Stalking Mr. House

Is it weird that I like to stalk this little house we're interested in? Our friends from church own this quaint 3 bedroom, 1970s era house in a nice quiet neighborhood in East Brainerd with great highway access. They have been renovating it to sell (or hopefully to rent with the option to sell in our case) for the past number of months. I talked to Maureen on Sunday and learned the updated list:

new carpets
new door from the kitchen to the den, with a window-opening between those rooms
repainted cabinetry with an addition
new vinyl flooring
new hard wood flooring
1.5 bath made into 2 full baths
updated tiling in bathrooms
new toilets
new bathroom sinks
new heating/air system
new windows
repainted exterior
repainted gutters

She said it'd be ready to see in about 2 weeks (which means next weekend if possible). I drove by the house yesterday to take a peek. New windows! It's amazing how much nicer an entire place looks just by window updates.

Stalking 101: Find an image to stare at longingly:

I probably could bring my camera and take a better snap, but I feel like that commits my emotions to an uncertainty, so this will do. And now for more emotionally-committing statements:

It's cute! I'm not sure what color they're going to change the outside to, right now it's like a worn-looking peach color. On the right side where it looks like there's a window is actually a windowed door. It used to be a garage but has been turned into a den, which Jon could use as a music studio quite effectively. The front porch is small, but the backyard area looks nice and green with area for a potential small deck or porch.

The front door has been updated to a really nice oval-shaped glass-windowed door. The glass looks like it might have some etching design in it.

One of the unused 3 bedrooms would be my amazing art and sewing studio! Amazing. I long for the day to have room for such a thing.. and to have a master bedroom where I can get into the doorway while holding a laundry basket without running into a guitar stand and a thick pile of art papers and portfolios behind the door. Seriously.

I think if I owned this house I'd have fun doing some landscaping, and eventually to fence in the lot with a nice little wooden fence or something.

Enough emotions. I really hope this place is a definite possibility. It'll come down to how the numbers can work with our current goals to take out student loan debt completely in the next year and a half. I've been praying. Feel free to join me.

Flying Dreams

I've had a lot of dreams lately about big life change things: finding a house, having children, the fate of starting my own line of work.. And I think it's interesting to note that when my anxieties rest about those things, my dreams revisit the same silly, weird and inspiring nature that they had long ago before all this adult stuff happened. I like that I can still go back there without even trying.

The Innocence Mission

I can really appreciate the way a great musician can catch my undivided attention within mere seconds of listening to their work. But my goodness, how lovely! The Innocence Mission is my new appreciation. I've been listening to track samples in iTunes all afternoon and really enjoying it. This sound takes me away to a relaxing leisurely drive, or to working in a sunny room on sewing projects and being filled with creativity.

And look at the design :•)

The song that caught me was a cover of What A Wonderful World on the "Now The Day Is Over" album, which includes additional covers of Moon River, Edelweiss and Over The Rainbow. Such a soft sound. Love it.

Birth Of The Human Spark

There's a really interesting program on PBS tonight about the brain.. Specifically the segment discussing the question: At what age do we develop the "human spark"? It isn't at birth, they observe, but at around 9 or 10 months of age. Basically from birth to this age, a human is much like an animal. Their reactions to communication are similar but they do not understand language per say at such a young age... learning language is when the human spark begins.

Babies will coo and make noises and will seem to understand differences in the sound of their mother's voice, but this behavior is much like a dog's reaction to the same type of communication. Interesting! (So a baby is much like a pet in the beginning, haha.. until it learns... because it's capacity is so much greater than an animal).

Another study showed that at 6-9months, a baby can tell which character traits in others are preferable to them. They were shown puppets interacting with each other. Almost 100% of the time the child preferred the nicer character, based solely on motion behavior, no voice, and were able to identify good versus bad intentions in inanimate objects. Kinda makes you feel the need to be more intentional about the way you act around kids.

Babies can also spot others who are like them and make preferences. In this test there were 2 foods given to the child, who then made his food preference. A puppet was used to prefer one food and another was used to prefer the other. When given the choice the baby chose the puppet who liked the same food he liked.. same results almost 100% of the time as well.

