New Years Eve

Tonight I placed an avocado pit in a glass of water, with hopes that it will sprout in the new year.



I'm going to spend a bit more time reflecting on the year and baking some cookies before I go find some friends and ring in the next decade.

Vagina Thumbprint Cookies

I'm sure by now you've heard that I like to make vagina cakes.

Well, Abby and I made some vagina cookies.





We have big plans for these erotic sweets. I'll keep you updated.

Snowflake Curtains

I've said this before: I really, really like taking paper to the sewing machine. Maybe because it feels like something I'm not supposed to be doing? Whatever. It's fun.

I've been making lots of snowflakes lately. I'm kind of addicted to it. They were piling up, so I decided to sew some snowflake garlands.

Some to go in the kitchen:



Some to go in my bedroom (with the curtains that I just finished sewing):



They're pretty festive and cute and make me very happy when I wake up in the morning. And Jill just pointed out this 5-pointed snowflake tutorial. So now I'm going to try and master those.

Cute Things to Make From Soda Cans: Pt. 1

My sister and I made these for our mom awhile ago. For her birthday, in May. We dug through my neighbor's trash can and ended up with some nice & colorful magnets.



Tutorial is here.

Triple Chocolate Fat Pants Cake

Abby and I made this delightful cake last Friday night. The recipe was discovered in Babycakes, a bakebook that I actually find to be kind of annoying because it uses celebrities to sell the readers on all of its recipes. And what do I care if Pamela Anderson or Natalie Portman likes the cupcakes I'm about to bake? But Jason Schwartzman was right, the triple chocolate fat pants cake is amazing. Plenty of chocolate, coffee, and coconut oil. And the whole thing is topped with broken chocolate chip cookies. And guess what, kids? Vegan and gluten-free.



Mouthwatering delicious, seriously.

Pumpkins!

I've always wanted to break away from the traditional jack-o'-lantern . Not that silly and scary faces aren't wonderful, but this Halloween weekend I felt like it was time to try something new. So I made a bird (cause birds are one of the only things I can cut out freehand). I think it turned out quite nicely. This weekend I am in love with our front porch.

They finally bloomed.

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

"Balloon"

You might remember me saying that I wanted to learn how to make stop motion animation. Well, I did it! Some friends and I spent an afternoon in the front yard constructing a story about ben franklin and some balloons. Surprise guest appearance from a unicorn!



In other news, I have been neglecting this blog for far too long. That's what happens when your camera breaks, I guess. But I'm about to buy a new one, which means I will start documenting my crafty projects once again.

Hope you're all having lovely summers!

Classy Containers

It took me awhile to track down wine crates to plant in. Turns out most wine comes in cardboard boxes these days, and wine distributors like to hold onto the few crates they do get in, since wine crates work so well as makeshift shelves. Really, there are so many cool things you can do with them.

I finally got a response to my numerous craigslist wanted postings. The woman was super nice and excited to get the old crates out of her garage. I'm pretty happy with what I've done with them.

Springtime zine

I really love spring. There is so much to be excited about this time of year. I am compiling a zine that speaks to how awesome and exciting spring is. If you also like this season, I would love for you to contribute (and your friends too! tell all of them!)

IDEAS: write about your favorite music to listen to this time of year. your favorite foods to eat. your favorite springtime activities. instructions on how to do said stuff that you like to do in the spring. write about picnics that you've put together or hikes that you've gone on. tell us about the best spring of your life. write about spring fever. draw pictures of you and your friends swimming in lakes. WHATEVER YOU WANT.

I want to put this together quickly, so that it can be distributed while spring is still in full swing. So the deadline is May 9th! Really soon!

Email contributions to:
ashley.mcallister@gmail.com

Ask me for my address if you want to snail mail your contribution.

Alys and the Avocado Plant

I really enjoyed watching this. I can't wait till I eat my next avocado.

Hot Body Scrub

I feel most awake on the days that I've done a hot body scrub.

Skin is the largest organ in the body and it is responsible for something like one quarter of the body’s detoxification each day. Not to sound too woo-woo (I've been saying that a lot lately) but we're covered in dead skin cells and scrubbing them away makes me feel waaaaaay less clogged up both physically and emotionally.

