Becoming a Meal Prep Master

Do you know those people who show up to the lunchroom at work and always have something that looks and smells delicious? Something that, when they microwave it, fills the kitchen with enticing aromas?

Have you ever wondered how you can become one of those people? How they find the time?

The answer: meal planning and prep.

I used to bring a Lean Cuisine meal to work EVERY DAY. When I got home, I would eat something like scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, or a quesadilla. I didn't really like vegetables or know how to prepare them.  

When I read Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, however, I radically changed almost everything about my diet. I stopped eating most highly-processed foods (anything with ingredients I couldn't pronounce or weren't food) and upped my calories from plant foods. 

The truth is, however, this type of eating takes a lot more planning than the old way. Whether you're interested in meal prepping to save time, money, the environment, or your health, here are a few of the ways that I've found to make meal planning and prepping easier.


Get to know yourself as a cook.
If you've never done much cooking, that doesn't mean you can't change the way you eat to include more home-cooked foods. It just means you might need to experiment for awhile. Some people don't really like cooking, and so they'd rather sacrifice one whole day a week (or a month, if they are really organized!) to cooking. I love cooking and so I don't mind doing some cooking mid-week. I also like to buy a lot of fresh produce or use things from the garden, so that means that I go shopping every week (usually twice - one "big shopping" on Sunday, and one mid-week). Think about how much time you want to spend shopping and cooking. If you have a partner or roommate who likes chores that you don't, you might be able to trade some of them for food. I once had a roommate who did all the cleaning if I did all the shopping and cooking for both of us - perfect arrangement.

I use this meal planning pad from
Knock Knock for my planning
(then I use the back of last week's
 sheet for a shopping list).

Start with a plan.
Every Sunday, I sit down with my week's calendar and grab a few cookbooks, plus my Kindle so I can Pinterest. I plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every day, plus two snacks.

I'm one of those people who doesn't mind repeating foods I like, so I'll usually have the same thing for breakfast for a whole week (lately I've been digging a variation on these goat cheese, turkey and egg cups), and I have a routine for snacks: green smoothie in the morning, a piece of fruit and some almonds or a homemade granola bar for afternoon snack. I make the green smoothies each morning, because I don't like them more than a day old. However, I prep all of the fruits and veggies on Sundays, cutting them up and freezing them.

For lunch, I have three go-tos:
1. Mason jar salads (or other types of salad, like this bulgur blueberry mint salad I ate three days last week). Mason jar salads are great for prepping on the weekend and then popping in your lunch box, because they don't get soggy.  This article tells you the basics of how to prep them, and there are a bazillion variations on Pinterest. 
2. Homemade soups, stews, or chilis: These are more of a winter fave, when I want something warm. I usually cook these on Sunday, then portion out into individual containers for the week.
3. Dinner leftovers: I often cook one dinner on Sunday, eat it for dinner Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, then have the leftovers for lunch on Wednesday and cook a new dinner Wednesday night.

If you're planning for kids, Kristin Howerton has awesome ideas for how you can set up a situation for them to make their own lunches. My friends who have smaller kids who can't yet make their own foods, put on their plans lines for their own lunches and snacks, and those for their kiddos. More detailed planning templates for whole families can be found a quick Google away.

On your plan, jot down any notes that are going to impact your time during the week. For example: last week I was planning to make chicken on Thursday night, but I had a work event in the early evening and knew I wouldn't have any energy when I got home. I put on my plan that I needed to make the marinade on Wednesday night, then put the chicken in the marinade before I went to work in the morning Thursday. When I got home, I just had to dump the chicken into the pan and bake it.

Shop smart:
Once you have a plan for all of your meals, go through your plan and write out your shopping list. Then here's the trick: only buy stuff on the list. I can't tell you the number of times I wanted to eat something bad for me, but couldn't because there was nothing in the house. If you need to, you might want to make some rules for yourself -- I tend to live by Pollan's food rules: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

For me, the hardest part is not shopping on the weekend, it's the desire for bad stuff during the week when I'm driving around for work. Diet Coke, get thee behind me!! This is the main reason I always have my snacks planned out, so I try not to be hungry.

