Moving

We did it, we finally decided to leave the current apartment complex (New Soviet Russia, I call it) and apply for a new place, a duplex a block or so away on the exact same street. It has 2 bedrooms and a washer and dryer, and RED CARPETING. Red carpets to me were a little weird at first, but then I thought: Twin Peaks themed living room. We didn't tell anyone about appling for a while out of superstition, AND we GOT IT!
Now all we have to do is clean. And pack. And clean some more. It's 11 days til the apartment is available for us to move in, and another 5 to get the current place cleaned up for the final walk thru. For normal people it probably wouldn't be panic time but I know me and my tendency to procrastinate, so I'm trying to pack and dispose of things now so that we can just up and walk things down the block come the first, then spend the weekend doing the final cleaning. It's funny to watch me go, I'm sure. I do 5-10 min of sorting, packing into various bags or adding to a give away pile, and then 5-20 min on the computer, facebooking or pinning, sometimes with the excuse of looking up tricks to pack stuff or what-have you.
I've blogged about being something of a hoarder, and lazy to boot, and different cleaning projects I've taken on in the last year or so, but there's nooks and crannies I've overlooked for a while, and it's been awesome and annoying, this journey I've taken. For example, finding all sorts of crafting supplies I bought on a whim and squirrelled away: both annoying and awesome. Clothes that don't fit. Clothes that fit. Finding a whole $10 roll of quarters and some cool books I thought were lost forever. All awesome. Except having too many books now. UHG. oh, and finding a million hair doodads and like 10 pieces of old nicotine gum, which I haven't needed for 7 months or so. (Cigarrette free for over 9 months now!)
Then there's the shoes. I won't start on the number of shoes that I found under a chair, covered in dust, that I really like even though I haven't touched some of them in over a year, maybe even 2...They're in the washer in today's "craft project" which is how many pairs of shoes can one wash in the washer without breaking/ruining anything. I took advice from this page, so hopefully they'll be alright.
Oh my goob, look at me, procrastinating yet again. (I'll include any photos I find hilarious, but as long as they're not too embarassing.)

Just some things I've been working on

Sorry, we've been watching episodes of Deep Space Nine obsessively, and I've been pinning again, since we got better internet, so yeah, I've been lazy. But every now and then I get a bug, and then there's crafting frenzy. I try to remember to take pictures.

Knitted bangles. Easy I-cords. I try to connect the ends in the bind off.

Mini pies! Links to recipe for the crust and the inspiration below

Cherry and mixed berry filling, by the way.

Stencil paintings to add to the creepy/cute wall of art. Not that these are creepy...*shrug*

Right: my pies. Left: half of a thin sliced pork sammy from Shut up and Eat

Mini pies: I mixed berries with a bit of sugar in one bowl and pitted fresh cherries with a bit of sugar in another bowl. Eyeballed it all. The only thing I measured was the ingredients for the crust, as it's the first time I ever made pie crust. After a few hours of everything chilling in the fridge, I pre-heated the oven to 375 degrees, like the inspiration pies, cut out and filled them, sprinkled a tiny bit of sugar over the tops, let them chill for about 5 min. in the freezer, and baked them for about 19 min. Since I eyeballed the cutting out, and in the interest of not over working the dough, I didn't pinch the tops to the bottoms like real pies. Oh well, they still taste amazing!
Crust recipe
Inspiration

Wonder Northwest Photo Dump!

I didn't do the LSP cosplay, more on that later.
WNW was smaller this year with more focus on cosplay and artists booths. There were still some comic booths, there was a cute "soap in the shape of cute things" booth, couple of game & toys booths, but everywhere I turned there were artists selling prints, paintings, drawings, zines, or awesome bags...The people attending all seemed younger too, hence all the cosplay. So I *think* some of the art for sale was not being sold. On Sunday when I was getting ready to leave, one person eating outside said, "Oh my god, my friend was so happy you bought her bag!" Whoa, for a minute, I had no idea what she meant, then found out that I was the only person to buy one all weekend...Same with this cool clay/painting thing below, from a table that always sells buttons and magnets. I guess the market was different this year? All in all, it was still fun, but in the future, I think instead of a weekend pass, we'll just get there early Saturday morning.
And even though I used to dress up all crazy as a teen, for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to dress up as a lumpy space princess.  Sad...
On to the photos!

