Jonah Lisa Land

Boo!

Sorry I cut class yesterday but I haven't gone to the bathroom since Monday.  Thank you for understanding. 

There's nothing quite as roll your eyes predictable as a humongous pregnant chick in the check out line with nothing but a giant bottle of Milk of Magnesia.  I considered buying a few extra items as subterfuge but all I could think of was Hostess Donettes and US Weekly.  Somehow that seemed even worse.   And let me tell you, low crime rate aside, it's times like these that living in a small town sucks.

Hopefully next week will be smooth sailing with posts...and everything else. 

So, enough people were freaked out by the Killer Tomato belly pic I did on Pixelmator--my very cool but much cheaper Apple version of Photoshop--that I couldn't resist doing another one today. 

Happy Halloween!

Sheriff's Log :: 3

OCT. 13

10:03 am  Report of a PT Cruiser just hit a deer and drove off.

12:41 am  Two kids between 12 and 13 years of age are shooting off a handgun into a dirt bank and pointing it at each other.  Contacted juveniles and found they are just shooting a BB gun.

8:14 pm    There is a herd of horses out on the road heading toward the highway.

OCT. 15

2:54 pm    A heard [sic] of cows were reported on the road.

4:01 pm    A kid was reported huffing something in the parking lot.

OCT. 16

9:59 pm    Cows at large on Bates Road.

10:10 pm  Hit and run of an elk on Teton Pass.

OCT. 18

12:38 pm  A 50-year-old adult female was stung by a bee.

5:35 pm    A cow was shot dead.
 

7:59 pm    A mule was found up Pole Canyon.  The resident that found the mule stated they were going to leave it tied up but check on it at a later time.  If abandoned they stated they would take care of the mule until the owner claimed it. 

One Pretty Thing

My infiltration into the craft blog world continues... WHA HA HA HA HA!   If they ever discover I don't know how to use interfacing, I'll surely be bound and gagged with cheap, polyester yarn and ridiculed openly on CraftSanity.

My Felt Autumn Leaves Garland is being featured today on a site I only recently discovered myself.  And it is oh so cool.  One Pretty Thing is billed as "daily inspirations for a beautiful life" and features fabulous DIY projects from all over the web.  The focus seems to be mostly, though not exclusively, projects for the home.  It's like The Crafty Crow for stylish grown ups!  Rachel has an amazing eye and all the projects are gorgeous.  I'm very flattered indeed.  Please pop over and visit her site.

And for all you One Pretty Thing regulars visiting this site for the first time...Welcome!  There are some get to know me pages on the top of the first sidebar along with all the other typical navigation features. 

Enjoy the show.

Extra! Extra!

Just a coupla quick points to notes...

The Crafty Crow just ran another project of mine today--the Knight's Sword and Shield I made during my Cheap and Easy Toy Week.  Welcome back Crow readers!  Cassi's been doing a ton of Halloween crafts, snacks and costume ideas lately so if you're having a party or trouble coming up with costume ideas head over there for inspiration.  Only 4 more days to go!

And Jean over at The Artful Parent is closing her Etsy shop so everything in stock is 50% off.  She has lovely stenciled shirts for babies, toddlers and big kids and a few gorgeous pendants for Moms.  I just snapped up a few things.  There's nothing over $7.50 people!

And, final point of interest, I'm finding even my big pregnant girl panties very, very constricting.

Green Cleaning :: The Extras

This is green cleaning recipe post number 2.  A few weeks ago I loaded you up with The Basic Arsenal (Clean, Mop, Dust and Shine) and now I'm back with a few extra recipes for more specific applications.

As I've stated before, this way of cleaning is not only better for the environment and your family's health, it's also alot cheaper.

  

                              THE EXTRAS                            

FLUSH

1/4 cup White Vinegar
1/4 Baking Soda

You can also add 10-15 drops of essential oil.  Lemon smells great but I prefer Tea Tree Oil which has awesome natural disinfecting powers.

It will foam like crazy when you add the baking soda.  Let it stand for an hour or even overnight.
I like to do the vinegar first (it's such a great whitener) drop in some oil, then come along a little while later and add the baking soda and scrub.

Some say the best bowl cleaner is to swish in a 1/4 cup of straight Borax and let it stand overnight.  I did this for a few hours (not overnight) and didn't find that it whitened as nicely as the vinegar & baking soda.  Others may have different results.

