Meet Orpheus, our new blue-tortoiseshell Holland Lop!
Healthy living + good eats + balcony gardening + weekend adventures in the Pacific Northwest.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The luck (and traditions) of the half-Irish and not-so-Irish
Tonight we have been preparing our St. Patrick's Day feast. For the past four years, Matt and I have enjoyed making a big crock-pot stew of corned beef, potatoes, carrots, turnip, and parsnip. It's a nice blending of traditions and preferences for us. It's one of the few holidays which we take the time to prepare a big meal for (Valentine's Day and our anniversary usually includes a meal at a fancy restaurant!), and probably the only one which we celebrate just by ourselves. We have always prepared what we call "mini-Thanksgiving" either the weekend before or after Thanksgiving, where we make little portions of all our favorite Turkey Day foods. But most of the big holidays we love to share with our family or friends - Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter with family, or hosting a 4th of July Barbeque, birthdays, a Halloween fiesta, etc. with our friends. So St. Patrick's Day has unexpectedly become a low-key holiday which we have come to really enjoy. Matt has no Irish ancestry (that we have yet discovered, although I bet with all those English in his family tree, there's bound to be a few Irish lines far back!), and a quick calculation from my genealogy program reports that I am 53.125 percent Irish (100 percent from Mom and 1/32 from Dad through his great-grandmother Kate Morrison of County Cork, Ireland through her mother Mary!). But the celebration of the day is a nice combination of varied traditions - using my great-grandmother Marie's Irish soda bread recipe which Mom gave me a few years ago, or the inclusion of turnips and parsnips (while perhaps traditional in St. Paddy's day meals, they weren't present in my first stew creation! But our annual autumn trips to western Massachusetts began to include trips to a little farmstand in Deerfield, where we would buy tons of vegetables - including turnips and parsnips - and make lots of autumn stews and soups! So we began to add them to our corned beef stew too).
And now for some interesting historical facts about St. Patrick's Day and the man of honor!
* St. Patrick was born in Roman Britain about 387, and died 17 March 460 AD, and is believed to have been buried in Downpatrick, County Down, Ireland
* Two letters written by St. Patrick survive
* He was captured at the age of 16 by Irish raiders and worked as a sheep-herder and slave for 6 years before escaping back to Britain. He then became a bishop and returned to Ireland, converting numerous Irish, and, in his own words, he "baptised thousands of people".
* St. Patrick became the patron saint of Ireland by the 8th century
*St. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to pre-Christian Irish
* Blue was the color associated with St. Patrick, but over time green has come to represent him, inspired by the tradition of his use of shamrocks
* Tradition states that St. Patrick banished snakes from Ireland, however, that honor actually goes to a much bigger force: glaciers (long before St. Patrick!)
*The oldest St. Patrick's Day parade is in Boston, where it has been held since 1737
* General George Washington declared 17 March 1780 a holiday for the Continental Army in honor of the high percentage of Irish-born and Irish-American troops in the Revolutionary War
* Since 1962, Chicago has dyed its river green, after sewer workers released 100 pounds of green vegetable dye into the water
* Today, the largest St. Patrick's Day parade is held in New York City, with over 2 million people in attendance
And now for some interesting historical facts about St. Patrick's Day and the man of honor!
* St. Patrick was born in Roman Britain about 387, and died 17 March 460 AD, and is believed to have been buried in Downpatrick, County Down, Ireland
* Two letters written by St. Patrick survive
* He was captured at the age of 16 by Irish raiders and worked as a sheep-herder and slave for 6 years before escaping back to Britain. He then became a bishop and returned to Ireland, converting numerous Irish, and, in his own words, he "baptised thousands of people".
* St. Patrick became the patron saint of Ireland by the 8th century
*St. Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to pre-Christian Irish
* Blue was the color associated with St. Patrick, but over time green has come to represent him, inspired by the tradition of his use of shamrocks
* Tradition states that St. Patrick banished snakes from Ireland, however, that honor actually goes to a much bigger force: glaciers (long before St. Patrick!)
*The oldest St. Patrick's Day parade is in Boston, where it has been held since 1737
* General George Washington declared 17 March 1780 a holiday for the Continental Army in honor of the high percentage of Irish-born and Irish-American troops in the Revolutionary War
* Since 1962, Chicago has dyed its river green, after sewer workers released 100 pounds of green vegetable dye into the water
* Today, the largest St. Patrick's Day parade is held in New York City, with over 2 million people in attendance
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Adventures in House Hunting
After going house hunting for several winter weekends, we were surprised at the lack of open houses for the past few weeks. Maybe no one wanted to have their houses on view in the snow, mud, then snow again! But this weekend with its beautiful weather brought out more open houses than we could handle! We had to map out the exact order of houses to see today in order to fit them all in. The nice thing about visiting these open houses months in advance of our lease expiring in the summer is that we have the leisure of casually searching for "the right one" without feeling too much of a time-crunch to choose. And since we are renting and are first-time homebuyers to boot, we don't have an additional threat of having to sell our home and buy a new home all at the same time - I can't imagine the stress of buying a new home before you have sold your old home, and having to deal with two mortgages!
