If You're Stressed, It's Fine Dining We Suggest

So I lost my camera for several weeks. Today I found it: in a random grocery sack in the spare room. Yah, that room hadn't been examined in a while. But little by little I'm bringing this apartment back to order. Tuesday I tackled the master bedroom and finally got around to hanging the decorations. Wednesday I managed some laundry. Today was the spare room. Though it's by no means a masterpiece of interior decorating, I feel like I can think when I'm in there. A plus since I may be working from the home 'office' frequently when the snow starts to fall and I'm stuck figuring out how to bike to campus or how to drive Neal's standard transmission car.

Anyways, I was looking for the camera because I wanted to take a picture (no kidding). You see, a few years ago I took a trip with my dear friends Katie, Whitni, and Rachel, to Canada. While there we stayed in Rachel's family home. I wish I could describe every detail of the restored 1940 decor. Suffice it to say, it was a lovely experience. This was during my time of no dairy, no fat, little sugar, etc. so I had packed my own farina cereal for breakfast. Each day I fixed some and put it in one of the delicate china bowls. I swear the food tasted better because it was so beautiful in the dishes.

The house, with all its restoration, was not enormously expensive in design. The dishes were mismatched china from thrift stores, with family heirlooms on the walls and simple antiques worth squat from Antique's Roadshow, but still lovely. I slept in the gable room during my stay there. Though it was suffocatingly hot and the window wouldn't open because of a gargantuous spider, the little four poster bed with down stuffing, nook and crannies, and morning sunlight made me feel just like Anne of Green Gables. I slept like a dream.

While the trip was enchanting, what really stuck with me was the feeling of it all. We spent a great deal of time just visiting with Rachel's great aunt (?) Priscilla next door. The wonderful lady sometimes couldn't remember who we were, but she was always glad to see us and visit with us. We ate delicious food made from produce provided by the local Hutterite community. We went on early morning walks in the mistiness. We went to a barn dance. And I felt so at peace during those moments.

I want to be the kind of person who has time, who makes time, to visit family and friends frequently. I want to be someone who always has room for an extra person (or several) at the dinner table. For the last...all my life I've been in school. I kept telling myself that someday school would end and I'd be able to settle down a bit. But since starting graduate school I realized that school just keeps going. From my dear married friends, stay-at-home mom friends, and working friends I realize that the crazy schedule never really lets up. So I have tried to become the kind of woman I want to be now, instead of waiting around for the graduation that never seems to come.

Now I may live in a very modern little apartment. But heck, I've got mismatched everything so I figured I might as well go for my dream. So each time Neal and I visit the Deseret Industries, I look through their dishes and find something for my collection. I know china is ridiculous. And I'm a complete klutz. But unlike formal china, this is all mismatched already and comes at a cheap price from the thrift store. So I can break as many as I like! And in the meantime, I can feel like my food is a delight to eat.

Maybe someday I'll have an actual house, with a yard and a gable and somewhere to store things. But I'm not waiting around for my fine china days.

Doesn't that just make you crave some filling creamy wheat?

The view from the gable room window

My newest edition, along with some squash, pepper, tomato pasta

Master bedroom decor (it's not really crooked, that's your imagination)

And finally, I thought I'd share another festive touch: umbrellas in homemade strawberry lemonade.