Matters of Dire Importance: my hair

I am getting a haircut tomorrow.  A ways back I chopped off all my hair in an asymmetrical bob.  Of course, one can only have a tilted head for so long and now I have been growing it out.  I am at that terrible stage where it is horrendous and hot on my neck and I hate how it looks, and last week's 100+ temperatures made me think it is stupid to grow one's hair out over the summer.

Do I push on and suffer through a hot summer with scraggly hair on my neck?  Or just bow to the inevitable and chop it again?

If it matters, I do this pretty much every two years.  Chop, grow, repeat.  I have thin, fine, flat hair, so my "long" hair will not be the Voluminous Hair of My Dreams.  It will just be long enough for the Ponytail of Defeat.  I am aiming for about this long (that is me a year ago):

Currently my hair looks like this (boring, triangular-ish):

I am thinking of growing it out to this (which is probably at least another year of growing):

Or chopping it to this (which does not look drastically shorter or different, but is a good three inches shorter in the back than what I have now):

Vote here:

Longer or shorter?
	Long
	Short
pollcode.com free polls

how YOU doin?

I miss blogging on a daily basis.  I especially miss blogging about the kids.  I stopped blogging about the kids because they are getting older and I have conflicted feelings about their privacy and putting them on the interwebs. I may have to start a private blog where I wax rhapsodical about my children.  When I look back at this blog over the past four years the posts about the kids are the ones I most enjoy reading.

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I have a number of family things going on behind the scenes here,  most of which are anxiety producing.  The brownie consumption/romance novel reading are way up here.

One of my anxiety producing activities is job hunting. I am hoping to go back to work this year, not to teaching, but in the foster care system or in hunger/poverty organizations.  These issues are dear to my heart and I would like to start a new career in a field I care deeply about.

Since I have had no luck finding a job in the past year, recently I joined a career coaching group aimed specifically at women attorneys who have been out of the work force for a few years.  Interestingly, there are at least a dozen graduate programs aimed at getting career-paused women physicians back into the work force, but I only found one coaching group aimed at serving women attorneys.

The group has been a great help.  It is forcing me to do stuff I already knew but have zero desire to implement, such as expanding my personal and professional network.  Every two weeks I am assigned two to three "action items" that will help my job search, such as identifying useful people in organizations I would like to work and then contacting them for informational interviews.  As in, ask a stranger out of the blue for their time and advice.

Please feel free to send an oxygen mask my way (we are running out of brown paper bags).  Or deliver a truckload of brownies to Introverts Anonymous (can you find us?). I can think of very little I would like to do less than start phoning strangers and asking them to tell me how their career path can help me find a job.

I will ask you, dear readers, if you have any contacts in Orange County in the foster care system or hunger/poverty organizations, please leave a comment.

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I will share a few recipes I have been making frequently of late.

1) I have been cooking a Moroccan chicken and lentils dish that I find delightful and delicious, and my family sort of tolerates.  I serve it with the lentils over mashed sweet potatoes.  Lentils over sweet potatoes is my new favorite dish ever.

I have the ability to ruin lentils every time I make them.  I have stopped attempting to make lentils on the stovetop, because despite the fact that every recipe says lentils should take 25 minutes, I find that lentils require 45 minutes to an hour of cooking time and a varying amount of water every time. I generally make them burnt and undercooked. To alleviate this problem I have started using a small crockpot to make them.  They usually turn out a bit mushy, but I am ok with that.

2) I have also started making caramelized onions and putting them on everything.  Making caramelized onions is easy--a stick of butter and two sliced up onions, set on low heat and stir around every ten minutes or so for about an hour and a half.  Caramelized onions are good on EVERYTHING.  (This from a girl who used to detest onions, and still doesn't really like raw onions on anything, or large amounts of cooked onions.  Totally different than caramelized onions.)

3) last but not least, overnight oatmeal.  I eat this oatmeal every day.  I love it to death.  I use lactose free milk and lactose free yogurt.  I put in black chia seeds (my local grocery store carries them in the baking section, with the alternative flours like amaranth and spelt, and sometimes I find them in the rice/quinoa section.)  Because I am also in need of All The Fiber, I put in a huge spoonful of Chia and Flax Seed Decadent Blend with Coconut and Cocoa (also in the baking section) (I don't know that I would call it decadent; I freely admit it sort of looks like ground up bark or mulch, but I enjoy the hint of chocolate and coconut in my breakfast).  I follow it up with a splash of vanilla extract and a superlarge helping of blueberries and strawberries.  In fact I just had a bowl of it for lunch; it only needs about an hour to absorb the milk and yogurt.

I love the berry ones, I am eh to the dried fruit ones, and believe it or not, I did not care for the chocolate and banana one.  The cocoa one is not quite sweet enough; it is like eating straight cocoa.  Also, I really don't like the mushy bananas overnight.  I don't mind bananas but only if added right before eating.  Lastly, avoid frozen fruit, it makes it very mushy and watery.

I would kill to eat the peanut butter ones but alas, me eating peanut butter in my home will not commence until Peter moves out.  Only another fifteen years or so.

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So how you doin?

One Week Challenge, Week Six: the big reveal

See Week One, Week Two, Week Three, and Weeks Four & Five.

I am up to my eyeballs in ear infections and job hunting so nothing got done this week.  But, I feel like a fair amount got done from six weeks ago and I am liking the direction that the room is going, so I will count this challenge a success, if only half-completed.

The before:

The after:

I bought two navy poufs from Target for the boys to sit on when they are playing video games, and to provide some extra seating in the living room.  The boys love them, but I am sort of at a loss for where the poufs should live--for now they are residing behind the chairs.  I thought they would look good at the end of the coffee table between the chairs and sofa, but it looked busy and crowded.

I did not get around to painting the front door (as you can see by the two paint swatches, I haven't even finalized the paint color).  I did buy a rug.

I think a full length mirror would look lovely on that right hand side, wouldn't it?

The rug was a craigslist find.

I had high hopes, but I did not get to the dining room (seen here artfully cropped so that you can't see the mess).

 
Although there were a number of good ideas about what to do with the problem corner, I ended up putting Peter's Lego table back there.  Peter enjoys having a hideaway corner to build his stuff.  I am looking for some art to hang on the wall, but otherwise, I shall probably leave the Lego table there for a while.

Budget and time constraints meant I didn't finish the room, but I am liking the direction it is taking, and I do have plans on continuing it as time and budget allows (finishing the window treatments, installing blinds, pretty pillows for the chairs, more art, etc).   Thanks to Linda at Calling It Home for providing the impetus to get started on the space!

See all the big reveals for the other home participants here.

One Room Challenge: Weeks Four and Five, condensed

See the previous three weeks here.

I was on the East Coast last weekend, visiting some family, and I just didn't have enough time to get a post up.  But I got to see my sisters for the Seventeenth Annual Spaghetti Dinner (and everyone else!) so I am a happy camper.

Week Four: the new coffee table arrived.  Actually, it arrived during Week Two but it sat in an enormous box blocking the front hallway until the end of Week Four.  I have been eyeing this coffee table for a year, and it serendipitously went on sale (and free shipping!) right as the One Room Challenge started.  Kismet, obviously.

This seems like the sort of table that one could decorate and style a million ways with lots of little tchotchkes and magazines and hoozywhatsits.  However, I am not in the season of my life where I can have lots of beautifully styled low surface tables and I will just have to accept that.  I did attempt to style it with three lone little tchotchkes, but Peter said "that doesn't look very good" and so we will just leave it bare.  The better to stage an epic Lego battle, my dear.

What else....how about some art?  In my grandmother's house there is a picture of bicycles that I love.  It turns out the artist is actually an Orange County resident and his (expensive) oil paintings are sold in a gallery near here, but he has a few pieces that are sold as mass-produced art at Home Goods.  I came across this large printed giclee canvas at Home Goods, and thought, ooooooh that is perfect for over the fireplace. I do miss my minivan; getting this piece home in a Honda Accord was an adventure.

Over the past year I have cycled (har har) through eleventy-million different mirrors and pieces of art over that fireplace, never being totally satisfied with any of them.  THIS, however, I  am really happy with and love it.

Last but not least, stuff that will not get done, mostly due to budget constraints.  I had high hopes to put red tassels on the white drapes, like this curtain from Serena and Lily (inspired by this picture):

Unfortunately, I have eight 98-inch drapes, which equates to more than 40 yards of trim.  Similar trim is usually about $15 a yard.  I have found it as cheap as $5 a yard on ebay (still $200 worth of trim), but I do not have a sewing machine and so I'd have to pay someone to attach $200 worth of trim to 8 Ikea curtains.  I like to think that eventually I will get this done, because I think it will look fantastic, but it won't be by next week.

I'd also like to invest in blackout lined outside mount bamboo shades for the windows and take out the white venetian blinds.  I attempted to do the cheap bamboo shades from a large box hardware store, but they didn't come in the length or width that we need, so we returned the mistakes.  The blackout lined custom ones will be more expensive but I think they will be a good investment, especially seeing as the front corner of the living room is a fiery sauna in the late afternoon.....but again, not by next week.

I also had high hopes to paint the interior of the front door red by next week...you never know, that one may get done.

Next week: the reveal!  Check out the rest of the link party here. 

Adding electrical stuff: let there be light

Last summer I had an electrician come out to give us an estimate on a large list of items. Most of the items were putting in overhead lights (we have none), fans, and sockets.  Last week (ten months later) I finally called him back to get started on a few things.  

We had fans installed in the master bedroom, dining room, and family room.  Not the sexiest decor choice, but it gets warm here.  

It turned into a goat rodeo.

But after six trips to Home Depot, it was all good. 

One thing that I am really happy with is the hallway can lights.  Previously the dark hallway was lit by one enormous sized can light that held a twenty-watt bulb.  I didn't take a before picture, but in the below picture you can see the new can light and the size of the hole that was left by the old fixture. 

We switched out the large can light for a regular one that could hold a higher wattage bulb, and added a can light on either end of the hallway.  

Ta-DA!!!

I am super in love with ALL THE LIGHT.  Woot woot.  

One Room Challenge, Week Three: new chairs and pillows

This room is never going to be finished in three more weeks, yo.

This week I bought two chairs for the living room.

I have been searching for either one interesting chair or a pair of matching chairs for under $200 that do not need to be reupholstered on craigslist for a year.  I search every. single. day. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
So I gave up on craigslist.

My sister bought some slipper chairs from Target, and suggested these blue and off-white ikat chairs on clearance at Target for $107 each.  (They are no longer available online.) I hesitated, even though the price was right.  In the past decade I have bought four pieces of real furniture at Target (a bookshelf, a cube unit, a leather bench, and a table) and have returned them all for being terrible,  un-build-able pieces of crap.  Also, I dislike slipper chairs.  I like to curl up in chairs with a good book, and that is impossible in a slipper chair.

However! They were pretty, I love the pattern, they were the right price, and they provided seating for guests.  More importantly, I see them as a temporary fix for the living room.  When I can afford to buy real chairs with arms, I will move these chairs into my bedroom.

When they showed up at my house, I got to building them.  And failed.  I could not get the screws to line up at all. I tried for two hours.  I cursed Target and their crappy furniture.  I called my sister to complain. She told me that her three year old daughter built her chairs without any help.  The Mister came home and built them in twenty minutes.  ANNOYED.

End result: new chairs that look nice.

I also switched out our old pillows for blue and red and black ones.

Almost all of the pillows are previously owned; the only new one is the black and white one from Ikea.  The small red one with blue trim is a $5 pillow from Target my mom sewed some trim on, the red and white lumbar pillow is from this etsy store four years ago, the large blue/black/red one is Ikea a few years ago, and the large red/white/blue is a John Robshaw from four years ago.

Next week: art!

Check out the linky party playing along at home here.

One Room Challenge, Week 2

Week two of the One Room Challenge and whoa, the designers are bringing it something fierce. (As are all the others linking up on Thursdays; I am feeling outgunned and outclassed.)  Go check them all out.  

You can see my Week One post here. 

A wee bit of progress--I switched out the floral curtains for white ones, and switched out the orange lamps for white ones with navy shades. Also, a few months ago I put up some picture ledges in the corner of the living room.

This may have been a mistake.

I enjoy having the pictures out and collected in one spot.  However, I put up the ledges before we figured out the current furniture arrangement, and now I am second-guessing myself.

The problem is the corner on the other side.

What do I put there?

No, the dinosaur isn't going to stay there.  

My sense is that something symmetrical on either side of the window would be nice.  However, like every other single thing in this house, the window is off center.  The far corner with the dinosaur is 26 inches wide, while the side with the picture ledges is 38 inches.  (The curtains are hung high and wide to camouflage this.) 

I could take down the shelves and put a narrow Vittsjo shelf on either side:

Alternatively I could leave the picture ledges where they are and do something completely different on the other side.  Different like what I have no idea.

Update:  I should have said that I have a few tchotchkes (not many since taking everything out a few months ago, but five or six)  that I would like to display, which is why I am attempting to shoehorn a shelf unit in that corner.  

Do I look for symmetry for behind the sofa?  Or consider the view from entering the front door (which is of course also off-center)?  

(No, the dinosaur isn't staying over the fireplace either.) 

I am at a loss on that corner.  Orient for symmetry on either side of the window? No symmetry and put something on the wall where the federal mirror is?  Put something on the longer wall where the bookcase is facing the door?  I CANNOT DECIDE.  Halp.   

Check out everyone playing along at home here.