Also note that the baking soda/vinegar mix is great for keeping drains clean.  Try this before you use a commercial drain cleaner if your sink is draining slow:  Sprinkle baking soda over the drain, pour vinegar over it, let it fizz and then sit for 5 minutes or so and then pour a kettle of boiling water down the drain. 

LAUNDER

There are great recipes out there for making your own green laundery powder or liquid detergent.  I don't do it.  It's just a bridge too far for me.  I use a good biodegradable laundry detergent.  I've tried many: Seventh Generation Liquid, Ecover Liquid, Ecover Powder, Earth Friednly Liquid, Planet Liquid.  What I feel cleans the best is Country Save Powdered Detergent.  But in case you want to venture into much cheaper world of making your own laundry detergent here are some well reviewed recipes.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

One of the other big keys to green laundering is using COLD WATER.  Studies show that cold water is just as good at cleaning as warm and it's much better on your clothes.  Most normal households (not cattle farmers and oil rig workers mind you) can get by using cold water for every load except for those occasional really dirty gardening or mud puddle loads.

BOOST

A typical laundry booster many people use is bleach.  Bleach is a pretty nasty poison.  Alternatives include Non-Chlorine bleaches (Seventh Generation and BioKleen both make a good one) and dry oxygen bleaches.  But I prefer the 2 below for their added boosting effects. 

1/4 cup Borax - Whitens AND boosts cleaning power
1/2 cup Vinegar - Whitens AND cuts static cling and strips chemicals

For stains I generally use a store bought stain remover like Ecover.  But I've also rubbed a plain bar of Fels Naptha directly onto many stains and never been disappointed with the result.  Talk about cheap.  You can find it in the laundry aisle in most grocery stores.

SOFTEN

Dryer sheets contain all kinds of yicky chemicals and fabric softener liquids actually build up in your clothing which makes them get dirtier faster--sort of like using too much conditioner in your hair (which is all liquid fabric softeners really are).   Plus, most things don't need to be softened.  I mean, come on, cotton is pretty soft to begin with.  If you really must soften something like a load of towels or sheets or jeans, try this instead.

1/4 cup Baking Soda (in the WASH, not the dryer!)

If it's the smell you like most about dryer sheets, put a few drops of your favorite essential oil on a piece of flannel and toss that in the dryer with your clothes.

RINSE

I use this as a rinse in my washing machine and in the rinse aide dispenser of my dishwasher. 

1/4 cup-1/2 cup White Vinegar
Essential Oil of choice

In the clothes washer, vinegar helps strip out any remaining soap and gets rid of the chemicals on new clothing.  In the dishwasher, it eliminates water spots and detergent residue.

     

CONDITION

I talked in The Basic Arsenal post about not using furniture polish because you are really just creating a surface that attracts more dust.  It's really true.  Even so, fine wood furniture does need to be treated and conditioned now and then to keep it healthy.  The thing to remember is that conditioning a piece of wood and cleaning it are two different beasts.  Dry dust and spot clean your surfaces frequently, but use a non-toxic furniture polish like the one below very conservatively only when your wood needs a good conditioning. 

Straight Olive Oil or Mineral Oil

Pour oil straight onto your finished wood surface and rub it all over with a soft cloth.  Keep rubbing and rubbing until it's nicely absorbed and there's no oily residue visible on the surface.

Same goes for leather.  I condition my leather in a 2 step process.  I wipe it (chair, purse, jacket, whatever) with a damp sponge to clean.  Seriously, nothing on the sponge but warm water--maybe 1 DROP of a mild liquid soap if something is really dirty but I think water does a good enough job for most things.  Then I wipe the entire surface with a soft rag and Olive Oil.  With leather, put the Olive Oil on the cloth, not directly the leather and only use a teaspoon or so.  I did an entire overstuffed leather chair and ottoman and probably used less than a Tbsp of olive oil.  And by the way, the chair look great!  Just rub until the oil has really been absorbed.

   

FRESHEN

Baking Soda, scented or unscented

Nothing like a sprinkle of straight baking soda to freshen the carpet, trashcan or diaper pail.  And to freshen the whole house while you vacuum try dropping a few of these in the bag:

Cotton ball with 5-10 drops of any essential oil

That's it for green cleaning.  I hope you give this lifestyle change a try.  It's not that hard.  Over the past year I've successfully removed all conventional cleaners from my home.  I spend less at the grocery store, still have a clean house plus the added peace of mind that comes from not having dangerous chemicals and poisons around.

