Tree envy

I was not born in the Pacific Northwest, but I’ve spent almost my entire life here and as such am very familiar with the flora and fauna that surrounds us. One of my favorite things about traveling is that I get to see new things. I avoided taking a million photos of palm trees and cacti, but I did snap these three trees while we were in California over the weekend.

I have no idea what this is, but there were a bunch planted along a street in San Luis Obispo. The bark is soft and slightly spongy, like a mushroom, and the trees seemed to be doing just fine despite flashing the world their inner bark:

Another street had these dramatic specimens. The contrast between the white bark and incredibly dense foliage was quite striking (though it was raining while we were there and some of the bark was water-darkened, you can still see how cool it is):

And who wouldn’t love fresh oranges growing right in the back yard??? We meandered through a residential section and saw several houses boasting their own orange trees, and a lime tree as well. I know, I know – we have apples and plums and pears, but I’d really like an orange tree.

Stunted

Almost three weeks into May and my garden is less than impressive. It has been far too wet and cold. At this rate, I don’t think I’ll get tomatoes until October.

The educated recycler

I popped into a local coffee shop to treat myself to a latte during lunch, and as I waited for my beverage I saw this little display above their garbage-recycle-compost bins:

More places should do this. Seriously – I see so many that have separate bins, but don’t tell consumers what goes in which bin, so they just toss things randomly into bins and completely void the whole point of separating trash in the first place.  You know what I like best about that display? Only the straw is actual garbage; everything else can either be recycled or composted. Hooray!

I didn’t need to worry about that stuff, though, because I got my latte in a real cup. Isn’t it gorgeous?

 

Stepping up

There are 98 stairs at the light rail train station near my office, and 95 stairs at the station near my house. I’ve been working up to walking all 193 of them, twice a day – but sometimes I walk up the escalator which cuts them in half… Not today! Today I am happy to report that I walked them all, both in the morning and evening! And I plan to continue walking them all; my knees have been behaving and I need to take advantage of that.

(half of the stairs at the station near my house)

Got debt?

I’ve made a commitment to make a big dent in my debt by the end of 2011 (can you say “student loans”?), and I ran across a great, FREE, online calculator that helps to prioritize your monthly payments. It works on the “pay down the highest interest rate first” principle, as those cost you the most money in the long run. You then snowball your monthly allotment to the next debt, and so forth. The key is, of course, to stop racking up debt in the first place…

Anyway, while this is not exactly earth-shattering information, I found it encouraging to see what would happen if I eked out a couple hundred dollars from my monthly take-home pay and applied it to paying down debt rather than frittering it away on lattes and take-out food.  Seeing a card eliminated in 12 months instead of years is uplifting and lights a fire under my arse to trim our expenditures even more. Plus, how cool would it be to have the house paid off early??

Here’s a link to the debt calculator.

And here are some ways that I’m trimming our expenses while enriching our lives:

1. Walk to the bus, instead of driving to the park-and-ride. Not only does this save gas (which, at $3+ per gallon is nothing to sneeze at), I walk an extra two miles each day. Combined with taking public transportation in the first place, I’m not spending $200+ a month in getting to / from work.

2. Pack a lunch. Oy, buying lunch gets expensive! Even if all I have is PB&J, I pack a lunch to take to work. Usually, what I pack is healthier than what I would buy, too.

3. Opt for store brands. We always try store brands first, and 95% of the time they taste / work just as well as name brands. For the few that don’t, see #4:

4. Clip coupons. This only really works if the coupons are for items you would already buy, and if the store brand isn’t already cheaper. Also, take advantage of your store’s ‘frequent shopper’ or ‘club card’ savings or programs.

5. Say no to consumerism. Make gifts, or do without. Holidays should be about friends and family, not spending tons of money. If your TV still works fine, resist the marketing that urges you to upgrade to a bigger (more expensive) one. Don’t try to one-up your family with gift-giving.

6. Cut the cable. We did, opting for Netflix instead – it cuts our monthly entertainment down to $13 instead of $50 and we don’t feel deprived in any way.

7. Cook at home. Use inexpensive ingredients as a base (rice, beans, potatoes) and build upon them, keeping meat (the most expensive item) to a minimum. Cook in bulk, too – freezing leftovers for later meals.

8. Use what you have. Rearrange your furnishings / pictures to spruce up your home. Go through closets, cupboards, and the garage to find useful things you have forgotten about. Scavenge. Use the “good” dishes.  Be creative!

9. Stay home. Have a game night, a movie night in, invite friends over, or just sit quietly and read a good book for awhile. Talk to someone. Have a conversation. Discuss what’s going on in the world, or how to grow better petunias. Work in the yard, write a letter, show the kids how to make pancakes from scratch.  We have two closets’ worth of games, and we frequently have ‘electronic-free’ evenings in which we spend a couple of hours playing a board game.

10. Wear it out, use it up. This goes hand-in-hand with buying used, repairing instead of replacing, and just plain learning to live with not being first in line for every new gadget.

Going SLS-free

As I take my health into my own hands, I have recently added another crusade: SLS (and SLES), known as sodium laurel sulfate (and sodium laureth (laurel ether) sulfate).

SLS is an inexpensive surfactant, foaming agent, and degreaser – commonly used in cleansers of all kinds, including shampoo and liquid soap (and shower gel). It is also a known skin irritant. Some say it is absorbed into your body and affects hormone levels. Scare-mongers say it causes cancer, but I couldn’t find any supporting evidence of this. I’m mainly doing this because I am obviously sensitive to this ingredient, as I get skin irritation from any products that contain it.

