The Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out; They Eat My Garbage, Dontcha Know

My early Christmas gift this year was a box of creepy-crawlies. I've wanted to vermicompost for a while - I compost but half the year I'm basically just adding garbage to a pile of snow. It's inefficient and, frankly, unsightly. So that's why I got these guys:

First, in the cute little package they came in (made it through single digits to get to us, all worms present and accounted for!). And here they are in their box:

I didn't have a real worm farm - fancy ones can run $100 dollars or more. But I did have a spare Rubbermaid storage container (18 gals., I think) and lots of newspaper, so I decided to make my own. And no, I can't take credit for this idea. I'll have some great ref. sites at the end of this post. But here's the container before I re-purposed it:

To make sure our little fellas have plenty of air I drilled holes all over the bottom and sides. Not the top, since I have another need for it. This is how it looked:

The holes were a little rough:

so I cut them down, which of course I didn't get a picture of - whoops. Then I added shredded papers and cardboard:

I added a cupful of potting soil to help the little guys grind up all the refuse I plan on giving them:

Then I put them in:

God speed, little fellas, God speed:

Here they are in situ (and, yes, our basement is this messy):

I used the lid as a base to catch any liquid or escaping wormies. To keep them happily in the dark, I just flattened a box to cover them:

Looks ramshackle, but it works! And here are those links:

http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/bse/442-005/442-005.html

http://www.compostsantacruzcounty.org/Home_Composting/Worm_Composting/index.htm

http://www.recycleworks.org/compost/wormcomp.html

My Yard of Shame

Really, it’s not as bad as all that. But there was a lot I didn’t get done before the snow fell. Here’s a rundown:

In the summer and fall this trashcan looks really nice with petunias spilling over the sides - now it just looks, well, seedy.

And my cast iron chairs look kind of sad. They're frozen tight to the ground, so barring a thaw they're there till April.

And under this mound of snow was a mess of planters. I say was because after I took the picture I cleared the snow and pried them up. Better than picking up planter shards in the spring.

This lone plastic chair somehow missed being put away with all it's friends. Now it's under cover, so I guess I'm lucky I found it before it was completely entombed.

And my poor, sad dahlia bed. Yep, every one of those stems is, sorry was, a dahlia. I feel really bad, because they're surely dead now after the cold we've had (dahlia-killer!), but the winter just snuck up on me. The end of October it was 70 and gorgeous, the second week of November it was in the twenties. So, if any of them survive they'll be my little dahlia-miracles - but I'm not too optimistic.

Since I took these pics we've had another foot or so of snow, so the petunia-can and dahlias are pretty-much lost under there. Next year (and, yes, I say this every year) I will be more on top of it all. I will rake up all the leaves (no pictures to show, but trust me, the ground is still covered), I will put away all the outdoor paraphernalia (again, trust me - the small stuff is still out there, somewhere), and I will dig up my poor dahlias. Or I really will be guilty of dahliacide.

I Don't Dig Christmas

I don’t. I don’t know why, I just don’t. I like anticipating Christmas, I like remembering Christmas, but I don’t like living Christmas so much. It’s partly the pressure, the countdown, the empty chocolate boxes in the two dollar Advent calendar. And it doesn’t help that everywhere is an image of Christmas perfection when perfect and I are almost never even in the same room. Sounds like some seasonal depression, right? Really, it’s not - I like the tree, my kids’ off-key carol-mangles make me happy - I’ll just be happier when it’s over.

This little guy makes me happy, that’s for sure.

I call him my cheeky Santa. I got him years ago at a yard sale. I think he’s some kind of decoupaged paper, but he’s gotten a nice patina over the years (maybe he lived with a smoker before he moved in here!) and his expression is great.

This is my other Santa-dude.

I do remember where I got him - a thrift store in Montpelier, VT, nine years ago. He’s a tin of some kind; he’s hollow, and looking at the picture he’s lined up wrong right now, but he’s great for tucking little candies in for Christmas Eve.
So.... Enough about my kinda-sorta-S.A.D. for now. I'll just go look at Cheeky Santa and imagine it's January already.

A few weeks ago we went to one of our favorite yearly Church sales in Bangor. I picked up a box of old patterns and books for $3 and in it were these old McCall’s Needlework magazines. They range from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies, so there’s every style from Suzy Homemaker to full-on Mod to Flower Child going on.




