OH, HOW DINNER PARTIES CHANGE once kids come into the picture. (For the better. Really.)

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Used to be: Interesting guests, elaborate menu, flowing wine and great music filling the air.

These days: Still great people, food and wine. But the background noise now also includes the shrieks of multiples of kids running around.

From the time my children were toddlers, I realized the key to a successful, family-style dinner party was to engage the kids with enough distractions so that when adult dinnertime came around, they would be content to disappear for a movie. This strategy still works today, with my kids now 10 and 7. In fact, they so enjoy family dinner parties that they’re eager to help me prepare.

Set a table just for them: Keep a card table accessible and set it up in an adjacent room. Cover it with craft paper and fill cups with markers for dinner-time doodling. (My daughter draws place mats on the paper, along with place cards for each child.)

Organize a pre-dinner activity: Set up a board game, organize an outdoor obstacle course or plan an in-house scavenger hunt to keep kids occupied during adult cocktail and app hour.

Keep the meal simple: Parents don’t expect you to feed filet mignon at the kids table. One easy idea is a pasta bar: Set out bowls of toppings — meatballs, cheese, green peas, tomatoes — along with piping hot noodles and let the kids make their own pasta masterpieces.

Plan a post-dinner dance party: It’s OK to banish the kids to another room during adult dinner time. But after dessert, turn up the tunes for a family-friendly dancefest. (Make sure the Pointer Sisters’ “We Are Family” is on your playlist — the Little Ones will love it.)

FOR ME, MY FAMILY AND MY BUSINESS, it’s all about St Patrick’s Day. Since I was a little girl and would accompany my Murphy mom and Spellman dad to the local St Patrick’s Day Parade and Irish Soda Bread Baking Contest, March 17 has been a day to look forward to all year.

As a college student I tested my first culinary wings by having friends over for corned beef and a home-cooked meal each year. The celebration was always topped by trying to pour a perfect “black and tan” (alas, my years of effort haven’t netted a beauty yet, and my recent search on Wikipedia showed it to be a decidedly non-authentic-Irish drink, after all) and play the best records, cassette tapes and CDs from favorite Irish talent.

Years passed and the 17th morphed into an annual pilgrimage by taxi to a local Irish bar for fresh pours and great live music and dancing.  And when, 15 years ago, I officially became my own boss, one of the first dates I marked off on my calendar was March 17: BUSY. No work, lots of play — all fun. Now? As a mom and wife I love celebrating the heritage I’m proud of, the art and music I adore, and the kind of homey food that brings everyone together as family.

Look back. What’s your culture, heritage or passion prescribe? Then go ahead and pick it — your own annual holiday. Put it on your Outlook now and don’t waver. Happy holidays!

DECADES AGO I LEARNED that St. Patrick’s Day is the best time to plant peas.

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Culinary peas and their cousins, ephemeral sweet peas, are happiest when sown in cool conditions, with soil around 40 degrees F. If snow still covers your garden on St. Patrick’s Day, start seeds indoors, in peat pots arranged on a windowsill tray. Transplant seedlings (degradable pot and all) after temperatures rise or snow melts.

Peas You Eat

In their book “The Bountiful Container”, Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey point out that peas begin to lose flavor the moment they are picked. That’s good enough reason to grow your own.

Planting sugar, shelling or snap peas is easy because the seed is basically a dried-up pea. They are large enough for little hands to grasp, making planting a fun kids’ project. Follow seed-packet directions (seeds are usually planted 1 inch deep, spaced at 1-inch intervals). Climbing varieties will need trellis or lattice support.

In a couple of months, you’ll eat them fresh off the vine. Recommended varieties include ‘Mr. Big’, ‘Oregon Giant Sugar Pod’ and ‘Sugar Sprint’.

Peas You Cut for Bouquets

Romance is summed up in a bouquet of fresh-cut sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus), one of the garden’s most profusely fragrant annual flowers. I love the heirloom and antique forms, including ‘Cupani Original’, with beautiful bi-colored maroon and violet flowers. You can also find dwarf and bunching sweet peas — perfect for containers or small-space gardens.

Sweet-pea seeds need to be soaked in fresh water for 24 to 48 hours before planting to encourage germination. Like the edible peas, most sweet-pea vines climb 5 to 8 feet high, so give them support. As you cut and gather bouquets, the plant continues to produce even more blooms. Isn’t that sweet?

YEARS AGO WE MOVED JUST ONE SHORT BLOCK from Wild Ginger Restaurant in Seattle. At the time, reviews were springing up across the country about its inspired “Asian Fusion” cuisine.

SOURCE: WILDGINGER.NET

We became so hooked on its Seven-Flavor Beef that we couldn’t go there without ordering it: dark, luscious slices of flank steak in a sauce so complex and mysterious that at once we were talking about trying to recreate it at home.

But what were those seven flavors?

For several years, I tried different combinations. Was that orange? No. Chinese five-spice powder? Perhaps. Ginger and garlic? For sure. Soy sauce? I don’t know.

