star Wars, so Mr. Michie was very happy!
We are still re-organizing things! I feel like, “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie”, once you start, it just kinda snowballs.
This was my calendar page today, it made me smile:
Yesterday we finished our major overhaul of the room we chose to attack during 1/2 term. There are still a few more things to sort though, and to be put back in their rightful place, but it feels so wonderful to be rid of anything we don’t need.
We recycled, donated, organized, made two bags of items to take to school that will live in the cupboard as still life objects, dusted, vacuumed, mopped and sat for a five minute break to catch our breaths.
We decided to have a big lunch yesterday since Mr. Michie had an online meeting last night. I made a fresh spinach and artichoke dip, with a couple of pieces of crusty bread and carrot and red pepper sticks to dip into it. It was wonderful.
We cheated and watched something while we ate, an episode of “Bunheads”. I will be sad when this show finishes for the season!
For dessert I had a chocolate chip cookie and it was actually smiling at me.
It reminded me of one of my all-time favorite “Bewitched” episodes, when Tabitha turns herself into an oatmeal raisin cookie and then smiles at her mom, with the raisins forming the smile, too cute! (It starts about 5 minutes in)
It must have been the day for things looking like other things to me, because I had a handful of popcorn last night and this piece looked like a little alien creature waving at me, I thought it looked cute and couldn’t eat it, but Mr. Michie grabbed it and ate it instead.
The past two days we have done some serious purging in our house. This has been our second major clean out of the year since we attacked the attic.
This time we attacked the kitchen and pantry. You can now clearly see the floor in our pantry and actually walk in without having to hold on to the door jam to get what you need or balance mixing bowls on your knee to get the bowl you are really after. It is AMAZING!
All of our cookbooks are now lined up on one shelf, well almost one shelf, we ran out of room and had to move to the next shelf. I have a thing about cookbooks, they just kind of jump into my hands.
We had 2 big trips to the recycling center and 3 big trips to the Charity shop (it sounds scarier then it is, we walk, so it would have been one round trip in a car). It feels good to purge, to clean, to simplify. Everything just feels brighter and refreshened.
I think that removing the clutter, removes some of the stress from day to day living. We have made a pledge to simplify this year and to make sure that we can eat at our dinner table at night, which is not always easy as Mr. Michie normally has a lot of papers to grade and that is his easiest place to work. But, we are working with that to make our lives easier, more enjoyable and our home life a little more stress free.
After working all day it is nice to come home to a house that is organized (at least semi-organized) and things are easier to get to, so you can enjoy them more and enjoy your house more. As Martha Stewart says, “Its a good thing!”
We have been flying under the radar these past two days. We tore apart our bedroom this weekend and cleaned it from top to bottom. The major cleaning the kind that calls for you vacuuming under the bed. There weren’t dust bunnies underneath the bed, there were dust elephants.
We made a little mexican inspired dinner Saturday night with Mr. Michie’s famous guacamole and on Sunday we treated ourselves to some homemade chocolate milkshakes and Mr. Michie treated me to some raspberry jelly hearts. Delicious!
Once I got home last night from the job that pays me with real money, I started my second job last night, the one I love, even though there is no money in it, my job at home. It was a busy night! We had to run to the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients for a cake I am making for Mr. Michie’s class. Friday is their cake day and this week the class is celebrating two birthdays, so he asked me if I would make Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Cake.
He loves this cake. I baked my 2 cakes last night, so tonight when I get in from work, I can make the icing and start to decorate it.
At the grocery store we were walking down the baking aisle and saw these:
I couldn’t believe it! We have been being very good lately, but decided to cheat a little and got a bag of these and a bag of chocolate chunk with pecan. I have never been able to get Pepperidge Farm cookies here, so this is a BIG DEAL! If they start selling the gingerbread men or the chocolate milano’s, I am in big trouble!!
I folded laundry, we had homemade tiropita for dinner and salad, they were delicious, just the right bite from the feta cheese! I did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, baked the cakes, Mr. Michie had an online meeting and then I finally sat down to watch some TV and “Romancing the Stone”on. I love that movie! So, I sat there with my little Pepperidge Farm cookies wrapped in a blanket and was absolutely happy.