Prayer Beads?

A couple of weeks ago I went to a garage sale where an older gentleman was selling the last of his wife's jewelry as she had passed away a year or so ago and they had no children to take it.  I picked up a little packet of unusual beads for $1.  When I got home and unpackaged them for a closer look, they were part of a necklace or possibly a crucifix since there is a copper cross attached to the one end.  The strand is broken but there's a good number of beads and I've been pondering what to do with them ever since.

My first thought was some kind of art display for these oh-so-bare walls.  But how to accomplish that?  Then a friend suggested stringing them for a bookmark in my Bible.  I'm still uncertain if I want to do that but I do like the idea of being able to touch them because they have such a unique feel when you hold them in your hands that's both pleasant and disturbing.  I like the elements of irony and contrast and surprise in jewelry and decor.

Besides the cross, there are 8 of these skulls.  Each is approximately the size of my small fingernail and they are VERY primitively carved.  No two are the same and some barely resemble a skull while others look very much like one.  The material feels like polished bone or possibly ivory.  There's probably a simple way to tell the difference and I'll feel silly for questioning it once I find out...  The other beads are a little smaller than pony beads and either dark brown or black glass.

When I came to the cross, I was stumped.  Why would skulls be part of a religious item?  Turns out I was again woefully undereducated.  Skulls have a long history of symbolism in religious art as a reminder of the transitory nature of our life here on earth and the certainty of our physical death.  Very old paintings of saints such as Mary Magdalene, Jerome and St. Francis of Assisi often included a depiction of them meditating over a skull.  Some pictures of Jesus' crucifixion show a skull over the cross presumably as a reminder that He could not rise again and offer us resurrection and salvation without first experiencing death.  And more than a few religions have been known to keep a human skull on the premises for their members to use as an aid to meditation.  It seems a little macabre to me considering the squeaky-clean image of a very nice father-figure God most of modern Christianity holds but a Google search shows that skull prayer beads are pretty widely available today and appeal to a variety of faiths.

This description for a set of Buddhist mala beads was interesting:  "...Buddhists integrated Tibetan skull images into malas to represent the brevity of life and the restrictions of human understanding.  Skull-shaped mala beads help chanters [consider] the inevitability of fatality and the requirement of accepting lives filled with empathy."  (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/panoramicnun5041/what-is-the-meaning-of-skull-prayer-beads).

I find it fascinating when looking at world religions just how much we all have in common.  And this is another example... that our earthly life is short and, while we don't understand everything we are here to do, we are to be compassionate and helpful to others on this journey.

While the idea of using the beads in meditation is appealing, a Rosary is not part of my faith's tradition and it's not something that feels comfortable to me to introduce into my personal spirituality.  (I really know very little about Rosaries beyond they are an aid to repetitive prayer.  My most simple explanation is that each bead is like a place marker to keep you focused on the part of the prayer you are reciting.)  And I'm not really sure what to do with the cross as, again, that's not part of my faith. Mormons choose to focus on the ministry of the risen Christ and the promises of eternal life and see the cross as an instrument of death... a common method of executing criminals in that part of human history.  It's not pretty and pleasant to consider, and it shouldn't be... but could it possibly be more painful to bear than what He experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane when taking our sins caused blood to pour from his body like sweat?

So... if you had these beads, what would you do with them?

That 70's Bathroom

I'm pretty sure I've whined about having bathrooms straight out of the 70's before...

But it's true!!

There's Harvest Gold fixtures and everything!  In the hall bathroom anyway (the master has the ever-lovely Avocado Green) which is one of the rooms I've been working on the past few days as I start to get stuff in shape for a visit from a wonderful friend I haven't seen since about the time we both graduated from high school 30 + years ago.  Sadly, for now we're stuck with the Harvest Gold so... I'm doing my best to rock that shade of awful!

Here's a couple of BEFORE photographs of this little bathroom I've all but ignored for the last 5 months.

I started with a good cleaning.  The bathtub, toilet, and sink are actually in pretty decent condition with all the muck scraped and scrubbed off... they're just uglier than sin.  Which is kind of funny since it's almost the same color as the bedspread in the bedroom that this bathroom services.  Once the tub and tile were clean, I hung an ivory shower curtain liner ($1 for the rings and $1 for the liner panel at Dollar Tree) and used some of the extra drapes from the bedroom (the windows at my old house were a LOT bigger!) around the bathtub.  It was tighter than tight getting the drapery panels on the shower curtain rod!!  But for a free fix, I can expend a little effort.

