amidst festivity

(taken with polaroid 180 on chocolate film)

hi.
how's your holiday season going on?
here snow has just started to rage around in the air, and it's a quiet wednesday morning.

not many words have come to me lately, so i've been rather absent here.
today i don't have much to say yet, just a small talk over the christmas feast we've just had a couple days ago.

as we decided to be as simple as possible to celebrate christmas, so was the feast.
we started with 2 kinds of cheese (brie and blue cheese) and fresh fruits, crudites with hummus, artisan country bread and champaign.(the picture above is of those.)
for main dish, i fixed seafood pasta.
it was satisfying and cozy meal.

oh, i have to say this!
we're really pleased with panettone bought at the co-op a couple weeks ago.
as i told you before, i whipped heavy cream with good pinch of kirsh and topped slices of them.
the subtlety of combination of those was beyond description.
it must be repeated next year.

now i'm feeling too much pressure over the new year holidays and trying not to get irritated.
i suggested my husband that we should chose either christmas or a new year's day to celebrate because it's too much for me to celebrate both.
i can't help but feel this is the japanese wife who lives in the u.s.'s sad fate.
am i too fussy over these things and you're willing to celebrate both?


stay warm, keep satisfied.:)

random thoughts for christmas

(taken with minolta autocord lll on fuji pro 400nc)

hi.
today i don't have much to say.

i've just cooked very quickly for holidays and now the room is being filled with god damn nice smell from the oven.
and cats are roaming around the pie dish put on the counter from the oven.
they know it'll be yummy. ( hopefully.)
when it turns out to be good enough to share with you, i'll tell you about the recipe sometime later.

even though i don't expect a christmas present from my husband, i'm very happy now.
i'm living in our new home with our 3 cats.
i don't think of happier situation than this.
tomorrow i'll be very lazy with them.
the day after tomorrow i'll drink champaign with some good food.

oh, i said that i'm not gonna have anything for christmas, but my husband allowed me to buy this.
after spending a lot for the house, i've stayed away from this thing till now.
i love polaroid(now should i call "impossible"?), but they are now far from affordable for me nor trusty enough as they are still at the experimental stage. (i was a bit disappointed with the quality of their first color film, "color shade first flush".)

i hope you'll have the merriest christmas in either case you expect a big present or not. ;)

a cake i made for christmas in the past year

(taken with nikon fe2 on superia 400)

three more days to christmas.
and how're you doing?
i'm quite slow on everything, and enjoying everyday with my cats and crocheting.


i like to scroll my food portfolio these days, and today i came across several old photos probably taken 3~4 years ago on the christmas day.
i think i was more strict over my diet at that time, and this cake was kinda vegan cake.
i don't remember exactly what ingredients i used for making this cake, but apparently this seems to have been a vegan apple cheese cake.
i didn't really use cream cheese but tofu and soy milk and some other veggie products instead of dairy product people usually use for making an usual cheese cake.
doesn't it look perfect real cheese cake?

actually, i haven't really liked to make cake or that kinds.
for one thing, i don't care for sweets at all, and another thing it's hard to make these yummy and healthy as well.
also as i used to be vegan, macrobiotics or such kind, making sweets were always full of ambition and fear.
so you want to ask me why i made this cake, don't you?
the reason why i made this cake is just to lift our spirit up for the special day.
i didn't care, and my husband didn't ask me nor expected me to prepare a cake, but this unexpected feast must have added the festive feeling to us.


this year, i've already bought a box of panettone to follow my husband's request.
so i don't have to think about cake anymore.
but as store-bought cake made me feel kinda guilty and lazy, i bought a carton of heavy cream last weekend.(though i'm still not good at dairy products, occasional and festive consumption of them are ok now.)
i'll whip the cream with some flavorful fruit liquor and put it on top of a piece of slices of panettone.
i like to do decoration for sweets this way.
it's quite easy, but brings gorgeousness and the courteousness.

the picture right above is the sliced and put on a plate version of vegan apple cheese cake.
this picture makes me sure how i was and am me.
beside the slice of the cake, i put a scoop of soy vanilla ice cream, and the sauce around them must have made from balsamic vinegar, apple sauce, maple syrup, grand marnier and roughly cracked pepper.
i love add a pinch of fresh ground pepper on my dessert and liquor is always necessity for my dessert.

here's my recommendation for liquor for your pantry stock if you're curious about.
;grand marnier or cointreau, kirsch, vanilla liquor, kahlua or other coffee liquor, rum and brandy.
i've never been short of flavor with these above.
promise. :)

pizza and sunday

(taken with mamiya m645 on rdplll)

hi.
do you remember that i complaint about this year's wet weather?
and today's paper favors me with one information.
it says that this year is on track for being the city's wettest year since 1998.
see?
i don't really dislike rainy days, but this year's are too much.
so, i'm feeling sooo good today because it's sunny!!
i'll make most of this pretty weather though i'll be stuck in my home. ;P

i've been talking about the feasts we're going to have in next 1~2 weeks lately.
and i told you yesterday that we're going to eat traditional japanese style feast for the first 3 days of new year.
with regard to this, my husband asked me a few days ago if we eat our sunday pizza on January 2.
the moment i heard that question, i answered without any hesitation "yes, of course!".

i can't remember when the sunday pizza started within us.
3 years ago?, or 4??
anyway, we have been stuck with that habit for quite a while.
that long we are accustomed to having pizza on every single sunday, i'm afraid that i feel my hands are shaking like a symptom of addiction on sunday without pizza.
i definitely need pizza even sunday falls on a new year's day or the day after.

well, the picture was taken at the brewery restaurant which features their handmade pizza in portland, oregon when we visited there last march.
as we eat our own pizza every sunday, we seldom eat out for pizza in our own town.
but i think we'd better do that sometimes in the coming year.
that doesn't necessarily mean that we're bored with our own pizza but doing so will help to make our pizza better than ever.
actually i have some pizza places that have drew my attention in my town.
the most competent candidate is the one my husband's co-worker and his wife opened recently.
he is a beer guy.
he brews his own beer and is trying to serve that in the restaurant.
and when their restaurant was picked up for the featured restaurant in the local free paper, the menu selection listed there seemed to be so nice. (how about pesto, apple, walnut and spinach on a whole wheat crust? yum!)
i expect them to be artisan pizza and beer makers.

i've already been excited with pizza life of next year!

wagaya-no-ozoni （我が家のお雑煮）

(taken with contax-rts on fuji superia 400)

i successfully did some grocery shopping for the x'mas holidays and a new year's day over the weekend.
though i was so busy to prepare season's greeting cards and didn't make even only one step outside on saturday, i was busy to go back and forth between one grocery store and another on sunday to the contrary.

in addition to the last post and the yesterday's grocery shopping episode, i want to talk about "ozoni" today.

