Miss Modish- Mojo Maker

Kitty Photo Friday

I think the kitties like this whole mid-painting thing more than I do. A sunny room with all the furniture piled up in middle and comfy dropcloths covering the floor? Kitty heaven!

We'll be finishing up the paint job this weekend and putting my office back together- it's been hard working without it! And we'll have to get out to enjoy our near perfect summer weather, sunny and low 80s! August is the best month here in Portland, I love it! (not to mention it's both my and the mr's birthday month :)

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you back here next week!

<3 jena

Something to chew on

Seems every time I turn my head there is an article about growing food. Sometimes food growing is shown in good light, sometimes not. Many of them give me the feeling gardening isn't simply about plants, but as much about the people cultivating them.

Image from Edible Estates

Most recently, I've seen a rash of newspapers covering HOA feuds and court and cases proving local governments are not necessarily wild about literally seeing food growing.  Of course, that's not the case everywhere.

Think about it, decreasing grass and increasing organic food crops can help heal our water supplies by reducing chemical run off while increasing ground water absorption. I say three cheers for that! And another three cheers for: Less mowing! Yay! Less of a burden on municipal water filtration! Yay! You get food from your yard! Yay! You can share with neighbors! Yay! (Wait, that made 4 cheers.)

Image from Flickr user edibleoffice

All sorts of people are involved and affected by food production. It's reaching way beyond farms and scaling down to the individual. Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates has been at the forefront of the front yard food movement. Yesterday the New York Times used the word permaculture in a pretty lengthy piece about creating a landscape of sustenance. No matter where gardens are garnering attention, one thing is for sure - the practice of growing food has a surprisingly large impact.

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Image from Flickr user waltarrrrr

Each time food gardening is in the spotlight I grow increasingly convinced that growing food is a viable way to grow community. After all, if an act so simple as planting a seed can divide communities, the reverse should also hold true, right?

How about you? Have a recent run-in with rhubarb or do the neighbor's tomatoes taunt you? Do you think growing food brings you closer or further apart with others in your community?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise.  When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

My Insta Weekend

We were awakened by thunder and lightning at 6am this morn and now it's super grey and dismal out, so strange! But this weekend? This weekend was a ball of sunshine and I got so many projects done!

On Saturday morning we walked to breakfast and then went to the nursery to pick out some new pretties. And then I had a lovely crafternoon with my friend Ronit- we went to Goodwill to pick out some basic tees and stuff and then tried our hands at bleach tie-dyeing ala Honestly, WTF! Verdict? SO MUCH FUN. Although I kinda overbleached one of mine, I think- practice makes perfect tho, right? I wanna do it again!

Then on Sunday, the mister and I got our first coat of blue paint up in the office- bye bye yellow! We're keeping one wall behind a big bookcase yellow, but the agean blue is a breath of calm and cool fresh air. The mood feels so different in there, I love it so far! (I'll show final pics once we're all done, of course :) And later, in the afternoon shade, I planted some zinnias, straw flowers and a flowering maple to cover the eyehole where our big lupine & foxglove used to be (they're done for the season now.) And I planted some lillies and yarrow in another spot to hopefully come back next year. And my last bit of energy was spent giving myself a neon orange pedicure (thanks, R!) Phew! Was a fun one.

Work on any projects this weekend? Hope you're having a good Monday so far and happy week!

PS: My friend Jen from the DIY Lounge is looking for people to lead workshops for the Hello Etsy PDX conference coming to town in Sept- interested? Details over on Jen's blog!

Kitty Photo Friday

A sunny happy boogie monster for you this kitty photo Friday, because I'm feeling pretty sunny happy too! It's been unseasonably cool and rainy here this week, which I actually didn't mind, but now the sun is back! And it's gonna stick around allll weekend and head into the mid 80's- sounds pretty perfect! I see paint and tie-dye in my immediate weekend future and hopefully some digging in the dirt too- I need some late summer bloomers, all my spring flowers are dunzo!

Hope you all have a happy weekend too and stay cool out there!

<3 jena

Hot Hot Heat

Will this summer heat ever let up? Around here (in NC) even with the rain the heat just envelopes you, and the moisture from the rain makes everything thick and muggy. We usually spend sunny days outdoors, but this has been a week of staying inside, drinking lots of water and eating fresh veggies.

One such sweet relief: tomatoes. As the days warm up, the big bold berries ripen and the true flavor of summer comes alive. The lush, juiciness re-hydrates; homegrown, vine-ripened tomatoes take me away, no Calgon needed. Add a bit of fresh chopped basil for its cooling properties, and I can {almost} completely forget the three digit heat index outside. 

Are you growing tomatoes? What are your favorite types to grow or eat? Not a fan of the mater? What's keeping you cool during these long, hot days?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise.  When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

easy DIY earring holders

I needed a quick and easy solution to get my ever growing earring collection under control and up on the wall where's I can sees 'em! I didn't even remember I had all these earrings! They've been hidden in jewelry boxes, the boxes they came in, in a travel jewelry case I found that I never emptied after a trip! Obviously, I'm in need of a little organization, but until I can buy one of these suckers (we need a new dresser first) this was my solution using things I just had around the house.

