I am a bit of a liar

It turns out I am a bit of a liar. Not a big one. I don't cheat on my taxes or tell people that I am 5'3". But there are a few things that I feel like I should come clean about.

It all started when I was at work the other day. I have an enormously powerful sweet tooth, so when I packed my lunch I had filled a little Tupperware with fresh berries and Cool Whip. (I'm all for actual whipped cream, but there is something delightful about that sweet, room-temperature, stable, vegetable-oil foam.) Berries and Cool Whip is not actually all that bad for you (if you are just looking at calories) so some berries mixed with the Whip isn't too unhealthy of a snack. But when one of my other manager walked into the break room and asked what I was eating I instinctively said "Yogurt and raspberries." Because suddenly I felt sheepish about eating a big bowl of cool whip. I don't know why - it just came out without thought. IT made me think about what other little lies I told for the sake of making myself seem more cool or worldly. So in the spirit of disclosure, here they are:

1. When people ask what I studied in college I say "English, with a creative writing emphasis." I guess it sounds more bourgeois and interesting than just English. Well, I had no creative writing emphasis. I just was a straight up English major. I did take some creative writing classes. Most of the time I didn't even do anything creative. I just turned in stuff I had written for other creative writing classes. That was sort of my MO in college. So, no, I didn't sit in hip cafes and write amazing poems and compelling short stories. I just read (or pretended to read) lots of books.

2. I read a lot of Young Adult novels. I do it because I love young adult novels. I think they are clever and well written and have great stories and characters. And if you are an adult male reading Harry Potter you are good. But if you are a 30 year old and you are reading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, then it seems a little weird. (Great book, BTW. My review here.) So when people ask what kind of books I like reading and I say Young Adult, I usually follow it up with "I am writing a Young Adult novel, so I like to see what is going on in the genre." That is kind of true. I am "writing" a young adult novel (I have about 4 pages so far.) But that isn't why I read young adult novels. I don't get myself - I am not at all ashamed to admit that I watch America's Next Top Model but I get embarrassed when I tell people I am reading Delirium (also a great read.) So there you have it. I am a YA reader.

3. I didn't like Battlestar Gallactaca. There I said it. Sci-Fi. Critically acclaimed. Cult following. It seems tailor maid for me. But I couldn't get into it. I'm sorry!

4. I really do LOVE dogs.

Just kidding. I really do totally hate them.

5. I'm really 5'3. I wear really tall shoes.

There. I feel better.

Free at Last!

Gratuitous cute picture of Lila that has nothing to do with this post. Because I think blogs should have pictures.

So we are going public. Or, indeed, we are public now. We took this blog private a couple of years ago. We didn't really have a clear reason or thought process behind it. It just seemed that the blog was mostly about the kids and there were a lot of pictures of them and a lot of pictures of the house and it seemed like it would be a good idea to control who had access to that.  So we went private. And I think our readership went from about 12 to about 3.

Not that we were really worried about readership. We are not trying to retire from our jobs and blog professionally (unless you have 1.2 million friends that you want to have read this blog every month.) We were living in Oregon and the blog seemed an easy way to keep the grandmas up to speed with our adventures in pumpkin picking, and berry picking, and tree harvesting. (Wow, we sure did a lot of agri-tourism in Oregon.)

But we are back in Utah. And it seems less necessary to blog about every cute thing our kids do. (Though, fair warning, we may still blog about cute things the kids do.) So the blog is evolving. And I am trying to write more. (See my 2011 wrap up.) And Amy has told me she probably will be blogging less (even though she is clearly a better writer than me, amirite?) So we are becoming something new. And I don't know what that will be. But it didn't seem to need to be something private anymore.

So tell your friends and loved ones who got tired of trying to remember their password and stopped reading. They are welcome to come back and read every scintillating word! And feel free to weigh in in the comments. Are there particular posts you like or dislike? Things you want to see more of? Or less of? And please note: I measure my self worth by the number of comments I receive. So weigh in.

Magnifying my consignment

In the spirit of meeting my "300 words a day" goal, I am posting again about my furniture. It may be that this blog just becomes a place where I talk about all of the things that Amy and I purchase at consignment shops. You guys are cool with that, right? Good. I thought so. We're all friends here.

I blogged about this once before and the more we shop in antique stores and vintage shops, the more I love it. It just seems like you find cooler stuff, the price is usually lower, and you can feel some sort of self-righteousness that your are repurposing items that already exist instead of increasing your carbon footprint or something. And once we started looking, we found there are vintage shops everywhere. Seriously. Even Spanish Fork has one. So that is your assignment this week. You guys don't mind if I start giving weekly assignments, do you? Good.

Our kids broke the lamp in the loft. And what is more annoying than spending money to replace things your kids broke (i.e. the video camera they broke a couple of weeks ago trying to smash a spider?) But then we heard Amy's grandma had a lamp in her basement she wasn't using, so we went and got this treasure..

Its a tension lamp, which means it is spring loaded and you wedge it between the floor and the ceiling. Originally the room we were going to put it in had too high of a ceiling for it to work. So we bought that little light box to put underneath the lamp. Then we decided we liked the lamp better in this room so we just put some stuff on the light box.

Here is the lamp all lit up and a closeup of the light box, which had a weird orange vase on it that we found at a vintage store. Isn't she grand?

And as long as we were buying a light box, and a vase and a pair of boots for Amy (not pictured) we decided we needed to spruce up the kitchen, so we got this super awesome bread box and little tin bucket utensil holder thing.

Shabby chic? Perhaps. But it looks grand with the yellow owl butter dish. 

So that's all I got. No profound statement on the meaning of finding old things and making them new. No commentary about illuminating our homes and our lives with things from the past. Just some more pictures of furniture I like. This 300 words thing could get pretty boring pretty quick. Someone get me a book deal!