Pinterest Wednesday: the day your breath started smelling like onions forever

You guys, seriously. Seriously. You will smell like red onions for the rest of your natural life and you will not care even a little.

I made this for dinner Monday night to top a lentils and rice dish I made and I haven't stopped eating it since. It is summer in a bowl and I long for the day i can make it with produce fresh from the farmer's market. It's cold, crisp, refreshing and just delicious. I'm used to making this type of salad with an olive oil, lemon, garlic dressing but the red wine vinegar, olive oil, oregano is a new winner.

Click the picture to get to the pin, then to the recipe, then to heaven in salad form.

Pinterest Wednesday: Treat yo cuticles!

Please click through to the pin for recipe

Because this winter has been so harsh and because he often works outside, I made some cuticle cream for my boyfriend for Valentine's day. I used the recipe linked above because it looked pretty simple and ordered my supplies from Mountain Rose Herbs with the exception of the essential oils which I bought from my lovely and amazing friend Heather (if you're in the Mount Pleasant area and would like to buy from her, email me!).

In the days leading up to the time I planned to make this, I kept tracking my package from Mountain Rose Herbs and watching it get closer and closer until a major snow storm slowed it down, so it was late and I didn't get to make it in time for Valentines day. Hoist by winter's petard again! When my package finally arrived, I kept checking the pin all day to make sure I hadn't forgotten something. I tend to be the queen of getting ready to make a "simple" new recipe that I have read a thousand times only to discover that I missed the fact that it requires unicorn tears and some complicated piece of kitchen machinery that I do not own. But everything looked to be in order and you know what? It totally was. The beeswax takes FOREVER to melt but other than that, this was no problem whatsoever! I don't have a double boiler so I just melted everything over low heat (FOREVER) and did homework at the counter while I stirred.

Because the recipe makes so little, I doubled it and kept one tin for myself. I love it! I've been using it every night before bed and I've definitely noticed a difference in my cuticles but most importantly my fingers aren't cracking by the corners of my nails anymore, which was happening a lot and is very painful. As the website mentions, it's not so much a cream as a balm: the ingredients are very solid at room temp so you don't scoop this in your hands as much as you rub it with your finger tips until it warms and then spread it over your cuticles.

This is a complete pinterest win and I HIGHLY recommend it. Also, I HIGHLY recommend Mountain Rose Herbs for all your herbal product needs. Their prices are fair and I love their values and mission. I used one of their 4oz tins for each of the batches of cuticle cream and it was perfect.

Pinterest Wednesday- Messy Microwave

Living alone means pockets of grossness can happen in a relatively normal looking house. I'm the only one who sees certain things so I'm not always super picky about how they are cleaned. Especially if, like a microwave, the pocket comes with it's own door that you can shut and forget that you said "YUCK" out loud when you opened it.

It was gross, ok? And I'm not going to post pictures of it here because I didn't take any because I was in a hurry to clean. But I tried this technique (click on the image to see the pin and subsequently the webpage for a full description) and it worked really nicely! You still (if you have let things get as bad as I did) have to scrub a little, but a wet dishcloth was all it took. I highly recommend this!

Pinterest Wednesday: Winter Minestrone

This minestrone was a success on many levels. First, and most obvious: soup is great for winter, especially a hearty soup like this one. Second, I made it ahead of time and it reheated really well. Third, it was cheap and fourth, it is healthy. Oh and fifth, it is really delicious.

It does take a lot of chopping and a lot of veg. And it was too big for my soup pot which meant a mid-cooking transfer to the big soup pot, but live and learn. I recommend chopping the vegetables up the day before if you're going to make this on a weeknight because by the time you're done chopping you're going to be too hungry to combine your ingredients. And use your big soup pot from the beginning because this recipe makes a lot of soup!

Enjoy!

Pinterest Wednesday: Flaunt your flautas

In an effort to make my weeks less hectic, I'm trying to do more meal planning and cooking ahead. Now, that might seem unrelated to this post because I definitely did not cook any part of these ahead BUT I COULD HAVE and might in the future. I mention it because even though I was a bit lax on my prep work, these were quick and easy and done in about 25 minutes baking time included. That is not bad. And the 15 minutes it took them to cook was just enough time to clean the kitchen, which was rad. So the theme of this post is: I was starving, I didn't plan ahead super well, and these still turned out great.

