Lorraine, You B!t@h.

I'm a recipe hoarder. There's actually a limited amount of things some members of my family eat, so really it's the same ingredients added up in different ways. I love cookbooks, but I also pin food on Pinterest and have some go-to blogs and websites with recipes I'll try. It's very hard for me to trust recipes that do not come in books, so I, like my mother taught me, end up adding a little something to everything. It is the "Tim the Toolman Taylor" approach to cooking. I re-wired it. Usually it does not end up disastrously, because I know what I am doing in the kitchen. It's My Room. Except for this attempt to make quiche Tuesday.

Recipe and photo from Williams Sonoma.

During the week, it is hard for me to spend more than an hour cooking a meal. That's an amount of time I can devote only if I managed to get a little prep work done during the day. And you can only serve Oven-Baked Chicken with Crockpot Macaroni and Cheese or shredded chicken for tacos so many times before people stop getting excited about it and walk to table like they are approaching the plank.

I decided that I was going to make Quiche Lorraine, my first endeavor at quiche. They like eggs. They love bacon. We all eat cheese. This is the making of a successful entree. The boys and I even went to Sur La Table to get the right tart pan. And I decided to cut corners because I'm a working mom/servant and use a pre-bought crust. It was too small for the tart pan, and when I pre-cooked it like the recipe said, it shrunk and got poofy. But a dish doesn't have to be beautiful to be delicious, so I advanced as if the crust was perfect.

It was at this point that Corey, wandering through the kitchen because he smelled bacon, told me that "everyone f**ks up their first quiche." Like he knows this, even though he has never made quiche and certainly did not understand why I had to buy a special pan.

The eggs overflowed the crust, ran under it and seeped out the removable bottom of the tart pan. Before I put it in the oven, like immediately upon pouring them into the tart pan. The worst part was that I bought Fancy Irish Cheddar from Whole Foods, and that whole block went to waste. It was a holy mess, and we had Chinese for dinner. Corey said I handled my first Kitchen Disaster like a champ, because he would have been really mad and there would have been cursing and slamming of items. All I did was one slow "motherf***er" and declared Chinese food was for dinner, like that had been my plan all along.

I did not tell Corey at the time that it is actually the third time I have delivered an Epic Fail in the kitchen. The first being in college when I tried to fry chicken at his apartment and set a grease fire on the entire stovetop. And instead of yelling at him that there was a fire! in the kitchen, I ran out of the house screaming. The second time was a little over a year ago when I tried to make white chicken lasagna with a sauce made from evaporated milk, got distracted by the phone and let the sauce boil, and ended up with something that resembled oatmeal. I called the China Bear that night too.

So here I go again last night, making Quiche Lorraine. I made my own crust, like the recipe said. I gently poured the eggs in and it just barely did not overflow. I could have cooked it three minutes longer for the custard to set a little bit more, but it was deemed successful by 75% of my family, Jake being the one who was offended that I would make him eat custard and filled up on baked french fries, canteloupe and the bacon he picked out of the pie.

When I told Corey that I was serving Quiche Lorraine last night, he said "Okay, but you're paying for the Chinese food tonight." And then when it came out looking like culinary perfection, I sent this picture to him, captioned "Boo-yah."

So yeah, I owned this quiche. And if you're brave enough to venture out on your inaugural quiche adventure, please do what is best for your sanity and PRIDE, and follow the directions exactly. Because it is very shaming to declare to the entire family with absolute confidence that you will be serving Quiche Lorraine for dinner and send your husband out for Chinese a half hour later.

PINNING!

I've stepped up my Pinterest game lately. I am looking to be inspired in all aspects of life. And, if you really sit down and start digging (say, while watching Sister Wives, which no one in your house wants a part of so you get at least an uninterrupted hour), you can find so much of it there. Here are my favorites from the Looks I Love board this week.

The May Lonny magazine has a feature on Jamie Meares, who is a Southern designer who blogged and then opened a shop. Her style is extremely layered with eclectic, traditional and industrial elements in most rooms. I love it. All of it. Corey tells me it is too busy, but he's a guy and he has no creative vision.

From Furbish Studio.

This room makes me so happy I could piddle. It has watermelon walls! With those blue and white curtains and a couch the same color as mine, if I lived in my own half of a duplex, I could do all of this. I have that mirror in the boys' room. I have a porcelain animal (turtle) under a table in my house. See that blue and white box on the coffee table with the dragon on top? I have that exact box by my bed!

