A couple of days ago I made Pioneer Woman’s Chex Mix, and when I got to the part where you add the Worcestershire sauce to the butter, I had a flashback to 1998 when I went to a grocery store in Louisiana with my sister-in-law, Rose.

Rose is a fabulous cook, and she had a big ole grocery list of stuff she needed. We decided to divide and conquer the list, and one of the things I was in charge of finding was the Worcestershire sauce. Once I’d managed to locate everything, I made my way back to Rose and dropped the items in the cart.

She took one look at that Worcestershire sauce and said, “Ooooh – I can’t use that.”

I double-checked the bottle to make sure I hadn’t grabbed steak sauce or some other such nonsense, but sure enough, it was Worcestershire. So I said, “What’s wrong with it? Did I get the wrong size bottle?”

“Oh, no,” she replied, “the size is fine – but I can’t use French’s. I only use Lea & Perrins.”

I was completely fascinated. At that point, as a newlywed of less than a year, I hadn’t really been cooking long enough to have favorite brands (with the exception of Hamburger Helper, of course). So the whole notion that my sister-in-law had noticed a difference in Worcestershire sauces and then also had a preference?

FANCY.

However, now that I’ve been cooking for awhile (truth be told, after 12 years of marriage, some days it feels like I’ve been cooking FOR A SWEET FOREVER, AMEN), I definitely have favorite brands. I mostly buy whatever the store brand is, but when it comes to certain products, I am fiercely loyal.

Here’s my Fiercely Loyal list:

1) Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce (Rose taught me well)
2) JIF peanut butter
3) Blue Plate mayonnaise (I know. I’m a Southern girl and supposed to prefer Hellman’s. But I LURVE Blue Plate.)
4) White Lily flour
5) White Lily cornmeal mix
6) Maxwell House coffee
7) Campbell’s soups
8) Diet Coke
9) Hidden Valley Ranch dressing packets
10) Heinz ketchup

I think the only way I’d deviate from these brands is if I could get a competing brand for free. But even then I’d have to wave at these products – and maybe even whisper a bittersweet “I miss you” – as I passed them by in the grocery store.

What about you? What are your favorites? Or am I the only weirdo who has favorites?

(Please don’t tell me if I’m the only weirdo.)

(I find great comfort in my illusions of normalcy.)

Today I made the most exciting discovery.

Crystal Light Pomegranate Lemonade.

OH MY WORD. It is so tasty. And tart. And refreshing.

And apparently it has something in it that’s good for your skin, but I don’t even care because it is perfectly delicious with or without any added benefits.

Now I’m fighting that urge I have when I run across something I really like: the urge to go to the store and buy several packs of it because WHAT IF THEY RUN OUT? WHAT IF I CAN’T FIND IT THE NEXT TIME I’M IN THE STORE?

You might say it made a bit of an impression.

So now I’m going to go to sleep so that I can wake up and drink it again tomorrow.

Okay. I need to ‘fess up.

I’ve had two bad nights in a row as far as sleeping goes.

So today? I was in full-on, full-out coffee and Diet Coke form. I probably should have tried to take a nap, but there wasn’t really room in the day – so I relied on caffeine to get me through.

And now? At the end of day? I am so stinkin’ thirsty. Which is a dead-giveaway that I didn’t get nearly what I needed today in terms of hydration.

I’ll be back on the wagon tomorrow – and I’m going to try the Crystal Light Peach Tea, I think.

I’m all daredevilish like that. :-)

See y’all tomorrow!

Before I bore you to crashing new lows with pictures of how I put up some window treatments in my kitchen without sewing a single stitch, I feel like I need to say something.

I still haven’t watched the most recent episode of The Bachelorette. I know. I KNOW.

So, since I haven’t seen it, I haven’t blogged about it. Some sweet friends spent the night with us Monday, and we ate good Mexican food and painted canvases (oh yes we did) and played spades and ate strawberry cake. It just didn’t seem right to interrupt all the fun to watchThe Bachelorette and then have to listen to Tanner P. talk about Jillian’s feet.

Any. way.

