Here’s the Smithsonian skinny on Fiestaware safety. (The news is good)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/is-it-safe-to-eat-off-vintage-plates-66089830/
I share your enjoyment of Fiestaware. I started collecting new place settings for my daughter early on and then gave them to her as a wedding shower present. It’s safe to enjoy yours, old and new. The Smithsonian has just a few caveats.
We keep the house picked up and fairly clean. Two big dogs that are constantly shaking their fur and slobber around doesn’t help, but we are always working at it.
I have family pictures on the walls, also outdoor pictures I’ve taken - Lake Superior, the woods, trees, sunsets, sunrises, etc.
My bed is very comfy with a beautiful boho print comforter in the winter and quilt in the summer. Matching curtains, rug and pictures complete it.
I love using scented candles, wax melts and incense. I have several flameless candles that all have timers set to come on every evening.
Thick towels and washcloths, heated towel rack, soft sheets, good pillows.
I recently installed strip lights in my home. The back lighting is so much more pleasant and less migraine inducing.
I like the way you think. I didn’t know heated towel rack was a thing period LOL
I want one though.
They are great during the winter when you don’t want to get out of the warm shower and face the cold day. I don’t actually have a heated towel rack, but I have a baseboard heater with a towel rack above it, works the same and heats the bathroom as well. 
Heated bathroom floors are a thing if you’ve got a little more scratch.
I discovered that if you use one of those oil radiators in the bathroom they make the most amazing towel heaters imaginable. I had a bathroom on the furthest north side of the house with the gas heater unit on the furthest south side of the house which guaranteed a goddamned cold bathroom. So I got an oil radiator with a timer and set it to start warming the bathroom about an hour before I had to get up for work, so the radiator would be good and warm when I hit the shower. Drape towel over radiator during shower, blissfully toasty towel when needed. So luxe!
Seasonal decorations, including kitchen towels and oven mitts. It means there is something changing, without just being messy, and not just for Christmas.
We also have lots of lighting options, so we can have fairly dark, comfortable for reading and really bright, so each room has different possibilities.
We have a programmable LED strip in the bedroom which is programmed for waking up (5 different lighting levels) and for going to sleep (reddish light).
We just had the whole interior painted, and we got new flooring in all common areas. Just this week, we added large area rugs on top of the carpet in 2 rooms. New furniture is due in coming months.
In honor of this freshening up, We’ve been getting rid of accumulated miscellany and making an effort to be tidy. I actually do the dishes every evening instead of “letting them soak.” It’s so nice to come into a clean kitchen in the morning.
So, in summary, we’re turning away from our messy habits and enjoying a simple, cleaner lifestyle.
I indulge in those showy silk flowers you see at craft and hobby shops. I consult online images of flower arrangements and pick the ones which I think look best, and try to duplicate them. I buy attractive urns and pots to hold the arrangements.
In my living room is a big hammered copper Mexican urn, and it holds three huge white dahlias and a quantity of curly willow branches twisting in all directions. Upstairs is a big rustic white-and-terra cotta jug and it holds a riot of flowers in shades of red, yellow and burgundy.
Mr. brown isn’t as enthused about the flowers, so I keep it to just these two containers.
I have found that as long as dirty laundry isnt strewn about, dishes are washed or at least rinsed and in the machine and counters sre neat and organized, well, my house is cluttered and lived in but not messy. I need to vacuum and mop but there isn’t trash all over them either. And dust, i need to dust as I live in a very dusty area
Removal of piked heads of disliked relaitives and family members has been appreciated when remaining ones visit now.
Finally finished fine tuning on trip-wired snatch’n’rend thingie.
Getting one of these from Home Depot this Saturday.
Indeed. Though, I look at it a bit more as: the more clutter in one’s environment, the more corresponding clutter there is in one’s brain.
Sometimes I’m also trying to square the notion of having spent gazoodles of money on something that has, in time, become obsolete / useless, with the sad eventuality of having to just trash the godamned thing. Sometimes such actions are cathartic (or have this pragamatically satisfying finality to it); at others, I’m awash in absolutely moronic sentimental grief.
Both of my parents were artists, as am I. I have art work from all three of us on walls all over the house, plus some hooked rugs they made, enamel ash trays and a beautiful batik dining room tablecloth.
My brother, who passed in January, was an excellent photographer. I have all his thousands of slides, which I’m slowly going through. I’ll make prints of the best ones. Hope I’ll have wall space for them.
Did he have a favored subject for his photography? What kind of art did your parents make?
Obviously, you yourself have some photography skill, do you do other types of art, like paint or sculpture or weaving or whatever?
We always have cut flowers and greens in our hone. My gf’s has studied flower arranging and is talented. She also uses kenzan (aka floral fogs) to secure greenery for display.
I do this too. I love to decorate for different seasons. I don’t go to the extent I do for Christmas. Kitchen towels, oven mitts and hot pads, candles, little doo-dads here and there. I do it for Valentine’s Day, Easter, autumn, Halloween, Thanksgiving and of course Christmas. It’s nice to have something different to look at. I like changing things up once in awhile.
I live alone and started teleworking full-time on March 24th, and since then I’ve done all sorts of things around the house. I bought a new desk chair, rearranged my home office (after replacing my nightstand with a shelf unit and moving the nightstand into the office), let the cleaning ladies come back after a few months, etc. Normally I don’t have anything on my front door unless it’s Christmastime and my pre-lit wreath is out, but in the spring I found a pretty wreath online and had that on my door for a while. I briefly considered getting a wreath for every season, but decided against it.
A couple of weeks ago I decided that my hallway looks boring, and I experimented with wallpapering the insets on the bedroom doors…luckily I used Command strips, because after about a week I decided that I didn’t like it. I kept the rest of the wallpaper roll, though, and might try it again with just the linen and coat closet doors.
After grumbling to myself about the exterior appearance of my house and back yard for the entire summer, I finally decided to do something about it: on Saturday I borrowed a friend’s power washer and cleaned the siding (well, most of it: neither of us has a ladder tall enough to reach the top part of the side of the house), and today I approved an estimate for a bunch of yard cleanup/landscaping work. Not “little” things, but definitely pleasing. 
I was doing that for a while after I started working from home, but in June I decided to replace the real things with some fake roses and I’ve been pretty happy. 
You might like this:
Leave.