Better Homes and Gardens it's not, but I think we can live with the Harvest Gold a while longer now...

You can't see it in any of the pictures but we also traded out the wimpy little showerhead for a nice big rainfall style one.  And I spray painted a neon green mesh trash can (gotta love the stuff you can find at Dollar Tree!) white for this room.  Now to fresh up the towels, parcel out the wall decor between bed and bath, get some cute soaps and stuff and put down a fluffy rug to make this room ready for its AFTER shots!

Everything is pretty simple and basic still at this point... but I'm repurposing things we already own and the FREE part helps me appreciate what beauty there is.  The liner makes the shower functional and the curtains do add privacy and the beginning of some sense of the room being put together.  There's a fluffy rug on the floor that matches one of the shades of gold in the curtain that makes for a nice spot to step out of the shower.

Not too bad for just using the extra curtain panels from the bedroom?

Fresh clean towels are also out.  We're short on towel bars so... in both bathrooms the clean ones are just folded and kept on top of the toilet tank.  It works because we're also not flush on towels so all we own fits in that spot.

What's funny about these tan towels is that when we first looked at the house, the lighting in this bathroom was so bad we thought the tub, toilet, and sink were tan.  It wasn't until we'd moved and replaced the scary old light fixture that we realized everything was harvest gold...

I decorated the corner of the counter with shells from all over the world:  The conch and abalone were my Grandma Clarke's from a trip to the CA coast in the late 1940s.  The sand dollar posed on the lip of the conch and the smaller similar shell up front was collected by a cousin taking an adventure and travelling as an itinerant worker all around the country during the mid-1980s.  Most of the small tan and brown ones my dad gathered on the beaches of the Mariana Islands when he was there as a soldier during WWII.   And the really tiny shells and bits of coral on top are things I picked up relaxing on the beach in Antigua.

At some point we do want to re-do this bathroom with white fixtures and a smaller simpler vanity cabinet.  Not fancy even then, just brought into the current century.

Peanut Butter Banana Pupsicles

I finally have the concoction figured out for the boys to get their Pupsicles!  For the past several days I've been paying attention to what foods my boys are the worst beggars about and surprisingly it's bananas that they love most for a people food treat.

A piece of banana, the pieces in a sip of my smoothie, banana bread - all of it sets off a look of pure felicity!

Are they weird or do all dogs like bananas?

My only previous experience with a pet and bananas was with my old cat, Lizzie.  She took a sniff of a banana... once.  And she was so disgusted by it that her whole head pulled back in a big wrinkle that would make the 'bitter beer face' of television fame look like a silly grin.  She shook her head vigorously trying to clear the air and then she retched.  No barf, just a super-dramatic gag.  She very graphically showed me that bananas had no place in her world.

But my dogs LOVE them!

They also love peanut butter.  I can't find any place where it says either of these things are bad for dogs and the vet didn't react negatively during our last visit when I said they'd had a piece of banana bread for a treat that morning.  Nor has she had any cautions when we've said we give them a fingerful of peanut butter now and then.  I'm using apple juice as a base.  Juice is ok.  Only large quantities of apple seeds are harmful to dogs from minute amounts of cyanide in the skin-like covering of the seed.  See?  I think things through and check this stuff out before just randomly handing them a bite of what I'm eating.

Peanut Butter Banana Pupsicles

Add to blender cup and whirl until fairly smooth:
1 1/4 cups apple juice
6 oz vanilla yogurt (1 small container minus a spoonful or so)
2 Tbl (+/-) creamy peanut butter
1-2 bananas broken into pieces




Pour into ice cube trays, or molds of your choice, and freeze.







Pop out and store in a ziplock bag in the freezer to give your puppy as an occasional treat during the hot summer.  It sure makes my boys think they've got something special!

I'm guessing that you saw right off that mine are round instead of ice cube shaped.  I confess.... I didn't go buy the ice cube trays I talked about a few posts back.  We had some of those appetizer-size frozen quiches we got on our Sam's Club trip and the plastic tray they are in inside the box is near perfect (a little bendy, but 'near' perfect) for both these little dog treats and for freezing cookie dough and I can get it in the freezer.  SCORE!!  I love free stuff!