Invest in the right tools:
If you're going to meal prep, you can't get around the fact that you need A LOT of containers. Some of my favorites:

Mason jars: They're not just for hipsters! Mason jars are excellent for salads, as I noted above, and for smoothies, soups, or anything somewhat liquidy. The lids go on super-tight, so they aren't easy to spill.
Lunch Blox:  I prefer glass containers for foods that I'm going to heat up, but for salads and snacks, Rubbermaid Lunch Blox are awesome. I have a couple of the salad Blox, and they are also great for what I call "snack bento": you can put a bunch of different small snack items, like some tomatoes, carrot sticks, a few Nut Thins, and some hummus all together, and they don't mix with each other because of the divisions in the Blox.
Small containers and spice jars: It's good to have lots of tiny containers -- I use these more than any others, because they help you keep a handle on portions. When you use up a spice, save the jar (wash it thoroughly or the spice flavor will linger), and it can be added as another small container.
Gallon zip bags: While I try not to use many items that aren't reusable, gallon zipper bags are the best for freezing fruit, soups, cooked grains, etc. This is because they can be stacked flat in the freezer, saving space. Depending upon what was inside them, they can be washed and reused before recycling.

Use the whole kitchen.
If you're one of those people who doesn't want to cook more than once a week, make use of the entire kitchen. When you plan, make sure you have one thing you can cook on the stovetop, one for the crockpot, one for the oven, and maybe one for the grill or toaster oven (I cook whole meals in the toaster oven, especially in the summer when I don't want to turn on the real oven). This is especially helpful when you're planning not just for one or two people, but a whole family, where you'll need multiple dinner entrees.

Meal planning and prep can be a shift in thinking about eating, which many of us tend to do on the fly, or turn to convenience foods. However, it also makes life more delicious -- I like to turn up the music when I'm cooking, and it's always wonderful to wake up in the morning knowing that I don't have to think about what to pack in my lunch kit.

Do you have any great tips for meal prepping?

What's Happening at The Farm

In Houston, we treasure every precious fallish day like the gem that it truly is. These are the days that make you think, "Hmm... why would anyone ever live anywhere else?" Those days work to counter-balance those days in August when we think, "Tell me again why I live in this fetid swamp?"

I cope by treating summer the way people treat winter in northern climes. I don't worry about  the fact that I'm staying indoors watching movies and reading books. I know that in December I'll be able to have outdoor fun while my friends back home are huddled up with their cocoa.

Now that fall is here, though, I've started puttering around the farm again, working on improvements.

Garden
I'm in my third season of attempting a small garden in a raised bed. I'm someone who learns by doing, which means this gardening process has been a lot of trial and error. My friend Sara from Feeding the Soil is the opposite: she's just planning to have a garden and has already started researching which books to read and asking for advice. Sometimes I wish I was more like that! However, each person has to learn in her own way.

So I'm on my third gardening attempt. I've been most successful growing herbs. I had three basil plants that did well this summer - I was proud because the one that did the best was the one that I started from seed, rather than a transplant. 

The basil just started bolting (or flowering, which takes energy from the leaves, making them less tasty if you allow it to keep growing), so I harvested the basil, washed it, chopped it up, and froze it for use this fall.

This rosemary plant is the
garden's longest-term resident.

The back steps are where I do all my transplanting.
I started  summer squash and cucumber seeds this September.

These are the squash seedlings in the ground.

Around the yard:

We've been having lots of rain -
this toadstool grew this size
 in ONE NIGHT.

I just like this picture of the door to the chicken
coop - no chickens yet. I'm waiting until
I get my gardening skillz solid before I take
on another outside hobby.

Inside the House

My friend Melanie is great at thinking through how to decorate your home. She's been helping me out with my decor by creating Pinterest boards and pinning lots of inspirations. I think I'm a constant source of disappointment to her because I'm always going on and on about money and priorities when she suggests ideas (someday, Melanie, I will get a new couch!)

Right now the priority is the blinds in my house. Like most rentals, my house is decked with the cheap mini-blinds that a small animal - let's say, a curious cat - can destroy by constantly brushing past them to look out the window. Wily pulled down one set of blinds and that window is currently covered by pinned up shelf paper. I definitely need to do something, but I don't necessarily want more blinds but I HATE curtains, especially because said window-sitting cat sheds all over them. 

