Friends and family

Just finished our 5th day in a row of guests.

But... I think we all probably have different things in mind when we imagine inviting someone over for a visit. In Russian culture a meal is often involved, and a huge spread is not unheard of. When I was single and would visit families during the day, often they would feed me the food they made for their own families, but would not hesitate to offer me the entire contents of their fridge out of generosity.

By the way, Russians will keep offering you food even if you say no. I suppose it is more polite to refuse in order to not seem like a pig...I have a hard time getting used to that, especially if the food is really good. ;) If you don't want me to eat all your food, don't keep offering me seconds!

Back to cooking. If I waited until I had the time/energy/skill to cook a big multi-course meal, I'd never have guests over.

So, this is more what it looked like:

That time I decided to vacuum...

Day #1: A friend from church needed some company and we agreed to meet during the day. The night before, it had snowed, and the kids really wanted to play in it. Instead of cooking or cleaning, I took them outside. Then I fed my friend some yummy homemade soup that my in-laws had delivered to us the day before.

Release

Long post alert! Read on for some personal thoughts about organizing and purging.

I'm on track to be done sorting papers by the time we leave for summer travel this month. It's taken me about 6 months, so I guess it should feel satisfying.

Surprisingly, though, it doesn't feel great. I feel relieved to have freed up a little space, and to not have so many unsorted papers in storage. However, in many cases I didn't enjoy tossing things out. Many of the documents represented things I had worked very hard on. And others represented special memories, though weren't as hard to let go of.

Trying to sort in a central location and watch the kids at the same time...

I tend to keep things with sentimental value, but also for archival reasons. I simply like to keep a record and I like to sort through and go down memory lane. It bugs me if there is a chronological gap, so that is part of why I keep certain things. But to get more specific....

Things I found "easy" to get rid of:

-Sunday school teaching materials: I can always get more.
-Random artwork: If I don't remember who made it and the occasion, it doesn't hold value, unless I could use it to decorate.
-Sermon notes: I did keep a few print-outs of Andrei's sermons, but I came to the realization that the notes served their purpose at the moment WHEN I WAS WRITING THEM DOWN. I can go through and sort of make sense of them, but I'm a different person now...my 2010 self needed them then.
-Financial statements: Most things have an electronic record now.
-Hand-outs: They weren't given to me personally; too generic.
-Notes from former friends: I don't want to intentionally wipe them from my memory, but I don't need correspondence from every single person either.
-Sentimental items not easily identified (see random artwork): If I remember that so-and-so brought it back from Greece, I might keep it. But as the years go by I tend to forget, and don't feel as tied to those items.

Hobby pruning

I promised myself that if I did some paper sorting I could do a new blog post.

Remember hobbies? When I got married I swore I would never let myself forget how busy I was when I was single. And by that I mean look down on unmarried men and women as if they had lots of free time on their hands. We all have plenty to keep us busy. And who made it a virtue to be busy, anyway?

But, I will say that I was SHOCKED to open up all my old notepads and skim through them. Detailed notes from sermons, grammar from studying several languages (mainly Greek, French, and Italian) for FUN as well as formal Russian courses. Notebooks full of Bible passages and questions that I had written down meticulously. A Calligraphy instructional guide along with several pages of my attempts. And of course there were all the notes from lesson planning for teaching English, and different ministry projects I was involved in.

Although looking at the notes made me jealous of my past self as if I had lots of free time, I know that isn't necessarily true. Obviously I had the time to study some subjects on my own, but I might have done that by waking up earlier, or using the time in the late evening. Although there was blogging and Skype, I managed to find time for other pursuits. And I was my own master, setting my own schedule.

It's interesting to think about why people have less time for study when they get married and/or have children. I think for one thing, there is always the possibility of work being interrupted. It may take longer to shut out distractions, and someone could need something at any moment. Our brains also fill up with the tasks that go along with caring for other people in the household. Intellectual (emotional? mental?) fatigue. And while I had plenty of late nights as a single person, sleep deprivation as a parent is just different. I still make foolish choices by staying up too late, but there are plenty of other reasons that parents don't get enough sleep. Just like with concentrating on work, it may take a while to get settled for sleep, and then you could get woken up at any moment by someone who needs something, so I'm not sure how deep the sleep really is.

