Transition

Are you wondering where I went?

Please update your readers to the most excellent official website of The Oni!
Thanks to my awesome awesome friend at New Aeon Creative, we have migrated this blog over to what will some day be, if it isn’t already for some crazy reason, your favorite most awesome site.

I will leave this blog the way it is. We all need to get in touch with our roots every now and then.

But if you are led here, go check out the real thing, comin atcha multiple times a day! Or sometimes not at all for days! The world may never know.

Read it and weep!

Financial Quickie: The Secret to Never Paying Fees

I vacillate between laissez-faire and obsessive paranoia about my bank accounts and spending habits. I used to go back and forth between a little money and negative money in my bank accounts while I worked in crappy retail, before I got my foot in the door of a trade. This has made me always worry about the digits in my bank account. In contrast, I have really erratic spending habits. For a few weeks, I will be a recluse and spend almost no money on anything, and then in one night of desperation I can go out and drop several hundred dollars on everything I can find. In the last two years, I have been super responsible with my finances, and even managed to build up a savings account with my husband in the last year. We only have $2000, but it’s a big step from my years of fretting about being a tiptoe away from a $0 or negative balance.

I took half of our savings account balance and opened a mutual fund last week. It is fascinating for me to look at my account each day and see more money miraculously appearing there. No wonder the super-rich get so addicted to this! In 1 week our account has earned us $7.69. By contrast, our savings account has only earned us $1.57 in interest in an entire year. The investment account has already earned five times that amount in just one week! It’s such a thrill.

Anyhow, this week I made my first minor slip-up with my checking account. I transferred out money to our joint checking account to pay January bills – rent, car registration, utilities, etc., leaving a small balance in my own checking. I used my own checking account to fill up the gas tank, and totally spaced on how much I spent on gas before I went on a mini-spree on amazon – namely to get a copy of Glorious Interiors to bring with me to the Kaffe Fassett book signing I talked about last night.*** I looked at my account today and nearly had a heart attack when I saw that my checking had been overdrawn! And then to top it off, of course, the bank charges a fee on top of the already-overdrawn account, making a small accounting error look like a much bigger one.

However, because of my good standing with the bank I was able to get the fee refunded to me. The call took 7 minutes and 23 seconds, most of which was spent fighting with the automated system. I was able to complete the call while making myself a cup of tea, and when I explained my goof to the customer service representative, she refunded the overdraft fee to my account.

The lesson here is that you should suck up your embarrassment, hesitation, or laziness, call customer service, and ask them to refund or waive any fees you find yourself subject to. I have had to change plane tickets 3 times in the past year, and I never paid a fee. I have had to mail cell phones back and forth due to issues with my service provider, some of which went out past the allotted time frame, and any fees charged to me have always been refunded. If you don’t want to pay a fee, it’s really up to you whether you pay it or not. Every time I have called a customer service line and said, politely, “I can’t afford to/don’t want to pay this fee, will you waive/refund it for me?” the answer has been yes.

One caveat is, of course, it is important to be in good standing with the institution in question. If you are constantly making mistakes, overdrafting, being charged late fees, or generally being irresponsible, then you should be fine. If not, then I have no idea how this tactic will work for you. But, you could be surprised – the only thing you can lose by calling to ask is a few minutes of your time.

***My Tax Advisor meeting ended after only an hour, so I was able to make it to the book signing/trunk show/gallery at the quilting shop! I have some cool pics to post later, I’ll try to get another update in after the lecture tonight. Wooooooot

Kaffe Fasset Book Signing and Lecture

A few weeks ago, I managed to score a ticket to attend a super exclusive slide show and lecture given by the one and only Mr. Kaffe Fassett! So exclusive it’s not even listed in the events section of his website!

A year ago, I had no idea who this man was. I decided that I needed another hobby, so I thought I could take up quilting.

Layout of the first quilt I've ever made
(it's not *technically* done yet)

6 months ago, I walked into the local quilting store and the cashier dropped his name. I had no idea who it was, but after poring over his designer fabrics, I was smitten. The colors! The patterns! I came home and googled him, and found an awesome colorful world of awesomeness. This guy is my new hero. He knits, crochets, needlepoints, designs fabric, in fact I don’t know if there’s a niche of textile arts that he hasn’t touched.

Even my husband thinks all his stuff is awesome, but my husband has great taste.

The lecture is at 7:00pm tomorrow, and before it there is a book signing and family trunk show & sale at the quilting shop. He will be there from 2:00-4:00pm, and I even managed to convince my boss to let me work through and leave work an hour early (I normally get out at 4). I was pumped!

But today I found out that I have been volun-told to become a Tax Advisor for work, and the first meeting is tomorrow at 2:00pm. Blargh! I don’t even like numbers! I specifically use the tax advisor service every year so I don’t have to think about my own taxes, which are super easy to do, and now I’m going to spend the next several weeks – if not months – doing everybody else’s taxes! Booooo.

Well, I hope that the meeting ends early enough for me to make it to the quilting shop! If not, maybe he will be sympathetic to my story and sign my copy of Glorious Interiors for me at the lecture later that evening if I ask nicely. There were only 120 tickets sold, so I don’t want to have to embarrass myself in front of an intimate crowd!

In other news, soon I will make some noise about the natural snacks recipe book I bought from Kitchen Stewardship(click to check it out! if you like the book and buy it, you will send me a small commission), how I took all the chemicals out of my my under- and over-sink cabinets and my shower ledge, how I cleaned the Hideous Water Stain of Doom using only vinegar (which lead to the aforementioned clearing-out), tonight’s tomato sauce experiment, and updates on the Honey Challenge and washing my hair without shampoo.

And finally, if you are ready to kick all the chemical skin cleansers out of your house and start washing your face with what nature gives us, check out Crunchy Betty’s Food on Your Face. You will never look a store-shelf cleanser, toner, moisturizer, scrub or mask in the face again. That’s right, you’ll just look down and to the side when you walk by, trying not to think about how much you used to like them and how glad you are that you finally realized how bad they were for you. Plus buying through my link will send me a little kickback.

Now, I’m off to wash my hair, it has been pretty awful today. I wonder how much it might have to do with the cucumber juice experimentation.

Cucumber Juice, or, Things You Didn’t Know Were This Awesome

Yesterday I got ambitious on my lunch hour. I’m trying to vary my diet from my staples of cheese, ketchup, and starches and eat in a more “healthy” manner. I had two 3-week-old cucumbers going slightly mushy in my fridge, so I decided to make cucumber and yogurt dip to eat for lunch with a piece of lavash bread.

There are a lot of middle eastern restaurants in the area I live right now, and I first tried cucumber yogurt dip at a Persian restaurant at least 8 months ago. I was shocked. The whole concept of yogurt – eaten sweet and with fruit, namely that sticky-sweet stuff with questionable pulpy nuggets floating around in it that they sell at the grocery store – was totally changed for me. I had yet to try making a cucumber yogurt at home, but it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

First, I peeled my cucumbers. I had bought them in the regular grocery store produce aisle, not organic, so the skin was thick, very dark green, and had a weird waxy texture. I definitely didn’t want that in my juice. It took me about 10 minutes to peel and juice the cucumbers, and clean my juicer.

It's so greeeeeeeeen!

The pulp I saved in a bowl after mixing a couple of tablespoons into a couple of tablespoons of plain greek-style yogurt.

Deliciouussss

The juice I tried to drink, but it tasted awful! Not awful, as in, not fresh, but awful in a concentrated bitter green way. One big gulp was way more than enough for me – it reminded me of medicine or maybe slightly of that sweet and bitter stomach acid taste when you are vomiting with nothing in your stomach…so I knew I couldn’t drink the juice plain, at least.

I let it sit in the cup on the counter for the rest of my day at work, trying to decide what to do with it. After work, I ran around and did some errands, stopped to hang out with a friend for a couple hours, then headed home.

I got home and my face was feeling like I wanted to wash it, plus my friend told me before I left her house that my eyes were looking like somebody had punched me (a combination of late nights, early mornings, and sleep troubles). So, thinking back to the stereotypical cucumber slice on the eyes spa treatment, I dipped my scrubby pad into my cup of cucumber juice and let it sit on each eye for about a minute. Then I used it to rinse the rest of my face with cucumber juice and let the juice soak in for a few minutes, then washed it off with warm water in the shower.

I noticed after a minute or two of the juice soaking in that my face was feeling extra dry and almost burning in places. I’m not sure why, but I’ll look this up later.

I followed up the cucumber juice rinse with an additional honey face wash, logging myself two washes for the day on my second day of the honey challenge. I didnt want to pour the rest of the cup of juice down the sink, so I put it in a spray bottle and sprayed my hair down with it.

My hair has been feeling kind of greasy since I started washing without shampoo about a week ago. I decided to try and use the rest of the cucumber juice on my hair after reading this post. I filled up my spray bottle and sprayed the crap out of my hair with it, then let it soak in for a few minutes while I soaked up the heat of the shower.

After rinsing, my hair felt really awesome. It didn’t have that weird, clumpy, slightly greasy feeling I have been getting with the shampoo-less wash. I did, however, notice that today my hair looks like I have really bad dandruff, even pulled back in a tight bun. I will try to comb it out and see if it improves.

Using the spray bottle gave me the idea to save myself some time and water-spots from getting in-and-out of the shower to mix my apple cider vinegar solution by pre-mixing it and pouring it into the spray bottle. Pouring the ACV over my hair was also not working very well – a lot gets wasted by running off and pouring down the drain, and didn’t penetrate my uber-thick hair. Using the spray bottle, I anticipate being able to lift and spray between layers of hair, which may improve the feel of my hair after washing. If it doesn’t improve, I will follow up the ACV with more awesome treatments of cucumber juice, and keep experimenting with other things until I find the perfect recipe.

Back to the cucumber yogurt – it was delicious. I mixed in a little cucumber juice, and sprinkled the top with Tony’s – my husband got me addicted.

Up close and personal.

It took one piece of lavash bread and a couple of shredded wheat crackers to clean the bowl, and I actually felt full-ish afterward, despite the small portion. The same recipe (with extra pulp, minus the juice, which I used up yesterday and plus a little cilantro) is my lunch today. Tastyyy.

Simple and awesome.

Here are some more awesome things you can do with a cucumber:

• Drink it. I liked this recipe for cucumber juice without a juicer and their suggestion to add sparkling water and lemon juice.
• Eat it. Cucumbers are full of vitamins and most importantly – water. Here are some cucumber facts.
• Clean with it. Cucumbers can be used to remove fog from your bathroom mirror.
• Clean with it more. You can use slices of cucumber to shine your stainless steel.
• Sweeten your breath. Hold a slice of cucumber in your mouth, and it will kill the bacteria that cause bad breath.

Crunchy Betty’s Food on Your Face also has a recipe for a toner using cucumber. If you are interested in finding out which foods you can put on your face and why, you can click here to preview and buy the book. By using this link when you purchase the book, you will be sending me a tiny kickback. And then you can keep it going by becoming an affiliate to Crunchy Betty and sharing with your friends and family!

P.S. Food on Your Face is still on sale for 25% off the regular price, making it only $5.99 !

The Deodorant Experiment

I lost my deodorant.

I had already been cutting back, because there are significant amounts of research being done to try and draw a link between use of products with parabens and aluminum on the armpits and risk of developing breast cancer. While there is no conclusive evidence that such a link exists, the idea that people are questioning it makes me slightly uncomfortable. On top of that, I haven’t really found a good deodorant/antiperspirant…. ever? So the chance to try to make something myself at home for at least as cheap as the “traditional” brands, and at cheaper than the “natural” brands seemed like as good a reason as any to jump in. Also, the deodorant that caught my attention is made completely from things that are already in my kitchen.

Plus, I lost my deodorant.

I just used it the other day, which may have been last monday when my husband was last here….but i have looked for it every day and I have no idea where it evaporated too.

Moving on, this post from Crunchy Betty about deodorant and this post from Kitchen Stewardship about taking baby steps toward switching to natural deodorant were my inspiration. I liked some of these recipes for homemade natural deodorant but i don’t have the resources right now for the fancy stuff :\

So here’s what I did:

1. Mix 1/4C baking soda and 1/4C corn starch with a fork.
2. Add in one TBS at a time of organic virgin coconut oil. Cream the oil into the powders until you get a creamy consistency.


It's fluffy.

3. Add a few drops of essential oil. I don’t have an impressive essential oil stash, so I put in tea tree oil. You could add in any essential oils you like – I’m thinking about adding lemon and lavender to the next batch, if I ever run out of this one.
4. Clean out an old deodorant container, if you want to be able to apply it in the “traditional” deodorant way. Since I lost my deodorant, I couldn’t use a girly-style container. Luckily, I found an old container lying on my husband’s side of the bed that he forgot when he went back to work. I boiled it and scrubbed the inside of the container with an old toothbrush to remove the old deodorant residue. Man, did it stink like a chemical factory D:


Three simple parts.





Nice and clean inside.

5. Use your fork to pack the deodorant mix into the container. I had a little trouble with this, but I found that as the container warmed up to my hand temperature, the oil would warm up a bit and slide further down.


First scoop into the container





Almost fully packed.


I made too much to fit in the container, and my attempts to wipe the excess oil off only made it melt out all over the place.

The mixture was on the mushy side at this point, but I took a little bit on my finger and rubbed it in under my arm. The oil soaked in almost immediately, but the grainy texture seemed a little bit weird. My armpits itched a little bit overnight, but not much of a big deal.

I left the deodorant out on the counter overnight to set, but it didnt really look any different this morning. I rubbed some more in under my arms after my post-work out shower, capped it, and stuck it in the fridge before work.




Firmed up pretty awesomely, with an awesome rugged texture.

It showed great improvement, it was firm and deodorant-y looking. And I rubbed my finger on the top to smooth out the rugged areas. Then I rubbed it under my arms, and it felt pretty good. Like “real” deodorant.



I put this on with a black cap-sleeve shirt on, and the thing I hated most about “regular” deodorant – the white rings under the arms! – they didnt appear all night. The story might go differently over the course of a day, but I’m dubious.

The weird part is my underarms feel kind of grainy, but only to the touch. I was worried it would feel like sandpaper rubbing against my skin, but it’s not noticeable at all. I reapplied after taking a shower tonight, but mostly because I just really like the feel of it. The graininess is a little bit weird, and I feel a little bit itchy, but i didnt smell nasty pit funk on myself all day – a nice change after a full week without being able to find deodorant.

I would love to get a hold of one of those containers for the creamy type “regular” deodorant – it has the dial-up plunger, plus a cap on top with little holes in it. Each turn of the dial pushes one “click” of cream up through the holes, which you spread on using the rounded top. The consistency I got when I mixed this reminded me of that immediately.

The Honey Challenge

Starting today, I am going to wash my face with only raw, local honey every morning for the next 14 days.

Granted, I’m about six months late to the Crunchy Betty Honey Challenge, but it’s better late than never my mom always said.

So, here’s how I plan to schedule this in:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I exercise in the morning before work. I get up early and carpool in to the gym with my friend. We arrive and spend a few minutes chatting (man am I gonna miss that when we both move!) and then head our separate ways to start working out. I sit in the sauna for 15-20 minutes to warm up my back and then get down to some sweaty cardio – bike, elliptical, rowing, or walking on the track (this is actually the hardest of the 4) and then spend 10-15 minutes stretching. We head home after about an hour and a half, leaving me over an hour to relax, shower, change, and make it to work a few minutes early. On these days, I will do the honey wash while I’m in the shower, and let it soak in on my face for 3-5 minutes while I scrub the stank off with some Kirk’s and my awesome new supersecret prototype hand-crocheted hemp/cotton mix washcloths. I will share them with you guys when I get a good, consistent pattern worked out. Then I will rinse the honey off my face with the soft cottony part of the cloth.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I don’t exercise, so it will be harder to drag my lazy butt out of bed a few extra minutes early to wash my face. I usually just…don’t. I usually wash my face at night after I get back from work, and usually just with warm water and a washcloth. So, I will have to find some intestinal fortitude and possibly not snooze for the hour I usually allow myself (yes i snooze for an hour…it goes off every 5 minutes. it doesn’t bother me…) and get up and wash my face. with honey.

Saturdays I get up early to volunteer at the local SPCA wildlife center. I usually have trouble getting up early enough and tend to arrive at least a few minutes late. I’ll see if I can hang on to some discipline and actually wake up early/on time.

Sundays are the real kicker – I usually sleep until at least noon. I wonder if “every morning” really means in the morning? or just when you wake up. Do you have to do it first thing when you wake up? Today I woke up, did some baking and juicing, and then washed my face. Does that count?

The other possible hitch I might have is the upcoming 4-day weekend in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. That means friday, saturday, sunday, and monday, I have no reason to drag my butt out of bed before noon. I love these days <3

In any case, I'm going to do my best to commit to this experiment.

Back to the topic – Day 1 of the Honey Challenge, I washed my face about 8 hours ago and the only side-effect I'm fighting is the urge to go cover my face in more honey!

If you are interested in the honey challenge, or more things you can do to your face and body with honey, go and check out Crunchy Betty’s Food on Your Face. She has tons of peeks and previews on the page, and if you like it then splurge on the $8 for the book. (Hint! It is still on sale for just $5.99. It will be the best six bucks you spend in 2012, I promise you. And buying with this link will earn me a small commission.) There are tons of recipes for face washes, scrubs, masks, toners, and moisturizers that cost less to make in your own kitchen than your coffee at starbucks, and many of them with ingredients you already have in your cupboards.

Tomorrow, I will talk about my home-made deodorant experiment (oh joyy!!).

I went and bought some raw, local honey from Whole Foods:

Raw and gritty

I was curious because it’s labeled “Grade B”, so I did some research and read the United States Standards for Grades of Extracted Honey

From what I gather, my honey is rated Grade B because it has those cute grains of pollen etc. floating around in it. Doesn’t bother me.

So, what I did this morning was:

• Got in the shower, a few degrees cooler than I usually like.
• Washed my hair. I have upped the mixture to 2TBS baking soda/2.5C tepid water, because I wasn’t feeling very clean with only 1TBS.
• Conditioned my hair. I reduced the ACV to 2TBS vinegar/2c tepid water, because I think my hair was getting too greasy with a higher vinegar ratio
• Took 1tsp of honey and slathered it on my face, neck, shoulders, chest, and upper back. I left this on to soak up all the crap from my face while I…
• Lathered up with my bar of Kirks and shaved my 1-week hairy legs.
• Rinsed my face off and toweled off with my new favorite wash cloth.

Honey and vinegar and Witches Brew!

presto change-o! my face feels pretty good. perhaps a little bit on the dry side, but not uncomfortably. I put a few drops of jojoba oil on my shorn legs, and headed out.

If you are considering trying this out, you should read this article which i also linked above, and this article about why you should care what type of honey you use. The principles don’t apply just to honey you put on your skin either – tests have been done that show that the ultra-clear, amber honey bear honey you can find everywhere is not actually honey anymore, and thereby when you use it you don’t get any of the awesome health benefits you get by using natural honey. This over-processed honey can also not be traced to its origin, putting you at risk of eating smuggled honey which could contain illegal antibiotics or heavy metals.

Tomorrow, you can look forward to a post about my trial-run of home-made deodorant. for a preview, take a look at Kitchen Stewardship’s baby steps. I’ll tell you the details of my own experiment tomorrow. If I remember D:

Juice Magic

I have a hate-hate relationship with most fruits and vegetables, but along with some recently developed interest in trying to boost my health and vary my diet from my 4 staple food groups (meat, cheese, carbs, ketchup) I also developed an itch to somehow get a juicer into our tiny kitchen.

A couple weeks ago, I heard an ad on the radio for Macy’s year-end clearance sale. A couple days later, the Husband and I headed down there and picked out the juicer we wanted to take home, and we managed to pick it up at a discount for around $130, including tax. It’s a Breville juice fountain PLUS (i’m not sure what the plus is for) and it’s pretty kickass.

Our first juice!

I do kind of wish I had done some research on juicers before we picked one out, but if I didn’t know what I learned from blatant advertising, I’d be 100% happy with our pick. As it is, I’m 100% happy with what it does for me with my current living situation and lifestyle, but some day in the future when I can afford the time to make my own almond milk and wheatgrass juice and other nerdy health things, I will definitely want to invest in a different style of juicer.

Tonight I was going to make an illustrious, math-centric post about my aggressive debt eliminating plan, inspired by the many, many voices of financially empowered women at Daily Worth, whose newsletter I’ve been reading for the last 3 years (or more). But I’m tired and I have an early morning wake-up, so instead I decided to write a juice-centric slightly mathy post.

Today I went to buy organic produce from Trader Joes. I was expecting to feel a little cringe at the checkout line when they totaled all my fancy organic fruit and veg, so I planned to allot myself $50 to spend on produce that I promise I will use and not just throw into my sweet compost bucket in a few weeks when I notice they are getting a little funky. *ahem*

My other plan was to not walk out of there with anything that wouldn’t fit in a shopping basket (not the cart, just the hand basket.)

I ended up leaving with

• 4 pounds of navel oranges
• 2lbs of organic carrots
• 3 lbs of tangerines
• 2 celery hearts
• 2 lbs of organic gala apples
• 3 lbs of organic piñata apples
• 6 bananas
• 5 lbs of Anjou pears

aaaaaaaand a box of their creamy tomato soup, for dinner.

I dragged my loaded basket over to the checkout counter, watched the cashier ring up all my delicious looking fruit, waiting with bated breath for the total. Aaaaand the total kind of took my breath away, and made me decide to not go back to buying the slightly cheaper produce from the regular grocery store. The kind with that weird greasy/waxy finish that I just can’t seem to scrub off.

My total was a whopping $22.05! Including the soup. If I take the soup out, aaaaaall that fruit was less than 20 bucks. And of course, I took the fruit directly home to start juicing. Tonight I made an apple-grape-pear juice similar to the one we made on our first night with the juicer (above).

For some comparison, here’s a case of 12 bottles of 32oz organic apple juice for $38.99 (not counting the $41.53 for shipping! ouch). Before shipping, that’s $3.25 per bottle, and if you add in the shipping it’s almost $7 per bottle. Sorry but I have no clue how much these cost in the grocery store, because I generally feel like the organic certification requirements are a bit bogus. Also I don’t really like the mentality these days that “organic” is synonymous with “healthy”. There are plenty of things that are organic, but could kill you very quickly if you eat them. Mushrooms come to mind. Lots and lots of kinds of mushrooms.

Anyhow, here’s the breakdown of my juice recipe tonight, along with the price (obviously not including the price of having the juicer in the first place):
2 Gala apples – $0.50
6 Piñata apples – $1.50
1 Anjou pear – $0.44
1 bunch of grapes – $0.99 (not sure what kind, these were leftover in my fridge from 2 weeks ago….i did have to pluck off some mushy ones and throw them in to compost)

The total cost for ingredients for my awesome fresh organic juice is $3.43 (those apples were tiny). It yielded about 30oz, or 2 1/2 glasses of juice, which is more than I really need to drink at once (but I wanted to make it all, just to check.)

In glasses, as evidence
(this has the foam removed btw)

Now, the more expensive the ingredients, the more expensive the juice of course. If I had scrimped on some apples and thrown in a carrot, the cost would have gone down in respect. There’s also the freshness to consider. In the end, my juice cost about $0.11/oz, whereas that other organic, bottled who-knows-when juice ordered from amazon would cost $0.10/oz (without the shipping! with shipping it’s over 2x as much at $0.21/oz!). That $0.01 difference can definitely add up, but while I’m still apartment-living and buying produce, it’s a worthy expense in the interest of health.

Oh, and my $22 of produce will last me at least through the next two weekends, especially if i save the more protected (oranges, tangerines) kind of fruits til the end. And I also still have 2 cucumbers from 2 weeks ago that need to get juiced before they get any weirder looking. Point being, that (multiplied) as a monthly cost for produce is absolutely a negligible and justifiable figure.

I Hate Spray Paint, or, the DIY Compost Bucket

Ok, being a lover of instant gratification, spray paint is just not the paint for me. Sure, I could wait for 1 minute between coats and spray 1,000 coats onto my beloved project for that perfect glossy newly-painted finish. But that’s 1000 minutes of pure waiting, not to mention the time to actually spray, which I’m pretty sure is way more than the time it takes me to say SCREW IT and just hold down that nozzle until it looks the color I want.

But no, it’s looking the color I want, because I didn’t want a drippy Ivy Leaf mess of a bucket, I wanted a bucket that looked like it was originally made in Ivy Leaf. I have attempted to spray paint various projects exactly 4 times in the past and every one of them has come out Drippy Mess. I just really lack the patience, or maybe I don’t use heavy enough layers of primer? Can you prime heavily without Drippy Mess?

On a side note, you know who can spray-prime like a pro? My friends at The Battle Standard. If only I were home, maybe someone could use his pro touch and spray paint my dang bucket correctly!

Anyhow, every time I have gotten ambitious and decide to spray paint something, it turns out the same. About 30 minutes in, I decide I’ve had enough but my project still doesn’t have enough paint on it, so i spray the heck out of it until it looks the right shade, but is in shambles otherwise. I would love to use regular paint and a nice spongey brush, but it just doesn’t have the clean finish of spray paint.

Anyhow, here’s the back story on the paint catastrophe.

I live in an apartment complex that looks like, well, a motel.

Apartment Motel

We started a little spruce-up of our front-of-the-apartment walkway area when a neighbor moved out earlier in the year, leaving a row of free basil seedlings. We snagged one.

Then, the Husband and I picked up a few flower seed packets on close-out at the local hardware store, a couple terra cotta pots, and a sack of dirt. We planted our seeds and they sprouted within days. After that though, they didn’t do so well. A couple of the pots had been over-planted and now, months later, some haven’t even sprouted a true set of leaves yet. So, we saved up a few extra tin cans, spray painted them (with similar drippy results), filled them with dirt and separated out some of the seedlings. That wasn’t quite enough so I used the plastic box from my delicious gingerbread men (apparently you can buy them on ebay?? who’s that desperate! lol) and poked some holes in the bottom for drainage, then put the lid underneath.

Now our front stoop area is all fancy and green, it makes me feel pretty good when I get home.

How Cheerful

Heeeeere are some closeups of our little dudes in action, keep in mind all of these seeds were planted at the same time – even the ones in the gingerbread man box. This is what crowded planting does!

The Basil that Started It All

Some Planter-Cans

A Ferny Plant

Gingerbread Men Box Seedlings

Now, the second part of this is that I really feel bad wasting food. I’m a picky eater, and a small eater, and I all-too-often find myself throwing out something that I made experimentally or cooked too much of. Case in point – the raw sweet potato chunks we put in the fridge on the 25th that I vowed to do something with. I dumped them into a pot today, with the intention of cooking them and then puree-ing into some kind of soupy mess. And then, I saw the gross mold spots, the mushiness of the bottom pieces, and the layer of liquid in the bottom of the cup. They weren’t wet when we put them in the cup D:

This tendency, plus our new front-stoop-garden of sorts, which seems to be wilting occasionally due to lack of fertilizer, has led me to think about picking up a compost bucket, especially in recent weeks with all the special holiday side dishes i made because my husband likes them, but I was skeptical and even though I ended up liking them fresh-outta-the-oven, I know I won’t eat them as leftovers and definitely not over a week later. Also, I want a place to put the pulp out of our juicer other than the garbage can.

When I dumped that cup of mushy sweet potatoes into my pan today, I knew that my compost bin could not be put off another day.

While I could have spent around 30 bucks and get a fancy one that looks like a mini garbage can, I decided to take a hint from this tutorial and make my own. I followed the idea of a charcoal filter inside a bucket with a snap-on lid, but instead of a coffee canister (my boss at work totally drinks the same kind that comes in the canister in the tutorial, but I looked in the cabinet today and there is a brand-new one and one half-full, so no scavenging for me) I went to the local hardware store and bought a paint bucket and lid for $8.49 and spray-painted it – you guessed it – Ivy Leaf, to cover the ugly hardware store logo. I did go to the local privately owned pet store and bought 2 round carbon filters for $3.25. I already had the paint and glue gun. I don’t have a drill, so instead i stabbed the lid really hard with a 3/16 Phillips head screwdriver a few times.

And now, I have a beautiful, albeit drippy, Ivy Leaf compost bucket

In all its buckety glory

The carbon filter inside the lid

Scrubbing Goodness

I couldn’t sleep last night, so I kept busy with a How I Met Your Mother marathon and slowly working up this little body buffing pad.

Scrubbly When Wet

Crunchy Betty’s Food on Your Face

As I mentioned in my previous post, I took a nearly 2-week bender on Crunchy Betty and i’ve been spending a good portion of that time debating whether or not I should go ahead and buy her book.

Welp, it was worth the few bucks and I wish I hadn’t waited! I would have loved to use a few of my lazy vacation days to pamper my skin. Work and medication-related stress have been piling up these last few months and my skin has not been enjoying it. First, my face started breaking out. Then, my back and shoulders, and now my chest and neck have been embarrassingly breaking out off-and-on and I’ve had it up to here!

This book is only 68 pages long, but it’s totally saturated with natural recipes for toners, cleansers, masks and more. It’s delivered in the direct and witty style that got me hooked on reading Crunchy Betty in the first place. Soooooooo what are you waiting for? She even has samples from the book on the page if you are still a non-believer. Plus, if you click here, I get a tiny kickback.

Stop wasting money on expensive health and beauty products! Don’t wait to start putting food on your face!