Melanie pinned some cool tutorials on my board to make DIY Roman shades out of your mini-blinds.  I'm thinking I might go that route. I couldn't do anything, however, until I figured out how the blinds had been installed - the owners used some metal brackets  that I just could not figure out how to release. This morning I got creative on Google and I figured it out. Now I'm ready to rock.

I have added one piece of furniture to the living room - this IKEA Strandmon wing chair. It's now become the living room chair of choice for all of the house's residents.

Even when I'm sitting here, Wily likes to sit on the ottoman at my feet. 

He's learning that this is NOT a piece of furniture that he can sharpen his claws on. I realize that this post is making him seem like a destructive little guy, but he's always just doing cat stuff. Cat stuff just happens to sometimes be incompatible with human stuff. It's because he's a descendant of jungle cats!

I also got some new sheets.  These are organic cotton and came from Target. Traditional cotton production is bad for the environment, but it also makes a stiffer fabric. I find that with organic cotton you get soft sheets with a lower thread count. 

Wily decided to try them out as I was making the bed for the first time.

So things are slowly coming together around here. While sometimes I shake my head at how much more work it is to live in a house (especially a house on a half-acre!) than in an apartment, it has also made life easier in many ways - having a full-sized kitchen in itself makes this home-gourmet much happier. I think Wily (obviously) is much happier too, with all of the windows looking out on the squirrels and birds. If only he would become better at bug-catching, he'd really pay his way around here.

Farmhouse Tour: Kitchen

Time for another installment of the tour of the farmhouse: the kitchen.

In my old garage apartment, I made the most of my teeny-tiny red-painted kitchen. I had a small square of counter space, and during big cooking projects, bowls and dishes of the components would be scattered all over the living room.

The kitchen at the farm is much more convenient for someone who does a lot of cooking - which I do.





For the first time in my life, I have a gas stove! It took some getting used to; I admit I burned a few things in the beginning. Now, I love it.

There's plenty of space for me to store all of my utensils. The lazy susan holds the spices that I use most often: cumin, cayenne pepper, turmeric, coriander... I make a lot of Mexican and Indian food. 

All of those canisters hold dried beans, lentils, and grains. Of course, buying these items in bulk and cooking them yourself is much more economical and eco-friendly than buying canned or boxed versions, so I try to keep staples like black beans, pintos, lentils, and bulgur on hand at all times. 

There's also room for the SodaStream and the speakers where I can dock my phone to play music. I alway play music while I cook.









When I first moved in, I was not a fan of the buttery yellow walls in the kitchen. I wanted to paint them right away. After painting the office, however, I was done with painting for awhile. The color has grown on me over time. I especially like it with brightly-colored blues and pops of pink and orange.






The kitchen wall wall is a great space for vintagey prints and colorful artwork that doesn't fit with the science and exploration theme in the office and living room. I got this vintage sign at an Antique Mall.

There's also an outlet in the wall at just the right height to put the ironing board - I keep it set up in the kitchen when people aren't coming over. I iron almost every day, which lots of people find weird. My mama taught me well!.








You can just see through the window here into the mud room. Probably one of my favorite rooms in the house! I love having a washer and dryer that I'm not sharing with any other tenants.  However, it has created some bad habits. I'm not going to lie; there have been a few weeks when I got my clothes out of the dryer every day!














The kitchen window looks out on the garage, garden, and back yard.  It's so peaceful to look out in the mornings and see the doves and jays in bushes. Wily likes climbing up on the counters and looking out at the wildlife.

I keep stones and antique bottles on the window ledge.

Right now, none of the windows in the house have window treatments, except for some cheap shades in the main part of the house. Next project will be some cafe curtains for the kitchen. I'm thinking blue and white stripes - what do you think?

 The appliances in the kitchen are black - it's a little weird with the soft yellow. However, I'm just happy to have a dishwasher and a newish refrigerator.

I keep all of my cookbooks here, along with the microwave. Buying cookbooks is a guilty pleasure of mine. I do actually use them.









So that's the Farmhouse kitchen. It's definitely one of the cheeriest, most-used rooms in the house.

Farmhouse Tour: The Office

I've shown very few pics of the inside of the "Farmhouse" - mostly because I haven't felt like the inside of the house was "finished" enough to share. However, I've been here almost a year and just signed my lease for another year (yipee!) and so I thought it was about time.

