cooking : crafts : organization : gardening : thrifting : going green
I got this sun jar as a gift quite a while ago, but for some reason my first attempts at using it didn’t work. I was resigned to thinking I got a broken one, but when I went through the basement digging things out for our garage sale, I saw it sitting there in the [...]
Wow, is November a busy month for craft fairs. My first is on Sunday, and it’s a new one! Check out the Green Gifts Fair at the Des Moines Social Club. Then on Nov. 21 comes Craft Saturday, which is always full of great vendors around holiday time. And finally, as an alternative to the [...]
If you need to clean gunk out of your microwave, heat a bowl of water for 2-3 minutes before you get started. The steam will loosen the gunk so you can just wipe it away quickly. You may not even have to use any cleaning spray. How’s that for green cleaning? I think I read [...]
A few months ago I wrote an article about eco-friendly beauty products. The gist of it is that there are a lot of controversial ingredients in shampoo, makeup, face wash, etc. that are cool with the FDA, but not with a lot of consumers. Either because they’re harmful to the environment after they swish down [...]
I wasn’t really expecting anything from the farmers market this morning, but it was just full of good looking produce today. We loaded up our basket so full we could barely carry it. Now it looks like we have a lot of cooking to do! Mike was excited to try gooseberries. The woman at the [...]
Naturally, the more food books you read, the more you start to think about your own diet. And by this point, I’ve read enough Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver to give my food choices a pretty hard look. I ate a pretty standard American diet up until I was 24. After seeing my cousins, several [...]
Mike’s brother and his wife gave us (well, I took it) a Chico Bag for Christmas and I’ve been grateful to have it at least a dozen times since. I just stuck it in my purse because it folds up so small, and whenever I’m buying enough stuff to fit into one sack I pull [...]
Two of my crochet patterns — vintage hanger covers and a colorful granny square pillow — have been published in a new book. You can now order So Pretty! Crochet, by my talented friend Amy Palanjian, at Amazon.com. 
