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In addition to the organizing, there has been some stealth decorating going on here. I had no problem personalizing my various rooms in college with strings of fairy lights and enormous Pre-Raphaelite posters, intersperced with hand-stamped watercolored "wise words" and silly photographs and postcards blu-tacked to the walls. But a grown up apartment? Forget it. I leave the walls bare (we'll have to pay to have the nail holes filled in!) and agonize about choosing the curtains and pillow cases etc of my dreams. Because of course you can't change your curtains, oh no, they have to be the *perfect* curtains to last a lifetime! Well, Moondoggie finally got a bit fed up with this and said "Haven't you been talking about getting some curtains for the living room since, well, forever?" Thus fortified with husbandly inspiration I hied myself to Ikea, closed my eyes, spun around and pointed and came up with these

Which look like this up close

Basically cream with dark brown and grey-blue. I quite like them, and since we have a pretty terrible cheapie curtain rod (left us by the landlord), the tab-top situtation is the best available. I think these should go nicely with the couches we ordered about a million years ago that still haven't arrived.

And, in the thrilling "Marketplace" in Ikea I found the holy grail of kitchenware-- Inatainers! Like many craft bloggers more accomplished than myself, I worship at the temple of the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. In fact, last night I dreamed that she had me over for lunch at her house. Really. Anyway, I've been annoyed with the stupid Wal-Mart flour and sugar canisters I've had for ages-- the openings are not big enough to scoop out the contents with even my 1/4 cup measure, which leads to spilling and muttering and general unhappiness. And at Ikea? They had chubby, darling, vaccum-sealing glass canisters reminiscent of Ina's!

Baking is now much happier and less messy in my kitchen.

Also the brainchild of the surprisingly domestically savvy Moondoggie, this wee flock recently joined our household

I was squealing over the Anthropologie holiday catalog this weekend and Moondoggie agreed to look at it and see how cute everything is (good man). He turned to a page and said "Will you please go and get these?" and lo, was pointing at the insanely cute Japanese owl tea set. No one needs to tell me twice when the order is "Go to Anthropologie and buy something cute."

And I did make Tomato Bread Soup

I didn't actually use a recipe from that book, it just looked pretty under the bowl. I didn't use the Mario Batali recipe either, I kind of made one up. If you'd like to try it, it goes like this:

Tomato Bread Soup
3/4 lb crusty Italian bread
1T olive oil
1 small onion, diced small
2 cloves garlic, pressed
28 oz can peeled crushed tomatoes in puree
7 large basil leaves, cut into ribbons (and another few for garnish if you like)
3.5 cups chicken broth
1T sugar
1t kosher salt or sea salt

Heat oven to 350. Cut the bread into 1 inch slices, cut off & discard the crusts, then cut remaining squishy middle into 1x1 inch cubes. Place bread cubes on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for 15 minutes, until they are golden and dry. You could also just use stale bread if you have it.

Heat 1T olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. When it is hot, add the onion and sautee until translucent (8 minutes or so?).

Put the salt and pressed garlic in a small bowl and mush together to make a paste. Add this paste to the onion and sautee for about a minute.

Add the contents of the can of tomatoes, the tablespoon of sugar and stir. Cook until they are bubbling nicely, then add the chicken broth and allow the whole thing to come to a boil. Drop in the toasted bread cubes and stir. They will very quickly slurp up the liquid and the mixture will take on a puddingy texture. Turn the heat down if you're worried about the soup at the bottom burning, and keep stirring until the bread cubes are pretty much totally broken up into the yummy, puddingy mess. It takes 5-10 minutes generally. If you don't like the looks of it, add more broth or some water a few tablespoons at a time until it is the consistency you like. When it gets there, stir in the basil bits and take it off the heat.

Scoop it into bowls, garnish with a drizzle of good olive oil, some parmesan cheese and a whole basil leaf. Yum!

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