Okay, that was kind of a tangent. I definitely miss devoting more time to study, but I'm looking forward to doing more activities as a family together as the kids get older. One friend recently posted a comment on FB to the effect of "poor new parents thinking it will get easier." I know each age has its difficulties, but I think the future is bright! I know it will make such a difference (both good and bad?) just having kids know how to read! Lately David has been more into puzzles and we've learned a few card games. And as he gets into school subjects, I'll be able to dive into learning again, too. Might have to sneak some of my favorites in there!

As for the fate of my papers, I threw a lot of them away. Do notes serve a purpose beyond a year or so? My first instinct was to save them because they represented so many hours of dedication, but to be honest, 1) I couldn't understand most of them without the original context, and 2) they had already served their purpose at the moment when I was writing them down-that was part of the actual learning process.

As I was going through my pile of Important Documents, a few actually went missing...including our marriage certificate! Ugh! How does that happen? You might think something could be lost in the piles, but in actuality I normally have a pretty good sense of where things are. So, not sure what to do about that. I feel like I've had many moments lately of missing things that have been purged, but that is a story for another post.

Spring cleaning /KonMari/ Changing seasons

This was going to be a short and sweet "everyday life" post, but it ended up taking me a long time to explain a few photos!

Do you do spring cleaning? There are always a lot of projects around this time of year.

Some of my projects aren't so fun. In my Konmari tidying (using the term very loosely), I'm done with my own clothes and books and need to tackle papers. I got all the important documents out of the cabinet and they're sitting there waiting for me, but tonight I decided to blog instead. :)

Maybe tomorrow?

Another category is old CDs. I already discarded some that required older versions of Windows. But I have to go through all the ones that might have files and photos, even though I probably have already copied a lot of them to an external hard drive. It's going to be tedious going through each one. I guess I'd better really discard the CDs this time so I don't have to sort them ever again! I'm keeping some music CDs for now, though.

Not looking forward to this, either.

Little things

Got to get a July post up, not sure how the rest of the summer will go! As I probably say every year, just as September feels like a fresh start, summer always feels like a big deadline. Even though we normally travel for less than 2 months, it feels like I have to reach the end of my to-do list before we go away. If I haven't seen someone all year, it has to happen now even though it could happen in September. But now that we're leaving quite soon, I've abandoned all the lists and have focused my attention towards the suitcases and provisions across the pond.

Anyway, we did get a bunch of little projects done even if it wasn't as much as desired. A few examples are below. Little organizational fixes that will make life easier even if they're not anything fancy.

I'll do the fancier one first, though. This was hand-made by friends. I love being able to put up decorations that are made with love and not from IKEA. :)

I love seeing this as we walk in the door!

Next, some additional shelves for the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe. It was half-outfitted with shelves, and then there were a few sections with a rail for hanging coats. BUT it's a shallow wardrobe, so that would fit maybe 1 winter coat? Like it's made for someone's dress pants in their bedroom and not front hallway. Didn't make sense to me so we're putting shelves everywhere and hooks elsewhere in the entryway. The wardrobe also has cleaning supplies so it will get good use...not sure what to put on the top shelves, though!

Now each person has a shelf...reach in and grab
 your hat before heading out the door. Looks messy
 but it's out of sight. :)

The Urban Housewife and Proverbs 31

I was a bit bowled over by a blog post I stumbled upon. The blog itself seems like it has a lot of posts about conservative Christian homemaking that I would normally agree with, and I actually want to read more of her writing. However, the more I live abroad and gain perspective in housekeeping/family life, the more I realize that the suburban American Christian vision of a housewife isn't necessarily a universal ideal.

So with that little intro in mind, here is the situation. Someone wrote to this blogger (linked above) asking for advice on boredom and loneliness as a housewife. The blogger had a fairly-anonymous male reader write a response from a husband's viewpoint.

I guess my first issue is with the women who were supposedly commenting that they were bored. I can't even imagine having "nothing to do!" I can't imagine looking around a house that is already clean and wondering what to do next. Every once in a while I will hear a comment from a woman who took up a new hobby while at home with small children, or while they napped. Sure, I take time for a creative project, but if I waited until I did my "chores," I'd never have time for it. Throughout the post, the man discusses how wives can best use their "free time," and it's like he's writing in a foreign language. That might be just me, though.

I will say that boredom can also probably arise from being busy with something that isn't your favorite. I can definitely feel bored doing various tasks or even playing certain games with my kids. So in that case I agree that sometimes an attitude adjustment is needed.