Having finicky skin is why I make my own soap and lotion. It’s why I wash every new article of clothing before I wear it. It’s why I don’t wear foundation makeup. It’s why I’m very careful about what products I do use on my body, and aim for as-close-to-natural-as-possible.

Well, add SLS to the banned list. I have for years been less than thrilled with commercial shampoos but continued to use them. With a head of long, fine, stick-straight hair it is necessary to wash my hair on a daily basis lest I look like I was bobbing for apples in a deep fryer. Thing is, I’ve also been plagued with an itchy scalp; not dandruff, just itchy.  In addition, shampoo strips my hair down to straw which I then have to remedy with copious amounts of conditioner – many of which weigh my hair down. I constantly struggle with split ends, frizzy fly-aways, and breakage.

With lots of research and a bit of experimenting, I have successfully ditched shampoo altogether, in favor of “shampoo soap” and an occasional ACV (apple cider vinegar) rinse.

The results? Total relief of itching, and no grease head. Less frizzies. Absolutely no weighed-down or coated hair. It’s easy to comb out, less prone to static electricity, and I am noticing less breakage and hair loss (based on how much I clean from my hairbrush).  The cherry topping to this happy hair sundae: nobody notices that I’m no longer using shampoo, because my hair is still clean and fresh.

So, what about this “shampoo soap” I mentioned? Well, I’m using one that I made, which is darned close to the regular soap I make, but it is readily availabe from websites that specialize in natural products. I’ve got several recipe tweaks lined up to try, but really – regular (handmade) soap works just fine. Keep in mind that I don’t color or chemically treat my hair, so it’s 100% natural to begin with. Soap has a higher pH level than your skin/hair, and that can strip out some fake coloring so tread with care if you are trying to cover grey. (Blond is a bleach, not a colorant, so there shouldn’t be any problems if you lighten your hair.)

To balance the pH level and smooth the hair shafts, I use a weak ACV rinse a couple days a week. Right now, I don’t even scent it but I do plan on doing a rosemary infusion (rosemary oils is fabulous for your hair and scalp). Even without the ACV rinse, my hair is smoother and easy to comb. It’s squeaky-clean from the shower but not tangled; this took a little getting used to, as I was so accustomed to that snot-slick feel of commercial conditioner, but now that I”m used to it I can’t imagine going back to that gross coating.

Honestly, I’m thrilled with the results. Dumping the itchy scalp and taking a simpler approach to hair care has been a roaring success for me. Now to convert the rest of the house…

KP duty

We’ve been giving our little kitchen a much-needed face lift, which has occupied my evenings the past week. Since we are doing the work ourselves, spans of time go by where nothing is accomplished (for instance, when I have to make dinner or vacuum the floor) which are then followed by frenzies of activity (tonight’s agenda is to do all the tile work).  While I love working with my hands and seeing such an improvement on our ugly eatery, I do miss my evenings of knitting, spinning, or reading. Here are a few photos of our progress.

Sort-of-Before: By the time I thought about taking a photo, we had already done the cabinets and started on the walls. Hubby added a couple of outlets and we’ve patched the walls. Here is the old laminate, which we removed.

This is the tile that was behind the stove. It’s fair nasty; do you like how the white-and-gold “matches” the old counters? Much patching of the wall was needed, but it was totally worth it to get rid of this stuff. Further down you can see the old flooring, which also has that lovely color scheme going on. Very hip.

Here’s the full length of the main counter, stripped and sanded – ready for new laminate. We had to build some edges and re-do a corner with some creative carpentry. You can also see the pass-thru window in this shot (currently holding tools and assorted implements of torture), which will get a piece of laminate so that it’s all matchy-matchy. Imagine that.

After gluing down the new laminate, hubby handled the router.

Next up is the tile backsplash. Most likely I’ll be setting the tile while hubs does the cutting – and there will be lots of cutting. Old houses are never level. Or square. Or flat, for that matter. The walls bow and bend and swoop all over the place. We’re hoping the tile disguises some of that. It took three tries to draw a level line across the walls for the tile, because the level wouldn’t lay flush to the walls.

Did I mention that there is another counter to do? It’s in the corner and not very big, but it’s holding the the majority of our kitchen “stuff” right now and when we pull the stove out that corner is totally inaccessible. So we get to do all this again, but on a smaller scale. And without the sink in the way.

River bound

We spent the last three days doing very little. Well, that’s not quite true — we did puzzles, took a walk in the woods, read, knit, ate, played games, and made s’mores — all at our cabin. It’s always nice to get out of town, and when you can fall asleep to the rushing river, well, that is just about perfect in my book.

Garden delights

today I got our first real harvest from the garden. We have been enjoying radishes and strawberries for about a month, but today I gathered an armful of organic goodies: garlic, two zucchini, three carrots, a late radish, a bowl of peas, and enough lettuce to feed an elephant. The tomatoes are still green, but I have a good crop on the vines. Still holding my breath about the cucumbers; the plants are pretty small yet.

In season

Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and even a few blackberries are in season around here, and I fully intend to do my part to eat a lot of them. Today I ate a pint each of blueberries and raspberries that I picked up at the farmer’s market, and they were delicious! I just munched my way through them as I ran some errands downtown. ’twas perfect.

I planted three blueberry bushes in our yard this spring, but they won’t actually bear fruit for quite some time…  We should get some raspberries from the plants we put in last fall, however. And we have been enjoying strawberries for about a month now (the ones I managed to snag before the slugs get them, that is).  It’s so much easier to eat well during the summer.