You can see more pictures of this room, and others, by visiting her website, but here are a couple more I pinned this week.

From Furbish Studio. This is the bar area from the same room above. Now there are ZEBRAS on watermelon wallpaper (Africa) with Asian accent pieces (pagoda lamps and ginger jars) and industrial elements. It's genius. You don't see it? Also, there is wine. There must always be wine.

From Furbish Studio.  My office has to move out of the guest room and it will likely not go back in there. But I am thinking about how to incorporate desk space, especially as Jake gets older and needs more privacy for his work. This parsons desk is not styled as a workspace, but could certainly accommodate the need for one.  

From Furbish Studio. I have a little guilt for kicking Corey's bookshelf full of books out of the bedroom to make way for my new secretary. I love these semi-floating shelves, full of books and accents to break up the monotony. Corey vetoed anything involving attaching things to studs, so it looks like his books are exiled to storage until we get another house.

You know that uncomfortable feeling you get when you stick something in a spot in your house because that is where it needs to go, but it never feels right? I have this afflictive relationship with my laundry room. It is not really a room on its own. You pass through it to get from the kitchen to the sunroom and out the back door. The storage is nice. There is a window. And the appliances are pretty. But it's an area I walk through 27 times per day and I wince when I do. I tore this photo out of a magazine once and now I have added it to my Pinterest this week.

From This Old Property/Southern Living.

It's a curtain, trimmed in poofs (a favorite since college) with a countertop! Not just any countertop, but a BAR on top. We do not have good flow for entertaining, which we do not do, but having an extra counter is never a negative. The tops of the washer and dryer have become a makeshift tabletop to drop all sorts of odd items. I actually have a cabinet and a window above the appliances, but a counter, some curtains and a flashy light fixture, and I could be living with a space that has just as much form as function.

Lastly, I troll Pinterest until my eyes are dry looking for the Aha! for what to put above the boys' beds. There are pictures beside their beds, so I'd like something with some depth to hang above them. This would silence the ache I've had in me for two years about where and how to accent a wall with one of these, even though my aunt tells me "Careful, your roots are showing" when I've asked about them. But they're BOYS, and they obviously need humane versions of slaughtered animals on their walls.

The picture is from Restoration Home Baby and Child, but I do not think they sell the deer.

I must excuse myself now to go search Ebay maniacally looking for "deer heads" that are not actual dead deer. Actually, by the time this blog posts, I've finished a mulligan in the kitchen and am in my chair with the iPad in my face, having shown Corey so many pictures of faux animal heads that he has moved to another area of the room.

High Five for Friday!

Last week, I did not high five myself on Friday. This week, I seem t have it more together and will from this point forward forget that last week happened, or didn't. So, here are my five favorite things from this week:

 

1. Baseball is almost over.

Do not misunderstand me. I love that Landen is a sports kid, and I have a ridiculous amount of pride watching him play his Saturday games. But, it's been every Saturday morning for six weeks. I do love my boy enough to wake up to an alarm six days a week for his athletic endeavors, but I love my sleeping Saturdays to be happy when this is almost over. Plus, it's starting to get hot, even in the mornings, and shade is harder to find. Our last game is this Saturday. Then we are in a sports break until football starts in the fall.

2. Lonny magazine, especially the Furbish spread.

I finally sat down and read this month's Lonny magazine.  Jamie Meares's spread in the magazine makes me green with envy that I do not have more money to fully style my house immediately and that I live with boys for whom I must restrain my desire to totally glam out my house. On these pages alone, she wallpapered a corner cabinet for the purposes of displaying two of my favorite things - blue and white porcelain and coral. And then this giant Jackie O flanked by those lamps. Do you think if I showed up on Jamie's door, she would let me in to take pictures in a non-creepy way?

3. This is one of the best TV weeks of the year.

All the season finales have been stellar. I always cry in finales, and this week has been a true purge for me. Desperate Housewives, Smash, and Grey's Anatomy kicked my ass this week and it was FANTASTIC! Plus, the off-season shows that carry you through the summer have started, like The Real Housewives of New Jersey and Sister Wives.

If you are not watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, you are missing the craziest, most fabulous hour on television.

4.  I cooked this week. The real stuff.

I did not cook a single night last week. Shopping and menu planning was a level of coordination I not aspire to last week. This week, I cooked white chicken enchiladas on Tuesday and cream cheese smothered pork chops on Wednesday. It's an extra hour of activity in a work day, but it feels so much better to be tired from feeding your family fresh, balanced foods than full from the Chinese food or pizza you fed them.

