Here they are!
12/29/09
It's Christmas time...
I saw these fun "Tomorrowland Holiday Trees at Wise Craft and I just had to try and make some for myself. They were oh - so - easy, and fun to boot. I am a terrible sewer and usually give up on any project I start after I deem it has become to hard - but I was able to finish these in a short afternoon! And it didn't hurt that the felt was cheap. Next time I might try to make my own felt (a craft FAIL blog post in the near future perhaps...).
Here they are!
Here they are!
Rural Wisconsin = too much cheese and sausage.
I have been spending too much time reading other people's blogs rather than writing my own. I also have been very busy vacationing. Not since I was a freshman in high school was I able to enjoy the holidays with such workless abandon - and it has been wonderful. I am a substitute teacher (more on that in another post) and with that job comes some great holiday off time.
After school ended on Friday the 19th, I came home and packed up for a trip to see my boyfriend's mother in Rhode Island at 5:00 the next morning. While we were there, we had a blizzard (18 inches of snow - woohoo!) and then 4 days later, due to weather in Chicago, were lucky enough to be the last flight out of the east coast toward home. Then, after an evening of rest, we were up at 4:00 A.M. to start the 6 hour drive to rural Wisconsin to see my man's grandparents. All of this traveling finally concluded Sunday night, after a quick jaunt down to West Bend to see my family, and finally into our Cat's love starved and attention hungry kitty arms.
Rural Wisconsin...oh what can I say. We went last summer and I was lucky enough to be taken for a ride on this:
There is a large Amish population where they live, and his Grandparents commissioned this from someone in that community. According to the boyfriend, I was lucky enough to get a ride because I had charmed them into liking me - a good thing.
We also spent a lot of time playing with cute things like this:
What made this winter trip the most exciting? The buffalo hunt across the street!
We were in the country all right - but don't get me wrong, I spent my summers on a farm in South Dakota as a kid, so even though I consider myself a city slicker I know a little about rural life.
The story is really anti climatic.
Across the gravel road, there is a small buffalo farm, owned by a man who's ex wife has a restraining order against him. (On a side note: he seems like an interesting guy, and I know all the gossip on him - evidently he also deals drugs - the boyfriend's grandma is convinced he's running some kind of organized weed dealing ring.) On account of this restraining order, he isn't permitted to handle his own guns, and therefore needs a friend to come and do any shooting for him. Well, the owner of the farm rode into his field on a tractor with another man hanging off the back with a shotgun. Around and around they rode, with many buffalo stupid enough to come within inches of their hunters; the man with the gun, incidentally and to our delight, continually falling off the tractor. After 45 minutes or so of this, a buffalo was shot, and then another, and both were dragged toward the farm and butchered.
On a side note, his Grandma pointed out several times that this drug dealing divorced farmer now lives with what she called his "live in woman," which made me wonder if she knew I lived with her grandson and if she would use the same words to classify me in our relationship.
After school ended on Friday the 19th, I came home and packed up for a trip to see my boyfriend's mother in Rhode Island at 5:00 the next morning. While we were there, we had a blizzard (18 inches of snow - woohoo!) and then 4 days later, due to weather in Chicago, were lucky enough to be the last flight out of the east coast toward home. Then, after an evening of rest, we were up at 4:00 A.M. to start the 6 hour drive to rural Wisconsin to see my man's grandparents. All of this traveling finally concluded Sunday night, after a quick jaunt down to West Bend to see my family, and finally into our Cat's love starved and attention hungry kitty arms.
Rural Wisconsin...oh what can I say. We went last summer and I was lucky enough to be taken for a ride on this:
There is a large Amish population where they live, and his Grandparents commissioned this from someone in that community. According to the boyfriend, I was lucky enough to get a ride because I had charmed them into liking me - a good thing.
We also spent a lot of time playing with cute things like this:
His Grandma informed us during our winter visit that this kitten later got sat on by a cow and died - a bad thing.
This winter, we spent a lot of time looking for my favorite kitten I had fallen in love with last summer:
It was very cold out this trip, and all the Barn Kitties were snuggled up hiding somewhere, so we never found him. That's the boyfriend's cousin trying to give the cat bunny ears - a 7 year old thing.
