Yep, just like that. If I can make my hair tangle-y enough for the braid.
From Dare to wear this day-to-evening hair
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
How I'm going to wear my hair tonight
Yep, just like that. If I can make my hair tangle-y enough for the braid.
From Dare to wear this day-to-evening hair
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Links I'm really feeling today
These links all hit me emotionally hard today. The first two made me cry.
On Wendy Davis, the Supreme Court, and Speaking Out As Women
We Are the 15 Percent
The Race Card Project
I definitely have family photos to submit to the We Are the 15 Percent tumblr.
On Wendy Davis, the Supreme Court, and Speaking Out As Women
We Are the 15 Percent
The Race Card Project
I definitely have family photos to submit to the We Are the 15 Percent tumblr.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Friday, June 14, 2013
What I firmly believe about mandated presents
This!
So many times over. Stop with the senseless, mandatory gift giving! I'm all for random, perfectly-suited expressions of love in physical form and special treats that someone wouldn't otherwise buy for themselves, but I hate the whole institution of gift giving. Hate.
So many times over. Stop with the senseless, mandatory gift giving! I'm all for random, perfectly-suited expressions of love in physical form and special treats that someone wouldn't otherwise buy for themselves, but I hate the whole institution of gift giving. Hate.
Monday, June 10, 2013
What I need to do right now: Glitter Floor!
I had forgotten about the Crafty Chica, what an effing mistake. Glitter floor!??! And the method of applying the glitter to the floor is tossing it up in the air!?!?!? YES PLEASE,
NOW OR FASTER!
NOW OR FASTER!
What I am working on right now: Being Unpopular
Friday, June 7, 2013
What I'm definitely making
For children both young and grown:
Story Stones!
Apparently this is a very popular thing on Pinterest but because I refuse to join Pinterest and really don't follow any blogs that feature craft things to make for or do with small children, I'd never heard of them until today. But I think its a really fun concept and think Sci-Fi story stones are a great idea.
If I was making my own set though, they'd probably have to be motocross themed.
Story Stones!
Apparently this is a very popular thing on Pinterest but because I refuse to join Pinterest and really don't follow any blogs that feature craft things to make for or do with small children, I'd never heard of them until today. But I think its a really fun concept and think Sci-Fi story stones are a great idea.
If I was making my own set though, they'd probably have to be motocross themed.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
What I need to go home and craft
Ojos de Dios!
Some of Jay Mohler's amazing pieces were featured on the Martha Stewart website's Craft Department blog and I think they are gourgeous!
Some of Jay Mohler's amazing pieces were featured on the Martha Stewart website's Craft Department blog and I think they are gourgeous!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
What I still am happy I threw away
I just threw away a bunch of electrical boxes that I pull out of the basement with the old lighting as part of my basement remodel. I've been throwing (or giving) just about everything away these days, and I'm loving it. So much stuff!!
And then I see these:
They're so cute that I almost regretted throwing away those electrical boxes. But mine were really old and gross, and I probably won't have time or money to plant succulents (even though I LOVE succulents right now - I'd plant tomatoes and beans first anyway), so I'm still happy I'm purging all the junk from my life.
And then I see these:
They're so cute that I almost regretted throwing away those electrical boxes. But mine were really old and gross, and I probably won't have time or money to plant succulents (even though I LOVE succulents right now - I'd plant tomatoes and beans first anyway), so I'm still happy I'm purging all the junk from my life.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
What quote I love
I don't like the way digital cameras and camera phones have encouraged the sense that we need to 'capture' everything in order for it feel complete. I'd rather people simply watched and clapped and smiled and cried — and really listened and remembered, not from the photos they downloaded onto their computers, but from their own memories.quoted from Carrie Kilman, in an article by Ariel Meadows on Offbeat Bride
I love it not just in regard to weddings. I love the sentiment about life in general.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
What sounds so delicious I might die
Or settle for a kouign amann from Rustica. That's at least closer.
What I perversely wish I had time for right now
Spring cleaning!
Yes, I wish I had time to do everything on this pretty list from Going Home to Roost. Who wishes they had time to clean? Me. Maybe I will someday.
Yes, I wish I had time to do everything on this pretty list from Going Home to Roost. Who wishes they had time to clean? Me. Maybe I will someday.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
What quote sums up my life right now
This quote by Antonio Gramsci:
Which I found in this super interesting article about Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
Which I found in this super interesting article about Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
What I learned how to do yesterday
Drill holes in concrete so I could hang this:
Drilling holes in concrete required learning about masonry bits and how to distinguish them from normal drill bits while sifting through our ever-growing collection of various bits and learning about the hammer drill setting on my father's ancient but most powerful drill.
This is what I do on the weekend when my father and boyfriend both go out of town. The shelf is beautiful, and I'm so proud!