5.  The Secretary makeover continues through the weekend.

Earlier this week, I formally introduced you to my biggest furniture makeover project yet. Today I am going to get my paint so that I can make this sumbitch (I love you) pretty and me by the end of the weekend. This has actually become a functional necessity as well, because I am selling my desk this weekend. So if I do not finish this monster this weekend, I will have no place to work on Tuesday.

As always, don't forget to go see what Emily is recapping this Friday. Something about beer and makeup. And she travels. You can have experiences on her blog you will not get here, because Emily is a jet-setter, and I am stationary.

Let's switch it up this week, by ending with a gratuitious photo of my non-dog, whom Jake believes with his heart and soul is his dog, and not Aunt Cydney's.

An Ode to Blue

When I was in college, living in my first apartment by myself, I started collecting blue and white porcelain. It began as a small basket for potpourri (did you not potpourri in 1999?) or a small dish for earrings and change. Now, in 2012, it could be described as a full-fledged addictive behavior. It's in almost every room of the house, save the boys' room and upstairs bathroom. Although, the purchases have been curbed since we bought a house and I spend money on rolls of drapery fabric and paint for furniture. And because they closed Bombay and Company, which was like the FAO Schwartz for people who loved blue and white.

There have been a couple borderline obsessive pursuits to collect it. My friend Arkansas Emily had two sets of blue china monkeys when we met in 2003, and the search for a set of my own "hear/see/speak no evil" monkeys went bicoastal for severl years, with searches extending from the DC area to my mother in Louisiana, her mother in Arkansas and the high-end decorator shops in southern California, until that prized California Aunt sent me some for Christmas in 2006. The monkey fondness expanded from there and now when I see a blue china monkey, I buy it. No questions asked. 

In truth, some of the blame must be placed upon Arkansas Emily, for not only was the family torment for the monkeys inspired by her, but I also successfully scoured the internets for blue china dog bookends after not absconding with hers one spring visit.

I also left a store with Corey once cradling a blue china lamp, having conned him into purchasing it for me by declaring that leaving the store sans lamp would mean I would never be happy again. This was during the courting phase. He would not succumb to that appeal today. In fact, he regular threatens to take a hammer to my collection.

I now have almost one hundred pieces of it, and I say that with more shame than pride. I get rid of it when I absolutely have to can. I install pieces in my sister's apartment when she needs a little something. It does not need to be ALL you see when you come in our home, so at least one box of it is packed and stored upstairs. When I buy a new piece, I retire another. I no longer buy animals or candlesticks, but a good planter or jar priced as a steal from an antique mall is just too much serendipity for me to walk away from.

Why do I not get rid of it instead of letting it take up valuable storage space in our cottage dwelling, you ask? Because this is my starter home, and one day I hope to have a bigger house offering built-in shelving and large walls for the prominent featuring of hutch-type furniture. And in those shelves and behind those glass doors I endeavor to cluster my collection.

At night when I cyberwander around Pinterest, I am drawn to pictures of this porcelain candy, and I now have an entire board devoted to it.

From prettystuff.tumblr.com

From 1.bp.blogspot.com

From paloma81.blogspot.com

From prettystuff.tumblr.com

From thatschic.net

From chinoiseriechic.blogspot.com

 Are you tired of it yet? Do you feel sorry for Corey?

A Massive Undertaking

In our carport, we have this

At $200 from craigslist, it was a steal. I convinced Corey to haul it home from Metairie. It is solid wood. No veneer. It is all one piece, not a separate desk and hutch. It is much larger than the dainty secretaries I have been eyeing in antique stores for three years. It will provide me ample work space now that I am relinquishing the guest room/home office to a summer boarder. Plus, our bedroom TV will fit in and be quasi-hidden by those upper cabinets, which is my ultimate goal for all televisions in my house.

One teensy, leetle thing about this secretary, which I did not fully acknowledge until we got it home and in our carport. It is rustic. Rustic is not bad, but rustic is also not me. The plan has always been to paint a secretary a soft white with a bold interior, so all those knots can be hidden and that finish recovered, no problem.

Except that the entire surface is the opposite of smooth.

None of the planks line up and there are ridges in the wood. I spent a week applying wood filler to it in 15-minute bursts. On Mother's Day, Corey sanded the beejesus out of it. This morning, I wiped inches of sand dust from it and it is now waiting primer and paint. Corey hates it and hates me for not buying exactly what I wanted. I keep insisting that the bones and the price and the size were all perfect, and so what's a little extra work on the surface? This weekend it gets primed and painted, and then a Grownup Dream of mine to own a secretary will be realized.

