Shameless self-promotion

Remember a few months ago, when I told y’all I’d published a novel? I’ll be signing copies from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at Annie Laurie’s Antiques, 536 Broadway in Cape Girardeau, as part of Cape’s monthly First Friday with the Arts promotion.

If you’ll be in the area, stop by and see me — and be sure to bring extra money for shiny objects, because Laurie always has plenty of them. (Remember that cool ’70s dining set I posted a few weeks ago? I bought that from her.) Make sure to check out the other downtown businesses, too — all the fun little shops and galleries stay open late for First Friday, and Minglewood Brewery usually taps a firkin of some interesting new brew they’re trying out.

I’ll have copies of both Greetings from Coldwater and Route 66 for Kids on hand Friday. If you’ve already read the novel and just want to come in and ask questions about it, I’m game to answer them (if I know the answers; Shirley is just about as enigmatic to me as she is to you), and if you wanted to get a jump on your Christmas shopping, this would be a good way to do it. If you don’t know anybody who wants a book, you probably know somebody who’d like something from Annie Laurie’s or its sister shop across the street, the Indie House, which is sort of an incubator for several artsy little businesses.

Bonus: I think Laurie is planning to have a food truck outside, so you can grab dinner while you’re there, and if you don’t see something you like, you can always cruise a few blocks to find good Cajun, great pizza, or amazing wings. Come visit us!

Emily

Tiny Tuesday: Broom and mop storage

This is such a simple thing, I’m not even sure it deserves its own entry, but it has come in really handy, so I’ll post it anyway.

I got tired of knocking over brooms and mops every time I pulled the stepstool out of its spot next to the refrigerator, so I got online and found myself a nice wall-mounted storage rack to take advantage of an unused space next to the basement steps.

Any time I can get some benefit out of an unused space, I’m calling that a win.

The model I bought cost about $15 and has pull-down plastic hooks between the broom-storage brackets, making it perfect for storing my broom, dust mop, sponge mop, dustpan, watering can and plastic-bag dispenser. It’s out of sight, easily accessible, and makes use of a previously dormant space — all essential in tiny-house planning, and very helpful even in our house, which is about twice the size of most tiny houses.

I can’t remember what brand mine, is but it’s very similar to this one. I highly recommend one if you’ve got an out-of-the-way spot to hang it.

Make-it Monday: Flowerbed

Inspired by an end-of-season sale on echinacea, rudbeckia, and Oklahoma Indian blankets, I was just turning over the first few spades of dirt for a new flowerbed in the front yard when a young man walked up and asked if I’d consider paying him to do some yard work. He was stranded in town, he said, and was trying to earn enough money to buy a bus ticket home to Springfield, Missouri, to see his daughter.

I’d already hit three rocks by that point and was losing my enthusiasm for the project, so I told him I’d give him $20 an hour to spade up the area I wanted to plant and flatten out the rise left in the yard after the plumber replaced our sewer line last year.

I figured he’d be out there the rest of the afternoon, but he had the flowerbed spaded up in less than 15 minutes, and in the time it took me to install mulch cloth and plant my flowers, he’d flattened that rise. He was done in just over an hour, so I treated him like those fraction-of-an-hour-is-an-hour contractors and sent him off to the Greyhound station with $40, a big bottle of Gatorade, and a big smile.

I cannot believe he did this in 45 minutes. It would have taken me all weekend.

After he left, I took myself to Lowe’s to pick up mulch and more flowers — including several daylilies to plant along the sewer line.

Daylily. I forget the variety, but I like the dark eye.

Between the two of us, I think we did a pretty good job.

Finished bed. Well, almost finished. It still needs edging.

I still need some flagstone to use as edging, and I need to move the coupler and spare hose to the front so I can water more easily, but I’m happy with this project so far, and I’m looking forward to expanding the beds in the coming months so they’ll be ready for planting in the spring.

Emily

Sunday Self-care: Funny Farm

We were driving down Route 66 in Granite City, Illinois, one spring afternoon in 2004 when the thought came out of nowhere:

It’s going to be a good summer. It’s going to be an interesting summer. It’s going to be a really good summer.

