g&g

My genius friend Ally planned a fruit-picking, pic nicking field trip for this weekend! A bunch of us drove north of the city to Briar Patch Farms in Dacula, where you can pick apples, pears, blueberries and muscadines. There were tomatoes and beans that we weren’t sure you could pick or not, but I think we probably could have. They also have blackberries most of the time, but the fellow told us they weren’t ready for picking.

We came home with a gallon of mixed up apples and pears, 2/3 gallon of blueberries and a gallon of muscadines! The blueberries are divvied up between the fridge and freezer, and some are already starring in some awesome blueberry muffins! Since we had so many, I used a full cup of berries instead of the 3/4 cup that the recipe calls for. Recommended! This evening, I need to pick up some sugar and yeast to try out this recipe for muscadine wine! There is also probably some sort of apple, pear and blueberry tart in the future. Does anyone have a good tart recipe that doesn’t take the entire day to prepare?

Yesterday, Christy, Liz and I hit up the craft store for supplies for the Craft:08 Release Party this coming Saturday. I’m getting super-excited about it! We’ll have snax, drinks and a couple of fun crafty projects for folks to play with!

Oooh and this coming weekend is 3 whole days long! It’s probably a bad sign that I’m thinking about that before I’ve even gotten ready for work today, huh?

<3

[photo by Lorigami]
Liz and I set up a blog for our local pals to post about kittens in need of loving homes! Of course, Liz gave it a delightfully puntastic name! If you’re local and have kittens or cats you want to post about, hit me up! Anyone can register, and I’ll change your permissions to Author!

<3

I can’t even really tell you how excited I was to hear that KRAFTWORK, the monthly craft show, is coming back at Youngblood Gallery!!! There are a few little differences with KRAFTWORK 2.0. You can read all about it over on the Indie Craft Experience blog. Yea! Youngblood and ICE are teaming up to pull off a super-awesome, new and improved Kraftwork! They’re accepting applications now for the very first one in the new space. The show is on September 4th!

Dave and I got up this morning and headed straight to the ACE in East Atlanta Village for some supplies to fix up the front yard and porch. The front area has been the subject of much discussion, but we had a tough time sorting what we wanted to do with it. We finally settled on what needed to happen this week! Hurrah! I wish I had taken a before picture, because it’s so different now! We added windowboxes to one side of the porch, cleaned up the front walk, put potted firs and elephant ears on the front porch and filled in the front beds with pine straw. Everything looks so much more lush out there now! Here are a million more pictures!

The hanging planters have these lovely tall perennial flowers in them and each one has an edible! The one pictured is lavendar, but we also planted collards and rosemary!

Dave went to Lowe’s while I sorted out the front path and swept the porch after all that potting. He came back with bales of pine straw. Our front beds always felt sort of unfinished to me.

Now, though, I just love it! The straw fills in all the gaps and will keep water around for our thirsty plants, too!

I anticipate lots of porch-sitting once the weather cools down a bit!

On Wednesday evening, I was getting ready to hop on my bike and head over to my friend Meghan’s for Project: Runway. I was heading to the closet when I stubbed my toe on the bed. In true Clumsy Girl fashion, of course, I managed to fracture it! Ack! I had to cancel my plans and taped it to the toe next to it, since the Internet seemed to indicate that that is all they would do at the hospital anyways.

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a golfball-sized bruise on the top of my foot, not so much on the toe at all. That was a little worrisome, so I got a doctor’s appointment, where they took one look at my foot and ordered an X Ray and an appointment with an orthopedist. Three hours later, I left Piedmont Hospital….with my toe taped to the one next to it. I did, however, get a fashionable new shoe out of the deal!

The doc said I should be a real girl again in a week to 10 days. Hurrah! In the meantime, I can sort of hobble/walk thanks to my new stylish shoe. The real question is: how are all of my injury stories so boring? Don’t most people break toes trying some daredevil stunt? Don’t they split open their knees while rescuing a Girl Scout who was in peril? Not this gal! Pretty much anything that sends me to the hospital happens while walking. Usually alone and also sober. Clumsy Girl Life!

When I showed this kitchen composter to Dave, his exact response was: “OMG get one. Overnight it!”

Well, overnight shipping would have been $97, but I did order one of these little babies from Sustainable Community Development. We have been composting since we moved into the house, but it’s been a bit…problematic? Let’s be honest here. The main problem is that I am lazy - possibly the laziest hippie in granolatown. Our compost would collect for over a week, and you just can’t expect food leavings, even veggie scraps, not to smell after that long. There was also the problem that we had a few problems with fruit flies if I left banana peels and whatnot in there for too long. This seems like the perfect answer! They promise no smells on the site, and the bin is all sealed up, which should keep those pesky flies out of there. I can’t wait to use it! It will be like we have a whole new kitchen!

I promise to update again on how it’s going once it gets here!

Momentum Magazine has a really great article on yoga for urban cyclists! They talk about some of the stresses on bike commuters and then a list of poses to help counter it all. I know that when I was riding bikes to work every day, my neck and wrists took a beating, so I thought this list of poses would be really helpful. Here are a few:

• Pigeon Pose
• Warrior I
• Standing Forward Bend

Yoga Journal has great info on their poses page about a lot of the other ones in the article, too! They list the Sanskrit and English names, which should make stuff ultra easy to find. Happy riding!

<3

There is a great post over a Treehugger about cars, bikes and infrastructure. Andrew makes the excellent point that the way our roads are built and our drivers and cyclists are educated is really just a recipe for frustration and accidents. With more and more folks riding bikes to avoid filling up their tanks, education is going to be more important than ever.