Day 27 - Kitchen Decor

This is a framed menu from Chino Latino restaurant in Minneapolis. It lives on a tiny sliver of wall beside my fridge. The other side is a really cool poster print of a Mexican/Chinese guy, but I chose to frame it with the food-side-out for two reasons: 1) our dinner there was one of the most memorable ever and 2) whenever I can't decide what to cook, I turn to it for inspiration.

Chino Latino features an eclectic mish-mash of all of the best street foods from the world's "hot zones", from Pad Thai to a whole roasted pig dinner (72 hours notice, please.) On the night that we went, we had fish tacos, jerk chicken, and Mexican grilled corn that was so good we ordered seconds. And, yes, I fell off the veggie-wagon that night. I blame it on the massive tropical cocktails.

Day 25 - Dining Room

Don't get me wrong; I love my house. I really do. In the almost 4 years that we have been here, I have only wanted for a handful of things: a self- cutting lawn, a fireplace, and a dining room. As in, a *real* dining room, not just a (cozy) corner of the kitchen.

Day 20 - Before & After

My fella has always been amazed by the number of dishes that we generate over the course of a day...or even just with one good meal. Just tonight, I used 3 pans, a pot, a mixing bowl, 3 wooden spoons and 2 knives just to get dinner on the table...plus our plates, bowls and cutlery. One of these days I will get the dishwasher fixed, but until then it all gets washed by hand.

Some days it's lot to deal with, so, in order to not get completely overwhelmed by the clean-up, I try to rinse, wash and stack as much as I can while the food prep is still underway. Then, after we've eaten, it just takes me a few minutes to finish up what's left in the sink and wipe down the counters and the stove. Everything drip-dries overnight and gets dealt with at some point the next day, depending on how busy we are. 

It doesn't bother me to have *clean* dishes waiting to be put away, but I can't sleep unless that sink is empty when I go to bed.

A Perfect Marriage

The art in our home is becoming quite an eclectic combination of store-bought prints and posters, original pieces, and found objects. Scattered among the original pieces are a few works of my own, including a somewhat “Mad Men”-esque collage (pictured below) which hangs in our living room. (See, I do occasionally keep the stuff that I make!) It's a perfect marriage of two of my favourite things - vintage self-help books and lovely ladies.



As far as collages go, it’s a pretty simple one, but I absolutely love how it turned out. I’ve used only two elements – a figure cut from a vintage pattern envelope and a dust jacket from “How to Help Your Husband Get Ahead”, a very helpful book written in 1953 by Mrs Dale Carnegie, wife of the much-quoted American author and lecturer, Dale Carnegie. (Incidentally, one of the chapters in the book is titled “Getting Along with his Secretary”. Isn’t that fabulous??)