Weekend full of Cleansing and Backyard Nature

I am on day 6 of my Standard Process Cleanse and it is going very well! It is so strange but the minute someone says you can't have you want! In the last several days I have had cravings for things I haven't eaten in years! Anyway here is a normal routine 2 times a day that is 19 pills and a shake!
Today I made one of the best shakes yet containing:

• flax seed oil
• vanilla coconut milk
• the supplement
• apples
• kiwi
• banana
• spinach
• grapes
• tart cherry juice

Yesterday was the first day using the flax seed oil and I made a delicious shake with it too:

• orange juice
• supplement
• flax seed oil
• organic fresh wild maine blueberry's
• strawberry
• banana
  

While enjoying some time out back and watering my garden the birds were in full force enjoying a bath in the sun!

Here is a yellow bird that I think my husband and I saw a month ago and thought it was someones pet but it rolls with the sparrows in the neighborhood.

This was a gift from a friend and I just love the pot and dish it is in.

I can't just exercise I need an activity,

I can't just exercise I need an activity, so I decided to walk the trail by my house and take pictures! I had no clue how far I was going to walk but I was going to walk! So these are the items that I brought with me:
spring water, sketch pad, pens, ipod, phone, wallet, and some fruit

There were a bunch of these butterfly's hanging out so I was able to grab a couple snap shots of them.
I thought this was a neat tree with the contrast from the sky and the death of the tree.

Eating Yummy things while Cleansing

I started a liver cleanse yesterday which will continue for 3 weeks! I have a shake I make 2 or 3 times a day and I put a bunch of organic fruit that I have cut and frozen into the blender with some fresh squeezed orange juice, which is actually really good and kind of fools me into thinking I am getting my yogurt! Pretty much no dairy, meat or grains except for brown rice, wild rice and lentils. So basically organic veggies and more organic veggies! I decided that I need to figure out how to make some kick ass meals to make this a challenge more then something to dread!

For lunch today I sauteed some onions and garlic in extra virgin olive oil for a while to let them sweat.


Then I added the mushrooms!

Added salt and pepper and a bit of butter and of course the baby spinach!


I was so excited to eat this that I forgot to take a picture of it on it's plate and now it is all gone! I highly recommend this recipe for a side dish for times when you aren't cleansing!

Mushroom Hunting in the Garden

As I was watering and weeding this morning I noticed there were a few mushrooms that had sprouted up over night. So I decided to hunt through garden and found that there were several. Fungi has always been intriguing to me. It has all sorts of different textures from slimy to powdery. The arrays of colors that they are is quite amazing as well. Here are a few shots I took of the mushrooms I found today that I thought were interesting...

Outdoor Studio Work is the Best

As I am often times most creative in the morning I grabbed a few supplies to continue work on Project Bedroom Artwork and brought it outside to enjoy the lovely breeze! However, not too good of an idea working with paper in the wind, but what can I say I love a challenge! Here is what I am working on today. I would love your feedback and comments.

Going Paperless and Digitizing Documents that Take up Space

I have decided I needed a side project along side my bedroom artwork project, so I decided I will get organized. I will use my new Neat Receipts for Mac by Neat Co. to scan all our documents and make them easy to search through and eventually export to our gmail account so we can view the database from anywhere!


I spent 6 hours yesterday scanning and getting to know how I want to use this software! But once I got on a roll there was no stopping me! I got all our taxes and related items from 2007 to 2009 imputed and organized. The software is easy to use and it appears from online comments that they have made updates to fix issues.


I had no clue anyone else was as interested in this until my post on facebook yesterday which triggered my post today...

mrs. onion: Just got a neat receipt scanner for mac and am loving it! Think I am going to sit on the deck all day and scan our precious documents, gotta love going digital. After everything is in and organized we can upload it to google docs so when we are at work we can still search and view our documents that there is no way we would find even if we were at home!
caller number 1: Is it just for receipts? One of the best purchases I made recently was a business card scanner. I got rid of about 300-400 cards lying around my office in a matter of hours.
mrs. onion: No it recognizes business cards, and anything smaller than 8.5 width or smaller! It is super rad! I made a folder called taxes and I scanned all our forms, w2s and the h&r blocks business card! So u have 3 categories contact, receipt and document, you can choose what field u want and don't want. It is searchable and color coded to the type of category!
caller number 1: Interesting. BTW, do you really get that many paper receipts? Seems like most billing companies are going paperless these days.
mrs. onion: I am using it mostly for our house documents, taxes, car title that sort of thing, stuff that if the house burned down we may need! Most if not all our billing is done paperless and automatically paid out which is super nice! I think we write 4 checks a year and that is to the water company!
caller number 2: I still haven't figured out how this darn thing downloads to Quicken without having to save a file as an intermediate step. If you figure that one out, please let me know. Otherwise I pretty much agree with you.
mrs. onion: it pretty much scans the document and allows you to pull info from it to populate fields that then can be exported out various ways

Various Stages of the Artwork for our Bedroom

Here is a sampling of the pieces of artwork I am working on for our bedroom. As you can see I am using a bunch of different materials and they are in various stages of completion. So far I am happy with the progress as well as how things are turning out. You truly never know how something is going to turn out until it is done!