A few of y’all have emailed me with cabinet-painting questions, and considering that I have painted kitchen cabinets one whole time in my life, I don’t know that I’m your best resource. But as far as my personal experience: no, I didn’t sand the doors. Well, that’s not entirely true. I sanded one of them, hated the mess it made all over my countertops, decided that sanding would make my life miserable since it would essentially shut down my kitchen for a full day and the people around here are real funny in that they expect to eat and stuff, so I didn’t sand. I also didn’t take the doors off before I painted because the hinges had already been painted, so it wasn’t like I could restore them to their original glory. I just painted over them again. I also didn’t paint my shelves because they didn’t really need it.

Another also: since our house is about 35 years old, our cabinets are real-live wood, and I think that’s one reason the painting was pretty easy. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe laminate is easier. I don’t know. Why am I giving advice? I’m an amateur. Don’t listen to me.

I have some issues with confidence.

After I finished painting the cabinets, I decided to recover my chairs in the fabric I showed you a couple of days ago. You know. This stuff.

So I recovered the chairs and really liked the results but felt a little sad that you couldn’t see the fabric as soon as you walked in the kitchen. It seemed like the fabric needed to be on the windows, but how in the world could I do that because I’m not a very strong seamstress, and by that I mean that while yes, I could sew on a button for you, you wouldn’t necessarily want for me to do that. Because of how horrid it would look after I was finished and all.

But.

Saturday afternoon Melanie reminded me of a post of The Nester’s where she documented how she made window treatments in her sister’s kitchen. So I re-read it. And I thought about my fabric. And I decided that if I could just figure out the right places to fold it, I could do something similar.

The Nester uses upholstery tacks when she does no-sew window treatments, and while I did have some upholstery tacks, I was working by myself and couldn’t seem to keep the fabric in the right place AND nail in the tack. So I used clear push pins like you’d use on a bulletin board (obviously I am very, very fancy). I’ll go back at some point and replace the push pins with upholstery tacks, but for now they’re fine. You can barely see them.

I made a practice treatment on our garage door – I just cut about a yard of fabric, then folded it and folded it until the part of the pattern that I wanted to show was showing AND until I figured out what length worked best on our window panes. This part of the process probably took me 30 or 45 minutes – there was lots of folding and refolding and pushpinning and whathaveyou – but once I figured out a little system, it was easy breezy from there on out (Nester’s instructions are way more specific and helpful, by the way).

And here’s the almost-final result, except for the part where I replace the push pins with upholstery tacks and make a few little daily adjustments because I am an obsessive adjuster and also quite annoying.

This is in the little office off of the kitchen, only now it’s totally even because you’d better know I spent some quality time getting everything JUST SO Sunday afternoon.

And this is in the actual kitchen, only now the one on the far right is a little bit shorter so that it matches up better with the others. The big window in the center actually has two separate window treatments – I just tried to pin them so they’d look like one big thing.

(Yes, I know the animal print on the table doesn’t match. I’ll cross that bridge in a couple of days or maybe sometime in 2012.)

Best part?

TOTALLY FREE.

Zero dollars and zero cents.

And on top of that, the kitchen feels so much warmer and cozier and betterer. I can’t even tell you how much more “finished” it feels. Makes me smile every single time I walk in there – maybe even moreso because the fabric was Aunt Roxie’s and I just know she’d be so tickled that I’m getting to enjoy it every single day.

Here’s the thing: if you can fold fabric and use a thumbtack, you can TOTALLY do this. Oh yes ma’am you can. It may not be perfect, but it’ll be bright and crisp and colorful and cheerful. And that is always delightful.

The end.

Yesterday I really tried to up my water intake. And while yes, I did have a couple of Diet Cokes and a couple of glasses of Crystal Light during the day, I only drank water from supper until I went to sleep.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Feel free to applaud.

One thing I’ve really started to wonder about myself over the last week is WHY I crave Diet Cokes like I do. Is it habit? Caffeine? Fizz? Comfort? I think the first three probably have something to do with it, but I think it’s that last thing – comfort – that really keeps me in the DC clutches.

It’s a hard habit to break, y’all.