Home Sweet Home

A little while in coming, but here is an updated peek into my little home!

Well, this is my door in my pretty 1930's Mock-Tudor building!

Now, up until this month my "living room" looked like this...

But as the radiators have turned on...and that little table is made of melamine coated particleboard...I had to re-arrange before it melted! I also switched out my pink summery colors to more blue and winter appropriate ones.

My little icon corner in the bookcase.

Desk where I'm sitting now. 

The table by the window you will no doubt see a lot of since I take all my food photos there!

I love the texture of my walls at night, it's like a cozy rustic cottage.

And of course my kitchen!  

With my breakfast on the counter. Mmmm bagels.

Umm. I kind of have a lot of tea...

Aaaand behind the door with the fancy duck? Closet. Or is it a hallway? Or a very small room?

Whatever it is, it has a funky old intercom my guests love to poke at.

 I'm not terribly fond of these old Ikea drawers, but for now they at least hold my clothes! Oops. And those are my PJ clad legs in the mirror, fail.

Wee blue bathroom.

And that's mouthwash in the re-purposed maple syrup bottle...not green moonshine as my mother assumed. Though that would, no doubt, also clean my teeth.

So there's the tour!

And now I'll be getting back in my chair with my feet toasting by the radiator...

To watch old black and white Sherlock Holmes movies and have yet another cup of tea.

Happy Weekend!

Golden

Everything is golden these days. I took a drive into the country with friends a few weeks ago, pretty much hanging out the window like a dog the whole time.  We rode horses and ate apples and freshly made doughnuts. Simply divine! The sky was blue and bright and it looked so well against the bronze of the leaves and grass.

I had a great walk the other day, kicking the leaves around like the (twenty) five year old I am. The crunch! The smell! Mouldering death! Gotta love it!



Of course it won't last forever. Already most of the leaves have fallen, my legs are freezing waiting for the bus in the morning, and before I'm ready it's going to be down coat time here in Chicago. But that may be what makes fall so lovely.  You have to savor it fast! The gallon of apple cider I bought two weeks ago is drunk. I used the last of the 1/2 peck of apples I bought in applesauce today. And unless it warms up again I think I just wore flats for the last time this year!

I made the most of good weather last weekend with two friends, wandering in and out of some of my city's finest buildings on the Chicago Open House. Burnham, Sullivan and Wright! We saw them all! Clambered around a bridge house, rode in the last manually operated elevator in the city, and took an obscene amount of photographs.

This is Miss Ashley's favorite staircase. And you can see why, its in the Auditorium Building, which means Louis Sullivan (my architecture boyfriend) did it.

And then there's the Auditorium's Ganz Hall. It's like walking into Rivendell, or Meduseld.

                                            Photo from AIA Chicago

Sullivan blows my mind, every time.  The dude had a serious thing for lightbulbs.

Though not Sullivan, the gallery hall in the Fine Arts Building was lovely too. All dark wood with etched glass doors. Beautiful music coming from practice rooms. Art Nuveau murals.

I adore gold leafed skies! Gold leafed anything really...I am the daughter of a Byzantinist after all!

And they had a good staircase too...

I think architecture is one of my favorite types of art. You not only get to look at it, but you get to poke it too! Sit on it! Or lick it if you really really wanted! No one would stop you! (Though it's not a good idea, think of the germs and lead paint.)

It was nice to have such a lovely day in my city, then come home to my own little bit of it.

I made apple pancakes. And watched Inspector Lewis with a cup of tea and my feet up on the poof (lots of stairs).

And didn't update my blog so am now waaay backed up on posts!  So am now going to un-gracefully shove in some photographic evidence of my projects from that jewelry class I took.
Behold!

Pretty Plaque Number One!

Pretty Plaque Number Two! It's got a bird on it! (I found I really liked "punching" things so made not one but TWO hole punched projects! Both are based off classic American tin punching designs.)

And I made a brass band ring, to pair with the wee brass ring I stole off a Kewpie  doll ages ago and wear every day.

It's got a simple hammered finish and a whopping load of solder ghost at the seam but my fingers are strategically covering that! I still have to write up a post on the crazy food night I had with the friends I went galavanting around the coutryside with...but hopefully that will happen soon! And apartment photos! I have not forgotten! I just hate writing in past tense! About my own life! It's like I died! Buh!

