update {life}

Where were we?

Mark chastised me this week that my bathroom reno wasn't progressing quickly enough. Or I wasn't blogging enough about it. One of those. I forget. Anyway. We're at the midpoint, or perhaps at bit past that, so let me catch you up.

When I last reported on the renovation, Neel was happily tackling the demolotion of the tile walls and carefully chipping away at the tile on the bath. Because we'd earlier removed sliding doors from the shower, we needed to retile the area where the doors used to meet the wall. Neel carefully pulled tile from the walls to knit into those surrounding the bath, but then something happened.

No matchy.

That was frustrating. So all the tile from the shower came down.

And went back up again. It's much better now.

This was a big day too. :)

I've chatted about the floors, and for sure they were a big change. Before they went in though, the radiator went out; I think I had mentioned that it had never worked. My friend Stephanie asked me on Facebook if we'd given up on radiant heat, and for this bathroom, sadly we have. For a few reasons. For one, the new floor is going in on top of the old floor, which would make radiant heat tricky. Also, this is our guest bathroom. Even Callum tends to shower in our master bath. We just didn't want to put a ton of investment here. After two recommendations, we opted instead for a small wall heater, which will blow warm air on your chilly damp calves right as you step out of the shower. The room is small enough that I think it'll heat up nicely. And anything will heat up better than say, no heat, right?

I'm beyond pleased with the floors; already it's so much brighter and lighter in there. And we're getting baseboards in now too, so things are starting to come together. Last weekend we purchased the vanity and the toilet and all the attendant faucets. Paint too. All that's left for the guys to do is to skimcoat and dry wall the walls and Neel and I will paint before we get the rest of the stuff installed. Past halfway, for sure. I can definitely see the home stretch.

And then it's on to Number 2. (Take that any way you will... )

baking history {life}

My earliest memories of Nestlé's iconic Toll House Cookies come from the first house I remember living in, standing on a stool at the kitchen sink and "helping" my mom bake. My help included the dishes, soap and lots of splashing, but I was there, mixing it up. I have such acute memories of those times, the windows over the sink and how tall I felt standing on that stool. The softness of my mom's chef's-style apron and her head bent over the bowl as she beat the flour into the batter. I do know that one time while I was "helping," I went to take one last bite of cookie dough off of the wooden spoon that was sitting in the bowl only to find that the spoon had dish soap on it.

Shudder.

We didn't have these cookies all the time, but they were a regular enough staple in our house. Fool-proof baking for sure, simple enough and yet stunningly flavored so that we were wreathed in smiles whenever my mom got the urge to make them. As an older kid, I would come home from school and have a sudden realization, "Mom made cookies Sunday!" It was the best possible feeling, to remember that there were cookies in the blue jar with the chipped lid to give me a boost after a long day at school. And that jar, I think my mom still has it. Intrinsically intertwined with the cookies themselves was this old blue jar. The lid was chipped, but it too spoke of home and sweet comfort to me.

In recent years, I've been making these cookies for my own family. They're nothing fancy. I've said again and again that I'm not a baker, but you can't get these wrong, really. And there's something terribly satisfying about making the same recipe that my mom used to make. The same crinkle of the plastic wrapper that the chocolate chips come in, the same rich scent of vanilla extract. The same sweet surprise in remembering that there are cookies, still, when you walk in the door. The only thing missing is a jar, and I think I'm going to get on that right away.