...........................................................................................................

For more my main green cleaning recipes check out Green Cleaning :: The Basic Arsenal.  Also visit Green Cleaning 101 for a list of pantry items & other great resources and ideas.

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Because it makes people sad.

   

I don't want to go to the mailbox.
    Why not?
Because the mailbox makes people sad.

I don't want to give you a hug.
    Why not?
Because hugs make people sad.

I don't want to put on my pants.
    Why not?
Because pants make people sad.

These are not the lyrics to the newest Coldplay single.  This is Huck's current answer for anything he doesn't want to do.  He delivers the line with his very best sympathetic tone and a facial expression that says he's really only trying to save the world from more heartache.

I think he's trying to play on the whole bleeding heart liberal thing, but maybe I'm just overly sensitive to manipulation right now.

I've got wood

Firewood!  <Sheesh, people>

Stephen spent the weekend stacking it.  We were going to make it a family project, but he just up and did it all.  My hero.  I didn't have to pick up so much as a stick of kindling.

That's is our new, classy, cheap and fully patented wood stacking system--2 cinder blocks, 2 beams, 4 2x4s.  Boom.  Done.  Pretty smart, huh?  I put the kibosh on spending $200 on a fancy iron frame, but we needed something.  Previous years our stacks have been very haphazard and a disastrous frozen mess by January.  That's only one cord of wood, with only half of it visible--there's another identical stack behind that one under the tarp.  We mainly use our stove for ambiance, but it also keeps the propane cost down and it's a necessity for those nights when the electricity goes out during a big winter storm and we need a secondary heat source.  

Our first winter up here we lived in an old farm house built around 1900 that was horribly insulated and heated almost entirely by a wood stove.  We stacked in 3 cords of wood that fall. 

I wasn't grinning like such a fool once the actual stacking began. 

Aside from being as drafty as a rotting barn that house was really interesting.  It was owned by a Swiss world antiques collector (we didn't have kids back then).  It contained a huge Chinese Puppet theatre (complete with spooky puppets) that had been hidden away and then smuggled out of China during the cultural revolution, lots of African jewelry, textiles, masks and spears, and a wooden sculpture of a sacred bull that served as our Christmas tree that year. 

Here's the sacred Hindu deity adored with wanton commercialism in celebration of Christmas.  Blasphemy or refreshing acceptance of world cultures?  You be the judge.

Our second fall in the mountains we were building our house and in an effort to save money as our construction loan payments were steadily rising, we moved out of the funky farm house and into a Yurt for 3 months (mid-August to mid-November).  Don't know from yurt?  This is a yurt.

It's a round, hide tent used historically by Mongolian nomads.  The place was so dirty when we moved in, I just sat down on the floor and cried.  Stephen gently told me I needed to cowboy up and reminded me that the owner's wife had lived in it through 3 winters.  To which I screamed, "She's tougher than I am!  She has a mustache for fuck's sake!"  Not one of my finer moments.

It really wasn't all that bad.  It was just the initial shock.  It was strangely peaceful to live in a round structure in the middle of the woods with fresh air constantly blowing through.  The center of the roof was a plexiglass dome so we literally slept under the stars with the sounds of nature all around us.  And we had every modern convenience exactly 4 modern conveniences--running water in the sink (cold only), a toaster oven, a mini fridge, and high speed internet!  The bathhouse was outside, down a short path.  A round structure made of cordwood that had a toilet, hot water and a sauna.  Not too shabby.  Of course you had to make lots of noise before you headed out there at night because there were also bears.

I actually came to enjoy yurt living...until October.

A modern yurt isn't made of yak hide, you know.  It has canvas walls.  Ours was 100% "heated" by an old wood stove up cinder blocks.  It got cold.  If you let the fire die out in the night, you'd wake up to ice in your nostrils and your boots frozen to the floor planks.  In early November that year Stephen (our nightly fire stoker) had to take a week long trip to New York for business.  I just don't wake up on my own in the middle of the night usually, so the fire almost always went out and had to be completely relit in the morning.  Coldest I've ever been in my life I think.  And I'll admit, one morning I did resort to peeing in a saucepan while I worked on getting the fire going.

We ran out of wood the last week in the yurt.  We mooched off friends like a couple of beggars.  We even went back to the farm house under cover of darkness and "stole" a little of the wood we hadn't used from the previous winter.