It was a fun, ongoing challenge. But a couple years ago it occurred to me to try online. (The World Wide Web didn’t even exist when Wild Ginger opened!) Sure enough, several hits showed the same recipe, and I made it that very night –- voila!

Now, of course, they list the special seven ingredients on their menu.

Wild Ginger’s Seven Flavor Beef

Marinade:
8 ounces sliced flank steak
1 tablespoon minced lemongrass
1/2 teaspoon peeled and minced fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon dried red chili flakes
1 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt

To finish:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
1/2 bunch thinly sliced green onion
1 cup bean sprouts
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon ground peanuts
20 Thai basil leaves

Combine all the marinade ingredients in a glass baking dish for 1 hour.

Heat the oil in a wok and heat over high heat. When the oil is hot, add red onion, green onion and bean sprouts and sear for 1 minute, stirring. Set aside on a serving platter.

Add the beef mixture to the very hot wok and sear until rare. Add the hoisin sauce and toss until coated. Add the ground peanuts and basil and cook until the meat is medium rare. Serve the meat over the onions and bean sprouts.

WHEN I WAS SENTENCED TO BE MY FAMILY’S DESIGNATED HOUSE PAINTER years ago, it didn’t take long for me to discover that painting can be:

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1. A form of mediation 
2. More than a little trippy

Maybe it’s the fumes, the hours of isolation or my choice of music, but my mind goes all over the place when I paint.

Some of those thoughts settle in the room forever, like sanding dust. Every time I enter the room from then on, I’m taken back to whatever was going on in my life at the time I was painting.

At my late grandparents’ house, which we rent out, I get whiffs of these memories:

• High-ceiling living room, Los Angeles Olympic Games, which I watched from atop a ladder
• Blistered west exterior, the runaway border collie pup who picked me out mid-paint job and said, “You’ll do!”
• Upstairs turquoise bedroom, my mother sorting through her old school papers in a final cleanout

The sensation is even more intense when I’m painting over the same spot in back-to-back years (bad renters). I get total flashbacks ― sight, smell, emotion ― similar to how a surgeon releases vivid memories by cutting into an old scar.

I can steer these thoughts by making sure I’m listening to upbeat music or TV programs. It’s harder when people come in, see you’re captive and confess their life woes.

My most recent project was my basement walls and ceiling in anticipation of a replacing an old TV with a home theater. Painting into the early hours of morning, I listened to a documentary on a Norwegian explorer trapped on northern ice floes for 3½ years.

Big mistake! The room looks great, but popcorn tastes like whale blubber.

NOT AT MY HOUSE!

If you’d fought your way into my garage recently, you would have sworn that Sanford and Son had moved north from California.

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It’s true: I had an unorganized, virtual vortex of a building that sucked in any object without a base of its own. Its constant state of chaos made my head spin.

Some organizing projects seem bigger than the entire universe. To me, this was one of them.

I’ve had all kinds of ideas for how this space might work better, but I knew it would take some real time to focus and work on them. Finally, I had the time to dig in and dig out.

Here’s what I did: I created “‘stations”. This concept works in my kitchen; why not apply it to my garage? Individual, free-standing, adjustable racks of heavy-duty wire shelving was my solution.

Shelves line the walls; each unit is a station. I have one for props and one for sports equipment. Another for fishing and camping, and a “shipping and receiving” station for boxes, bubble wrap and packing peanuts. I have a station for file boxes, office equipment and storage containers, and one for holiday lights, ornaments and such.

The best part of this system is that it’s completely freestanding and adjustable. When we move, it moves with us.

Rethinking the existing workbench was a key element to the success of this project. By utilizing what already existed and designing a few new systems, I created a well-functioning work area.

This was a challenging project. But the hardest part was getting started and dedicating the time to do the project right.

That’s the key to most any project: Give it the necessary time, patience and persistence, and you’ll never have to do it again.

MY HUSBAND AND I STARTED LIVING ON THE FLOOR more than 25 years ago, when the small, squishy bed where we were house-sitting prompted us to try the thick Chinese rug alongside it ― and we quickly realized the rug was way more comfortable (and roomy) than the bed.

CELL OCCASIONAL TABLES BY SpHAUS

So when the house-sitting gig ended, we moved into a studio apartment, eschewed the Murphy bed and settled in with a comforter atop the carpet. Then we figured out that a 36-inch fiberboard round fit nicely atop our mini-trampoline; topped off with a standard 52-inch square tablecloth, it’s still our dining table.

For seating we tend to go with the basics, mainly the canvas-covered metal frame BackJack chair that I saw marketed first as a “TV chair”, then “video-game chair”, “meditation chair” and now as a “go-anywhere chair”.

Though the grandchildren like to tease us about having no furniture, they don’t yet know that if you do anything long enough, you’re likely to be trendy for a few minutes at least. So sure enough, “living on the floor” has been rebranded of late as “low-profile furnishings”, and upscale tables, for example, for floor-huggers are popping up from Italy to Australia.