"ozoni" is defined as a soup dish which has mochi (rice cakes) for its main ingredient, and its style differs depending on regions and families.
i'll omit the story about its history so that i don't make this post long-winded and bore you.
speaking about its ingredients, though it depends on regions and families as i told you, they are basically mochi, some meat or seafood, 2~3 kinds of veggies, and something which adds flavor like yuzu (a citrus fruit which is largely cropped in japan.) or mitsuba (leafy green which has a very similar look to cilantro, but has much milder flavor and bitter taste.).
for the soup, it also has 2 major kinds of "sumashi" soup ( transparent and has simple soy sauce flavor) and "miso" soup.
all in all, "ozoni" surprisingly varies from one family to another, and that makes me feel "ozoni" is the family food.

my ozoni is different from that of my husband's parents' and my own parents', but my original.
of course, only i haven't made my ozoni, but my husband has helped to create our own ozoni after the marriage.
usually, ozoni is created like this; a husband had eaten his mother's ozoni before the marriage, a wife had eaten her mother's ozoni the same way, and after the marriage they exchange and mix their own familiar ozoni styles and create the new one.
isn't it romantic as well as interesting?
oh, so, a part of today's title of "wagaya-no" means this romantic part. (literally it means homemade or original.)


here's our ozoni;

1, ingredients;
-mochi (i can get this at the co-op. it's regarded as health food or macrobiotic.)
-anko (sweet adzuki bean paste; i make this from scratch by getting organic dried adzuki bean also at the co-op.)
-ikura (salmon roe in english. i don't think it's common nor both parents' style, but we love this on ozoni so much.)
-flowery shaped daikon radishes and carrots, lightly boiled snow peas and shiitake mashroom.

2, how mochi is served;
either style of being lightly toasted and put in the soup or simply and easily poached in the soup are fine.
but we prefer the former way because of the slightly burned surface of mochi.
it offers flavorful aroma and pleasant crisp texture.

3, soup varies day by day;
because we follow a traditional way of eating "osechi-ryori" and "ozoni" for the first 3 straight days of the new year, we usually change the soup day by day, like sumashi-miso-sumashi or sumashi-sumashi-miso.

4, leftover anko's future;
this part is not exactly related to the topic, but i like this part.
as i make more anko than we really need for ozoni, i divide the leftover anko into 3~4 flat sheet on plastic wrap and wrap them up and put them in the freezer.
every weekend after a new year's day, i thaw one and use for our weekend breakfast to eat "anko-pan".
"anko-pan" is, i think, like PBJ sandwich's japanese version. ( i mean sweet sandwich not savory one.)
i put anko, lightly kirsh(cherry liquor) added whipped cream and a drop of orange marmalade between bread.
it's yummy!


so, i'm very ready to make and eat ozoni and anko-pan!
can't wait!!

cooking madness

(taken with sx-70 on 600 film)

this time of the year i'm stunned by a lot of consideration to be made over cooking.
the closer it draws to the end of the year, the more disorderly my mind is cluttered.
x'mas holidays, the new year's day, .... ah...
what should i prepare for x'mas feast and how should i manage to fix the traditional japanese style new year's feast?!

the picture was taken on the new year's day this year.
as my husband and i are japanese by origin, we've kept eating this traditional style of japanese food to cerebrate the new year's day.
actually, i don't care it at all.
but i know that my husband cares it a lot.
so i've kept following his internal request even after we came to the u.s.
my wish that i live in the west coast because there're abundant of japanese food and seafood is easily doubled or tripled or more especially this time of the year.
i try not to come to that idea usually, but i can't wipe away this seasonal and occasional envy.
after all the frustration and headache, i work very hard to make them from scratch every year.
and this year is also unexceptional.

so, i definitely have to make a cooking list and a shopping list so that i don't get slammed at very end of the year.
i always think that cooking is all about planning.
by reviewing with this picture, i'll make an ultimate lists later today.

hope you'll have an enjoyable weekend.
don't get hastened so much!

around the table lately

(taken with nikon f on fuji superia 400)

i like white steam floating up in the air when i exhale, and today's a perfect cold sunny day to enjoy that.
under such low temperature, my cats seem to decided to be quiet at their each favorite places.

the picture was taken recent weekend.
word game's pieces and board cluttered up the table and it has often been seen lately.
this time of the year, it is so common for us.

maple is on one of the chairs.
she loves that place, and almost all through the day she's there.
other two cats also loved this place, but after we welcomed maple to our home, they seem to have decided to offer one of their favorite places to this pretty newcomer kindly.

i don't know which, but one of my cats licked about half of chocolate candy inside the glass container on the table. (the one at very left edge on the table.)
it has a lid, but he/she opened or slid it aside without breaking and licked candy one by one.
rough and foggy brown chocolate coating, which used to look slick and clear brown, showed the evidence.
when i first found the scene, i was very afraid that the culprit would suffer food poisoning, but seemingly everyone (every cats?) seemed to be very ok.
btw, the chocolate candy inside the container was "whoppers", and i like having 2 balls of them with a cup of morning coffee.
it is one of current "shoukakkou-小確幸-"s (which means tiny but sure happiness in japanese, the famous novelist "haruki murakami" created this word.) for me.
there used to be peanuts m&m inside the container before, but whoppers've took over its place since halloween.
yes i first got it from the left over candies supposed to be given to children and unexpectedly came to love it!

since the dining area is between the living area and the kitchen, i like sitting there. (actually, "here" is proper, because i'm always blogging here!)
from here, i can see what' going on where.
i can see all my 3 cats sleeping peacefully, plants by the window collecting precious light, a kettle hissing on the cooktop, and so on.
in winter, things around table are very pretty.

yearning for italy

(taken with nikon f on kodachrome 64)

hi.
today is very cold and beautiful day.
i feel the sun light.
the harshness of the cold air gives me a good stimulus.
i'm going to enjoy today as much as possible.


recently italy is growing on me more and more.
maybe because i like drinking wine lately.
and maybe because i watched the dvd movie, "eat pray love", which julia roberts stared, last weekend.
to tell the truth, i didn't really like the story itself, but loved the scenes shot in italy.
i definitely envied julia because she's in italy, eats italian food, absorbs the atmosphere italy offers.
just after watching the movie, i made a promise to myself to learn italian more seriously.
well, 3 days have past since then and i haven't started to learn it yet, but i'll .... yes, i'll do that!

my husband and i went to italy about one and a half years ago for the first time.
i suddenly came up with the idea to go somewhere in europe this time of the year 2 years ago.
i didn't exactly know where i wanted to go, but when i started to search air tickets to somewhere in the web, i typed in the word of "italy" in the blank of the destination.
my husband and i have been together for 17 years now, and before we got married we liked to eat out in the italian restaurant and talked like this; "sometime in future, we should go to italy, shouldn't we?"
then we got married and we had a 10 year anniversary last year.
as we didn't have honey moon trip when we got married (we even didn't have an official wedding party), i thought that the trip to italy to cerebrate our 10 year anniversary must be a prettiest idea.
this way, our destination fell on italy.

a year later since then, this year in other words, we went back to italy.
we could go somewhere other country in europe, but we didn't come up with that idea.
we slightly changed the destination within italy this year, but mostly the same region.
of all the places we've visited, we utterly fell in love with south.
puglia (the heel part) is amazing!
basilicata (the bottom part) is also pretty.
and next, i need to visit calabria (the toe part).

i was born and raised in japan and had been there for 25 years.
now i'm in the u.s.a. and have been here for 11 years.
i love both japan and the u.s., but someday in future, i want to be in italy as residents with my husband and cats.


so, what's your country you've wanted to live sometime in future?
if you have such dream, maybe learning its language might be a nice resolution of the coming year. :))

random thoughts

(taken with hasselblad 500c on fuji 400nc)
hi.
today, i don't have much to say.
so i'll list up some random thoughts with a picuture i came across.

