Currently: August 27, 2007 link

I recently added another addition to my Jim Flora album covers and I LOVE it!

This brings the grand total up to six:

I need to buy a frame for it so it can join its brethren on the wall.

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August 21, 2007 link

I bought some Dahlia tubers back in March and they are blooming right now. I love dahlias so much I just can't even tell you. They are by far my favorite flower and I have been wanting to grow them ever since I saw a segment on them waaaaaay back in the day on Martha. She was visiting a woman who had the most amazing dahlia garden and I knew immediately that I had to have a garden just like it once it was feasible. I am lucky that I finally have a yard with a sunny plot to put such a garden. The only problem with my sunny plot is that right now it's a dandelion infested lawn that used to be a gravel driveway or something because one cannot put a shovel into the ground without being stopped by a rock. I am going to have to go the Lasagna route I am afraid and layer newspaper/cardboard, compost, etc..

August 14, 2007 link

This is the concrete rhubarb leaf that is supposed to be a birdbath. Mom and I both made one during the Wyoming vacation. You can see hers here and there is also a slideshow on my flickr that has all of the steps documented.

I am very please with how this turned out for the first attempt. Next year when my rhubarb is bigger I will make another one. I learned that I used too big of a leaf for the amount of form sand I had and the leaf didn't form a smooth bowl shape - I made a bird platter.

August 13, 2007 link

I went to The Home Improvement Store this weekend to check out hooks for my mugs:

They didn't have 42 hooks, so I cleaned them out and got only 26. Part of me is wondering if I should use long nails instead, and part of me is wishing the hooks were black. Another part of me is wondering if this is going to look lame and the largest part of me says "Screw it! Do it anyway! You talk yourself out of everything!". My many faces of Eve Erica. I'll keep you posted.

I also priced some items for some projects I want to tackle in the near future. Mainly closets. I have a tall, skinny cupboard in my kitchen that is a prime example of what one would call "wasted space" and I want to turn it into a mini-pantry with shelves. I was please to see that this project will not break the bank. Not like the 6 new doorknobs I would need to buy for the Great Hall Makeover.

On the "Distractions That Keep Me From Important Items" list I have been flirting with the idea of making bath products again, mainly bath bombs. I blame it on Sur La Table. The last time I was in one I saw these silicon ice cube trays that are perfect cubes and I got to wondering if they would make good molds for a bath bomb/bubble bar type thng. The only hitch in my get-along is that I got rid of of my supplies when we moved into this house so now I have to restock, and I got rid of almost everything.

What else? I am going through a serious grain phase right now and I am loving it. Our local food co-op has just about every grain under the sun and I found a slew of grain-based salad recipes on the Whole Foods website I am dying to check out. I ripped a page out of a Food and Wine a while back that has some grain-based salads and I have been trying those as well. The Wild Rice with Chickpeas and Ham is super-good. This week I am going to try the Wheat Berry Salad with Smoked Turkey as well as the Sardinian Rice Salad. I like to eat a cup or so of the grain salad on a bed of greens. My favorite grain to do this with is quinoa. Just plain ol' quinoa on a salad with whatever else one likes to put in a salad topped with a vinaigrette. (I have heard a rumor that quinona has the highest protein of all grains.) And since I am on the topic of salads, one of my favorite new salad additions is wasabi peas. Especially if you use a sesame vinaigrette. Sooooo goood.

August 9, 2007 link

One item on my to-do list for the Wyoming visit was to harvest some sagebrush. Now, growing up, I pretty much ignored the stuff but one day at a Farmer's Market in Santa Cruz, CA I saw a nice hippy boy selling bundles of "Fresh Utah Sage" for about five bucks a pop. "Sagebrush!?" I thought..."MY sagebrush?!" Because you know, I own it all. Ever since then I have been seeing sage bundles in shops all over the place, even here in Olympia and I have been wanting to bundle up some sagebrush ever since.

What do you do with sage bundles? You burn them. I think that Native Americans burn sage as a cleansing sort of thing, but I am not qualified to speak on that, but I do know that Jeffery burned sage a lot in his Massage School days and honestly I haven't given much thought on what to do with the bundles once I made them. It's the making I care about. I am usually out in Wyoming in the winter - not a good time for harvesting.

This is Hojo, my parent's cat, keeper of the sage and junky barn wood.

Bundled and unbundled sagebrush.

Finished bundle waiting to be dried out. This stuff smells so good, I can't wait to light it on fire!

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August 6, 2007 link

We just got back from Wyoming and it was so much fun. Lots of things to talk about for a while. I meant to update while I was there, but for some reason the we couldn't get the internet to work with my laptop, and hey..it was a vacation. I still have a few more days off so I can get back into the swing of things.

I helped Mom start a blog so she can share all of the amazing things she makes. She is much more productive than I am. We made birdbaths casted with rhubarb leaves and concrete. I'll post the process shortly but I should let you know that mine didn't turn out quite as well as hers.

Jeff and I drove out this time so I could bring back some things that mom is storing for me. Among other goodies, I got her Frankoma Political Mug collection which I am very excited to hang in my dining room:

There are 41 of them and they are in all different colors. I have only unwrapped a few and haven't found out who is missing a partner yet.

The trip was so much fun and the weather was HOT. There are wildfires all over the Rocky Mountain west and it created a beautiful moon:

My parents had hummingbird feeders everywhere and these little guys were so entertaining to watch. There were two different types, Roofus and Longtails and they would battle and whizz around like little demons. I am totally getting a hummingbird feeder ASAP.

These fellas/gals were so sweet.

It's good to be back!

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