What you'll need:

• Some embroidery hoops of various sizes
• lace or other open weave fabric
• scissors
• craft or fabric glue
• fabric stiffening spray- I used a brand called "stiffen stuff" from a craft store

Place the fabric in the embroidery hoops where you'd like it and pull taught. I spent some time deciding how I wanted the designs to lay inside the hoop...

Once they're how you'd like them and pulled tight on all sides, spray the fabric thoroughly with the stiffening spray and let dry (this stuff took about an hour.)

Once dry, the fabric should feel more stiff like a window screen- this step is the trick to making these easy to get your earrings in and out of and keeping them tight through the years.

Cut the fabric around the hoops with a 1/4" or so border- as you can see, it really doesn't have to be neat. Place glue all around the inside edge and fold the fabric down tight- craft glue worked great on the wood hoop and I used a stronger fabric-specific glue on the plastic hoops.

And once the glue dries, you're in business! Add earrings, bang some nails in the wall and you're done. Easy peasy pretty organization.

I need to make one more big hoop to hold my BIG earrings (yes, I still have more!) but these have been working out pretty darn well so far. And I've been wearing earrings more often because of them too!

Now, what to do about all my necklaces... how do you ladies keep your jewelry organized?

Weekend Thrift Scores

There's a newish Salvation Army that I always find stuff at. Everytime we go, I come home with something- usually clothes or little housey trinkets, but I always find something. Don't you just love those thrift stores? The ones you can count on? They used to always be like that...sigh. Anyway, here's what I came home with this time! 

This preppy-cute chambray shirt in light lilac- a perfect fit.

This linen/cotton blend plaid shirt, just the right weight for our coolish summer right now.

These great pants! I've been looking so long for some 80's/90's high waisted trousers but they all fit me so horribly I usually can't make it work- til I found these! They're actually newish I think. They need a new button at the top but otherwise, they're super awesome!

And this cute take-to-the-park-with-me bag, a great size for crafty projects or magazines!

Overall, pret-ty, pret-ty good. What'd you come home with this weekend? :)

Kitty Photo Friday

Our kitties are indoor only but we've had this little halter and leash set for a couple years and have never tried it! Our littlest kitty is at the vet today for some dental work :( so I thought it a good time to let our oldest cat Mira have a special moment outside without the little one getting jealous... 

And hey, she didn't mind the leash at all! And good thing I had it on, eventho it seems so silly I know, as she tried to bolt a few times over the fence, up the tree and there's lots of plants and flowers back there that I don't want her eating as they could make her really sick, so we had some controlled exploration :)

After some romping around and grass eating, all she wanted to do was climb up in my lap anyway!

Here's to some more fun in the sun this weekend (come on sun, stick around for us!) Hope you all have a great one and I'll see you back here next week!

<3 jena

Gleaning Green Beans

If you planted green beans this year, you're probably knee deep in them at this point. When my friend Bob told me he's all beaned out and isn't going to pick anymore from his crop, I offered to pick the rest. After a bit of hard bargaining, we had a deal. I'll give him some canned beans in exchange for the free produce.

Without going on and on about the virtues of gleaning, that's exactly what my little one and I did for about an hour yesterday. We picked through a row of Blue Lake (and a few rogue string bean plants) and came home with a plastic grocery bag bursting at the seams with our harvest of beans.

What will I do with all these beans? I'll pressure can most of them, but a few have already been blanched and frozen for quick preservation. They'll quickly get used when cooler weather hits and our own beans are no longer producing.

Tired of plain ol' beans? Blanch a handful, mix 'em up with chopped sweet onions and a sliced garden-fresh cucumber, then top with vinaigrette. Refrigerate and you have yourself a tasty green bean salad to snack on.

Growing beans yourself? Interested in getting your glean on? What in the world will you do with all your beans?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise.  When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

My Insta Weekend

{photo by the Mr!}

{photo by the Mr!}

This weekend we ditched the Antique Expo because we couldn't find parking and hit up some estate sales instead. I've been hunting for juuust the right granny square blanket for our living room and I found it this weekend! It's clean, soft, in totally random perfect-for-us colors and was only 10 bucks! Love it! I also picked up some table runners just because I loved the fabric- those might become curtains for our french doors to the office.

This weekend also had: BBQ tofu & a yummy mason jar cocktail at Bye & Bye. Naptime with kitty. Starting to watch Twin Peaks again from the beginning (it's on Netflix instant!) Potting some plants to pretty-up our porch (my mom sent me the snail and terracotta turtle- thanks mom!) Cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and all that fun Sunday stuff. And some lazy backyard summer sky enjoyin. It was just too nice to stay in and paint- we're saving that for a rainy day which looks like... today! Boo.

Kitty Photo Friday

The cuteness that is Lulu fluffmonster kitty just can't be contained...

She's definitely my favorite kitty to hug out of them all (shh...don't tell the others!) I'll give her a big squeeze for you all, k?