Until then just keep listening to this really loud on repeat while staring at this image, because it's the sexiest Sullivan moment of All Time. 

Not mine...

It's the weekend!

My apartment currently looks like I've melted a bunch of witches. Clothes everywhere! Had a late night dryer "situation" and don't own a drying rack (fixing that next Ikea run!).  And my dishes are piled up. And my bathroom needs a wipe down. And as usual my closet floor is covered in everything I've worn this week.

The clothes I will dry, but the rest is going to have to wait. I'm up to crazy schenanigans this weekend which you will hear about...later!

For now, I hope you are enjoying the insanely good weather we have here this weekend! A complete turn around from last weekend. Where it was officially cold enough for my radiators to turn on and me to don the monkey slippers.

It rained last Friday night, but there was a lovely rainbow when it was just starting!

I just stayed inside and poached some eggs (duh.) And see! They are looking much better! I had this set with beet greens. I'm not sure how I feel about beet greens. They taste just as you'd expect them too, kind of beet-y, kind of spinach-y. But I think I may just prefer straight up beets and spinach.  Or maybe I was just hoping they'd taste like the chard I had a while ago. Next time I'll just buy chard!

My laundry should be done (fingers crossed!) and I'm off for my adventures. Here's a sneak peek!

It's the incredible edible egg folks.

 I went through a carton of eggs and half a loaf of bread this week.  I'm at the tail end of a cold/cough and spent most of my past weekend lying on various surfaces looking as pathetic as possible. For a split second I remembered my idea of cooking something more difficult, and then decided the kitchen was simply too far away from my chair to attempt it.

 I did fry some eggs though. I put them on toast. And made cups and cups of tea.  Irish Breakfast, Orange Pekoe and Oolong. I really didn't feel that bad, just slept like shit so was tired and kept hacking up seriously nasty globs of green which looked a lot like the Grinch.

It was pretty late when my lazy ass got around to making my dinner last Saturday, but I had just checked the Stonesoup blog and she talked about all the benefits of eating eggs for breakfast then had an allegedly easy way to poach eggs. Poach eggs? Easy? What the hell?

Now I've never ever wanted to poach eggs.  I want to roast a chicken.  I want to figure out the whole cold water bath thing for cakes.  I want to pickle things.  Poaching had not made the list yet.  They seem like such a fancy thing to eat y'know? And it's a generally acknowledged fact that I'm not that classy.  Especially first thing in the morning.

But I do love me some eggs for breakfast... Scrambled, fried, toad in the hole, made into a custard for french toast.  A friend once made me soft boiled eggs. It blew my mind. The yolks were that perfect median between liquid and solid that makes an egg incredibly delicious which I'm always trying to achieve. I'd had a failed attempt with soft boiled eggs before and was told the key was to let the eggs come to room temperature before boiling them. I've been wanting to make them for myself since then but I can never ever remember to leave eggs out to warm.  I've just woken up for heavens sake, can I really be expected to wait around for eggs to un-cool? There's an hour long window after I wake where I must be fed or I turn into Trogdor and start burn-a-nating villages. No soft boiled eggs for me.

Now it's not like I've been depressed about my soft boiled egg less life...much...but I can tell you I got ridiculously excited when I ate my poached eggs last weekend. It turns out fancy folks knew something I didn't. Did you know that poached eggs have that amazing yolk-y texture that make soft boiled eggs so fantastic??? I didn't! No one told me! Suddenly all the fuss makes sense.

And the best part? The stone soup lady wasn't kidding. They're easy to make. Like stupid first thing in the morning easy. They might not look all pretty like a fancy restaurant poached eggs but who cares? You're going to scarf it down in a few minutes anyways! And lick the yolk off your fingers too.

I first ate them on buttered toast with pickled beets. The bread I get is awesome, it's this Italian bread my grocer has that's chewy textured like chiabatta but has just a hint of sourdough flavor. I've now had them with greens which is quite nice. What's better is their looks have improved (I pour the eggs into a ladle and then slowly submerge them into the simmering water and make sure it's really simmering and not boiling). But I keep eating them before I can take a picture! You'll just have to take my word for it ;-)