That summer, we moved to Tulsa.

I was driving down Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico, one winter afternoon in late 2012, thinking — as I often do — that we should just move out there and be done with it, when the thought came out of nowhere:

Hang on. I’ve got a better idea.

That spring, we moved to Cape.

We were driving down Route 66 in Granite City one afternoon last February when the thought came out of nowhere:

It’s going to be a good summer. It’s going to be an interesting summer. It’s going to be a really good summer.

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but given my track record, I started bracing myself for major life changes.

I bookmarked the websites for several school districts in the Southwest. I bookmarked the New Mexico page on JournalismJobs.com. I kept an open mind. I listened for guidance. I waited. And while I waited, I worked.

I applied for a New Mexico teaching certificate. I looked into local possibilities. I gave serious thought to applying when two positions opened up in the Illinois newsroom where Ron and I met. And I spent a lot of time doing projects meant to make our house attractive to prospective buyers.

It is almost September.

We haven’t moved to New Mexico. We didn’t go back to Illinois. I didn’t change careers.

But at the end of this very interesting summer, I’m $6,000 closer to paying off my Subaru. I’ve redone the living and dining rooms. I’ve covered my porch with plants, installed new flowerbeds, covered an arbor with wisteria, and filled my home with mid-century furniture. Our bungalow looks warmer and neater and prettier than I ever dreamed it could. And I am content.

I suspected this might happen.

One spring morning, as I was tending the garden, I thought:

You watch. This is gonna be like the Chevy Chase movie Funny Farm.

Remember Funny Farm? A Vermont couple bribe their cranky neighbors into helping them charm prospective buyers so they can sell their house — and in the process, they charm themselves into staying.

That’s basically what I’ve done. In trying to make my house irresistible to buyers, I’ve made it irresistible to myself.

I’d still swap it for New Mexico. And if I feel led somewhere else, I’ll go, as I always do. But for the moment, I am content — and it has, indeed, been a very good summer.

Emily

Eco-Saturday: Fruit-fly trap

Score one for Pinterest: After an infestation of caffeine-junkie fruit flies this summer, I ran a search for organic solutions to the problem. This one, courtesy of Suburban Turmoil, kept coming up.

For any method to work on a long-term basis, you have to start by finding the source of your bugs. In our case, the flies came in with some dodgy bananas, invaded the compost bucket in search of coffee grounds (apparently a great favorite of fruit flies — not that I blame them) and decided the filter on the underside of the lid was an ideal place to raise kids.

To eradicate the larvae and eggs, we replaced the filter, and to kill the adults, I used Suburban Turmoil’s technique:

Get a Mason jar with a lid. Fill it about halfway with apple-cider vinegar. Add a couple of drops of dish soap, put the lid on the jar, and shake until it’s good and sudsy. Open the jar, add enough water to bring the bubbles up to the top, and leave it out overnight.

Your fruit-fly trap should look like cheap beer with a nice head. Try to suppress the urge to drink it.

The bugs will smell the vinegar, think you’ve got rotten apples for them to snack on, and become trapped in the suds when they try to check it out.

Gross.

I caught the better end of 30 flies the first night, and over the next few days, this sneaky little trap killed at least 100 more. Every time the suds died down, I closed the jar and shook it up again, adding soap or vinegar as necessary and replacing the solution a time or two until I stopped finding bugs in it, which took maybe three or four days.

I don’t know the blogger over at Suburban Turmoil, but I definitely owe her a beer for this excellent solution to a really annoying problem.

Emily

Vegetarian Friday: Cheese-stuffed mushrooms

You guys. This might be the best recipe I’ve ever come up with.

Several weeks ago, we had lunch at a great little bar and grill here in Cape. I ordered stuffed mushrooms, which were delicious, but which I am pretty sure also had approximately seven million calories and 42 grams of fat apiece.

I decided to riff on the basic recipe, using ingredients with a little better ratio of protein to fat. This is what I came up with:

Cheese-stuffed mushrooms. These were amazing.

