a very busy bunny, indeed.

In a couple of hours I'm going to be focused solely on kicking the Rhody Run's ass, then I'll inevitably spend a couple of days feeling tired, sore, and extremely blistery. In the coming week I have a sewing class to teach and an unschooling conference to attend. I know this is a lot less than a lot of people manage to do on a regular basis, but my plate is more of a dessert/salad plate than a traditional dinner plate, and I've got a lot of stuff on it right now.

I'll be back after Life is Good with all sorts of goodies! In the meantime, you can stay abreast of my OMGSUPERINTERESTING life via twitter and tumblr.

It's Friday, I'm in Love: nailzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Self-care is super important, you guys. It can mean anything, really: getting enough sleep or dancing or watching your favorite movies or re-reading cherished books or getting your hair did or going shopping or hiking or bird-watching or swimming in the ocean or eating burritos or knitting scarves or... doing your nails.

I love painting my nails. I generally only do it once a week or so and haven't been doing it on a regular basis for super long, but with the wide array of inexpensive polishes available, it's a fun and relatively cheap self-care ritual.

Marina, bb.

I also get a kick out of looking at what other people have done to their nails. Sometimes I get inspiration from it, and other times I just sit there, happily drooling over the prettiness. Predictably, I reblog A LOT of manicure pictures on ye olde tumblrs. Here's a collection of such pictures.

I need more pastel polishes in my life. I own a couple of pastel pink shades, but this minty green is quite lovely.

Glitter, glitter, glitter. I am ALWAYS on the lookout for sparkles in different shapes and colors! I love the big square chunks in this one.

I rarely grow my nails out long enough to do proper tips, but this is pretty fabulous. If I were to ever get gels again, I might consider doing a matte nail with a glossy tip. It would probably look good in almost any color.

HARDCORE GLITTER. It looks like teensy-weensy sequins!

All black. All matte. All the time. This would fit my aesthetic rather nicely, don't you think?

I dig a good ombre nail, and although red and gold aren't a go-to color combo for me, it looks rulllllllllll good here. I may have to try that in the future. Or at the very least try out a gold glitter.

More gold glitter, this time in a reverse ombre over jade green. I love the idea of doing full glitter only on the ring finger. Femme-flagging FTW.

I've tried out my matte topcoat over glitter and it didn't look nearly this cool. I'm thinking I need to do it over an opalescent polish, rather than a chunky glitter. This looks like a nebula.

I have a polish in my collection that matches my skin almost perfectly. I've done the mannequin-hands thing a couple of times and have liked the effect, but I never thought to outline it in neon! I'm debating picking up a few of those nail-art pens they sell at the drug store.

And of course, more ombre. I cannot get enough of glitter ombre nails. These look dip-dyed!

Are you also a manicure junky? What's your favorite look right now - glitter? matte? stripes? each nail a different color? Embrace your inner 15 year old and tell me what's up!

thrifted thursday: I've been framed!

I've been working on assembling a gallery-style wall of picture frames since we were in our tiny little apartment uptown, slowly adding to it two or three frames at a time. My ultimate goal is to have it fill the wall, but I'm a long way from getting there, as the wall the arrangement lives on is on the high side of the vaulted ceilings (which are 11' at the highest point). I keep trucking along, though.

I've thrifted these various frames for anywhere from 10 cents to $1 each, depending on the size and quality, and have painted them all in the same glossy dark brown spray-paint. Recently I became interested in air plants and realized that if I thrifted some chintzy little wooden shelves, that I could incorporate them into my gallery wall. I picked up 5 of these funky little plants at a shop downtown (and it appears they don't have a website, or else I'd link to them... it's 2012, who doesn't have a website? C'mon!) and went to it.

I happen to LOVE the effect. Four of the little guys are nestled in this funky shelf, on top of some random beach rocks that I've collected over the years.

The other one sits up top of this tiny series of shelves, also with some rocks, shells, and a piece of petrified wood!

Overall I feel like the arrangement finally feels complete. Like I said, I ultimately would LOVE to fill the wall, but from this point on, I won't feel like it looks unfinished or sparse.

tutorial tuesday: garbanzo beans w/tomatoes, rice, & allspice

This particular dish is another adaptation of a winning recipe that Seth found while flipping through one of my many cookbooks that sits neglected on the kitchen counter, Gourmet's Five Ingredients. I have a lot of cookbooks (I just counted and yah... there are about 40). There is a used book store downtown that we like to pop into about once a month and I'm pretty sure that cookbooks are the type of book I buy the most there (with occasional memoirs, history, or lit books), and yet, I tend to do most of my recipe searching online.

