cleanse day 1

Anders, my bestie, Kristina, and I are all doing a five day juice cleanse starting today. Wish us luck!

photo a day update

Here are some of the new pictures my sister and I took for our December photo a day project (first set here).

Subject: Green

Taken by me

Subject: Green

Taken by Kate

Subject: Christmas Tree

Taken by me

Subject: Family

Taken by Kate

(aren't my nieces and nephew the cutest!)

Subject: Wrapping Paper

Taken by Kate

Subject: A Beautiful Sight

Taken by Kate:

Subject: A Beautiful Sight

Taken by me

photo a day

My sister, Kate, just got her first SRL camera. This is pretty exciting because now I have someone to nerd out with on F stops and shutter speeds. She wanted to practice shooting in manual, so she found this photo a day project and asked me to do it with her. The project is just for the month of December, and you are given one subject to shoot every day for the month. I need all the practice I can get as well, so I thought it was a good reason to stretch my mind creatively and also bounce tips, tricks, ideas and critiques off each other. Here are some of our pictures so far!

Subject: Red

Taken by Kate

Subject: Something you are currently reading

Taken by me

Subject: Something you are reading

Taken by Kate

Subject: Ornament

Taken by Kate

Subject: Shopping

Taken by me

We're only 9 days in, but I'm excited to keep working at it. I'll share some more pictures as we progress.

drinking vegetables

 So, December is happening this Saturday, and the holiday parties and events are already starting to fill the calendar. December is by far, in my opinion, the unhealthiest month. It's super hard to stay committed to healthy eating when your cube mate has brought in triple chocolate banana fudge bread topped with candy canes for the third day in a row. I have already been sick twice this fall, and I don’t want the holidays to take me down for a third time. I’m a little stressed out about it, so I decided to take some serious action. Enter our juice machine. I haven’t been much of a juicer unless there were extra carrots around our house that needed to be used up, but this week Anders and I specifically planned to start each morning with some sort of veggie juice concoction. I literally gagged on the beet, carrot, cucumber juice, but the carrot, ginger, apple is really good (I'm beginning to think all juices need one apple!). Next up, cabbage juice…although honestly, I’m really scared about that one. If anyone has a veggie juice that they can recommend, please send our way!
Merry Carrots! 

fall challenge

JoAnna from one of my favorite blogs, A Cup of Jo, has started giving her readers weekly fall challenges. She posts a new one every week. The first challenge was to go a week without TV, but since it's football season, I promptly declined. The second challenge was to memorize a poem, but, well, I just sort of forgot about that one. However, this week's challenge was to try a new food, and since I love to eat, I figured this was a challenge I could get behind. I finally tried Bibimbap last night, a Korean dish which literally translates to mixed rice. It comes with vegetables, a fried egg and super delicious sliced beef. It was so fun to try something new and step outside my comfort zone, and, also, it was amazing...so bonus! What do you think? Wanna play along?

Also, random, but this article was super interesting to me. People living forever in Ikaria. 

Happy Saturday!

in the yard

Anders and I are those strange kind of people who actually love yard work. We love to put on music, make fun drinks and get our hands dirty. We are tackling a rather large landscaping project this year, so, last Sunday, we finally got started. The first order of business was to create a border along our fence. We are planning a edible garden theme for our backyard and have plans to put columnar apple trees, blueberries and herbs in this border. There will be many before and after pictures to come, but here are a few shots of our work party.

garden show

I'm still working on my New Year's goals. One of the biggest ones for me is to landscape our backyard. Since spring is right around the corner, we are going to have to get that goal in gear soon. Anders and I spend a lot of time in our yard and really want to make it as cozy as we feel about the inside of our house. We headed downtown last weekend to get some inspiration at the Seattle Garden Show, and we were blown away by what people were able to create. Here are some of the highlights:

A chicken coop made out of a van was my favorite display. They had popped the hatch and added a ladder to the back so they chickens could nest. Also, these might have been the cutest chickens I've ever seen if one could call a chicken cute. And check out the Paris scene!  All I needed was a cafe au lait and a macaroon.

See! Cute, right?

Potato seeds grown in actual potato bags. So simple, but so cute. There was also a "rock" garden, and the drums were the fountain. The curved pipes above the drums slowly dripped water which caused the drums to be lightly played.

