Modern WenchCooking, Baking, Gardening, Parenting, Pregnancy, Photos, and Humor. Enough?

I’ve been house hunting on Zillow for years. We’re in the market for an inexpensive starter home, so I spend most of my time looking at atrociously decorated spaces. Messy, cluttered, wood-paneled, “retro” rust colored carpets… They’re all pretty awful. So yesterday when I found a home that was beautifully and tastefully styled, as well as clean, I was shocked. My instinct was to pin some of the photos to my “Indoor Living Space” board on Pinterest, but you can’t really do that from Zillow because the listing won’t always be there. So I copied the pictures to my computer, and I am putting them here. I love the colors they’ve used, and the cleanliness they’ve managed to bring into a tiny little house.

… Read the rest

In 2 days, I will be delivering my first child, a girl, by cesarean. Her name will be Sagan, named after the great Carl Sagan, a man that my husband and I find to be very inspiring.

Until I learned that she was breech, I planned to have a natural birth. By natural, I mean I wanted to do it the way billions of women for millions of years have done it; by gritting their teeth, screaming until they were hoarse, and pushing out a baby without the aid of painkillers. This isn’t because I’m some kind of superwoman, or because I have a high tolerance for pain, or because I am brave. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s because I am terrified of having an epidural. Seriously, I’ve been having all sorts of dreams about it. Not one of them has been pleasant. I have a very irrational fear that I will end up paralyzed. I know it’s irrational, but I can’t shake it. So I’ve been pacing Sagan’s room, cleaning things that are already cleaned, and self-medicating with Charleston Chew like it’s Brooklyn in the 50′s.

Today I wrote a post on the baby’s blog. Yes, we … Read the rest

What have I been doing? Nesting. I’ve been cleaning, organizing, cleaning, sorting, cleaning, buying, and cleaning. Along with a fair amount of baking, which is a stress reliever for me, both the process and the products.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I currently share a home with my parents. They were kind enough to allow us to weather out the recession in their home, so that we could keep our business alive and save for a house of our own rather than continue renting an overpriced apartment. Of course, none of the four of us thought we’d be bringing a baby into their home, but we’re all adjusting quite well to the idea.

While it can sometimes be stressful to live with your parents when you’re over 30, most of the time it’s great. Like when I realized that the most practical room to give my baby was the room I that grew up in. It had since been redecorated, repurposed into a guest room, but it’s still my old bedroom. It has the same view from the window, the same incredible sunniness, and the same tiny closet. Luckily it no longer has the awkward collages of puppies … Read the rest