A child by the age of 5 is capable of what they called "theory of mind," where they are able to consider their own intentions, as well as others' intentions.. like considering what other people might be thinking about.

So interesting! I always wondered what babies actually think about. Turns out, before 6-9 months or so, like an animal, they're only able to consider their own intentions for basic necessities.. as they slowly become aware that this thing called communication actually exists and that it can do things for them.

Basically the message behind this show is that language and communication is the "spark" that sets us apart from every other species on this planet. It's what essentially gives us the ability to wonder, to hope, to plan for the future, to make our lives what they are.

Orange Cornmeal Cake

I saw this recipe on the Saturday morning cooking show we watch regularly, thought I'd share it!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup olive oil, plus more for greasing the pan
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar, plus 1/3 cup for the topping
• 1/2 cup orange juice (or dry white wine)
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup finely ground yellow cornmeal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• Zest of 1 large orange

Method

1 Preheat oven to 375°F. Brush the bottom and sides of an 8-inch round cake pan with oil (can use butter for this too); line the bottom of the pan with wax paper or parchment paper, and brush the top of the paper with oil.

2 In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, 1 cup of the sugar, and orange juice until smooth. Add flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and orange zest; whisk lightly to combine.

3 Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan; sprinkle the top evenly with the remaining 1/3 cup sugar. Bake until cake begins to pull away from sides of pan and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25-35 minutes.

4 Cool the cake in the pan 20 minutes. Run a knife around edge of cake to separate it from the edge of the pan. Invert the cake gently onto a plate, and remove the parchment paper. Re-invert the cake onto a rack to cool completely before serving.

Serves 8.

A Personal Update

Well.. I haven't updated on here for a while. I've been so engulfed with my shop progress! .. it's really fun. I have a feeling that the clothing is going to be a more successful effort than trying to sell invitations and art prints though. It's more practical for the price... and people just want clothes more than art or printed materials I guess.

I've been spreading knowledge of my shop through chat rooms on etsy.com.. which is innnnteresting, to say the least. I've learned that there are a lot of stay at home moms and retired folks selling on there. I've also learned that there is a TON of crafty (in my opinion junk) type stuff that people are trying to sell. Like, buy a bag o' beads from Michaels, string 'em and sell them for $15. Meh. I'm sure some people go for that. I've personally felt impressed by very few other shops on that site (and shop banners made with Microsoft Word). However, it's encouraging that the inspiring shops are few.. because it's easier to stand out :0) I've already had people comment on how nice my blog looks or how cool my website is (gee, helps to be an actual web/designer when it comes to marketing your own stuff!). Right now my main marketing angle is social marketing only (Facebook fan page, Twitter, blogging, etsy chat rooms) .. but being as connected as I naturally am, that's a plus and I think (I hope) eventually it'll work out well for me.

Anyway here's an update on other things.. we are still waiting on renovation progress about a little house we're interested in that some friends from church are renting/selling as soon as it's done. It'd be a great location, in East Brainerd with easy highway access but in a nice, older little subdivision. I haven't seen the inside yet, and the renovated inside will be new to both of us. We're hoping to see it later this month or next month. We both have a good feeling about it though, so maybe some goodness will happen with it soon.

Our second 13-week session of Financial Peace University is about to start up again, with a preview this Sunday, for which I'm making dollar sign shaped sugar cookies! I'm looking forward to it... and to seeing peoples' eyes opened to how they can change their lives forever because of learning how to focus on finances. It's powerful. I love it.

For The Birds

My sister decided to buy a pet bird, a smaller parrot breed of sorts.. so I decided to provide some name options I came up with, haha:

Scuttle Butt
Qwerty
McPecksalot
Tweets McFlappingly
Fowlly Golightly (for a girl)
Harvey Birdman
Thrush
Twitternaut
Birdiesdirtifeet
Swoopsenpecks
Featherface
Heath Fledger
Beaker
Andrew

I think it's funny that a number of these sound like those spam email sender names I used to get.. hilarious.