Living Simply
Helpful DIY articles and musings from a small cowtown in the midwest.
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Things To Do With Your Old Coffee Grounds
If you love coffee, most likely you are generating used coffee grounds, and lots of them. Are you tossing them in the trash? Don't! There's plenty of uses for them!
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I Can Almost See the New Year From Here
I'm starting to feel my annual New Year's Refresh/Restart kicking in!
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Frost Warning Hot Pepper Sauce
A bright, spicy green sauce made from those bell peppers you just ran out and rescued from the frost.
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You Can Teach An Old Earthmomma New Tricks
Today I learned something that will forever change my dandelion petal harvesting method.
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Book Review: Sustainable Kitchen
I recommend this cookbook or anyone who's looking for practical ways to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Home gardeners will love the recipes, kids can have fun making ecobricks, and new cooks can…
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Old Dog, New Tricks
We don't often go out for dinner, and keeping to our low-sodium, low-fat diets means most convenience foods never follow us home from the grocery story. But there's always going to be nights…
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Book Review: How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying
How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms by Frank Hyman My rating: 5 of 5 stars I’m a forager by nature, and take…
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Book Review: The Preserving Answer Book
The Preserving Answer Book: Expert Tips, Techniques, and Best Methods for Preserving All Your Favorite Foods by Sherri Brooks Vinton My rating: 3 of 5 stars The Preserving Answer Book isn’t just for…
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Fall Foraging: Rose Hip Tea
After the flowers are done blooming, the hips expand and billow out, much like mine at Thanksgiving. Once they turn red (not my hips, the roses), I harvest them all.
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Social Distancing 101: Deep Dive Organizing
I have recipes. Lots of recipes. Some are aging, crumbling newspaper clippings. Some are printouts from websites. Some are PDFs on my hard drive. Some are cut out of magazines. Some are beautifully…
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Social Distancing 101: Free Online Learning
I think we all have a mental list of stuff we wish we knew how to do. As the saying goes, ‘there’s no time like the present’ and the present we are living…
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Social Distancing 101: Enjoying The Arts
If you’re able to pull up the internet on your smart TV or a good-sized monitor, you can continue to enjoy cultural experiences from home. Yesterday, CNN published a good resource article: All…
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Social Distancing 101: Free Literature
Staying home means more than trying to stretch your food so you don’t have to shop so often. Today’s advice is all about fun. Read a Book! There’s no better time than now…
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Social Distancing 101: Making Your Celery Work Harder
I’m going to start posting a daily tip on making the most of your food, since going to the grocery store right now has turned into the worst kind of contact sport. Today’s…
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Timberrrrrr!
On Saturday, August 24, 2019, the largest tree in our yard, a Black Locust tree that might have been as old as our Eisenhower-era home, changed its stance from vertical to horizontal. Enjoy…
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It’s Dandelion Day!
The dandelions have achieved full bloom in the back yard. Each year, I set aside one day in early spring to wallow in them. This year’s goal – enough petals to brew the…
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99th Aether Salon Chat Transcript: Foraging! with Ceejay Writer
If you admire food, or have been known to occasionally eat food, or perhaps have even gone so far as to stir food in a pot, you may know that food can be…
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Easy Gardening Project: Growing Garlic
Growing garlic isn’t difficult. I live in mid-Michigan in gardening zone 5B, where we plant garlic cloves in late fall, just around the time the first freezes hit. This way they can winter…
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A California Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there were six little cousins. The eldest, most wisest of them all was Sherrie the Trailblazer. Successor to her throne was Sharon the Serious. Following down the line of…
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The Weekend Left A Good Impression
It’s been an extraordinarily rainy weekend. Rainy and windy, which means that all the windows facing south and east are providing a rather impressionistic view of the world. This hazy, beautiful view inspired…
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A Typical August Country Weekend
We’ve only lived in Casa de Caribou 2.0 for about 5 months, but the grounds are already being cultivated into useful, productive, pretty land. Here’s my progress from the last few days, as…
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Sweet and Sourdough
I love my sourdough starter. I’ve been maintaining it for a couple of decades now. Even when I neglect it, old Beastie always springs back to life when I pull him from the…
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Chaise-ing The Blues Away
For those tuning in late, we moved in late February, and have been doing a lot of landscaping and home decor work ever since. For the first time in my life, I have…
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Speaking of Disappointing Politics and Snowstorms
William Henry Harrison gave the longest damn inaugural speech any president’s ever given, on March 4th, 1841. For an hour and forty five minutes a 68 year old guy shouted at a crowd…
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Smile? Okay!
When I was in 6th grade, I thought it would be fun to ride my Flexy Racer down one of the steepest streets in my hilly suburb. It was great fun! I sat on…
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The Life Cycle of a Loaf of Bread
Life Stage One: Fresh bread! It doesn’t matter what type of bread it is, as long as it’s a loaf you love. Around this house, we always have a loaf of classic soft white…
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Chives Discusses the Health Benefits of Catnip
Good Day, Humans! My name is Chives and I’m a special guest blogger today. Don’t tell Ceejay, she’s already jealous enough of my quick wit and classically handsome looks. Anyway. I’m here to…
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Listing to the Left
Today I learned that two of the art blogs I link to in my sidebar changed URL’s, so I popped in here to change them. Do take a peek at Virtually PJ and…
