Category Archives: Homemaking

Cleaning Up

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I swept and mopped the floor today.

Lest someone think that I have my priorities wrong and remind me that new moms should sleep when baby sleeps, I should clarify that I did take a two-hour nap this morning. And lest someone say being fed and clothed is more important, I should mention that I cooked dinner (leftovers!) and did five loads of laundry yesterday. And lest the grandmas complain, I posted a picture of Paul on the website first. Then I swept the floor.

Don’t be impressed. It has been swept twice since I came home from the hospital. And the first time I cut corners.

The things I learned:

  • A hardwood floor the size of Kentucky needs to swept every day.
  • When I have another child (I suppose I should say “if”, but who am I kidding?), I’m hiring a maid service for a month.

In defense of my husband: He is much cleaner than I am and is very good about chipping in and keeping things clean. However, he took off a week of work when Paul was born. It was just before a major project went live. Now he’s working long hours to make up for taking time off. Besides, I want him to hold his son once he comes home! And he doesn’t get a nap during the day like I do.

In defense of my friends: They offered to clean, but I am not yet willing to ask a friend to clean up my dust. And I wasn’t yet willing to give up my newborn to them so I could clean. I cherished week 2: I held my newborn just about every minute during the day and didn’t have to share him with anyone. I’m very sad that I’ll probably never get to do that again with a newborn bundle of joy.

The bottom line is, I’m starting to feel like I have control of this Being a Mother Thing, so it’s time I take care of the house too. I suppose tomorrow may feel like chaos again. But the messy house is very out of control, and today I’m feeling ready to take charge.

On to vacuuming! Oh wait, Paul’s crying. Maybe later….

What I Miss

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This week, I decided I miss good old American shopping.

I miss:

  • Being able to find prices for things like brooms and ironing boards and baby clothes and sheets online at various stores, then going to the store and getting the exact one I want.
  • Frozen boneless, skinless chicken breast (or any frozen meat, for that matter!)
  • Apple sauce (I never thought it would be so hard to find. I miss rows of Motts to choose from!)
  • Corn meal (polenta mix just isn’t quite the same–too gritty)
  • Cream of Wheat (for me) and grits (for my husband)
  • Variety of breakfast cereals (where are my two aisles?)
  • Frozen pizzas (what ever you do, don’t try a grocery store frozen pizza!)
  • Readily prepared foods (such as a vegetable platter)
  • Carmex (Thanks, Mom, for sending some! Chap Stick doesn’t cut it.)
  • Affordable makeup (The kind of foundation I particularly like is $20, which I’m sure is more than twice as much as that particular Maybelline style in the States. I think I’ll go for the generic. I don’t care about makeup THAT much.)

So here’s today’s story: I volunteered to bring a vegetable platter to a ward event tonight. I figured that would be the easiest possible option. Go to the store, buy a platter and dip, and voila! But no, they don’t have those here anywhere. I had to buy broccoli and cut it up! How old-fashioned!

Here’s the other story: The other day I went to no fewer than three stores before I found an acceptable ironing board (Target, Kmart, and Big W). All of these stores are in malls. Why can’t there be a store that stands by itself and has acceptable parking? I’m very tired of walking through malls. Besides, all of them have these very tempting ice cream kiosks on every corner. It’s very hard to resist (but I did! This time, at least.).

So, this week I really started missing all those good old American comforts when it comes to shopping. Go eat some apple sauce and enjoy it.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

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The best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever discovered is the one from the back of the Western Family bag of chocolate chips. It amazes me that the discount brand of chocolate chips was the most successful at discovering the best combination of fat, sugar, and chocolate. And yet, it is this recipe that is truly delicious.

I have made this recipe on many occasions. It is truly the best out there. I believe good things should be shared. So here it is for your baking pleasure!

Western Family Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yield: 36 cookies

Ingredients:

    2 1/4 c. flour
    1 t. baking soda
    1/2 t. salt
    1 c. butter/margarine (225 g)
    1/2 c. sugar
    3/4 c. brown sugar (packed)
    2 t. vanilla
    1 egg
    chocolate chips (I put in as many as I want!)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C). In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars together until fluffy. Add vanilla and egg. Beat well. Mix together dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then add them to the creamed mixture. Add chocolate chips. Mix well. Drop by rounded tablespoons, 2″ apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 10-15 minutes at 375 F (190 C).