I truly believe that having a nice space - not fancy or expensive - but just right for you, can bring a lot of peace and calm into your life. It's important to me that my home is a place where I really want to be day in and day out. 

There are still a few things I want to do - right now there are no rugs anywhere, and all of the windows have those crappy three-dollar shades that every rental has. However, those are small things compared to the state that it was in when I first moved in.

I first wanted to share: The Office!

Part of the reason I originally began looking for a new place was that my beloved-yet-janky one bedroom garage apartment didn't have enough space for me to have an office/place to do crafts. I occasionally sew, and my two-foot by two-foot eating table just wasn't conducive to cutting fabric or setting up a sewing machine. However, what my garage apartment did have was lots and lots of built-in storage, so when I moved I realized - despite a great deal of library downsizing -- that I didn't have a place for all of my books.

Over the months, I've worked to purchase enough storage to accommodate all of the books, comic books, notebooks, knitting magazines, etc. that I just couldn't part with. Last night, in a flurry of industry, I finally brought it all together. So the last room to be assembled will be the first I show you.

The desk area. I got the desk from World Market, and the drawers were salvaged from my old office when we moved into a new space. I got a big table-like desk so that I can set up the sewing machine as needed. I definitely need a new chair - will have to hit the thrift stores.

Wily likes the new desk too - it's right next to the window so he can look at all the squirrels and birds.

This little contraption on the closet door is because Wily's litter box is in the closet. I tied a ribbon around the doorknobs, so Wily can get in to use the facilities, but the door isn't wide open all the time.

I've been trying to find a litterbox that isn't too messy, and finally settled on the Booda Dome Cleanstep Cat Box - it has a tiny kitty stairway that leads into the litterbox. This helps contain the litter somewhat, despite being a little ridiculous.

This corner was the last to be figured out. I needed a small cabinet, but discovered that any kind of furniture with doors and drawers is mega expensive. I got this little guy from Joss and Main and it was reasonably priced. (Joss and Main is a flash sale site and they have lots of farmy-type furniture. While many flash sale sites get negative customer complaints, the two that I use most often - Fab.com and Joss and Main -- have been fast, friendly, and easy to use. This cabinet came two days after I ordered it!) I don't really like those anchors as door pulls so I'll change those out at some point.











I wish that more of the furniture could have been recycled, but I ended up having to buy some new things, like the desk. I got two of these bookshelves from Target, and they were really easy to set up because they just unfold.

I painted the room myself - it was a grimy white. This color is called "Belle Grove Victory Blue" and it's from Lowe's. The walls had a bumpy texture that made it hard to paint - especially around the edges. If you ever visit me - don't look too closely!

One thing I did reuse? Two old bulletin boards I've had since I was a teenager. I just covered them with some craft paper that I had in the craft drawer. Over time I'll add more photos and mementoes. And yes, that's my camp patch from 1987.

This collection of folk art crosses is one of my favorite parts of my decor.  I've collected them over the years at various antique shops and markets. Some have come from friends as well. The little skelly was knitted by me.
This bookshelf was reused - some friends gave it to me when they moved away.

What to do with Christmas Cards... an idea for lazy people

My Christmas card photo this year

Do you ever look on Pinterest, or on craft websites, and see something, and think: there is no way in hell that I will ever do that?

That's my reaction when I see what some people do with the Christmas cards they receive each year. They make wreaths or ornaments or garlands or coasters or placemats or scrapbooks.

That's all very nice, but I don't have time for that. 

However, just recycling the Christmas cards seems wasteful. And unChristmassy. After all, these are expressions of joy and fellowship from friends and insurance companies. It's a bit cold to toss them in the bin without a second glance.

This is the binder

Many of my friends take the Christmas cards and create a refrigerator collage that they leave up throughout the new year, replacing it when Christmas comes around again and the cards start rolling in. But that just delays the inevitable for another year.

Therefore, I've solved the problem of the lingering Christmas cards with a simple solution that is excellent for lazy people like me. First, I bought a binder. 

Inside the binder.

Then I filled it with sheet protectors. Each family that sends me cards gets its own sheet protector (the insurance company cards DO go in the recycle bin). Then, when it's time to take the Christmas cards off the refrigerator, I just put them in the sheet protector for that family. It's kind of like a scrapbook, but without the gluing and craft paper and effort. Instead, it takes about two minutes of my time.

