From time to time here at TNH Central, odd boxes show up at the door, addressed to "Editor." Sometimes I know they're coming; sometimes I don't. Usually they contain books, but not today.

Today, a long thin one showed up, and inside was a HomeRight Paint Stick Kit. I vaguely remember telling a PR guy I'd give it a bash. After all, we have a kitchen to paint--oh yeah, hey! We shooed the last of the workmen out! The cabinets, flooring, countertops, they are all done! Jeffy the Hippie Contractor has only a tiny bit of mudding to do, then we get to paint! Eeek! I have to find colors now!

So the Paint Stick showed up at the right time. We've been curious as to whether these work better than just an ol' roller and tray, and I guess we'll find out. If this does work, it'll make painting the high ceilings around here really easy, almost fun. We'll keep you posted, and I'll try to get pix of the kitchen soon.
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Eleven years ago this week, The New Homemaker was born. Josie was about 18 months old, Louisa was a wish, and my life was very different.

Josie is now twelve and a half. She is as tall as I am, and by the end of the year will probably loom over me. Louisa is past my shoulder, and turns nine next month, if you can believe it.

TNH has survived economic catastrophes, disk crashes, pregnancy, critical illnesses, and stuff you'll never know about. Here we are, eleven years later.

Thank you for reading.
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It gets very dark and gray in Oregon in the winter, so any bits of color I can get into my life, I do. The cheapest, most instant-gratification-y way I've found? Nail polish. Cheap bottles can be as little as a dollar, and I get them in all kinds of colors, anything that appeals! Right now my nails are a warm metallic gold--gilded like a picture frame! But at other times this winter, they've been deep red, mermaid blue, dark green. Cheers me up every time I look at my hands.

Another way to get color: Embroidery floss! Also cheap, and in vivid tones. Here's a big pile I've collected:

And this is what I'm doing with it:

This started life as a Russian punch embroidery kit we could never figure out; the punch wouldn't punch. But I liked the design, so i decided to just do regular old embroidery over it. I'm done with the background and have started the chicken. It's turning out really well and will be framed and hung either in the kitchen or in the TV room. Possibly the latter. We have this odd animal motif going on in there.

The unexpected jolt of color:

One of my youngest daughters' friends managed to somehow snap the axle of my spinning wheel clean off. Luckily, it's a Babe Production wheel and almost everything on it is pretty much open source/self-serve--we just need a dowel.

The funny thing was when JJ took it apart to pound out the broken pieces. Inside (the top of the supporting tube is open), we found my missing needle-nose bottle of spinning oil, its refill bottle (I've been missing both for six years), five colored pencils, a bright blue knitting needle, and a big piece of pink pink pink sidewalk chalk!
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So glad you asked! I've taken up my crafting again in earnest after a couple of years of lackluster inspiration.

I'm nearly done with a ripple afghan which turned into a blanket. This is what happens when you don't pay attention to the hook size closely enough. The gauge is so tight that when I'm done I'll have something like 12 skeins in this thing. It is HEAVY.

I just finished a pair of very simple thumbless, fingerless mitts--a tube with a slit for the thumb--out of some handspun Romney I spun in the grease:

Just now on the needles: Another set of fingerless mitts, this pair much more ornate, and out of Shepherd Sock Solid in charcoal. Ruffled cuffs, a stretchy eyelet for the hand, a proper thumb, even.

After that, I don't know. Maybe I'll just concentrate on the blanket, and then figure out what to make next. I'd like a proper sweater for myself.

Meeting someone you've known for 13 years for the first time is an odd thing. Will we like one another? Are we each the person the other thought she was? After all, people are often different online than they are in person; they're not lying about who they are, but they're better able to express themselves or connect than they are in real life (or vice versa).

My old online friend Nita is exactly who I thought she was--lovely, warm, altogether delightful. We spent the evening eating good barbecue, listening to Lou prattle about her latest story (she's writing, you see), playing with Henry the Floppy Dog, and talking. My only regret is that she didn't get to meet Josie, one of the babies that brought us together. (Jo's in Eugene with her cousins.)

Yay! I met Nita! We're no longer imaginary friends!

Yesterday we finally got the last cabinet. Some time next week, we'll have the cabinet fronts back, newly repainted--did I tell you that? All the new cabinets showed up with the paint peeling off. grrr.

The new cabinet is perfectly painted, and the cabinet maker is making things right. When he brings the fronts, he'll also repaint the base cabinets. Yeah, those got munged, too.

So: Floor, check. Last cabinet, check.

