In the Week Ahead: Brand Spanking New Year

This house is called "The Hepburn".  I chose it for the somewhat Tudor cottage appeal of the exterior.  I'm rather fond of that house style from the 1920's and '30's.  I clove the diamond pane windows which remind me of the diamond pane windows that Cornelia puts in either side of her fireplace addition to the family home in Grace Livingston Hill's book Re-Creations.   I've always said the homemaking books (literally making a home) are my most favorite among that author's works.  

You can see the size of the house is fairly modest with just living room, dining room, breakfast nook and kitchen downstairs and two beds and a bath upstairs.  It's worth opening the image and magnifying to read how 'modern' the house is with a mail slot at the front door, a proper working fireplace (it says equipment but never having had a fireplace I've no clue what they mean), a tub-shower combination in the bathroom upstairs and the kitchen has an electric fridge, gas stove and a cabinet (oh my!  "What storage!", she says as she contemplates the vast amount of space in her own kitchen and the constant wailing about lack of space...)  

In my home this week, I thought I'd share some old house plans this month.  I love older homes, especially turn of the century.  I think of all the life they've seen and how styles changed over time and how sturdily built they are.  I lived in a few different older homes in my lifetime, and each had its merits and problems.

There was the first older home of memory that was on the plot of land above Granny's house.  It had four square rooms with a wide central hall that divided two rooms each side of it, a front porch across the front, a breezeway porch and two rooms at the back which was meant as a detached kitchen and servant quarters.  Not fancy, just plain and old fashioned but well loved.

Then the house we lived in next was an older home built at the turn of the century so newer and more modern than the first.  It had wainscotting in the dining, living and bedrooms, hall and bath.  Mama and Daddy's room was a room portion off the back porch with an entrance out to the back porch that they blocked with a heavy old dresser.  This house had a lovely old-fashioned pantry as well as the pass-through China closet that divided the kitchen and dining room.  

My next old homes I shared with my first husband.  One was just a four room with central hall, hip roofed house built about 1920.  The kitchen faced west and was hot as blazes all times of the day in summer.  I never felt quite comfortable in that house.   Something was off and I can't explain why.  I said the kitchen faced west but it appeared from the situation of the house that it faced east, and I was forever discombobulated in direction when in that house.  Perhaps it had something to do with the abundant natural gas supply underground.  Or some strange magnetic field there.  I don't know.  I just know I liked the house, and it was quite nice, but I was always disoriented somehow by it.

And last was the house I loved best, the old railroad foreman's four room house with two newer additions that were still older than most homes in the neighborhood.  It had chestnut beams and was a sound and sturdy house that likely will stand another two or three hundred years if it's left alone.

I feel most at home in an older house, but it has not been possible to indulge that love of mine in any of my married years.  My first husband and I rented the one house that disoriented me, and we never had money to improve upon the one I best loved.   John doesn't share my love of older homes.  He sees $$ signs when he looks at them and for what we could afford he's quite right to see them!   I've grown to love and appreciate this home deeply and we chose it with a long-term view, but I shall always be grateful for the years I lived in the older homes.  I felt connected to them in a way I never quite have embraced these new builds, be they Ranch style or manufactured. 

But it's not just my love of old homes leading me to share these house plans.  It seems that over the past couple of years the trend has slowly been turning from open floor plans to separate rooms once more.  I'm not at all surprised.  Open plans have their merits and their demerits in equal values.  It's mighty hard to shut out the view of the mess in the kitchen if all living areas are just one big area.   And in weather or energy crisis, it's hard to keep that one big room heated or cool enough to be comfortable.  In the end, though, it comes right back around to 'Everything old is new again.'   It's a change from what so many young folks grew up with and so it's in vogue once more.  

Work this week will likely center around some gentle decluttering and organizing.  Whatever Caleb will allow me to spare time for, anyway.  On New Year's Eve I spent an hour organizing and filing papers and tossed out some older things.  I put a bag of things to donate into the car that I've been slowly adding to all summer and fall.  I managed to organize Christmas things in my shed on Thursday.  That was just the beginning.  I plan to take it one room at a time and work in each until I'm satisfied that things are neat and tidy and that I have in each only those things I mean to actually use or with which I simply cannot part.  Still, it must have a place or out to the shed it will go to sit with other things I love too well to pass on and rotate in and out of the house on a periodic basis.

Other than what I've just mentioned, I have no hard and fast plans.  I feel very much that at present, with Caleb at his current age, I pretty much make meals, clean up behind them, clean up whatever mess he's made, herd him away from forbidden areas to areas where he might play safely and freely and repeat ad nauseum.   He's getting better and better at playing for long spells alone and happily but he's still just two and needs much watching.

In my kitchen this week, I've made a short list of meals I know we shall have here in January that I'll likely prepare.  I did this other day by reading through all my old January menus on the blog and noting what sounded particularly good to me of those.  I tend to repeat certain menus each month of the year, so it wasn't hard to notice favorite meals.   I expect the cooks I enjoy watching will have some recipe or other that appeal and we shall get through the month with old favorites and new recipes to try.

My big goal this month, starting this week, is to begin using what I have on hand in pantry and freezer, in cupboard and fridge.  Right now, there are oranges that must be cut up and eaten or we shall lose them.  Potatoes, too.  I've no real clue what is in the fridge at present, but I can tell you it's looking fairly bare, the way it typically does about this time of the month and especially after the glut of holiday items shoved in every nook and cranny.  I'll look for items in the pantry that are about to expire, or which have appeared on the freezer inventory list for a bit too long now.  

I don't have any plans to bake anything except bread this week.  John's off sugar for the month of January.   I've stashed away a few treats in the freezer that can be removed and enjoyed by the cookie rather than taunt him with sweet things under his nose in the cabinets.  I'll be bringing out fruit, canned and fresh, for him to eat to satisfy his desire without ruining his resolution.

Submarine Sandwiches and Wings, Chips and Pickles

Pizza, Salad

Swedish Meatballs, Noodles, Green Peas, Cranberry and Pear Salads

Turkey Strata, Green Beans, Fruit Salad

Black Beans and Yellow Rice, Salsa and chips, Orange and Onion Salad 

Mississippi Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, Black Eyed Peas, Coleslaw with apples and walnuts

Beef Stew, Cornbread, Apples

Personal and Leisure:  

Two advantages to having Caleb here is that I am on computer a lot less and I am reading more because he tends to let me be if I've got a book in hand.  I'm currently reading Little Women and also am continuing to read Jane Austen's Town and Country Style.   Yes, I've been at that particular book now for months.   I take it in spells to read and then lay it aside for a bit.  

Pick up the Genealogy notebooks once more and dig a little deeper into the past.

Go back to my previously started Bible study and finish it up.

Sit down with my resolutions every day and ask myself how I can incorporate them into that day.