I like to flip through it, pulling out the cards and seeing how each family has grown over the years. I also put in birth announcements, wedding invites, etc., so I have a family chronicle for each of the families close to me.

What do you do with the Christmas cards you receive?

O Christmas Tree!

Real or fake tree? That is the question on environmentalists' minds around Christmas (at least, the minds of those enviro types who celebrate Christmas).

Personally, I love, love, LOVE everything about the holiday season. I freely admit that in July, if a Christmas song shuffles onto my iPod playlist, I often let it play. 

But I'm not down with the amount of waste that accompanies Christmas, and every year, the "corpocracy" (to steal a term from Cloud Atlas) seems to be encouraging us to consume more each holiday season. In fact, you could probably replace almost every single item in your house (dishes, sheets, pyjamas, vases, candles, toiletries, towels ...) with a "holiday" version of said item.

Christmas trees, while beautiful and joyous, can contribute to the consumerism of the holiday and the general waste. In order to enjoy the festive spirit greenly, we can try to choose a tree that makes the least impact possible. However, each household has to consider what will work in their situation - there's not a one-size-fits-all solution to getting the "greenest" tree.

Live Trees
Advantages: A live tree with roots still attached is probably the gold standard of eco-friendly trees. You can re-plant it after Christmas! What's more eco than that?
Disadvantages: Live trees shouldn't be out of the ground for significant amounts of time, and they aren't suited to all environments -- you can't just plant a pine tree anywhere in America and hope it will thrive. Also, there are many parts of the U.S. (parts where pine trees would be happy to grow) where the ground is frozen in winter, making planting impractical. For these reasons, a live tree isn't an option for a lot of busy families.

"Real" Cut Trees
Advantages: Cut trees, in general, have a lower impact on the environment than "fake" trees. Like all trees, they help keep our atmosphere clean. These days you can buy organic trees in many places, although you'll often spend a pretty penny for them. In the Northwest, where I'm from, many people skirt the cost of buying organic by simply going out into the woods and cutting a tree. Not, probably, legal in the strictest sense of the word, but people in the Northwest tend to be independent thinkers. 
Disadvantages: Commercially-produced Christmas trees have all the disadvantages of commercial agriculture  - pesticides, soil degradation, etc. Some cities and towns have the capability to turn trees into mulch - but not all, leading to those trees that sit on the roadside for months.

"Fake" Trees
Advantages: You can re-use them year after year, so if you keep the same tree, you're producing less waste than if you keep upgrading. Thrift stores are filled with used trees at a variety of price points, but you can usually get a full-sized one for under $30 - a huge savings for both the environment and your pocketbook.
Disadvantages: Most fake trees are made of PVC, which is one of the most environmentally-deleterious kinds of plastic. For this reason, you should think carefully about buying a brand new fake tree. When fake trees come into your home and are unwrapped, they can off gas chemicals - like other large manufactured items you might bring home.

My Choice...
So, having moved to "The Farm" and having room for a full-sized tree, I had to decide what would be best for me. While I grew up with cut trees, I simply don't have the time to maintain a tree. And because I often travel during the holidays, it's not a practical choice for me; nor is a live tree.

I went the thrift store route and bought a very un-fancy tree with lights already on it (seen above) from Goodwill. It's not exactly high-class, but I feel good that I'm able to re-use something that (I hope) already brought someone a lot of joy.

Homemade "Shower Soothers"

My homemade shower soother.

Hi! And sorry I've been MIA for awhile. I was planning lots of blogging this week but then I got a bad cold that's been going around the office, so mostly I've been blowing my nose and casting annoyed glances at the DVR, wishing it would magically create more interesting shows for me to watch.

Most of the time, when I feel a little bug coming on, I take very good care of myself and marshal my homeopathic remedies to fight it off. Sure, they could be placebos - but if placebos work, then who cares? I rarely get seriously sick, so when I do it tends to be a doozy - every third year or so, I get something that knocks me out for a week or more.

This is that time, I guess. I woke up with a sore throat Sunday morning, and despite my valiant efforts to stave off, it developed into a full-blown cold.