However, I was a bit shocked by this man's harsh assessment of the "modern" woman:

"Whereas in decades and centuries past where the woman worked hard all day long at doing these types of beneficial household activities and ended up contributing so much more to the overall support of the household, nowadays, especially for the stay at home wife/mom, EVERYTHING is left to the husband to earn and provide for while the wives sit at home idle, suffering with loneliness and complaining that their husbands work too many hours."

A Day in the Life

Today was just one of those days where David was a little more rambunctious than usual! Once again I was thankful to have a more domestic day with few interruptions from the outside world, but I sure am glad his shenanigans are normally fewer in number. Also, we are at the halfway point of Andrei being away. So like I said in the last post, I'm feeling kind of "mom-busy."

I stayed up late last night enjoying the quiet. My kind of quiet...catching up via the Internet at my own pace, and doing a little reading for fun.

Didn't get the miracle I hoped for, and David woke up pretty early this morning. So I went to get him his chocolate milk and turn on Netflix. We started giving him chocolate milk when weaning from breastfeeding (at 2.5 yrs!), so it kind of stuck. No cavities that we know of!

David usually hangs out in the kitchen, but I wanted to snooze a bit and didn't want him in there unsupervised. So I set him up in the living room, right next to our bedroom....

An hour later, he had wet his pants. Just one hour. Somehow it seems to only happen on my watch and never when Andrei is in charge! I found some dry clothes for him and crawled back under the covers...

About a half million requests later (it's hard to make Buzz Lightyear's arms go the right way), I found myself in the living room again, this time to find David sliding around in a puddle on the floor, exclaiming "chocolate milk is slippery!" Again...Andrei gives him chocolate milk, end of story. I give it to him and get to clean up a chocolate milk eruption. Was kind of a backwards start to the housecleaning I had planned, but we rolled with it.

Went to bring the laptop back to the kitchen and felt something on the underside...it was modeling clay. Stuck right to the bottom of my computer, partially covering the fan. Uggghhh. David "didn't know" how it had gotten there, but still apologized, and then eventually confessed.

Apartment: D's room

Bummer: Lost about half the photos I had been storing up for this post. :/ It would have been cool to see the transformation, but I've got a few from when we first bought our apartment, so we'll start with that.

The former owners were semi-empty-nesters, and had tailored this multi-room family apartment to meet their needs, including a huge bedroom with matching furniture, etc. They sent the cable from their TV through the wall into the room behind it, which they were using as some sort of cloakroom/walk-in closet? Definitely not standard for Russian city life! But we'll see what happens if we ever become empty-nesters. ;)

Vladimir checking the space out

The shelves were ugly but came in pretty handy, and we were using that room as an office (the missing photos). We moved some of the shelves down to table level and I did a few craft projects there.

However, we ultimately decided this would be the best room for David (see below). We moved his furniture in there a while ago, but he just started sleeping there at night last month, when we had completed the next phase of the Room Switch.

Click through for the "after" view and some more photos...

Anti-Flying

After going back to FlyLady time and again to see if I could make it work, I finally realized that it's probably not the best strategy for my personality type.

First I thought it was just the season of life or the fact that I have a toddler who will mess up whatever "zone" I've finished, turning 15 minutes of completed work into a new 30-minute job.

I also noticed that because I can't do all the rooms, and have to focus on the common areas, that preparing for guests will always involve cleaning the kitchen and neglecting the bedroom. I was so excited when FlyLady assigned the "master bedroom"....only to realize I had no time to do it that week as I needed to clean for guests.

"No-nonsense" can be good, but I put my foot down when she started talking about purging. "You don't need your school essays," she said. But I do. Okay, I don't. And my parents don't need them in their attic. But I'm not ready to throw everything away yet. That's a choice. And when she tells me to throw certain things away, she's making a choice for her own personality type, not for mine.

Maybe FlyLady would suggest scanning photos of the projects and artwork and throwing the originals away and then making each family member a memory book for that year or quarter, like I saw on one blog. But I haven't seen time for that allotted on the FlyLady calendar, plus she probably wants me to throw all my album-making supplies away.

The Food Chronicles

I decided to look at what our family was eating to see if I could make some changes.


Breakfast: Omelets

Lunch: Homemade soup (chicken or pork w/ veggies using homemade broth), + sandwich (1 piece of rye bread with a slice of cheese or leftover roasted pork/chicken)

Dinner: Various kinds of meat+rice/pasta/potatoes +salad or other veggie

We have tea after every meal with a small treat of some kind (ONE piece of chocolate or ONE cookie). And snack on fruit or homemade croutons, etc.


Verdict: I know that I don't eat enough of some things, like fruits and veggies. But it's hard to believe that with 90% of our food made from scratch we could be way off the mark. People keep talking about the evils of grains and sugar and it's hard for me to believe that having a few slices of bread or a few cookies per day would be ruining my digestion.

A lot of women in the fitness discussion groups I frequent seem to talk about "real food" and "Paleo" all the time. So I decided to check out a new e-book written by a woman I'd run into before in the blogosphere. She blogs at http://trinaholden.com/blog/.

Your Real Food Journey: A Gentle Guide to Steady Progress (by Trina Holden)

-My Thoughts-

Even though I am not sold on the "real food" movement, I really enjoyed this book. Yes, I rolled my eyes about all the "staying close to the source" and buying local everything and finding a raw milk source and whatnot. I wish someone would put out a book like this for urban life! And the dessert section is frustrating...I don't know where to buy sugar substitute or eggs that can be consumed raw.

But aside from the shopping side of the equation, Trina definitely has a knack for making things sound doable, and she assigns some simple tasks for those who like their checklists.

Here are a few sections of the book I found applicable:

1) Bone Broth

Making my own chicken broth seemed like a no-brainer. If I make soup, I use homemade broth, but I don't actually make it that often because I don't have stock vegetables on hand like onions, celery, and carrots.

"Your Real Food Journey" suggests: use bone broth in almost everything as a substitute for water; use it to boil your rice, pasta, etc. Again, that wasn't a new idea to me, but I'd never purposed to do it regularly. The life-changer was that she mentioned simmering just the bones. No soup veggies needed, just cover the chicken bones with water and some vinegar and simmer away for several hours. Then you have some broth you can use the next day for cooking your dinner. We eat chicken so often that I could definitely see myself doing this a lot.


2) Cultured Foods/Homemade Yogurt

Fermentation is a part of the Russian food culture, and I could see myself getting into it. "Your Real Food Journey" claims that fermented foods have special enzymes that can aid your digestion if you include them in every meal. Kefir and sauerkraut are the main ones around here, but the book has recipes like "Gingered Carrots" that sound edible as well.

As far as homemade yogurt, she suggests using some whey, which I'm pretty sure I could find in the supermarket here. The dairy section in Russian grocery stores is huge, and that includes cultured products. Hopefully I will make a yogurt attempt one of these days. If not, I can always just buy some kefir. Homemade is "better," but sometimes baby steps are necessary. Extra dishes have to be factored in!


So those are a few projects I'd like to try. As far as cutting out foods/food groups, well....the jury is still out.

What does YOUR medicine chest look like?

So today while David was napping I reorganized the spice shelf and the medicine shelves. Mainly I just took everything out and then put it back in a more orderly manner...no fancy Pinterest crafts here. I did use some smaller boxes to create tiers so that you can see everything at once.

This is the AFTER, in case you couldn't tell :)

The throat (and cough) remedy category (along the back wall) wins for being the most populated! I wonder if that is indicative of the climate/environment here. Lots and lots of people with chronic throat ailments.

Anyway....for now the medicines occupy 1.5 shelves of the wardrobe in the front hallway. Since the shelves are deeper than your typical bathroom medicine cabinet, it's hard to make it so that everything is easy to find. The way we have it right now pretty much works, though it isn't very pretty. When David gets a little older I think I will want something more closed, not a shelf that is completely exposed when the doors slide away.

I can't figure out what the optimal variation would be, though. I guess something with rather shallow shelves so that you can see all the labels at once? But then it would need to be really tall to fit everything! It was handy when we had them in the bedside table because we could open the drawer and look down and read the labels. But that wasn't child-proof. And drawers high up are rather silly; can't see into them.

Maybe one of those hanging things (shoe organizer?) with the clear pockets? But again, the medicines must be easy to find for US but out of sight to a child.

I haven't really found anything good online...do you have any ideas?

Recycling failure

I don't know how I've lived here all these years without coming up with a solution, but for the past 2 years I've had a growing pile of items that need to be RECYCLED. Maybe a lot of it is baby-related...lots of glass packaging and some cardboard.

I just couldn't figure out how to dispose of it properly, and that made me want to HOARD it even more. If it pricks my conscience to put it all in a landfill-bound heap, then I can just find a way to REUSE it. My suitcase is a lot lighter now that I'm not bringing craft supplies from the U.S.! And we have Pinterest now! Look how many ideas there are!

But enough is enough, and in the hopes of certain home improvement and decluttering projects becoming possible, I decided to find a way to finally get rid of some of these piles. But it turned out to not be so simple. I kept catching hints of recycling programs, only to learn that they were a bust; a temporary grant that people hadn't responded to actively, and therefore discontinued. It seemed to be one of those questions that goes unanswered in the forums, along with where to buy molasses and in what year the city will become handicapped-accessible...

A few times I stumbled upon a list of addresses published by environmental agencies. But as I ran those addresses through to double-check, most were defunct.

The glass seemed to be the hardest. We weren't even looking to redeem them for money. We just wanted to find a place that would take these dozens and dozens of glass jars and USE them for something. But I didn't find any reliable information.

So I gave up. Andrei took six bags of glass jars out to the dumpster yesterday. My only hope was that with them being all together, anyone looking for that kind of thing would find them before they got hauled away with the rest of the trash.

Apparently there ARE receptacles for paper. I have a HUGE garbage bag full of paper/cardboard remnants. I can think of so many ways I could use them: for Christmas cards/ornaments, decorations, Sunday school crafts, toilet paper towers, etc. But I just can't deal with the clutter. I'm not doing enough art to make up for it taking up so much space.

My comfort here is that we will build up another supply pretty fast. :)

Farewell, potential craft projects!

The paper garbage is going to be disposed of in the next few days and then I guess I will have to decide on a policy for future sorting.

I wish I could say I expect improvement in this city in the future, but I guess people just don't really have an incentive right now to sort their trash. I don't really like the idea of fining or otherwise punishing people for NOT doing it, but I do wish there were more options. We'll see.

This week

Sort of in survival mode here. I caught a cold over the weekend as we were heading into Andrei's most intense 2 weeks of the semester. Oops! We need to keep HIM healthy, too! I think I would rather be sick than have David and/or Andrei be sick.

So I've been laying low, but I guess if I feel like blogging I must be on the rebound.

Last week we had a stream of guests every other day, and today we would have too if I hadn't cancelled. But what seemed like a recipe for a nervous breakdown (in terms of lots of entertaining) didn't turn out too badly. Apparently keeping one's home clean is EASIER when you have more guests. I wonder why that is? More discipline? Less time to mess it up? Kind of reminds me of Fly Lady and working towards always being ready for company. Lately (when the sniffles don't get me down) I have been operating on the principle of "DO IT NOW." In general I do triage with housework and that means that a lot of seemingly insignificant tasks pile up because I don't see them as being worth my time. I'm still bad about the dishes, but returning things to their places or putting things in the trash right away does reduce the work later on.

I also feel calmer when other people do the cooking, or at least contribute. I'd love to be able to do it all myself, but then I turn into a monster. On one of the occasions I opted to make a salad and have storebought dessert. My tastebuds may have missed out, but the stress of trying to pull a dessert together in addition to everything else would have had consequences, not to mention I would have neglected David.

Meanwhile, it's Lent...but we're not fasting. Andrei and I "joked" (though not to make light of the Resurrection) that fasting would actually be pretty practical during Holy Week due to the vigor of the scheduling. He doesn't have time to eat breakfast before work, and by the time he's home from church in the evening we don't get to eat dinner until around 11pm. And then it's time to prepare for the next day's lectures/sermons/etc. And of course I think of the Passover too and the unleavened bread and the traveling clothes...readiness.

Housebound: Nightmare or Dream Come True?

Because of a sniffling baby, I wasn't able to attend church last week and put my recent musings into practice.

The best form of entertainment!

There was a seminar that weekend too that we didn't go to. I'm not sure if we've been to anything like that (besides the church retreat) since becoming parents. We could manage it if the grandparents babysat. But I guess we just like to nest. The "reward" of being present at an event doesn't quite match up to the effort used to get there. Sad, I know.

I'm speaking for us as a family unit, though. Andrei does go to events, often where he is the speaker, and he works hard to prepare for those. Of course all that effort is not in vain! And we do soak as much as we can out of the fellowship we do have.

There are times when I wish we had a car. David and I could go somewhere without Andrei. I'd pop David in his carseat and off we'd go. We could give other people rides, too. It's pretty hard to picture Andrei or myself behind the wheel of a car, though. We'll see-the first step is getting a license.

On the other hand, staying in has plenty of merits. Aside from the calm, cozy, and safe atmosphere, there are economic benefits: less money spent on going out and making purchases; less transportation energy consumed. Fewer germs to catch. It also breeds a sort of discipline when it comes to planning trips out of the house. If shopping is to be done once a week, then it must be planned for and the groceries planned to last for that time period. If we're to be in a certain neighborhood on a certain day, we must see if there's anything to be done in that general vicinity. If I want Andrei's help to go up or down the stairs with David, then I must determine in advance when he will be available. And big city life usually involves grocery shopping on the way home from somewhere; no separate trips. It used to annoy me to always have that "chore" after a long day out, but I'm used to it now, and Andrei at least is very gracious about stopping at the store for an item or two.

Anyway. I can look back on those seasons: the student days of running around like crazy, and the single missionary days of spending 3-4 hours in public transportation, traveling all over St. Petersburg each day. And I sure am glad to have a "break."

I was going to end the post there, but I didn't want to conclude without mentioning something about friendship. It's good to have friends of all ages and walks of life. Sure, parents of littles have a lot in common, but unfortunately being housebound is one of those shared traits! Hospitality works in hearts in more ways than one; a "mobile" friend who is willing to travel is just as much of a blessing as those who do the hosting.

Who?

Well, this is a different kind of post. I was doing some "spring cleaning" and was reminded of my OWL collection! Back when I was a teenager, I was "Owl" in my group of friends, and then people started giving me owl-themed gifts, and it's led to an interesting group of keepsakes so far.

Maybe someday I'll have a little display wall or something. Right now they are scattered in different rooms and some are in a box waiting to be used in a project.

Here are just a few that were close at hand:

A pair of earrings that I bought recently but haven't worn. They're actually really tiny!

A brooch from Andrei. :)

Also a gift from Andrei; a decal that you can stick somewhere.

An adorable tea towel from my grandmother!

A pair of socks I'm about to get rid of. Kind of gross, I know. But I had to photograph them for posterity! I was actually wearing these socks  (with sandals) to an OB visit before David was born, and the OB commented on them. Then he was the one to deliver David. Not my favorite doctor, but David and I both lived to tell about it.

A handsewn blank book from my mom, with an owl newspaper photo.

David has been into owls lately, too. We have a few finger puppets that he likes to play with, and he recognizes them now in books.

Cooking adventures

Recently I was planning on making a salad and asked Andrei to grate a little onion. I thought the flavor would be a little more subtle that way...who wants a mouthful of onion?

Ingredients mixed with care, I took a bite and got a blast of...bitter! The whole salad was bitter and the only thing I could trace it back to was the onion. Weird! And why?

When I have cooking mishaps, I often wonder where I went wrong. I've been trying to work on my "kitchen chemistry" skills lately to avoid the big no-nos. When I scoured the Internet a year or so ago looking for a good handbook, I came across Cook's Illustrated's "The Science of Good Cooking." It's organized around 50 "concepts" that cover a lot of the chemical reactions that occur in cooking. When I looked up onion in the index, sure enough, there was a page talking about oxidation, with accompanying experiments. Something about cell structure and bruising and so on. The bottom line is, when the recipe says to chop/ dice/ crush/ grate/ etc., you don't substitute one action for the other. You could end up with a flavor too defined (or too subtle). And you might end up having to throw out the whole thing, sigh.

More on The Science of Good Cooking

Whenever I'm curious about something cooking-related, it's definitely helpful to have this book in order to look it up. Each concept is accompanied by several recipes and then an explanation of why each recipe is destined to be successful.

I like reading the explanations, but I've been a little disappointed by the recipe assortment. I think it might be a regional thing as Andrei and I mostly eat chicken and pork and don't need all the recipes for steak, grilled items, turkey, vegetables that we can't buy here, etc. The reviews on Amazon at least say the recipes are really good, but I just don't see myself trying a majority of them, so I'll have to find other ways to use the concepts.