I'm in love with these hanging pallet gardens! This is a serious contender for our garden if I can figure out where to hang it. I found this tutorial online, and it doesn't sound too hard. I also loved the tree made out of recycled bottles. Sometimes I feel like I should never have to go out and buy anything. It's amazing what you can create with a little bit of imagination.

Another hanging garden. This one with a chevron design. The way to my heart is through chevrons. Well, that and vacation time.

Giant glass flowers made my heart skip. I wouldn't hate having that shed either. 

And meet our newest addition! This is Domio, and he will live in our garden. He is made of stone so Maggie can't eat his hat. Quincy, the last garden gnome, was not so lucky.

when in doubt...craft

When one finds herself home for a week because of snow, one tends to have a lot of time on her hands. There is only so much cleaning, laundry and coffee drinking a person can do (wait...wait...not that last one). Since one of my goals was to create more time for crafts, I figured snow days were the perfect time to make good on my promise. 

I made:

This fox shirt.

This skirt out of a men's shirt.

These cute mittens that I plan on dyeing as soon as I get some dye.

And these pillows made out of T-shirts!

And now Maggie will demonstrate the usefulness of these pillows.

Do you want to make your own?

1. Drawstring shirt tutorial on A Beautiful Mess.

2. Skirt tutorial on Megan Nielsen Design Diary.

3. (soon to be) Dip-dyed mittens by Skunkboy Creatures on the Modcloth blog.

4. T-shirt pillows are my own design, but feel free to email me if you really want a tutorial.

I'm thinking this goal can be marked a success, and it's only January. Snow days, I thank you.

backyard dance party

Last year I got my first sewing machine, and my Mom has been teaching me how to sew. This, of course, is a bit hard since she lives 2,000 miles away, but we have been making it work. I usually save a ton of questions for when she comes to visit, but she also talks me through things over the phone. She has also been known to send detailed, hand-written instructions with diagrams made out of real fabric. This may or may not have happened on multiple occasions. So, last year, with my Mom's help (and Maggie's), I worked on my very first quilt and had it almost completed. Since one of my New Year's goals is to finish all old projects, I made this quilt my first priority. I really love how it came out. It's bright and colorful, and I have this vision of using it for summer picnics.

Or...maybe I'll just hang it up in the backyard for impromptu dance party photo shoots.

new space

I wasted no time getting a jump start on my New Year's goals. My first order of business was to create my own little space in our house where I could work on crafts. Our house is tiny, but we do have two extra bedrooms. This room didn't have any real purpose except to be a dumping ground for things when we couldn't or didn't want to find space for them. I hate clutter, so this room gave me a lot of anxiety and definitely did not promote creative thinking. There was a considerable lack of storage in there, so lots of items ended up sitting on the floor. It was beginning to look like an episode of hoarders! I'm actually a little embarrassed to show before pictures, but this is the reality of the situation.

I didn't have any money to spend, so I had to make do with the furniture and pictures that could be spared from other parts of the house. My only purchase was my new sewing table, which I love! I'm sure a professional could come in and do amazing things with the place, but I'm pretty proud of my little room. I can feel the creative juices flowing already!

Before

Just looking at these pictures gives me anxiety!

After

First resolution...check! 

12 for 12

2012 is going to be a very full year. We have five different vacations planned (some small, some really big), a bunch of plans for our house and some (hopefully) exciting things in our careers. I'm really excited to make it the best year ever, so I came up with 12 goals for 2012 to help keep myself focused. I'm feeling really inspired right now and hope I can keep the feeling up all year.

1. Turn my home office into a creative and inspiring work space

2. Landscape our back yard and have a pig roast

3. Reduce my consumption of nightshade plants (ugh...I HATE this one. I eat tomatoes every day!)

4. Support independent and local artists whenever possible

5. Make more time for crafts

6. Add variety to my workouts and take them outside often (especially in the summer!)

7. Create more original recipes (like this one)

8. Learn to take better pictures

9. Try 12 new Seattle restaurants

10. Turn our guest room into a comfortable space so guests actually want to stay

11. Get caught up on photo albums. Print all pictures and get them in albums!

12. Finish all projects I started and never completed in 2011