When I do get sick, I don't necessarily rely only on homeopathy. The doctor recommended some more serious drugs, which I'm taking diligently. However, I do think that a lot of homeopathic remedies can make one feel a lot more comfortable. I especially like SudaCare Shower Soothers. They are these little hockey pucks that you put on the floor of your shower, and as the water pours over them, they release mentholly vapors into the steam, which helps to clear your sinuses.

I find them extremely comforting, especially since every illness seems to come to rest in my sinuses, but they can be hard to find at the pharmacy. That's why I was excited to find a recipe for homemade Shower Soothers on Pinterest.

Luckily, the grocery store I stopped off at to stock up on Kleenex had all the ingredients I needed: baking soda and essential oils (the store had a little natural area - you should be able to find essential oils at natural groceries or at hippie places like bead stores, candle stores, and natural beauty shops. You can also order them if you're someone - unlike me -- who has the capability of planning ahead).

If you go to the link above, there are two sets of directions - after the main post, there's an updated one. I used this one. Basically, you just mix a cup of baking soda with a half-cup of water, which creates a thick paste. Then you smash the paste into a muffin tin. You bake for 20 minutes at 350, and when it's cool, you dribble a few drops of the essential oil on to the hockey puck you've created. I used tea tree oil, because out of all the ones I sniffed in the store, it seemed the most sinus clearing, and it was cheaper than some of the others.

I'd definitely consider this another Pinterest success. Plus -- making your own shower soothers means cutting back on lots of packaging and you can feel good about where the ingredients came from.

Pinterest: The Useful Tool

... as opposed to Pinterest: The Pointless Time Suck

I recognize that it's passé to say "I love Pinterest." There's probably some newer, cooler social media-linked image filing system out there. But you're reading the words of someone who still has an AOL account* and still uses blogger**.  Trust me, I'm actually a fairly with-it person. Did you hear that song by Carly Rae Jepsen? Well, I did. That's how with-it I am.

You didn't know that you needed
to see this baby otter until you
found Pinterest.

I love Pinterest, and not just because one of my friends has a pinboard entitled "Wouldn't Kick Him Out of Bed For Eating Crackers" that is filled with pics of hot actors. No, I love it because I think it is actually a useful (and green!) way of organizing images and ideas.

For example, let's think about the old way of organizing ideas, recipes, etc. - the way my mom did back in the early 80's. My mom was a lot like a modern mom blogger before blogs - she baked, sewed, knitted, etc. Of course, it wasn't a trend then. It was just something you did. And she had a variety of paper-based systems for organizing her ideas for projects:

• a recipe box filled with recipe cards, most of which were hand-written. A few were recipes torn from magazines and then glued onto cards. Some others were torn from magazines and crammed into the box.
• a binder where she kept pages she'd ripped out of magazines for decorating or fashion ideas she wanted to remember
• stacks of magazines or catalogs with folded down pages, meant to be perused later

You might be thinking... that sounds awfully familiar. It does to me, because I adopted a very similar "system," although mine consisted of a lot of folders.

But with Pinterest, you don't have to waste any paper (or space in your house.)  There's no need to print out articles or recipes that you want to remember, or to keep a folder of bookmarks on your browser. There's just the simplicity of hitting that little button on the tool bar with a red P in a circle.

Now, you might be thinking, this is nice, but is it REALLY useful? It's not just another way for American consumerist society to take up more corners in our lives?

Take that, Gyllenhaal.

Of course it is. The internet begat easier and easier ways to fill one's home with more stuff, while also begetting a movement of connected (mostly female) bloggers who are sharing the ways that they live more sustainably and creatively. So does Pinterest beget people who pin slightly alarming pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal naked in a bathtub (no, I'm not going to link to it. Do your own dirty work), while also resulting in folks who use it for organizing their work or life.