Looks like it's gonna be a cool, cloudy weekend here- perfect for office re-painting, yay! And the Antique Expo is this weekend, which we'll be hitting up again at some point. So I'll have some pics to share of that next week! See you back here then, hope you all have a happy weekend!

<3 jena

Share the Wealth

During a recent gardening geek out session, someone asked me if I had any mint to spare. Resisting the urge to double over in laughter, I asked how many garbage bags he wanted. Okay, maybe not garbage bags, but mint is one of those plants that will sprawl like a poorly planned city so a hard pruning won't hurt it. 

I went home and cut off several handfuls of mint for him, stood up, looked around the garden and realized I had plenty of other herbs to spare. There's no way I could use all the rosemary, thyme, and oregano that were encroaching on my tomatoes, and don't get me started on catnip. Thus was born my new favorite way to unload, ahem, give away herbs that grow crazy.

What you need:

• A 6-pack carrier for bottled beer (or soda)
• 6 small jars
• An abundance of herbs (I had thyme,  oregano, rosemary, basil, and enough mint to fill 2 spots)
• Tongue depressors to label each section, label the types of herbs with waterproof ink

 
If you don't like the graphics on the 6-pack holder, cover it with kraft paper. I happened to like mine, it emphasized the seasonality with a gift of fresh herbs.

Put each jar in a separate section of the 6-pack holder, and fill halfway with fresh water. The water will keep the herbs fresh and perky until the recipient can use them (or get them to a fridge!)

Pinch the lower leaves from the herbs so no leaves will be below the water line. Leaves under water for a couple of days will make for stinky, slimy water-- not appealing. {Bonus: the pinched leaves from my bouquets are now drying on the counter for winter use.}

Make little bouquets of individual types of herbs and tuck the stems in the water. Repeat one type of herb per jar for all 6 jars and you're done! Tuck a tongue depressor label between the jar and the cardboard, slightly sticking out.

Give the package to your favorite gourmand. Sit back and gracefully accept the accolades from your generosity all the while knowing you were really just doing a little garden maintenance.

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise.  When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.

color psych

We painted the office space yellow before we moved in, a color that we thought would be a sunny happy spot for the many grey Portland days. But now that I've actually lived in this yellow for awhile, working and making and creating in here, I just can't help but shake the feeling- this yellow has got to go!

But why? I love yellow, it's probably my fave color to wear and I'm normally drawn to warm, earthy tones like this. So why does it now feel so not right? It could have something to do with color psychology...

Yellow is happy and stimulating, it improves memory, judgement, decision making, productivity (that's why legal pads are yellow!) Sounds good for an office environment, yes? Sure! But it depends a lot on the shade and intensity of the yellow, I'm learning... A bright yellow in large quantities (like, on 4 walls?) can be too stimulating for the nervous system. Yellow that's bold resembles fire and can trigger and inherent avoidance in us. Studies have shown babies cry more and people fight more in yellow rooms cause saturated, intense yellow like this can make you feel cranky after awhile.

Well, shit! No wonder it's not workin for me!

So I've decided to save the mustard yellow for my cardigan collection, and for the walls, we're goin blue...

We picked up a sample last weekend of a light and icy but vibrant blue (Martha Stewart Aegean Blue) that I am just dying to get on the walls now, it makes me feel better already.

And the color psychology behind blue? It's shown to be calming, reflective and inspires creativity. Light blue mimics the sky and feels wide and limitless. Blue has also been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rates in people, and research has shown people are more productive in blue rooms!

With an over-stimulated brain already, all I want is an office that can help me feel calm, relaxed and foster focus instead of helping make me feel tweaked out and cranky! I hopped off that stress train a couple weeks ago and am determined not to get back on, so every little bit helps, right? We'll see how it goes- I'll report back with some before/after pics once we paint!

How bout you? Have you ever found yourself psyched out, or psyched up by the colors you surround yourself with? Do you consider the psychology behind a color before you paint the walls with it or just choose what you like?  

Kitty Photo Friday

Three happy sunshine kitties...

The sun is out, the sky is blue and summer has arrived in Portland! Just in time for the holiday weekend, ahhh... There will be much relaxing, hopefully some exploring, friends, food and maybe we'll even break out the sparklers. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and I'll see you back here next week!

<3 jena

bench {im}pressing

If you're going to have lots of pretty plants, you need to have a few niches in the yard to view mother nature's handiwork, right? There are a handful of tutorials on the web on how to take cheap chairs and turn them into a bench.

This Homestyle magazine version is pretty, playful and sophisticated with a splash of colors on the wood slats. Studio G's blog posted a before and after: 2 mundane chairs turned metal/wood modern rustic. Either of these could be done with 2 chairs ready for a second life, some scrap wood, maybe some paint, and a little elbow grease.

I think a quick scour of the flea market or Saturday yard saling would quickly turn up a pair of chairs begging for such a transformation, don't you?

Renee Garner has a passion to make things grow, although her brownish thumb wants her to believe otherwise.  When mud pies aren't on the menu, you can find her doodling the days away at Wolfie and the Sneak.