Semiotics of Home Ownership

There are no renovation pictures for your pleasure. I really cannot envision a life where I stop to take pictures along the way in the flow of the everyday. Thus, food blogging is out. And so now sadly is the Home Renovation blog. If I took a picture right now you would see dining chairs that need recovering, piles of boxes, a toolbox permanently taking up residence in the kitchen, boxes of mugs with nowhere to go, textured walls that need covering, doors that need hanging...it ain't pretty. It's fun, but it ain't pretty.There are 37 things on my current To Do list ranging from Kitchen Remodel (see you in a few years!) to Buy some air plants for the bathroom. I did manage to paint a room "Barely Blush", much to the delight of my daughter, and I think I did a pretty good job toning down the girly with some bunkbeds and plaid bedding - but it's still just a pink room. So in lieu of that, I offer you instead my recent Favourite Things:

At the Elles exhibit opening at SAM this weekend (an exhibit which made my little post-90's Art School Loving feminist heart for pitter-pat), this was a surprise and a favourite. Martha Rossler and the Semiotics of the Kitchen. Too bad this is a poor copy, but you get the idea. Searching for it also brought up this Barbie-infused homage, equally delightful but in a different way:

In other accomplishments, I'm currently working my way through all the Dell Yearling books I can find in my own collection and at the thrift store. I always remember them as being the high water mark of middle grade quality (wish I had such a marker now, for buying) so I'm revisiting them. Many, many are out of print and forgotten but oh so good. There's almost no history of the series or the editors or any kind of serious analysis of it - I love children's books in general but for me, the 1970's-early 1980's were a true golden time in children's book publishing and middle readers. Just look at my bookshelves, it's almost all I own. Nothing to do me reading those books for the first time as a kid or anything, no nostalgia here...ha ha. Which is why I'm rereading. Am I right in thinking they were deeper/darker/more complex? So far, yes. 

Just finished this, it was so good. On to the next...Is this avoidance of my own writing or a true celebration of writing I could never hope to live up to? A little of both.
Okay, back to tile samples and dishwasher installations.

Happy Birthday to Me

It seems silly to jump back into this creative blogging thing with a materialistic post but really, I'm just segueing into a renovation blog, let's be honest. A couple of things I got for my birthday are making me so ridiculously happy I have to spread the love.

First was the surprise internet radio from AH. We had talked and talked about finding a good one but he pulled the trigger for my birthday. It's a little more "nostalgic" than I would normally go but in this case, funtion outshines form to the nth degree. For the past 10 years I have been using a red "jelly" style alarm clock radio from Radio Shack as my personal listening device in the kitchen. I do two things when I wake up: put the kettle on and turn on the radio. My kitchen radio has been permanently tuned to NPR as it's not a digital tuner and switching between KEXP and NPR is too painful. So sadly most mornings I wake up to Morning Edition - now with a 100% more Mitt Romney! - or worse, Marketplace. There are not enough adjectives to describe my hatred of Kai Ryssdal, especially before I've had a cup of coffee. Yet strangely, silence in the morning is worse. I need that chatter, that background hum. But I am also tired of yelling at the radio "you lying sack of doo-doo!" and switching it off in a huff. So the internet radio - amazing. I can preset and stream all my favourite radio stations from around the world and the internets - including every CBC radio station and BBC. I can attach my iPod or phone and play that. Or stream my Pandora stations or my iTunes playlist. If it could stream my record player we would truly be in business. But this is so perfect for my cooking, doing dishes, Sunday Brunch life. I love love love it and love tossing out my cracked, ancient, buzzy ridiculous alarm radio for good.

While on the last minute birthday trip I bought myself a new cookbook:

Oh I love everything about it. I read it from cover to cover and I want to make everything in the book. And then I put it on display.

 Then I bought this clock I have been wanting since approximately 2002.

Contemporary Clocks design by Amazon

and the densest, least frivolous purchase (I'm not even including my new red peep-toe wedges) was this book:

Because we are set to close on the silly house tomorrow, 6 months after we began this process. And we have a lot of renovation to do. Which I might just document here, cause a house needs a lot more than 1 million cookbooks and a decent clock.