Drilling holes in concrete required learning about masonry bits and how to distinguish them from normal drill bits while sifting through our ever-growing collection of various bits and learning about the hammer drill setting on my father's ancient but most powerful drill.
This is what I do on the weekend when my father and boyfriend both go out of town. The shelf is beautiful, and I'm so proud!
Thursday, May 9, 2013
What everyone should read
...regardless of whether someone is actually ill. Because someone, somewhere in everyone's life is dealing with something hard. Always.
Practice Ring Theory. I'm trying. Its hard.
Practice Ring Theory. I'm trying. Its hard.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
How I wore my hair this afternoon
After wearing my hair in a high bun for this entire semester, I pulled my hair down this afternoon.
I think I'm trying to use it as a disguise so the universe won't be able to find me and throw more life at me.
Colors I'm obsessed with today
Every day this week, when I start thinking about what I want to do when I get home, the first idea I have is buy spray paint and paint something orange!
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Friday, May 3, 2013
What I wish my life looked like right now
Instead of this dreary, depressing gray weather and brain fog.
From MSN Glo's 5 Festive Cinco de Mayo Party Finds
From MSN Glo's 5 Festive Cinco de Mayo Party Finds
How I want to decorate a Christmas tree
Christmas tree? What? Isn't it about as far away from Christmas as we could possibly get? Yes, it is. And don't I not really celebrate Christmas? That is correct. But that didn't stop me from being struck with a Christmas-type tree decorating idea.
Jade and stone ornament themed!
The idea came because I was trying to sell some of my father's old jewelry and took some of our old jade pieces like the one pictured above with to see if they had any value. In the American jewelry world, apparently they do not. So I've been brainstorming what else I can do with these pieces. Pawn shops and a garage sale came up as ideas, and then I started thinking about some kind of wall art or house decoration piece. The problem is the cut, color, and pattern of the pieces are all over the place and might not go that well right next to each other. And then it hit me: winter tree decorations!
Now, I generally prefer secular, winter season type decorations over uber Christmas-y ones and matchy-matchy, Martha Stewart-esque decorating themes over years of mismatched and child-made family decoration collections. I say prefer and generally because I've never had a place or the time to decorate for the winter season. But someday I would like a tree. And I will call it a winter-season-celebration tree. And I will decorate it with many shades of green and gray stone and stone related decorations. And I will finally have something to do with all our jade.
Maybe I'll leave it up until Chinese New Year and just call it a festival tree.
Jade and stone ornament themed!
The idea came because I was trying to sell some of my father's old jewelry and took some of our old jade pieces like the one pictured above with to see if they had any value. In the American jewelry world, apparently they do not. So I've been brainstorming what else I can do with these pieces. Pawn shops and a garage sale came up as ideas, and then I started thinking about some kind of wall art or house decoration piece. The problem is the cut, color, and pattern of the pieces are all over the place and might not go that well right next to each other. And then it hit me: winter tree decorations!
Now, I generally prefer secular, winter season type decorations over uber Christmas-y ones and matchy-matchy, Martha Stewart-esque decorating themes over years of mismatched and child-made family decoration collections. I say prefer and generally because I've never had a place or the time to decorate for the winter season. But someday I would like a tree. And I will call it a winter-season-celebration tree. And I will decorate it with many shades of green and gray stone and stone related decorations. And I will finally have something to do with all our jade.
Maybe I'll leave it up until Chinese New Year and just call it a festival tree.
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Wednesday, May 1, 2013
What I could cook with oatmeal
Dr. Sam shops at Costco and, on his most recent trip, he came home with a 10 lb box of oatmeal. I don't think I could have accurately pictured 10 lb of oatmeal before seeing the two huge 5 lb bags inside the box and trying to find a container to fit any amount of just one of the bags in. Its a lot of oatmeal. Now, I like oatmeal and have been eating more of it recently but getting through 10 lb anytime in the next year is going to require some creative cooking. I like making oatmeal bread and lovelovelove oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but those usually require additional ingredients I don't always have on hand. I am going through a flour dry spell right now, because I refuse to buy it and no one else has bought it either, so I've been using up the last of all my specialty flours and mixes and getting rather creative finding flour alternatives (with varying success).
What I do have on hand that could potentially make this 10 lb of oatmeal a lot more useful is a flour mill. So my plan is to mill some of the oatmeal into oat flour. I don't know how versatile oat flour is but with an excess of 10 lb, I've got some room to experiment. Bob's Red Mill sells whole grain oat flour, and I found two recipes on their website which use oat flour that I'd like to try: Oatmeal Old-Fashion Muffins and Poppy Seed Raisin Oatcakes.
