A couple weeks ago I decided that I couldn’t stand our couch for another day. Not only that, but we also needed to get additional seating, a nice love seat let’s say, to round out our living room furniture. This led to weeks of obsession, searching websites, visiting local stores and basically doing a lot of hand-wringing.

The more I looked, the more I liked our current couch. It is just the right size for our narrow living room, such a nice color and the right mid-mod period. Maybe I can live with the couch, but what about a love seat? I keep coming back to this ridiculously over-priced, tiny sofa, from DWR, the Poet Sofa. It is just lovely and comfortable, and the right size to add couple more seats to the room but no way am I ever getting that couch.

After careful measuring, I determined that the ideal love seat for us would be 60 inches long. In looking at some of my other favorite furniture makers, like Gus and Thrive, I discovered that modern sofas are hardly ever made in the 60 inch range. Chairs get as wide as 40 and sofas get as narrow as 76. Can you hear the sighing, the exasperation? Was there no solution???

I went back to a broader search and found a new term for love seat, “settee”. Presto! A settee is a small couch with most being around 60 inches. Why these aren’t love seats or sofas is still a mystery. Right now my top pick Settee is the Elton from West Elm. I’d get it in yellow velvet. Ofcourse, I still need to try sitting on it first, which means a trip to Chicago. There is no instant gratification for the furniture shopper.

Just finding a potential solution has calmed my obsession for now. Last week, in the very depths of the search I started to wonder if I had a problem, a furniture obsession problem. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, searching for an answer. SB pointed out that this happens to me every year and every year it ends when a new piece of furniture arrives in our home. I begin to grumble about this or that furniture need around January and by April I’ve purchased something. At first I denied that this is my pattern, but looking back through the blog proved SB right. Maybe this is my cabin fever, the furniture itch.

I did end-up buying a couple items for the living room last week… More on that soon.

For our weekend game group, I volunteered to bring dessert. Originally I had been planning on brownies, but SB reminded me of the door county cherries in our freezer and suddenly cherry pie sounded perfect. I’ve got my pie crust, a la Deborah Madison, down perfect, so pie is no longer daunting. I used Smitten Kitchen’s cherry pie filling. In honor of valentine’s day, I decorated it with two hearts. Ta Da! I had pie to share.

Only, when it came time to slice the pie, of the six people at game group, only three wanted pie. Two of the non-pie eaters claim to like other fruit pies, just not cherry. One has decided to take a strong stand on the pie vs cake controversy and she chose cake, thanks to this guy. All the controversy meant left-over pie for me. Still, I’ve never had such a luke-warm response to dessert.

The web is full of pie or cake discussions. To provide the counter-point to the pro-cake camp, I give you this illustrated post. Personally, I enjoy cake AND pie. Good thing I don’t have to choose.

Monthly Music Challenge:
January Music: Polica at High Noon, part of the FRZN Festival
Bonus Event: Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know? with Ed Begley Jr.

I spent last weekend in San Francisco, visiting my sister, eating good food, drinking great wine and enjoying a little milder weather, before spending the week working in San Jose. One of the things I love about San Francisco is the enthusiasm and dedication to micro-trends from design to food.

Everyday I was in SF, I saw people waiting in line for bread. The bread line went around the block and started forming hours before the bakery opened. Now, these were not people desperate for a little nourishment, this was a line of trendy youngsters waiting outside the french bakery, Tartine. How could bread be worth it? I didn’t brave the line, so I can’t say, though this video is persuasive: http://www.tartinebread.com/

Besides bread I learned a new food concept, biodynamic. As best I understand, it is half the science of extreme sustainability and half a kind of earth religion. Reading the website, it actually started in the 1920s but seems to be gaining popularity recently. I’m sure I’ll be hearing and learning more about it, as their national conference this year is here in Madison. Whatever it may be, it sure produced some wonderful California wines.

Finally, I visited the garden center, Flora Grubb, whose photos had inspired me to start a new succulent arrangement and where I captured the planted bicycle pictured above. The store was every bit as inspiring as the photos had me believe. It made me long to live in a climate where I could grow giant cactus, palms and waxy leafed beauties.

I couldn’t have asked for a better mini-vacation, or as some call it, weekend. Thank you to my lovely hostess.

When we decided to move back to Wisconsin from Atlanta, I knew that there would be some financial hardship. We were jumping off the cliff of any financial planning we had during our time in Atlanta and had no solid plan for the future. There were setbacks and uncertainty in the years that followed. What I didn’t realize was how long and difficult the recovery would be or how much the challenge would teach me about personal finance.