We've seen a number of lovely homes so far, and some that were just plain strange. Since we start our search for open houses online, we generally know what to expect, and generally choose which homes to visit based upon whether or not they meet our "wish list" of basic criteria for our house - for instance, we'd like at least 3 bedrooms and over half an acre of property. And we've learned a lot more about our wish list as we've seen homes in person too - as much as I love antique homes, we also both love open floor plans and fewer, bigger rooms over many tiny rooms, which are more common in antiques (plus Matt needs head room - we've seen several head-bumpers which were a no-go!) - although we have seen several homes which consist of a perfect compromise - old homes which have an addition built on with more modern updates. We've seen a lot of lovely elements to the homes we've visited so far - but also a lot of weird, strange, or just plain quirky elements along the way!
One house seemed great with a great piece of property, but then we discovered that the beautiful, huge private backyard had just been subdivided by the seller and the back half had been sold to another person to build a house directly behind the property. Although the house was lovely, we did not want to lose the gorgeous woodland view in the yard for a big, noisy new house built in the way!
Or take the house which was actually two houses which had been squished together to form one big, awkward house. The layout felt strange, but the weirdest element seemed to be the "Buffalo Bill" (the bad one, from Silence of the Lambs, not the Western folk hero!) style basement, which was subdivided into maybe 10 tiny rooms which all linked together via twisting maze doors and were filled with perpetual junk and hanging linens lit with single, flashing bulbs. I know you are supposed to look past the current owner's junk and visualize your own, but having a Silence of the Lambs basement just creeped us out!
Then there have been just plain funny elements. One basement had a solitary tub raised up about two feet off the ground to wash dogs in - Matt knew this was a unique find to have a house built just for the dogs! Or when we walked into a big empty room on a second floor which just had a sink attached to a wall and nothing else. When we opened a tiny closet across the room, there was a little toilet inside - a quirky "bathroom" indeed! Or the house whose main driveway and entrance to the house was literally covered every step in dog-poop - we love dogs, but why wouldn't you clear the decks on the day of your open house???
The houses have run the gamut of "staging", too - some homes seem pulled right out of an HGTV show with perfect staging, colors, and de-cluttering. But I don't mind clutter, that's easy enough to look past - and sometimes the Red-Sox themed boys rooms (and sometimes men's offices!!) or the Jonas Brothers-covered girls room are just too cute! It's sometimes harder to visualize updating kitchens which have not been changed since the '60s or envisioning what to do with top-floor rooms which feature two or three different roof-lines from awkwardly-built additions.
Its been fun to visit the open houses and get a better sense of what we love, like, dislike, or hate in both houses and property, and we've been learning a lot about the process of house-hunting along the way! We look forward to finding just the right one to call "home".
We've seen a number of lovely homes so far, and some that were just plain strange. Since we start our search for open houses online, we generally know what to expect, and generally choose which homes to visit based upon whether or not they meet our "wish list" of basic criteria for our house - for instance, we'd like at least 3 bedrooms and over half an acre of property. And we've learned a lot more about our wish list as we've seen homes in person too - as much as I love antique homes, we also both love open floor plans and fewer, bigger rooms over many tiny rooms, which are more common in antiques (plus Matt needs head room - we've seen several head-bumpers which were a no-go!) - although we have seen several homes which consist of a perfect compromise - old homes which have an addition built on with more modern updates. We've seen a lot of lovely elements to the homes we've visited so far - but also a lot of weird, strange, or just plain quirky elements along the way!
One house seemed great with a great piece of property, but then we discovered that the beautiful, huge private backyard had just been subdivided by the seller and the back half had been sold to another person to build a house directly behind the property. Although the house was lovely, we did not want to lose the gorgeous woodland view in the yard for a big, noisy new house built in the way!
Or take the house which was actually two houses which had been squished together to form one big, awkward house. The layout felt strange, but the weirdest element seemed to be the "Buffalo Bill" (the bad one, from Silence of the Lambs, not the Western folk hero!) style basement, which was subdivided into maybe 10 tiny rooms which all linked together via twisting maze doors and were filled with perpetual junk and hanging linens lit with single, flashing bulbs. I know you are supposed to look past the current owner's junk and visualize your own, but having a Silence of the Lambs basement just creeped us out!
Then there have been just plain funny elements. One basement had a solitary tub raised up about two feet off the ground to wash dogs in - Matt knew this was a unique find to have a house built just for the dogs! Or when we walked into a big empty room on a second floor which just had a sink attached to a wall and nothing else. When we opened a tiny closet across the room, there was a little toilet inside - a quirky "bathroom" indeed! Or the house whose main driveway and entrance to the house was literally covered every step in dog-poop - we love dogs, but why wouldn't you clear the decks on the day of your open house???
The houses have run the gamut of "staging", too - some homes seem pulled right out of an HGTV show with perfect staging, colors, and de-cluttering. But I don't mind clutter, that's easy enough to look past - and sometimes the Red-Sox themed boys rooms (and sometimes men's offices!!) or the Jonas Brothers-covered girls room are just too cute! It's sometimes harder to visualize updating kitchens which have not been changed since the '60s or envisioning what to do with top-floor rooms which feature two or three different roof-lines from awkwardly-built additions.
Its been fun to visit the open houses and get a better sense of what we love, like, dislike, or hate in both houses and property, and we've been learning a lot about the process of house-hunting along the way! We look forward to finding just the right one to call "home".
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