Success!

I typically do not boast about domestic endeavors for two reasons:

1.) My domestic achievements are not that great in the big scheme of life - no where approaching where they would be in my ideal world. (Largely due to lack of time.)

2.) I have an incredibly complex view of domesticity. I think it is important, necessary, and worthy work. I greatly respect women - and men - who do it well. However, these other women who cite their big "achievements" throughout their "busy" days make me want to hurl a brick at them. These are the women who stay at home with their only child and barely manage to keep the house clean and walk the dog let alone prepare gourmet meals or other high quality projects. These women also feel the need to broadcast their meal schedule, workout schedule, cleaning schedule, and errand-running schedule on Facebook with updates every 15 minutes. Really? I would love to get some of these women alone in a room and explain to them what real work is like. And how some of us can't even begin to think about what's for dinner until after 6pm. That's right - typically not until AFTER my husband gets home from work. Shocking, I know. What a bad wife I am. Especially after having worked all day myself - at a REAL job - too. I clearly do not care about my family's well being.

However, this weekend I had three domestic achievements that I am actually proud of. First, I made some lemon cupcakes with a light vanilla butter cream frosting from scratch. This typically would not be cause for pride in my book because I love baking from scratch and refuse to use boxed mixes for anything unless I'm in a brownie pinch at the last minute, but lemon cake absolutely disgusts me. And it happens to be the favorite of my husband and his mother. So, since it was her birthday, I decided to go on a quest to find a good lemon cupcake recipe that didn't make me want to vomit upon first bite. Leave it to Martha's cupcake book - there was a perfect recipe! The cupcakes were light, moist, and delicious with just a hint of lemon for some nice refreshing citrus flavor. I also found a butter cream recipe elsewhere on Martha's site that took about half the butter of typical ones. Still very rich, but when applied in a very thin layer absolutely delicious. And further counteracted the lemon flavor. I also think it helped that we got the lemons from Fresh Market which always has the best produce. It's the only store outside of Brooks Brothers, Crate and Barrel, or high end purse designers that I actually enjoy visiting... and at which I willingly part with my money. So, the cupcakes were a success.

Second, I finally repaired our couch cushions that the dogs tried to destroy about 6 weeks ago. Now, it took some creativity to repair the zipper that was torn through the center of some of the teeth, but after breaking one zipper head and tearing apart an old pair of jeans to get a strong metal zipper head I managed to do it without having to replace the entire zipper (which was something I don't really have the skill to do. Granted, I could always learn and plan to, but didn't want to exert that effort at this time.) I also sewed up a hole around the base of a zipper on the other cushion that looks like it will hold just fine. So, after an hour or two of trial and error, we finally have our couch back! It was nice to actually be able to sit next to my husband and watch some TV last night instead of sitting across the room from each other like strangers. It was even better to save the $200 it probably would have cost to have someone fix it. Overall, I was very pleased with the situation.

Third, I spent about 4 hours finally unpacking and trying to organize the office. Woo hoo! We can actually see the wall because I put away about 10 boxes of books and was then able to move all the boxes of Christmas decorations and remaining boxes of books into the closet. Once we get the spare bed put together tonight it might actually look like someone lives there instead of looking like someone is getting ready to move out. Or that the biggest room in our entire house has been set up as a permanent storage facility. Bring on the holiday guests!

Sorry for the lack of whit in this post, but I just wanted to share because these things have been hanging over my head and I'm so happy that they all worked out! I also have not really looked at the news today causing me to generally be in good spirits. I expect that to last all of about 30 more minutes, but I figured I'd take advantage of while I could.