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I have this thing for chocolate nut butter. It started late in life, like, after having two babies. Before that, I never really craved anything sweet, and chocolate was a take it or leave it thing. It still is often a take it or leave it. I don’t have a stash of chocolate in my…
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It has truly been a while since I’ve posted on this blog. A lot falls by the way side when you have a baby. Photography has been one of the last things on my list of to dos. But luckily, I decided to take my Nikon D300 with me when we went camping a few…
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So we’re not milk drinkers in this house hold. I ended up with a nearly-full half gallon carton of milk after making my hubby a birthday cake (first cake I ever made, but that’s a story for another time). I looked at him and just threw it out there: “what can you make with milk?…
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This is SO simple you’ll be laughing all the way to fudgesicle heaven. I came up with this recipe in about 5 minutes expecting to have to do a lot of doctoring and fine tuning, but it was great right off the bat. Ingredients list: 1 can coconut milk 3Tbs coco powder 4Tbs agave 5Tbs…
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On the verge of becoming one myself (currently gestating a little one of my own) I feel the need to stop and think about mom and what motherhood is all about. I called mom today to wish her ‘Happy Mother’s Day’, but rather tentatively. It seems arbitrary to have just one day to celebrate someone…
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Anyone who has read a few of my previous posts related to plants knows that I love succulents. They are beautiful and for the most part easy to keep alive ( provided they have the right soil to start with and do not get some random plant disease). I like having plants around, but I…
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So, as it turns out, rhino dung is fantastic. Mixed in with the existing soil in proved to be the perfect environment for our lovely veggie garden. I’ve harvested two bok choi crops, tons of lettuce and some chard. The ones I planted in the planters..not so good. Probably too confined, and no rhino dung…
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So, the hubby was home this weekend – the WHOLE weekend which was a true miracle as he usually works. So we decided to put in some time on the house. Our master bedroom is now completely sheet-rocked, our tub re-caulked for the third time (don’t ask), we have a treasure trove of great tiles…
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I’ve been feeling immense guilt at having not posted in over a month. I was in the midst of a move, and blogging about creativity was far from my mind. That’s not to say that I haven’t been creative. I’m lucky to have a job that requires creativity on a daily basis, so that even…
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A whole month has slipped by with nary a post. When faced with slew of stresses, work and life related, I have a hard time staying creative let alone document and write about it. Excuses, excuses, I know. So, to show that I am not in a complete creative dry spell, I’m posting a pic…
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Let’s face it, I’m overwhelmed. I have a little too much on my plate and I need to at least acknowledge that fact if not change it. The good news is that the plate is loaded with mostly creative ventures. The sucky news is that I have more ideas than time. If only I could…
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So, as I’ve mentioned before, we didn’t put much thought into our garden this year being that we thought we were buying a house and moving out. Regardless of our neglect, the garden thrives on. And to his credit, my hubby waters the place every morning before he goes to work. In regards to actually…
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Forward momentum. That’s what I’m all about these days. After an inspiring visit to Canada to see my sister doing her Farmer’s Market and other shows, I wanted to get started in my neck of the woods. I enquired about the local Farmer’s Market but didn’t hear back, didn’t hear back…and then suddenly an email…
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So, I was trying to throw together a last-minute portfolio for a job listing I found on Craigslist calling for an illustrator…and I found the most interesting things I’d long forgotten about. It’s amazing how one can create something, put a whole lot of effort and time into it and then completely forget about…
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Finally I finished this painting. It’s been in the works for a while – not because it takes long to paint, but because I had to walk away from it for a while because my energies were focused elsewhere. It was really nice to return to it and have it happen really easily. Like I…
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My day-time job is teaching art to kids at the local Boys and Girls Club. I’m blessed that my working life still involves creativity. It has surprised me over the years how inhibited some kids can be, I had assumed that the joy of childom was to be very uninhibited. Instead, I find the majority…
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What to do with 8 oz of Lavender oil and 2 cups of lavender buds? I don’t know. I haven’t come close to using all that, but I can show you what I did do to use about 16 drops of that 8 ozs. Important: Before beginning experiments, decant lavender oil into a dropper bottle;…
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My friend and I recently went to the Lavender Festival in Sonoma The entrance fee was a mere $5 dollars and well worth it. Vendors were set up all around a lavender field full of the Grosso and Provence varieties. I sound like I know what I’m talking about but that’s only because they also…
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If you read this blog it’s a) because you know me or b) because you actually like what I post. To both groups I say thank you. It’s not easy taking on a blog this unfocused. Most successful blogs I read are on one topic and one topic only. I admire those who can do…