I also think oat flour might be good in my hippy muffins. The muffins I now make and call hippy muffins originated from a recipe for Breakfast Muffins. I've made them many times since I first found the recipe with many more- and less- successful modifications. Different flours, different chunkies, different dairy products. My favorite is using creme fraiche instead of yogurt. I always have a hard time with the topping, and it rarely turns out as good as the rest of the muffin and sometimes omit it all together. I call them hippy muffins because I usually add things that are part of an alternative, so-called healthy, hippy, whatever diet. Things like flaxseed, agave nectar, chia seeds, whole wheat whatever flour, gluten free flours. I usually add these ingredients, because my father wanted to try them and so did and then never finished then so I inherited the remainder of the various ingredients and have to use them up, not particularly because of my hippy diet tendencies.
Its also almost cold cereal time, a breakfast treat Pretty Boy and I both love and which is primarily oatmeal and will be perfect for weekend camping trips at the race track. And so cute in the little mason jars.
Good, three recipes to try with oat flour. Four with oats in general. I'm excited. Now I just need the time.
What I do have on hand that could potentially make this 10 lb of oatmeal a lot more useful is a flour mill. So my plan is to mill some of the oatmeal into oat flour. I don't know how versatile oat flour is but with an excess of 10 lb, I've got some room to experiment. Bob's Red Mill sells whole grain oat flour, and I found two recipes on their website which use oat flour that I'd like to try: Oatmeal Old-Fashion Muffins and Poppy Seed Raisin Oatcakes.
I also think oat flour might be good in my hippy muffins. The muffins I now make and call hippy muffins originated from a recipe for Breakfast Muffins. I've made them many times since I first found the recipe with many more- and less- successful modifications. Different flours, different chunkies, different dairy products. My favorite is using creme fraiche instead of yogurt. I always have a hard time with the topping, and it rarely turns out as good as the rest of the muffin and sometimes omit it all together. I call them hippy muffins because I usually add things that are part of an alternative, so-called healthy, hippy, whatever diet. Things like flaxseed, agave nectar, chia seeds, whole wheat whatever flour, gluten free flours. I usually add these ingredients, because my father wanted to try them and so did and then never finished then so I inherited the remainder of the various ingredients and have to use them up, not particularly because of my hippy diet tendencies.
Its also almost cold cereal time, a breakfast treat Pretty Boy and I both love and which is primarily oatmeal and will be perfect for weekend camping trips at the race track. And so cute in the little mason jars.
Good, three recipes to try with oat flour. Four with oats in general. I'm excited. Now I just need the time.
What clothes I want
This shirt from Threadless:
This dress also from Threadless:
This dress by Emily Ryan on Etsy:
This skirt by idea2stylelife on Etsy:
This dress also from Threadless:
This dress by Emily Ryan on Etsy:
This skirt by idea2stylelife on Etsy:
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
What I am and am not eating
Somewhere along the way, I gradually stopped eating eggs along with meat. Along with gluten (mostly). Along with dairy (mostly).
This weekend while camping and struggling to find something I had on hand to eat and wanted to eat and could eat (an intersection I am increasingly struggling to find), I almost came to the decision I needed to relax my egg restriction and maybe gluten too if I was going to really commit to the meat restriction for the long haul. Monday morning rolled around and I get in my email a post notification from one of my favorite bloggers, Marc Gunther, which just happened to be about eggs. Yep, still not going to eat eggs. Or meat. I was familiar with most of the information in the post already but push it to the back of my mind because I get depressed if I think about it too much. Instead I'll just try to not eat eggs.
So if I'm going to maintain these dietary restrictions, I think I better start following blogs like Wolf and Willow and getting more cookbooks like Chloe's Kitchen, which I'm already quite impressed by. This recipe for potato, rosemary, and blackberry pizza from Wolf and Willow looks really tasty and I'm going to try and make it tonight. And then someday, I might accept that somehow, I became a vegan.
5/1/13 update - I actually made this pizza last night. And I didn't sabotage it by messing with the recipe. And Pretty Boy and my father ate it and we all liked it! I used real Parmesan cheese instead of making the vegan stuff and spinach leaves instead of rocket and dried rosemary instead of fresh because we already had those. And I didn't add any lemon.
The dough ended up being really sticky and I stretched the first pizza too much so as a result, it would not slide off the board onto the pizza stone. We ended up shoving it onto the stone, but the damage was done. The whole pizza turned out lumpy and the crust was crispy and dry in places. The second one turned out much better. The flavor of the berries and crust are what really came through on this. I was skeptical about the berries but really, they were the best part. The cheese and potato flavors were really mild. Pretty Boy would have liked a lot more cheese. My father would have liked a lot more meat. But all in all it was a success. I had a few marinated potato sliced left over that I fried up in a pan that everyone like so much that I cut up another potato to fry in the infused oil that didn't go on the pizzas. Carbs with a side of carbs, right? Anyway, while it wasn't a vegan or gluten-free or dairy-free success, it was a vegetarian, low-gluten, low-impact, economic, popular success and that's what I'm aiming for the most.
