Archive for the category ‘Home’

Something New

By Brit

Monday I start my new job. It’s the first job that I’ll work 40 hours a week. It’s my first real job. I’m scared to death.

The two years I spent as a flight attendant were amazing. It was a job, I just don’t know if I can call it a real job. I sat at home for days on end while “working” waiting to be called. It was awesome at the time, but I don’t get anything done while sitting around the house. Some of the time, I traveled the world; most of the time, I sat on my couch. It was an amazing opportunity, but I didn’t want to be on reserve (the sitting around waiting for a call part) the rest of my life. Getting a schedule to fly was a good 10 years away, probably even more with the merger. The life on reserve combined with the illness, and subsequent surgeries,  I had while flying made me stop. I miss it sometimes. I miss traveling most. I’d give quite a bit to go to Amsterdam again.

Anyways, Monday starts my new job. Well, ok, the five weeks of training before I start my new job at the hospital. I’m nervous. I can’t lie. I’ve never had a job that was five days a week, eight hours a day. It’s daunting. How am I going to keep up with the laundry? How am I going to make dinner every night? Am I really going to pack my lunch everyday and not succumb to the crappy hospital cafeteria? I sure as hell hope so.

Matt’s still working from home, so he’ll be a help with the laundry (ok, I’m really hoping on that one). His idea of a cooked meal is a frozen meal (there’s totally nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what I want to eat every night when I get home from work) or a pasta/rice side (again, not what I want to eat every night). I’m really hoping that this will get him to want to cook more, it’s a big wish, but maybe someday it’ll happen.

I know that I can spend a good chunk of time over the weekend preparing and freezing meals, and I know that a sandwich is a perfectly acceptable dinner … but I want to make the big dinners and I don’t want to go out to eat six times a week. I want to be able to make up new recipes. I want to make amazing things. I just don’t know how that all fits in with this new working thing. I know people do it, and they really excel at it. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it. It’s a lot to do, and but if I actually try it can’t be too bad, right?

Pretty much, all I’m going to do this weekend is worry. Awesome.

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This entry was posted on February 20th, 2010 under Home, Other.

A Surprise Package

By Brit

Yesterday while diligently working on some such thing, the back doorbell rang. The back doorbell never rings, half the time we’re convinced it’s broken and half the time I’m convinced the person ringing the doorbell is a dumb-ass who doesn’t know how doorbells work.

The package was from Amazon, not so unusual around here. Matt orders random crap all the time and I figured it was for him, but this time, it wasn’t. IT WAS FOR ME. Lucy-dog and I ran back upstairs and tore into the package while sitting on the floor of the dining room (hey, I like to get her involved), and this is what was inside:

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A MOTHER FUCKING DUTCH OVEN. Seriously. I’m not fucking kidding. It showed up, unaccounted for, from Amazon. I thought I had accidently fucked up and ordered it myself, because about three times a week I drool over them. Lucky for me, that wasn’t the case.

This amazingly turquoise-y and navy blue dutch oven was from a friend. A dear, dear friend who coincidentally I met on twitter. I somehow busted into a conversation with other flight attendants, and over the last (almost?) year we’ve become quite good tweeps (ok, I swore I’d never use that word, but I don’t know how else to explain it). He’s a chef and I’m a pretend cook. We both have ties to airlines, and we both have an affinity for the penis.

Anyways, he’s an amazing friend. To honor this amazing new gift to our kitchen, I’m going to make his beef bourguignon (check out his website for other amazing recipes and ridiculously good travel information, and some flight attendant stories). A recipe he CANNOT stop telling me how amazing it is. I can’t wait. I seriously CANNOT wait.

Thank you again, @brajit. I can’t wait to cook with you someday!

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This entry was posted on February 11th, 2010 under Home.

Winter in Michigan

By Brit

Ok, January’s over and February has started. The fact still stands:

Winter in Michigan SUCKS.

Sucks, sucks, sucks. Not only for the 12 degrees I woke up to this morning, but the $200 heating bills, and the absolute lack of daylight.

There is about 4-5 hours of usable daylight for taking photographs everyday. Ok, generally it’s less than that. It’s cloudy almost every day, making daylight ridiculously hard to come by. It also doesn’t help that our kitchen is on the east side of the house and the early morning sun is mostly clouds.

I can’t take a damned food photograph for the life of me after about 11:30am, and that’s when I’ve been up and moving enough to cook.

It also doesn’t help that the kitchen, no matter how ridiculously nice it is, is pretty dark. I found some under cabinet lights when I was at IKEA a few months ago and finally got them installed this past weekend.

I can’t tell you how much the lights have helped cooking in the last couple days. I guess I never realized how much I needed more light in the kitchen until I started trying to take pictures of the foods I made and now I’m considering getting more lights for under every cupboard.

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This entry was posted on February 1st, 2010 under Home.

