An Ode to some stuff I like

I'll admit it, I've been kinda blue lately...due to a lot of stuff that I won't rehash here for the sake of moving on. I'd rather talk about fun, inspiring stuff anyways!
I found a big sturdy buffet cabinet at a garage sale for $20!!

My plans are to sand the less-than-attractive green and gold paint off of it and either stain or re-paint. Coming home from a day of madness at the shelter and just putting an hous worth of elbow grease into sanding this thing has become so cathartic for me..

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Transplanted the swiss chard and planted spinach seeds in a very handy planter Barrett re-purposed for me from a this giant plastic thing we found!



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Some of my favorite pics from the Portland "Bro"ad trip 08

Barrett and Adrian livin the red light special

Gettin into green green Oregon..

A little house of a friend of Matt's...my dream!

I LOVE this picture..Adrian, dwarfed by the Bloody Mary....with that look on his face and the quote on his shirt narrating his thoughts

The sum..

Three road scholars lost in the forest

The view from the top

Sundown in p-town

The beautiful garden at the boy's gracious hostess' house!

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Voyage to P-town

Barrett and Adrian are helping move Matt to Portland today. Barrett is pretty excited to see the city for the first time...wish I could join! So, I have a few days to myself :( but hopefully I can make the best of them. I so have a LOT to do around here...

the rig..

a little sketchy at best.

All in all I think this makes 7 or 8 people we know that have made the transplant there in the past year.
Carson and Jon's trip...happening now too.

We're gonna miss Matt.

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This guy better get home safe and sound too...

Under the Sea, or, work with the Bee

Problem:
I share this place with 3 boys..one bathroom. Space is at a premium. I desperately needed a girl corner; somewhere to keep the jewelry, makeup, hair-stuff, etc. We didn't necessarily have space in the room for a desk or vanity, so I came up with something different.
Solution:
I found a guy selling big floating shelves for CHEAP, that he had used and gotten tired of. I snapped them all up and have found quite a few uses so far! Two are painted red and hung in the kitchen to hold glasses, spices, etc(pic to come), two will be art shelves over our bed, two will be a makeshift linen rack outside the bathroom, and the last two I painted the same deep blue as our accent wall and did this with!

The corner space is only about 3 feet long, so we did have to cut them down a bit, but I really like the snug, unobtrusive look! I get the combined storage of a bookshelf and a little vanity table all in one. For so little money! As part of the little vanity nook, I needed somewhere to hang the miscellaneous jewelry. My little rack was overflowing, and I had all this open wall space...sooo.... Bees!

Hammer, nails, superglue, leftover Bee buttons!

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The green stuff is all comin up nicely!








Our goals are modest...this is a first time effort! I do have some big plans for fall planting though!
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Jon Choi's going away party..."Under the Sea" theme...









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My detailed list to the guys what can and cannot be composted...and tips on recycling.

Earthless Mabel

When one takes on 7 million responsibilities...one forgets to update their blog. Ah, such is the life of a newly promoted supervisor...
Poe has been making great strides in exploring the warehouse, and heck it only took him 6 months to come down the stairs!


Poe and Pickle spend time antagonizing each other...

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This is Mabel...mooshy face pitbull. So ridiculously sweet!

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We saw Earthless and Witch play at the Brookdale Lodge in the Santa Cruz Mtns. This place has been around forever, and has a million different stories about various ghostly inhabitants, weird sightings, strange occurrences, and other sordid tales..



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I found this broken down lounger outside our front door when I was cleaning up stuff. I think If I cut off all of the broken plastic...I could make a pretty decent woven seat and back for it!

Every good project needs somewhere to start!

Dexter the Kitten!

We got to play foster hosts to a super cute kitty last night! Barrett named him Dexter because of his very large head.




Playtime!!







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Having him here totally reminded me of when my little Poe was a wee babe!

Our worms eat better than we do

I'm a woman who likes to see results. Don't get me wrong I'm also infinitely patient, but if I can finagle a way to get good, quality rewards from a process in less time...why not, right? Don't get me wrong (pt. 2), I'm pretty darn frugal so I don't jump at every convenience item or gadget I see either...probably because I get this gut-wrenching pain every time I have to buy something "new"...so I try to avoid that too. What I'm trying to say is who doesn't appreciate a good shortcut every once in a while when you're living a life (by choice) mostly in the slow (yet scenic) lane?!?!
Case in point: Our friendly little Casa de Wormies

These guys are voracious, let me tell ya...but by no fault of their own, it does take a while for them to get through an apple core, carrot head, or any of a number of other veggie material. I figured the most logical answer would be to make the food smaller..a LOT smaller. The Handy blender to the rescue!

Step 1: Gather past-prime and trimmings from fridge. In this case our menu consists of some slightly stinky rice and beans, loose and limp rainbow chard, somewhat soggy mache lettuce, and usually unusable corn husks and silks.


Step 2: Chop all your ingredients to blender size pieces. Throw about handful size amounts in blender at a time w/ enough water to make ingredients actually blend.


Step 3: Pour your soup into freezable container, drain off extra water (which I throw right onto outdoor compost heap), and marvel at the quickness you've just made some delicious veggie pate for your wormies!


My first batch from this method had SUCH awesome results that I think I'll definitely stick with it. The key is, when placing a dollop of our goo into the bin, make a little taco pocket for it out of damp newspaper. That way, the excess moisture in the mix doesn't drown any baby worms, adults can eat the mix from the outside in, creating little safe pockets for more baby worms!

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Yesterday was kind of a rough one for me at the ole' HSSV, so I treated myself to some new reading material after work. Its RARE that I splurge on new stuff (see above) but it made me feel much better after a day of seeing one terribly taken care of animal after another...
I got..

and..

and...finally...


I almost finished the compost one last night....and I'm full of ideas!!