No more excuses

I have spent the past two hours completely gutting and organizing our office (including unpacking some more boxes that were, yes, still taped up and everything since the move).

I have moved the bookshelf that Dad painted for me when I was six into this room, and I have placed on its shelves my slurry of cooking magazines. Most of them are Cooking Lights (they have plastic holding cases....the others aren't good enough for that, I guess)....but I do have a few issues of Martha Stewart Living, a handful of issues of Taste of Home, and one lonely issue of Hallmark magazine, a magazine that I adored at first copy, but later learned that it was never able to get off the ground.

I now have no excuses to resort to the same old recipes time and again. Sure....tried and true recipes are sometimes called for...when there's a time crunch, or special company that you have to "impress" in some way. But for the most part, I have fallen back into a recipe rut, and now having these at my fingertips once again instead of in boxes, I have no more excuses as to why I'm not digging out new ideas for our dinners.

One day, I hope to catalog these even more accurately....maybe even do as my friend Sara does and index card each one, writing down which recipes I'd actually like to try (some of them aren't realistic for new moms....or grocery store selection in the South, or savvy budgets, for that matter).

For now, I will revel in how masterfully these magazines are aligned on these handpainted shelves, and look forward to my next meal planning session.