This weekend while camping and struggling to find something I had on hand to eat and wanted to eat and could eat (an intersection I am increasingly struggling to find), I almost came to the decision I needed to relax my egg restriction and maybe gluten too if I was going to really commit to the meat restriction for the long haul. Monday morning rolled around and I get in my email a post notification from one of my favorite bloggers, Marc Gunther, which just happened to be about eggs. Yep, still not going to eat eggs. Or meat. I was familiar with most of the information in the post already but push it to the back of my mind because I get depressed if I think about it too much. Instead I'll just try to not eat eggs.
So if I'm going to maintain these dietary restrictions, I think I better start following blogs like Wolf and Willow and getting more cookbooks like Chloe's Kitchen, which I'm already quite impressed by. This recipe for potato, rosemary, and blackberry pizza from Wolf and Willow looks really tasty and I'm going to try and make it tonight. And then someday, I might accept that somehow, I became a vegan.
5/1/13 update - I actually made this pizza last night. And I didn't sabotage it by messing with the recipe. And Pretty Boy and my father ate it and we all liked it! I used real Parmesan cheese instead of making the vegan stuff and spinach leaves instead of rocket and dried rosemary instead of fresh because we already had those. And I didn't add any lemon.
The dough ended up being really sticky and I stretched the first pizza too much so as a result, it would not slide off the board onto the pizza stone. We ended up shoving it onto the stone, but the damage was done. The whole pizza turned out lumpy and the crust was crispy and dry in places. The second one turned out much better. The flavor of the berries and crust are what really came through on this. I was skeptical about the berries but really, they were the best part. The cheese and potato flavors were really mild. Pretty Boy would have liked a lot more cheese. My father would have liked a lot more meat. But all in all it was a success. I had a few marinated potato sliced left over that I fried up in a pan that everyone like so much that I cut up another potato to fry in the infused oil that didn't go on the pizzas. Carbs with a side of carbs, right? Anyway, while it wasn't a vegan or gluten-free or dairy-free success, it was a vegetarian, low-gluten, low-impact, economic, popular success and that's what I'm aiming for the most.
What are questionably the weirdest donuts
MSN's Delish has a slideshow of what they call "The Weirdest and Greatest Doughnut Flavors." Some are weird, yes. But some are definitely not the weirdest. I think it's pretty much a requirement now for any "artisan" or "hip" or whatever donut place to have a maple bacon offering. And greatest? Don't even get me started on that.
Poi, rosemary olive oil, lemon Szechuan, and pineapple pow (pineapple, wasabi, and ginger) are the flavors on the list I'd want to try the most. And I think someone should let the author know about Glam Doll Donuts.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
What makes me want to paint
Everything! In super bright colors! Which is saying something because I am slowly working through the finishing work on the almost finished half of my basement remodel project which is mostly painting and completely frustrating me.
MyColor paints by Pantone. Smaller, self-priming containers of brightly colored perfect for smaller painting projects. I want to paint smaller, bright colored objects for my soon-to-be finished half a basement remodel! I want to live out loud!
MyColor paints by Pantone. Smaller, self-priming containers of brightly colored perfect for smaller painting projects. I want to paint smaller, bright colored objects for my soon-to-be finished half a basement remodel! I want to live out loud!
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
What I need on my wall
This amazing design, Pushing Daisies by Katie Campbell:
Its available from the Threadless website on shirts, phone cases, and prints. I want a print!
Pretty Boy has a great love of skulls, but in the creepy, haunted, and scary or hyper-realistic ways. I wouldn't say I love skulls, but I do like them in abstract, artsy, interpretive renditions. So I get very excited about anything that is a compromise between our style and which we both love. Like Katie Campbell's Pushing Daisies. Or this engraving of a human skull from Surface View in the UK:
So cool! There will definitely be a place on our walls for some skull art. Maybe some sugar skulls too...
Its available from the Threadless website on shirts, phone cases, and prints. I want a print!
Pretty Boy has a great love of skulls, but in the creepy, haunted, and scary or hyper-realistic ways. I wouldn't say I love skulls, but I do like them in abstract, artsy, interpretive renditions. So I get very excited about anything that is a compromise between our style and which we both love. Like Katie Campbell's Pushing Daisies. Or this engraving of a human skull from Surface View in the UK:
So cool! There will definitely be a place on our walls for some skull art. Maybe some sugar skulls too...
What quote I need to embrace
By Louisa May Alcott from Little Women:
I'm trying to embrace the storms, but sometimes, its just so exhausting to continually sail a ship through them.
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