Ever since I set the goal for myself of making 25 new meals this year, Seth has picked about half of them and his choices have been consistently delicious. This meal was no exception!

Garbanzo Beans w/Tomatoes, Rice, & Allspice

• 2 cans of garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas), rinsed and drained.
• 1 can stewed tomatoes
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 tbsp dried parsley
• 1 cup crumbled feta
• 1/2 cup cooked white or brown rice

First off, cook your rice. I do mine on the stove-top using this method: One part rice to two parts water. Bring water to a boil and add a little bit of butter and salt. Once boiling, add your rice. Return to a boil and then turn heat to low, cover, and simmer. 18-25 minutes for white rice, 45-60 minutes for brown.

Slip the skins off of the beans & discard (I threw mine in the compost bin! HUZZAH!). Simmer with tomatoes (and their juice), parsley, allspice, and 1/3 cup water for 10-15 minutes over medium heat. Use your spatula to break up the tomatoes as much as possible. Add feta, salt and pepper to taste, and cooked rice and simmer for an additional few minutes.

Seriously. It's that easy. The thing that took the longest was getting the skins off of the beans, but I developed a pretty good system using one hand - I put the bean between my thumb and first two fingers and squeezed JUST enough that the skin popped into my fingers and the bean dropped into my palm. It took awhile, but was fairly easy.

This recipe is definitely being put into my regular rotation, as I am always on the look out for tasty, cheap, meatless meals.

sartorial sunday: sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

We have been fortunate enough to have 3 days of warmth and sunshine IN A ROW this week. It feels a bit too good to be true, but I'm trying my hardest to believe it and not take it for granted. The forecast for the coming week says 0% chance of rain, slight breeze, light clouds here and there, and warm warm warm. For me, this means FAT-ing it up with my legs out for the world to see. When the temp goes over 70, there's no way in hell I'm putting on pants.

So behold, SHORTSPOCALYPSE 2012.

top - Walmart
cocoon cardigan - Target
leggings (cut off and hemmed into shorts) & boots - Old Navy
jewelry - a combo of Forever 21, Target, and Misty Island Jewelry on Etsy

5’3” - 240ish - size 18/20ish - DEATHFATTY

My nails are bare this week, as I clipped them quite short recently and am in the process of re-growing them. I hope they're long enough to bother painting by next weekend. I hate painting them when they're too short, because I end up with more polish on my fingertips than on my actual nails.

Silas doesn't own any shorts other than swim trunks, but the warmer weather has translated into rolled up flannel sleeves for him. I may cut one of his ill-fitting pairs of jeans into below-the-knee shorts for the summer (a look he has rocked quite well in the past). I just bought him 3 new pairs of jeans, as his most recent growth-spurt sent him upwards in the legs by at least an inch and suddenly everything was too short.

v-neck, jeans, and slip-ons - Old Navy

flannel - thrifted

"Panda is boxcat now." - Maru

It's Friday, I'm in Love: shenanigans

I've loved this town for a very long time.

It started when I got a job working at a small grocery store in uptown on my 24th birthday (I was still living in Sequim at the time). One month later I met a cute boy and ended up moving here in February of 2006 to live in sin with said boy. Here I am, over 6 years later and still madly in love with this little "victorian seaport & arts community" (and the boy). And in all this time that I had carried on this love affair with Port Townsend, only recently did it start loving me back.

If you had told me three years ago that Silas would have a plethora of friends (mostly other unschoolers, at that!) and that Seth and I would have plans most weekends, or that I'd be selling my sewn items at an art studio and teaching classes at a local gallery, I'd have said bullshit. No way. Nuh uh.

And yet, it's happened. Days at the beach, going out for pizza, or ice cream, or jumping around at open gym. Hanging out at the park and wandering downtown, popping into shops and walking out onto piers...

Skyping with friends and pointing the camera at the screen so that you can share Minecraft tips and ideas. Making faces at each other and just hanging out, connected by wires and cords and invisible signals.

Sitting out on the deck at a local pub, sipping on pints and getting a good view of the moon. Browsing paintings and sculptures and jewelry during gallery walk, standing around smoking menthol cigarettes and quoting movies and talking about 90s techno songs we remember.

Laughing and posing and passing around some anonymous pair of sunglasses for each person to try on. Dancing and wiggling and shaking and more laughing...

It really happened and I feel like I'm old enough to actually appreciate it. I never knew you could have social circles and multiple people to hang out with and places to go without DRAMA hanging over your head.

