Cleaning & Treasures

I started my spring cleaning a couple of weeks ago, focusing first on my kitchen cabinets. It's a daunting task to clean any room if you try to do the whole thing at once, so I work on one cabinet a day. This is my reusable containers and kitchen gadgets cabinet, which always ends up disordered with mismatched or missing lids or bottoms. I took everything out, wiped down the shelves, matched everything up, and then put it all back in a workable order.

Ditto with my cabinet of baking and cooking stuff -- these are all things I use a lot, some daily, so I keep them here by the stove instead of in the pantry closet. I also had a ton of expired specialty vinegars and oils my favorite person stored here from her apartment when she went off on her adventures around the world, so it was a good time to get rid of all that stuff.

Cleaning also turns up missing things. Last Christmas I went looking for this old-fashioned pottery cookie stamp that a friend gave me many years ago. At the time I couldn't find it, and made do with cookie cutters instead.

I really treasure this little thing, so I was glad I found it again. I'll have to use it to make some cookies for Valentine's Day.

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Gifts

This is a story that starts out very sadly, so if you're depressed by the holidays you might want to skip the first part. As far back as I can remember I've dreaded the holidays. Being poor, having constant family troubles and belonging to a strict religion made that time of year always pretty unhappy. I just hunkered down and hoped to get through without being yelled at or punished because I didn't do something I was expected to do, like sit in church for hours without moving or making a sound while a priest spoke mass in Latin. Gifts were uniformly disappointing, too. My mother usually gave me dolls or socks or underwear for Christmas. I understand now as an adult that she was doing the best she could, and trying to save money at the same time, but as a kid I'd been told good children got what they wanted for Christmas. I was a pretty good kid, but while my friends received new bikes and cool toys and lots of treats from Santa, I didn't. I thought San

We Have Backsplash!

Yesterday my guy and I decided to chose this natural stone as the backsplash tiles for our new kitchen counters (which will be in the same quartz I'm holding at the bottom of the photo.) Since all the bids for installing the backsplash came in very high my guy is going to put it in himself; he's done a bit of tile work in the past, too. I swear there is nothing this guy can't do. :)

Detoxing Results

For twenty-four hours I left these five vintage cigar boxes sit with detoxing agents (baking soda, coffee grinds, dryer sheets, vinegar and Febreze) inside them to see which worked best to remove the tobacco/storage odors that came with them. I then removed the agents and did a sniff test. Before we get into the results, a reminder: none of what I do is ever meant to be expert advice, as I am certainly not an expert at anything. Follow my methods at your own risk, and please first consult an actual antique expert conservator or restorer to detox items that have value for you. Okay, let's see how my experiment worked. Baking soda (left) did nothing to remove the odors. I think if I let it sit for a longer period of time it might have done something, but for a 24-hour test it was a complete fail. Coffee grinds (right) removed 100% of the odors, and left behind definite coffee scent. I like that and think it goes very well with wood, but if you don't like the smel

Rayen

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