So here it is – the post you have all been waiting for, the post you can’t wait to read – the post about my sugar jar!

As long as I can remember, my Mom has kept her sugar in a gallon-sized glass jar with a yellow lid. It is a cute shape, but much more functional than flourishy. She has mostly kept it in cupboards, or on the bottom slider in her pantry (which is where it is right now), but that jar has just been part of the kitchen life at Mom’s for so long, that it has actually gotten itself all tied up in a lot of fun memories.

I know that I learned to bake with that jar on the counter – I still remember the feeling of trying to shake some sugar out into a measuring cup and having one of those huge sugar landslides come out on the counter, caused by some invisible sugar clod, and I am sure that I used it when I made my incredible orange zest angel-food cake. I don’t know how old I was then, but I had been perusing some cookbook (habits can start pretty young), and landed on what I thought would be a very dreamy cake. As I recall, we did not have all the ingredients, and I asked Mom to get me some of the needed items.

Remarkably, she invested in that scheme of mine – she has always been kind that way. I am not sure why I was let alone in the kitchen for this, but it is clear in retrospect that I was over-confident. I simply grabbed a mixing bowl, beat it all together, and popped it in the oven. In the time that lapsed before the buzzer buzzed, I looked in the oven and Read More

I think I need to just come straight out and say that the last post I wrote was really just a way of easing into a discussion of the merits of random things I love. Well, I love fiber drums.

If you have never heard of a fiber drum before, you are not alone. I really “saw” my first fiber drum in the attic of our shop, left there by a long-ago jewelry store. I mean first saw it in the same way that you think you have never heard a word before, and then you see it everywhere, and hear it in the casual conversations of kindergarteners.

Basically, a fiber drum is an overgrown toilet paper tube (mine are 50 Read More

Sometime when I was in early high school my Mom and I started yard-saling together. I don’t really remember why we started, maybe someone needed a dresser, maybe it just sounded fun, I don’t know. But what I quickly discovered was that the fun of yard-saling is in finding things that just “sing” to you. If you haven’t experienced this before, it goes something like this: You are walking beside the table of other people’s discolored tupperware, and suddenly you see something that you never knew you would like. For me it is sometimes in a color that I didn’t think I liked, but then find all at once, that I adore. Sometimes it is simply an item that has the right shape, and I fall in love with it in the color that I plan to paint it. Whatever the case, it is seldom something that I could have anticipated loving. It just hits you, you pick it up, and carry it around with you to look at the other totally unappealing things. Sometimes you run into someone you know, and of course they look to see what you are getting, Read More