Here's the charming evidence

When did I ever say I was a vigilant housekeeper?

See two posts before this for the back story..Ewwww!

Family Centerpiece

We had some 20 people to dinner the other night, many of whom had not seen each other since the 1960s. It was a reunion for David’s side of the family and a pretty important one too. Naturally I wanted to make the house look its best and maybe that’s also why home décor has been so much on my mind this past week: I was anticipating this one great night.Yesterday I talked here about using a cut-up bottle to make a hanging planter and mentioned that for this task you need to get your hands on a bottle-cutting kit of some kind, a device from the 70s that I was pretty sure had come and gone like the Pet Rock. So Imagine my surprise when the very first Google search I did turned up this beauty here.To cut the bottle you scratch a faint line all around the circumference using the little blade that comes with the kit. Then you insert a kind of sturdy metal implement inside and go clink clink clink all along this hairline fracture and the next thing you know the bottle cleaves in two. It’s like magic! The top parts you can use for the many things but I think you’ll agree that the bottoms cry out to be made into….. drinking glasses! You just have to sand the dickens out of the jagged break line so blood doesn’t trickle down into your beverage when you lift the thing to your mouth, but hey that’s easy to do too.I think they’re adorable though I didn’t bring any of them out to add character to last night’s reunion table. For last night’s reunion centerpiece I bought four little vases for 99¢ apiece and filled them with a couple of wildflowers snipped from the neighbor’s flowerbed that abuts our driveway (thank you Fontana family!)Also the blossoms from two three-dollar houseplants scored at the discount store.These I interspersed with some favorite fake pumpkins collected over the years, three real gourds, ivy from the side of our house and dried cranberries scattered about for the people who like to eat a centerpiece. Here's another of those nice fake pumpkins now, this one ceramic -  and a guest brought the flowers, and the candle is from last Christmas :Then, when the sun went down and the reunion dinner was about to commence I nestled a couple of lit candles down among all these objects.... 

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 And what a night it was for my husband’s side of the family. What a night of new beginnings for us all!

Fine Dining

What is my problem? I know how a broiling lamb chop shed fat so why do I forget every time and cover the broiler-pan with tinfoil? Do I really not remember what you get when fat pools on foil in 500-degree heat? Fire! But they’re so little, went my thinking last night.  Just four slender little rib chops. How much fat can they produce?” I stretched the foil  over the rack that sits in the broiler pan and laid those chops DOWN, once again giving nary a thought to the fact that I was covering the holes designed to drain the fat away.Just then I got an emergency text from a reporter and begun madly texting back and the next thing I knew the kitchen was filled  with a cheerful crackling sound and a warm orange glow lit up the inside of the oven.“We got fire!  I yelled to Old Dave who was stretched out reading a couple of rooms away. “I’m on top of it !" I added even as I rapidly flung open every canister on the counter-top in search of the one with the flour.I turned off the broiler and opened the oven door: sure enough, a fire as merry as Christmas Morning. I tossed in a scoop of flour and half the flames went out.Then the smoke detector went off. I opened the back door to get the smoke out and David, newly arrived in the kitchen, took a dishtowel and began waving it in the air. I returned to the stove, threw more flour onto the flames and watched as they quickly disappeared.All this went forth without a word being spoken between us. We're old hands at this kind of thing.  He got out the plates and the silverware and set out some napkins. Then all that was left for me to do was to set out the salad and the rice, open a nice young  Chianti, throw a little salt on the floury goo, stir it around on its tinfoil and voilà: crispy lamb chops served up with some good-old-fashioned spur-of the-moment PAN GRAVY as an unexpected treat. :-)

 Bon Appetit! 

An Offer You Can't Refuse

I just  got one of those emails, this one claiming to have  come from my own little author site.  “Beautiful Russian women waiting to meet you!" it says.  What I like even better is its subject line:  “I CAN DO FOR YOU IS WHAT NOT NO GIRL” it promises, presumably in an effort at sounding adorably new to English.How sweetly naïve this Eastern promise is! Especially when you remember that we’re all uniform construction sets, our little bodies assembled according to just one design. Hence, people have pretty much figured out how to put the Tinker Toy parts of themselves together in just about every way they can be put together.So I ask myself: what exactly is this saucy minx who speaks from my site going to do for you? There's one thing I know I can do for you 'what not no other girl can do' - what not no other girl will do either. Click below to see what that is:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lE1mP0BmFE]