In the three years since the move, I have developed and refined a household budget, set financial goals and with literal enjoyment, regularly review my progress. SB says this new-found love for personal finance comes from my passion for checking things off the list. I have long been a list maker. I love the satisfaction of a good check-off and have learned to make lists that contain steps to a larger goal, so little achievements can be checked along the way. I am terrible at remembering accomplishments once they have been checked off, but that is a topic for another post.

To aide me in my list making, I have a stack of pocket/reporter notebooks. These are spiral bound, 4 x 8 inch, lined, notebooks and contain lists and notes, to-dos and measurements. They are the foundation of my tool set. During the big move, when it became obvious we needed serious budget control, I started using Google Docs, as a shared repository for budget documents. Since the documents are accessible to both SB and I, we can both refer and edit, making the budget a living plan. The notebook and the spreadsheet have gotten me through the past few years.

Recently, I started reading a new financial blog, Mr. Money Moustache (Mr. MM) – Putting the cash in your ‘stash. This blog has reminded me that I need to start thinking longer term and bigger. It isn’t enough to have a monthly balanced budget, I need to think about the future, creating a reality where retirement is possible. If you have talked with me recently, there is a good chance you’ve heard me mention this blog. One of my friends, on hearing about Mr. MM, said, “Isn’t he just re-stating things you already know? Guys like that are just trying to make money off stating the obvious.” The sub-text being, “I’m smart enough that I don’t need to read a blog like that”.

While that may be true for my friend, I find the Mr. MM blog energizing. What he writes is not new to me, but is like a big dose of a frugality vitamin. I do want to retire some day. I do want to see every dollar helping me reach for financial independence. His blog has made me realize it is possible and worth striving towards a more independent future. In recent years I have scoffed at the mere mention of retirement, “Not in my lifetime.” Now I have hope that I can actually make it happen.

To help me make a check list for a richer future, I just started using Mint. The nice thing about Mint, so far, is that it tracks my retirement accounts and stock, in addition to the more day-to-day finances. This gives me a bigger picture of my finances than I’ve had before and will help me set some new, longer term goals. I’m excited about my financial plan for 2012 and hope to keep learning new tricks that will set me up for a great today and tomorrow.

A year ago I set a goal of seeing one live show a month. A live show could be music or a play or any other live performance. Those were the only rules. So how did I do? I missed two months, June and December. I did see a total of 14 shows and it kept me looking for new bands to see and checking the local listings. I found some new-to-me music, bought some great cds and brought more music back into my life. Overall, it was a huge success, even if I didn’t make my goal. Here’s what I saw:

- December: None
- November: The Sweetback Sisters at High Noon Saloon
- October: Sh*tty Barn Party including Group of the Altos and Control
- September: The Gentle Guest at Sh*tty Barn and Ani D’Franco at Barrymore
- August: The Pines at Sh*tty Barn
- July: The Old 97′s at Summer Fest and Caravan Gypsy Swing Ensemble at Sh*tty Barn
- June: None
- May: Romi Mayes at High Noon
- April: The Old 97′s at The Barrymore and Jonathan Coulton with Paul and Storm at Majestic
- March: Momix at Overture and Portland Cello Project at High Noon
- February: Tennis at High Noon
- January: Ben Folds at Overture

Favorite concert of the year: Caravan Gypsy Swing Ensemble at The Sh*tty Barn as much for the venue as for the band. It was our introduction to the Spring Green music scene and had us coming back again and again this year.

Favorite album of the year: Parov Stellar an Austrian DJ whose two disc album Coco, produced in 2009, saw the most action on our playlist this year.

For next year the “rules” of this challenge need a little fine tuning. There were many questions around whether seeing the same band more than once counted. In 2012 it will not. Also, the definition of “live performance” is going to be limited to just music, since that is what it naturally became. Happy listening.

2011 in numbers:
- 1,275 visitors to this blog. July 13th had the most visits, Lola Swims
- 329 photos uploaded to Flickr
- 42 tweets
- 33 blog entries posted
- 20 books read (3 non-fiction, 17 fiction)
- 14 yarn projects completed (4 crochet, 10 knit)
- 14 concerts attended
- 7 cities visited Las Vegas, Sparta, Orem (x2), Chicago (x2), Cable, Atlanta and Portland
- 1 wedding attended

2011 was the year of the house and yard. The year started with tearing out trees and shrubs and planting new gardens in the front and back. SB hand dug a 30 foot drainage ditch and installed a french drain system, to keep our basement dry year round. We also resided and painted the garage and organized the inside of the garage, including lining the inside with peg board. I sharpened my trim skills installing chair rail, door trim and baseboard in the dining room. SB became an expert plumber, installing a new outdoor faucet and under counter dishwasher. We also painted the stairwell and continued organizing and donating stuff.

