The Great Logan Square Herbicide of 2012

As some of you may know, the manfriend and I hosted Thanksgiving (and my sister's 21st birthday - whoa) for my family last year. It was a great success, people danced in the street, there was a parade in our honor, etc. etc.

This year we're upping the ante by having BOTH families to feast in our teeny tiny apartment. Ok. It's not really teeny tiny. But there will be two extra people staying here for two nights and at least ten people here for The Meal. So it might feel teeny tiny by the end of the night.

To keep my focus, I go to my happy place: Ashley's bringing Trader Joe's Pumpkin Cheesecake. Ashley's bringing Trader Joe's Pumpkin Cheesecake. Ashley's bringing Trader Joe's Pumpkin Cheesecake.

In preparation for All The Family, I've been knocking out all the weird "home improvement" projects I've been putting off in a desperate attempt to fool everyone into thinking we're adults. Please imagine the twinkly sound from infomercials when scrolling between the before and after pictures. I sure do.

Replacing the sad little prints over the couch with a wider spread of fun black and white prints:

And moving said prints over the bookcase in the dining room (they look so much less sad here):

Transforming a cluttered mess in the bathroom:

With the help of a utensil caddy from Target!

And - I have to admit, I'm pretty proud of this - moving the clusterfuck of shoes to a nicely arranged "curtain" in the second bedroom. The second bedroom now feels like a guest room and not a catchall room. Or a huge closet that happens to have a bed in it.

Madness!

And now I can sleep at night!

But. The Project to End All Projects, the project I bribed Lexy with food (not that that's hard) to get her to help me:

The Great Logan Square Herbicide of 2012

Also known as:

WEEDING THE BACK YARD OHMAIGAWD

Lexy: Crap. I left my Agent Orange at home.

We went in, hoes and shovels held high, and took no prisoners. Gloves and Wellies were muddied. Trashcans were filled with the remains of the fallen. Tubers were unearthed. But in the end... we were victorious.

Lexy with her kill.

Me with my kill.

Two and a half hours later it looked like this:

As I said before, I bribed Lexy with food. Specifically, with Martha Stewart's Lightened Tuna Noodle Casserole (http://www.marthastewart.com/859566/tuna-casserole) and Butterscotch Oatmeal Cookies (uh, recipe on the back of the bag of Nestle butterscotch chips). 

Martha made us wait a whole TEN MINUTES for the casserole to cool. Damn it, Martha.

The casserole is good, for a "lightened" casserole. I could go for a creamier texture, but I'm also ok with my pants continuing to fit. But the pasta is delish and the peas are like little explosions of freshness in what could otherwise be a rather bland dish.

The cookies, on the other hand, might be in the top five best cookies I've ever made. Go forth and make these cookies. The world will be better place.

The next morning, I spent another hour weeding the bricks on the patio and cutting back the branches on the fence. Because, call me crazy, I was tired of getting whipped in the face every time I came in from the garage.

So now, we live in a land ruled by... well, not order, but controlled chaos.

And, more importantly, there are cookies.

Now all I have left is to mop the floors, finish piecing the quilt, keep the house clean, and, oh yeah, make a huge meal for 10-12 people. The manfriend is in charge of the ribs:

Manfriend: Are you sure we have a broiler?
Me: Yes.
Manfriend: Where is it?
Me: Under the oven.
Manfriend: Are you sure this isn't a drawer?
Me: Yes.
Manfriend: Have you ever opened it?
Me: Yes.
Manfriend: What is it?
Me: ...a broiler.

And after all that, he decided to use the grill. Hooray Thanksgiving!

Early voting and public libraries - democracy at its finest.

I know you guys have been on the edge of your seat, waiting for another thrilling post about quilting, but, dear readers, I have to disappoint you.