All this to say, wood is important up here.  Having enough firewood, the right kind, having it dry and well stacked--these things matter.  It makes me feel very comforted to have this chore done, and done so well, in mid-October.

Let it snow.

Sheriff's Log :: 2

As said last week, this is a new Wednesday feature here on The Toby Show. Get used to it. These are unedited entries from the actual County Sheriff's log up here where I live on the Idaho/Wyoming border. This installment is a little longer than I expect most will be. What can I say, it was a banner week.

OCT. 6

10:06 am    Fraud was reported after a suspicious circumstance arose.

12:37 pm    Water dispute occurred.

OCT. 7

 2:46 pm    A citizens arrest was attempted on felony warrant charges.  Didn't work.

 4:29 pm    Suspicious behavior of kids in bushes at City Park.  Possibly smoking marijuana.

 6:06 pm    Indecent exposure was reported.

OCT. 9

12:21pm   A reckless driver was reported doing donuts out by the dump.

1:35 pm    Two campaign signs were reported missing from resident's front yard.

3:58 pm    Dead horse reported.  Resident suspects someone might have wanted it for bear bait.

5:45 pm    Resident reported a reckless driver, possibly on drugs or drinks.  Resident stated the driver hits poles and garbage cans every day.

OCT. 11

11:14 pm   Four or five bulls were in the cemetery.

5:20 pm    A finger amputation was called in and a man requested that an officer ensured his safe arrival.

5:42 pm    Fifty cows were headed across Bates Road before the bridge.

7:16 pm    Poacher was reported off-roading and shooting deer near town.

OCT. 12

6:59 pm    Two loose cows were reported in the LIl' Tykes Day Care area.

8:21 pm    A woman called in reporting an angry man was hitting her in the head.  

Comment freely.

Green Holiday Series :: Homemade Gift Box

I posted this last year but I'm bringing it back to the top of the blog for the Green Holiday Series and because it's such a handy idea and lots of people liked it.  For the last couple of years, I've been making these great little gift boxes using old greeting cards and Christmas cards. They are the perfect size for jewelry and gift cards.

It's a skill that was taught to me by the proprietress of my local bookshop (Thanks Jeanne!).  It's simple and easy and a great way to reduce, reuse and recycle for the holidays.  It's ideal for using up the left overs from last years Christmas cards but I'm very intermittent about doing Christmas cards.  Most years I just don't get to it.  Hitting after season sales is another great way to stock up on cards and I often end up using the free card samples I get from World Wildlife Fund and UNICEF.   Holiday timing is also perfect for using old calendar pages to make larger boxes. 

GIFT BOX TUTORIAL

STEP 1:  Gather what you'll need.  Cards, scissors, tape, and a pencil (coffee optional).

STEP 2:  Cut the card in half.  The front will be the top of the box and the back will be the bottom of the box, with the message (if there is one) on the inside of the box.  Mark the center of each piece by laying a ruler (or just the other half of the card like I did) corner to corner and drawing a faint line in roughly the middle.  Now do the other corner to corner and your X will mark the center.

STEP 3: Start with the bottom piece.  Fold the long sides in to meet in the middle.  Then fold the short sides in to meet in the middle.

STEP 4: On the short end of the card, cut from the outside in, just up to the fold mark.

STEP 5: Fold up the long sides and tape the flaps together.  Then bring the short ends up, fold down any overhang and tape again.

STEP 6: Repeat steps 3, 4, & 5 for the top of the box (front of the card).  But remember that the top needs to be just a tad larger than the bottom.  So, when you fold the sides in, don't bring them exactly to the center mark this time.  Leave just a little bit of room.

And that's it!  Cute little gift boxes that don't even need to be wrapped.  Perfect for jewelry, gift cards and other small stocking stuffers or gifts.

Don't forget to check out the rest of the Green Holiday Series, especially the other post from last year on Green Gift Wrapping using drawstring bags.

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Check in for next week's installment.

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Welcome again Parent Hackers!

I've got another post up on Parent Hacks today so Hi to everyone visiting from there.  Have a look around.  I've put a few new features up recently--A Green Holiday Series and a brand new Wednesday feature called Sheriff's Log.  Both are accessible through buttons in my sidebar.

Huck and I have colds so I'm taking the day off but everyone can expect another installment of both series on Tuesday & Wednesday, respectively.