Home Sweet Home

Mountain Lions, Coyotes and Bears…

by Lorri on July 17, 2010 · 1 comment

We’ve been living in Colorado for one year now, can you believe it? It’s a little different, living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, especially for someone who grew up near the ocean.

Here are some of the things we’ve learned this year:

1. Do not leave your trash cans out on the curb the night before pick-up or bears will get into them.

2. Only mountain newbies forget to drag the trashcans back to the house after trash pick-up and leave them out over night. Bears will check to make sure they are really empty.

3. Don’t forget to close your garage door at night, especially if you have a chest freezer full of deer meat. Bears will get at your freezer and steal your meat. This happened to a neighbor.

4. The police are very reluctant to come and assist with the removal of a bear eating deer meat in your tree.

5. That lovely rubbed-oil lever-handled door knob you just installed in your back door? Bears can open it to get at the kitty treats inside. And by kitty treats, I mean the actual cats. Keep yer backdoor locked, ya flatlander!

6. The dry creek behind the house is not actually dry and is a great attractor of wildlife. Like a spotted fawn and it’s mother…

and a raccoon out late at dawn and needing a nap.

7. Where there are deer, there are mountain lions.

8. Did I mention the bears? Here’s one at our neighbor’s house a couple of months ago.

9. The dogs we hear howling at night sometimes are not dogs. They are coyotes. They live in the bluff across the street. This one:

All these wildlife spottings have sparked this daily conversation in our house:

Boo: I’m going to get the mail.

Pumpkin Girl and Bip, without hint of irony, sarcasm or emotion: Don’t get eaten by bears!

That’s love, right there.

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This post was brought to you by Mittens the Cat, who wants to remind you to keep your lever-handled doors locked.

Cats are friends, not food.

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Butter Bell

by Lorri on March 26, 2010 · 2 comments

in Home Sweet Home, Our Favorite Recipes

KC over at The Cabbage Patch asked me about my butter bell. I got mine at a kitchen store, but I’ve seen them in kitchen goods catalogs all the time. The website for the company is The Official Butter Bell Store.

Here’s the lid and the base, sitting next to each other.
The lid, on the left, holds the butter. That’s the part I usually put on the table at dinner time. The base, on the right, has just a little bit of cold water in it. You change out the water every 2-3 days and the butter stays fresh, yet soft.

I have 2 pieces of advice – First, let the stick of butter warm up a bit before stuffing it into the lid. And Second, wash the lid before adding a new stick of butter. Otherwise it develops pink spots and a not so pleasant smell.

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Things I Love: Kitchen

by Lorri on March 18, 2010 · 3 comments

in Home Sweet Home

I recently got one of these Butter Bell things. You load the lid with butter and put a little cold water in the base and the butter stays fresh, soft and spreadable. Change the water every couple of days and all is well. Mmms, soft butter on homemade bread. Bliss!
I got this idea from my friend Tami. She puts her dishwashing liquid in an oil carafe thing. The name completely escapes me at the moment. Anyway, it looks so much better sitting near the kitchen sink than that bottle of soap. I happen to have a window behind my sink so the light shines through and makes it even prettier. Tami has good taste and I copy her as often as I can.

Ok, so this isn’t in my kitchen, it’s on my front porch. But what you find inside it does end up in the kitchen.

See? This is the best milk ever, at least according to my children. The first day they tried it, they declared they like it better than our regular stuff. It’s hormone and antibiotic free, not raw but not ultra-pasteurized either AND it’s cheaper than the milk at the commissary. Bonus points because the empty bottles go back in the box to be sterilized and reused. (Does that make it green milk? Ha, Ha! I crack myself up!) Plus, it is so much fun having a milk man, even if his truck does sometimes wake me up by idling in front of my house at 4 am.

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Wishful Thinking

by Lorri on February 20, 2010 · 2 comments

in Family Life, Home Sweet Home

You know what I’d like?

A Day to Do Nothing. A day not to have to worry about anyone or anything, no cooking, no cleaning, no teaching. A day with no agenda. I’d like a whole day to just do what I want to do, without feeling like I need to get something accomplished with my free time. I’d like a day without “I really should…” going through my head. Not the kind of day when you look back and are frustrated because nothing got done, but a day with no guilt.

And you know what else I’d like?

Right after my Do Nothing Day, I’d like a Highly Efficient Day. Again without the cooking or teaching, but I’d have a long list of to-do’s that I’d accomplish. All those little things that pile up because other, more important things get in the way. I’d like to unpack those last two boxes and tidy up the office, move some furniture around, tackle the linen closet and…

Alas, it’s all wishful thinking.

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Mad About the Mouse

by Lorri on February 4, 2010 · 3 comments

in Home Sweet Home

We’re a little crazy for Disney around here. That’s putting it mildly.

It seems that everywhere you look in our house, you can find that iconic Mouse in red, black and yellow.

On the floor near the boys’ room.

Waiting to play.

In the kitchen.

On my wrist.

So that after awhile, we start seeing Mickey everywhere!

Doesn’t this car look suspiciously familiar? Go ahead, scroll up to my watch…and back to the car. You see it, too!

I’d say we need help, but we refuse to admit that we have a problem.

But if you’d like to stage an intervention, may I suggest holding it at the Disneyland Hotel?