It's simple: Take a wash cloth and run it under steaming water. Once it's hot, take it to your legs. Rub in circular motions towards your heart and work your way up till you've scrubbed your whole body. Run the washcloth under the faucet every little bit so that the cloth stays hot. Take a shower when you're done. If you don't they say the skin cells will make you itchy, and that's kinda gross.

I want to learn how to do this!

A group of teenage girls made this AWESOME music video at a Spring Break Music Video Camp. It's super fun to watch and it really makes me want to learn how to do some stop-motion animation...summer project!

MAKE YOUR OWN LAUNDRY DETERGENT

This is so easy. It will take you ten minutes. It will save you money*. It's better for the earth. And you will feel cool cause you made it yourself.

YOU NEED:
hot water
1 cup washing soda (available at most grocery stores)
1/2 cup borax
1 bar of soap (nothing that's heavily scented)
10 gallon bucket (you can get these from restaurants or dumpsters pretty easily)

Grate the bar soap (it's fun! it'll look like mozzarella cheese!) Add it to a large saucepan with hot water. Stir over medium-low heat until soap melts and dissolves.

Fill a 10 gallon bucket half full of hot water. Add the melted soap, borax, and washing soda. Stir until all of the powder is dissolved.Top the pail off with more hot water.

Use 1 cup per load. The detergent will gel, so make sure to stir it each time you use it.

*The math has been done. This woman figured it out and said she saved something like $65 a year.

Vagina Cakes pt. 2

When you google image searches "vagina cakes", you will find pictures from my blog and my friend Jill's on the very first page. I'm pretty sure Jill has mentioned that most of the people who find her blog find it through that picture. I recently looked into which pages people come to my blog from. Sure enough, I get about ten hits a day because people want to see vagina cakes!

So, I made another vagina cake! I made it in honor of my friend Mel coming back to the USA (she's the one who made that awesome toothed-vagina cake last year).


I made a vanilla vegan cake with a little lemon extract. The frosting was colored with juice from beets I'd eaten for dinner the night before (again, my favorite food coloring). I added some toasted coconut for the pubic hair and it was ready to go.


It was pretty delicious. Sometimes I think I could go into the vagina cake making business.

Hey, Nettles

I think I've only had nettles once in my life, but after watching this video all I feel like doing tomorrow is foraging for nettles.



The video might be a little woo-woo, but it's pretty charming, and it is definitely convincing.

My Little Lettuce Babies

My seeds sprouted a few days ago and I feel like a new mom. At least, how I imagine a new mom might feel.

First of all, I'm pretty darn proud! When I wake up in the morning, I look at the seedlings on the ground beneath my bedroom window and squeal something like, "I can't believe how big you're all getting!!!" I make sure that whoever else is in the room (Mel, Joel) also sees how much they've grown. I admire the tall, well-postured ones and I pay special attention to the little ones who are lagging behind.


I find myself lying on the ground next to them quite often, holding my breath and watching intently. Sometimes I think that if I could just stop myself from blinking, I might catch them growing before my very eyes.

Seed pots!

The current issues of ReadyMade told me that newspaper could be used to make excellent biodegradable seed pots. So I tried it out.

All you need is some scissors, newspaper, a small glass, soil, and seeds.

I cut the newspaper into strips that were about 3 inches wide and 27 inches long. I took the strip and rolled it around a glass. I then folded the excess paper over the base of the glass, making sure that there were no gaps. I gave the bottom of the glass a little push to secure the base and the pot was good to go!


My cupcake trays are helping out with the vegetable growing. I put plastic wrap over the trays to keep the moisture sealed within the pots.


And now I wait. Anxiously!

And there's not much to say, so I'll tap my foot

I spent today scratching things off of my to-do list. Things I'd been meaning to do for weeks. Months even. It felt very, very nice.


This is my favorite song right now. It will not leave my head.

Garden Anywhere!

On Saturday afternoon Joel and I went to Powell's, filled our arms with as many books on vegetable gardening as we could hold, plopped them down on a table in the cafe, and started reading. And guess what? It turns out gardening (or at least getting started as a gardener) is not as difficult as we may have led ourselves to believe.

