a peek inside the fishbowl

Ah, fall.

You are hot chocolate and warm hats. You are cozy covers and heavy sweaters. You are road trips and leaves – lots of leaves – enough to send someone home with arms that barely function and muscles that scream for mercy.

This was my view of you last year.

Some of you may already know that I snap a photo of my lunch every day. It’s my own personal just-because type project. I call it Daily Lunches. I have been enjoying this project for many reasons. (1) It’s improved the quality of the foods I eat. (2) It’s helping me be more mindful of what I eat and how I eat it. In other words, I’m less likely to hoover up a toasted bagel while standing over the kitchen sink (3) I like to share the recipes of my favourite meals (many of which are from Recipes.ca!)

I also love to see what YOU have for lunch too, and I’m grateful every time someone tweets something out with the #dailylunches hashtag.

Anyway, yes, I am especially happy to say that today’s lunch was the star of a photoshoot for HealthWise Ottawa magazine:

I had a very fun morning… despite the fact I was also cooking up a vegetarian curry before nine. :)

Do you want to check out all of the lunches I’ve eaten since June? Click over to my Flickr set.

I’m quite particular about dinner dishes. Some might even accuse me of being PICKY, although I try not to see it that way.

The last set of dinner dishes we bought were Debbie Travis dishes from Canadian Tire. (I wrote about them here in fact. That’s the great thing about blogs… Every Single Story can be documented in great detail!) I loved the colour – a light robin’s egg blue – and its ever-so-slight asymmetry. But my joy ended there. They turned out to be pretty lousy dishes. They chipped like crazy. The dinner plates were too large and didn’t fit in the dishwasher very well, and the whole set wasn’t suited for the microwave. We’d heat up some soup only to find that the bowl was burning hot and the contents were cold. Same went for hot chocolate in the mugs.

Since then I’ve kept my eyes half-open for an aesthetically-pleasing and practical set but nothing I saw fit the bill, whether it was open stock or pre-packaged in sets. There was always one piece that was off-kilter for my tastes… a too-small mug, a too-big bowl, for example. Quite often the heft was wrong too. I wanted something lightweight, and a mug that wasn’t too chunky or thick-walled. And as much as I admire non-traditionally shaped dinnerware I just couldn’t see myself eating off a dinner plate that wasn’t round.

(See, I’m PARTICULAR.)

A few weeks ago I came pretty close. On a whim I found myself at HomeSense when I saw a nice white set with a subtle pattern but they didn’t have enough pieces to make a complete set. A salesperson called around to different stores to see if they had anything in stock but came up empty-handed… and then suggested I buy the remainder of their stock (one bowl, one dinner plate, six sandwich plates, eight mugs etc) in case another shipment of the same pattern came in at some point soon. Er, I don’t think so lady!

I finally found something I liked at Home Outfitters: a 40-piece (!) set of creamy white bone china dishes In fact, it was such a great deal I couldn’t pass it up. For $89.00 we got eight instant place settings that included mugs, bowls, dinner plates, sandwich plates, and appetizer plates. I confess that the set is a little on the plain side for me, but I’m hoping to eventually liven it up with new glassware, and colourful serving pieces and linens.

This will give you an idea of what I’m talking about:

See? Plain. But guess what:

• The heat well in the microwave.
• They are dishwasher safe and fit in my dishwasher racks and in my cupboards.
• They are lightweight.

Yay!

Goodbye mismatched mugs and plates, hello sleek and new and clean and white. I have missed you so.

Related Home Outfitter shopping story: can someone explain the existence of home bathroom wastebaskets that don’t come with swing lids? Who wants to look at crumpled Kleenex and waxy Q-tips every time they go in to the bathroom? Gah.

Other recent reno-related updates (yes, they are STILL happening):

• Our office door has finally been installed. (See pic here.) I love it, but it needs a minor adjustment so it can actually close. Sigh.
• The shed is being worked on right now. Woot!
• We still don’t have a driveway, and we walk through mucky stuff to get in and out of the house every day. Gah! I hope that’s going to be happening next week.
• We might actually get our bathroom vanity on Tuesday.
• Our bedroom and bathroom blinds (Levelor, cordless, top down/bottom up) have been ordered (20% off at Home Depot!) but will take a couple weeks to get here.
• Piper is slowly adjusting to the dog-washing sink. I am loving it. It’s been so incredibly useful already.

We are slowly continuing to strike things off the list. Now if I can only get those last few boxes unpacked…