Cannon Beach Love

At the beach. Love it here. Need to figure out how to move here full time.

































Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:S Hemlock St,,United States

Lulu's First Egg

Exciting times in the egg box! The chickens are squawking and making a racket. Three days of this and I finally figured out that Lulu was laying eggs - soft shelled broken eggs. And then! The magic little treasure we were waiting for - a little brown speckled egg. Thank you, Lulu!

Finally! New Beads!

Well, don't fall over in your seats or anything, but I have new beads! I know, I know, it's been a very long time. But I made it out to the messy studio and melted glass and had a blast doing it. And! There are now 8 new beads on Etsy, and few more will come soon once I photograph them.

Here, have a look, handfuls and handfuls of them!

Bead Soup Blog Party Is Here!

It's that time again! Lori Anderson has been hard at work matching up 363 people for this one - wow! Check out the list here: Bead Soup Blog Party.

Remember how it works? She matches us up with a partner that she thinks may give us some challenges? And we exchange a focal and a pretty clasp, and then go to work adding our own beads and creating something new and hopefully different from what we normally make.

Well, this time, my partner is Linda Inhelder, of Must-Haves. She makes beautiful silver and beaded jewelry - really pretty things. Like this:



I'm sure whatever I send her will not be a challenge. Except that I just found out that she had an accident and will have one hand in a cast for some time. She probably won't be making anything for quite a bit. I'll be sending her something in the next couple of days, regardless. Wishing her a speedy recovery!

She managed to get my package out to me before all that, and it arrived last night - very pretty blues and greens and browns. Just my kind of colors, right? YES. Lovely. Baltic amber, dyed apatite, carved quartz flowers,and some fine silver pretties, some charms she made, a few circle links. And a few other goodies. I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do with it all. None!

My favorites are probably the amber and the little sea shell charm and silver links. But in my mind... I just can't see how to fit them together. But, I'm sure I'll figure it out. Definitely a challenge!

Here's the goods:







Thanks Linda! Get well soon! And thanks to Lori too - I know this is a huge undertaking for her - but so worth it - I hope!

Trickle Down Creativity

Or is it bubbling up? I'm not sure, I just know that it's back... let's see if I can hold on to it.

First of all, there was this glass fusing class that I signed my whole family up for. Susan Murphy was teaching her new glass fusing technique, along with another teacher, Brian, at Cascade Glass Art Center in Redmond, WA.

We learned how to decorate glass with powders and paints and stencils and a whole new world of possibilities opened up for me. I have to admit that I've always been a little snobby about stencils, except maybe for hand-made ones... but I now see the error of my ways. Stencils are my new best friend.

These photos show the pieces after the first day of class:





And here are the (mostly) finished pieces. I can still add more, and I might.







Interesting, right? So I debated and debated... do I want to get into something completely new, with all new supplies and materials? Finally it came down to this: This is something I can do with my son - he thinks his art passion is glass fusing. So I ordered hundreds of dollars worth of supplies. I guess I should show you what he made in class, check it out:









And then there's Frank's pieces - I really love this dodo bird with the flying eyeball and tiny wing. Frank's got some buried creativity in him too, just waiting to come out.



So... now we wait. There are a couple of slumped pieces that need to be picked up still. And paints and powders and stencils should be arriving any day now. But the muse had ideas and wanted to try them. SO I pulled out my acrylics and an old tree painting that I never felt was done, and a couple of stencils from Ben Franklin's... and started playing. And it was fun. Paint on canvas is much more instantly gratifying than glass, no kiln time... you see what you have withing minutes rather than hours or days.

Here is the tree painting I was never very happy with:



And what it looks like after messing around with it:







Let's see where this takes me...

Baking Successes

More gluten-free success this week.

First of all, Fanny Farmer's banana bread - I followed the recipe exactly, just substituting gluten free flour blend for regular and adding an extra banana. It was very, very good.

Second, there was cheese straws. Ones the whole family thought were great. I'd serve these at a cocktail party, they were that fun and yummy.

Art of Gluten Free Baking's Cheese Crackers and Straws.

I added a sprinkle of salt and baked until totally crispy:



And then there was shortcakes, for strawberries. These were good. Not my grandmother's shortcake, obviously, but a little on the tropical side with almond flour and coconut oil. I substituted sugar for the honey and it was a bit too sweet. But, we enjoyed them.