Here are some of the ways I actually use Pinterest to make life easier:

• To make stuff.  If you've been on Pinterest for five seconds, no doubt you've seen some pretty amazing recipes for things like "Black Bottomed Mini Caramel Cheesecake Bites" and "Fig and Goat Cheese Pizza" (totally re-pinning that). It's a lot like having subscriptions to a schizophrenic collection of cooking magazines, some dedicated to desserts that will cause instant heart attacks, others to eating healthy. And don't let's get started on the craft ideas! I have boards dedicated to crafts and to food. You're probably wondering, then, if this is useful or just wish-fulfillment -- am I simply creating the idea of a crafty life? Well, no. I've actually made a skirt that I saw on Pinterest, tried recipes, etc. Will I make it all? No. But I also won't make all of the recipes in my Cooking Light subscription, or in the knitting magazines I've bought, and no trees died for my pinboard.
• To share ideas. Because Pinterest allows you to share pinboards with friends, it can be a really cool way to create together. For example, I lead a Girl Scout troop with three other volunteers. We used to send each other random emails with ideas for crafts and cookouts. The emails just got lost, the ideas forgotten. Now, however, we have a shared pinboard and so before a campout, say, we can go to our board and look at the ideas we have shared to create our plan. My friend Melanie, who really likes home decoration, created shared boards with me to help me with ideas for my new house. Without those pinboards, I'd probably have an empty home right now.
• For inspiration. I like to save pictures. I'm a little bit of an image hoarder. I have a whole file drawer filled with images I've cut out of magazines. Why? What do I do with them? Well, when I'm writing a story, I often create a kind of "mood board" for the story (until moving and sharing the home pinboards with Melanie, I probably wouldn't have known to call them mood boards) It's MUCH more efficient to create these mood boards through pinning - no flipping through magazines or digging through files.
• For lookin' cool. Or... cool-ish? I have a little bit of trouble putting together outfits and figuring out how to do my hair. Lately, however, I've gotten a lot of comments like, "How do you do your hair like that? That's so cool." The answers: a) bobby pins; b) Pinterest. Pinterest is full of easy to replicate, real-life fashion ideas. I know that sounds trivial, but most of the fashion world is not meant to be re-created by actual humans.
• To find pictures of Daniel Craig. Because, after all, are you going to kick him outta bed for eating crackers?

* The God's honest truth.
** Someone younger than me at work has declared that "Blogs are dead." I'll run and tell my blog right now.

Decorating the Farmhouse

When I moved into my new place (which my friends have lovingly dubbed "The Farm," I realized that I was going to need to do some shopping.I'm not a person who needs a lot of possessions - in fact, I prefer fewer. 

However, at my last place, I had a lot of built-ins -- bookshelves, storage, even a drop-down ironing board. The farmhouse doesn't have those amenities.

I also wanted to decorate in a style that fit better with the farmhouse. I was inspired by the home of ceramics artist Laura Zindel; her designs showcase illustrations of flora and faun. Her style is what one might call "scary farmhouse" or "Darwin's study." I love the spirit of science in the 1800's. And let's face it -- Darwin had style.

And on top of that, I wanted to be as green as one can when fueling the economy with major purchases. That means lots of thrifting (I'm now familiar with most of the thrift stores in Houston) and antiquing. Although I've always known the green benefits of thrifting, I've never been good at it. That's because I was shopping for clothes. I wanted to be like my sister, who is great at putting together amazing vintage outfits from her thrift store forays.

Housewares, I discovered, are much more my game. Here are a few of my finds:

This farmhouse table was at an antique store. It was
cheaper than a similar table and chairs bought new.

My friend Melanie bought this little cabinet. It didn't
really go with her more modern style, so she gave
it to me.

This isn't exactly decor, but I just thought it was
too cute to pass up.

These are some antique bottles. The smaller one
contained bluing. Does anyone use bluing anymore?

Melanie also persuaded me to get this vintage lamp

with gold roses painted on it.

 

The Healing Hands of Mama Earth

I'll admit something to you right now: I've read all the Twilight books.

I was an "early adopter" of Twilight -- a friend's daughter was into them before they went all mainstream. Say what you will about Stephanie Meyer's writing (I'm sure I've said it all myself, and I'm certainly not immune to criticism; someone needs to say a few words about my excessive use of parentheses), but Ms.Steph had a few clever ideas. 

One of those ideas is that when you become a vampire in the Twi-verse, your human qualities become heightened. So empathy becomes the ability to influence others' emotions; ability to "read" people becomes mind reading. 

SPOILER AHEAD... damn the internet tyranny that makes me declare a spoiler that should be common knowledge even to people who live under rocks.

I'm about to step on your toes, Edward.

Bella, the heroine of Twilight, is incredibly clumsy in life. She's always almost getting hit by cars, dropping things, and crashing motorcycles. So when she became a vampire, SHOULDN'T SHE ACQUIRE SUPER-CLUMSINESS AS HER POWER?