Being in my thirties is kind of amazing. Being in my thirties in Port Townsend... priceless.

thrifted thursday: backdoor lover

In doing "thrifted thursday", I'm rediscovering all the little corners of my home that I don't usually focus on - the hidden places that fade into the big picture when looking at each room as a whole. This is fun for me since I am a person who enjoys the small details in life.

One such corner is the spot to the left of our sliding glass door in the dining room.

The chickens hanging on the wall are something I got from my friend Amber when she moved across the country (she's moving back later this year and I am practically bursting with joy at the thought of hanging out more often). I have similar birds by the front door, as well. The wooden crate was thrifted and is full of some WWII books of Seths. The blue bag is from Ikea and is full of shredded grocery circulars to be used as browns in our compost bin. The curtains were made by me prior to moving in and the fabric is from Ikea.

tutorial tuesday: asparagus-lemon pasta

This was a seriously delicious meal and not complicated or difficult to prepare. My one qualm with the recipe was that I had to pay attention, as it uses the same cooking water throughout, to maximize the flavor of the asparagus. I'm used to dumping used cooking water and refilling the pot for the next step, so while this wasn't exactly a big deal, it was out of the norm for me and I had to keep reminding myself not to dump the water. It probably didn't help that I was drinking copious amounts of white wine while cooking dinner, but that's par for the course around here. I like white wine, deal with it.

The ingredients for this dish are simple and minimal! Just 5 things are needed:

• 1 lb fresh asparagus, trimmed
• the zest of one small lemon
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 lb pasta (I used cellentani, but penne or mafalde would work just as well)
• 1 cup cheese (I did mostly shaved parmesan with a bit of sharp cheddar)

1. Cut asparagus into 1 inch pieces, setting tips aside for later. Cook stems in 5 to 6 quarts of boiling water with a sprinkling of sea salt until very tender, about 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to colander with a slotted spoon, reserving the cooking water in the pot.
2. Put drained asparagus in a blender or food processor with the lemon zest, olive oil, and 1/2 cup of the cooking water and puree well. 
3. In the remaining cooking water, boil the asparagus tips for 3-5 minutes. Transfer them to the colander with a slotted spoon, saving the cooking water once again.
4. Cook the pasta in the boiling asparagus cooking water (you can add a little more water to it if what's left isn't enough to cover the pasta) until it just a tiny bit harder than al dente (about 3/4 the recommended cooking time).  Save the water AGAIN when you drain the pasta.
5. Transfer the pureed sauce, cooked asparagus tips, and cooked pasta to another pot and cook over high heat for 3 to 5 minutes, adding 1/2 cup of the cooking water to the pot half way through. 
6. Ok, NOW you can dump the last of the cooking water. You're done with that.
7. Once the sauce has thickened and loosely coats the pasta, add your cheese and stir, stir, stir. Cook for another minute or two until the cheese has all melted. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy.

sartorial sunday: easy like sunday morning

This weeks outfit isn't the most daring or creative; it's mostly a remix of things I've already shown here, but money doesn't grow on trees and it's been a busy week. Sometimes you've just got to put on your tried and true uniform of sorts and call it good. If you know you'll be comfortable and presentable and give off your own personal vibe through what you're wearing, who says it needs to be more complicated than that...?

I guess that I'm basically saying that this outfit is my fashion equivalent of chicken soup or something. Mmmmm... soupy.

top - Ross

 cocoon cardigan -Target

  leggings - Old Navy

boots - Jessica London

  bracelet & earrings - Forever21

FAT necklace - Fancy Lady Industries
 

5’3” - 240ish - size 18/20ish - DEATHFATTY

Silas is getting his hands on new clothes WAY more often than I am these days because he just won't stop growing. It's getting out of control. He's like a weed.

hoodie, & t-shirt - Target

jeans & shoes - Old Navy

It's Friday, I'm in Love: and you can tell everybody this is your song

My musical tastes have mellowed as I've gotten older. Not in tempo or volume, but in coolness. I don't really care anymore if a band is underground or if they're on the Top 40. Worrying about being edgy or hip all the time frankly sounds exhausting as I am very busy and important and can't be bothered with all of that nonsense.

If I like something, I like it. Simple as. It doesn't matter if I'm supposed to like it or if liking it makes me boring. Whatever. So these are the songs I can't stop listening to; I'm not claiming they are the best songs or the newest songs or that everyone should love them, just that they are my current songs.

I know she's all posho-swagger and floral headpieces and lips and american flags, but I have come to accept that I adore Lana Del Rey. The whole album is pretty fabulous, but the song I can't stop playing at full volume in the car is Off to the Races.