Yes, you could munch these little disks yourself.  Or give them to your kid.  They would be quite tasty, I think, if I hadn't used Greek yogurt.... man, that tangy aftertaste and barf-o-rama smell that stuff carries are a turnoff!   The dogs don't seem to mind, but I do not like it and will be switching back to the plain old regular yogurt we've always got at the store from here on out.

If you object to giving your dog sweet treats, or you have one of those puppies without a sweet tooth, try chicken broth, unflavored yogurt, shredded chicken and mashed up cooked peas and/or carrots instead.  Next time I have a bit of leftover chicken I plan to make that variation for them.

How about that?

My puppies get treats better than some people give their kids!

What To Do With Old Tires

I think the picture is pretty self-explanatory.  No, I haven't done this.  Yet.

Actually, I just wanted to pin it on Pinterest but since I found the link on Facebook and you can't pin directly from there and I couldn't find a way to get this specific picture into a format that would work, I'm blogging it here specifically so I can pin it.  And yes, that you can post from Pinterest to Facebook but you can't pin from Facebook to Pinterest annoys me.  It really annoys me today...

For those of you who want to trace the source back and see what other cool stuff they have, here's the link from Homesteading Self Sufficiency Survival's Facebook page.

Patio Lanterns & Pesto

Last summer my dearest friend, Heidi, shared a recipe for a Green Bean Pesto Salad that is both heavenly and healthy.  You'll find the recipe at the end of this post and I hope you'll try it because it is delish!  Making it (and just using the pesto on pasta) a "few" times left me with a whole bunch of cute little jars.  Even though they are imprinted Atlas Mason in the glass, and  look to be about the same size as a jelly jar, the top is smaller than any canning sealers and rings I've found.  So... they are becoming a craft/garden art project and finding new life, with the help of a roll of concrete tie wire, as hanging patio lanterns for some soft candle light on summer evenings.

I probably should have used gloves when cutting and bending the wire but you know I didn't bother with safety precautions.  And even with my reckless behavior no fingers were bloodied or permanently maimed in the process.  You can find the tie wire in a roll with the concrete and related supplies at any home improvement store.  I got mine at Lowes for less than $5.  You'll also need wire cutters, needle nose pliers and an abundance of patience.

Here's the steps:

Cut a length of wire big enough to wrap around the neck of the jar plus enough to twist the ends together to secure in place.  Don't twist it down yet, however.  Cut 2 pieces of wire about 1 inch long and form each into a small ring.  Place them on each side of the jar - this is how the handle/hanger will be secured.  Slip them onto the wire you wrapped on the jar neck and twist it down securely.  Next, form the handle/hanger.  Cut a length of wire approximately 9 inches long and using the pliers form a curly-q at each end then bend the wire up just above each curly-q and into an arch that will span the top of the jar.  It took some work and frustration and even some not-so-nice words to get the curly-qs even but with time and patience it can be done.  You can get a better look at this piece viewing the finished lantern above.

Then I decided that I wanted a bit more length in my handle/hanger and made 3 of these S shaped pieces using about 5 inches of wire for each.  They slip apart easily so if 2 ends up making the length I want it to hang that's easily accomplished.

I also made a hook for hanging it using an approximate 6-inch length of wire.

And a little dangly with some flower shaped beads to add a spot of color, movement and visual interest.







So what do you think of my first attempt at a wire project?

I'm pretty happy with it in all its quaint, rustic and imperfectedness.  Maybe by the time I finish a dozen of them I'll have it mastered!

And now, the recipe that got this whole project started:

Heidi's Green Bean Pesto Salad

1 Cup Fresh Cut Green Beans
1 tsp Sea Salt
3 Cups Cooked Salad Macaroni
1 Cup Diced Mozzarella
6-7 oz Pesto with Basil

Cover green beans with water, add sea salt, and cook until water is gone. Let beans cool then mix all ingredients together. Serve.

My Notes: I like green beans to still be a little crispy so I picked fresh from the garden and just tossed them in with the pasta the last few minutes of cooking and then drained and cooled all in a big colander with ice cold water. The crispiness added a nice texture. I also added a bit of parmesan to the mix and used half again more mozzarella. It's a family size recipe, more than I could eat in one day, and it dried out a little storing overnight in the fridge so I tossed with a tiny drizzle of olive oil the second (and again the 3rd) day.  Perfecto!


I've shared this post at FarmGirl Friday Blog Hop! #53 on White Wolf Summit Farmgirl.

