suziebeezieland

thicket

Our house is painted! I am so happy. 

It's greeny-bluey-grayey ... a color match of Glidden's old, no-longer-produced "Thicket". In the sun it looks more green, and at dusk it looks bluer.

I wanted the house to be just the two colors (Thicket and white), plus the roof.

We're getting new rain gutters, which is the opposite of interesting, but I have to tell you that I am very thankful for them. The old gutters were leaky, and rain would hit the house horizontally and make strange noises when you were trying to sleep. 

Then I will work on the garden. It's a desolate mess right now. But I like how stark the house looks, with its sharp angles and gray and white, like something out of an Andrew Wyeth painting, if he had painted in California and not New England. But then the roses and the tulip tree in front kind of give it some fluff. I think the flowers in the beds will look nice and soft against that crisp background.

I had a dream last night that I planted a pretty flower that turned out to be illegal in California. (I don't mean drugs.) I know this was sparked by all the "we do not ship to California" notifications in my gardening catalogs. We're a very strict state when it comes to bringing in plants. This is a burden you must bear if you fancy yourself the new-world Land of Milk and Honey. We are concerned about things like Japanese Beetles and Red Palm Weevils and Light Brown Apple Moths and Exotic Fruit Flies and Pink Bollworms. (The Pink Bollworms, for example, eat the California cotton crop, which is worth one billion (!) dollars annually.)

So in my dream, I planted something that had flowers that looked like scrunched-up balls of paper, suitable for a Dr. Seuss book or a Tim Burton movie, and then I became worried that someone I knew would turn out to be secretly working for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. They would come over for dinner, but pause in the garden and see my illegal plant and then have to skip dinner and arrest me, instead.

Sure enough, in my dream, my mild-mannered and retired neighbor, Joe, turned out to be an agent with the CDFA. 

I am pretty sure that in real life he would have let me keep those flowers, because he is an extremely kind and soft-spoken man, and really not the type you would imagine going into law enforcement of any kind.  

I saw him today in his front yard and wanted to tell him about it, but that is always a little risky, to tell people your dreams, because one person's "creative and funny" is another person's "stark raving mad".

Best to just smile and wave, maybe. :)

to kill a mockingbird

If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it. 

The 50th anniversary edition of the movie To Kill a Mockingbird comes out today on DVD and Blu-ray. Here is an interesting interview about the movie's legacy with Mary Badham (who played Scout) and Cecilia Peck (Gregory Peck's daughter).

postcards from puffin + postcards from ladybird

Have you seen this Postcards from Puffin collection? I somehow missed it (although I had seen Postcards from Penguin at Anthropologie) when it came out in the fall of 2010. This would be such a sweet way to decorate a wall in a nursery or child's room.

Here is the official blurb:

A unique collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Puffin book cover. From picture books to paperbacks, teen fiction to Puffin Classics, this is a selection from seventy years of outstanding British design and illustration in one sturdy little box.

I went looking over at Amazon UK to see what else I haven't noticed, and I found a similar collection called Postcards from Ladybird. 

When I was little and lived in Australia, we had Ladybird books. :)

another porch light

Do they really? Do they REALLY share my disappointment? Is there somebody actually there sharing my disappointment? Because right under "Dear Suzanne", it says "This is an automated message."

No biggy. :) It's just a light.

I have ordered a new one at the very cool Barn Light Electric (where I should have looked to begin with), and after some research, measuring, and a tall-person-walking-through-doorway simulation, this one should (1) actually be in stock, should (2) look cute, and (3) should not decapitate anyone I love.

adidas

I've been thinking about Paris a lot lately. We're going to spend some time there this summer. The last time I was in Paris was 27 years ago. I spent a semester there my sophomore year in college, and turned 19 that November. Good times.

I guess the traditional thing for me to say is, "It seems like I was just there yesterday." But it doesn't. It feels like I haven't been there in about 27 years. :)

I'm excited to show Bob and Claire around, if I can still orient myself. Alas, I'm not known for my sense of direction. But when I lived there, I slept with a big map of Paris taped to the wall next to my bed, so I kind of got the hang of where things were. 

This is Sandro in Paris. He was my boyfriend for a few months while I was there, until he had to go home, which was the saddest day of my life up until then. :) He was Italian, from a suburb just outside Venice. He lived in the same student dorms I did. 

I went and visited him in Venice later in the fall. When I was in Venice, I stayed in a convent with my also-Italian friend Sonia, who had lived in the room next to me in Paris. (I met Sandro through her.) I took the train from Paris to Venice, which is a very long train ride, and when I got there I was exhausted, but they pumped me full of espresso and showed me around.

Everybody's mom kept making me eat and eat and eat.

It's funny, the details you remember. I remember how Sonia handwashed her clothes out in the sink, and I remember her grandma squeezing my cheeks and saying "Bella!" like something out of a movie, and I remember the convent had marble floors. I remember Sonia explaining prosciutto to me, and saying that Americans never wanted to eat it because they were nervous about uncooked meat. And there was a trash strike in Venice, which was embarrassing to all of them, and intriguing to me. I was so surprised that gondolas were just normal, and you zipped around in them as if you were in a taxi in any another city. And we went to a party and everybody was really nice to me, and I was barely awake, just running on espresso fumes and five full meals in one day.

And below, that's me. We were climbing around on the roofs in Paris, which is surprisingly easy to do. I am not sure why we were dressed the same: jeans, red sweaters, and Adidas. I think that was probably accidental. That doesn't seem like something I would do on purpose.

I think I owned that sweater for about 10 years. I really loved it. And those Adidas, too.

patience, grasshopper

On Saturday, when I was running some errands, a guy in a gigantic black Ford Extinction (or whatever they're called) was in a hurry to make a right turn, and decided to pretend there was a lane next to me. He went into this imaginary lane to make his extremely urgent and important emergency right turn, and just about took off my passenger mirror in the process.

Pan left to Suzanne, sitting in her car with little black squiggles smoking out of the top of her head, like the ones that hover above you in Wii Sports Resort if you miss a shot at table tennis. In less then a minute, I built a complete case in my head about what a total and complete jerk this guy was, based on two observations: (1) he drove a gigantic black SUV, and (2) he got too close to me when he turned right.

After I calmed down, I realized I didn't really know very much about him.

Maybe he had a big SUV because he has a big family, or because he's tall, or because his work gives him one, or maybe just because he thinks they are nice, and when he was younger he always wanted one, and now he's excited he can actually have one.

And maybe he chose black because it is a nice basic and non-flashy color, or maybe he parks under a tree that drops black junk on it and so it blends in better, or maybe his wife chose the color, or maybe that's the color the dealer had on the lot.

Why do I have it in my head that if somebody has a big huge black SUV, they're a pushy jerk? That is a stereotype, and it's not always true. It's true sometimes, but there are pushy jerks driving green Honda CRVs (which is what I drive), also.

And maybe he was making that right turn because he really WAS in a hurry. Maybe it was a new SUV because his wife is pregnant with triplets and they were ON THE WAY THAT SECOND. Maybe he was just zoned out for a minute, and made a bad choice.  I do that, too. And there is a really good chance he was not as close to me as I thought he was. I always think everything is closer or farther away than it is, because I am spatially challenged.

The fact is that I had no proof that this guy was a jerk ... or even that he was temporarily acting jerkily. From where I sat, that right-hand turn seemed like a bad move, but I took it so far so quickly in my head, and imputed motive and character he probably didn't have.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever received related to the day-to-day mechanics of the Christian walk is, "Give people the benefit of the doubt."

I sometimes (okay, often) jump to conclusions. I jump to a conclusion, it's often incorrect, I lay it as my foundation, and then I start building on top of this foundation that is incorrect. Before you know it, I have created an entire scenario or universe inside my head that is NOT TRUE AT ALL. You know how it is when you quilt or lay tile, and get one row off, and it gets more off with each successive row. I decide something, and I'm wrong, but then I keep going, and I get even wronger and wronger. And wronger.

Sometimes, I'm right. A couple years ago, a guy backed into me in the parking lot at Ralph's, and he was, in fact, a complete and utter jerk. Our brief conversation established that, and the police and insurance company confirmed my belief. But I still would not have been justified in flipping out at him, as I would very much have liked to.

In Ephesians, Paul tells us how believers should treat fellow believers:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:1-3 ESV)

In 2 Corinthians, he talks about how we should treat unbelievers, and in so doing, bring glory to God:

We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. (2 Corinthians 6:3-8 ESV)

My passenger mirror (or even my entire car) is not more important in any given situation than is my mandate to speak and act like I am a child of the King.

So whether that guy turning right on Saturday was a fellow believer or not, and whether he actually took off my passenger mirror or not, and whether he was as jerky as the parking lot guy or not, I have a pretty clear idea of how I should have reacted. In this case, he wouldn't have heard my reaction good or bad (unless I rolled down the window and screamed obscenities at him), but it's good for my heart when I react to things in a Godly way, even if nobody knows I'm reacting in a Godly way. :)

We're not here to glorify ourselves. We're not here to have perfect, carefree lives, and skip through each day unblemished. My reactions to people reflect on my God. When I give them "the benefit of the doubt", what I'm really doing is showing to them the same grace that God has shown to me. How many times in my life have I (metaphorically)(and possibly literally) driven my obnoxious, gigantic car into somebody's lane and almost smashed them? How often and how liberally has God forgiven me and shown me His glorious grace?

In light of the cross of Christ, how should we respond to "heat" in our lives?

... in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (2 Corinthians 5:19-20 ESV)

sausage bean soup

Katherine mentioned sausage bean soup in a comment below, and I realized it might be good if I reposted that recipe, since the last time I posted it was January 16, 2007, on the old suziebeezieland blog (that was password-protected). 

January must be soup month. :)

In 2007 when I posted it, I wrote, "We've had a hard frost three nights in a row, which is unusual for southern California! Our lawn sprinklers have been freezing the sidewalks into a big ice slick."

Not so 2012! It's been in the 80's (and even 90's) almost all month so far. It has been a very, very warm winter for us. Our tulip tree is in full bloom. I will take a photo of it for you tomorrow.

Anyway, here it is. I buy Italian sausages, slit each down the side, and pull the casing off.  I separate the meat in the pan with the end of the wooden spoon as I brown it with the onion and garlic.

I do love this soup. It is good with a big hunk of French bread, to soak up the broth. My mom or sister gave me this recipe. Or maybe they both did. I can't remember. Maybe they can remember.

Sausage Bean Soup

3/4 lb bulk Italian sausage

1/2 c chopped onion

1 garlic clove, minced

15 1/2-oz can butter beans, rinsed and drained

15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained

14 1/2-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained

14 1/12- can beef broth

1 T minced fresh basil or 1t dried

2 T shredded Parmesan cheese

In a large saucepan, cook sausage, onion, and garlic until sausage is browned. Drain. Add beans, tomatoes, broth and basil. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan cheese.

4-6 servings

minestrone

I'm not a big fan of soup, usually, unless it resembles stew. It seems like kind of a rip-off as far as meals go.

But! I made some minestrone a couple weeks ago because it was such an efficient way to get large quantities of vegetables into my family. And it was delicious! And it was even MORE delicious heated up for lunch the next day! I will definitely make it again.

There is a lot of chopping prep, but that's kind of fun if your knife is sharp and you're not in a hurry.

I used Ellie Krieger's recipe that was in the January issue of Better Homes and Gardens. I forgot to grab low-sodium broth (I used vegetable), so I just omitted the teaspoon of salt when I made it and it didn't taste too salty or too bland to me. Here it is:

1 large onion, diced
2 Tbsp. olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 ribs celery, diced (1/2 cup)
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
1 medium zucchini (about 8 oz.), diced
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
6 cups low-sodium vegetable broth or low-sodium chicken broth (48 oz.)
1 28-oz. can no-salt-added diced tomatoes
1 14-oz. can no-salt-added crushed tomatoes
1 15-oz. can low-sodium cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 c. whole grain elbow pasta
1/3 c. finely shredded Parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley leaves

1. In large soup pot over medium-high heat cook and stir onion in hot oil 4 minutes or until translucent. Add garlic; cook for 30 seconds. Add celery and carrot. Cook and stir 5 minutes, until vegetables begin to soften. Add zucchini, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.

