Organization, Baby Steps

Our kitchen cabinets are the original to the house, steel mid-Century GE space age things. We have a dream of having the painted at a car place, but not the funds, so they're rusty and imperfect and perfectly suited for the aesthetic of the rest of our home.

Anyway, a few days ago I was unloading the dishwasher for the bazillionth time (really probably the 3rd time that day...how?! why?!) and decided we needed a better system for the utensils.

As with 90% of the population I vowed not to be more frugal this year, so naturally Charlie needed to make a a custom sorter for the drawer, right? The old and icky contact paper needed to go, too, so I thought a nice piece of fabric doubled over would be a better alternative (after all, it could be washed when the time comes). I measured the drawer, marked the size on the fabric and quickly serged the edges together to make it into a large mat.

Not too shabby for a quick project that didn't cost an extra dime to make, huh?

New product shots

When there's work to be done and 2 kids who both want attention, you have to figure out the simplest (yet somewhat elegant) solution. This is what I came up with:

Product shots using our neighbor's aged wood siding for a rustic back drop.

Feeling the farmhouse vibe? When things (if things?) calm down again, I can do some styled shots, but in the meantime, I'm diggin' these. A big ol' thanks to the Hubs for taking such pretty photos!

More KTSD

Still making progress despite 6 inches of snow (no quick trips to the hardware store) and my week down with the stomach flu (C on full-time kid duty). The image just below was the plan. Then we realized a slide-in or drop-in stove would double or triple the cost of what was already in-the-distant-future stove. THEN... the snow melted and C schlepped the kids across town to Ikea, only to find out the oak butcher block counters we were counting on have been discontinued.

So I guess we can just nix that mock up. We're thinking of doing polished concrete instead, but adding another DIY to the to-do list, 2 young and energetic kids (meaning there's only 1 person who can work on the overhaul at a time), and the house being in shambles...Let's just say I'm not so sure about that.

A few more garden critters

We're finding a lot of critters in the few minutes we spend outside each week. It's so hot I have a hard time motivating Mabel to play out there and should admit that I'm pretty happy to sink into the couch for a while each afternoon, too.

We found another batch of swallowtail caterpillars, both of which are now chrysalis. Saturday night I made a sorrel tart. The sorrel, straight from the garden to the kitchen, had lots and lots of little snails which I collected in a jar. I told M we weren't going to keep them, but they're still in the jar on her work table (aka the den coffee table). I'm thinking we could become Matthews, NC's first escargot farmers.  

A Big Shop Announcement

I've been debating over whether I want to reopen the shop, deciding how to balance all of my interests without falling prey to the need to constantly update the shop and maintain competitiveness of mainstream consumerism. (Anyone else feel like etsy no longer sets an independent pace but pushes shop keepers to stay ahead of the retail curve?) I don't have the drive to make items based on holiday themes, nor do I have the time.

All rants aside, when the shop reopens, I'm going to have a different structure and a different process: I will just offer 1 print at a time in very limited editions. The paper, the size and the time of availability will vary, but my goal is to have a new design every 2 months. If an edition doesn't sell out, I'll still pull it from the shop.

It's a way for me to keep pushing myself, stay outside that retail rush, and feel passionate about my product.

This print is nearly finished, and will be the first available in a 16 x 22" poster as an edition of 10 ($75). Smaller prints (8 x 10", edition of 20, $30) will be available through the fine retailers that carry Wolfie and the Sneak wares.

Action vs In Action

I'm full of questions these days with not much content for blog writing. In November I hurt my shoulder when I switched to 3 days of strength training a week. The shoulder pain lasted for well over a month, and in that month plus I became workout lazy.

Well 8 months later, I'm kicking myself in the pants and getting back to it. All of that work before? Down the drain and my weight is just shy of where I was before. In all honesty I thought blogging about this aspect of life would help me maintain personal accountability. I don't really think it did, but I have had great conversations about health with readers, conversations that wouldn't have happened had I said nothing.

So here's the deal: I'm back on Weight Watchers and I'm going to the local Y. Here's the question: Is this content you're interested in or something that makes your eyes glaze over? If it's interesting, how much information is interesting and how much is too much?

Want to read recipes and talk about food? Would you rather laugh at my pain (I went to Zumba yesterday, there's a lot of fodder for laughing there) or should I just stick to gardening and art?

Do you feel my pain or feel painfully bored when this topic comes up? Want to join in the fun and make the process a group effort? Want the whole issue to just go away? Spill the beans, people!

The pitter patter of progress

Look! Just for you I created a fun survey where you can tell me which type of column you'd like to see on our house.(Woo hoo! Lucky you!!)

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Though I'm not sure this picture says a lot, compare and contrast with this one and see all the work we've done.

Mabel went to Nana's and Paw Paw's so I thought we'd spend the weekend solely working on the columns, getting the project finished. There are, with us at least, certain methods to our DIY madness and sometimes we have to be honest with ourselves about these projects. Money is limited, and it is the facet we most often have to remember.

Despite my hope for a big unveil this morning, we had a budget set aside of less than $80. Most of that ended up going into reciprocating saw blades. We bought a $20 one meant for cutting iron which turned out to be overkill; a $3 blade for thick metal was actually the blade we needed. When you're talking about an $80 project, $23 takes a big cut (no pun intended). It didn't leave us enough to get the wood for the facade of the columns, and we decided to wait to get that wood anyway. For a nominally larger cost, we can get a higher grade board from a local lumber yard rather than from the big box store. A higher grade board will mean less knots and mars, making the finished column smoother and much prettier.

This coming weekend we'll both have paychecks to dole out for the finishing wood and trim, so until then our yard will remain (as one friend deftly put it) one trampoline shy of redneck gold. All of that is to give a glimpse inside how our renovations work: with time, ingenuity, and a little bit of spending money. Oh, and a generous Nana to keep the little one distracted and happy all weekend--essential to success.

It took an entire day to get the iron work down and the 4 x 4 (actually 2 2x4s laminated and screwed together) cores for the new columns up. That "entire workday" happened on Saturday, after I spent 6 hours volunteering at the community garden. My body still hurts.

On Sunday Charlie mended the fence while I built a small retaining wall from some 4 x 4s we had on hand. Having the dogs in the fenced area most of the time, they've created paths where they run laps around the perimeter of the space. That path, even on a gently sloping hill, has created an erosion problem which, in turn, created soil build up around the fence at the bottom of the hill. The soil build up pushed the fence every which way, making it lean and wobble. Once again the fence is perpendicular to the ground and we're already seeing and hearing the pitter patter of progress.

When work is slow I can draw in a relatively distraction-free zone for hours at a time, provided I don't hop on twitter or facebook... Those are my happiest days, the ones where I work the day job (which means we have health care coverage for our family) but I also get to have a creative field day. Yes, I do know how fortunate I am!

A couple of those kinds of days plus a few good afternoon naps for Mabel so I can scan, color everything in, and make the drawings into repeats and I actually get stuff done!
I ordered 2 yards of each on organic cotton sateen. These will become tea towels. (Of course, that's as soon as I have another good nap day with Mabel...amazing the things I can get done when she takes an afternoon nap.)
 

If you like these, check out my other fabric patterns on Spoonflower.

Family Dinner Traditions

Family dinner is a fantastic thing. Unfortunately (brace yourself, I'm about to let you down) we don't sit at the table and have them very often. Um, actually never. We did for a while, but for whatever reason we haven't found a dining table set up that keeps that role. Instead it's covered in fabric or another project. Right now it's just sitting in a room that doesn't heat very well, so that room stays blocked off through the winter. I know, weird. Whatever.

But the past 2 nights we've made dinner as a family. That, my friends, makes for some spectacular fun while working the kid's brain and forcing C and I to maintain a steady and heaping helping of patience.

Some ground rules: Mabel isn't allowed to get near the stove. She's not allowed to use knives, either. She's a great helper with stirring, kneading dough, and, when all else fails, sweeping the floor. Inviting a toddler in the kitchen makes for messy cooking--none of that clean-as-you-go stuff. The extra bits of time go into engaging her young, active mind.

Sunday we spent the day being lazy and doing whatever we wanted,randomly convening in the kitchen to work on the simmering from-scratch chicken noodle soup. Mabel's job? Take the pasta dough and roll it into little balls, then help roll it out through the pasta roller.

So she's 2 and she's already helped Mama make buttermilk biscuits, egg pasta, and turned masa into tortillas. Now that's a family dinner tradition I think we can keep.

Everywhere Are Signs

I've done a little bit of hand lettering for signs in the past, but the most recent one was also the most fun. Now I'm thinking I want to brush up on my skills and do a few more! Maybe we need some hand lettered signs around our place. Hmmmm.

A weekend of progress

This is how we started off on Saturday. Pulling down the old ceiling which was water damaged from a roof leak and a couple of tiles were actually falling down.

Inspired by Abbey's ability to get stuff done, I set a goal to finish the room this weekend. So what if it was totally unrealistic? By 7 PM Saturday the room looked like this. (We're waiting to see how much/if the bead board will settle before trying to pull it flat around the edges.)

Then on Sunday morning I woke up at 6:30 while the other 2 2-leggers in the house slept for.another.2.hours. and touched up the paint, moved the orange rug back in and did a little bit of laundry purging.

When we demoed the closets to make the laundry area we saved the wood from the shelving. My granddad built the shelving from construction scraps and old army crate wood. I liked the idea of reintegrating them into the house somehow--you know, keep his industrious spirit a part of the place. The legs to this low table came from some of those shelves. I asked Charlie to make me a 56" long x 22" wide shelf in different types of wood so we wouldn't feel obligated to make it all matchy matchy.I like how it's rustic. Add a few houseplants on it and then we're really talking!


