aaron

Happy Birthday to my little grand nephew. Aaron, better known as Brazey J, is the youngest son of my niece, Mandy. I've only met Aaron once but I've have gotten to know him well through pictures. He often wears a very serious expression and is just the most adorable baby ever. This photo was taken by his grandma, my sister, Deb. I hope she doesn't get mad at me for stealing her photo for my blog but I have none of my own. Happy birthday, Brazey.

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snowy, blowy bumper to bumper commute into the city


Paula's citrus blueberry birthday cake made by Alison

I'm not a cake person (give me cookies any day) but this cake was the absolute best. I took a tiny sliver at 8:30 and went back at 9:30 for another tiny sliver and this was all that was left. I think this is the fastest a cake ever disappeared in our office. When Alison gives me the recipe, I'll share it with you.


first jean's day of the tax season

Got to wear one of my favorite thrift store finds - brand new New Balance tie-dye sneakers for $2.99.


lunch at my desk - turkey breast with smoked apple cheddar and thinly sliced crisp New York Empire apple on a Wegman's Kaiser roll


time to bring home the Christmas flower arrangement I made for the reception area and pack it away until next year

Then home to B and our traditional Friday night date at home - burgers (turkey or veggie for me, beef for B) and crisp Ore-Ida fries baked in the oven. Followed up with a Blockbuster movie on our big 52 inch. Could life get any better than this?

how i became an accountant

This was at an evening open house. I don't usually drink wine at work. And my arms are usually longer than they are in this photo.

When I was a girl heading to college I thought there were only two professions for a woman to pursue – nurse and teacher. But when anyone in my presence even mentioned that they didn’t feel well, instead of wanting to care for them, I wanted to run the other way. That ruled out nurse. As soon as I entered college I declared a major of special education. I loved all my general courses but 2 ½ years into special ed I had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t for me. I doubted that I wanted to be a teacher of any kind. I had met B at the end of my freshman year and I turned to him to help me decide on a new major. He was an accounting major who had started out as a music major. I was head over heels in love with him and he convinced me with those bedroom eyes that I should become an accounting major also. I had to go an extra semester in order to fit all my courses in but I graduated with a degree in accounting.




If I knew myself then as well as I know myself now, I would have known that a career in any facet of the Home Economics area would have been the fit for me. I have learned to like the accounting field. I think I’m fairly good at my job. I get a thrill out of reconciling a bank account to the penny. I like payroll tax and hate sales tax. I am somewhat accomplished at navigating any accounting software. But I’m not interested in becoming a CPA or one day a partner or even staff accountant. My title is paraprofessional and I’m happy enough with it.

Woman, know thyself. I think I do know myself better now. So each morning I don my accountant disguise and every evening I come home, slip it off and become the real me. Interior decorator (for my firm), celebrated (by my family & a few people at work) chef, fashion consultant (to myself and my family), consistent athlete and published author (on Blogger).

gifted

My sister, Deb, gifted me with this delicate Oriental look bracelet and matching earrings. A product of her own design and creativity. Don't you think she is gifted?

dennis

Happy Captain Denny

Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law, Denny. He is married to my sister, Deb. A retired airplane pilot, he is one of those lucky ones whose career and hobby were one and the same. He looks so happy to be going work in the above photo.
Now that he is retired he is building an airplane. He also dedicates many happy hours volunteering at his local animal shelter.


A bit younger Denny at Christmas, one of the few times during the year that I would get to see him


Denny entertaining me on one of my visits to AZ - picnics and hiking are some of the best times I've spent with Denny

misremembering

I got to thinking about those window treatments and looked at the photos more closely. It's been over 3 years since I've seen that room but I remembered that I didn't defer to those Barbie pink blinds after all. I remember now that the lining I chose was gold to bring out the gold gilt in the fabric. I remember that I also wanted to paint a fine line of gold on the chair rail and how I really would have liked to have a Chinese triptych on the wall above the table with the vase. One that featured black with gold, green & pinks. I get caught up in details. But enough about that room. I am waiting for a phone call from Sammy's doctor. Sammy is my gray cat and hasn't been well for several years. His body doesn't want to make red blood cells, but we have been tricking it with prednisolone. Those red cells can only be tricked so long.

how i became an interior decorator

after decorating but before window treatments - the top color is a few shades darker and warmer than it appears in all these pictures....on sunny days a pinkish glow filled the room

If you were to visit me you would not think that my home was the home of an interior decorator. I am not an interior decorator by profession nor do I frequently redecorate my house. But I am an interior decorator in my heart. I have notebooks I have filled over the years with ideas for decorating my rooms. I have painstakingly listed everything I would do in every room. I have carried little of that out, however, due to lack of money, time and consent from my better half. Word got around though at work that I was interested in those domestic pursuits. When my firm was still located downtown on Delaware Ave I was approached by the partners who inquired if I might be interested in redecorating the conference room. They had a tight budget which prevented hiring a real interior decorator and had heard through the grapevine that I had a creative flair. They were willing to take a chance on me. And I was thrilled to be given that chance.



This is what I had to work with. Plain white walls, gray carpeting, a cherry conference table, chairs upholstered in black fabric with a tiny pink shell design, downright pink blinds at the windows and a gorgeous painting of Niagara Falls. The room was very bland, drab and cold looking. I wanted to warm it up but with all those cool colors I had my work cut out for me. I had a lot of practice working with obstacles in all my daydreaming about what I would do to change things at home if I were forced to keep this or that. I welcomed those obstacles and found them challenging.



The first thing I did was take a close look at the carpeting. Even though it just looked gray from a distance, in fact, it had flecks of several colors in it. I found flecks of tan, green and pink. I knew the chairs had to stay so I looked closely at the ombre shell design and discovered that even though it had cool purple and pink, it also had a warmer pink shade. And then I looked at the painting and drew out the warmer shades. I starting choosing my wall color from these things - carpet, painting and shell design. I found that I liked two colors - a grayed green and a pinkish tan. What color should I choose? Why not both? If I had a chair rail installed then I could have one color below and one above. And why not crown moulding while I was at it?


the Roman shade


twin windows

Finally to bring all the colors of the room together and to somehow soften those pink blinds, I needed the perfect fabric for the window treatments. I found all the colors - cool and warm - plus an elegant touch of gold gilt swirled together in the fabric I chose. A Roman shade for the window by the door could be shut all the way to darken the room during presentations requiring a projector. The two windows at the end of the room were tricky. I decided to treat them as one unit by having the window treatments made draping to opposite sides. And I chose a color for the peekaboo lining in deference for the pink blinds. If you can't beat them, join them.


finishing touches


Over the next year the partners had many clients exclaim over the room and ask who their interior decorator was. So when the firm made the decision to relocate to the newly renovated Larkin Building (the only remaining building of the Larkin Complex designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), they asked me to make all the decorating decisions.
So that is how I became an interior decorator.

serendipity and other weird things

When Jay moved into his own place last fall I transformed his bedroom into my personal retreat/guest bedroom. I kept his old desk, one of his chest of drawers and one of the beds (yes, he had two....one in his bedroom at home and one in his apartment when he was in college). I needed a nightstand so I looked in some of the thrift stores but couldn't find anything.


So I purchased this one on-line from Target. Basket not included.

It arrived on a Friday and I set it up, but I still needed some kind of stand or table for the TV. Saturday morning I made a trip to the Farmer's Market and on my way home just two houses from my house


this perfectly wonderful shabby chic nightstand was sitting by the road in wait for the garbage man or garbage picker. I instantly snatched it up (this wasn't easy as it is fairly large and very heavy) and carried it home. How serendipitious was that?


my reading nook

We had a small TV that I placed on the black nightstand and started using the white nightstand by the bed. When we got our big 52-inch for the family room in December we took the old family room TV to the basement, but we already had a nice TV in the basement that we had bought to watch while working out. What to do with two nice TVs? Jay came home to visit that weekend and turned on the little TV in the guest room. The picture was all black and not visible. Serendipity again. The little TV broke right when we we wondering what to do. The old basement TV came up to the guest room. Since it is big I had to switch out the black nightstand by the bed again and use the white one for the TV.


a really neat chair I found at the the Salvation Army to use for my desk chair and round out the room

Isn't it funny how things happen like that? Little things happen all the time that leave me wondering why? Like I logged on to my e-mail a few days ago to e-mail my friend Donna in Chicago and there was mail from her. We don't e-mail one another often so how did it happen that we were thinking of one another at the same time? And do you ever notice how you might say a word or phrase in conversation with someone and then someone on the TV says the same word or phrase right after you do? Or the day I was thinking about a friend that I haven't seen or heard from since college. I googled her and that very day an article had been published in the New York Times about how she was involved in a video that helps woman make a choice about how to treat their breast cancer. She is a breast cancer survivor.
Or the morning B & I dropped off our car to have a cracked windshield replaced and then went to the Pancake House for breakfast. Who should be there but a guy I work with who doesn't even live in my area. I went over to say hi and ask him what he was doing up this way. He said he and his son had just dropped off his car to have a cracked windshield replaced and had come to have breakfast while they waited.
And then the dishwasher incident. The spring on the door to my dishwasher broke a few days before Christmas. B ordered a new spring and replaced it. A few days later he asked me if I'd like to go shopping for a new dishwasher. Our dishwasher was 25 years old and B is handy and has always repaired it every time it broke. But it was really looking old inside and out. We shopped on Saturday and picked out a beautiful new stainless steel inside and out dishwasher and set up delivery for the the following Saturday. On Sunday I filled up the old one, poured in the soap and cranked her up. Smoke started billowing out the bottom and up through the sink drain. I quick turned her off and an investigation by B revealed that her motor had burnt out. B's theory was that she was saying " F you, I'm not washing one more thing. All these years of service and you go and replace me." I think he was right.

random thoughts on thursday

I am sitting here having random thoughts about what I could blog about today. So why not put those random thoughts down on screen? After all the reason I named my blog Mishmash Melange was so I could do exactly that. Blog about anything I wanted with no particular theme in mind. The definition of mishmash is a collection or mixture of unrelated things. The definition of melange is a mixture of incongruous elements. Another plus about melange is that it is the fictional name of the spice central to the Dune series of science fiction. A spicy mixture of random stuff. Sounds like a unique name to me. I googled the name of my blog to see if it would come up and it did. How it zeros in on one particular post, I don't know. Does anyone else know? But I found that I'm not so unique after all and someone else had the same idea for a name. I do not have a unique blog name.

I am missing Pandora at work. I discovered Pandora online radio about a year ago and now have it honed down to be uniquely me. But a few days ago an e-mail was put out that our auditing staff was experiencing inconsistent results when trying to work on the terminal server when they are out in the field. Streaming on-line radio was taking up too much bandwidth and now we are forbidden from listening at work. I keep trying to remember to bring in some CDs.

It is cold here in Buffalo but not as cold as elsewhere in the nation. Today is a high of 5 degrees but I heard on the radio this morning that it is 10 below in Chicago. I used to live and work in Chicago and I have never experienced cold here in Buffalo like that I've experienced in Illinois. I didn't think it had ever got below zero in Buffalo because it never has in the 20 years I've lived here. But they also said on the radio that in 1932 it got 20 below and in 1982 it got 10 below. It has never however been over 99 degrees in the summer. Ever. Lake Erie keeps our temps moderated. And also gives us those lake effect snows for which we are so well known.

We are getting busy at work. Tax season is starting up. It can be a little fun. We have jeans day Fridays when you can pay $5 to wear jeans and each week it goes to a different charity. We have weekly Bingo and other games with small prizes like gift cards to Starbucks, Tim Horton's, Wegmans etc. The firm provides wonderful free lunches every Saturday. And we have fun 3/15 and 4/15 parties. Everyone in our firm gets along so well. We are almost like a family. It's always nice when April 15 arrives though and everything slows down again.

Speaking of work we are adding on a new addition. We have outgrown the space we moved into three years ago here at the Larkin Building. I have again been consulted on my interior decorating services. I got to chose everything for our original space. This is something that I plan to blog about soon. It is a big story and will require several posts.

And lastly I just ate a chocolate covered cherry from a box of candy given to me by someone at work. It made me reminisce about how I would give my dad a box of chocolate covered cherries every year for Christmas. He loved them. Or so I thought. After decades of dutifully munching them down, he told me that he had never really cared very much for chocolate covered cherries. After that I gave him a box of assorted chocolates every year. He always had a sweet tooth.

flowers make me happy

Oriental lilies in the powder room


mums on the kitchen table

what i bought with my christmas money

This bracelet and necklace were dicounted 40%...maybe because of the Christmasy red & green colors but I think it works year round.

My mom gave me some money for Christmas. She doesn't like to hear that I just deposited it in my checking account. She wants to know that I bought something specific with it and she wants to know what that something was. This year I took my money to one of my favorite shops on Main Steet - Village Artisans. Most everything in the shop is made by local village artisans - thus the name. The owner was having a January sale so my money went a bit farther.


This necklace features blue plastic blocks that are hand stamped in a silver leaf pattern. The artist made the stamp herself.


This necklace is very me. It looks like hammered aluminum and the beads are some of my favorite dusty colors.


This is a necklace I bought at the same shop earlier this summer when I was craving something elegant.


This necklace came from the same shop but I bought it a couple years ago. It has turned out to be one that I reach for often.


And finally this one came from Point of View on Main Street. I saw it and put it on my Christmas list a couple years ago and B bought it for me.

So, Mom, this post is for you.

wake up

B and I were attending a concert in a very large church. Reformation Lutheran Church in Rochester - one of the churches that was used as a venue for the Rochester International Jazz Festival that we had attended this past summer. We were sitting in a pew near the back enjoying the concert when suddenly an irritating beeping noise started up. I realized that it was emanating from a very small alarm clock I was carrying in my purse. I reached into my purse and pulled out the half-dollar sized clock. B was becoming increasingly annoyed with me as I slide the button back and forth to no avail. The clock just kept beeping and beeping. People were turning to look at us. I decided that the only way to stop it was to unplug it. I gave the cord a tug and felt the plug release from the wall behind the band in the front of the church. I start reeling in the transparent pinkish-red cord. I kept pulling and pulling and finally the plug appeared in my hand. But the beeping had never stopped. Embarrassed, I sprang from my seat and headed for the stairs. I ran down the stairs into my living room and started looking for places where I could hide the offensive beeping clock. I was sure that anywhere I put it, the concert-goers upstairs would still be able to hear it. So I flung open the back door and heaved the thing as far as I could into the snowy backyard. Then I woke up and you know the rest of the story.



A day filled with work commutes, payroll tax preparation, dinner preparation and blogging.


tonight's WW meal of ginger-scallion turkey meatballs with bok choy, peppers and shitake mushrooms on brown rice

food, glorious food

green bean, grape tomato, kalamata olive and mozzarella salad with Marzetti's roasted garlic vinaigrette

I took this picture in the lunchroom at work after warning one of the partners at my table that I was going to do something that he would probably think was very strange. He did think I was a bit strange but told me that his daughter took a picture of her dinner one night that past week. I asked if she was a blogger and he said he didn't know and he didn't ask.

I've been feeling inspired by the new 2009 Weight Watcher's cookbook I picked up at Wegman's this week. Every recipe truly is quick and every recipe truly sounds scrumptious. I think it's one of the best WW cookbooks in years. The above salad isn't from the cookbook. It's one of my own creations. I sometimes use feta and dill, but this time I wanted to use fresh mozzarella. I didn't have any so I made due with string cheese.


the cookbook


This is my version of the meal on the cover. It's broiled salmon with a Dijon mustard-mayo topping, boiled potatoes with lemon pepper seasoning and a side salad of broccoli, cauliflower, yellow pepper, red onion and mandarin oranges in vinegar and oil.


One of the chicken selections. Cornmeal crusted chicken with peach-basil salsa. I added saffron yellow rice and asparagus.

allie

This little sweetheart is my niece, Allie. She is also my godchild. Today is her birthday. She is 15 today. Is that possible? Where did those years go? I only have pictures of her when she was much younger because she is another person that I don't see nearly often enough. I have, of course, seen her a number of times since these pics were taken, but still not nearly often enough. I love you, Al. Have a Happy Birthday.


a little diva

marie

This pretty lady is my sister-in-law, Marie. She is married to B's brother, John. I don't see her often enough but when I do I feel like we bond a little closer each time. Today is Marie's birthday and I hope she is having a wonderful day. I wish her many, many more happy birthdays and hope I get to share some of them with her someday.


This is John and Marie on their wedding day.

savory savoy

Swiss chard, beet greens and savoy shining like jewels in the pan. Emerald, amethyst, ruby and topaz. We had this for Christmas dinner and Jay liked it so much he requested it again when he stopped by for an unexpected visit last weekend. Cook in a bit of olive oil until slightly wilted and add a cup of chicken broth and cook a tad longer. The second time we had it I added a splash of balsamic vinegar. Wegman's carried this mix during the holidays but I haven't seen it this week. I hope they bring it back because I'm hooked on it.

fresh paint

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