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.