So maybe it's not totally finished, but it's so much better than this, right?

Still to do: Add ornamental trim around the door area to the washer/dryer to keep the look of woodwork uniform with the rest of the house;
hang bi-fold doors to hide the washer/dryer area;
paint trim white;
add sewing table top;
replace blinds with something (anything!) more attractive;
change the rug - I don't want to keep the orange rug, but since we already have it (no more money to spend on this project), for now it stays.

cramming vegetables every which way

I posted about watching Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead and the quest for a juicer, but haven't updated you since then. We found a juicer on Craigslist, a Champion 2000+, and though we haven't used it all the time like I thought we would, we've used it a handful of times. It has certainly inspired a different mindset in my dinner preparation, albeit accidentally. I went a little overboard buying produce to juice...as in the fridge was crammed full of collards, kale, chard, turnip greens, spinach, cauliflower and fruits.The result was a week crammed with veggies in every manner possible. Here's a little recap:

Creamy cauliflower and greens soup with grilled hummus sandwiches (I saw on Facebook Jen was having them and totally loved that idea)

This is a chicken, chard coconut curry sort of concoction. Martha Stewart has a recipe for Chicken Spinach Casserole, that's pretty good, but I didn't want all that cream. Instead I subbed the half and half with coconut milk, added curry powder, ginger and lemongrass and deleted the bread crumb topping.

Last night we had leftover stew. Basically the liquid is a quick chicken broth mixed with leftover cauliflower soup with shredded chicken, carrots and chard.

Thursday night I made a big ol' batch of green juice. The colors (before mixing together into a muddy green) were fantastic thanks to kale, apples, lemon, oranges, and carrots. Oddly enough, kale juice has a faint banana flavor to it. Who woulda known?

What's your favorite sneak-a-veggie recipe?

Laundry List

This is going to sound whiny and privileged, so bear with me and know there are also regular life things going on, so the following "issue" isn't really an issue, just an ongoing search for a clutterbug's organizing solution.

Our laundry room is in an upstairs alcove, which means it's visible as a space you walk past anytime you're upstairs. It's a 10 x 10' sunny, warm, welcoming spot when clean, but a stressful eyesore the rest of the time. Let's face it, stressful messy rooms don't get used, and I need to use the laundry room or they'll start complaining at work. 

In my eternal quest for a vacation-land home, I'm stuck. We have a few items (pictured above: free desk rescued from the dumpster by the Mr., similar dresser to the one shown via Craigslist, 3 sorting baskets from Ballard Designs) and I want to keep it as simple as possible.

Any great ideas come to mind for helping me make our ugly space pretty? I'm ready to start outsourcing laundry...hey, that's not such a bad idea. 

A brief intro to our indoor composting station

In case you haven't noticed, we take our compost pretty seriously. There's a worm bin in the kitchen, and passive piles (sometimes hot...but to be honest I haven't had much time to keep turning them so they're passive for now) in the yard. The chickens do a lot of compost work by eating veggie scraps, but we don't give them spent coffee grounds, onions, garlic and a few other things; our worms get those.

The worm bin, though was too awkward for our new kitchen arrangement. In order to get into some of the cabinets the bin had to be moved, and worms don't particularly care to be bothered with that. They like to have little by way of change, so I'd been considering a vertical worm bin for some time. We'd kept them going for 3 years in the storage tote bin, I finally decided it was time to move them to something a little fancier: a Worm Factory. Lucky for me, I know a guy.

I got in touch with my friend (and fellow Master Composter) Stefan and ordered the Worm Factory and a bokashi bucket. {Because if you're going to have worms in your kitchen you might as well have fermenting waste as well, right?}

Bokawha? Bokashi is an anaerobic form of composting. You're basically fermenting the food scraps. I thought we should add that to our composting repertoire because you can add bones and dairy to the bokashi bin.

Adding meat to my diet way back when created a new challenge for our household food waste. Before, when there was meat in our house, it was only Charlie's meals and I wasn't a fan of touching/preparing the stuff, so everything was of the heat-and-serve variety that no longer resembled the formerly living creature it once was. No skin, no bones, no fat to cut off.

Now, though, the meat comes straight from the farmer; it looks like meat, there are bones, there is skin, there is fat. Usually trimmed fat and skin go to the furry kids, but bones pose a risk so they are sometimes used for broth preparation, but ultimately go to the landfill.

After little rearranging in the kitchen, the worms are in their new home and the bokashi has started a-brewing. I'll keep you filled in as things progress, but for now I love the fact that I can open the cabinets without shifting everything around. A bonus for the new set up? The two new bins take up less space than the old worm bin alone!