What remains: Framing for the fridge--it got pushed into what was the door to the back porch, which is now a sorta shed accessible only from the new deck; the countertop for the new cabinet; and the painting. Oh, and a new unfitted glass display case/cabinet where I can put my pretty things like teapots that I regularly use.

We're already re-organizing things. I winnowed my cookbook collection from nearly 100 volumes down to 30, and from there, down to 17 remaining books, all beloved.

The major casualty: My ancient, falling-apart copy of "Laurel's Kitchen," which I've kept all these years solely for the introduction. Carol Flinders' essay on the value of women's work is absolutely brilliant, as was her similar essay in the first edition (I had the tenth anniversary second edition).

But the recipes themselves are horrid, the nutritional advice is outdated, and we are about as diametrically opposed to vegetarianism as we can be. If I could get a chapbook of the introductions, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But the book itself is in my recycling bin.
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For thirteen years now, I've been a member of an online support group of mothers. We formed as a group early in our pregnancies on what was then the only dedicated listserv for pregnant women. We were supposed to be together only for the duration of our pregnancies, all due in October of 1997. (Josie came in September, earlier than expected, but they let me stick around. ) At one point early in the babies' lives, someone said, wouldn't it be funny if we were still together when the kids were in kindergarten? We all scoffed.
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Thirteen years later, one of our October kids has shaved for the first time. Many of the girls "became women." (Hi, Aunt Flo!) One of our children (of a set of triplets) was stillborn, one died seven days later, one of the children died of cancer very young, but those mothers are still a part of our list.

Many siblings have arrived for our October kids. Marriages have ended, new marriages begun. We've been there as some of us have survived cancer, two of us strange heart conditions. When I was struck myself, the list was there for me.

Out of the 140 or so original members, nearly 60 remain, even though we've changed listservs at least four times. We are homeschoolers, teachers, political activists (on different sides), artists, mothers of one, mothers of many. We live mostly in the US but have members in Europe, Canada and what used to be called the Antipodes. We've often said that we have only October in common. But that's been enough.

This Saturday, I get to meet Nita for the first time. She'll be in town for a conference, and we're going to hang out for the night. I am beside myself with excitement. She is no "imaginary friend"; she's been my friend for thirteen years, and yet we've never met face to face. It's one of the weirdest feelings in the world, feeling so close to someone and yet so far.

I'll let you know what happens.

Ever think about becoming a reporter? (Hint: Don't.) Here's how to put a story together:

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Dr Oetker. All opinions are 100% mine.

Hey, all you Canadians! Do you buy Dr Oetker's products? We get some of them down here in the States. I'm especially fond of the pudding mixes--they're weird-stuff-free, and gluten free to boot (though not everything they make is gluten-free). Now they're running a contest you might want to know about.
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It's the Dr Oetker Adventure Romantica Contest, and if you enter, you may win eleven days in Italy--touring, airfare, meals, the whole bit. I just watched a Tony Bourdain "No Reservations" where he went to Italy, and man, if I didn't hate airplanes, I'd totally go.

You need to register online to enter. Inside specially marked packages of Dr Oetker pizzas you'll find a PIN number. You can enter as many PINs as you like, so if you're a pizza fan, you just might win. There are other prizes, too--mostly frozen pizza. Surprise!

You've got until February 15th to enter. Good luck!

We have been in this fershlugginer kitchen remodel/recovery since AUGUST, and before then our old floor was a disaster. Well, feast your eyes on this (commentary by JJ):

Marmoleum in Barbados (off-white), Raven (black) and Bleecker Street (red--yeah, I don't get the name either). As you can see, the baseboards aren't in yet, nor is the painting done. But oh, man, it's an improvement from this:

End of February it should be 100% done, the railings on the new deck in, the painting done, everything fresh and tidy and re-organized. It's like having a new house. I keep going in there as it is, with the new floor and the stainless steel appliances and countertops, and think I've walked into the wrong house...
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We love Netflix. We're not big buyers of movies, and we always have a hard time remembering to take videos and DVDs back to the rental place.

When Netflix rolled out their online streaming, we loved them even more, because we are big fat flakes and keep forgetting to send discs back! Yeah, I know, they send the envelope with the DVD, blah blah. We're pathetic. With the online streaming, boom, nothing to return, instant gratification, better blah blah.

Problem: We had to hook up my laptop to watch. On the old TV, it wasn't that big a deal. But on our new TV, there's no way to hook the computer's audio output; we had to run it separately through a pair of precariously placed speakers.

