steps to domestic bliss

My domestic life should be enough to fill my time, if only I had the desire to hone my skills in the domestic arts. I mean, I do sometimes; just not this week.

Last night I spent some time putting handwritten recipes into plastic sleeves in a binder, to keep them safe from the drips that always find their way onto my recipes while I'm cooking something. It's a fairly significant binder. This doesn't include all the recipes I've bookmarked to look at another day. There are literally hundreds of those that may never make their way onto paper or into my belly. Wishful bookmarking. I did find a nice sounding espresso gingerbread cake that doesn't require a trip to the store unless I want to make this specific icing. Recipes requiring a springform pan are enchanting.

On Monday my Christmas china setting finally came in, four full months after ordering it. Apparently rim bowls throw the whole thing off. I'm up to six place settings, but really would like to concentrate on getting a few more for those fancy dinner parties I'll enjoy at some point in the future. I guess it's strange for a single person with an itchy moving finger to want the stability of china; it's oddly comforting to know I have something that will be with me until death.

With the few extra hours worked at the public library, I've been requesting more books and DVDs that I come across. Some of them I already know I'll want, so I just ordered a few online, including: Ratio, The complete book of small-batch preserving and Miniature Rooms. It makes me a little crazy because sometimes I only collect the books for a rainy day, but on rainy days I tend to revisit books I always look at.

Books in my bookshelf suggest I've had grand ideas without the follow through. Keeping up with Japanese books take up 1/12th of my collection. Learning more about targeted architecture and art history take up slightly more. Most glaring right now are the books on making miniatures, something I've been thinking of semi-regularly for four or five years, and more than once per year before that.

I was obsessed with the dollhouse my sister and I got for Christmas one year, a put-it-together three-storey with 10 rooms. My mother and I decorated it, albeit somewhat tackily since I was around 10 or 11 and had no concept of time periods. Despite the few rooms that were done terribly by me, I still love to look at it when I visit my parents. At some point, my mom bought a few books on making miniature furniture and rooms, inspired by my interest in the dollhouse I suppose. After the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute, I'm somewhat inspired again, though to a lesser degree than Mrs. James Ward Thorne, who hired craftsmen to build her rooms. I'm thinking a little more DIY.

Really, I'd just be content to follow through on one of these ideas that run through my head constantly. Hopefully the book on the Thorne Rooms will be incentive enough to get me working on the miniature rooms idea. That and a Dremel tool. Who doesn't want a mini room? Except those that don't want another room to clean...