My Spice Rack

By Brit

When Matt and I moved into the condo last April, one of the first things I got set up was the kitchen. I’d never really had a kitchen like this (pretty much everyone who comes over is ridiculously jealous of it) and I was so excited to get everything into it.

I had made a pilgrimage to IKEA with Ginny right after we moved in to get curtains and shower rods and all the stuff you need to buy when you move into a brand-new home. I can’t tell you how long I looked over the IKEA catalog. It was seriously hours. The pages were getting dog-eared and crinkled pretty bad. I finally made my choices (and subsequently threw them all out the window as soon as we walked into that bright, shiny building).

One thing I didn’t falter on was my spice jars. I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them in the catalog and have never regretted the choice.

The jars are the Rajtan jars from IKEA. They’re ridiculously cheap ($3 for 4 jars) and they’re absolutely cute (especially when stuffed with amazing spices). I even use one jar for my vanilla (mostly because Ginny brought me some amazing vanilla from Mexico and I didn’t have anything to put it in – she wouldn’t let me have the whole bottle, psh!)

The problem of the spice rack lies with the actual rack. I don’t have one. I have a shelf I bought one day at IKEA, which conveniently, they don’t carry anymore.

I also have been cooking a lot more since we moved in, and collecting more and more spices, which no longer conveniently fit on the single shelf anymore. I have no idea what to do with this. I don’t want the jars hanging out on the counter, it’d be amazing I could have found that shelf again.

So, you’re probably asking WHY THE FUCK DON’T YOU BUY A SPICE RACK!? Good question. The space between the bottom of the cabinet and the countertop is 16 inches, oh and there’s that 3.5 inch “backsplash.” All of this means there is absolutely no space for a spice rack.

I do have to admit that I haven’t been to Home Depot or Lowe’s yet to look for a spice rack, or hell, just a shelf that I could use to store them on – but I’m not sure how well that’d go for me anyways (I’m probably the most picky person in the world).

My question to you: How do you store your spices? Do you hide them in a cupboard? Do you display them proudly? Do you even use them?

Oh, and if you have any ideas for my conundrum, PLEASE please PLEASE! Do tell!

PS, there’s a brand new design for you three people who read Yuppish on your reader … so, check it out!

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This entry was posted on January 31st, 2010 under Home.

The Blanket Problem

By Brit

I started making this blanket. I was so excited. I saw this post on Apartment Therapy and knew I needed it. I tried knitting this weekend at the cottage. Ginny tried to teach me, well she did teach me. I just sucked at it and couldn’t knit as fast as I can crochet. So, I decided to crochet a blanket for our bed.

It started out awesome. I bought 6 skeins of yarn this week so I could get a start. I googled how big the blanket needs to be for our queen sized bed. I measured it out with Matt’s help and I started. I worked on it for 6 hours the first night this week.

The next day I decided I wanted to crochet in bed because it was freezing cold (and I wanted to take a nap, duh) outside. I laid the blanket, which had just more than a foot done, and it laid more than a foot off from each side. It hung 15 inches off the bed on each side. The blanket was almost three feet too big.

Are you fucking kidding me? Ugh. I was through almost four skeins of yarn and barely had more than a foot. If I kept going at this rate, the blanket was going to cost me almost $100 to make. Are you fucking kidding me?

So, I did the only logical thing. I took it apart and rolled all of the yarn into a ball and started over. It tested my sanity and today I finally got past the point I was at a few days ago.

It’s getting there. I need more yarn, and when I remeasured I guess how I crocheted it somehow it shrunk and now it’s just the size of our bed, if not a tad smaller, and FUCK. Oh well. It’ll be the best blanket ever, and I’m not taking it apart again.

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This entry was posted on January 21st, 2010 under Home.

Worry, Worry, Worry

By Brit

If you’ve ever met me for more than about 10 minutes, you would know that I worry about EVERYTHING. Seriously, everything.

Case and point? Last night Lucy got into the trash can when we were out at our association meeting. Better than the normal trash in the kitchen, she got into the bathroom trash. The bathroom trash that I hadn’t emptied since, well, you don’t need those specifics. We came home to a dining room full of nasty bathroom trash and the suspicion that my wonderful dog ate a tampon. Yeah. Fucking gross.

We can’t tell if she ate it for sure or not, but we can’t find it. So yeah, awesome. I’m convinced she ate it and that it’s working its way through my little baby’s tummy and intestines and that she’s going to have to poop it out and if it doesn’t come out then she’ll have to go to the vet and then she’ll need surgery and AHHHHHH. She’s fine. I’m stupid. And before you start on me for leaving the trash so she can get it, she’s never got into the trash before and it was moved so that we could continue painting the bathroom, so eat it.