I can't stop listening to Be The Void by Dr. Dog in its entirety. From the first note to the last, this album is sheer perfection. A little bit Paul Simon, a little bit of Touch of Grey era Grateful Dead, hints of early Kings of Leon...It's basically perfect Spring/Summer music.

I'm also finding myself digging on Grimes quite a bit lately. She is incredibly bizarre and a bit twee with her delicate soprano vocals and looped beats and I just can't get enough. I don't know what the hell she's doing half the time, but I know I want to listen to it.

I was recently introduced to Yeasayer by a friend who sent me a mix cd (no one has made a mix cd for me in ages, so it was kind of a big deal). Their videos are seriously out there. Why does Veronica Mars have a dying pet monster that eats Trix? Why? I don't know. All I know is that it makes me cry. I'm done trying to figure that one out. 

Best Coast has been the perfect salve to my shoe-gazer-loving soul lately. Their stand-out video is Our Deal, for sure (C'mon, beautiful people being tough and badass and beautiful and in love... I'm a sucker for that). As far as songs go, though, Boyfriend is my favorite. Angsty and sweet and delicious.

What are you play-really-loudly-with-the-windows-down songs for Summer 2012?

thrifted thursday: things on doilies edition

My friend Gennie sent me a link on ye olde facebook last week that forced me to finally accept that "put a doily under it" is my own personal version of "put a bird on it". And it's not just putting them under things, it's putting them IN things and ON things and sewing them TO things. I've even had people give me vintage doilies as birthday gifts.

It's kind of hard to have two trees out in your yard covered in doilies without people labeling you as "that crazy-ass doily lady". I'm perfectly ok with this.

I was given this sweet and tiny carebear cup for my birthday last year. Once I got it home I discovered that it's the perfect size for my favorite liquorice-scented candles from The Candle Store here in town. So of course, I put a doily under it and put a candle in it and VOILA. Pure unadulterated Jasie-esque business.

On another bookshelf I have a jar where I burn incense, sitting on a thrifted orange saucer and a doily. All of these lacey lovelies come from various thrift shops around here. That silver picture frame with the picture of my late Grandma Dorothy in it is also thrifted. Hell, so is the bookshelf it all sits on, which used to be in the sewing room, stuffed full of fabric (and doilies, duh).

A Spring Faire & Flea!

I've been busy this week gearing up for Saturday! Lots of sewing and creating and re-doing my price-tags and organizing my inventory and packing things up so they're ready to go.

I've made some patchwork hoops that will only be available at this sale. I've got sachets in fabrics not offered in the shop (which you can buy singles or multiples of) and of course, I'll be selling some of the laundry soap that I make. Also, BATH BOMBS!

tutorial tuesday: citrus eucalyptus laundry soap

Making your own laundry soap is seriously THE BEST way to ensure that you know exactly what chemicals are touching your clothes and ultimately your skin. Plus it's a lot cheaper than buying laundry detergent from the store, especially if you're buying Seventh Generation or Charlie's, which can get really expensive right-quick-like. It also means that the scent is totally customizable, based on what essential oils/shaved bar soap you use! For this tutorial I'll be doing a specific scent combo, but this could easily be tweaked to your preferences.

Here's what you'll need for a batch that will make enough soap for approximately 25 loads of laundry:

• 1 cup Borax 
• 1 cup Baking Soda
• 1/4 cup grated Fels Naptha laundry bar soap
• 1/2 cup grated Dove Cucumber scented soap
• 10-15 drops each of the following essential oils: lemon eucalyptus, lime, sweet orange (I use AuraCacia brand essential oils, which they sell at my local food co-op)

Mix these ingredients together in a metal or glass mixing bowl (plastic is porous and will absorb the essential oils, which is fine if you dedicate the bowl to non-food uses), taking extra care to make sure that any clumps formed by the essential oils are broken apart as much as possible.

If you want to store it the same way that I did in the above picture, you can find used 400 ML mason jars at most thrift stores for under 50 cents. Trace a circle in fabric that's at least 3" larger across than your lid and cut out, trimming off the pen-marking. Stick it under the rim (no underneath lid piece required, which is FAB since they generally don't sell that part with the jar & rim at thrift stores) and twist! You can smell the detergent just a little through the fabric and let me tell you, it is DIVINE! It's also a cute touch if you're giving the soap as a gift.

Use 2 spoonfuls of detergent per load of laundry, boosting with distilled white vinegar when needed.