Saturday, I spent three hours waiting in line to vote early. Yeah, democracy! Here's why I stood in such a freakishly long line: I work at several jobs that pay hourly, so if I'm not working because I'm waiting in line to vote on Tuesday, I'm missing out on income. Yes, the lines might be better on Tuesday - especially if I got there super early - but that was not a chance I was willing to take. And I'm stupidly stubborn. After being in line for an hour, I wasn't jumping ship. Not when I got out of my cozy bed to go vote.

If anyone else has spent hours in line waiting to vote (especially my Ohio people!), be proud. Wear that sticker like a badge of honor! It's important that every single one of us gets a chance to exercise our right to vote, no matter which way we lean.

Finally, this: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/war-on-women-waged-in-postcards-memes-from-the-suffragist-era/ 

Women fought too hard for too long for ladies today to skip out on voting.

Right. Getting off my teeny tiny soap box. (Go vote!)

While I was in line at the Wicker Park library, I was amused to see how many people (including me) were on their Kindles. In my defense, I was reading a library e-book on my Kindle. A wonderful, lighthearted murder mystery. 

Flavia de Luce. 11-year-old chemist and sleuth. She is beyond delightful. 

Months ago, I was killing time in the Logan Square library and stumbled upon these brightly colored, whimsical looking books in the mystery section, a section usually reserved for dark and gloomy colored books. I was intrigued. I read the description on the cover. I laughed. But no! The first book wasn't there! Crisis! Panic! I immediately rushed to a computer station to reserve a copy for my Kindle. And thus, a new obsession was born.

 

She comes from the brilliant mind of Alan Bradley. Her world is 1950s England at the Buckshaw estate in the village of Bishop's Lacey. In the first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, she stumbles across a body in the cucumber patch. It happens. I think we've all been there.

She lives with her two older sisters (reminiscent of Cinderella's sisters) and her widower father. Flavia is largely left to her own devices, which leads to her spending many, many hours in the chemistry laboratory in her wing of the house, studying the poisons she so loves, or roaming the countryside and village on her trusty bicycle, Gladys.

The books are full of quirky English village characters: Inspector Hewitt, the bemused and surprisingly competent police officer; Mrs. Mullet, the gossipy family cook; Dogger, the butler/jack-of-all-trades-servant with PTSD; Miss Mountjoy, the rather severe former librarian... the list goes on. Even if you don't enjoy the plot, the characters themselves make up for it.

I have trouble reading Flavia's adventures on public transportation. I end up being that crazy girl on the train, laughing uncontrollably.

I finished the second book, The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, in about two days. I'm currently halfway through the third book, A Red Herring without Mustard, and loving it. In my opinion, the third book is turning out even better than the last two. It seeeeeems to be heading towards a big reveal, with more information about Flavia's mother (a shadowy figure who hovers around the edges of the books) coming to light. She died when Flavia was a baby, but she is just as much a part of the series as Flavia herself.

Escape into Flavia's world. After you vote.

And for my next trick...

When you turn 27 two months after you quit two jobs within two weeks... panic sets in.

When you panic as a 23 year old, you drink. When you panic as 27 year old, you quilt. It's all part of that "older and wiser" thing.

I decided that I would use my ample free time to tackle a project I've always wanted to conquer: a quilt. Turns out, having 3 part time jobs does not give you a ton of free time, so it's slower going than anticipated, but I'm chugging along!

It helps that the manfriend has recently become enamored with "The Walking Dead." While I recognize that the show has an amazing production quality and it's not necessarily gory for the sake of being gory, I can't watch more than ten minute without having horrendous nightmares. But since we don't get to spend a lot of time together (despite living together) due to our schedules, I hate slinking off to the bedroom to read when he's home.

Unless the book is really, really good.

So, in order to spend time with the manfriend, and avoid the emotional scarring that comes from the zombie apocalypse, I quilt in the dining room while he watches his stories in the living room. 

It turns out that semi-unemployment doesn't give me as much free time as I anticipated, so this took about a month, but! Here they are! Completed quilt squares:

Next - putting it all together.


TO BE CONTINUED...