"a clean house is a sign of a wasted life." ~ unknown

organized chaos. what a lovely concept. i think that those two words describe my life perfectly. i may not have it all together, but i am pretty close. the same thing goes for my apartment. i always feel like i am constantly organizing and cleaning, but it never looks quite right. until today. i usually spend my sundays cleaning, baking, reading magazines, laying by the pool, watching some tv. you know, the usual. well, today i woke up and decided that i absolutely had to have cheese grits. lindsay, my friend from lexington, makes the most delicious grits, its like a little scoop of heaven.

to my surprise i found all the ingredients i needed AND the recipe in my apartment! that almost never happens. it was at this point that i realized that maybe my chaotic sense of organization was just right for me. kinda crazy, but at least i know where everything is, or at least the general area of where things can be found. so i started looking around and realized that pretty much everything in my apartment, from my books to my pantry, was organized chaos. so, in honor of my lazy sunday i am giving my readers the fantastic recipe i made today, as well as some pictures of the chaos i love so much.

this is the original recipe, complete with ink stains and torn edges. just to clarify...

1) cook 1 and 1/2 cups of quick grits in 6 cups of boiling water. (according to the direction on the box).

2) add in 3 tbsp of lawry's seasoned salt, 1 pound of sharp cheddar, 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter and a few splashes of hot sauce.

3) wait until the mixture cools a bit then mix in 3 beaten eggs.

4) cook for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

5) let it stand for 15 minutes, then serve!

mmmmm, cheese grits. for those of you who have never lived in the south, you are in for a treat. lindsay's recipe is perfection.

my mom got me this recipe book a few years ago and now it is stuffed with recipes. most of them are still on scraps of paper or torn from magazines. i should probably transfer them on to recipe cards, but what's the fun in that?

i am guilty of over-stuffing my pantry with way too much food. i have an irrational fear that one day i will wake up craving something and it won't be there. or that i will be trapped in my apartment and will starve. better safe than sorry.

part of my bulletin board in my kitchen. ohio state button, drive-in theater ticket and a tear-out from 'real simple' that says, "be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you." love it.

perhaps more chaos than organization. my poor handbags desperately need space to be hung and admired. this is almost too painful to look at.

i love this area of my apartment. "beowulf" next to 'the year of living biblically'. 'love in the time of cholera' next to 'confessions of a shopaholic.' 'wuthering heights' next to 'the rules.' its pretty safe to say that i like all genres of literature. not to mention the random football on one of the stacks.