But no, she's a quick-moving, light-on-her-feet huntress. Blergh. That's totally boring, and doesn't make sense given the rules of vampirism in the Twi-verse. (BT-dubs, OMG DID YOU HEAR about what K-Stew did to R-Pattz? SCANDAL!!!)

Why am I telling you this? Because my super-power is super-klutziness -- I'm like that vampire with heightened power of clumsiness, the one that Stephanie Meyer should have created. If it can be tripped over, dropped, spilled or dribbled, I will do it.

So the other night, my super power was at full strength. I was taking a pot of pasta off the stove. I have a gas stove in my new house, and I'm not used to the uneven surface. The pot started to slide, and I steadied it. Yay! I thought. Disaster averted. At which point I lost hold of the pot and spilled boiling water all over my hand.

I sort of tossed the pot away from me, trying to keep it upright - which I did surprisingly well, as only a little pasta landed on the floor. But I had burned my hand.

I was pretty bummed, because I knew that I needed some burn gel to treat my hand, but it was Sunday night and I just didn't feel like leaving the house, even to jaunt the five minutes to my friend Kelly's house. Just the other week she was touting the brand of burn gel she had, so I knew that she had some.

As the pain grew, I was beginning to resign myself to the idea that I was going to have to hop in the car (yes, I'm lazy AND klutzy). Then I remembered that when I'd moved in, one of my friends had pointed out an aloe plant in the front yard.

I ran outside and pulled off a leaf, squeezing out some of nature's burn gel. I put the rest of the leaf in the fridge.

I knew that aloe would help a sunburn, but I was incredibly impressed by the way that it took care of the pain immediately. The next day I applied it two or three more times, but I was totally fine by the end of the day. 

Hooray for nature. 

Just some randomness...

I love my new house. I love it that I have a full-size kitchen and a utility room. I love that I can go out and collect flowers from the rose bush and the crepe myrtle and the butterfly bushes. Wily (my cat) loves it too. Having more space (and a yard FULL of birds to stare at through the windows) has reinvigorated him. He races around the house like a kitten.

My new home also has what I would call "REAL" recycling - i.e., I can recycle glass. For some reason, in downtown Houston, you can't recycle glass in your curbside bin. You have to take it to the recycling center. But at my new house we have full-size wheelie bins for recycling, which is great, because I recycle more than I throw away.

I would throw away almost nothing if I got into composting. There's a place in the backyard that's all set up to start, but I'm waiting until it cools off to get the outside of the house settled.

Also, I have to get the inside of the house put together. I can totally see how people move and then look around nine months later and they still have boxes... but I've made some progress. I have a dining table and chairs, and a desk (it's in a box right now), and a bookshelf is on the way. I really need to hang my art - that will make things start to feel like home.

I didn't do much around the house this weekend, though, because I was seeing friends and working on a skirt that I've been sewing all summer. My goal is to wear it on Friday. That means I have to have it done by Thursday. It's actually not a difficult project, but I was silly and started it right before the move.

I haven't been watching much of the Olympics. I hold the (very unpopular) belief that sports serve a sociological function of priming us for war - as  wikipedia puts it, it's a "symbolic competition between nations." Don't believe me? Here's an article for you.  I used to root for Russia (then the USSR) because my great grandmother immigrated from there. Other kids didn't appreciate that. Which sort of proves my point.

But it is kind of cool that Guatemala (where my great-grandfather hailed from - sort of; it's a long story) won it's first medal EVER this week. So? I'm a hypocrite. We all are sometimes.

And it was in racewalking. Hello?! Awesome.

Last night my friend Katie and I watched a movie called Take This Waltz. It's available on demand and is also playing in theaters. We ended up being really glad that we only paid $8 to watch it on demand, instead of driving downtown and each paying $10, plus money for food and parking and what not -- because we DID NOT enjoy the movie. It looked so promising - forbidden romance, Seth Rogen and Sarah Silverman, Canada. Neither of us could really relate to any of the characters, though, and so we didn't care what happened, which wasn't interesting anyway. It's gotten a lot of good reviews, so I don't know ... maybe we didn't get it. But I think we did.

And just because you need to see this, here is a baby wombat: