heypielady's Profile

I had a registry for the very reason that I think it does help people out. I will admit though that I wasn't as smart as I could have been. I still have a box of brand new wine glasses in my storage space because why would I need that many wine glasses?

One thing I learned is that when someone is giving you a gift, they usually want to give something they like. For example people of my parents generation (boomers) love to give crystal for weddings. So I registered for a very simple crystal vase even though I probably wouldn't have bought it for myself. But you know, it makes any old bouquet of supermarket flowers look great.

I do the same thing, too. Leaning over the sink.

My parents old kitchen had a warming drawer and we hardly ever used it. Their current kitchen has a heat lamp and shelf as part of their enormous range hood (viking) and we use that almost every weekend we are preparing dinner for more than 4 people.

I love reading too and my favorite thing to read is a cookbook. I have limited space so I periodically do a purge of books I'm not using. I regularly take cookbooks out of the library which is a great way to use them right away because you have to return it in 30 days. It's a good way to preview it and see if its worth buying. Or maybe you only need to take it out every so often.

This post gets me excited for spring. All the pictures look so light and airy. Can't wait until I can throw my own windows open!

Kim Boyce has a recipe for an olive oil cake with rosemary and chocolate (no citrus) in her book "Good to the Grain." It's delicious.

Up until now I thought, "I don't care about this contest." But I just had to vote for your bedroom. So beautiful!

I have to give a shout out to David Smith at http://www.theboardsmith.com/

He did a custom end-grain butcher block for me for my pass through window and a large movable end-grain walnut butcher block and both have held up beautifully over the past 2 years that I have had them. I use it daily and sponge it down multiple times a day... sometimes get lazy about oiling it and still not warping.

And one thing not to send? Ridiculous floral displays. At the hospital it was fine to get one and thankfully only one because poor ol' dad had to carry everything including the little one down to the car. A couple weeks out we received a huge floral arrangement (it must have been at least $200) in our tiny apartment. I couldn't even lift it and with all of the new things we had to buy (diapers, wipes, eventually formula) it made me uncomfortable that someone spent that much on flowers. Plus, the place was such a mess that the flowers just added to the clutter.

My husband is the dishwasher loader but he likes to get to the dishes when he feels like it. I like the sink to be empty at all times. So I keep a plastic bin in the cabinet under the sink and all the dishes go in there until he's ready to load. It works with both his laid-back attitude and my anal-retentiveness. (And I don't have a lot of space, by the way, but the empty sink was that important to me.)

The other small change I committed to was washing my chef's knife immediately after mincing garlic even if I'm going to cut an onion or something else afterward. Too many times in a row the garlic dried to the knife and was just so much more work to clean.