We were in the country all right - but don't get me wrong, I spent my summers on a farm in South Dakota as a kid, so even though I consider myself a city slicker I know a little about rural life.
The story is really anti climatic.
Across the gravel road, there is a small buffalo farm, owned by a man who's ex wife has a restraining order against him. (On a side note: he seems like an interesting guy, and I know all the gossip on him - evidently he also deals drugs - the boyfriend's grandma is convinced he's running some kind of organized weed dealing ring.) On account of this restraining order, he isn't permitted to handle his own guns, and therefore needs a friend to come and do any shooting for him. Well, the owner of the farm rode into his field on a tractor with another man hanging off the back with a shotgun. Around and around they rode, with many buffalo stupid enough to come within inches of their hunters; the man with the gun, incidentally and to our delight, continually falling off the tractor. After 45 minutes or so of this, a buffalo was shot, and then another, and both were dragged toward the farm and butchered.
Could it have been one of these? Yummy.
On a side note, his Grandma pointed out several times that this drug dealing divorced farmer now lives with what she called his "live in woman," which made me wonder if she knew I lived with her grandson and if she would use the same words to classify me in our relationship.
12/12/09
I like to craft!
As I am sitting here, my boyfriend is swearing at his xbox 360, which he is trying to take apart because it is broken. Or overheating. Or both. The poor thing has given up, posing now like The Thinker, although picture less pensiveness and more frustration.
But yes - I like to craft! That's one thing I can blog about. Today in fact I made this lovely wreath from the Christmas tree clippings my neighbor just threw in the front yard. You bet! I just marched right out there and just hauled them all back inside. And then I cut them up! And made this:
Maybe I should share with you some other wreaths I made this fall.
Well, time for dinner!
But yes - I like to craft! That's one thing I can blog about. Today in fact I made this lovely wreath from the Christmas tree clippings my neighbor just threw in the front yard. You bet! I just marched right out there and just hauled them all back inside. And then I cut them up! And made this:
Maybe I should share with you some other wreaths I made this fall.
- This one I almost broke while trying to get it out of the garbage bag I was storing it in. I made it this fall with twigs I collected from around my neighborhood and a bag of fake leaves - I'm a DIYer:
- And this one - which differs from the other two in that I used a store bought frame:
Blog Fail
Ok. So my attempt to write a "green" blog was an utter failure. As you can see from the simple fact that I only wrote about, oh let's see... one post. Evidently I was not made to be a" green" blogger. I am not sure if I was even made to be a "green" person. Notice my use of quotation marks - as if to suggest that "green" is some sort of figment of our social, collective, imagination. Or at least an unattainable figment of my own imagination.
My life is not as "green" as I would have liked it to be; and I am speaking in the sense of the word as it refers to being "environmentally friendly." This is perhaps why the blog was such a complete FAIL.
Here are some of my FAILS as related to being "green."
But seriously. I got all excited about having an awesome urban container garden, and writing a blog about it, and then I lost interest. I felt too much pressure to keep the blog "green" focused when what I should have been doing was just writing about whatever I wanted, to see what would become of it.
What will become of this?
My life is not as "green" as I would have liked it to be; and I am speaking in the sense of the word as it refers to being "environmentally friendly." This is perhaps why the blog was such a complete FAIL.
Here are some of my FAILS as related to being "green."
- I killed all of my plants.
But seriously. I got all excited about having an awesome urban container garden, and writing a blog about it, and then I lost interest. I felt too much pressure to keep the blog "green" focused when what I should have been doing was just writing about whatever I wanted, to see what would become of it.
What will become of this?
5/19/09
Welcome Haiku
Ah! The Peonies
For which
Kusunoki
Took off his
Armour
- Takarai Kikaku
This blog intends to expose the beauty of my urban Chicago environment, whether it be from pictures of my container garden, videos of squirrels yelling at each other in the trees outside my window, or the simple random thought I may choose to share with you, the reader. This blog will also have a green focus, as I move in to a new apartment with my partner in crime, Andy, who uses disposable paper towels with reckless abandon and doesn't understand the words "you're wasting water." It is sure to be an interesting adjustment and transition.
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