Settling in

Little by little- even with the plaster dust and drop cloths and wood glue and tile samples-- this house is feeling like a home. I planted some herb seeds last night which made me exceedingly happy. I really, really missed gardening while we were displaced for a year and a half so am excited to get back 'diggin' in the dirt'! I may do a later more detailed post on this project later...
Also, this weekend I baked cookies for the first time in over a year! I really loved baking and this was another thing I've really missed- although I was also traumatized by my last attempt which was just after we had gotten settled in the first apartment post-fire. The apartment was new construction which appealed to us because it was clean and looked great-- but there were SO many things wrong with it- the worst of which were faulty smoke detectors (of all things!) that went off at the slightest thing. We ultimately learned that you had to put the fan on High in order to even boil water on the stove top. Anyway- this was about two months after the fire; I had the idea of taking a "mental health" day to settle in and bake cookies for the fire department as a thank you. Everything was great until I opened the oven to check on the first batch and smoke alarms went off and I couldn't get them to stop.... I'd press the reset button and not two minutes later they'd start blaring again. Long story short- I opened every window in the apartment, eventually in a fit of despair threw the cookies (sheet and all!) into the snow-- and with my nerves totally fried, literally shaking, took the train into work just to get away from it all....
Sooooo this was a MUCH better experience! The blue star convection worked wonders and I made up a couple of little cookie packets to leave for our builders to take home to their families.

Lastly, in the evenings we've been letting our kitty cats out to explore (after we vacuum and wet mop the plaster dust up!) It makes me so happy to see them out and about. Caelyn, our little black cat is a little camera shy-- but here are a couple of photos of Zin:

They both love all the windows in the house-- good for checking out the birds and squirrels and sittling in patches of sunshine. Here's Zin looking out the window between the builtins in the dining room.

..and here's where he sat while we watched a little television last night. I'm so happy that all four of us are slowly relaxing back to being home.