Speaking of strawberries, our strawberry patch finally started producing, and I swear! these are the best strawberries I have ever in my entire life tasted. So red and juicy. Red all the way through. I am having a love affair with strawberries again, after years and years of those beautiful huge store berries that taste like nothing and are white inside... I finally remember what Grandma's berries were like, and why she got up early every morning to water her berry patch. I'm sure I was 10 the last time I ate her berries... and now here I am in my (gasp) 40's and finally have her secret back.

So, when my little patch did not give me enough to get through the year with my new berry love and refusal to ever again buy the grocery store/costco ones... Luke and I went berry picking at an organic farm.



I made, for the first time, strawberry jam. Freezer jam. The first batch did not set, but is still delicious. The second batch worked great (I decided to follow exact directions for a change).



And now I'm inspired to can for real. Glass jars, hot water, the works. I got my ball canning book and I'm ready to go, I just need something to can! Raspberry picking is up next, if it would only stop raining around here.

Edible Landscaping

Have you heard about the lady who had to go to jail because she planted veggies in her front yard? No, that's not the beginning of a joke... though I can see how you might think it was, it sound silly enough to be one. Sadly, not a joke, and not even funny.

Meet Julie Bass of Oak Park, MI - this is her blog:Oak Park Hates Veggies, here she is in the news: Julie Bass of Oak Park Faces Misdemeanor Charge for Vegetable Garden and here is a petition you can sign online to help her: Stop the Prosecution of the Bass Family for Growing Veggies.

This is her yard, her front yard veggie garden:



They had to tear out their old yard to repair a sewer pipe and decided to install some raised beds and grow some food for their family. Sound pretty criminal, no? Of course not. She is not in jail (yet, though it sounds like her town council would like to put her there), but is going to trial over it this month. I sure hope she wins and shows that town of hers what's what. Please take the time to sign her petition and even send a letter to her city, if it strikes you as crazy and unfair as it does me.

Growing a garden seems like such a basic right. If you own your own land, you should be able to grow your own food, to feed your own family. And unless you bought into a community with strict laws about what color you had to have your house painted and how high your fence can be and how many cars you can park in your driveway... you should be able to do just that. And not only that, but look at her place - it's totally neat and clean, not a weed to be seen. And she was starting with a bare dirt from the pipe issue, so it's not like she's even had time to let it grow and get wonderful yet!

I don't know why this has struck such a nerve with me, but it has - it's making me very mad, and she's half way across the country! Of course I'm on the West Coast where it's very hip to have edible landscaping - it's part of the whole urban homesteading thing - and I too have had edibles in my front yard. It was great. I met more neighbors the one summer I had the raised beds out front than I have the entire 5 years I've lived here. The neighbors walking by when I was out there working or watering would comment on my veggies, telling me how they were watching that pepper turn red, or wow, how great to see my garden growing, or whatever. When we pulled it out to move it all to a sunnier spot, people stopped to tell me they would miss seeing my garden grown. Just thinking about it, and knowing Julie Bass's story, makes me want to put some edibles back out there. And I think I will!

(I was telling Frank about this story and the first thing he said was "You are going to put some veggies back out front, aren't you? And I support you, we should." - This is just one of the reasons I love that man.)

So...

I've been looking at gardening books and googling front yard veggie garden pictures, and I have to say, I'm totally inspired.

Let me inspire you, too, but only after you go back up to those links and sign that petition, ok?!

First, the books, I do love gardening books:

The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden



and

Edible Landscaping




And now for the pictures - just google front yard gardens and hit images to see tons more:

First of all, I wonder who's house this is? The ultimate in front yard veggie gardens:



Great article: Why the White House garden matters.




Sunset Magazine's Grow Veggies in the Front Yard

A really beautiful front yard veggie garden:



From:Garden Porn.

And another, this one is huge! The link is worth clicking, just to see the garden progress from sprouts to lush wonder:



OK, that's plenty, you get the idea. What are you going to plant in your front yard? Are you as hot and bothered by this as I am? I think I'm going to start with strawberries and blueberries. And sunflowers. Maybe I'll try some pole beans too since the ones in my back yard are not doing so great. Whatever, you know I'll share pictures when I get this project going. But first, I need to go write a letter to Julie Bass's City Council. Did you sign that petition yet? Please do!

Backyard Chickens

Everything is done, just waiting for the eggs now!













Chicken tractor - two parts to move around and fit between the raised veggie beds.





Hanging watering system - with poultry water nipples: