Home Improvements

Hi.  My name is Jessie and I'm not a good blogger.

1. I take horrible pictures.  I have a wonderfully charged battery for my adorable pink camera.  I'm simply missing the camera it goes in.  Result: tacky camera phone pictures.  Sorry guys.

2. A new post appears approximately the same time an asteroid hits Earth.  That's every few thousand years, you say?  Sounds accurate.

5. I don't have a common blog theme.  Well, so what.  I don't have a common life, either.

With those confessions out of the way....

The past month has brought about a few changes, aka "improvements," to our home.  One was a small change in diet, as a previous blog alluded to.  No, we're still not perfect there.  But as an avid cook and baker, I'm having fun discovering our new options.  The latest was some pretty tasty pancakes:

These were made with brown rice flour and fluffed up with tapioca flour.  Topped with butter and paired with some French press, they were amazing!  In fact, after finishing off his plate, my son came up behind me, put his hand on my back and said, "Thanks Mommy."  Uhh, you're welcome?  Wait, did you even know what I put in them??  Oh, nevermind.

In addition to the cooking adventures, I've also created for myself a little workstation.  And here we have one of my tacky camera phone pics:

I am a stay-at-home mom so this area is the irony of all ironies since the entire house is my workstation.  But this is where my life gets to be organized.  I purchased this adorable desk off of craigslist for $50 (did I mention it's Pier 1?).  My sweet brother-in-law said it was nice, just needed "a few touch-ups".  Guess I need to have him over more and introduce him to the lovable world of shabby chic (Love ya Samuel!).  

Despite the fact that we own bookshelves, most of my personal books end up stacked.  I tell myself its for health reasons  - who reads with their head tilted sideways anyway?  I might end up with taco neck syndrome.  In actuality, I think my book stacks are just a lazy mans bookshelf.  Whatever.  Thankfully, my desk has room for my current reads:

(If you want to keep updated with my reading list, check out the main page of my blog.  But no worries, you only have to check it every other month to see a change .  Haha.) 

I have this opinion that every real desk needs a globe .  Why?  Well, because . That's why.  I don't really have a wonderful reason for this; it just seems to feel official.  So I have a globe.  

In addition to that, I keep a cute stack of homemade coasters that I won in a surprise raffle.  Well, the raffle wasn't a surprise, but the winning was.  And these things are so cute!  The purpose of hosting them on my desk was to protect my new area from my daily coffee habit.  But I haven't had the heart to untie the bundle so it sits there as decoration.  It's kind of like repurposing your garage while your $30,000 car sits outside.  But my desk wasn't $30,000.  So I guess its not really the same .  

And then there is the obvious pen cup.  But mine is no ordinary pen cup.  It holds pictures.  And no ordinary pictures.  If you look close enough, you will see a picture of my dad at 23 months old.  I love that picture.  

Next to my pen cup sits two jars of bottle caps.  Well, one of bottle caps, and another of bottle cap charms.  This will be explained in another blog, hopefully before the next asteroid hits our planet.

Last but not least, my bulletin board.  We had one of these growing up.  It was housed on the door that led to our side yard, and it was always covered with papers...thousands upon thousands of papers.  One tack usually secured about 15-20 sheets of paper because we kept losing all the tacks and nobody in our house was smart enough to buy new ones.  So when I went shopping for my own bulletin board, I walked up and down the aisles looking for a frame with a thousand papers on it.  I finally inquired about the location of the bulletin boards.  Imagine my surprise when I was shown an empty brown board.  Where are all the papers?  Well, you add them yourself.  Add them, myself?  You mean to tell me all those papers belonged to my family?!?  So now I have my own bulletin board, with empty space and extra tacks.  Maybe I'll donate some of those tacks to my mom.  

My hope is that, with this new workstation, my brain will appreciate the organization and actually get some work done.  So far its working beautifully. 

And in light of improving our home, my sweet daughter graciously boosted the appeal of my trash can, something I never would have considered:

Thanks sweetheart.