Clean Up Duty

To anyone with neat and tidy tendencies, these pictures probably don't look too different. I'm not a neat and tidy gal, though, and yesterday's picture of the sofa cover reminded me of just how "cleaned up" our lives on the internet seem to be. Even I, queen of pack rats, tidy up my photos before presenting them to the world.

As I read Sea + Prairie, I'm reminded of the pervasive neatness we see all around us on the internet. Tidy pockets of perfect lives, except this one profoundly honest woman who seeks and speaks truth. Eren reminds us that life is full of learning, truths and even some struggle, but that's okay, that's just how it is.

We've all got pretty pictures to share, but how many of us are brave enough to share the messes that go along with them?

When working through ideas for ephemerealization, there were several ideas and prototypes that didn't make the cut. Two of the building prototypes were doily embellished and gave off just a little too much of an Anthro vibe {not the look I wanted}. They were pushed to the side, but came back out when the 2nd log sprouted mushrooms.

Though they're just past their freshness prime in this pic, they sure look cozy, don't they?

Art and Life

A little bit of work, a little bit of play. 

{Yep, that's a fabric banner we printed of a custom logo design.}

Behind the scenes

The holiday season offers us crafters endless opportunities to push our wares on the masses.It can get tricky figuring out which show is when, the word on the street about which shows to do (good organizers, bad organizers, buying crowd, I-can-do-that crowd), and just how much driving is too much.

Some consideration even goes into which areas of the country dig what you're selling. We have had one good show here in Charlotte...the holiday one we organized several years ago. Just a short 3 1/2 hour drive to Raleigh and we've had some of the best shows we've ever done.

Some winter shows have already closed the application process (The Handmade Market in Raleigh and Boston Bizarre Bazaar are 2 examples) while some are still open (Baltimore Holiday Heap and Richmond Handmade Holiday are but 2).

It's all a process that basically boils down to two questions for me: Where is the fine line between doing what I love and crossing over into bitter holiday exhaustion? Just how much excitement vs. exhaustion can we lovingly share amongst our little family?

Are you a craft show creeper? How do you plan your show season each year?

Against the grain

Let's continue the talk about coming home from vacation and having the energy to maintain cleaning mode, shall we?


I've started a 30 day grain detox...yep, internal cleaning. I'm on day 3 after a vacation packed with sugary, wheat-filled delights. I've been a bit crabby, not unlike the agitation that comes along with quitting smoking. Fun times, right? You should all wish Charlie well through this, it might suck up all the extra patience he's ever had!

Homegrown cow and black eyed peas as well as simmered

and mashed figs (our own) with applesauce.

The Matthews Fitness Together is doing a 30-day Paleo Challenge. I thought about going full force and taking part in the challenge, but after 10 years as a vegan I've decided deep down I don't have the personal fire it would take to stick with this particular way of eating. I mulled over the challenge and the part that stuck out most to me was eliminating cane sugar and grains (see numbers 9 and 10). Eliminating cane sugar eliminates a bunch of nasty processed non-foods, and eliminating grains (fingers crossed) will help me get creative and add more veggies to my day.

I'm also hoping it will jump start the all-too-stubborn weight loss effort that stalled out about a year (A YEAR!!) ago. Wish me luck. Anyone else out there off the grains? Any tips for a newbie?

the underbelly of the Sneak

I've been getting up at 5 every morning to work on printing orders for shops. I've worked out 3 days this week. I've gone to work my desk job every day and then home to work my real job (mama-ing). Then it's time for laundry, dinner, and any other cleaning I can fit into 2 minute increments.

I'm tired. (Enough with the whining, I know.) We're supposed to take a quick little jaunt to the beach, but that's all up in the air now, thanks to Irene. She seems to want to see the NC coast, too. On a non-related (but far prettier) note, another skirt:

Since I had Fat Roll Friday once before, I thought I'd share the strength part of my Wednesday and Friday workouts this week.  We do a 45 minute work out that consists of a 15 minute warm up, 15 minute skill building and then a 15 minutes of strength building. I'm writing it out because it makes me look tougher than I really am.

Wednesday: 90 sit ups, 160 lunges and 68 25-lb kettle bell push presses in 15 minutes. My bottom hurts, but that's it! A few months ago I would've been immobilized.

Since Wednesday's lunges didn't do me in then today's 11 minute workout of 60 sumo lifts (15 pounds each arm), 120 15 pound kettlebell rows, and 120 side lunges with a 15 pound kettlebell probably will. Yeah, I can hardly move around and today I've already run upstairs and downstairs at work more than I usually do in a whole month.

To distract you from the pain, I present to you some feathery culottes. If for no other reason, simply the word "culottes" should make you smile. Say it with me: CULOTTES!

There you have it. Some pretty, some ugly, just a bit of life from the underbelly of the Sneak!