Letter from the Editor

Photo Credit: Siobhan Connally, Getty Images

It seems that there has been less doing around here at The Do-tique so I thought I would post a progress update in case you are thirsting for a bit of DIY entertainment.

We spent Thursday at IKEA in North York picking out accessories to transform our small entry landing into a functional storage space for coats, shoes, hats and miscellanea. The haul did indeed fit into our very small Mazda with little room for anything else. We'll begin work on assembling the area and I'll keep you posted on the final results.

The shoe organizer we picked up.
I used my handy trick of photographing the label so that
I'd have the aisle and bin #'s handy in the marketplace area.

Baby did a good job of inspecting the toy department.

I am also working on editing the manuscript for a friend's book - the deadline is fairly short. It is a trial experiment on whether or not a home business might work out for me in the future. Things are going well, but it has left me with  no time for any other projects around the house. I'm also unsure about the idea of trying to babysit and write at the same time.

Hubby's most recent batch of bread

One endeavor that Hubby has returned to around here is bread making. We've found that with decent bread priced at anywhere from $5 to $7.50 per loaf that it makes sense to bake our own bread at home as much as possible. We don't have a bread maker, but I do have a KitchenAid Stand Mixer which makes the kneading process very straightforward. 

Bread making is fairly time consuming and the only way to go about it is to pick a time period where you will be home for a few hours and can work on other projects while waiting for the bread to rise and bake. We often start our bread right before dinner and finish it up by bedtime. Total time in is about four hours, but most of that is waiting. If you can make several loaves at once, it's worthwhile and besides, who doesn't love the smell of fresh bread?

You can find the recipe for Light Rye Bread on my recipe page.

DIY Rating: 7 for making your own bread.

It's absolutely worth it if you enjoy baking and might even save you some money, 

but it can be time consuming and practice makes perfect. 

I'd encourage anyone to try it at least once.