P&PS

Back before I discovered I'm lactose intolerant I used to make my own yogurt.  It was something I loved doing not only because it was easy and thrifty but because it felt like I was doing something good for myself.  When I cut out dairy I felt a bit lost for a while.  I tried making dairy free yogurt, but while it worked, it wasn't the same experience.  Kombucha sounded promising but I can't tolerate caffeine, so I considered giving up on this particular probiotic avenue until I discovered water kefir. For those of you who are unfamiliar with water kefir, it has the same probiotic and digestive benefits as milk kefir or yogurt without dairy.  The consistency of water kefir is similar to that of soda or carbonated water.  While initially I missed the creamy goodness of yogurt, thinking of water kefir as a totally different experience (aka extra healthy juice) really hooked me. Not only is water kefir addicting, it's really easy to make. To make your ...

I haven't been feeling very chatty or very crafty lately.  I have been working on stuff for some friends and am either waiting for official photos or am waiting to ship the gifts off before I can share.  In fact this afternoon I have to put the finishing touches on a couple of things before I mail them tomorrow (I keep saying this so we'll see). Tomorrow I also need to start another hedgehog.  I swore I would give this pattern a break (the loop stitch it uses eventually turns me into whiny knitting girl because it's a bit slow and odd), but it's too cute and it's been requested by JB as a gift for someone.  After that I'm back to trying to clear out my queue and backlog or WIPs (story of my life). January was a bit of a book month which continued into this month.  Currently I'm a quarter of the way through the Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes and half way through The Golden Compass.  This had lead to a bit of a Sherlock kick and really hasn't helped...

Baking Soda Aside from the fact you can use it for everything.  Well pretty much anything, particularly cleaning wise, baking soda is awesome.  It makes a great deodorant, it’s a really good exfoliater and mild cleanser. Bar Soap (Beer and Charcoal) Bar soap for starters, particularly handmade bar soap tends to be SLS free (*cheers*).  Beer soap in particular makes my scalp happy.  Charcoal soap does wonders for my skin, an extra oily bar in the winter is moisturizing without being heavy and a more simple bar works wonders in the summer with all the outdoor dirt and grime. Honey Honey, I could eat the stuff all day.  Mixed with crushed aspirin or alone it makes a wonderful mask.  It evens up skin tone and you smell good too. Oil (Castor, Coconut, Jojoba, and Olive) I know people have qualms about using castor oil, but since it works for me I’m hesitant to mess with it.  Castor along with jojoba make up my OCM mix.  Jojoba’s...

I can't find my henna mix anywhere. I've been lamenting this fact for a week now and I can't stand it any longer. I've ordered another batch. My roots are long enough that my bangs match my eyebrows. I am not impressed. I'm thinking this go around I'll be adding 3TBSP of cloves to my mix to cut down on the wretched smell that is vinegar mixed with lemon juice and henna. Perhaps I could get by without the vinegar. Lemon and henna smells nice. Lemon is acidic. I think I may declare this a grand experiment...again. I like this plan. I do.

These little guys grow fast...the leaves are now bigger than my hand and we've got the start of some blooms. Originally I was worried about them getting over watered with the heavy rain we'd been getting, but it turns out the more water you give them the faster they grow.

Trash Fashion by ~ stasha-pistachio on deviant ART Another day of record breaking heat and I'm ready to call it quits. It's just too hot to do much of anything. The weather service says it was 95 at the hottest point yesterday, but the temperature display across the street read 99 at about five last night. Thankfully it's a bit cooler inside, but I'm wondering how miserable this summer's going to be if this keeps up. I haven't gotten anything planted outside yet, I'm worried about the heat killing the seedlings off. It's hard enough to keep them watered when they're sitting inside on the window sill. On the etsy front things are going better. I've been having a lot of fun browsing through all the new summer stuff and I've been pumping out the paper. Who knew cold paper pulp would feel so good. I've gotten quite a bit behind on all my blog reading though. I've been keeping up with crunchy chicken and burbanmom , but no...

A couple of the little guys that have been poking up on a regular basis.

Time flies when you're having fun, that's for sure. I started an entry on Saturday, but I never got around to finishing. The nice weather was calling to me. I've been doing a lot of cleaning. I packed up and shipped out a lot of stuff to local charities and finally got around to recycling all the paper little old packrat me had saved. It's nice to have the space to store the stuff I've started collecting, especially the glass jars, wicker baskets, and ceramic bowls. I also helped clean out a couple of the flower beds outside, although we've still got a bunch of work to do. Hopefully we'll get most of it done by the time I've managed to coax my seedlings into plantable size. Which as of now is still quite plausible as nothing has actually sprouted yet. I keep hoping I'll wake up to little green shoots, but that might be a while off.

Shut Down Day is this Saturday May 3. There's still time to join in if you're interested. I know for me it doesn't seem like a big deal until I try and do it. What's a day without a computer? It's something about voluntarily giving it up that makes it so hard for me. Sure if I'm too busy or if I've got something better to do it's not an issue. Staying off the computer on an unplugged night isn't usually much of an issue either, but staying off for a whole day? It's going to be interesting. Especially since it's on a weekend this year. It'll be me, my camera, and my ipod for most of the time. Maybe I'll even get around to finishing Kitchen Literacy. And while we're on the subject of unplugging, there's a great article over at electrolicious (the home of 52 nights unplugged ) on etsy, the alchemy feature, and a jacket.

I spent a lot of time this week poking around homesteading and gardening sites. I looked at everything from square foot gardening , to container gardening, and building houses on rural homesteads. All in all a very interesting bit of research, I learned a lot but I still haven't decided what I want to grow. I know I want to start some herbs inside on the window sill, basil, parsley, thyme, coriander and some stuff for my tea, mint, lemon balm, chamomile, maybe some stevia . Thing is I haven't decided what and how I want to grow stuff outside. All I know is I want to grow something, and badly. I'll figure it out eventually. I'm not too worried, although I'm hoping I don't get sick of it the second the temperature gets into the high eighties. I also spent a lot of time this week on etsy looking for birthday presents for a couple of friends. I haven't found exactly what I wanted, but I found a bunch of really cool stuff in the process. Jack - Swirl Bub...

Leafy Tree Pendant from OneElf Earth Day’s fast approaching and I’m super excited. My ‘hug a tree’ shirt’s ready and waiting and I’m impatiently counting down the hours. Yes I’m a giant geek, but it’s the one day where spreading the green love is totally socially acceptable. Although I will still try and refrain from yelling at people who chuck plastic bottles in the trash; I will not refrain from rolling my eyes at people who look at me funny when I remove perfectly good rolls of wrapping paper from the trash. It’s going to be fun. However since it is Earth Day I know everyone’s being berated with things like ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ and ‘turn the water off when you brush your teeth’. Important, yes, but I think there’s a bit of a bigger picture that gets missed in all that, so I’m going for something different. I’m not going to talk about it, at least not today. Today I’m talking about worms. Yes, I’m finally writing a real entry about something, and yes it’s about worms. ...