Saturday, January 14, 2012

Cleaning House

 It's been a busy January so far at The Garden Gate and the Coop de Grace, but I always enjoy the fresh start of a new year and the motivation that comes with it to organize and indulge my organizational OCD. (The rest of the year I am in recovery, as anyone who takes a really close look at my house will tell you.) And although packing away the Christmas stuff was easy this year, I am still reminded of the woeful lack of storage in this house. With my newly found love of canning, I had to do some serious reallocation of closet space this summer, but it still isn't enough. For example, I would love to have a pantry that looks like this:

Pinterest
As for other "house" cleaning, we are taking advantage of all of our winter greens to try to mitigate the excess of holiday eating. Right now the lettuces are tender and flavorful, and we have been eating a lot of salads. This year I planted some new varieties of heirloom greens, including Little Gem Romaine, Red Romaine, Buttercrunch, Tom Thumb Butterhead, Bronze Mignonette, and arugula. The cilantro I used in a citrus vinaigrette in which I also used our blood oranges. Remarkably, we are still getting grape tomatoes from one of our plants, and they are very good. The girls are also benefiting from the greens in our garden and it is fun to mix up a good salad for them, too.
Green goodness

Coop de Grace special
Stitching has been at a minimum these past two weeks, as there really has been too much to be done both indoors and out, but I shan't leave you without a house-related stitching photo.
"By wisdom a house is built,
and by understanding it is established;
 and by knowledge the rooms are filled
 with all precious and pleasant riches." ~ Proverbs 24:3,4
Have a great week, everyone!

4 comments:

barbara said...

I thought that WAS your pantry and was having to reassess my feelings about you. LOL!!! (Because of awe and jealousy.)

Beehive Needleworks said...

Tho' not as grand, "your" pantry is reminiscent of the one in my childhood home. Shelves lined top to bottom with all manner of lovelies. Peaches with cinnamon sticks placed just so, pears with whole cloves, pickles with fresh dill weed, et cetera...all artfully prepared and displayed by my dear Mum.
Thank you most kindly Joy, for rekindling so many pleasant and treasured memories.
And, I shall await a photograph of your real-life pantry...I feel certain that it shall upstage the one pictured in your blog!

Warmly,
Judy

Katrina said...

OH my that's quite a canning cupboard :-). I love the little house too, which sampler is it from????

Autumn said...

First visit here and I'm inspired. Thanks.