 The first example of my not planning well was that the tortillas were frozen. Oops! But, pro tip here, if your tortillas are frozen and you are preheating the oven, spread those babies on top of the stove and they will be thawed in time for you to fill them with flauta goodness!

Thank you, iphone for these terrible pictures.

 So then I mixed up my business. I used frozen corn from this summer's CSA which was still frozen when I mixed this up and was just fine. I left out the peppers because I didn't have any and I didn't do any sort of "mexicorn" like the recipe calls for (click on the first picture to get to the pin which you can then click through to the complete recipe). It's called winging it, people. I also completely forgot cheese which explains why these were pretty low calorie when I did that calculation. They were good without it but I will add it next time if I remember.

So, you're pretty clearly supposed to use smaller tortillas, because the ends got kind of burny after 15 minutes and there was a lot of extra tortilla but other than that these were totally delicious, pretty filling, quick to make, and there are lots of opportunities to make parts of this ahead of time if you are so inclined. They were also relatively inexpensive, so I'm calling it a win all around!

New Years! 2014 for the win! (a sort of Pinterest Wednesday)

Happy New Year! In writing this post, I looked back over past blog posts because I was sure SURE that I must have written before about how much I love New Years but NO! Not one single New Years post to link to! Whaaaaaaat?

I'm a huge believer in new beginnings of all kinds. Remember how every first day of school you thought THIS WAS THE YEAR you were going to stay organized and have a clean desk and never lose a pencil? Or was that just me? Regardless, I know calendars are arbitrary and everyday is it's own new beginning and blah blah but on January 1rst a lot of people agree all at once that it's a new year and resolve to do things differently and that's good enough for me. I'm pretty much the same as everyone in that I make resolutions and stop/break them by the end of January. And I'm ok with that too. There are some that I've kept: I make my bed everyday and I'm pretty sure that was a New Years resolution. I put on makeup, perfume, and jewelry every morning before work because it makes me feel like less of a slob and I think that was a resolution too. I'm careful not to make too many resolutions including the words "always," or "never," and when I use the word "everyday" I mean it the same way I meant it when I said it about making the bed and getting ready for work which is to say "most days" and probably never on a Saturday or Sunday.

Because this is a Pinterest Wednesday, the pictures link to my Resolution board on Pinterest. Oh, tricky tricky!

I resolve:

-to knit instead of play with my phone after dinner (it's better for my focus, my eyes, my happiness).

 -to make time for yoga weekly.

-to work a little toward various goals and big projects calmly everyday instead of freaking out and fear-watching too much Netflix.

-to remember that I am enough, I do enough, and I'm right where I should be and to listen to my breath when I needed to be reminded of it.

-to do the dishes everyday. And to remember that it makes me feel good to wake up to a clean kitchen counter.

-to be quiet and listen more often.

-to journal everyday.

-to blog three times a week.

And that's it! In short, I want to knit, write, and be more mindful. I want to stop freaking myself out and indulging in counter-productive behavior because of it. If I move in that direction this year, I'll be pleased. It's not about the number of times I do something, really, or doing something daily without fail. It's about gently guiding yourself in the direction you'd like your life to go. And that is why I love New Years.

What are your resolutions? Do you make them? What are you hoping for out of the new year? Regardless, Happy New Year everyone!

Pinterest Wednesday: Christmas Edition

Merry Christmas to you and yours! I hope everyone's enjoying  a quiet, restful holiday!

As I mentioned I was not originally going to knit anyone Christmas gifts. But then money got away from me and I got ambitious and I got on a knitting kick, so I decided what the heck! I don't have the resources to give all of my friends gifts, but there are some friends that I would like to give more than just a Christmas card. I found this pattern on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect. They are quick, easy, I could use yarn I already had in my stash, and they are cute!

You could do a lot of fun things with this pattern: use sparkly yarn, add beads, do different colors, etc. I actually knit the stars and made them into individual ornaments for peole and didn't do the garland, but that would be a fun/pretty project too! I was going to do an i-cord border in a contrasting color, but then I remembered my love/hate relationship with i-cord borders and this was meant to be a quick project so I refrained.