- last night, i was woken by dull pain with my chest in the wee hour.
i can't explain what it was.
it was tough to go back to sleep and i tossed myself about in the bed.
then i threw my pillow away and picked up one of pillows lying around the floor here and there.
i dislike my new pillow although my husband seems to like it (we bought same ones on black friday.)
i dislike it because it hasn't offered me comfortable sleep and has made my husband's snore louder.
yet, i can't explain what my chest pain was.


- i have about 10 pairs of glasses.
i've been wearing the red one in the picture lately.
i got it in austin, tx about 9 years ago.
it seems that my bad vision hasn't been worsened since then.
lucky me.


- i've been apprehensive about one of my cats' eating habit lately.
she's the smallest one of all 3 cats, and second oldest one, 6 years old.
she weighed only 6lb when we adopted her at a shelter about 2 years ago.
in spite of her small and skinny body, she showed us how she was glutton after coming to our home.
then she gained 3lb, and she started to look normally curvy.
and now, she seems to be distracted during her meal time. (i feed them twice a day, 6am and 6pm.)
she shows full appetite while i'm preparing to feed, and starts to eat willingly, but quits in the middle with about half the food still left.
.....
ok, the problem has been solved, i think.
while i'm writing, i had an impulse to look closely about their food nutrition and the serving suggestion.
and i found i was wrong.
i noticed that the dry food now i feed them has much higher calorie than the one i used to do.
so the reaction milk has made is just right.
and this finding brought me another apprehension.
what's gonna happen to my oldest(8yrs) and biggest(16lb!) cat who didn't change his intake after the change of the food??
omg.


- after moving in the new home, my husband and i haven't eaten out any.
because of our diet and my preference, we've rarely eaten out for our dinner all the time.
but we liked to go to coffee houses or bakeries for our lunch weekend.
before, we used to live a bit far away from downtown.
so every time we went downtown area for working in a darkroom, hanging around saturday market, and some other reasons, we'd prefer to stay in downtown and have light meal at pretty places.
then now we live really close to downtown, i can't find the excuse to go to such places.
maybe next spring or so, when i come not to mind paying $20 or so for cafe food, we'll go there.
now, i really mind $20 because of the new home!
so please allow me to dig old pictures of cafe scenes up and paste them here. ;P (yes, today's was taken on someday in the past i can't remember.)


- i've just used up the precious film which has been destined to vanish.
its name is "kodachrome".
only one lab in the world (it's in kansas.) can develop it, and they've already announced they'll quit to accept it at the end of this year.
now, i'm relieved that i'm in time for shipping all my exposed kodachrome to them, and sad to have said good-bye forever to my favorite film as well.
i can't help but heave a sigh for the irresistible force toward the digital generation.
i admit that i'm stubborn and outdated.



it's been raining all the day today.
it is another gray day.
hope you'll find cheerful color in your day.
see you later.

it was an unusual incident for me.

(taken with nikon fe2 on kodak 400nc)
... to have chosen a piece of vintage blanket over a piece of vintage plate and a mug cup.

hi, friends.
how was your weekend?
i can easily guess that most of you felt to be hastened by something somehow, but hope you had a good rest.
for me, it was a relaxed and nice one fortunately.

so, as i told you first, i bought a pretty vintage blanket made in england, and gave up to buy another old plate and mug cup yesterday.
i've never thought i'd done such thing.
vintage hardware is my another weakness in shopping. (what is the "one"?, if you want to ask me that, you'll be able to get the answer for that in the last post.)
i don't want to say that i'm a collector, but i consistently love them.
btw, the plate in the above picture was one of old plates i possess.
it was first introduced here in this post.
the love letter from one gentleman to one lady is still in the back. (i've been making effort not to wash that out since then.)

the plate i was supposed to buy yesterday was utterly my type.
it was made in japan and blue roses and their vine were beautifully hand painted by the authentic craftsman.
i was not sure how old it is, but i don't care such thing.
though i slightly incline toward made-in-england plates, only thing i care when i buy them is pattern.
i love both simple and decorative ones, and colorful and monotone ones, so it just depends on my subtle taste for pattern.
yesterday's was just desireble to obtain without any doubt for me.
i was really supposed to buy that.

speaking about the mug cup i once held in my hand yesterday, it was the one i usually buy "automatically".
i can't explain why, but i love fire king very much.
and of all fire king series, i have the biggest weakness for "jade-ite" line.
i met the jade-ite mug cup (in the linked page, the milky green ones) with an affordable price tag yesterday.
jade-ite line usually has rather expensive transactional price tags, but i never reached ones with such price tags. (for me, the listed prices in the link page are of unthinkable.)
i seldom pay more than $10 for each pieces.
well, the price depends on which market place you're in, and i think i'm so lucky to be able to obtain them easily at very affordable price at a nearby local antique shop.
but against the favorable situation of yesterday, the jade-ite mug didn't come to me.
as i have a tight budget for my pleasure of antique shopping, i wasn't able to allow me to have all at once.
to tell the truth, i didn't buy a plate or mug cup, but bought a stuffed bear besides. :P
i can't explain why, again, i've had obsession with stuffed animals, especially secondhand ones.
i wanted the stuffed bear with the blanket and had both of them finally over the plate and the mug.

my first job of the week was washing the blanket and bathing the bear.
i think this is the prettiest job to be done on monday.
i hope you're having a pretty monday as well.

a squirrel notebook

since i was a kid, i have had an unchangeable weakness for stationery.
especially for notebooks.
even if i don't really know how i'll use them for, i can't help myself from buying pretty notebooks.
i like the ones simply bound, rather thin, with inside pages free from any illustrations, and with a front page with a little pretty image and printed letters.
so, the one in the picture above is the perfect for me!

hi, friends.
today's story is about notebooks.
because i love to write something on notebooks at the table, i don't think this topic is inadequate for this blog even though here is the place mostly talked about food, isn't it? ;)

the size of the squirrel notebook is about 5'x7', and i bought that together with a bit bigger one with a deer image (about 7'x10') in its front.
they are from anthropologie about 1 year and some ago.
i seldom buy or am not fond of their clothes for some reasons, but i like to visit the store because of their stationery selection.
for those don't have this chain store nearby, i'll attach another link of their online shopping page for stationery.
not all are my taste, but i can find some of those hit my point.