You can almost hear them rolling their eyes in Japan, where centuries of floor living has resulted in a plethora of zaisu floor chairs, from practical to stylish. Solid wooden folding zaisu can even be a bit formal. But I’m partial to the bentwood zaisu, perhaps atop a tatami mat.

SHOCKING BUT TRUE: I still don’t own a flat-screen TV. Not because I don’t want one. It’s just that every time I walk into my local Costco there are newer, better and cheaper models. So I wait. But I confess, I never really thought about the energy efficiency of my televisions. Until now.

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I don’t live in California, but if it’s true that as goes California, so goes the nation, then energy efficiency of our big screens is something I am going to be paying more attention to. Large flat-screen TVs — combined with their associated DVRs, DVD players, cable or satellite boxes, gaming consoles and other various and sundry peripherals — now consume 10 percent of all household electricity in the Golden State. Although California has the lowest state-wide per-capita energy consumption levels in the country, that’s still a hefty chunk.

The California Energy Commission is proposing mandated energy efficiency standards for flat-screen televisions up to 58 inches, increasing energy efficiency up to 33 percent beginning in 2011, and increasing to 50-percent reduction in energy consumption beginning in 2013. These new standards will simply be mandating the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy’s Energy Star ratings, which are currently voluntary across the country.

The California Energy Commission has an FAQ on their website explaining the basics of the program, including a downloadable list of TVs on the market as of September 2009 that meet their proposed 2011 standards.

Now I’m glad I haven’t yet bought one of these babies. I’ll be taking that list on my next trip to Costco, and may finally bite the bullet, secure in the knowledge that it’s as green as it can be, at least for now.

“Contrasted with all these and other city existence characteristics are the permanence and productivity of land; the self-reliance of the man himself … ”

— From “Five Acres and Independence,” M.G. Kains, © 1935

WHEN WE ADDED TWO ACRES to our existing acre recently we officially became a “micro-farm.” With that, we expanded both pleasure and rain-or-shine commitment to our alpacas and garden, and became part of a national trend.

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Though mid-sized farms diminished, there was a gain of 53,503 new farms under 9 acres from 2002 to 2007, according to the 2007 U.S. Agriculture census. As Taylor Reid writes in “Trends in the Growth of Small Farms ­— And Hope for the Future,” former Ag secretary Earl Butz may have told farmers to “get big, or get out,” but the new trend is “be small, but be smart.”

If you are thinking about moving to a small farm or plowing a large suburban tract, don’t give a lot of thought to getting rich or even to spontaneous vacations. But do consider this:

• There is immense pleasure in being responsible for the care of animals and being a daily part of the outdoors — good weather and bad.
• The self-reliance for women comes in several flavors:
  • Yes, I can build that fence, tote that bale, soothe that worried cria (alpaca baby).
  • Yes, I do know what’s in the soil that nurtured those potatoes and I know it’s all natural because I shoveled it into the compost pile myself!
  • No, I don’t need to go to the store today to buy lettuce that traveled 1,500 miles.

Find out more at Beginning Farmers or the Tiny Farm Blog. And if you want to know more about the fun of our alpacas, please visit Barnstorm Farm.

FOUND OBJECTS, BUILDING ELEMENTS AND “JUNK” (as some dub it) are art in the eye of this beholder. Over 20-plus years, my hubby and I have amassed an odd collection of “art” that we lovingly move from home to home, re-imagine in new ways for display, and treasure as much as any framed painting or photo from a gallery.

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Piles of old metal locker baskets and industrial grates. Limbs of a mature tree felled by the wind. Consider these types of objects as high-impact art that’s affordable (often even free), nearly indestructible (critical if you have energetic kids like me) and decidedly different.

Where to “shop”

Keep an eye out for treasures being kicked to the curb. One of my favorite pieces was scored as hubby and I randomly drove by a house getting cleared out for sale. They were tossing a vintage bus sign for a long-shuttered ice cream parlor we’d both loved as kids.

Hit your local recycling center, dump or building-salvage warehouse to see what treasures you can score there. And don’t forget flea markets and tag sales where, often, the back tables have a crusty old collection of tools and random bits that offer great lines and graphic appeal when looked at in a new light.

Materials to watch for

In our house, metals and cement are a big favorite. If you love sparkle, seek out glass and mirrors that, even when flawed, hold great allure. Wood is another cheap option, bringing a bit of nature or a touch of the industrial into your decor, depending on what you’ve unearthed.

How to display

Consider dramatic statements, with “art” given a place of honor in uncluttered spaces. Repetition of a shape brings a restful continuity to a collection of wheels displayed graphically against a blank wall. Use tiny cup hooks to hang baskets on another wall, or hang one from the ceiling under a bare bulb fixture: instant chandelier. Look down and out, look up and in. Use large pieces to pull focus to the top of a cupboard or the far corner of a room.