I can see myself getting into the baked goods, though. I need to hunt around for the ingredients, but there are definitely several recipes I'd like to try, like cheesecake. So far I've tried brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and banana bread. The recipes are pretty nit-picky and involve a lot of different steps such as browning the butter or softening the bananas in the microwave and then straining them. It's not so much hard to follow the recipe as it is to do the dishes afterward! I think I will make the brownies and chocolate chip cookies again, but the banana bread wasn't all that special for the effort involved...quick breads should be "quick" in my opinion. ;) And I already have a reliable recipe.


Some other sources for recipes I've used lately are below.

Natasha's Kitchen has lots and lots of Russian/Ukrainian/other types of recipes and it is just a really well-organized, high-quality blog in general. I went through putting a bunch of them in a Pinterest folder to try later. Tonight for dinner I made Chicken Mushroom Casserole, really good! Natasha also has lots and lots of desserts, but I've never actually tried making any of them! Many of them are elegant but a little bit complicated. Hopefully for a holiday or something I can try one.

Another good English-language blog with Russian recipes is Olga's Flavor Factory. She's got a nice-sized archive on there too and there are also posts with cooking tips like how to deseed a tomato, and the occasional sweet post about her faith and family.

In general it seems that the number of U.S. based blogs with Russian cuisine is growing. I think that's a really good thing as Russian cuisine definitely has some tasty dishes that deserve recognition. And it's nice to have an English-language version of the recipes with nice photography. The only problem is sometimes they are TOO Americanized and use ingredients and short-cuts I don't have access to here! Obviously there is going to be a lot of overlap within the content of these blogs, but I don't think that's a problem.

Child-Proof Crafting

...It's not the crafting that's child-proof, it's the RESULT!

David was napping (gasp!) one day recently, and I decided to finally tackle a project that had been in the works for the past 6 months or so.

Lacy Earring Holder

Ever since we moved in 1.5 years ago, I'd never really unpacked my jewelry. The previous owners of the apartment left behind a vanity table with plenty of drawers for storage...pretty, but not practical for having a toddler in the house. For the first several months, the vanity table was used for diaper and baby clothing storage. :)

Then I decided enough was enough and moved the baby stuff out, but jewelry and make-up didn't seem like the best items to be within reach, so I still couldn't move them in. So I was looking for ideas to put my jewelry HIGH UP.

I really liked the idea of using a picture frame. I saw some examples online. Some involved stretching wires horizontally across the picture frame, and others required stretching a lacy material or netting across the frame so that you could stick earrings through the holes. I like that joke about Pinterest that it helps you use "things you have around the house (just making a trip to 3-4 different stores to supplement)." I did try to make do with plain old materials not suited for the purpose, and that's part of why it took so long.

I bought a cheap-o frame at IKEA, and then Andrei spent a long time getting it to the right color. Then I wanted to use up the lacy scraps I'd found lying around, but it was this narrow strip, so I couldn't stretch it across the frame properly. I tried to stiffen it up with starch and that was pretty much a bust. Then I ended up trying to close the gaps with thread. This is all by way of saying that if you look closely, the final result is far from perfect. Those seams just jump out to me when I look at the photo. But I'm still happy with how it turned out. An acceptable creative solution and not too unattractive.

But when I went to fill it up with earrings, I found that I didn't have that many dangly (sp?) ones after all. What I do have a lot of is NECKLACES. What to do with THOSE? I actually bought a few pretty hooks but I'm not sure when we will actually mount them somewhere.

In a moment of desperation I threw a bunch of knick-knacks on top of the vanity mirror and dangled the necklaces down. It looks a bit silly and is far from stable. But now the necklaces are at eye level and aren't lying in a box all tangled together!

And it all brings a bit of color/personality to the bedroom.

Improvised Necklace Holder

Next installment

Part One is here. Note that we are talking about real-life circumstances and not my dream sequence described here. :)

...

We had a date with the specialists.

As I mentioned, I was nervous about the details: about needing to quarantine items, about dangerous substances, about a few bugs getting away and continuing to multiply...and also about needing to clean for "company" (AKA the Bug Guys). Weren't they going to be going through every nook and cranny, like my underwear drawer? (gasp)

Well, David solved that one. He needed a nap, outside. Babushka had not arrived yet. I took him outside and the bug guy (there was just one) arrived soon after and got right to work. We had to stay outside. I was not involved at all. And that's when I realized...when you are too concerned with controlling everything, the best solution is to surrender control to someone else.