I May Never Toss a TP Roll Again

You may remember my seed starting project awhile back with tomatoes, pumpkins and sunflowers.  All are growing and thriving in their TP roll homes!  This alone was enough to make me think about saving my toilet paper rolls for next year.

But it seems like a lot more little projects are popping up to utilize this oft tossed bathroom remnant.

I bet you've seen them used as a way to organize extension cords and keep them de-tangled.  Works for all kinds of long cords, actually.  Not necessarily new, but a great idea!  And easy to cover with wallpaper, scrapbook paper or spray paint if you want something to blend into your decor better than a plain brown tube.

And how about to slip over rolls of wrapping paper?  I like this idea to keep them rolled up in storage.  It's annoying, to me anyway, when the paper gets ripped because part of it has unrolled itself while sitting in my storage box.


I also found another garden idea that I'm going to save them up for next year.  I think I like this idea a lot better than the newspaper seed tapes I made this year.  Awesome way to keep them neat and organized before you plant the garden.  The only thing I'd add to this idea is to write the kind of seed that is on the tape at the top of the tube.

And perusing Pinterest just now I found dozens of craft projects using toilet paper rolls.  There was everything from paint stamps, to gift boxes, to animal figure craft projects suitable to make with small kids, to amazingly intricate decor pieces that look a little like over-sized quilling projects to decorate your walls. Here's a couple of them that I might like to try one day...  Spray paint the flowers in pastel shades and wouldn't that wreath be pretty on the front door for spring?  And I think those black 'tiles' would be awesome on a wall in my master bedroom... maybe 2 on each side of the picture window or in a grouping above the headboard if I  move the quilt hanging that's there now.

So fun to contemplate!  Now... if I can just collect enough rolls for all the stuff I suddenly seem to want to make!

Yep, it's true.  Toilet paper rolls might just be my new favorite upcycle item.  I'm serious when I say I may NEVER toss a TP roll again!


(All of these pictures came from Pinterest.  I snapped none of them and claim no credit beyond the ability to cut and paste.)

I Made Tape

Seed tape, that is.

With all the garden tasks starting to creep in here, can you tell I want it to be spring already?  We got 4 inches of snow overnight and it's cold and gloomy and I needed something to keep me focused on learning and applying new skills for a sustainable lifestyle.  So I made seed tape to get me one step closer to planting my garden.

My intention was just to make a tape with carrot seeds because carrots are something I've had an especially hard time growing successfully.  But I was on such a roll with it that I prepped lots of other veggies as well.

To make your own you need some kind of quickly biodegrading paper.  Newspaper and single-ply TP are two of the easiest and cheapest to use.  You'll also need a little bit of plain white flour, some water and the seeds you want to plant.  I used newspaper.  And yes, I know there's a debate over whether the colored ink is ok or poisonous to your ground.   The printer of these inserts uses soy ink, which I understand makes the impact of the colored ink much less.  Anyway... debate or no, this is what I had so this is what I used.

The first step is to cut your paper into strips.  I made mine roughly an inch wide.  This particular mail insert is two feet across when unfolded and 4 sheets thick which is perfect for the 8-foot rows I'm planning in my garden.

When you have the strips cut, label them so you know what you are planting when the time comes!  You see here I'm planting carrots. I planted them mixed with radishes because they work together symbiotically.  Radishes are larger, fast sprouting seeds which will break the soil and keep it soft for the tiny, slower to sprout carrots.  And then when it's time to thin the carrots out it's just about the perfect time to pull the radishes because they also mature much more quickly.

Mix flour and just enough warm water together to make a paste the consistency of thick glue.  I dobbed it on in dots with a toothpick using the recommended spacing on each seed packet.  I used roughly (ok... I eye-balled it instead of grabbing a measuring cup) 1/4 cup flour and just added my water a little at a time to get the consistency I wanted, stirring constantly to work out the lumps.  That was oodles and scads more than enough for my project today.  Like 10 times more than enough!

I left my tapes in 2-foot sections because it was easier to spread them out to dry on my kitchen counters that way.  I could stick them together later to plant as one long tape or... it's more likely I'll just lay down the shorter pieces end-to-end and go from there.  Again, they will ultimately be  8-foot long rows and today I made tapes for:

3 Bush Beans - Blue Lake
1 Genovese Basil
2 Mixed Leaf Lettuces
1 Swiss Chard - Bright Lights
1 Carrot/Radish - Danvers Half Long/Cherry Bell
1 Beet - Detroit Dark Red

Not a bad task for a snowy cold 'in like a lion' first of March when I'm aching for weather warm enough to be out working in the yard and garden!

