Variations on Buckwheat

Baby Boy and I have been having buckwheat pancakes for breakfast almost everyday lately. This is the Arrowhead brand mix, though I like the Bob's Mill better. Sometimes we have it with an egg on top, sometimes with jelly, sometimes with a little side of clementine......

However, as much as BB requests them, I do get a little bored. Which is why I was so excited when my neighbor's Mom made us upside down (buck)wheat cake!!!! She just sauteed a little of whatever leftover fruit she had around, than poured the batter over it, cooked until bubbles begin to appear, and than fliped! Here are my pears and apples sauteeing:

Here's my batter cooking:

This is what happened when I flipped it!

@**@! When I saw neighbor's Mom today, I told her of my problem, and she said, oh just keep a plate near by, slide it out, and then flip it back into the pan. DUH!!! Oh well, Baby Boy and I enjoyed our broken cake with a little honey.

(I think the plate is a little big for the meal!)

The Growing Story

I left the charger for my camera battery in my sister's luggage on the way back from Kentucky. We have not been able to hook up in the chaos of starting a new year yet, and so I am without camera. However, this is a good chance to clear my desktop of posts I've been meaning to put up, like this one:

I ordered a lot of books on ebay, mostly because it was cheap and I recognized an old copy of Dr. Seuss's Foot Book in the blurry picture. The box arrived and it was a treasure trove of old children's books. This one, The Growing Story, written by Ruth Krauss, and illustrated by Phyllis Rowand, was first published in 1947, by E.M. Hale and Company, though mine appears to be a special edition released by Cadmus Books. I am so charmed by the illustrations, and the little boy is so sweet. The basic storyline: little boy puts away his winter clothes as spring arrives; wonders if he will grow like all the flowers and plants; seasons pass; boy gets back out winter clothes; realizes they are too small; egads, proof that he has grown!
Sorry for the pics of pages, but I can't find my scanner (from moving more than a year ago!).

Insomnia=Pictures of Street Art

It is 4:12 AM, baby was having nightmares and Daddy appears to have a stomach flu. Both of them are asleep again, but I can't see to get there.......thought I would post some pics of this street sculpture/pyramid Baby Boy and I ran across last month, I think on South Wythe......



Do you think the green bottle is part of the installation or just trash?

8-Step Home Cure

I am an Interior Designer (well right now I am a Mom, but before that I was a Designer). It is always very easy to put together other people's spaces, but my own never quite seems done. Every space I have ever lived in I have been working on, constantly. Even when I was a child I used to rearrange my room, sometimes daily. I've always enjoyed this process, but it also leads to a certain amount of chaos in my life. I never have a "work" space, things end up in heaps and I don't go through them until they start falling on me, I lose things (like my winter coat for instance!). I'm very good at hiding my mess, and making it look organized, but it never really is, that is always the next project on my list. Lately, I find that I have lost the taste for the constant turbulence of redesign, and I long for peace and tranquility, my wee son provides enough chaos in my life.
In order to break out of my habits, I am turning to Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan's Apartment Therapy, eight step home cure. Week one is about getting to know your home and figuring out what to do. While some of the things he suggests I have done (like run your hands around all the walls, and sit in a spot you have never sat in before and consider your home....I do that all the time!) Others are very practical....up first cleaning (particularly all floors) and list repairs. Also a big deal for the cure is an outbox, a place to begin to remove the unnecessary clutter, sort of a half-way house for items you cling to, but struggle with throwing out. This week I am supposed to remove one item from the house, I put out a broken lamp and a piece of wood, god knows what I have been holding on to it for.

Patterns in my Parent's House

We went home for Christmas, and I took a bunch of pics of my parent's house. My stepmother and father live in a four bedroom Victorian house in Louisville, KY. Louisville has the largest collection of Victorian homes in the US. You can see pictures of the neighborhood and read about some of the history at www.oldlouisville.com.My stepmother bought her house in 1975, for the ridiculous sum of $13,900, when the neighborhood was dilapidated after years of white flight and neglect, and promptly rehabbed it, with some help from the city, which was sponsoring some restoration in the neighborhood. Her ex-husband picked out the paint, wallpaper and flooring, and while some of it has a deliciously 70s vibe to it, I still think it stands the test of time. Unfortunately the house is in desperate need of another rehab, but the age of the house makes repairs costly, and while my parents chip away at the mountain of upkeep and repairs, it always seems to be crumbling just a bit faster. The first picture is under the back stairs (there are 2 stairwells) and is paper left over from before the renovation. It was common to use scraps of wallpaper in closets and side entrances in the Victorian era, and I like to think that this wallpaper is left over from the original house, though it could be from as late as the 30s. Anyway, here are some of the other patterns in the house:
Living Room Wallpaper

Dining Room Wallpaper

Kitchen Wallpaper (I love this one, and it is paired with a great mustard yellow paint!)

