My Addiction Fuels Literacy

I have a leeetle bit of a hoarding problem.

No, it's not back issues of Vogue, or empty soup cans, or cats.  

(Shut up... five cats doesn't count as "hoarding.")

It's BOOKS, lovely, lovely books.

And it's not enough to have a book; no, if it's a book I love, 

I must also have a hardcover edition:

(Minnie is also a fan of Louis Sachar's Newbery-winning Holes.)

My local library's "Friends of the Library" bookstore is an excellent source of inexpensive paperbacks -- I can leave with an armload of books for less than ten dollars. 

But when it's hardcovers I crave, I head to BetterWorldBooks.

This fine online company receives used books from donations, drives, and library discards;

sells them online, and uses a portion of the profits to fund literacy programs and libraries.

Here's where you can learn more about them.

Take a look at my latest haul!

I got eight books from them for only $24.40!  

That works out to only $3.50 per hardback book!

Why were these books so cheap?  They were in the "Bargain Bin," because of one reason:

The library-ness of them!

Do I care that there's an envelope and bar code in the front of the book? 

Not at all! 

In fact, it adds to the value of the book for me.

I can pretend I have my own personal library. 

Even better is when a book has an actual date-stamp sheet in the front:

Seeing those crooked dates stamped just fills my nerdy-girl heart with glee.

(Btw:  the only negative is those stickers on the spine are tricky to get off.  But I'll address how I rejuvenate used books in another post.)

This Picture is a Lie

Just look at these fine tomatoes I grew last summer:

There's some heirlooms there, and some Sungold cherry tomatoes.

 I'll bet you think I had baskets of these.

YOU WOULD BE WRONG.

Oh, I had enough Sungolds for our summer salads.  

And full-sized tomatoes for a sandwich or two:

 

(Isn't that the tastiest grilled cheese sammie you've ever seen?  

That's homemade mozzarella, too! )

But my plans to give away bags full of tomatoes

to friends, the food bank, and even passersby did NOT happen.

And don't even ask me about the zucchini.

It's just plain embarrassing.

...

Okay, fine.

What the heck, zucchini?  What the everlovin' heck?

I thought growing zucchini was supposed to be like growing

crabgrass, or kudzu, or dandelions.

Evidently, not.

But of course I'm trying again this spring!

My virtual cart is full at Renee's Garden, and I'm armed with some new ideas.  

I'll note them here, and let y'all know the outcome! 

Bow Down Before My Handiness

I've got a weird kitchen:  it has a fair amount of floor space, but a sucky amount of storage.  

Here's what might be on my counter on an average day:

So the Girl and I decided to make an island!

After kicking around Pinterest, I remembered that a blogger had made some very cool shelves out of boring old crates from the craft store. 

Fancy!

I took myself to Michaels, bought a dozen crates at ten dollars apiece,

and got some stain from Home Depot.

The blogger recommended a clear tint, but I accidentally got white.  This was fortuitous, because I think the clear would have been too light.  I chose something called golden/sunflower/meadow ...I don't really remember.  But it was yellow.

The Girl and I stacked those suckers out on the old Jacuzzi, and got to work.

As you can see, we didn't work terribly hard on getting the paint job perfect.  We were going for rustic/funky.  (Also known as, too lazy to get all the crevices.) 

After they were dry, we took them inside and realized, Whoa!  Stacking these guys

three-high would mean we'd be using mixing bowls chin-high!  Two-high would mean we'd have to squat, but a combo of landscape and portrait crates was juuuust right.

But how to keep the whole thing together?

Cable ties!

I picked up some eight inch ones at Home Depot, and the Girl and I just started attaching the crates to one another until the whole thing felt sturdy.

But I wanted to be able to move the whole island around, so I got a single piece of wood for the bottom and optimistically started sawing away with this little blade:

Oy.  

The Girl and I hacked away in shifts, then we called in the Boy.  He didn't make much progress, either, so we brought the heavy guns.

Who remembered we actually had an electric means to get through

this chunk of particle board.

I flipped the whole thing over and attached four casters.

Flipped it back, scored and cut a piece of acrylic for the top.

(If someone has a better idea for attaching the acrylic than silicon, let me know.  I ran a bead around the edge, and while it works fine, it kinda looks like snot.)


(***Note:  My friend Sam recommended stick-on silicon and rubber discs. 
I think that would work better!***)

I wanted little curtains, but the cafe curtain rods at Home Depot were too long. 

I was pondering what I could use instead, when one of those helpful

Home Depot guys suggested these:

I thumb tacked them to the inside corners, making a notch in one of each pair, and used wooden dowels to make the curtain rods.

(I was ridiculously proud of myself for this idea.)

There was just one more thing to do: sew curtains!  I didn't have enough of one fabric for all the curtains, so I decided to go with a quilt-y, scrappy look instead:

Ta-freakin'-da.

And here's the other side.

What's the second-most beautiful part of this project?

My new counter space!

Nom Nom... I Eat Your Scraps...

I could have spent twenty bucks plus on a compost bucket to sit on my kitchen counter, 

but instead I picked up a four dollar empty paint can at the hardware store:

I drew on a reminder munchy guy, because my family kept forgetting that yes,

 eggshells ARE good for the garden.

Not Late. Just Very, Very Early for Christmas

I've made an ornament for my kids every year since they were born.  What to do for 2011?

Well, a Pinterest pin took me to this talented blogger's idea for Christmas ornaments:

Cute, right?

But I wanted to add a Dang It, Minnie! spin on them.

So this is what I came up with:

Everything is better with dancing skeletons and purple rickrack!