Random Pictures from the Thanksgiving Break

While Kress and his mother and I celebrated Thanksgiving, a few small things around the house happened:

This crowded Peace Lily from my desk at work (which I brought home to divide months ago and never did) got cleaned up and separated into two pots:

The two new plants are very happy;  the smaller one in the center is a Chinese Evergreen that was in a pot with no drainage hole, and was NOT liking it.

Because I pretty much detest holidays, I completely neglected to plan any sort of table spread for dinner on Thursday, aside from the food.

This is simple and thrown-together (mostly from our basket of SCA feast gear, hehe), but it worked, and the food was awesome, which was the point. :)

Most of the cats, on the coffee table, scoping out someone's ice cream.  From the white-and-red one on the left, clockwise, that's
Sweet Pea
Rabi
Evie, and
Gypsy

Only Sasha is missing from this picture.

Kress' mom decided that she and I each needed a "little black apron" from Bloodbath & Beyond while we were out shopping Friday.  Lace trim and plastic pearls stitched around the neckline.  LOL!  Adorbs.



Hope everyone had a happy, safe holiday.

Kitchen B&A: New Dishums

After lots of web-combing, and trips to Target and Ikea, finally Kress and I trekked down to San Marcos to the outlet mall to go to the Pyrex/Corningware/Corelle outlet this week and found the new dishes I'd been hoping to score.

[Interestingly enough, it's 23.9 miles from my house to San Marcos, which is an entirely different city; and 30.2 miles from my house to Ikea...which is actually in Round Rock, also a different city, but going to Ikea doesn't really feel like traveling to a different city, since I have to cross all of Austin to get there and there's no open space in between.  This largely irrelevant digression brought to you by Google Maps.]

Anyway, I didn't take a "before" picture because I was just SURE I had one somewhere online, except, I totally didn't.  Which makes sense, given how crammed full of STUFF my kitchen cabinets were - I didn't exactly want to show them off, you know?  And since I don't have the doors on my cabinets...yeah.  You see where I'm going with that.  So in addition to getting new dishes, I also spent a couple of nights this week culling through the old, storing some stuff away and donating the rest to Goodwill.

Plus I broke a wine glass the other night, so that's even less clutter.  *facepalm*

So that now...

Thaaaaat's better.  :)  I'm not entirely crazy about the end result, but I'm still playing with the balance of things in there. 


The dishes are Corelle "Dazzling White" and "White Flower", at $3-4 apiece at the outlet store  - clean, smooth, simple, and inexpensive.  (The "White Flower" plates have a...wait for it....flower on them, but the soup/cereal bowls are solid white, and a smoother shape than the bowls that went with "Dazzling").  Also practically Laura-proof (shatter/chip resistant).  I bought about half as many as I actually want to keep on hand;  I'll get the rest after Thanksgiving after all the holiday weirdness is over.



Also pictured above:

• the cutting boards I made
• Ikea's VARSAM serving trays in white
• Kitchen cabinet interiors that are actually a pale, muted chicken-egg blue and looked exactly that way against the old sand-colored wall color, but which now appear to be almost exactly the same gray as the walls when viewed against them. Thankfully, I like the effect.  I am SO not painting all that over again.   

action shot!

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