This week we’re talking about the stuff that irritates you, even though it’s irrational to let something so small get to you.

I’ve actually been doing a lot of work on myself to be less annoyed at the general population, so this list is shorter than it would have been a few years ago.  Despite that, there are still some things that get my panties in a wad.

1. Corporate-ese.

This is the big one, folks.  I work in a day job where I email back and forth with business types all the time, and have to see/hear tons of this made up, meaningless jargon on a regular basis. “Sphere of influence”?  “Leveraging multi-level infrastructures” ?  “Optimize cross-platform functionalities” ?   Give me a break and speak English, please.   You probably don’t even know what you’re saying, so I can guarantee the dozens of folks working below you won’t know how to “implement next-generation architecture strategies.”

2. Drivers

Just in general. I am convinced that most people have no clue what the traffic laws actually are, or don’t believe they apply to them.  They also forget they are operating a very heavy machine that could easily kill someone, themselves included.  I err on the side of caution, so I probably annoy other drivers myself, but I’d rather be annoying than dead.

3.  People who order food or check out at a store while talking on their cell phones.

When I was a barista, I would wait for someone to finish their conversation before acknowledging that they wanted to order something.  I think it’s too easy for us to forget that service people are just that — people.   They are not Food Robots, they are not lesser beings, they are humans with thoughts and emotions.  Tell the person on the line you will call them back.  If it’s an important call, don’t get in line until you’re finished.    If you stay on the phone and dismissively order with one ear facing the person at the register, don’t be surprised if your order is wrong or contains faint traces of human saliva.

Those are my main peeves.  What are yours?   Join us over at Girl Talk Thursday!

One of the things Greg likes about me (and that our wallets love about me) is that, while I have fairly expensive taste, I’m not willing to spend top dollar on something I think I can do myself.

Typically, I’ll find something I absolutely love at an expensive store, and then scour the internet, craigslist, Home Depot, and craft stores for ways to buy or re-create it on a less expensive scale.  ( I think I get this from my mother, whose favorite place to shop is Tuesday Morning.  She loves to pick up really lovely things and then ask me to guess how much she paid for it.)

When I find something for a great price or realize I can make it at home for very little money, I call it a “hey-I-can-do-that” moment.

Recently,  I saw a “distressed” dresser at a fancy schmancy furniture store on sale for $1750.  I loved the way this thing looked.  It was rustic yet elegant, with cute hardware.  It would be a perfect addition to my office, but there is no way in heck I am going to shell out almost two grand for something that will be holding office supplies and a laptop.   Instead, I can buy some sandpaper and paint and fix the broken dresser I already have for a lot less.

Instead of money, I’m choosing to invest time and effort.   Yes, I will have to delay my gratification and wait for the thing to be done, but in the end I think it is worth the wait.

Aside from saving lots of money, it can be much more satisfying to have a hand in creating the pieces in your home.  I feel more connected to a room if I have put personal effort into the items decorating it, and proud when someone asks me where I bought something and I can say, “Oh, we made that.”

Do you have items in your home that you built or gave a makeover?  Have a “hey-I-can-do-that” moment you’d like to share?

I would love to hear about it in the comments!

I finished the chalkboard project just in time for a little bit of Christmas decorating.
After the steps I described in the first post, I used some wood glue to stick the boards onto the back of the frames, added a couple of nails just for extra security, and let them dry for a day.  I stacked books on top of them to weigh down the frames and make sure the glue really stuck.

Here’s what one of the finished boards looks like:

Once the boards were finished, the last step was to “cure” them with some chalk.   All I had to do was use the side of a piece of  chalk to completely coat the board in a soft layer of chalkdust, then wipe that away.   Then, they were done!

I  used this one to decorate our mantel for Christmas.

Hope you’ve all had a Happy Holiday!

I know I mentioned in a previous post that I am absolutely not crafty, and I think that might still be true, but I wanted to share a project I inexplicably started working on.

Greg’s mom had some stuff in the garage that I can only assume she wanted to one day do stuff with:   Broken dressers, random pieces of wood, wreaths, unfinished wooden boxes, and picture frames without backs.  In fact, there were at least five of these wooden frames leaning on the wall out there, and a few of them weren’t in terrible shape.

not bad, eh?

So I decided I would take a couple of these frames and create some cute little chalkboards out of them.

I got some board and cut it to about the right size and bought some chalkboard paint, then painted the boards with two coats of the paint.

In the next post I’ll show you the last steps of the project and the final product.

So yeah, maybe it’s a craft project, and maybe it made me feel  a little more domestic than usual.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting carried away and knitting any Christmas Nativity Meerkats, though.