I've linked this post to Rural Thursday #5 at A Rural Journal.

It just took peanut butter and spray paint

You know those round, orange, 5-gallon Coleman drink coolers?  I don't have one, but I want one... and I have every intention of buying one to provide beverages at the backyard barbecues I envision for summers to come.  These drink coolers only have one problem.  They drip.  And seriously, if you go to the trouble of a pedicure and cute little strappy sandals do you really want red punch dripping on your toenails?

Problem solved.  Just hang this drip catcher over the spigot and no more stinky sticky feet.  At least not from something dripping out of the drink cooler...

A week or so ago, on Pinterest, I saw this picture of a drip catcher made from a 2-liter soda bottle, but since I didn't have one I looked for alternatives and I think I found a pretty good one.  Mine is made out of a 64 oz. juice bottle.  Great Value Pink Grapefruit Juice Cocktail to be exact.  But if you don't care for grapefruit juice, have no worries.  Walmart packages lots of their juices in this same bottle.  I have one half full of apple juice in the fridge now.

After removing the label and using just a tiny touch of peanut butter to get rid of the sticky goo, I cut along the ridges in the bottle with my brand new utility knife then barely sanded the edges and gave it a few light coats of Krylon White Gloss spray paint.  Obviously I made it to the hardware store the other night... and dang!  Tools are expensive!!  But that's a whole different post...

I was a skeptic, but the peanut butter cuts right through the goo left from labels.  And it only takes a tiny bit.  I would guess I used about 1/4 teaspoon, maybe even a little less, to get it all off this particular bottle.

My photoshoot isn't nearly as pretty as the one from Pinterest, but I think my drip catcher will serve it's purpose well enough.  Don't you?

And I got through the whole project without cutting a finger.  That's a real accomplishment considering my safety record!

The green thing...

Those of you who know my bent toward a simpler, more earth friendly way of life won't be surprised by this rehash of an email I received recently...

It was simply titled "The green thing."

In a line at the grocery store, the cashier told an elderly woman she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags aren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and said simply "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

Then the clerk responded, "That's our problem today.  Your generation didn't care enough to save our environment."

Well, let's see...

Back then, we returned milk, soda and beer bottles to the store.  The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized and refilled.  The same bottles were used over and over.  So really they were recycled.

We walked up and down stairs because there wasn't an elevator and/or escalator in every store and office building.  And we walked to the grocery store rather than climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

Baby's diapers were washed because the throw away kind didn't exist yet.  We dried clothes on the line, not in a 220-volt energy gobbling machine.  Gee, wind and solar power really did dry the laundry...  And kids got hand-me-down clothes from older brothers and sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

There was one tv, or radio, in the house... not a television in every room.  And the tv had a screen the size of a handkerchief not a screen the size of the state of Montana.

In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do it for us.

And when we packaged up a fragile item to send in the mail, it was cushioned by wadded up newspaper not plastic bubbles and styrofoam peanuts.

We didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn.  We used a push mower than ran on human power.  We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club and run on treadmills powered by electricity.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle for every sip of water.  We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying new pens.  And we replaced razor blades in our razors rather than throwing it away and buying a new one when the blade got dull.

We rode streetcars or the bus to work and kids rode bikes or walked to school instead of turning mom into a 24-hour taxi service.  We had one electrical outlet per room not a bank of outlets to power a dozen different small kitchen appliances.  And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But... back then we didn't have the green thing.

It's sad to lament how wasteful, selfish and unenlightened prior generations were/are just because they didn't have "the green thing."  Maybe instead of just assigning blame, it's time to learn from the people who went before us.  If they made a mistake it was in providing the newest conveniences as we grew up because they wanted things to be better and easier for us than they had.

I'm old enough to remember most of the things that email mentioned... along with riding in the back of a pick up, swimming in the canal, being reprimanded by a friend's parents if I misbehaved at their house.  I had my butt swatted at school, rode my bike without a helmet, drank from the hose, fell out of the neighbor's apple tree, didn't get picked for a team, and I ate white bread, real butter and koolade made with sugar.  And stunningly, not only did I survive... but no one got sued!

We all just need a whole lot less "green things" and a whole lot more common sense.