I think it will get some Snowfall White on the outside, and something in a Sullivan Green or a Grassy Fields for the interior (upper and desk only, as the lower cabinets will be the same exterior off-white so that I can see under there.)

How about a little inspiration gallery, to help you understand my vision? Do not be like my husband, who fights my vision during and saves his full, belated appreciation for the end.

19th century Swedish secretary with pink interior from Annie Sloan

Secretary makeover featured on Apartment Therapy

Cottage-y secretary, size LARGE, featured on Casa Greer.

Chalky gray and powder blue secretary from Simply Seleta. I love the styling of this one most of all.

I must confess, I am not looking forward to painting all the nooks and crevices at least three times this weekend, plus there are places that will need caulking, for my sanity.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can........

High Five For Friday!

This week was a bitch. Like the big mean girls in high schools who would rather jump your ass than say "hi" in the hall. So much so that I actually feared this week that I would not be able to come up with five reasons to be happy today and write a blog post about it. But I dug right down to the bottom of my soul, to see what I had inside, yes I dug right down to the bottom of my soul, and I tried. I tried. But unlike Diana in A Chorus Line, I found something. Several, actually.

1. It's Friday, Friday, after all. 

Fridays are my favorite day. Everybody at work is more relaxed (towards the end, at least). There are TWO days of sleeping late ahead of me. I do not have to cook. I do not have to stop drinking wine at 9 PM. Tonight my mom is coming down so we can help Baby Sister start cleaning out her apartment in preparation for vacating the (shabby) premises at the end of this month. Tomorrow's baseball game is at 11:45, so I do not have to set my alarm. Lunesta, take me away. 

2. Macaroni and cheese is still my favorite food.

Photo from here. 

If a person could consider themselves a connoisseur of macaroni and cheese, I am it. And I recently discovered The Perfect Macaroni and Cheese recipe, and it is a bonus that it does not require standing over the stove stirring a white sauce. It is equal parts cheesy and creamy, and you can make it an entire meal by throwing some diced ham or chicken or some hamburger meat in it. Trisha Yearwood taught me how to make it. In my crock pot. With evaporated milk and five cups of cheese. Go forth and get your crock pot ready. You will not be sorry.

3. First swim of the season.

Not mine. My parents were here last weekend and we took the boys swimming at their hotel. Little fishies. Jake swims like a torpedo and Landen taught himself to dive. They take swimming lessons every summer, and we try to spend as much time in a pool as we can. 

4. First pedicure of the season

I feel odd taking pictures of my own feet, so these are not my toes. My toes do look like fingers and do spread out when I walk, so this picture is not entirely inaccurate. The first pedicure of the season is an exercise in humility, as they make quite the production about all of the machinery they use to get the winter skin off your feet. I have one place where I go get my first pedicure done, and then I do not go back there until the next year. I do not do it regularly over the summer, but it is worth it to me to shell out the dough a couple times a summer to have someone else do it for me. 

5. Furniture purchase

I have wanted a secretary since I was in college, the kind with the fold-out desk and the glass cabinet. Eddie Ross convinced me that I needed to get one and paint it a bold color and replace the glass with mirrors. When we bought the house, I ratholed money and visited the antiques shops regularly looking for one I could make over, with no luck. When I took the job working from home, I returned to the secretary search and ended up repurposing the guest room with a regular desk and office chair. On Wednesday, I returned to the longing for a secretary, painted a glossy white with a bold contrasting interior. I need to relocate my workspace from the guest room to my bedroom for at least the summer. And then I found this on craigslist

which is not necessarily my tastes for a finish, but the size is great, the price is great and the cabinet below will serve my work purposes much better than drawers. So it's coming to live here on Saturday, and I'll spend the month of May giving it The Best Furniture Makeover Yet, and I'll tell you all about it. My preliminary plan for it, sight unseen, is a creamy white with a high gloss for the exterior and a kelly green in the cabinets and fold-out desk. 

As with all of these Friday posts we have done together, do not forget to go check on Emily, to see what she is recapping for the week. I plan to sleep a lot, clean a lot, move a piece of furniture from Metairie to Baton Rouge and have an all-around better weekend than last, which will in turn yield a more positive emotional and mental-positioning with which to confront another week. 

Gratuitous Dog Photo (of a dog terrified of thunder and not wanting to go potty)