I’m beat from a long day of work followed by a long evening of removing cabinet doors and washing them as well as the cabinets, filling knob holes on the doors, and taping off the floor in the kitchen. Who knew that washing doors would take so long??

Today I share pictures of my front garden. You can find the before pictures here from June 2008 and another shot of it a year ago at the beginning of July. Here’s how it looked at the beginning of June of this year. A month and a half later, it has really taken off. All but three of the plants came from my mom’s garden. My peony bush, on which I am eagerly anticipating blooms, didn’t produce buds or flowers this year but it was only a twig when I planted it last year. I think it needs another season to establish itself.

I guess I have too much time on my hands because I’ve hatched a plan. See these?

I mean the cabinets, not the messy counters.

They’re orange. Actually cherry but they are incredibly orange-esque. It seems I have a money tree in my backyard because I am going to paint them. <Insert a gasp of horror from my mother (when I tell her): "You don’t paint cherry/oak/maple/walnut/etc!!!"> Even the guy at Home Depot said, "Well, you don’t [paint them]," when I told him why I was looking for a certain type of primer. Then he added, "But if you want to do that…" Yes, yes, I want.

I wish I had better lighting in here and today’s weather isn’t helping. I wish I could take a full picture of the entire kitchen/living room area. As I’ve said and shown before (I think), the kitchen and living room are essentially open to each other, separated only by that half-wall you see in the left foreground of the photo above. The living room side of that wall is going to be painted to match the walls. I was not liking the fact that the top piece of trim on it was probably going to have to stay cherry (because how could I paint only part of it white to match the baseboards and other trim?). Dilemma solved: paint the cabinets too.

Here are a couple more shots of the space as it is right now. Please pardon the horrible lighting and colouring.

The trim 10 inches up from the floor will be coming off.

I’ve spent the last two days at Young House Love and I am so envious of their house, their furniture, and their design savvy minds. They make it look effortless. I do think I’ve finally decided on colours though.

Ooh!! I just took a short break from this blog post to answer an email and during that time I had the idea to make the kitchen and living room more distinct as separate rooms by turning the wood half-wall into an actual drywall half-wall and extending a 16-inch (or so) piece all the way up to the ceiling at the window wall. Since the cabinets are being painted, I’ll take out the small open shelf on the upper cabinets and put in simple open shelving, painted the same colour as the cabinets, that extends to the new wall piece. I’ll then be able to paint the kitchen a different colour that the living room since the walls will now be broken up by the new wall piece and I’ll have someplace to put all the cookbooks that currently reside on that corner of the counter, which will in turn hopefully end the catch-all that corner.

Once again, I have plans (delusions?) of making exercise a part of my life. This time, I’m thinking that because B is going to my aunt’s cottage this Saturday for a little over a week and then, on returning back home, three days later heading to my brother’s out east for just over two weeks, that I’ll have the time to start establishing a routine of sorts. I am feeling more and more unhappy with my body as each day goes on, as I feel and see the weight around my middle, butt, and thighs and know that my clothes from even a year ago (but more so two years ago) won’t even make it past those thighs. I am tired of looking the way I did at 3 months pregnant. There is not a baby in this belly, just a lot of squishy flesh and fat. I’m figuring that the difficulty in finding time to dedicate to exercise due to B being here all the time and not being able to leave him after he’s in bed will be gone at least temporarily for nearly a month and I will have no good excuse.

So tonight I sit here surfing inspiration, dreaming dreams, and downloading podcasts for the Couch to 5k program (which I tried a few years ago and quit). There is the original podcast that I discovered the last time but I’ve also found some new ones here and here, which look to be upbeat and fun. Nicole’s podcasts end at Week 8 (C25K is a nine-week program) but I’ve taken Week 9 from Suz’s blog. Just from a quick glance, it appears that Nicole has more pop music and Suz is rocking the hip hop and R&B tunes. If you’re a Britney fan, Suz has one of her Week 9 playlists devoted to Ms. Spears. I’ve also found a nice-looking set of podcasts over at Chubby Jones so you can check those out too.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Couch to 5k program, it is a plan that covers nine weeks and is meant to be done three times a week. It involves intervals of walking and running sandwiched between a warm up and cool down period. Each week the walking decreases as the running time increases until, in week nine, you are running. Do I want to become a runner? Not necessarily, but I figure it can’t hurt to have these accessible on my iPod. I’m on the hunt for great workout music too as all my music has been lost and I’m starting over from scratch. It can’t hurt to have these podcasts available to mix up the cardio and strength training videos and DVD’s (yes, videos!) that I have filling one drawer of my entertainment centre.

Really, what’s the harm in planning to start something? Again. Only the future will tell if these plans come to pass.

What’s wrong with a little child labour?

That’s sunlight on the floor, not paint.

It’s not like I don’t have to go over the entire floor right after he’s done to pick up all the stuff he’s missed. And he wanted to vacuum. Honest.

Late last week I picked up a ton of fresh fruit and veggies so this week’s meals will be a fridge and pantry challenge. There should be no need for me to go to the grocery store this week except possibly for milk towards the end of this week if we run out.

• Monday: whatever’s easy - B fell asleep as I was beginning supper and is still sleeping so that meal has been moved to Tuesday
• Tuesday: ground turkey and chicken pot pie with cream soup instead of gravy
• Wednesday: turkey chili
• Thursday: spaghetti with marinara sauce and garlic bread from scratch
• Friday: Orange-Glazed Chicken Thighs made with fresh-squeezed orange juice
  
• Saturday: slow cooker beef roast and sweet potatoes
• Sunday: Ginger-Glazed Mahi Mahi with Lemon-Herb Quinoa

After supper was prepared, I took pity on the three brown bananas that were on my counter and mixed up a batch of apple-banana muffins, which I’ve just pulled out of the oven. It smells good in here! The batch makes 24 muffins and at the rate B eats them (double-fisted), I’m going to have to freeze some in 4-muffin portions or there won’t be any left by tomorrow afternoon.

If you’re interested in seeing other meal plans, head over to I’m an Organizing Junkie to see what 300 other people are going to be eating this week.

Last night I decided to make my mom’s beef stew for supper tonight so on my way to bed I sat some stewing beef out of the freezer. This morning I browned the meat, chopped the veggies, and threw it all in the slow cooker. I didn’t have a can of soup on hand so I used a small can of tomato paste instead and roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of Diana Sauce brand barbeque sauce. I had planned to have my boyfriend and his daughter over for supper but his parents came into town today to do a bit of shopping and my mom was over here painting baseboards (thanks, Mom!) so I had my boyfriend pick up some cobs of corn and a salad and we all sat down to a dinner of stew, corn, salad, fresh bread (we ate the entire loaf), and some wonderful-good blueberry-cherry cobbler (I traded the raspberries for cherries) made with fresh fruit. I was quite the little Suzy Homemaker today.

Photo recycled from a previous post

After preparing the cherries for the cobbler, I kept going while waiting for the corn to cook and chopped up the rest of the cherries in preparation for a small batch of Cherry-Raspberry Jam. The recipe says it yields eight jars but I only ended up with five and one that isn’t quite full. The part jar will go in my fridge tonight to be tested out at breakfast.

As I was posting today on Facebook, a friend commented that my food posts always make her hungry and "I love your lifestyle". She’s previously commented similarly on my "lifestyle" and it made me wonder today, along with feeling very good and very humbled, what exactly is my lifestyle. There are definitely people that I admire who practice or aspire to practice frugality, simplicity, and responsibility with the things around them in their journey here on earth but  to have someone comment on me and say that they admire my lifestyle… It rather blows my mind. I’m nowhere near where I’d like to be or where I feel I should be.

This week’s contribution to Quotable Sunday (hosted over at Toni’s blog) relates to having an impression on others:

"Sometimes one creates a dynamic impression by saying something, and sometimes one creates as significant an impression by remaining silent."
     — the Dalai Lama

"A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed."
     — Henrik Ibsen

"Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like."
     — Will Smith

"I’ve reached a point in life where it’s no longer necessary to try to impress. If they like me the way I am, that’s good. If they don’t, that’s too bad."
     — Corazon Aquino

"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means."
     — Calvin Coolidge

Do peas grow this fast? There was nothing there yesterday morning when I was walking around the gardens but late this afternoon, on getting home from work, I was taking a look again and saw the peas. Full sized pods. Was I just not all that observant yesterday?

There are more pods on the front of the vine and on the vine to the right (from the front) of this one. I’ve planted Lincoln and Sugar Pod varieties.

The floor is all done and the baseboards have been put back up. Now begins the task of priming them (most are unpainted pine) and painting them white. I wanted the fresh, airy look of white to go with my light dusty green walls and the new floor.

Nothing has really been put back in its place yet. The entertainment centre and other furniture are still out from the walls and not in the arrangement that they will be in. It’s easier to leave them out while the trim is being painted instead of pulling them out and pushing them back in all the time since the painting is happening in short random bursts of time.

The next project is to paint that left-hand wall the flows into the kitchen as well as the wooden half wall seen in the very left of the photo. The half wall is to be painted the same green as the rest of the walls and the counter is to be removed from the back of it. The hall wall is to be painted an as-yet-undetermined colour just to break up all the green. I’m not sure what colour I’m going to go with. I don’t really want a darker one but I don’t want a beige/cream/white shade either. A yellow? I’ll take the paint can to the store to find out the colour name and then, after finding that paint chip, see if I can find coordinating colours.

A friend posted a link on Facebook that really hit home in all its complex simplicity (sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?). I wish I had been sitting in that room as Paul Hawken gave this particular commencement address to the Class of 2009 at the University of Portland. You can read it here.