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#36 Estate of success

September 16, 2010

Since many of the walls in my old Windsor Park house remained bare until it came time to sell it (and I staged the place within an inch of its life), I decided I wanted to give the Crestview bungalow the feel of a gallery. I’m not a wealthy collector, so I turned to estate [...]

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#35 Shower shelving

September 14, 2010

After a year of trying to cram and balance shampoo and soap bottles in the world’s most impractical acrylic shower enclosure, I’d had enough. Here’s what I was dealing with: The trapezoidal (?!) bottle holders really only held one small bottle at a time (or one small bottle and one tiny one, if it was [...]

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#34 Thank you, Tropical Storm Hermine

September 9, 2010

In Texas, the weird weather makes it hard to tell when summer ends and fall starts. Luckily, the schoolhouse lilies along the front of the house help make the distinction. All of the rain that Tropical Storm Hermine dumped on Central Texas prompted the festive little flowers to pop up out of the ground. I’d [...]

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#33 Small stuff

September 7, 2010

When you get busy doing other things, it gets hard to stay motivated and focus on fixing up the house. That’s where the little projects come in. On an earlier trip to Home Depot, I picked up some picture hangers to start getting pieces of my art collection off the floor and up onto the [...]

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#32 I win!

September 2, 2010

I love free stuff. And I love winning. It’s even better when I win free stuff I actually need, as opposed to free stuff I’ll just end up donating to Goodwill in one of my yearly purges. What did I win? A luchador luggage tag that just says to would-be thieves, “My owner will kick [...]

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#31 I watch too much TV

August 31, 2010

On Sunday, I skipped watching the Emmys so I could catch up on some “Criminal Minds” episodes I missed, including one set on the Texas border in which a disgruntled white guy killed and beheaded illegal immigrants. It reminded me of home. After that, I switched over to HGTV for “Secrets From a Stylist,” a [...]

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#30 It all comes off

August 26, 2010

Mostly. In some cases, pieces of wall couldn’t bear to break their bond with the ’70s flowered paper and joined the sad heap of scraps on the floor. Gah. But the majority of the bathroom drywall held firm, which is good since the last thing I need is to create moisture issues where there were [...]

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#29 One year later (& more)

August 24, 2010

Exactly one year ago, I spent the day closing the sale of the casa in Crestview. After signing a stack of papers and handing a check over to the escrow officer, I got the keys. A lot of keys. Some of the keys don’t even work on any locks, but I keep them on there [...]

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#28 Pour some pulque on me

August 19, 2010

I told you about the food. Now it’s time to talk about the drink — pulque. On an excursion to Tlaxcala — the capital of the smallest state in Mexico where the humble tortilla holds a place of high honor — I got to taste pulque (also known as octli) for the first time. After [...]

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#27 Mexican flavor

August 17, 2010

One of the highlights of the trip to Puebla ended up being the Mexican cooking class at Meson Sacristía de la Companía. When I arrived in Puebla, I had no idea where to go for culinary lessons, but luckily, one day at lunch, I sat with a Californian named Barbara, who was on her 9th [...]