Move-in day; also an excellent approximation of my feelings about my kitchen floor
I hate my kitchen floor. I have hated it from the moment I moved in, when it consisted of paint-splattered linoleum in a shade that could generously be called "vomit." I hated it after I tried to fix it by covering the linoleum with peel-and-stick tiles, which - as it turns out - reallllly aren't the best choice for this large or well-trafficked of a space.
I'm currently working on a book about teachers, which means that I am thinking about mugs (a.k.a. the very last thing the teachers in your life want from you) more than the average bear.
I'm not particularly overextended in the mug department myself, but teacups are another story. My mom - like many, many moms out there, apparently - has always collected teacups, and over the years she's passed off a handful to me as "gifts" (a.k.a. "things she has too many of and no room for"). Which means I, too, now have a lot of teacups. Some of them are family heirlooms and belong safely tucked away in my china cabinet, but others are just...teacups. I have no special attachment to them, but they're not the kind of thing you toss in the garbage, you know?
Enter my friend Mollie's grandmother, Shotzy (which, if you're wondering, means "Darling" in German, because of course it does). Shotzy loved having a perfectly matched table, so whenever one of her teacups broke, she passed on the rest of the set to one of her granddaughters.
These cookies are fudgy (almost brownie-esque), just the tiniest bit fruity, and crowd-pleasers for all ages (I almost had to call them "Chocolate Cookies" instead of "Chocolate-Cherry Cookies" because OMG, six-year-old, STEP AWAY FROM THE MARASCHINOS).
CHOCOLATE CHERRY VALENTINE'S COOKIES
What you need:
Gorgeous layered rugs in my friend Elise's mountain home (full tour here)
You know the layered-rug trend that's been all over Pinterest these past few years? I always liked the way it looked, but never really thought of doing it myself, because rugs (or at least the ones I usually like) tend to be expensive, and if I'm buying a fancy rug I'd like to see...well, all of it. But lately, my fancy rug is having a rough go of it. Since life has been more than a little exhausting lately, by the time dinner rolls around I am ZONKED, and usually just plonk all three of us down in front of the TV to eat.
I know, I know, TV during dinner = bad, but what-EVER. I grew up with two parents who worked full-time in office jobs, so dinnertime was usually our first chance to actually see each other; had we all zoned out in front of the TV while we ate we would have cut down the time available to actually interact with each other by half. But I interact with my children a lot these days. And I also really, really love watching TV while I eat dinner, and I am the boss, and so TV during dinner it is.
I spent the entirety of New Year's weekend living my very best life, by which I mean I watched all seven episodes of The Queen's Gambit while Marie Kondo-ing every inch of this house. You guys, my Tupperware is organized. WHAT. (Related: How is it that I have reached the age of nearly forty years old, and have only just realized that the tops of Tupperwares click together for easier storage?)
One of my favorite things about being single (and there are many, starting with shared custody that permits the aforementioned living of one's best life) is that I have total and complete control over what comes into this house, and what goes out of it. In non-toy-related categories, at least. K is a lot more sentimental about possessions than I am, so there was a constant push-pull over what could and couldn't be tossed. As an example, I do not keep my children's artwork. I keep *some* of it, sure - the really special pieces, to the tune of, say, ten per year per kid - but anyone who has ever had a preschooler knows that they regularly get sent home with foot-high stacks of "artwork" that mostly consists of paint splotches in varying shades of purplish-brown, which is the result you get when you're thinking less about color theory and more about mushing your brush into the paper as hard as possible.
