Home

So I've started painting the house.... we started renting it in October it's about time to take it from a house to a home by making it a bit more us.  Funny enough, I can't help but think that this house is more me than the one we called "home" for over 20 years... the one I brought my babies home to... it just feels more me.  The kitchen, the fireplace, the front porch, the bathtub - oh gosh the bathtub, so deep I can sink right into it lol!  

So just a couple of coats of paint and then I can put up the photos and whatnots.  I planted flowers and re-arranged things in the garden which helped outside, and put in the solar lights to make it more cozy.  And I've started to think of the house as Basswood Cottage... lol.  We used to have Barnsley Bistro but not anymore, so now we have Basswood Cottage.  Much better than the year we spent in the apartment  - gosh but I hated that place, though it's view was amazing and I did love sitting out on the balcony, so it had a redeeming quality after all haha

It's painful.... all the up the ladder, down the ladder, bending and stretching.  And I'm tired....so I have to do it in small increments , but I feel so accomplished when I'm done the section I'm working on.  It's funny, but decorating is like creating in the kitchen for me a bit, it's just a different canvas.

#icook

I know I said that this house is more me than the previous, and it's true... but I'm most at home in the kitchen.  The kitchen is where I feel the most me and I'm happiest.  I love to cook and create, and I wish I had managed to go to culinary school.  Instead I did business school... twice (yikes) and spent far too many years working retail or crunching numbers....and watching cooking shows and reading as many cookbooks as I could.

 I love nothing more than to find THE perfect recipe and then change it and make it my own. And I love watching people enjoy the food.  I don't want accolades or spotlights... what makes it for me is just watching the food be enjoyed.  To me it's fun to make things that are really quite simple that people take them for granted and yet wouldn't consider trying to make it for themselves.  Pasta, tortillas, soup (though when one of your good friends is the SoupChef  you better deliver on the soup because she makes some damn fine soups) are the best.  One day I plan on trying my hand at egg yolk ravioli.. yumm.

Yes, I cook.. it makes me happy.  These days that's a good thing to be able to say. I create, whether it's with food, paint or plants, and it makes me happy and it has been making this house a home.  And maybe in some small way it makes up for what has been lost...maybe