Project Artwork for Bedroom!

I have had different ideas of big projects I was going to do regarding artwork for some area of our house. The ideas have melded over the years and I finally think that I can put some of this together for the artwork that will fill our room. I have always been a big fan of positive negative and to completely different things coexisting within the same space. I am taking a bunch from nature but all bringing in the elements of the city. Using different textures to accomplish this will be the fun part!
I got some shims and some half sheet plywood that I am cutting down for frames and bases for some of the work that I am putting together.

When I got the plywood I also perused through the aisle to see what other random things I could find and get inspired by. Here is a collection of the things I will be using.
My curiosity lays into when this will be done! So far it is going rather smoothly and I am hoping to continue this pace!

Backyard Blooms Inspiration

This vine has finally bloomed and I love it's soft delicate color and the sharpness of the green new buds developing flowers of their own.
This was a gift from a friends mom last year and it has latched on to the earth and grown significantly. This shot will probably be used in one of the art pieces I am doing for our bedroom, since we have some leaf like accents in our lighting and curtains. I love bringing the outside in.
You know summer is coming to an end when the hasta's start to flower, their fragrance is intoxicating yet subtle in the evening breeze.
The new addition to the garden, thank you Lowes we love your clearance outdoor items they are the best!

Curtains have been Created...with only a few hiccups!

Yesterday afternoon when all my curtain assembling materials were obtained, I moved on to measuring and cutting. Every time I cut fabric I wish that I would have cut it at the store where I could get a straight line, until I realized that my awesome collapsible ikea table would serve the purpose for a straight guide for my scissors.


Then I moved on to pinning the sides and also ironing a crease to hold a nice straight edge for sewing. I did this to both curtains and then spent several trips into the steamy attic to look for the sewing machine. On my third sweep through the attic I decided I was going to go rubbermaid by rubbermaid until I found the damn thing. At one point I threatened to buy another one, until I found it at the bottom of a laundry bin...


I get everything all set up, get the tunes going, have the bobbin in place and start to sew. Well, for about a second, when the bobbin kept effing off (for the lack of a better term) over and over and over. Usually I am able to get it going for a bit but this was getting ridiculous, I could have been done by now...


So I headed over to our lovely walmart and bought this new Project Runway addition sewing machine. Pretty funny huh? I bring it home check out the manual and fire this puppy up. The bobbin system is so much easier to deal with because you can see what is going on and the stitch is unbelievable. I zipped through these curtains in now time flat.


Stella enjoying the sun poking through her new curtains.


Overall this was a successful project! The fabric was a super good price, nice thickness and an easy pattern to work with. It was super easy to have both of the curtains matching without having an excess of leftover fabric.

Today, I am off to get some knobs, a better tie back solution, and some ideas for framing the artwork for the walls.

The Creative Process for Curtains

The more I work on projects the more I realize it is important to have a creative process to make sure that you aren't missing anything. I have been thinking about the design for our bedroom curtains and it is finally the day that I have put aside to bust these out.


I decided to make some sketches and take some notes to make sure that I was approaching this the right way. I also need to make sure that I have all the necessary supplies. When I got to thinking I realized that I couldn't make a tie back out of the material that the curtains are going to be made from, as it is very thick and wouldn't serve the look I was going for. Instead I am going to get a really thick bright ribbon that I am going to sew to the back, so it's always attached and can't get lost.


My other challenge was will this look funny if it doesn't go to the floor? so I decided to sketch it out and then of course made a phone call to my sister to see if she thought it would look ridiculous or not. She said, "no, it will look just fine."

Off to the fabric store to get some sturdy thread and a big old ribbon. The real question is will I get it all done today or will I have to wait til tomorrow to see the results?

Contract Job just about Done, New Projects getting Started

I am back from working my long days in the big city and ready to start some new projects, get the garden into shape and take pictures and notes along the way.


I have been wanting to redo our bedroom for a bit of time now and have finally found exactly what I want to do, but I don't want to put too much money into it and I definitely did not want to paint, right now. I found some great fabric at Ikea as well as a bunch of accessories for the new updated brighter bedroom. Luckily I was able to find a fabric that went with the current paint color spanish moss but also added some lighter soothing colors with an accent of brightness.


We have had the same hardware and curtains since before we were engaged so I thought swapping out the curtains would make a major change and the easiest way to add some color. But I didn't really want to swap out the hardware since it was a huge pain in the ass mounting the current ones. So I decided to go with a more convenient and thrifty plan. I am going to paint the old ones which will change the texture of the glass and the color will be updated to be a brighter, more cohesive color with the fabric I have chosen.


This is half way through my first coat of paint.



This is the finished product which I think will accent the design concept a bit better then the originals. Next plan of attack is finding a good template for some window coverings.