Matt and I Make A Lot of Cookies

Plus some fudge.

Working my way through the America’s Test Kitchen Best Ever Christmas Cookies, we have Maple-Pecan Swirls, Lemon Snowflakes, and Vanilla Icebox Cookies. These were shipped off to far-flung locales, and given as presents.

I enjoy a good vanilla icebox cookie. I liked the subtle flavor of the maple-pecan swirls and the lemon bite of the snowflakes.

The fudge was a bit crumbly, but still good.

Macramé for the Win

After many years of taping birthday and Christmas cards to the wall and then taping them again to the wall when they fell off, I finally googled “card holder” and found Barrington Butik’s shop on Etsy. She offers a long list of customizable colors for the rod and the macramé. I chose gray and yellow. Voila! My macramé arrived just in time to show off my birthday cards.

It’s going to be great for Christmas cards and will also look nice hanging there without cards.

Placeholder Stove Cover

As mentioned before, the new stove has a cooktop I’m not looking forward to keep looking nice. I brainstormed with Graham and Julie about what type of cover would be best (Graham voted for butcher block and Julie voted for a nice thick plastic cutting-board type.) But then Julie pointed out that it was a fairly large space and I might find myself not putting the cover back on because it was too heavy and hard to move. She suggested having a placeholder for a while until I was sure I wanted to haul the cover back and forth.

Et voilia!

I asked my brother if he could cut me a scrap of plywood down to 32″ by 22″ did just that. It was also my birthday present.

He said it was scrap wood from The Emerson School, where I used to work. I wonder about that though, because TES didn’t celebrate holidays, so there wouldn’t have been an advent calendar section of shelving. But it might be left over from when the Montessori school was in the building.

Backyard Excitement at The Orange Door: Cat Version

Antares was very interested in being on the catio, and after squinting a bit, I saw what was capturing his interest.

There was a black cat sitting on the fence.

And a calico cat sitting on the porch roof.

Sentinel also wanted to have a look, but from inside.

As with most cat encounters this one ended with the cats wandering off. But it was fun to have four cats in sight.

Hello to New Couch!

The new couch has arrived! It’s a bit more burgundy than I remembered, but it’s also super comfortable and was better than free.

How was it better than free? My friend Julie had us out to her beach house in Pacific City. Her and her husband Graham gave us a tour of the gorgeous beach house they have been building for the past eight years, they fed us lunch, and we had a walk on the beach. We hauled the couch up the stairs (which was fun for me) and we put it on top of their car. Then Graham strapped the couch to their car’s roof and they drove it to our house where we carried it inside.

We got a great day at the beach and a new couch. Better than free!

I need to do some shuffling of things. That blue chair isn’t going to stay there permanently. But it works okay for now.

Goodbye to Ektorp Couch

Matt’s mom Linda bought us this couch in 2007 and it’s been showing its age for some years now. The cushions are shot and the covers don’t come off anymore so I can’t wash them, and I’m ready for a new couch. Happily, my friend has one to give me. Now just to get rid of the current couch.

I put it on NextDoor and eventually on the Buy Nothing group. Even at the cool price of free, I worried that it wasn’t going to move. But it did! A woman came by to grab it for her kids’ room and I helped her load it into her minivan.

While we wait for the weekend when we will help get the couch, I moved the chairs over so we had something to sit in while we watch TV.