Wrapped in Plastic, 7 issues. The gentleman who sold these to me gave me a 50% price cut. I should have bought them all...

I figured it's best to buy issues of comics in bundles now. Unless I'm searching for that ONE issue of whatever...

First, "Just another Snake Cult" bag. Conan the Barbarian reference. Artwork by Adrienne Tilley Illustration. Links below.

Oh my god, Gir, cupcakes and candy, all crocheted. I don't buy knitted stuff because I can usually figure it out, but crocheted? I'm buying. Chibi Sayuri's Shop of Cute.

Left: sharpie art. I forgot the artists name!!! Right: thedancingbrothers on etsy.

They took a picture of me when I bought this! Anyway, one of the arms fell off in transport, we superglued it back on to the best of our abilities.

Dream King, from the guy who sold me the Twin Peaks mag.

The card in the top left corner is "Nicolas was..." Neil Gaiman's christmas card. 

Links:
Snake bag: adriennetilley.com
Crocheted cuteness: etsy.com/shop/chibisayuri
Clay on Painting: etsy.com/shop/TheDancingBrothers (currently an empty shop?)

Seeing the clay painting thingy made me want to create a wall with cute kitchy, cute/creepy things. Why have I not thought of this before? The crocheted goodies need a candy bowl or cool pastry plate, near the wall of creepy cute art. I don't know what to do with the Neil Gaiman Christmas card. Any ideas?

New melt and pour soap

So far I've made a few batches of melt and pour soap. I have yet to be super pleased with my results, but every time I'm a little closer to awesome.
This is layered soap (honey!), with benzoin and fullers earth clay, colored purple, with various things peppered in. Lavender and rose buds came from the awesome Stone Cottage. This is also the first time I've used this mold.

top two are rose buds, bottom left is lavender and right is dried mandarin orange. that was a last minute idea.

I should make little cloth bags for these so the herbs don't clog up my drain.

closer look at the layers. Should have waited a little longer to pour the second (top) layer.

I melted the soap in glass jars placed in a pot of hot water instead of in the microwave. I used red and blue coloring to make a purple soap. This is also the first time I've used white m&p base, as well as clay. Didn't use any scents, figured the flowers would be enough.
Also found some grapeseed oil, and am infusing rose petals right now.

My next idea is to use the left over calendula and rose buds from the infusions in the honey soap too.

Apothecary day

I know I was supposed to clean this weekend, but family's coming to town so I'll have to slowly pick up when I can. Luckily no one is staying at my apartment.
The box of tulle fabric was delivered quickly, I got it on Thursday. I still don't know what to do with it all! I mean obviously make a petticoat for my LSP cosplay, duah. But today I worked on a different project.
A month or more ago I bought some wild cherry bark and dried calendula petals and got to work. I made a tincture out of the cherry bark via an article from the 2013 herbal almanac. I infused what little almond oil I had left from making lotion with the flower petals, which I hear are good for acne and wound healing. I let them steep a lot longer than was probably called for but I don't think it's too bad. In the mean time I collected inexpensive glass bottles and strainers and what-not to successfully bottle everything up. Sorry there's no progress shots, I wasn't sure if I wanted to post it.
There are actually 3 little bottles all together for the oil, which comes to almost a whole whopping half cup total. There's almost a full cup of the cherry bark tincture. These bottles came from Joanne's for a buck each. The canning jars I used for infusing/steeping were from Target for pretty cheap too, I think like $5 for 4 jars.

Calendula infused almond oil on the left, cherry bark tincture on the right. Pretty bottles!