So we stayed outside while it all got done, and then all went and had lunch, and stayed outside for the rest of the day too, while the apartment was airing out.

How long ago was that? A week? It seems like ages!

The bug exterminator did NOT find anyone. No signs, nothing. Our bed was "clean." Maybe we never had "tenants," or maybe we were just in time. By the time you see them running around, you've got a pretty big problem. I count it a blessing that I didn't have any encounters.

I did get some more bites, only on my ankles, up to a few days ago. I think I've been bite-free for the past few days. There could be a few offspring somewhere, but the poison will continue to work, and for now it seems that we have won.

I still have doubts sometimes, thinking of all the ways they could come back. I guess in an apartment building you're never really SAFE. The bug guy said we're having an epidemic and that the warm weather is PERFECT for the bugs to thrive. You never know which of your neighbors are trying to drive out pests, only to have them seek refuge in YOUR home.

And so I realized that this is another area of my life in which to trust God. There are a lot of times I feel like a pilgrim, when we have to travel for one reason or another. It was a relief to become apartment owners, but in the back of my mind I sometimes feel God saying, "Don't get too attached to it." Whether it's bureaucracy, vacation, or a bed bug infestation, He reminds me that the only way to really feel at home is to abide in Him.

An update of sorts

A new kind of problem has kept us busy lately.

It started out with a few itchy bites on my leg. "Bug bites in the summer?" you say. "How unremarkable."

Perhaps. But they were just so CONSISTENT. No matter what the weather, what I wore to bed, whether or not I had changed the sheets, windows open or closed...whatever it was sure was hungry. I never felt anything at night, never saw any bugs on my body, I would just suddenly start itching and find a bite or two (or several).

Finally one day (my birthday), while David was taking an amazingly long nap, I did a little research. Unfortunately, the best explanation that fit the situation was that we had bed bugs. :( I didn't want to believe it...I really wasn't looking for there to be anything wrong. I would have accepted an allergy explanation or something similar. But, the signs were just adding up to bed bugs.

Andrei wasn't getting bitten, but he wanted to make sure David (with a few suspect bites) and I weren't going to suffer long. We then entered the research phase of things...

We scoured extermination sites and forums. Andrei wanted to hear from the professionals and I wanted to hear from the people who had experienced this (and won!) :). I typed in search phrases like "I get bites but husband doesn't," and found tons of testimonials. He looked for (child-safe) bug poison that could be purchased in St. Petersburg.

Meanwhile, if you read enough testimonials, you learn just how much people suffer psychologically from trying to get rid of infestations, whether it is bed bugs, fleas, etc. If it goes on for long enough, paranoia sets in. Since we didn't seem to have a huge problem (no visible signs of bugs except for the bites), we weren't TOO worried, but there was still a need to act fast. Even so, we began to exhibit a mild form of paranoia, manifested by incessantly checking each piece of lint we came across, often repeatedly. :)

Andrei, in an attempt to protect David, put containers of lavender water around the legs of his bed, so bugs couldn't climb up.

David's bed bug "bling"

My issue was that I'd read all about quarantining belongings. People described basically living out of garbage bags for MONTHS. I started becoming obsessed with how this would work. How would we determine what was clean and unclean? How would we keep them separate?

Where were they hiding?

To be continued...

DIY stuff

Life as we know it has halted, for reasons which I'll explain another time.

But in the craziness I have still managed to sneak in a project here and there. I tend to hoard craft supplies, and this has increased since we bought an apartment. Also, the fact that we don't have a recycling center nearby means that I save glass bottles and paper/cardboard containers. I love repurposing them and feeling like I've simultaneously satisfied my creative streak and justified my hoarder tendencies.

Anyway...

While the image above is no masterpiece, it's a quick fix I created to make mealtimes a little less messy. Our grown-up nice placemats are in a dirty laundry pile somewhere with stains I don't know how to remove, and I want to look for a different color anyway.

I took some contact paper that has been through 2 apartment moves with me, and cut out an image to go inside. Like I said it isn't the prettiest, and probably isn't long-lasting, but having a few of them on the table makes things look neater. It's also something that could work for holiday decorations, with some brighter colors. Or making boxes look fancier (which is another idea on my list).

I figure maybe some of you creative people could take the idea and run with it...

P.S. I mostly did this project while David was stuck in his high chair chewing on something.