Ingredients

1 lb. mushrooms
1 pkg. low-fat cream cheese (I used Green Mountain’s Greek-yogurt blend)
1 1/2 c. shredded mozzarella
Handful of fresh basil
Three or four fresh chives
2 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

Wash mushrooms. Remove stems and save in a freezer container for later. (We’re making vegetable stock in a few weeks, so start freezing your veggie scraps.)

Fresh mushrooms are a beautiful thing.

Snip up herbs with kitchen shears. (If you don’t have fresh on hand, dried will do in a pinch. I pulled these out of the garden.)

After rinsing, I scrunched these up in a paper towel to dry, which also bruised the leaves — thus releasing more flavor — and made them easier to snip up quickly.

In a big bowl, use a potato masher to mash together cream cheese, herbs and 1 c. of the mozzarella.

A potato masher makes quick work of this part.

Grease a baking pan (I use a Misto full of olive oil for this). Using a spoon, your fingers, or both, fill each mushroom cap with cheese mixture. Mound it up — the more, the better — and set the caps in the pan.

Sprinkle remaining mozzarella over the tops of the caps and bake at 375 degrees until cheese melts — about 20 to 30 minutes, depending on your oven. Sprinkle with Parmesan and bake another 5 to 10 minutes until cheese starts to brown.

Serves two as a main dish or four as an appetizer or side dish.

Enjoy!

Emily

Folk Thursday: Simon and Garfunkel

Heard this the other day while I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel on vinyl. Great song, and I happened to listen to it while I was reading The Dharma Bums, which was sort of a nice fit — a road-trip song like “America” goes well with Kerouac.

Emily

Marshmallow world

Wow. Where on earth has this summer gone? Seems like I was just waiting for the crocus to come up a minute ago, and now I’m listening to walnuts bounce off the roof, with way too little blogging in between.

I can’t say I’ve accomplished as much as I’d have liked this summer, but I’m really proud of my now-mostly-complete interior-decorating projects. (Mostly, but not entirely, complete because one of the legs on my new Marshmallow sofa knockoff is wonky, and we bought it online, so there are some logistical issues involved in getting that sorted out.)

Wonky leg or not, this is a pretty great-looking sofa. Hope we can get it straightened out.

Sofa situation aside, I’m really happy with the living room — especially this faux-mid-century credenza I fashioned from a set of cheap storage cubes and some hardware-store legs:

Songdog can’t resist a photobomb.

With my big projects mostly behind me, I’m hoping to get back to blogging like I mean it this fall.

To that end, I’m rolling out a couple of new features and have mapped out most of the topics I intend to write about through the end of the year. Here’s a quick preview of the new features and coming attractions:

• Sunday self-care: A new feature basically addressing whatever I’m doing to feed my soul, maintain my sanity, or take better care of myself in general.

• Make-it Monday: Kind of a hodgepodge of DIY projects, artwork, gardening, or whatever else I’ve got going. Coming soon: a safety feature I added to the back steps, a new flowerbed, a quick cleaning tip, and a headlight-restoration attempt.

• Tiny Tuesday: As longtime readers know, my long-term goal is to build a tiny, off-grid house in New Mexico. To that end, I’ve been using our 690-square-foot bungalow as a sort of test lab for space-saving ideas. I’ll share one with you every Tuesday.

• Wednesdays will be sort of a wild-card day, when I post whatever is on my mind. This will vary from week to week, but tentative ideas include a bit of shameless self-promotion, some ephemera from long ago, and a review of a terrific microbrewery in rural Southern Illinois.

• Folk Thursday: Upcoming artists will include Simon and Garfunkel, Woody Guthrie, Dave Van Ronk and Phil Ochs.

• Vegetarian Friday: The next few weeks will bring you cheese-stuffed mushrooms, pasta e lenticche, frozen fruit pops, homemade kettle corn and instructions for making and freezing your own vegetable stock.

• Eco-Saturday: We’re going to take down a fruit-fly infestation, experiment with leafcutter bees, install a water-heater blanket and discuss the ecological and financial advantages of old-fashioned safety razors.

Stay tuned, subscribe if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to like my author page on Facebook, where I post pictures, stories and bits of information that don’t always find their way onto the blog.

Emily