So, I worried about the bathroom painting project and I have this awesome knack for letting the whole world know about things before I should and well, this is how the bathroom turned out:

So, there. The bathroom turned out perfect. I’m a perfectionist and I can’t handle things not looking perfect the whole time. I probably just need to learn to chill-the-fuck-out and calm-the-fuck-down and just let things flow. It looks amazing and I can’t wait for the next room!

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This entry was posted on January 14th, 2010 under Home.

OFFICIALLY the “World’s Worst Painter”

By Brit

A few days ago I got this awesome idea to paint our powder room. We’ve been living in the condo for just under a year now, ok maybe like 9 months. Either way, Matt’s dad wanted me to wait a year to paint so that we could make sure that we didn’t need the builder to come in and fix anything (we need to have them fix a couple, ok, maybe like 10) things around the house. Anyways, the powder room was free and clear of any problems on the wall that need to be taken care of. I decided it’d be an awesome idea to paint it.

From the time I had the idea to the time I started taping up the room and painting was probably less than 2 hours. Hey, I move fast. It’s a cute little bathroom and I needed a project so that I could do something every day while I’m not working. This was an awesome idea, and hey, it worked. The last three days I’ve been doing almost nothing but painting, well I painted each day, for about an hour – the bathroom isn’t that big.

So why has it taken three days to paint this tiny powder room?

I’ve never painted a wall before in my life. I grew up with white walls. My mom’s house has always had white walls (I couldn’t stand it) and when my dad bought a new house he had someone come in and paint the walls … you guessed it, white. The condo is all completely white, too. It’s too bland. I need some COLOR! Anyways, I figured I could paint because I’d seen it done a million times on HGTV and well, how hard could it be?

I started Tuesday night. It took me about a half hour to tape everything off and then I got to the painting. It was awesome.

I’m painting! Yay! It took me about an hour and a half to paint the bathroom and I was on top of the world until I got to the last wall … I ran out of paint. It turns out that a quart of paint will not paint an entire room; no matter how much you want it or how hard you try.

This brings us to yesterday, when I went back to the store to get a full gallon of paint (thinking ahead, or something). I painted the last wall and touched up the parts that needed it and I was so excited I almost tore the tape off right there.

It’s a good thing I didn’t tear off the painter’s tape because this is what the bathroom looked like:

Yeah. It’s that bad. I repainted it today with a second coat over everything and well, I’m hoping it turns out. As it stands right now, though, I am the officially the world’s worst painter.

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This entry was posted on January 14th, 2010 under Home.

Onward to 2010!

By Brit

I can’t believe 2009 is almost over. It seems that the year flew by. So many things happened this year both good and bad.

Our year started off in Matt’s old apartment. I made dinner. He lit a candle. It was amazing.

I went to Guangzhou, China. I went to fucking CHINA! Oh, and Japan too.

There was also a trip to El Paso, TX in there for work. I finally got my picture taken in front of an airplane engine, with a TERRIBLE haircut :/

Matt bought a house. We are still working on making it our home.

There were many nights and weekends spent at Matt’s parent’s cottage (hell, we even lived there a month).

Luce came to live with us for a month. She couldn’t handle when I was away flying, so she went back to live with my dad.

We watched every Tigers game together; we even managed to go to a few downtown.


I had not one, but TWO surgical procedures. Oh, and a colonoscopy.

I got a bunny for my birthday from Matt. Bubs C. Stand is the cutest bunny, EVER.

I got sick and couldn’t fly anymore. Lucy came back to live with us. We had puppy parties with Gryff, Aparna and REB.

Matt got me stuck on sushi. I now have an insane love for this crap.

We spent our first Christmas together (last year we were at our parents house alone).

I couldn’t have asked for anything more this year. It’s been amazing. I can’t wait to see what 2010 brings us.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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This entry was posted on December 31st, 2009 under Home, Other.

Christmas Time!

By Brit

It’s almost December and after Thanksgiving which means it’s DECORATING FOR CHRISTMAS TIME! Since I’m not going to be out strengthening the economy and making Christmas presents, I spent a little extra on Christmas decorations.

Matt’s parents were gracious enough to give us their old artificial pre-lit tree. It’s gorgeous, but the lights didn’t work. Ginny and I spent the better part of the afternoon taking a gazillion strings of lights off from the Christmas tree. It looks amazing now, I’m really excited with how it turned out. Lucy likes it too, she keeps sleeping near it, or staring at it.

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This the first time I’ve actually had a full size tree that I can do what I want with. I could do all white lights because I’m ANAL and have pretty ornaments of two colors because everything has to match.

We even put lights on the balcony. Oh yeah, they have a wireless remote on them so that I can turn them on and off without getting a shit-ton of snow in the living room. I’m so excited for it to snow!

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This entry was posted on November 29th, 2009 under Home.

Sorry Par!

By Brit

I found this waiting for me when I came home from lunch today …

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I never used to have a problem with insects, but lately, they’ve really been getting to me.

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This entry was posted on October 27th, 2009 under Home.