in this connection i must add that the most regrettable fact about having chosen to live in the u.s. is that it's not easy to get pretty stationery as i was able to do in japan.

ok, let's go back to the original topic.
my husband and i have almost finished with the deer notebook.
i decided to follow his suggestion of using that as an our event record of 2010.
we filled it with the information for the trip to italy, some camera and lens research, occasional wishing lists, some curious drawings, and last but not least all about buying a house.
i'm so satisfied with the result of the deer note.

now, i've just started to use the squirrel one.
i'd been thinking about how to use it for long, but the idea was handed down on me 2~3 days ago.
first 5~6 pages have been filled with the information about house plants.
each pages contain one plant and tell how to care it .
after moving into the new home, i've added pretty house plants one by one, and now the number of the plants has come something.
i thought i need to know the right care for them not to lose them.
and i remembered the squirrel notebook lying around a bookcase in my room.
i thought i'd never come up with the better idea than using it for "a plant note".

every time i write something in the notebook, i sit at the table with gazing at the plants sitting by the window.
i love those moment and hope the note will be filled with a lot of plant's names in future.

i was a hopeless poached egg maker.

hi.
today is a cooking consultation day.
the subject is poached eggs.

as some of you may have known that i'm crazy about eggs in recent years.
well, i have an interesting food preference history.
for first 20 plus something years of my life, i loved eggs very much.
i think only protein i willingly consumed was eggs.
and then i changed my diet and gave up eggs.
saying good-by to eggs was kinda tough decision for me.
but i've been rather stubborn and good at keeping promise to my self, i'd been away from eggs for 4~5 years.
unbelievably i hadn't had any fragment of eggs during that time.
then another change was made a couple years ago and i finally got eggs back to my every day food to have followed the advice made by my naturopathy docctor.
since then, i've really adored eggs.
as i'm still not good at taking protein from other food, eggs are the main power source for me.

i may say that i forgot how to cook eggs during the hiatus.
or i should confess that i'm not good at cooking eggs in spite of the love for them.
well, hum, yesterday i had 2 poached eggs on toasted multi grain bread for my lunch and i was so desperate.
i thought i made or tried to make poached eggs.
but they actually were boiled fluffy egg white and yellow yolk balls.
can you imagine what they were like?
they were hopelessly most miserable and desperate poached eggs i've ever seen.
needless to say, they crushed my little heart so relentlessly.

i started to consider about how to make "right" poached eggs after the lunch.
as i've been a good executant of feedback, firstly i doubted if something important was missed or something inadequate was overdone in my method.
i'm using a le creuset sauce pan to make poached eggs, and is that wrong because it keeps water temperature too high?
i always add 1 or 2 table spoon of vinegar to water, and is that unnecessary?
i get together egg white and try to coat egg yolk with it by using a folk, and is that inadequate?
so many doubts were there, but i didn't have any clue.

so i googled and checked some written how-tos and you-tube video tutorials as well.
i was totally amazed the number of people who freaked out over poached eggs.
what an honor for poached eggs to have won such dedication from a lot of people!
but unfortunately for me, there weren't any ultimate solution not to have "separate egg white and yolk poached eggs" there.
and that mean, next time i may have another desperate poached egg.
sometimes i'm a good poached egg maker, and sometimes i'm not like yesterday.
i just need a certainty and promise of having cheerful lunch time with poached eggs.
or should i give up to have those for my lunch?

(today's picture is nothing to do with today's story as you can see. it's a sunny side up!)

it has its season for me.

(taken with sx-70 on 600 film)

today is a densely foggy day.
yesterday was a rainy day.
and i didn't see any sunshine in the weekly forecast in the yesterday's paper.
i don't remember if winter was always like that past few years here in idaho, but this year it seems to have decided to be gray almost all the time.
i definitely need vitamin d3 supplements.


a couple of years ago, i noticed that i enjoy shortbread cookies only in winter.
other than in winter, i rarely want them, or even hate them.
as i've been not good at the smell of butter at all, almost all the time i whimsically wanted something buttery and ate it, it's the unavoidable subsequence for me to be annoyed with the sticky buttery smell on the hands afterward.
croissant is the first on the list for those villains.
i sometimes want and eat it, and i'm bothered in some degree without fail.
shortbread cookie is sort of those villains.
well, except in winter.

what happened to me a couple of years ago is this.
one of my blog-related friends in england kindly sent me a gift of a set of place mats, a bag of tea and a package of shortbread cookie.
i was really pleased with her kindness and the prettiness of the design of those packages, and perplexed as well.
i've never bought shortbread cookie for me by myself because of the reason i told you above.
but i dared to confront the difficulty in this case because of the kindness of my friend.
and the package of shortbread cookie was the most fanciest i've ever seen in my entire life. (the one in the picture above is very that package. so, this pic was taken 2~3 years ago. ;P)
that was really of england.
i've been yearning for england since i was a child.
this state deserved to be given a brave try by me.

and that brave try paid off.
i became to love shortbread cookie only in winter.
i don't know exactly why only in winter.
partly because we generally need more fat in winter, partly because the cold temperature keeps buttery smell from rising up in the air, and likely because a cup of milk tea goes well with shortbread cookie.

one cold winter day with gray sky, having a piece of shortbread cookie with a cup of milk tea and cats beside must be irresistibly pretty treat.

monday after something unusual

(taken with nikon-f on fuji superia 400)

hi.
are you having happy monday?
i like monday a lot, and didn't like it a bit as well.
monday always brings me back to the usual swing of the things, and that makes me feel so comfortable and secured.
needless to say, going back to the swing needs us to make some effort, and that makes me feel a bit tired.
but i like monday after all.

so, i had something unusual this past saturday.
i and my husband were attendants at the party thrown by my friend.
as i've never been good at participating something like that, i usually manage not to be involved in.
please don't take me wrong, i love my friends but i just don't like the "gathering".
as i'm such a girl and prefer staying at home by myself rather than going out for meeting, actually this kind of occasion doesn't occur that often.
over those background, i was somehow an occasional partygoer last saturday.
to be an attendant at the party was fairly tough.
i sometimes wasn't able to find where my heart was.
the only thing kept my mind stable was my old nikon f.
i decided to bring it with me mainly because i thought i needed something like a charm.
partly because i simply wanted to shoot something pretty with my film camera.
fortunately for me, though i haven't shot much color negative film recently (i prefer slide film for color photography), i was able to find some high speed color negative film in my film stock box.

