For the love of orange

My husband loves orange with a childlike passion. Like a second-grader clings to his favorite color and always chooses it over other less superior colors. I don't mean that in a demeaning way; unlike the second-grader who will have a new favorite next year, his love has stood the test of time. And while he prefers orange, I don't think he insisted we register for anything that hue and has always been extremely patient with my decorating color schemes, despite the fact that they have never included anything resembling citrus.

Until now. I found this hot pot for $2 at a garage sale last week, and I have decorated my entire guest bedroom around it. (Edited to add: My husband did point out the irony of trying to rid our home of unnecessary plastics only to buy something plastic for our guests to boil water in! Good thinking, Brite. )


Orange has been winning me over slowly. When I first met WH and learned of this color preference I really hated orange. Then as I fell in love with him my hatred dissolved and everywhere I turned I saw "his" color. I really loved autumn tones for the first time (although in FL we saw the leaves turn mid-February) and created this collage and entitled it "The World Through WH's Eyes." Now I can hang it in the guest bedroom. :)

The guest room, or "Spare 'Oom" as we like to call it is now a cozy place to hang out. We are expecting a guest in a few minutes, so I'd better run and put the candy bowl out. I have to do that at the last minute to avoid tempting the tiny candy thieves (okay, and also so I don't eat all of it).

Do you share?

Here's an interesting article from the Chicago Tribune on sharing an email address with your spouse.

An excerpt:

Acuff shares one account with his wife of eight years, Jenny, and estimates that one-third of their married friends also use one e-mail address. He joked on the blog that he and his wife "cleaved our separate e-mail addresses and lit a unity candle on Yahoo! that burns brightly throughout the virtual landscape."

"We offset the whole thing by not dressing alike," he wrote.

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We created a joint email account a few days after we returned from our honeymoon. I don't think we ever thought through the aspects of avoiding secrecy or creating a new source of accountability, it just seemed like we were merging everything else. It was less complicated to have one account. And we have never dressed alike.

So how about you?

Worth their weight in coffee

My dear husband, ever the coffee connoisseur, recently found a new source for freshly roasted coffee. Naturally, he ordered 30 lbs. (Much of it to pass along to extended family for purchase. Economy of scale and such.) In other homes this would seem absurd, but my children have never known a time when the house didn't have large quantities of coffee sitting around. When Coop was in utero we called him our little coffee bean, and my husband used to be manage a coffee shop with absolutely amazing coffee. We miss (aspects of) those days.

When the last shipment came we thought it would be fun to help the kids visualize how much they weighed at birth, using bags of coffee.


His job was easy; with a birth weight of 5 lbs. 4 oz. the coffee equivalent wasn't too much to hold. I used to walk him down to the post office once a week to have him weighed. Oh, the joys of a small community.



Sweet A had a little more trouble; her 7 lbs.8 oz. was a little much for her 2-year old arms. I don't think she ever got past about 5 lbs.


Here is my wonderful midwife weighing A- we were shocked...10 days early and 50% bigger than Coop!

She was a beautiful baby...and of course I say that with no bias.

Baby T was a cutie too, but he was already in bed for our little lesson. He was 3 weeks early and the same weight as Sweet A. Hmmm, makes me a little nervous for whenever baby #4 comes around (although if that baby promises to come 3 weeks early he can weigh whatever he likes).

Fortunately, the kids didn't ask us to demonstrate our weight.