Here's my first one! It was a really simple project with minimal construction at the end. I will say the pattern doesn't describe wrapped short rows very well, but I had just started working on another project that involved them so I knew what it was talking about. So if you're reading the pattern and unsure on what to do, that's what it means: wrapped short rows. You might want to find a video or other instructions if you've never done them before, but rest-assured they're super simple once you know what to do.

Have you ever knit Christmas ornaments before? Do you have any favorite patterns? And one more Merry Christmas!

Pinterest Wednesday- Book Declutter

So remember that time I wrote about 100 ways to improve your life in 60 days? Well, I've been working at it in fits and starts. Not everyday, but as I pointed out at the time, I'm the boss. So ha! Take that, The Man! Or whatever.

Anyway, as a move toward greater organization, I decided to rearrange my books. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel I should tell you this was not a calmly planned initiative. No. Rather it was late on a Friday night and I was bored and sick of sitting down and realized one of my Sherlock Holmes books had been laying horizontally across the top of the other mysteries for far too long and I had an OCD freakout.

So I pulled all my books off the shelves and sorted them into piles. This is toward the beginning or end of the freak out, this is hardly any of the books I have. I've always loved to read and always collected books. I have many, many books. And I love organizing them. There's a reason I work in a library, is what I'm saying. I also love talking to people who love books about how they organize the books in their home. I don't know if I've ever heard two people describe it the same and I love that. It's all about being able to find the books when you want to, there's no right answer. Mine are organized first by genre: poetry, anthropology, art history, crafts, cookbooks, general science, mystery, science fiction/fantasy, women's studies, essays, etc. Then by author's last name and then by title. I have 5 book shelves and I arrange the genres in different areas for different reasons. The cookbooks are on the shelf between the kitchen and the living room, as are the craft books.

But I digress. Basically, you organize your books how you are comfortable organizing them. I have my way, you have yours. No judging.

One advantage to organizing your books late at night is you find books like this and laugh like a loon for far too long because you are tired and wish you hadn't started this big project, but you can't very well stop.

I got everything reorganized and back on the shelf and I even had a small pile of books I was willing to give away. I piled up the books I haven't read and put them by my bed. Then I turned around a saw this:

Ah, that small stack of books that I forgot about that would necessitate massive shifting to put them where they were supposed to go. Isn't that always the way with projects? Why didn't I turn around 20 minutes earlier?! At this point it was about 3 am so I went to bed anyway. Actually I think that stack of books is still sitting on top of a bookshelf.

Oh well, I can't be perfect because then there would be nothing to reorganize!

Pinterest Wednesday- Laundry Detergent

A while ago, my cousin Natalie and I decided to try our hand at making our own laundry soap. We came across this recipe:

It looked fairly doable and we were in the mood for a project. I cleaned the kitchen and then took a picture of it because my kitchen is never this clean except for right before a project:

Notice the cat tail by the garbage can? Constant cat photobombing could be the title of my memoirs.

And then we were off to Meijer. We found everything we needed for the laundry soap itself in the laundry aisle (imagine that!) and then found containers in the...container aisle? Wherever all the Rubbermaid stuff is.

The first step is to grate the Fels Naptha. The original pinner made some joke about its looking like cheese but not to eat it. It really, really looks like cheese. At this point, I discovered that the smell of Fals Naptha is one of my favorite smells. Saying Fels Naptha is also a pretty good time.

Say it with me now: Fels Naptha (it's not cheese).

After you grate it, you dissolve it into some water on the stove top (for the exact recipe, please click on the first picture) and then add your Borax and Washing Soda. Eventually you pour it into a bucket. A single batch looks a little something like this:

There's more stirring and a lot more water pouring. Note to self: buy a bigger liquid measuring cup. Measuring out one gallon plus six cups of water with a one cup measure is no fun at all.