When we started our registry for wedding gifts, I did add a couple of really neat composting containers to the list.  I’d still like to have one or two of those at some point, because I’ll need to have a few containers going if I want to have lots of good compost on hand at any given time, but there’s no reason I can’t start now using some materials we had on hand.

This compost bin is a variation on the considerably more fancy “tumbler” model of compost bin.   With just a few things we already had on hand, we were able to create a more low-tech, but still awesome, version.

We used:

A plastic garbage bin that was supposedly being used for “yard waste” but not actually serving a purpose.   It’s important to use a bin that has a lid that you can secure, to help with the whole “tumbling” part.

A drill that Greg got as a gift from his dad for his birthday.  Yay power tools!

Beyond that, all we needed were a couple of paving stones (we had a few sitting discarded on the edge of the yard) and the scraps & dirt that would become our initial materials for composting.

First, I drilled holes around the garbage bin, spaced fairly evenly apart.  Organic matter needs nifty stuff like oxygen in order to break down properly, and we want our compost to be moist but not wet.  The holes will let in some air and also help drain excess water from the bin.

I gotta say, drilling holes into a plastic bin is really, really easy…but you still get to feel like sort of a badass wielding a power drill.  It’s possible that I drilled one too many holes in the bin because I was enjoying it so much, but you ain’t heard that from me.

Next, we set the bin on top of a couple of paving stones in the yard.  We picked a spot that was convenient enough to walk out to regularly, but not in direct view of the deck.  It also gets fairly regular sunlight, which we want in order to keep in warm in the Winter.  During the Summer we may move it to a shadier spot in order to maintain the right moisture level.

Into the bin went some dirt from potted plants that were long gone, along with a bowl full of kitchen scraps, some torn up junk mail and cardboard, and the pieces of our leftover jack-o-lantern (goodbye, Cannibal Jack!)  I also added in some broken twigs and leaves that were swept from the deck.  Then, we closed the lid and left it alone.

Voila!

Every couple of days, I go out into the yard and roll the bin around a bit in order to keep everything circulated.      I’ll be adding kitchen scraps (fruit & veg scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds — no meat, dairy, or grease!) and paper regularly, and yard trimmings (leaves, small branches, grass) to the mix and eventually we’ll have our very own dirt!

If you want to try this yourself, here are some helpful links:

http://www.greenworks.tv/special/composting/index.html#

http://www.epa.gov/waste/conserve/rrr/composting/by_compost.htm

http://www.thecompostbin.com/

And here’s one about vermicomposting, to appease Greg, who really, really wants some worms.  I think it’s a dude thing.   http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/green-basics-vermicompost.php

The absolute BEST part of this project was the cost and effort involved.

Materials – $0

Time – 10 minutes

Effort – EASY, like whoa.

Are you composting at home or wanting to try it?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

My dad’s family is from a very rural area of Kentucky.  Even though we lived in suburban Atlanta, he would sometimes speak fondly of keeping chickens or wanting a goat, which my mom would quickly veto.   Mostly, he was joking, but I think that some part of him missed the self-sufficiency of country life.

Growing up in a large metro area, recycling, composting, and home gardening were things that only “out there” hippies did.  I got the impression that it was really difficult and inconvenient, and indicated something about my lifestyle or political standing.  Despite all that, I would often daydream about picking vegetables from the garden for lunch, planting bulbs, and finding uses for all the things we regularly threw away.

In the country, these activities were not political statements, they were just a way of life.  It was practical and necessary to re-use whatever you could, to feed the plants with coffee grounds and to do as much as you could on your own just in case the power went out or the money stopped coming in.  Gardening wasn’t for hippies, it was for people who had any lick of sense.

My Uncle Jim had a great vegetable garden that I wish I had spent more time in.   When we were up in Kentucky I had lots of outside space to run around in, tomato plants to look at and touch, and dirt to wiggle my fingers in…but back in Atlanta, when vacation was over, it seemed like a faraway concept.   Our condominium had about 3 square feet of “yard” and planting anything edible was not allowed by the homeowner’s association.

Needless to say, when we talked about moving up to the Little Green House, one of the very first things out of my mouth was “We can have a GARDEN!”

Last weekend, we took the first step toward that dream of picking our lunch from the backyard.   We decided to create a compost container out of an old trash bin that was not being used.  It is a variant on the “tumbler” model of composter, but much cheaper and pretty darn easy to do.      In the next post I will describe how we did it in case you want to try it for your own yard!

I’ve always been surprised that I’m not an Autumn baby, because it is my favorite time of year.   My heart skips a beat on the first day that pumpkins are displayed at grocery stores and farmer’s markets.