though i felt a bit awkward when i found myself in the circle of unfamiliar people, i mostly enjoyed the party because of the food my friend carefully considered and prepared, and my old nikon.
she has a good memory and remembered that we are kind of vegetarian (we eat seafood but don't any meat product.).
almost all the food on the table was "well cooked" and could be eaten by us.
i was terribly stunned by the selection, and they were really well cooked.
in most parties, vegetarian food are celery, carrots and cucumber sticks, bite size raw broccolis and cauliflowers, leafy green laid under cold cuts and ...... well, ....that's it!
the food i had this time was not anything like that at all, and that actually was more than i expected.
as my friend has real considerateness and style as well, i had thought she would entertain us a lot.
and she perfectly did entertain us in a way that exceeded my expectation.

the party was such an enjoyable one, but i still missed every day and today's cold rainy monday.
on monday, the breakfast is more merciful and tasteful.
on monday, coffee smells more atmospheric.
on monday, cats seem to be calmer and more relaxed.
and i can't help finding tiny happiness here and there in my sweet home.


i hope you're having or already had a happy monday!

lovely persimmons

(taken with hasselblad on fuji pro 800h)
hi.
today's a misty friday.
i'm a bit surprised with the fact that it's already friday, and especially that of december.
can you believe that we've already been in december?
gosh.

as usual for me, i tend to be engaged in something not very important this time of the year.
like knitting, some sort of word games, planting house plants, .... and so on.
i admit that i'm trying to flee from something important and something to be done.
if you're feeling guilty same way as me, you're not alone.
i'm with you. ;)

by the way, did i tell you about persimmons this winter?
i remember that i told you late fall that i was tired of figs and wanted persimmons instead.
in the weekend 2 weeks later i told you so, i got my first persimmons this year at an asian grocery store near my home.
though i live very close to that grocery store and i'm a japanese, i seldom go there.
only when i have necessity to go get something, i go there.
persimmons were kind of necessity for me at that time.

i made sure again that i love persimmons soooo much.
they are so versatile.
besides i simply eat them by peeling their skin and cut them into a bite size, i sometimes put them into salad, eat with yogurt, and use as a filling for sandwich with soft cheese and freshly and coarsely ground pepper.
i've never tried, but i may put them into my baked things.

today i wanted to talk about persimmons, but i felt awkward to scan the pictures i shot them this winter.
so i searched some past picture which contains the image of persimmons, and i came across the top one taken in the winter 2 years ago.
sometime later i'll update the new pictures of persimmons.


have a restful weekend, don't be rushed too much. :))

i found something!

(taken with nikon-f on rdplll)

hi.
how've you been doing?
it's been a little while since i posted last.
i had thanksgiving holidays and a pile of snow during the hiatus, and i enjoyed both with the warmth from the fire place.

well, i'm not sure, but i'm afraid that i've already had cabin fever this winter.
i haven't felt very good these days.
maybe i suffer from that, and maybe i have boredom from the loss of the hectic days as i told you in the 2 or 3 prior post.

while i had been searching for something fun or happy last days, i came across a can of cocoa in the fridge.
i totally forgot i put that there, and accidentally i found that when i was cooking and asked for frozen corn.
at the first sight, some excited feeling occurred.
what i forgot was not only the fact i stored cocoa in the fridge but also the fact cocoa can bring me a lot of happiness and fun that is limited to this very winter season.
of course you can drink a cup of hot cocoa all through the seasons, but you know what i mean?
the sweet smell and the warmth of hot cocoa makes us love winter more, doesn't it?

actually this accidental finding eased my little wounded heart.
it shouldn't necessarily be very special or gorgeous to make us feel good, right? :))
i hope you find something makes you feel good, too.

maybe i'll eat ...

(taken with polaroid 680 on px-color film)

eggs.
for my lunch today.

hi.
it's bitter cold (described that way in today's paper) outside, mildly cold inside.
and i'm wanting eggs.


(taken with polaroid 680 on px-color)

i like 2 poached eggs on 2 slices of well toasted halved whole wheat english muffin with slices of tomato and fresh basil.
fluffy white and slightly trickling yolk when opened are very good.
i'm sure they're going to make me feel satisfied and warm all through the cold afternoon.


btw, are you ready for your thanksgiving food?
i'm not, not at all.
actually i don't know what i should fix to celebrate that special day.
i've been always like that for last 10 years in the u.s..
i have some excuse for that.
so, i'm not familiar with that tradition, my husband i are vegetarian and we don't have family reunion here ( not the party time at all).
i have felt a bit lonely with this kind of traditional holiday, but i'm ok.
i have my husband and 3 cats by me, maybe pot-au-feu is nice to have for dinner, and having some glasses of red wine around the fire place sounds pretty.

i hope you'll have a pretty holiday.
stay warm and keep away from extra pounds!

welcome to my home -finale-

hi.
how was your weekend?
i had some snow over the weekend and also had pretty fire in the fire place on sunday.
gazing how fire dancing with snow quietly falling down outside was really something.
i loved that.
(though the room smells smoky today.;P)

today i don't have much to talk about my new place.
i think i introduced most of the rooms and area in my new home to you.
yet, i needed this post as a finale of the series.

my intention for having this series is letting you know about the background which stories over the food i'll talk about in future take place in.
as the food matter is so closely related to person's life style, i thought doing this is going to help you to understand the stories more precisely.



i like the dining area the most in my home.
all the cats and i are always around there.
actually i'm sitting on the dining chair and doing this.
the dining table is usually used as a working desk as well as an eating table.
i love 1 or 2 of my cats always sitting and sleeping on dining chairs under the table quietly and i'm doing something.

for me, dining area has been something beloved for long, i chose this pretty antique light fixture at my favorite antique store before i moved in.
i loved this one at first sight.
it had me imagine of north eastern european country's, like norway, finland and sweden's', dining area.
it is so classic and full of love.

because it's been mostly cloudy or rainy this fall, and the inside of the house has always been dimmed.
so i have left this light on almost all through the day, and it makes me feel warmed and relieved.

i'll tell you the stories which are going to be born here.
and i hope you are reminded of this light by those stories.


next time, i'll post something about food.
see you soon.

a little hiatus

hi, again.
this is the today's 2nd post.
i seldom do this, but i just have the necessity before posting the last post of the series "welcome to my home".

we bought a house.
we have refinished some, and still have some to be done.
everything is coming together little by little.
we start to nestle in here and adore the place.

i'm happy, but i'm also afraid that the hectic days are going away.
you know this feeling, don't you?

amidst of the hectic days we just feel like a rolling stone.
we exactly don't know where we're going.
but we have to keep rolling to meet the new day.
we may be scary, exhausted and sometimes escapist with that situation, but we still must enjoy it.
i did, and i do.

it's weird to say this, but i think i have been enjoying hectic days for last 2~3 months and will miss its absence soon.

i know that i've just done with the first period with this home.
i have second, 3rd, 4th, and more and more periods in future.
tlc for the home will never be completed.
maybe i'd just better turn my pace down a bit and be relaxed.


btw, my husband is having a difficult time to bake our sunday pizza.
we have eaten homemade pizza every single sunday.
because we started to use a new cook top and oven, he has to search how the temperature setting works.
he gradually gets to know that, but pizza has been kinda cranky since then.
here's another thing to be done little by little. ;)


talk to you soon.