2. Add the broth and the diced and crushed tomatoes. Bring to boiling. Reduce heat to medium low. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Add the beans and pasta. Cook 10 to 15 minutes more or until pasta and vegetables are tender. Top servings with cheese and parsley. Makes 6 servings. 

house painting! whoo hoo!

Tomorrow the house painters come, and start painting the exterior of our house! I'm quite excited about that.

I chose the same color that my aunt and uncle's house is painted, because I love their house, and it is also stucco. That's our sample swatch up there. Right now it's that beige color on the left (but in need of a repaint) and it will be the color on the right (Glidden Thicket ... they no longer make it, but I was able to get a reasonable match at MyPerfectColor.com).

All the trim and shutters will be bright white.

This autumn we got a new front door. We also had the front porch railings rebuilt (the wood was all rotted), and I had our carpenter add a tongue-and-groove ceiling to the porch to hide the ugly rafters. He rebuilt our pergola out back, which had also rotted over the years.

Here is the new pergola. It's much sturdier than the old one.

Here's the new porch ceiling. This used to be buggy, yucky rafters.

Here are the new porch railings. After the house is painted, we will get new rain gutters and have the front porch faced in brick to match the walkways. No more painting the front porch every year. Yay. :)

Since I knew we were paving the porch, I didn't bother to paint the concrete last summer, and it's looking pretty gross.

Here's a nice view out front when Tom was hanging the new door.

Come on in!

There had been some trim glued onto the stucco around the door that looked cheap and bad, and hid some spiders that came out at night and freaked me out when we'd come home late. He ripped it right off, and sure enough, look at this spider egg sac hiding underneath. Gross.

We're replacing the light below with this one (if it fits ... I measured but I'm not positive ... it might stick out too far) after the painters leave.

This is the new light. Hopefully it's not too big. Although as I look at it, I think it probably is. I can just imagine all the very tall people in my life walking out of our house and getting karate chopped in the head by this if it sticks out. I might need to keep looking.

Here's the new front door.

The windows make it brighter inside, which is nice.

We spent our initial effort on this house fixing the "systems" when we first moved in here seven years ago (it needed a new roof, and we've since installed new air ducts and a tankless water heater) and we also worked on getting the inside comfy. It's fun to be finally getting around to the outside of the house! 

i just enjoy your company

It's January! So I've been organizing like a maniac. It feels GOOD. Cleaning, moving stuff around (sometimes to make things more efficient, and sometimes just for change), getting rid of stuff we don't use. Once that Christmas tree comes down, I just zoom right into spring mode and want to freshen and lighten everything up every year.

The small canning jars are great for storage. They hold business cards exactly right. And chalk, and cords, and glitter, and baker's twine, and ... I still haven't finished filling them up yet. (It's been a work-in-progress for a couple years, because I'm particular. And I forget about it. Ha.) I got a gift certificate to French General for Christmas, and think I will find some more good cubby items there. :)

The small latte bowls are great office-supply storage, too: the green one holds thumbtacks and my flash drive. :)

sources:

White numbered cubbies, yellow lamp, clear lamp (discontinued), blue baskets (discontinued), chalkboard labels on baskets: Pottery Barn
Blue mini-goals chalkboard: Mary Kate McDevitt
Mini-goals chalkboard: Liberty
Dotted garland on chalkboard: Shanna Murray Illustrated Decals
Lyrics on chalkboard: from So Long by Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward from the Winnie the Pooh soundtrack available on iTunes
Yellow 2012 Calendar: Katharine Watson
"Eclair" vintage Hook & Eyes and vials of glitter: French General
Paper numbers tape (thanks, Aunt Paula!), Turquoise ceramic strawberry basket (thanks, Tash!), & small green latte bowl: Anthropologie
Wire file basket: See Jane Work
Blue springtime birdy: Bayberry Cove (discontinued; Jennifer Murphy had a licensed line for awhile but now sells only handmade through her website -- they are beautiful little creatures!)