Kate Flaim (Girl Reporter)

Who doesn’t love a before and after? Mine isn’t the most dramatic, unless you’re a big fan of, say, Hoarders or Clean Sweep or some other program about people who have piles of crap everywhere. But I spent last weekend, while Ben was off gallivanting on a ski slope (ok, fine, he was volunteering–on a [...]

I was in Oregon for a week to visit my parents and go to my cousin’s high school graduation (yay!), and I was going to be in the air en route from Salt Lake to Boston when the hour of the first CSA pickup rolled around. So Ben went. He also took lots and lots [...]

(I’m in Italy right now, but I thought I’d leave you with an entry or two while I’m gone!)
We eat on our narrow but lovely little porch almost every night during the summer, so we were delighted when the weather first warmed up enough for us to dig out the cushions and dust off the [...]

Thanks for stopping by! I’m afraid things will be a little messy for a while, as I complete the transition from wordpress.com, but so far, so good.
As you can see, the blog, along with my other ventures, is now at http://kateflaim.com/. If you visit the blog archives from before 2009 there are still a ton [...]

It must be spring in the air—Over the last couple weeks I’ve been wanting to launch all sorts of new ventures and start really trying to make a go at doing the things I love.

Venture 1: Straw into Gold
I love decorating, especially when I get to be super creative on a tight budget. I think [...]

Ok, so. I have spoken before about my unending love for Jamie at Home, and back in February I watched the pizza episode and promptly felt the urge to make dough from scratch. Hurray! It’s so easy! (Note: I had a tremendously bad day leading up to this attempt.)
Pizza Dough
adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at [...]

In late January I suddenly decided I couldn’t live with the drab faux-oriental rugs we had in the bedroom and dining room. Couldn’t stand them for another minute. I picked up a striped rug for the bedroom from PB, and ordered the (back-ordered) zigzag rug from West Elm. At the same time, I finally found [...]

So here’s a problem I’ve never had before and doubt I’ll ever have again: We are the owners of too much steak. We received generous and delectable assortments of steak from two sources in the last six months, and our small freezer drawer was beginning to get a bit unruly. We gobbled down two of [...]

I hope everyone else had a Christmas as relaxing as mine. My dearest friend came to stay (before flying out this evening) and we got to visit with another good friend—complete with much-delayed arrival and impromptu sleepover—on Tuesday night. We ate a delicious dinner Christmas Eve (more on that later) and slept in late this [...]

I must be some kind of masochist; this afternoon as the snow barely started to fall I thought to myself “Kate, go run 90 errands. It is less than a week before Christmas and they’re saying to stay off the roads, but clearly you must acquire more Pine Mountain logs (like duraflame, but better, and [...]