(And let’s not even mention what’s going on in the bathroom…)

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Christmas Foyer

by Lorri on December 21, 2009 · 4 comments

in Getting Crafty, Home Sweet Home

This is for my friend Tami. The first thing she said when she arrived at our house, after my family finished mugging hugging hers, was that our banister was going to look great for Christmas.

The candy garland is from my childhood.

This buffet table is about 90 years old and newly restored to its former glory. The dining room is too small to fit the whole set, so this piece moved here. Philip actually came up with the idea to put it here, and I like the weight it gives to the entry way. Plus, it provides some nice display area.

Right now it has our lighted Nativity. I bought this so long ago that I can’t even remember when. This is the first time we’ve had room to put it out. Originally we had Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and animals all set up, too, with Baby Jesus safely tucked away until Christmas and the Wise Men waiting off to the side to begin their journey. Then one of the children said that maybe we should put Mary and Joseph away, too. And boom! It hit me. Boo has a statue of Mary and Joseph on their way to Bethlehem. We packed everyone away and put the statue out instead. Now we are reminded of Mary and Joseph’s difficult journey all through the Advent season.

I smile when I see this statue. Mary’s patient, resigned face is so telling of her end of pregnancy state. I have been pregnant for two Advents, both times just about ready to pop, too. In fact, my girls were each born at 8 pm, one 3 days before Christmas and one 3 days after. I am eternally grateful for the comfort of our car instead of having to sit on a donkey.

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So here’s today’s Design Delemma. The staircase seems to need something (during the rest of the year, mostly). Or does it? It curves, so it’s tricky to hang anything up, but I suppose we could make it work. My original thought was to put a round table in the space, but with the buffet table we’d just end up zig-zagging around. So what say you? Attempt to hang something on the curved wall? Leave it as is? Here’s a different view, capturing the whole hallway.

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Well Protected

by Lorri on December 18, 2009 · 1 comment

in Home Sweet Home

A squad of snow soldiers keep silent vigil over the entrance to our house.

These guys claim the foyer for the USA.

LTC Freeze’s battalion has seized the high ground in defense against the children that are rumored to be in the area. Freeze is the 3rd guy from the right, with the red hat and green scarf.

(hmm, next time I’ll close the cabinet door for a better picture)

Snowman Army all present, sir!

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Out With the Old

by Lorri on December 8, 2009 · 4 comments

in Home Sweet Home

…

In with the new…

When we first moved in we knew that the side-by-side refrigerator that came with the house was going to be too small. It wasn’t a pressing issue, but we did research and figured out which fridge we wanted when the time came. Then Thanksgiving week we found an ad from Home Depot and we were able to save $700 on a new fridge! We’re loving the extra room, especially in the freezer. There was a brief moment of panic when I realized that we forgot to measure the space between the kitchen island and the counter. I made Philip get up (we were already in bed) and come with me to confirm that the new fridge would actually be able to be maneuvered in. No worries, it had a couple of inches to spare.

The rest of the appliances in the kitchen are black, but we decided to go with the stainless for the fridge. I’m glad we did, since we’ll be getting a gas range in the next few years and so will slowly go completely stainless.

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Music Room

by Lorri on November 12, 2009 · 5 comments

in Home Sweet Home, Uncategorized

Several people have asked to see pictures of our new house, a request I’ve blissfully ignored. We’ve lived here for 4 months now and those months have been filled with school work, scouts, dance and vacation. Not to mention unpacking and decorating. We’ve been having our dining room set slowly but surely restored to its original glory and battling what can only be described as zombie wasps. But that’s a story for another time. The point is, our house isn’t as presentable or as photogenic as I’d like it to be. However, if I wait until it is, the children will be grown and out of the house and it will be time for us to downsize. So here we go.

If you come in through our front door, the first room to your immediate right is the music room. We don’t have need of a formal living room, so we moved our grand piano into the space and are attempting to created a somewhat formal but welcoming library/music/quiet area. It’s going slowly since this is one of 3 rooms which we’ve never had before.

Look what I did yesterday:

I moved a ladder in!

Heh heh. Actually, I did something I’ve wanted to do in our home for several years. I added a quotation to the wall above the window. Here, I’ll show you a close up:

It says, “If music be the food of Love, play on. -Shakespeare.” How perfect is that for a music room? I did it all myself, except for Philip bringing me the ladder. Which we left there, since it looks so classy.

That’s the window at the front of the house. Now walk with me towards that window, then to your right and we’re looking at the piano.

Doesn’t that look nice? We need a lamp in here because this is the one room in the house that didn’t have some kind of overhead light. The angel next to the stairs doesn’t actually live there. My grandmother made her for me when I was oh…6 years old. She (the angel) is waiting her turn for the washing machine since the years have been a little hard on her.

So my decorating dilema for the day is two-fold. First – see the curtains in the front window? I’m not too thrilled with the rod showing there. The red curtains are always open and the sheers are always closed. Any ideas for how to hide the rod? Or just leave it?

Second – what sort of lamp should I get for the piano? I’m thinking floor lamp. The adjoining room is the dining room which has cherry wood Queen Anne furniture.

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Autumn In Colorado

by Lorri on October 29, 2009 · 3 comments

in Family Life, Home Sweet Home

Two days in a row of snow. Late openings and closures – including Philip’s office. And today the troops headed out sledding at the park across the street. Much fun was had by all.