This week before I bottled the calendula oil, I dipped into it a little, adding a drop or two to my regular moisturizer. Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seemed to me my face (combination skin, acne prone, acne scars) looked a bit brighter and cleaner after the first day. But now I have a pimple on my chin and another on my temple. It's still oil so I gotta be more careful. 
Yesterday I also bought the fabric paint I need to paint my white sketchers purple. To be on the safe side, I also got some '80's themed sharpies, which was the only purple sharpie I could find. Will get started very soon on these shoes: (pardon the dirty soles...)

While I'm at it, I've been reading all over the internet how creating perfect pictues for blogs is a good way to get more traffic so I've started experimenting with putting together better shots. I made this for the apothecary shot:

A box, a white thin piece of plastic that I think came from a shopping bag? some fancy sparkly tulle-like material I picked up from value village for $4 or $5. I almost took it outside but my neighbors were about and it was looking kinda gloomy too.
So hopefully I'll get started on the shoes soon, after a bit of tidying up. It seems like a good project to work on while I'm doing laundry.

Getting ready for geek fest

...It's been awhile. I know. My apartment is a mess. The mania I had right after quitting smoking wore off about the time I quit the nicotine gum (btw, 6 months smoke free!!). Mostly I do sudoku at work when it's slow. I've gotten pretty good at sudoku, surprisingly. I still work out a couple times a week and take half hour walks on my lunch break, but when I get home I sit. And pin. Not quite all the things just yet...but close. OH and there was Voyager. Remember when I said I wasn't really interested? Yeah, that apathy didn't last long. I swear I cried at more episodes of the last couple seasons than I did at during all of Doctor Who series 6. I digress.
BUT (this seems more out of place now that I've added the bit about Voyager)
Wonder Northwest (aka geek fest in my household) is coming in May. I've never cosplayed before (I've participated in live-action rpgs, not that it counts). However, I've always loved dressing up, dreamed up all sorts of costumes but never had the energy or means of actually putting them together. My main obsession in high school was Tank Girl, and with the exception of the hair, I did come close a few times, seeing as how a lack of money really works in favor of said character.
So now I'm taking on a bit of a challenge. I have 39 days (and roughly the same amount of money) to put together a costume for LSP, Lumpy Space Princess of Adventure Time. These are more what I had in mind.
Oh my glob. Mah Lumps...
Pretty much have the attitude down these days, that's for sure...
In the last few weeks I've considered Capt'n Janeway, Jet Girl, and Daria. But I think mostly it's LSP's charm (and that awesome purple dress) that really did it for me. Plus, Adventure Time. Need I say more?
Anyway, this is where the crafting part comes in, because I don't have much cash. I just scored an awesome purple dress at Ross for $15, and I already have some yellow felt and hair bands for the crown, plus a pair of white sketchers and some purple markers (since it's like a comicon, I'd prefer comfy shoes over heels, and rather than buy shoes I'll only wear a couple days, I'd rather modify some ugly free ones). I know where to get a cheap ass purple wig, which I will order after payday. But to make a pretty purple princess costume LUMPY, I feel a petticoat is in order. I have 2 black ones, but ...I need purple...
Petticoats are expensive usually. I spent at least 2 hours looking up petticoats last night, and the cheapest I can find in my size (40" waist), is $36 but will take 13 weeks to deliver. Or I could spend $60-100 for a custom made skirt. WOWZA. I could just risk it and spend about $40+/- for a one-size-fits-most (generally up to a 36" waist) and hope that I can shed 4+ inches off my waist in a month...
OR for $18.50 shipped, I can buy 40 yards of purple tulle from Amazon. And dig up the sewing machine I haven't touched in 4 years. I mean, how hard could it be? This is the tutorial I found via pinterest: Petticoat Please, A tutorial, from Girl.Inspired. Mostly I plan on winging it. I mean, the bottom part is the only part people will see. And I'm kinda lazy when it comes to sewing.
Except my apartment (size wise, about two large walk-in closets with a bathroom and kitchen) wont fit 40 yards of fabric. I mean I am out of space. srsly. There's stacks of books next to my 2 bookshelves. The second "couch"(don't ask) we brought in for company this winter is covered in more books and yarn and the debris of my writing and every day living...Don't get me started on the actual craft table.
And just think, in a week everything else will be covered in purple tulle. ...yay...
So this weekend I'm planning a major cleaning spree. After that, I gotta figure out if my sewing machine still works. (Probably should have done that before I ordered all that tulle...)
Also in the mean time I'll post pictures of the shoes, crown and whatever else I get done. And the petticoat, obs. Some one please wish me lots of luck...