My favorite of all of the books we found is Garden Anywhere: How to Grow Gorgeous Container Gardens, Herb Gardens, Kitchen Gardens, and More - Without Spending a Fortune. The title says it all. The book includes lots of tips on how to make cool containers for gardening (out of wine crates and milk crates and olive oil tins) and really straightforward information for those of us who are just learning about sowing seeds, building compost bins, etc.

Alys Fowler (the author) is someone I would like to be friends with. In the section on scavenging for containers to grow plants in, she includes step by step instructions on how to get into a dumpster, and includes photos of her dumpster diving in a dress. Just my style.

So, if you're looking to learn how to garden and would like a nice lady to guide you through it, read this book.

Neckties decorated with asparagus spears

Yesterday evening, I ate asparagus for the first time in almost a year. This was a very long time in-between eatings, especially considering my intense love for the delicious pretty green spears. Why did I refrain from eating asparagus all winter long? Well, it all started with reading a section on asparagus in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:

Pushing a refrigerated green vegetable from one end of the earth to another is, let's face it, a bizarre use of fuel. But there's a simpler reason to pass up off-season asparagus: it's inferior. Respecting the dignity of a spectacular food means enjoying it at its best. Europeans celebrate the short season of abundant asparagus as a form of holiday. In the Netherlands the first cutting coincides with Father's day, on which restaurants may feature all-asparagus menus and hand out neckties decorated with asparagus spears. The French make a similar party out of the release of each year's Beaujolais, the Italians crawl over their woods like harvester ants in the autumn mushroom seasons, and go gaga over the summer's first tomato.


I thought a lot about waiting to enjoy food after reading Kingsolver's book. I tried to think of a locally grown vegetable that I had ever spent a year of my life waiting for. I couldn't come up with anything. I tried to think of an annual holiday centered around the celebration of a just-harvested crop. Again, nothing. I felt like I was really missing out on something. Last summer I picked strawberries in Ferndale, WA and could NOT get over how much better they tasted that the ones you buy at the store in December. I decided that I would wait for spring to eat a few things in particular: berries, melons, tomatos, and asparagus.

The funny thing about giving up some of my favorite fruits and vegetables during the winter is that it was in no way difficult. I did not spend my winter unable to resist picking up containers of strawberries at the grocery store and then forcing myself to put them back. I am not the least bit tempted to spend money on a tomato that is not heriloom, or flimsy and flavorless asparagus from China. After realizing how much better these fruits and vegetables taste fresh, there was no going back.

Waiting was not frustrating; it was actually quite exciting. Instead of dreaming of spring and summertime foods, I was falling in love with squashes and beets during the cold months. The kind of foods that warmed me up and left me thinking, "of course this is what I'm supposed to be eating in December."

Joel picked me up from work yesterday and we went to the co-op to find food for dinner. When I saw asparagus, my heart seriously lept. I looked at the tag below the basket full of asparagus to find that, yes, this asparagus was from California. Not as fresh as possible, but only a state away! We decided to steam asparagus for dinner. And we did. Not only was the asparagus delicious, but the meal felt symbolic and meaningful. It was a delicious and satisfying way to spend the evening before the first day of spring.

This spring I am going to create some new holidays centered around eating just-harvested fruits and vegetables. In the Netherlands they wear ties with asparagus on them; perhaps in Oregon we will wear paint strawberries onto our faces while eating our first fresh strawberries of the season. Or something like that. I just came up with this idea while writing this entry, so the brainstorming session has only just begun.

Photo taken by my wonderful little sister

I have a terrible cold (I know I just raved about not getting sick all winter, but I've spent the last week working full-time with very young children, and I guess when you're around snotty-nosed kids, there is only so much your immune system can do) but this is not going to stop me from spending the first day of spring sowing my first seeds (!) and spending some time in the sun.

Spicy Eggplant Stew..

...was as good as it looks. If you like the sound of it, here's the recipe.

*Cilantro is the one of the only foods I've ever felt an aversion towards, but lately I have been giving it a chance. I might only be eating it because I like the way it looks piled on top of soups and guacamole. Or maybe I'm learning to like it. I just can't tell yet.