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I practice Bikram Yoga. Before you dis it, hear me out. I know there’s a lot of slap talk about it because of Bikram himself who has made a pretty penny from T M-ing his sequence of postures. I don’t care about all that. What I care about is whether it works for me and…
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No credit to myself, the garden is looking pretty swell. It’s my hubby who goes out every morning and waters the place. He also fought a valiant battle with earwigs and won. It took a bit to come up with a strategy, but once implemented the earwig populations was decimated. Our beer traps were not…
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Hellooo! So, way back when, I started a little propagation experiment with some cast off succulent leaves I found at the local nursery. Check out my April post title “Never Go Near A Garden Center a.k.a. Human Magnet” to see where it all began. This is mostly a success story, but as with all good…
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Daddy. Dad. Father. It took me years to realize that much of what I did, the decisions I made, were because I wanted dad to be proud of me. This surprised me when the realization struck. For most of my childhood dad was more of a background figure. He supported mom in her child…
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I hate paperwork. And yet, the winding path of my life has led me to a point where paperwork is the order of the day. It started small, as all things do. In the very beginning it was just a small thing: a social security number( rather a Social Insurance Number since I started out…
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Gack. I lack inspiration at the moment. My work schedule has shifted…I feel shifted…it’s going to take me some time to figure out how to reorganize my creative life. In the meantime, since I missed taking part in the local photography club slide show ( a bi-annual community event)…just totally gapped, dropped the ball, forgot…
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As always, let me start by saying that I am an instant gratification type of cook. Keep it simple geniuses, remember? So, as fancy as this might look, it really didn’t take much time to whip up. If it can’t be made in an hour or less,well, then it can’t be made…not in my world…
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I recently set up a booth at an outdoor art fair in Angwin called “Art in the Clouds”. It was only the second year for the art aspect of the fair and as such I was one of only four art related booths. I at least broke even, but it wasn’t super successful. I had…
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I had an “Ah ha! Ho ho! Hee hee!” moment just last week as I cruised through the aisles of the local grocery, desperate for a quick meal but not ready to totally compromise on quality. Standing at the meat counter I was eyeing the salmon, debating between the chilean farmed fish for 8.99 per…
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Folks, you know how I don’t like to spend loads of time doing domestic chores. Cooking falls somewhere in the middle. I groan about having to do it at times when I’m just off work and would rather be vegging or doing something creative. But as it turns out, cooking can also be an amazing…
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Many posts ago I started on the path of succulent propagation. My biggest experiment was using the “let it sit” method with a few leaves I’d gathered that had fallen from a succulent plant at the garden center – NOT stealing as they would have been considered cast offs and no doubt swept up and…
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It’s been quite a while, folks, since I last posted something. I was away on a 4 day, 3 night hiking/camping trip with my husband, his sister and her husband ( who only made it the last day as he was recovering from an infection from cat scratches and bites- yikes!) and two other friends.…
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A few days ago I bit the bullet and cleaned up the house. Yes, even used the vacuum. I was, of course, spurred on to this for a reason: guests were coming. That’s why I need a steady stream of guests if I want my house to be spa like at all times. But now…
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I’m feeling cranky. You know, the kind of cranky that makes you want to do crazy stuff…like shave off your hair or something. The crankiness is coming from a feeling of lack of moving forward, a lack of creative outlet. Shaving my head would probably be the result of misplaced action and something I’d deeply…
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So last time I wrote about succulents I’d just been to the garden center and picked up a few new wonders of the succulent variety as well as a handful of loose succulent leaves. Well, I laid them out on a bed of perlite and left it outside under filtered light (my covered porch) and…
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Out with all the organics and the green veg and the “clean” foods. That concept is just an unreachable ideal when a trip to the local grocery store ends in a bill that looks like you just went on a bulk shopping sprea at Costco…and a Costco bill equates to one round trip ticket to…
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I first caught on to the idea of a tasting chocolate from a friend. She whipped up a rich, creamy, chocolate with a spread-type consistency using cocoa and coconut oil and a few other ingredients. I watched her eat it by the spoonful. Flash forward to my friend Shannon, during her pregnancy and afterwards, turning…
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Ok. Here I am again, posting about cooking. Let me put in a quick disclaimer: I am not a chef. I am a self taught dabbler, a mother of two and wife of one (no polygamy here). I had no interest in food until, in art school, I discovered that I needed to cook, or…
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Ahh. This poor wallowing blog. It’s a sad state of affairs, I know, when I have no creative endeavor to blog about. So, I will seek out the creative in my everyday, because being a mom is a creativity-on-the-fly kind of a proposition. In recent years I’ve actually turned to cooking as a creative/relaxing-ish process.…
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