Not any more!

We bought a ROKU Digital Video Player. It's about the size of a paperback book--it's tiny--and it connects to the household wifi network. It streams Netflix directly into the TV, bypassing my laptop completely. That leaves it free to access IMDB to settle the inevitable arguments over who a particular actor is.

It interfaces with your Flickr account, so you can see your pictures right up on the big screen; it carries Amazon's video service and a number of other pay and free services as well. We really only use it for Netflix. But even if you only use it for that, it's well worth the price. It makes using Netflix on demand ridiculously easy.

The "Aughts" were a hard decade for this family. We started out healthy, happy, and rich--yeah, we were multimillionaires there for a brief, shining moment. Then we were plunged into poverty and sickness.

We've spent most of the decade climbing painfully out of both conditions, and while we're not entering the "Teens" in as good as shape as the previous decade, we're sure ending it better than we've been through most of the "Aughts." The main things we're grateful for about the decade are that we have Louisa (2001), and that I'm still alive after the medical cock-ups that started in 2002. I still fantasize about suing everyone involved, but I can't take the stress.

But here I am in 2010. I'm still alive. I'm finally feeling as if I can stop looking backward, as if I've finally processed what happened to us, and what happened to me. Financially, we're about as precarious as most middle-class families these days, but nothing like we were post-2001. Our kids are well. John's well--better than ever. And I'm ready to look ahead, not back.
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I don't make "resolutions"; I set goals and list projects I want to finish. This is my list, for the year and the decade.

Goals for 2010:

• To keep off the 20+ pounds I lost last year, and take off more. I'm not setting a number. Last year, the weight just came off, unexpectedly.
• To continue to drive as little as possible. Part of why I lost weight last year is that I got my awesome, pimped-out bike, and I rode it hundreds of miles. This is a goal not just for my health but also for sustainability. Not driving helps make us less dependent on oil, foreign or domestic. At our house, one of our rallying cries is "Bicycle Against Terrorism!" Because every dollar we don't pay at the gas pump is money that doesn't go to terrorists funded by our alleged allies. (Saudi Arabia, I'm looking at you.)
• To get back to my spinning and knitting. I've let it sit fallow for most of the last couple of years, and unlike most people, NOT having wool all over me is making me itch.
• To get better at bellydancing. Yes! I've taken up bellydancing, and it's awesome. I refuse to quit, even though it's been hard not to.
• To write more here. I've been writing a lot elsewhere, and I really miss writing here.
• To work even harder at buying local and living sustainably.

Projects for 2010:

• Finishing the kitchen remodel, tearing everything out of the shelves, and re-organizing. The remodel is *so close to being done!* The floor should be in by the end of next week, gods willing and the creek don't rise. We've been dealing with this since AUGUST!
• Finishing the little bit of work in Lou's room.
• Paneling and painting Jo's room, and getting her a new wall unit.
• Redoing the basement and garage into our main family entryway and mudroom, setting up my sewing area down there again, and making me a proper office down there so I can keep office hours instead of trying to work in the chaos of the living room.
• Finishing that @%#^@!!! pound of merino I've been spinning for AGES. I also want to spin up at least three other 3-8 oz rovings.
• Finish the blanket-that-started-out-as-an-afghan. When I'm done it'll have something like 12 skeins of Homespun in it! It's already as heavy as my down comforter. Let this be a lesson to you: if you're going to crochet a simple "wave" afghan, use a big hook, dang it!
• Sew up the big novelty yarn pillows I knitted in September/October.
• Start sewing for myself again.
• Knit myself a sweater that fits and flatters me.
• Knit Jo a pair of mittens.
• Getting the newly-small yard done up for both enjoying and food production.

Goals for the decade:
I really only have one goal. This is the decade both my girls will (probably) leave home. I want them to have a good start, and realizing that the "teens" is when they're leaving really galvanizes me.

What are your goals and projects?

Monty Python fans will get the reference.

My kitchen is "done enough." The cabinets and countertops are in, all but one anyway, the plastering is done. We still need to paint everything, get the cabinets repainted (the cabinet maker did a crappy job and I am still ticked off, but he promised to make good), and put the flooring in, but our contractor has been called away for family stuff until mid-December and...well, you can see how that's going to go.

Oh! A picture. I has one:



It's gotten a teeny bit more finished since then, but you get the idea. That's one big piece of stainless, by the way; the backsplash is part of the countertop, and the sink's been welded in. So far? Rave reviews. Now to get the rest finished.