Organizing and budgeting my way.

Hey guys, I don't know where to keep all my thoughts about recent activites but here, so I'ma go head and give it a whirl...
This weekend has been great, organization-wise. Yesterday morning, drinking my coffee, I sudddenly proclaimed: "I need to clean something." So I cleaned out all my old clothes, ones that are too small, too big, holey, stained etc. It was a great feeling, getting rid of 3 1/2 bags of unnecessary crap. It kind of felt like going through a thrift shop, trying on everything to see how it fit, if I liked the style still, and what have you. About half a bag went into the trash, the really horrible I wouldn't give this to my worst enemies sort of stuff. Because I live in a weird communist "village," I just went ahead and dumped the other 3 bags into our free pile. (but i just know that the stuff I tossed will make it into the free pile too. it's gross.)
After that was cleaning, sorting, hanging, folding...finding a better way to store my clothes, so each week when I do laundry they're easier to put away. I'll be honest, for a few months I've been living out of my laundry basket and a pile of clothes stacked on a chair. Usually when I use my dresser, I "fold" things and stuff them in the drawers without much of a system beyond: top drawer=socks and under things, middle=tees, bottom=pants and anything else I want to forget about. And the closet? You don't want to know.
Now, my dresses, skirts and button up tees hang in the closet, along with a few sweaters (oh, I have this neat closet hanger organizer, seriously awesome). I found that the hangers you get bras on make AWESOME skirt hangers, too. My dresser system is still kind of the same, only I've made 3 piles known as work, tanks, and weekend clothes, rolling up the tanks to fit better(folding the others for better access). I have more bras than usual (yay!) and more pants so I drug a cool plastic organizer into the bedroom for those items, and my "under the bed" tote (that doesn't fit under my bed) is behind that against the wall full of clothes I'm saving for craft projects. Oh, and the bottom drawer of the dresser is still holding a few things that I can't bring myself to get rid of, but that I've promised myself to do something with within the next 2 months (either reconstuct/craft, give to special friends/family, or donate).
I've done things like this on a smaller scale, and even tried to sort the clothes, but never really gave much thought to an actual system like this one. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm super stoked about this.
That was most of yesterday and about another hour or so today. Because the sun was out for the most part, around 1:30-2pm, we decided to begin our search for a new coffee table. The old one was a thrift shop score, less than $10 from Value Village about 6 1/2 years ago, a chipped bean shaped thing with WHEELS ON. Seriously. so cool. Until one leg kept falling off. and then a wheel on the other side kept falling out. You know, because it's on wheels that I use multiple times a day. It's where I keep my laptop, so I'd just wheel it around where ever I needed it. Hence, ruining it.
Moving onto the find of the year...We don't live much past Division, so after a lunch of Little Big Burgers (best of the city), we walked a couple blocks to Village Merchants. They recently moved to the other side of 39th into what used to be a neat hardware store, to anyone who's familiar with the place, and a bit closer to Trade Up music.
Score! a new table-sans wheels, for $16 from the upstairs area. There were quite a few more tables within our budget (under $70 or so) but this was sturdy, about the same size as the last, and light enough for us to carry home. Plus, you know, under $20. It's been painted over black, and yeah, the paint's chipping a bit, but the legs aren't about to pop out, so awsome. Introducing a new piece of furniture into our place takes a bit of "neatening up" so that's nice too.
On the way back we passed the grocery store so Tony waited with the table while I grabbed a few things I can't usually find at our closer store, and after things got settled I made 6 breakfast burritos with eggs and chorizo sausage and tossed them into the freezer (inspired by this, which I discovered through Pinterest). I'm not a morning person and for most of my life I get my coffee and breakfast from cafes or where ever, as long as it doesn't involve me cooking at 5 am. Generally this costs roughly $5-10 a day, depending on where I go or what I order. For a while now I've attempted to bring coffee or granola bars with me, but damn I love breakfast burritos. So for under $10 I've made enough food-6 burritos-for a couple weeks. There are also 4 more tortillas and plenty of cheese left. (Quesidilla snacks!) If I had thought it through more clearly, I'm sure there would have been 10 burritos, but I was intoxicated by the essence of chorizo and eggs. I also want to try them with hashbrowns like the recipe calls for.
Also, I bought oatmeal for one of my favorite baking projects (also pinterest inspired), oatmeal bars with cranberries, chocolate chips and almonds. That way I'm not eating the same thing everyday. And I got some andouille sausage to cook up and add to a corn and black bean salad I wanna make for lunches this week.
Oh, and pinterest. I'm pretty sure when I haven't been cleaning or shopping, I've been pinning. But today, seeing what it has inspired, I'm pretty impressed with what it has done for my life. 
Holy crap, I've been writing this for almost an hour! And I've got a kitchen full of dirty dishes.
What about you, are there ways you like to prepare for the week? Or times when you know it's time for a change in the way you do things?

