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.