This picture is an actual candid reaction my friend S.C. got on the first day Whole Foods put pumpkins in front of the store a couple of years ago.  I jumped out of the car, ran up to the pile, and hugged one before turning around and *click* he got a picture. <— This is some genuine pumpkin glee right here.

It was with similar glee, then, that I approached Halloween and the start of November this year.   I was really excited to decorate our front door for the kids, especially because we’re new to the neighborhood and haven’t met many people yet.   We had a great turnout and my jack-o-lantern was a hit.   He’s a cannibal:

Earlier this week, a few coworkers and I organized Pumpkin Palooza!  Several of us brought in all sorts of pumpkin treats.  We had ice cream, muffins, cupcakes, and pie.  I wanted to make sure we had a pumpkin pie there, since it seems the obvious choice, but I also wanted to try something I’d never done before.  Behold,  my Pumpkin Meringue Pie:

I used a graham cracker crust and made a meringue to put on top of the pie.  I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out since I’d never had a pumpkin pie with a meringue, but it went over really well.   I liked that it was a little lighter than most pumpkin pies, and the graham cracker crust added a little spice to it.

There is still one piece of it leftover in the office fridge, so I’m going to break with convention and eat some pie for breakfast.

What is your favorite thing to do with a pumpkin?

My ideal lunch date is an all-day affair.   It includes lots of friends, family, a few dogs, a giant grill, endless margaritas, and a backyard.

The ideal lunch in my head is a late Summer day when most of the renovations on the house are finished, at least to the point where we can throw a kickass party.   We’ve got our hot tub installed, the new deck looks awesome, and everyone is having a great time.

Nobody has to be anywhere in the next few hours, and no-one is worried that they are missing anything on Reality TV.    Oh, and someone else gets to clean up.

The interesting thing I’m finding about moving into a previously lived in house instead of a new construction is that before we can “DIY” we have to “UIY”… UN-do it ourselves.

When Greg’s mom moved into the house at the turn of the century*, the walls were in pretty bad shape.   Structurally, they were fine, but hooooo-boy did those previous dwellers have some decorating issues.   At some point (like when we have a scanner) I will scan and post the pictures of how the walls were painted, but suffice it to say that they loved to mix textures, patterns, and colors in a way that only colorblind people could appreciate.

Cyndi did a great job of UN-doing their mistakes and creating clean, neutral walls again.   The open, main room, which combines our living and dining room, is thankfully now plain white, the second bedroom (which will be Greg’s “mancave”) is beige, and the master bathroom is a solid, pretty blueish green.   Beyond that, she didn’t do much in the way of decorating the house, mostly because she didn’t enjoy those types of projects very much, and she spent so little time at home that she didn’t feel it was worth the effort.   I can’t really blame her, and am actually thankful that she didn’t leave us with too much to UN-do before we put our personal touches on the place.

That said, there was this thing.  Above the window in the master bedroom.  I believe it was intended to be decorative, but I can’t be sure.

My guess is that Cyndi saw a picture in a magazine of a do-it-yourself curtain with valance and decided she didn’t need to go to a store, because she already had everything she needed to accomplish this project at home.    The supplies she used were bedsheets, yard sticks, and nails.    Yes, you read me correctly:  bedsheets, yard sticks, and nails.

I can only imagine that Cyndi was here with us, laughing her ethereal butt off as I climbed a stepladder to take down that abomination.  I was laughing, too.

I’m thankful that this is one of the few “UN-do it yourself” tasks we’ve had to tackle so far.

Did you have any fun “UIY” projects when you first moved into your current living space?

*I love saying that when I mean 2002.

This week’s Girl Talk Thursday is all about vices.

If I have any vice that matches up with Dante’s Big Seven, it would have to be gluttony, and not just for food & drink.   I want to taste, feel, do, experience everything.

I love to eat and try all kinds of new foods.  I love to play.  I love to connect with as many people as possible in different ways (Hellooooo Twitter addiction) and to laugh, and talk, and eat and drink some more.

I am impatient.  I want to indulge in a lot of things, and when I decide what I want to try next, I want it now. 

While a little anticipation is nice ( I actually enjoy the wait for Christmas, for example) I do not handle long delays of gratification well.    When I don’t get what I want, I can  easily revert to behavior befitting a petulant six year old, or Veruca Salt from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.

“I want the world, I want the whole world!”

So I guess there’s a little greed in there, too.  But it’s a greediness for information, sensations and experience, rather than for stuff.  I can spend all day on Google Reader checking out blogs, and design websites, and forums, and then run off to go try something I read about there.  Later, I’ll invite a friend over to try it out with me and share a glass of wine, so we can indulge together.    Is being an Enabler a vice, too?  Hmm…

*64 more days,  in case you were curious.