More adventures in soap

Spent a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend. Today was another soap adventure. I wanted to make some cool sage soap but was getting sick of my (awesome) only real soap mold, the celtic heart. I tried a plasic container lined with plastic wrap, but didn't really care for it. Looked around some more, found my old muffin tins that aren't reusible from some long ago baking spree before I got awesome real muffin tin. I googled using a muffin tin in soap making, and I'm pretty sure you can only use this method for melt & pour soaps. I went here for one key piece of information.
Results:

Here's a few pictures on how this came to happen

Lavender and white crushed sage

soap and spices

some of the green inside the blue

 I did do a couple more celtic hearts too:

first attempt with sage and lavender

evidently one needs a special soap base in order to suspend things and even herbs in soap

...And some here are some cookies, pinterest inspired, recipe for brown sugar cookies here

We're also having tacos with chicken I cooked and shredded in the crockpot yesterday.
What about you? What do you like to craft on the weekend (or any spare time)?

hurry up and craft

I haven't got anything against Star Trek, I swear. But for all my interest in comics, sci-fi, and all things fantasy, the idea of a Voyager marathon today isn't what I'm feeling. When T, who never gets sick and yet is sick, asked if we could get these episodes out of the way so he could return the discs to his friend, I immediately thought, I need to craft. So, yeah, as long as you're ok with me running around getting things done...
I had a zombie dream last night, where I was trying to cure the "zombie virus" with essential oils (I made a small amount of eucalyptus rub for T the other night for congestion, maybe that's why?), and I've also been on a craft-using-only-what-I-have-kick*. Oh, and I've been reading The Complete book of Incense, Oils & Brews by Scott Cunningham. Put all this together and you get smelly soap balls.

Green eucalyptus and lavender balls, for sick people.

an intersesting mix of sandalwood and violet leftovers, and 2 different types of purples.

Reddish purple sandalwood celtic heart soap in mold

Violet essential oil scented. they were all made into balls, but this pic was supposed to show how cool they looked as chunks, almost crystal like.

Detail of sandalwood celtic heart.

The goods, in nothing fancy packaging.

I used Melt and pour soap and supplies from wholesale supplies plus (except the essential oils, which came from Moonshadow magic shoppe), with Crafters Choice coloring in forest green, candy apple red and something something blue. (A wave of exhaustion just washed over me. too tired to get up and look at the bottles.)
*an explanation of craft-only-what-I-have-kick:
I'm a crack-head when it comes to trying out new crafts. I realized this after xmas, when I bought a crap ton of yarn, a book on liqueurs, a bunch of glassware for apothecary stuff, and couldn't find places to put it all among all the leftover supplies from last years "new" crafting (woodburning/pyrography, stamping, soap, ect). So now I'm not going to buy more craft crap until I've used up (or given away) the old stuff. There was an attempt at a plan to do something each week until i was out of supplies, but that is way too organized for me. I also wanted to discipline myself by not using the new yarn until things get done, but hell, it's a cold winter here in P-town (yeah, that false spring sunshine from last post is gone) and I need a bunch of warm stuff.
Also, I got impatient with liqueurs. I'll give it one more shot, with almond flavoring, and maybe try out some tinctures, but I'm much more comfortable with oils and herbs. 