Laundry Room Vinyl Floor (and yes there is a separate laundry room, bigger than some bedrooms I have had in New York!)

Bathroom Vinyl Floor

Master Bedroom Wallpaper (definitely very 70s!)

Second Bedroom Wallpaper

Third Bedroom Wallpaper (this was my room growing up)

Christmas Roses

My landlord sent me roses for the holiday. How sweet is that?

PBJ

I'm trying to clean house and get packed before we leave at 5:30AM to Wednesday, but here is my Baby Boy eating PBJ!

More gushing about Alan

Did I forget to mention that Alan also gave me a few awesome 1960s lamps to aid in my ongoing battle against overhead lighting?

Bath AA

Henceforth I shall refer to my bathroom from a time either AA or BA. That would be before Alan and after Alan. Alan is the wonderful man my landlord sent to fix the crumbling walls surrounding my tub. You may remember the joys of our bath from such previous posts as this
and this. However, when the walls (which were really just wood paneling) litteraly began to crumble, I had to call in the big guns. Alan is wonderful, Alan is amazing, Alan is my new hero. Even though he had to jury rig a solution and work with-in a limited budget, he left my claw-foot tub exposed and fixed the surround in a non-hideous, even attractive way. I didn't really take before, before shots, so here are some of bath in progress:


This is a nice detail shot of some wood rot and mold:

Here is the AFTER (please add your own chorus of hallelujah):

This is my favorite bit, formed from a scrap of marble left over from another project:

Playhouse

This is the box our mattress came in last year!!! I finally got tired enough of it falling over, and desperate enough for something to entertain B with, that I built a playhouse yesterday, or at least started it.


Playhouse in progress.


B when I told him it wasn't ready yet.


Happy B, when I gave in and just let him play in his roofless playhouse. (Notice the Frank Loyd Wright, Falling Water cornerless window detail.)

Chicken Soup with Rice

Note to self: when you have a very particular 2 year old eater, try to find Carole King ballads accompanied by Maurice Sendak animation to encourage intake of previously rejected food.



He even asked for seconds. (Thank you Penny for the delicious soup!)

Nice House

Forgive the photo quality, my camera was low on batteries and the day was low on light. There is just about nothing I like better than a little urban renewal, particularly thoughtful, inexpensive, modern bits like this house. I especially love the simple entryway and unfinished wood slats (so in keeping with the neighborhood vernacular, but natural and modern at the same time).

Baby Boy's Art Wall

BB and I cleaned his room this morning. Getting him to help me with this is usually terribly unpleasant, but this morning I decided his growing stack of paintings , which is continually getting strewn across the floor, was driving me crazy. In an effort to get them out of the way I started to just tack them up with painter's tape. B loved this!! We ended up spending a lovely morning putting away all his toys and books so that we could "discover" more paintings to hang. Every time we found a new one B would ask to be lifted up to hang it. Here is the result:

Quite stylish and bright I think.

Clean House

I took pics of the house in all its cleanly glory on Thanksgiving morn and am just getting around to posting them.


Entryway with postcard collection (I have about 10x what is hung here)


Living Room


After I took a pic of these chairs I decided that they needed art of their own and dug out the painting.


Living Room with napping husband (and a lot of orange!! I never noticed that before.)


Long view of the apartment.


Another kids chair.


Little B's Room, sort of clean.


Little B asleep in his bed nook with Auntie's painting.

I did not finish the dining room

I did not even finish the wall, but I put the table in, and a wonderful dinner was had by all.

Found Wallpaper

They are working on my bathroom right now, and there were 3 different wallpapers lurking under the layers. First up, the most recent, from the late '60s, early 70s, maybe:

Please note that there are two different different depictions of pink swans, one with a blue bow...does this conotate maleness?

Second is a beautiful, simple all over pattern from maybe the '40s:


The final pattern is a hand-printed fish border (which appears to have been accompanied by a peptobismal pink and black sponge paint job!!!!) :

Despite dubious design pairings, I am very charmed by the pattern. I wonder when it dates to? It is the oldest, on the bottom layer of renovations...maybe the late '20s, early '30s?