What am I looking forward to in 2012?
- House: Installing crown molding and picture rail throughout, painting the bedrooms, re-doing our upstairs bathroom, finishing the kitchen, which includes building some custom cabinets and putting in a privacy fence in the back yard. Now that the garage is coming together, trim and cabinet making will be much easier.
- Music: The monthly concert goal will continue. It really motivated us to see some great live shows and we are are looking forward to even more this year.
- Travel: I think we need to travel more this year, or at least more vacation travel adventures. Destinations to be determined.

The self-betterment wishlist includes yoga, fiscal responsibility and more personal blog writing. More on these goals soon. Happy New Year!

Instead of a traveling adventure this fall, we are embarking on an expedition of home improvement. The garage siding is literally crumbling off the garage, like rotting paper. Starting today and through this week of vacation, we will be tearing it all off and replacing it with fiber cement siding. Then comes the fun part, instead of sticking with the white on white on white of our house, it is time for some more color.

The third blue from the left, “Mood Indigo” has come out the winner. That will be the main color and the trim will be white. Next spring we will bring the blue color onto our house by painting the trim and shutters the same Indigo. It would be lovely to paint our whole house that color, but we have 30-year-old white vinyl. I read that painting light colored vinyl a dark color can cause it to warp and deform, plus then suddenly the siding would go from no maintenance to high maintenance.

In addition to the siding project, SB is out in the yard right now, digging a trench for a french drain. Last spring we had some water in our basement because of poor drainage in our side yard and this may solve the leaky basement problem. We saved all the gravel from our front hedge and will be using that to build out the drain.

It may not be Paris but the drain is French. I’m still calling it a vacation.

Recently I was reminded of this project that had been lingering in my thoughts for a long-time. I wanted one of those cool, modern, plant centerpieces, made up of succulents and cactus, where the plants were kind of tumbling out of the pot. The recent inspiration came from my sister, who took some amazing photos at a San Francisco garden center, Flora Grubb. Looking at their site, not only do they have the centerpiece inspiration, they are also showcasing glass globes filled with air plants. This store looks like my kind of place!

Right after the injection of inspiration, I visited Olbrich Gardens, here in Madison. They too were featuring these succulent centerpieces and in their little garden shop, they were selling some very cool succulents. SB bought me a couple and then with a little searching I found a nice pot and a few more plants to fill-out they arrangement.

I didn’t want to fill it too full to start, so that each plant would have some space to expand. The only thing that may be missing is a couple of carefully placed stones.

Ta da! Introducing our Unique Panicle Hydrangea! (It is the little plant closest to the camera.) After trips to two arboretums and a city garden, plus many hours wandering local garden stores, we finally settled on a tree for the front yard. Tree may not be the right term, since it is more of a shrub, but it will grow as a single or double trunk and develop an umbrella of foliage, much like a tree.

As my search for the perfect tree continued, I realized that the space I had for the tree could only handle something about six to eight feet wide and tall, which is a very small tree. Second, the spot is full sun, all day, and true trees that enjoy full sun tend to want to get much larger than six feet, which totally makes sense with all that solar energy. Finally, this is our butterfly garden, so having a flowering something that attracts wings, is just added benefit.

Thanks to everyone for their tree advice, especially Rosemarie, who wandered both arboretums with me and her husband, Matt, who can spot a paniculata from 1000 yards.

As you can see from the photo above, the rest of the garden is coming together as well. SB spent the past week digging out grass and filling-in with new dirt, mulch and edging. My Mom donated the mature peonies and peegee hydrangea from her garden to anchor ours. I can’t wait until next summer, to see this garden develop. The photo below are the blooms from a mature unique panicle hydrangea, they start green, go to pink and then finally to white.

With the Sunshine Throw, I officially close the 2011 Blanket Challenge. This blanket, so nicely modeled by Lola, is blanket number eight and is a beauty. There are two geeky knitting things that make the sunshine throw special. First, it uses a slip stitch technique to work two colors at once, creating the illusion of the decreasing and increasing vertical lines. Second, it has a two strand i-cord border that gives the edge a nice bulkiness and texture. Everything about this pattern came together perfectly. I couldn’t be happier with the end result and am excited to give it to a knitting friend/new mom.

As for the timing on finishing this blanket, it just makes me sad. I had planned for this blanket to take me a month, which would have meant that I met my goal of eight blankets in six months. Instead, life, work, the house and summer got in the way and it took me two months to finish. At the five month mark I had completed seven blankets and had just one to go. Success seemed like a sure thing. Oh well, I don’t regret any of the non-knitting things I did. All told, in seven months I completed eight blankets, which is still more than one a month.

Here is one of the happy recipients. He says this is the best blanket he’s ever had. The first day with the blanket he was already picking out a name for it. Last I heard the blanket was “Blue McQueen”.