I know it's not spring but it feels that way.

In Portland I expect rain and weather that rarely goes below 35 degrees F. I don't expect to see the sun or patches of frost all over the ground, more like puddles, mudslides, and concrete grey skies if I can look up for more than a second without drowning. Seriously.
So this year I'm seeing the sun almost every day. And patches of ice on the ground...and freezing fog...morning temps around 24, which for us is really damn low, or maybe I just never paid attention to the weather growing up.
About 8 weeks ago, out of curiousity, I planted a bunch of stuff in the window.

garlic greens

Chamomile, anise, peppermint

I never expected this in such a short period of time.
So now it looks like spring, a very early, cold spring. That can only mean that I'm lighting candles and incense, listening to my (mostly) 90's Pandora station and spending what little is left of my limited funds on cleaning supplies for some early deep spring cleaning.
(What the hell else am I gonna do when my upstairs neighbor is building shelters and rabbit proofing her hardwood floored apartment above me at 9am?)
Right now I'm taking a lunch break after breaking and repairing the mop and scrubbing my bathroom floor.
All I can say is that it appears that my Virgoan nature takes over when I am not smoking (100 days last Saturday) and while I wasn't planning on doing this when I requested today off work, I don't have a choice.
Besides, now I have no money left to do anything else.
Ok, and it's kind of fun. kind of.
But the best part will be getting the kitchen clean, so I can continue to cook and make more crafts, and inevitably mess it up again.
Today's plan after the kitchen is clean:
Soap making
Liqueurs
Dessert which might be this or these

Wish me luck, all. The bathroom was easy. I'm dreading the kitchen for some reason.

YUM

Our toaster oven is probably a month away from a grease fire. Maybe that's what makes everything taste so much better though. So. Super. Easy. About half way thru toasting 2 frozen waffles, toss a marshmallow on top of one, and let it get kinda toasty/caramel colored. Slather on some hazelnut cocoa butter, and make a sammich... Oh, yeah, and consider cleaning out the toaster oven. I used gluten free waffles from Trader Joes, not because I'm one of those gluten free peeps, but because they do taste pretty good. Marshmallows are from Whole Foods, which is pretty much the only product I go there for, specifically.
Enjoy!

bring in the new year

Happy new year!

Mason jar + champagne

stupid bruise (NOT caused by champagne)

It has been almost 3 months since I quit smoking, and since then I've been a bit like a fruit fly on crack, in that I find little ways to occupy myself, but for short periods of time. Keeping updated here would have been crazy and impossible because I wasn't interested in any one craft long enough to take pictures, write about what I was doing and hit the post button. But here's a taste of what I've done in that time.

Thanksgiving, baking, and wearing a hand made hat and triangle scarf.

Baking and knitting. I also did some writing on a story I started a year ago, but obvs I couldn't take a picture of that. You probably wouldn't want a to see that anyways. ...chaos. really.
Learning new crafts:

Making apple pomegranate liqueur!

Unfortunately I didn't do everything I wanted to in 2012 (I blame pinterest...just kidding), but I did things I never thought I'd do, and I'm certain I'll do more hopefully awesome and unexpected things in 2013.
Here's some of my faves (recaps!)

Twin Peaks themed tattoo

New glasses

wood burning

wood burning

More baking

cleaning and organizing my kitchen (newer pic)

showing off my pretty spice jars

For the holidays I got lots of new yarn, specialty types, so my goal for the new year in knitting is to work with materials I've never used before, and to eventually write my own patterns. I also have an idea for dishcloth knitting, but I'm not ready to share that yet.
In 2012 I quit smoking and using any nicotine products, and started an exercise program, which I want to continue to expand. My main goals for the new year are to keep busy and to work on positive things.
What are your goals for 2013?