welcome to my home 5

hi.
i've just finished my yard work.
raking.
after i moved in the new home, i have worked so hard outside, and that made the 85 year old neighbor lady tell me " you're one of the hardest worker i've ever seen."
hummm.
what honor.

today i want to introduce my kitchen and dining area to you.
the top picture is of the left side of the kitchen, and the second (below) is of the right side of it.
my kitchen has 3 windows facing the front yard and the street.
that allows me to be proud of how hard and well i worked on the yard.
also i'm happy with seeing people, dogs and even neighbor's outside cats walking on the street.
because my area is very close to the park and there are a lot of tree here and there, i can see quite a big number of passersby everyday.
seeing how people winterize their clothes day by day is quite fun!



i have a big one piece granite counter in the kitchen, and it is used for multiple purpose.
i fix 3 meals on it, some small plants are sitting by the window, my 3 cats come sit by the window and gaze at outside in turn (my oldest cat "hamme" is in the picture above. he was gazing at outside, but when i was to shoot that, he then turned around and started to gaze at me and the polaroid camera. :) ), seasonal fruits lie in a basket on the counter, and my husband kneads his famous ultra thin pizza dough every sunday.
it grew on me so much now, though i hated this granite counter when i moved in.



and now, it's the time to introduce my new cat, maple to you.
she had been roaming around my house for 1 month from the day we moved in this home.
and i decided to let her in 1 month after moving-in because she seemed not to belong to anyone in this neighborhood (she gradually lost her weight, and that meant nobody fed her.), my 2 inside cats almost seemed to settle in a new home, the weather gradually but surely has been shifting toward that of winter and i couldn't neglect her.
because she had always been sitting by the huge maple tree in the back yard, her name had to be "maple".
she now loves to sit on the dining chair.



and this is the dining area.
it's situated between the kitchen and the living area.
do you remember i told you that i was working on refinishing the dining table and chairs about 2 months ago?
and they're there in the picture.
they used to have polyurethane finish on the cherry color stain.
i sanded the old finish away for both the table and chairs, and then i painted white and distressed for the chairs and adopted the soap finish without paining or staining for the table.
the soap finish is the traditional way in denmark.
because my dining set is danish, i thought it's the nice way to keep them look natural and simple.


so, this way, i am liking my new kitchen and dining.
i think i can deliver you a lot of delicious stories sometime soon.
keep up with here.

welcome to my home 4

hi.

today i want to introduce you my newly renovated bathroom.
before having moved in this home, i strongly felt the necessity of the renovation for the bathroom on the main floor.
unfortunately we didn't have time to do that before the moving-in, we had to do that after we moved in in the middle of october.
it took about 10 days to be completed, and we did that by ourselves with my kind friend's help.
i really appreciate his kind help and skilled ability.


=before=


these 2 photos taken by my husband while we were still searching our new home to be are "good" before photos.
this space is so narrow, and he used one of his widest, 18mm lens to capture the whole image of this bathroom.
in spite of the size of the space, it had a big old vanity at the entrance.
i really really really....... hated this vanity.
also i wasn't happy with the color of the wall, tile work on the floor and how the toilet bowl sat at tiny space very backward of the room.
for me, everything in this room didn't seem to have any harmony.
not only the vanity, but also the mirror and even the light fixture were big for this tiny bathroom, and i felt like suffocated in this room.
o.k., i'll quit to complain about the old bathroom here.


=after=


i'm sorry that i wasn't able to capture a broader image to show you all the transformation.
because of the tininess of the room, my polaroid camera wasn't able to meet the purpose.
but i needed to take the picture of our new bathroom with a polaroid camera.

here's the list what we did for the new bathroom.
1, we painted the wall over with warm yellow.
2, we removed all the original tiny tiles and laid new 12"x12" tiles with gray grout.
3, we settled a completely new vanity and a faucet.
4, we installed a new light fixture.
5, we replaced an old toilet bowl to the new one.
6, we replaced almost all the hardware to the new ones.

so, the list means that we renewed almost all but a bathtub.
you can see the new tile work in the first picture above.
to your and my surprise, i cut tiles and laid them by myself!

as i wanted this bathroom look like the one in a hotel in italy, i chose everything here with the image of that.
and now i call this bathroom "little italy".
sometime later, when my husband takes some pictures of this bathroom with his capable wide angle lens for me, i'll show them to you, promise.

i really enjoyed remodeling the bathroom.
seeing the transformation day by day was so fun.
it took about 10 days, but we were ok with that long lasting annoyance of not being allowed to use the bathroom on the main floor. (we have another one in the basement.)
because we saved a lot of money!
though i don't know it would have cost if we had requested this renovation to a professional contractor, i'm sure we saved a lot.
we spent about $1400 for the new items and some necessary material, and that's it.
instead of the big saving, we worked very very hard for 10 straight days.
dosn't it sound so tiresome and fun? :))


talk to you soon about another new story!

welcome to my home 3

hi.

today i want to talk about 2 out of 3 bedrooms in my new home.
we have 3 bedrooms on the main floor (we have another in the basement.), and we use one of them as our bedroom, but for other 2 we use for different purposes than bedrooms.

so, we have a study room at the corner of southeast.
in the daytime, it has plenty of light, so we decided to use this room for kinda gathering space.
we like to gather around books and photography.

these 2 tall bookshelves can contain a lot of stuff in them.
so i organized them as real book cases and also as show cases.
i like to put books and other things in a mixed way though i didn't mean to put one of my cat on the 3rd row. ;P



since my husband and my hobby is b&w photography ( we've been so serious about it.), i decorated this room in a way that gives us some inspiration and motivation.
the pictures in photo flames on the wall are our own creation.



and now, i want to show you another one.
this room is at the corner of northeast of our home, and my husband allowed me and cats to dominate this room.
there are my desk with a sewing machine, a training machine by the window, cat's possession here and there and so on.
almost everything belong to me and cats.
now i don't have enough time to be stuck in this room, eventually this room is going to be my castle.



this is the other side of the wall in this room.
i like something trifle and seemingly useless, and i have the accumulation on them.
i hung some of my favorites with wood clips on a string over the wall.
i think i have always done this over some rooms in my past homes, some times it was vertical and other times it was horizontal like the way in picture above.
this is kinda an inspiration wall for me.


next time, i want to talk about some other story over my new home.
talk to you soon and have a pretty start of the week.

welcome to my home 2

hi.
this is the second post of the series of "wlcome to my home".
today i want to talk to you about the maple tree in the back yard.
well, it's already had a lot of story to be talked about.

when my husband and i were searching for our new home, this house was the 9 or 10th one which we looked at.
it is situated upper the hill behind the beautiful huge park just off the downtown.
firstly we looked at the houses around downtown, but we weren't able to find any houses which really lured us to.
so we extended the area a bit, and we fell in love with the house now we're living.
house itself looked charming, and the huge maple tree in the back yard did as well.

