the january cure : assignments eight nine ten (or lack of).

okay, so part of the january cure is to throw a shindig at the end of the month so you have people over and feel great about your home. well, we had both our housewarming as well as christmas dinner at our house already the month of december, so i'm not really feeling up to having people over again in any sort of organized fashion.

so assignment eight (monday), which is to choose a date and time for this get-together and get the invite list invited, is.. well, out the door. now, it happens to be the lunar new year that weekend, so i still might invite a couple people over, but it most certainly would not be organized, and not at this point.

assignment nine (tuesday) is to create a landing strip and start using it. a landing strip "is where you can lay things down and sort the mail along with your change, keys and other odds and ends." well, lucky us - we already have one! two the right after entering the doorway is a place to hang keys, bags, clip coupons and sanford's leash and harness. to the left is a console table, also with a place to put keys, where sanford's wipes and bags are, and where mail gets dropped when we don't put it on the dining table.

we're not very good at using it though, particularly when it comes to getting the mail sorted and dealt with on a daily basis. that also comes with not having anything near a functioning office yet, so it sort of piles up (on the dining table) until we find time on the weekends to deal with it. but other than that, we definitely have a place to put our keys and other odds and ends.

and finally, assignment ten (wednesday) is to "unplug" for the evening aka do a "media fast" or "take a break from television, computer, tablet and cell or smart phone." this should have been really easy, as one of our good friends was staying with us (oh yea, did i mention we also made the guest room stay-in-able this past weekend? we're being so good!) and we mostly just hung out in the living room and chatted, but we did end up watching a couple videos on youtubethat had come up during conversation. i also did some reading on my e-reader, but i don't really feel like that counts.

the january cure : assignment seven.

i'm a bit behind on posting this, but here goes!

assignment seven (for the weekend) was to buy flowers, clean the kitchen and make dinner - done and done! i did this on time too, just was late to the posting game.

i bought the flowers at the atwater village farmers market, which is walking distance from the house and takes place on sundays. such a great little market. plus, they have several prepared food stands as well, so i also ate lunch there (a delmy chicharon con queso pupusa from and some bling bling dumplings; YUM.)

i went through and cleaned the whole kitchen. reorganizing drawers and cabinets, throwing away old, unused food items (both pantry and refridgerator), cleaned all the surfaces, found homes for various items still hanging out unnecessarily on the countertops and even oiled the butcher block island top. definitely feels nice to have a clean kitchen!

as for the cooking dinner part - well, i already cook dinner at home most nights, but i did decide to go a bit outside my usual box and made a leek and bell pepper quinoa, topped with a steamed and buttered lobster tail (this was supposed to be special, right?!) and some garlic sauteed baby bok choy (okay, not so much outside the box). it was deeeeeeeelicious. i should make quinoa, and lobster tails, more often!

the january cure : assignment six.

the assignment:

Most of us probably can very easily think of some piece of artwork we have that needs framing - It can be a painting, a drawing, a photograph, a print, a poster, a card - big or small, expensive or free - made by you, a friend, a local artist, or even your kids - from a gallery, a secondhand shop, a craft fair or found online. Non-traditional things can be wonderful as decorative art, too - when framed and elevated to an object of honor - a menu, a silk scarf, tickets, a note from a loved one.

Think about which item would truly make you happy to display in this way in your home. The origin and the artist is less important than how it makes you feel. The important part is that you should love it and really want to use it to add some warmth, beauty and individuality to your space. Now that you've given it some thought and made a choice it's time to get this taken care of - don't put it off any longer - let's get the process underway. (Lots of helpful links below!)

Get busy and keep in mind that we'll be hanging artwork on the 28th, so it should be ready by then.

If you already have a piece of framed artwork set aside that you can hang on the 28th with the rest of us, consider today a free day to catch up or put some time in on working on your project that you got started on yesterday.

well, framing and putting up art is something we've been pretty active about doing since we've moved in. we've even put up more recently that we haven't blogged about:

but even with all that, we have so much more, both framed and unframed:

so we're going to look through what we already have framed, and see if we can find some wall-homes for at least one, but hopefully more, by the 28th.