The last time I made this recipe, the cookies were a dismal failure. It was a few weeks ago, right after we moved in to our new home. I didn’t have any of measuring spoons or measuring cups so I “estimated.” I didn’t know what the Celsius equivalent of 375 F was, so I guessed. I was wrong on that. I can’t remember if the oven was too hot or too cold, but it didn’t work out very well. I decided at the time that the oven just didn’t work. In the end, I had very crispy dough that just didn’t taste right.

Tonight I felt like eating my chocolate chip cookies. So I tried again. Now I have my measuring cups and spoons and I even checked to make sure that my oven temperature was the correct Celsius equivalent. I think my cookies turned out perfectly!

Try some yourself!

Preparing for Baby

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We’ve been looking at cribs this week. Here they are called cots. This, of course, is “a must” for baby. I also really would like a glider rocking chair. I hear that they are “a must” for late night feedings. I’ve looked at some. We could rent one rather inexpensively, I think.

We will meet with our furniture rental company on Saturday. Our wish list (I should rephrase that: my wish list) has grown larger. It includes the following items to either rent or buy:

  • cot (aka crib)
  • mattress
  • dresser (four drawer) with change tray on top
  • glider rocking chair
  • two-seater couch for upstairs (for sitting during the day when I don’t feel like going back downstairs or when a slightly older baby is crawling around playing contentedly)
  • change mat for downstairs (I have a perfect place for a baby changing station in the laundry room!)
  • portable crib for downstairs (so he can sleep or play while I cook dinner, etc.)

What am I forgetting in terms of furniture? I know there are all sorts of other baby things on my lists…

In the mean time, while we still don’t have baby’s room all set up, I did add a webpage for our baby. See the link in the right column for Paul’s Page. I figure, making a webpage for him will make it easy to post the extra-adorable pictures of the extra-adorable kid once he comes. You won’t even have to read my ramblings. (Unfortunately, I think you have to register separately on that page in order to post comments.)

Does it seem strange that Paul is still kicking around inside of me and yet he already has a webpage? It is kind of odd, I admit.

ETA April 2011: Paul’s separate webpage has been merged into this one.

Home

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We are in our new home.

It’s a three bedroom, 2.5 bath town home, plus a loft, double garage, and yard. And it feels quite spacious, if not a little empty. It’s a lot of space for just us. But, in a few months it will feel a bit more crowded with one more to join us. (Interestingly, so much space costs about as much to rent per month as our 1 bedroom plus study apartment in Chicagoland.)

Now it is just a matter of making it home.

Our new home is mostly furnished with the classy furniture chosen for us by the rental studio. They say we can come back and exchange things in a month or so if we decide we don’t like something. But at this point, it’s nice to have a place to sit.

My favorite part of our new home is the front entryway. It has such a lovely, grand staircase. It makes me feel like I’m walking into a mansion!

The downstairs floors are all the most delicious red wood. But I’ve already discovered the downside of having lots of hardwood floors: dust. I can tell I must mop every other day to keep it looking nice. Once baby comes to keep it messy, I’ll be moping all that floor space twice a day. Also, my husband pointed out that it is just too hard to walk around or stand in the kitchen cooking without shoes on. But it sure looks nice.

They sent a console table and an interesting centerpiece. I wasn’t sure what to do with the table, so I put it in the front hallway. What should I hide in that drawer?

The kitchen is very modern and full of quality appliances. My husband likes the five-burner stove. We’re renting dishes and other kitchen stuff until ours arrives in a few weeks.

The orange, reddish, and yellow chairs that go with our dining set are starting to grow on me. The colors all coordinate okay into the red wood floor, so it really doesn’t seem all that strange. I really like the bay window for the dining area.

You can see how much empty space we have between the kitchen/dining area and the couches. Just the right size for a….playpen?

Our living room area looks a bit sparse: there is so much space and two couches just don’t fill it up well. Our piano is coming for the other bay window. We have such a lovely view of the Dandenongs (“mountains”; for those of you in Utah, consider them “big hills”).

We have a backyard! It is quite large. There’s supposedly been a drought (I’ve only seen rain every other day), so the grass is a bit muddied. We’re in charge of maintaining the yard, so it’s time I studied local plants!

Our master bedroom is on the ground floor, just by the front door. Upstairs is a large loft with more hard wood–not sure what we’ll put in that space. One of the bedrooms upstairs is a study with two desks, a small “sweet” one for me (aka, old and lopsided) and a regular office desk for my husband. The other upstairs bedroom will be a nursery! We didn’t get any furniture for that yet. We’ll choose it next month when we go back.

So that’s our house. I like it. I can’t wait until we get our box of stuff so we’ll have our towels and linens and dishes and pictures for the walls. Then it might feel a little more like home.

But so far so good.