one day we had a home inspector guy before the purchase of the house.
and he told us that the tree is apparently much older than the house, and still beautiful and healthy though we need it get pruned soon.

oh, something in the right bottom in the picture is the chimney of my home.




in this above picture, you can see how big the maple tree is.
her age is depending on the people who told us about, but seems to be approximately 70~100 years old.
it still has a lot of beautiful leaves, and now leaves are falling down day by day.
i'm busy to rake them up.

btw, this is the our house's face in front.
the most right window belongs to one of three bedrooms, the center window to the bathroom, and the most left to the kitchen.
actually kitchen has another window next to the left one, and we had a one car garage attached to the kitchen space.

our house has a painted with subtle green color brick wall, and black shingle roof.




as the home inspector recommended us to, we had a tree pruning for the maple tree just 2 days ago.
i had a lot of troubles with several tree companies over the estimate and appointment, but finally gotten a service from the honest and hardworking one.
i had been terribly annoyed with this thing over 2~3 weeks, but i don't want to let you bored with those stories here.

a very able climber and his supporters came and worked for the tree.
we had a lot of difficulty because the tree is humongous and our neighbors are close to each other.
and the thing which made the process most difficult was .....

the climber got down on the ground with the kinda looks of resignation on his face in the middle of the work.
he explained me the situation in a kind way.
the maple tree is now almost dead.
she is pretending to be healthy and having a lot of beautiful trees, but she actually likes to be in a nursery home and spend her rest of life which seems not to be long.
as you can see her condition by the cut surface in the above picture, she has a lot of rotten parts and holes inside.
even worse, some of her limbs didn't grow in a healthy way, so her skin is just curling inside and pretend to be a big limbs.
the climber dared not to climb on those dead limbs.
that's it.

it was sad.
just sad to know.
but it is the real.
we have to accept the situation and consider about the next step.
we probably want to remove her in 1~2 years.
the climber, who knows about trees very much, told me that there's the time to go for trees as well as for humans.
her bad condition is 50% because of bad maintenance in the past, but 50% because of her own life expectancy.
because her limbs and even her main body are so fragile now, we can't prevent from falling branches and limbs when the severe weather gives her some burden.
so when we think about the house and our life, we aren't going to be able to help removing her.

we have been so ready to live with the maple tree, but we can't be allowed to do that.
but we've already had some gifts from her.
my new cat, maple is one of them.
she had been sitting by her for almost a month, and finally we let her in and named her maple.
maple is still missing her, and gazing her sometimes by the window.

i'm going to love her till i have to tell her good-bye.
and this winter, our family is going to be warmed with her gifts in the wood fireplace.


the series is continued to the 3rd post next.

welcome to my home 1

(taken with polaroid 680 on 600 film)
hi.
with this post i want to start the series of 6 or 7 posts to feature my new home.
they're not necessarily going to be related to food, but i just want to share the record how i've started my new life here.
i want you to enjoy peeking someone's new life at a new place.

fyi, my husband and i bought a one-storied house in september and started our new life there on october 1.

so, this is the living room.
as you can see, it has a hard wood floor and this is one of most important points that my husband and i decided to buy this old house. ( she is approximately 60 years old.)
i like sweeping and wiping this pretty floor a lot.

i took this picture with facing the big window which doesn't have opening on south wall.
as you can see, i have an wood fireplace in the right side.
the emerald green ( i call this color "tiffany green") table is one of my "diy"s.
i got this for about $30 at a second hand store, and scraped and washed the original dark brown stain, and then painted green, distressed a lot and finished with a bit dark color stain over the paint.
i sewn a pair of linen curtain hanging over the window.
though we scarcely bought anything new here, but i'm so impressed with how my old furniture looks fresh in this new home and makes a totally new space.



(taken with polaroid 680 on px600 first flush)
i have some plants by the big window.
i welcomed them one by one, and they have their own shape and hight.
but they're all green.
i love to take care of them with collecting natural light with them.
maybe i need a little more of them.
whenever i go to the stores which sell greens at their corner, i carefully check the kinds.
it's my new hobby as well as hanging around antique shops.
oh, i'm surprised that my cats don't play with or eat them!
i was kinda afraid of that situation, but i couldn't help bringing house plants to my new home.
now i'm so happy that the apprehension is not needed.


so, i'm still hardly working on to get my place come together one by one.
and i like this slow pace.
with our own home, we have tons of things to be done, but i always try to tell myself not to hasten to do all the things at once.
we have a lot of time to work with, and in that way we can cultivate the feeling of reality that this home is our own nest.
apparently we're not too exhausted to make progress.
the room in our mind and life is important.


o.k., i talked too much at the first post of the series.
it's going to be followed by "welcome to my home 2".

the other way around

(taken with hasselblad 500c on rdplll)
hi.
how was your weekend?
mine was fun, but tired me a bit.
i struggled with a bunch of dandelions which were rocking here and there in the lawn of the front yard on saturday.
on sunday i had my friends over my home for the bathroom party, and i worked so hard as a chinese cuisine chef. (though i'm a japanese.)
well, i'm settling down on my home.

btw, as some of you have already known, i like breakfast very much.
as much as i can eat that for all of my 3 meals.
though i do, i hesitate to have a breakfast meal for dinner because of my husband.
so i have breakfast food 2 times a day for my breakfast and lunch.
eating cereal for lunch is nothing odd or special for me at all.

but something odd has been going on.
in the summer time, i liked to eat hot cereal like oat meal.
the picture was taken in this summer, and it is oat meal and an omelet.
i liked this combination so much, so i ate this 2~3 times a week.

and now, i like cold cereal like corn flakes and soy milk.
i usually add some fresh fruits and dried fruits like figs, bananas and raisins.
i like it so much, so i eat it 2~3 times a week.

i don't know why this opposition occurs.
people usually go the opposite way.
but this kinda explains why people like to eat a bowl of hot soup in a cool room amid of summer and a cup of ice cream in a warm room amid of winter, doesn't it?
sometimes going the other way around is just fun and cool.
and though i'm one of the fiber ambassadors, i can't help going with corn flakes over other fiber rich cereals.
totally odd.

good bye, for now.