Security Envelopes

People are doing all kinds of fabulous things with security envelopes lately. I've started to keep my eye on the security envelopes that show up in the mail, and holy cuss, there are a lot of different patterns. I'm excited to have found another free material to make pretty things out of.

Behold, my first security envelope project!


I cut up some envelopes and construction paper and decorated the front of a sketch pad that I gave to Joel for his birthday. Hearts and bird are way cuter when they come in patterns.

Mmmm, dirt!

This afternoon I explained the way food grows to a few two and three year olds.

"You know carrots? Well, they grow underground, and when people pick them, they yank them out of the DIRT!"

Of course, they thought that was disgusting. Food and dirt? No way.

Except for one of them, who seemed to like the idea. With a huge smile on her face, she picked up a handful of dirt and shoved it in her mouth.

Picture from http://orcagarden.wordpress.com/2009/10

Is it a good thing?

Every house that I move into, I always tape this 3x5 note card to my bedroom door.


I picked up the note card from Tender Forever's merch table at a show a couple of years ago. It has become one of my most prized possessions, because it keeps me in line, and acts as a kind of mantra.

Oh, and yes, I did just move into a new house. I'm in Portland now. Subletting before finding a more permanent residence. It's exciting to be in a city. And the cherry trees are very much in blossom.

IWD

Happy International Women's Day!


Photo from The Guerrilla Girls.

How to Become a Beekeeper: Part 1

So I wanna be a beekeeper.


I've decided that I'll need to find someone else to partake in this new hobby with me. So I've started with flyers.

Dear Portland, please send me a new friend who has a space in which they would like to invite some honey bees to live.

Ben's B'day Exchange

Way back in December, Ben gave me one of the coolest b'day presents ever: 2 frames. One of them for me to keep, the other for me to make pretty and then give back to him.

Ben's picture looks like this:


Kind of creepy, also awesome.

I finished mine up and gave it to him in February, and it looks like this:


He used sheet music for "If You're Going to San Francisco" as his backdrop and he gave me a Key to Dicotyledons to make my art on. I added some dried flower petals, to go along with the flower theme. I think it worked out quite nicely.

Thanks Ben! Birthday presents that not only encourage, but FORCE the recipient to make things are the very best.

The magic vitamin

I haven't been sick AT ALL this winter. Which is quite peculiar. I've spent the last month trying to figure out what lifestyle changes have saved me from the usual once-a-month colds, and I think I've finally cracked the code.

Vitamin D! I started taking it in the fall to see if it would ward off seasonal depression. Along with the St. John's Wort that I've been taking daily for the past year, I think it's done a pretty good job with keeping me out of the dumps while the sun is nonexistent. And now I'm starting to think that maybe it's convinced my skin that it's summer and so my skin has told the rest of my body that it's not the season for the cold and flu. Or something like that.

I was reading a column in People's Food Co-op's newsletter the other day about the role that nutrition, herbs, and homeopathics have played this year in preventing H1N1. Apparently clinics that promoted Vitamin D reported really low H1N1 rates. "Human skin cells produce Vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. Therefore, it would make sense that influenza (flu) takes hold in places when sunlight diminishes, and indeed, epidemiological review supports this correlation."

I was really excited to read this, so I did some more research, and it's true: there is indeed an inverse relationship between Vitamin D levels and not only H1N1, but all colds and flus.

It turns out half of people around this area are Vitamin D deficient. When you can't play in the sun, try Vitamin D supplements. Your body might just think that it is summer and start acting that way.

Hearts

I really like taking paper to the sewing machine. For Valentine's Day, I cut up all of my mom's Woman's Day magazines and made these heart strings for the nursing home she works at. (The kids I work with also made Valentine's for all of the residents, which was a-dorable.)



I also knit a bunch of dishcloths. Pattern found here.



I'm thinking about sticking with the heart theme and possibly partaking in some knit graffiti, inspired by this.