Some of the tips are dated: using one of those old, removable pop-tops to hang a picture (weren’t those things deadly-sharp?!?), using the round portion of those same pop-tops for a kitchen towel ring (again, deadly-sharp!). There are also a lot of bizarrely-intricate, time-intensive crafts made from household discards. I like to recycle, but golf-tee jewelry, macaroni-shell earrings (red nail polish and a rhinestone make ’em super fancy!), and “coffee-can grillwork” (think metal coffee cans, tin snips, and quilling - my god, how did anybody keep all their fingers back then?) are a little too, well…yeah. But the patterns for clothes are awesome! Not just the hats, scarves, and sweaters of today, but knit and crochet dresses, full-length coats, even three-piece suits. Someone tell me, why don’t we see more of this nowadays? I recognize the time factor, but is there another good reason? Cause I see three or four great dresses that I’d love to make, but if it turns out that they’ll end up all loose and ill-fitting, I’d like to know. Wouldn’t want to look like a bag lady in fabulous yarn! So I guess I'll start some - after the holidays, of course! - and see how they go.
Oh, yeah - here's a great usable tip from one of them:
Use a pair of old nylons as a sweater dryer - cut off legs, then pin the top of each one to a clothesline a few inches apart. Cross legs and run each one through a sleeve of sweater, pin toes to clothesline.
I'll have to try this one when the weather gets above freezing again - say, April.

Here Comes a Convert - Quick! Lock the Door!

Yes, I am a convert. I proclaim it and embrace it and like the best (or is it worst?) converts, I proselytize to all who will listen. Don’t worry, it’s not some cult I’m shilling, not Amway, not even some fad diet - it’s cloth diapers. I’ve had four kids and the first three wore disposables (‘sposies, now that I’m in the know) from birth to potty-training. J-dub was also in ‘sposies till just six weeks ago. Then, standing in the line at Target to shell out $26 bucks (with a coupon, no less!) for a box of diapers that would last him three weeks if I was lucky, I had an epiphany. Not a bright lights, halo-type epiphany, unfortunately, but a grumbling, hard-earned-money-type epiphany - NO MORE. To be honest, ‘sposies never made any sense for us as a family. Sure, we’re busy - who isn’t, right? - and convenience plays a role in our decisions, but except for convenience, ‘sposies were all wrong. Besides a new winter jacket for my birthday, I probably spent no more than fifty dollars on clothes for myself this year. And, I bought a maternity wardrobe out of that! I also analyze every item I put into the waste stream, curse over-packaging with words usually reserved for a sailor - what was I doing lugging a bag full of dirty diapers to the trash every other day?
So, I went home, started looking online and realized that all those cute, plushy, fancy diapers were… waaaayy out of my reach. More searching got me started with flats (four kids means lots and lots of receiving blankets - lots and lots of flats!) - I found a great “origami” fold here to move things along.
But flatfolds are a lot of work and I knew that S would never take the time to pin up a diaper when it was his turn to change the baby. I had visions of disposable diapers squirreled away in the closet to appear when I was out, hidden by a dad desperate not to poke the baby, or himself, with those giant diaper pins. Thankfully I found a super-easy tutorial on making your own dipes here. And to top it all off I found recycled T-shirt ideas here.
So I got a pile of old T-shirts of ours and I started trying to make fitted diapers. They're soft and cute and they do the job. I've done seven so far.


Well, actually, I've done eight. This is my first one.


And that's fine, right? Except this is the only thing it fits.

I just kept trying to get the tabs even and, well, it didn't turn out great. Or usable. For a human.

I'm really enjoying this - I'm not much of a seamstress, but I just love finding a use for something I was just going to throw away. Now, if I can just get my sister to switch to cloth. And my best friend. And that gal down the street who had twins.... Yeah, I think I just heard a door lock.

Intros

Time to give you the low-down on this mo-crowd. There's me, my hubmeister of twelve years, S; my two girls, T & T; and the littlest mo, J-dub. Five years ago we traveled north to the tiny, fictitious town of Pockwockamus and bought a small, 40s-era roadside motel. Every day is new, is a challenge, and is totally worth it.
This blog will never be fancy, that's for sure, but I'll try to keep it interesting.

Let's Get This Thing Started

Well, I've never done a blog before and I'm a wicked bad typist so I don't know how long this'll last, but I've wanted to get some kind of feedback (ahem, accolades!) on my life in general - so what do I have to lose, right? On second thought - I might wait a while till I let this thing go live.... Oh, I'm such a chicken.