(taken with sx-70 on color shade first flush film)

hi.

so, i'm not saying good-bye to you but to figs.
i've just done my lunch, and finished the last fig (likely).
i ate that with my favorite corn flakes and soy milk.

i'm sorry that i've been talking too much over figs this year, but i can't help because i haven't had so many fun over food recently.
nor i took picture.

just after i was into figs around the end of summer, i got involved in raging billows of buying a house, moving out and in, and remodeling and refinishing here and there.
and i also took a lot of pictures of figs this year somehow, so i don't have any difficulties to talk about figs with different pictures again and again here.

oh, speaking about figs from a different point of view, i have been wanting a fig tree in my yard.
if possible, i want plant trees of apple, persimmon and loquat as well.
these 3 plus fig is the very 4 most favorite fruits for me.
i think i'm the happiest if i were surrounded by these 4 kinds of trees.
apparently, my back yard is dominated by the humongous maple tree and she seems not to allow that dream comes true.

oh, maple tree!!
i have a news for you.
i've just decided to let the cat who was roaming around my house for a while and always sitting by the maple tree into my home.
she was always there since we started the new life here.
i've been concerning her a lot and my heart has been aching for her, but i just couldn't let her in because my 2 cats were so nervous with the new circumstance and needed some time to get adjusted.
but, on november first, which is the day another 1 month started after moving in, i successfully caught the cat and took her to the vet and had her checked her age, gender and health condition.
there i knew that she is "she", 2~3 years old and very healthy.
and i asked a doctor to inject some necessary vaccine with a certain decision.
on the way to my home, i stopped by a pet store and bought a pretty light blue collar for her.
i named her "maple" and told my husband that we are now 2 people and 3 cats family over the phone.

though only a month and a bit have past in a new home, we've already had a lot of stories.
figs have been always on my table during those days, and i'll say good-bye to figs and make another step.


have a fun weekend and not to forget to slow your clock Saturday night!

figholic

(taken with polaroid 185 on blue film)

hi.
today is going to be a perfect fall day.
air is crisp and chilly a bit, yet have a lot of sunshine, trees are colorful, and i'm relaxed.
a lovely fall day is a something admirable.

i have one confession here.
i'm afraid that i'm suffering from figholic.
though i am, i'm not unfortunate because it's not harmful or contagious at all.
it's just a happy food accident.

i don't buy figs so often, like every 2~3 days, but once a week.
i buy them only on Saturday or Sunday.
i buy 5~6 pieces at one time, and eat them one a day.
i sometimes generously share my figs my husband.
but mostly i eat them all by myself, because he allows me to do that as my little and biggest pleasure.

and now, i've bought a small basket of figs 8~9 weeks in a row.
everytime i go to co-op with him, he entices me to buy them.
and i always hesitate to do that because they are not affordable at all.
but then, he strongly insists that i deserve to do that somehow, and i happily yield myself to that word.
in that way, i've bought figs 8~9 weeks in a row.
i'm happy.

i'm happy, but i've just started to think that i can shift from figs to persimmons.
well, frankly speaking, i want to eat persimmons.
of course i love figs and appreciate my husband for allowing me to have them, but to tell the truth, i'm a bit tired of figs.
now i'm wanting persimmons.

maybe, i'll buy persimmons instead of figs this weekend.

fall is full of my favorite fruits, and that makes me love fall more.

chocolate marshmallow

(taken with sx-70 on 600 film)

hi.
leaves are now turning yellow and red, and that's the typical sign of autumn.
but i can't help feeling winter has been already here.
it's cold, too cold for me to think it's still autumn.

today i came across this polaroid.
and i liked this dark brown color box, which contain individually packaged chocolate marshmallow.
it seems to be one of fabulous symbols of autumn and winter.
i think i love brown and beige so much especially this time of the year.

speaking about my current situation, i'm still working on a lot of things to be done in a new home.
i just finished the bathroom yesterday.
new tile floor, wall, toilet bowl, vanity, mirror and light fixture (almost everything except the bath tub) are very good.
i'm so much satisfied with the result and i'm going to have a bathroom party with my friends who helped us a lot.
we're going to celebrate our own work with some food and drink.
i'm not sure if the party is held in the bathroom or not.
i don't think it's annoying even if so, because almost everything is new!
just weird, isn't it? ;P

well, i hope you all are enjoying the beautiful shift of the season.
don't miss pretty turning leaves!

a new life, again

(taken with sx-70 on 600 film)

hi.
how've you been up to?
i've been cleaning and organizing rooms, painting wall tirelessly, working on a back garden with a hundred year old maple tree in the center, watching hgtv(home and garden tv) at meals and slamming myself on the bed every night.
so, my new life in the new home has begun.

this morning, i was working on my garden.
the air was crisp and fresh, the morning sun ray was bright and full of hope, leaves were floating slowly from branches to the ground.
that was definitely a beautiful morning work.
and now, i'm sipping a cup of coffee and relaxing.

i'm still bit nervous as well as my cats, a lot dull because of accumulation of tiredness.
and so much excited with the new life.

i have this for the first time in last 6 years.
before, my husband i used to move a lot.
we lived in 12 homes including temporary ones, if my memory is correct, after we got married.
and i think this is likely to be the ultimate one, because we bought this house!

there're a lot of things to be done to get accustomed to this new life for us.
but this situation is not annoying at all but exciting a lot.
i hope i can write something yummy around the new kitchen and dining area soon.

coffee break

(taken with contax rts on superia 400)

hi.
how've you been up to?
i've been continuously exhausted for some reason.
so many things are still going on and a cup of coffee tastes so good.

though i haven't had much fun around the table, i popped in for updating the picture and words here.
it seems to refresh me as well as this place.

well, do you remember that i told you about couple months ago that i wasn't able to enjoy coffee any more?
after the trip to italy in last may, i had been in that situation because of the hurt throat. (the throat has been my weak point by nature and whenever my heath condition is down, i easily tend to lose my voice.)
but now, i think my throat has fully healed over and coffee is enjoyable again.
i switched my drink with breakfast from coffee to tea at that time and it's still effective now, but a cup of coffee in late morning entertains me a lot recently.
i'm simply glad about the comeback of the joy of coffee.

i hope you're doing very well with your favorite drink in this transitional climate.
talk to you soon.

what i want now

(taken with mamiya m645 on tmy400, developed and printed by me.)

.... might be a cup of hot cocoa with whipped cream in a heavy big cup.
i'm not really whipped cream with one's drinks on top person.
but somehow, i'm in the mood of wanting it.
i want something fluffy, white and sweet now.

oh, hi.
i've been terribly tired recently in the midst of moving.
i'm sure that my arms are getting more and more muscle on them.
hunting for free cardboard boxes, hanging around the Home depot for a while and being asked if i'm doing ok, and packing our stuff with feeling i'll never reach the end are my current daily basis.
speaking of getting free cardboard boxes, that is kinda messy job.
i sometimes have to reach my hand or step into the big garbage container, and that makes me be suspected by passersby.
i feel as if i were doing something i can't or don't wanna tell about to my mother or friends. (well, it's kinda that sort of thing.)

i'm working very hard this way.
and i want a big relief with something fancy and pretty, like a cup of cocoa with whipped cream.


btw, here's a small list of my current favorites on the kitchen counter. (yes, i've been eating every single meal there for almost 1 month now):
-a cup o coffee with m&m's (i like peanut one the best.)
-friday and saturday night of college football games, sunday and monday night of nfl games with finger food and beer
-weekend breakfast with cheap sound music from i-pod and a $10 mini speaker

i think i can come up with more favorites if i think about them more, but now i don't have much time to do that.
and i'm sorry for those left me kind comments with encouragement that i didn't reply to them.
i hope i'll soon be able to spend more time here. :)