Source Code

"Knitting gives me a lot of respect for my ancestors as hackers. Knitting is source code - you look at a knitting pattern - that's the code for a sweater. As we industrialize, more and more of the world we experience comes in a black box. We know how to use things but we don't know how they work. I've been de-black boxing my wardrobe." -Lisa Williams

Turning ugly news into pretty stuff

I'm poor. I also have a lot of free time. So when I can craft things for free, I get pretty excited. The other thing about free crafts is that they almost always involve reusing materials that otherwise would have gone to waste. When I was working at a grocery store, I got really into crocheting and knitting with plastic bags. It was fun, but even more than that it was therapeutic. There were so many evenings where I would ride my bike home from work so frustrated with how many plastic bags I had seen leave the store that day. There was always some middle aged man barking "OF COURSE I NEED A BAG! ARE YOU CRAZY?" (usually he "needed" this bag for something like, oh, a single can of pop). Crafting with plastic bags became a kind of activism for me, as well as a release. My nerves were calmed. I could pick a bag up off the street on my way home and turn it into something pretty. I didn't feel as upset about over consumption when I could do a little something to offset waste.

Newspaper is my new thing. I remember reading in a zine once that mulching can be a really cool thing because you take really crappy news and do something really fabulous with it. Mulching becomes a therapeutic act in that you can take pictures of soldiers and the president and stalk brokers and turn them all into this thing that will prevent weeds from growing in your garden! (I for the life of me cannot remember what zine this one. If someone knows, please tell me.)

I was feeling pretty bummed out by every newspaper I saw back in December, so I decided to make newspaper baskets for Christmas. And it felt really nice; turning ugly news into pretty crafts.




A pretty good tutorial for magazine baskets can be found here.

Happiness will be my revenge

I am listening to this song for what is probably the 28th time this week. It's the perfect song to play while getting ready for the day.

"The Sweptaways are thirty women who sing choir-arranged versions of pop tunes. Thirty women in color-coordinated or thematic costumes." And Jens Lekman is still my favorite.

Banners are hip, right?

My banner phase started in November, while I was falling in love with Learning to Love You More. We all kept talking about assignment #63: Make an Encouraging Banner.

This first one is hard to see, but when Joel, Mel, and I all moved away from Bellingham, we made a banner for ourselves that said ADIOS. We also hosted a Talent Show which I think was enormously successful. It included hula hooping, a couple magic shows, ukulele playing, a burping of the ABC's, Brooke reading Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA as spoken word, and lots of songs. Joel, Ben, Mel, and I sang and danced to Hold on by Wilson Phillips. And I think this picture was taken while Josh stuffed two whole doughnuts in his mouth...


Ben gave this "Be Your Higher Self" banner to Joel and I when we moved. He'd been working on it for weeks, ever since we started talking about making encouraging banners. I feel honored to have it in my possession after knowing how carefully he cut out each of the letters. Also, it is a nice banner to wake up to every morning.


My mom made this one for my birthday! (I forgot to take a photo while it was still hanging up in the living room)


Miniature banners are cute, so I made this diorama for my sister for Christmas. I thought it turned out nicely. (Natz is her nickname)


Now I'm going to make one and hang it in a public space. Any ideas for what the banner should say?

A sunset so vivid and warm

Forrest recently developed photos from our early fall country road trip (the one we baked all the cupcakes to fund raise for). They're absolutely stunning.

My favorites are of The Arches, in Utah. They remind me that that day was one of the best days.


We arrived at the National Park in the early evening. We'd been driving for almost 24 hours and wanted to sleep, but we'd read enough about Delicate Arch to know that we needed to see it before it got dark.


We drove along the windy roads towards the arch, racing to catch up with the sun before it set. We grabbed the last parking spot near the arch and with cameras, water, and some snacks, we made our way a mile and a half up the rugged sandstone.


The weather was incredible that day. Sunny with spurts of intense rain, and a tremendous rainbow spread out across the sky. We made it to the top just in time for the sunset. We ate a mango while we sat in it. It was magical.


That really was the trip of a lifetime.

Pinz

I used leftover fabric from Christmas presents to make these hairpins for my sister. I think they're pretty cute. The tutorial, from Kayte Terry, is available here. I stuck pretty closely to the tutorial, except I didn't cut the top circle like she suggests.

Lazy Samoas

I keep telling myself I'm going to take a break from baking cookies. But then my mom went and bought me coconut oil...


The Lazy Samoas, like all of the cookies I've been making lately, come from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.

Cookies from scratch always taste better. No offense, Girl Scouts.