And here was our finished product! We split one batch between the two of us. I have since used mine up (it took about six weeks of doing laundry everyday) and made another full batch just for me. This is a great recipe. It's super cheap (I think we figured out we spent $8 on our ingredients and from them you can get 3 full batches. After that, you'll need another bar of fels naptha, but that was $1. The washing soda and borax will last for many, many, many batches.) and super, super easy. It's not even that time consuming (especially if you have a larger cup measure than a dinky one cup, I'd imagine). We did not add any essential oils for scent, I've always used unscented laundry soap, but you easily could. I'm still experimenting a bit with how much to use, but a quarter cup usually does well for normal to small loads and for bigger loads I add another quarter cup.

Overall, I am a huge fan of this and intend to keep making and using it!

Pinterest Wednesday (a little late, shh!)

Hello everyone! Today's Friday edition of Pinterest Wednesday is brought to you by my very messy back room:

This is the "craft" room. It's been various levels of untidy during the entire time I've lived in my house. I decided to make it my first priority in my decluttering project because it's the only room in the house that is completely unusable and I find it horrifying. It's not always quite as bad as in the picture above, but it's never been great. This used to be my ex-boyfriend's office when we lived together and when he moved out at first I thought it would be GREAT to turn it into MY office and craft room! Hooray for healing! Instead, I would get tired even looking at it and go take a nap on the couch or knit something. Emotions, man. They'll getcha. But now I'm further away from the breakup and ready to dive in to some decluttering! I split this unholy mess into categories: paperwork, craft supplies, stuff under the table, stuff on the table, the bookshelves, and the closet. And since I have so many days on my 100 days to declutter list open, I can take just about as much time as I need to with each category.

I have some meetings coming up for which I will need certain papers, so I decided to jump right in with the paperwork. I put a bunch of it in a bag and brought it out in the living room to spread out. When I got back from grabbing my phone so I could take pictures, I found Harper inspecting the bag. "Oh, that's so cute," I thought and snapped this picture.

Little did I know she was going to try to help me with the recycling:

 

And with the papers I wanted to keep:

Other than my adorable (and annoying) cat, there isn't too much excitement in sorting papers. I sorted them into keep, recycle, and shred piles. It's still a work in progress but it will be a good feeling when I can all of this organized. Step one toward decluttering is a go!

The beginning of Pinterest Wednesdays

Hello and welcome to Pinterest Wednesdays!

As part of my goal to blog more, I have given myself three recurring blogs to write each week. On Wednesdays, the idea is Pinterest Wednesday. This also incorporates my goal of trying something I've pinned on Pinterest each week. Hopefully, the knowledge that I have to write a blog about it will inspire me to plan on trying a pin (might be a recipe, might be a craft, might be a product, an exercise who even knows? SUSPENSE.) and hopefully actually trying a pin each week will give me an easy blog to write leading to more regular blog writing. Killing two birds with one stone is the only way I kill birds! (Metaphorically is also the only way I kill birds).

So to kick things off, I looked at my Pins I've Tried Board. But I didn't feel inspired to write about any of those things. Some of them, I'd already written about and the rest just weren't doing it for me. So I picked a new pin:

I will be honest, I largely picked it because the mug looked beautiful. And it was such a peaceful scene that it made me think: Heck yes I want to improve my life in 60 small ways over the next 100 days. 

Then I read what the 60 small ways were. Hmmm....not so small as such. At least, not all of them. Some of them I think are great and doable. Some of them I think are great, just not for me. And some of them I just don't want to do. That's what great about writing your own blog and doing your own things: you can do and not do pretty much whatever you want.

Now let's get started: it looks like you're supposed to do all of these things all at once, which I find overwhelming and silly, so I'm going to start one at a time.

Number one small way to improve your life: Create a 100 days to declutter calendar- make a list of 100 things to declutter and do one each day. I typed up my list quickly, mentally moving around my house in a circle. It was actually kind of hard to think of 100 things, so I tried to break bigger things into smaller parts. Even so "Basement" is 30 of the things (mostly because my basement is big, totally cluttered, stinky, and scary, so I'm only going to be able to be down there for maybe 15 minutes at a time) and I left 63-100 blank. As I start this project, I might need to break some of my list items into smaller chunks, or I might think of other things to do. I'll be sharing them here on Pinterest Wednesdays as I go.

What pins are you doing? Are they going well or not so good? Do you have 100 things you could think of to declutter?