Favorite Documentory Series

I wanted to share a few of my all time favorite documentary shows. I'm mostly a fan of history series, and mostly BBC. When I find one I like I tend to watch it over and over, often I'll put them on in the background while I'm doing other things. Many of these can be found on Youtube.

Tales From the Green Valley: A group of historians and archeologists live for one year on a farm as if it's the 17th century. A real favorite around here, both my boyfriend and I love this show. We've re-watched it a million times, it's so cozy and comforting and just nice.

Edwardian Farm: Similar to the above show, only in the Edwardian era. It also has some of the same people, and the same cozy vibe, though it's different in other ways. There are actually a few more in this "series" but I think this is the best besides Tales From The Green Valley.

Victorian Kitchen Garden: Made in the early 80's this series attempts to run a manor house kitchen garden as it would have been in the victorian era. Another super cozy, but very informative show. I learned to much! For instance the Victorians had special tools for everything, even harvesting asparagus. (there are also two more in this series, Victorian Kitchen and Victorian Flower Garden, both also great!)

The Day The Universe Changed: Another great series from the 80's, this program is a little hard to describe but I'd say it focuses on history and science and the steps along the way that take place in order to advance science. It's whimsical and quirky in a way that I don't think you get any more with shows like this (not that there really are any like this now).

Cosmos: is beloved for a reason, and that reason is Carl Sagan. This science show is presented with such a sense of delight and heartfelt wonder that it's hard not to tear up sometimes.

Crusades: A series presented by Terry Jones (from Monty Python). As entertaining and funny as it can be, it also deals sensitively to the cruelty and pointlessness of the crusades, and makes a case for how we are still living with that history from the Middle Ages.

Lucy Worsley: A History Of Home: Really I could have picked any of the many shows presented by Lucy Worsley, she is delightful! She is a curator of Historic Royal Palaces, her shows mostly focus on the lives of the historic royals, and more general history of home, food, and clothes, etc. 


There you have it! Let me know if you also love any of these, or if you know of any others along the same lines that I should check out!

Recent Favorites

Yoga:I felt like I needed a change up from my running-working out routine, so this last month I've started doing yoga post run. I'm so glad I did! I've been feeling more calm and focused instead of completely spent before I start work in the mornings. I've been practicing along with Yoga With Adriene videos, she's great!

Slow Home Podcast: I've been working my way though this podcast (after binging the Gilmore Guys podcast, and finally catching up to them!). Some good conversations about slowing down and minimalism.

Citrine: I went to a crystal show last month specifically to find a nice piece of citrine (pictured above along with rose quartz). I in no way believe crystals they have magic/healing properties, but I do think they are beautiful and interesting, and if I can bring something that does that into my home that will make me happy, and that can be healing.

Bits and Pieces of June

June was a good month. it was an especially good month for making stuff & feeling empowered because of it. Most of the empowerment came from realizing that I can mend my own jeans and now I'm safe from having to buy new ones for a while! This feeling of self-sufficiency led to my first experiments in fermenting vegetables...


I've always been deeply apprehensive about fermenting, but something switched in my brain this month (possibly from being in daily contact with sourdough starter?) and I felt like I totally could do it! I love kimchi but it's pretty expensive to buy and easy cheap to make. The more I read the more I realized there's not much chance of poisoning myself either. Also, it's not an all day process at all and pretty forgiving as far as ingredients. I used a mixture of this recipe and this one and it took an afternoon of mostly waiting while cabbage salted.


This is my second jar, the first is eaten! I'm going to let this one ferment a few weeks in the fridge though.
Now I'm ready to ferment everything: sauerkraut, gingerbeer, and mead are high on my list. I'm also thinking about pickling? We'll see.


I've still been making bread like crazy. I've got the technique to where it doesn't feel like the main event of the day and I don't have to keep looking at the steps in the book. I feel like I can add more variation now and work on getting a really good loaf. I'd say mine "will do", but they still end up with too tough and done a trust on the bottom & not enough rise in the bake, so I want to work on that.


I made a earl grey & apricot cake last week. I over baked it a bit. Oh well it still tasted alright, even better dipped into a beautiful tea mixed by my friend the tea maker.


I'm finally able to pick flowers from my garden and fill every spare jar and the few small vases I have!

A Few Things I'm Into Right Now

Dandy Blend
This is so tasty! I like to have it in the afternoon when I'm craving something creamy but don't want caffeine. I can't really drink coffee anymore (the acidity) and I don't think this is really a replacement taste-wise, but it tastes delicious and scratches the same itch. Plus dandelion is supposed to be good for your liver and digestion and it's a pretty good source of iron and other vitamins and minerals. Those are only nice extras though, not the main reason I drink it.

Rosewater
Specifically this rosewater, which I avoided for a long time because I got it into my head that it only used rose oil & wasn't a hydrosol and therefor not as good. I actually checked it out recently and it does use rose oil, but it also has rose hydrosol and it's way less expensive and easier to find than any other rosewater! It smells nice, I love spraying it on my face after I wash it.

Pinon Incense
The smell of this is like a warm comforting campfire. I got this box at my new favorite store in town Palace.

Backyard Evolution

Things are looking pretty lush and bountiful in our garden right now. It's to satisfying to see it looking so good after some hard work and minimal money. I figure if it looks this good now it will look amazing in three years.
Flipping though the gallery on my phone I was shocked at how it looked only a few months ago. It's not really fair to compare a yard in lush June to one in November February, but still, we've made some changes.


Right after we moved in, Nov. 2015.


End of February, 2016.


And today!

April

I don't actually have any favorites for April, it went by so quickly and I am extremely boring! I didn't do anything besides work, garden, and make bread. It was a good month.


Well actually one favorite thing of the last month has been baking bread often using my own starter as the levain. It's so satisfying when it turns out at all well! Also after putting it off forever we finally bought a real bread knife, and not even an expensive one, which has made a huge difference to overall bread enjoyment. All my other knives are crazy dull, which is something I will deal with at some point...







I hope you had a good April!

Lovely Things Lately

Skin Treats: I treated myself to a few new skin things lately. I recently ran out of calendula salve, since I put calendula on every kind of skin irritation, and this one from Bodycentuals caught my eye at the store. It has very minimal organic ingredients, and I believe the company has it's own calendula farm and harvests it's own beeswax (and in the PNW no less), which appeals to me. I also got their Organic Neroli + Aloe Hydrating Facial Mist since I just ran out of my homemade toner and I wanted to try something new. Again this has minimal ingredients, it also smells wonderful and I felt like the price was pretty reasonable.


Rambling Rose Tea. I recently did some branding work for a friend-of-a-friend who makes and sells herbal teas. She grows most of the flowers and herbs she uses on her farm in Oregon and isn't it just beautiful looking tea? She's gifted me several and just looking at her beautiful blends & knowing they were grown and made with such love and care makes me so happy!

February Favorites

Not many favorite things this month! Really there was only one favorite in February for me and that was working on getting a garden going and doing some "landscaping" around the house, so stay tuned for a post on that!

Food: Oranges. February is the prime citrus month. A friend was driving though from California to Seattle and gave us a bag of fresh oranges, they were so amazingly good!

Watching: The Great British Garden Revival! I love it.

Music: Seaside Town by Baths. He uses samples from Kiki's Delivery Service, it makes me sooo happy & cheerful

Listening: The Sporkful podcast

What were some of your favorite things from February?

January Favorites

I'm going to try and make a list of things I'm into every month, loosely keeping to a few categories. We'll see how it goes, there are a lot of months where I'm just not into new things! I'm also going to post what books I've read every month, but in a separate post.

Beauty: Making diy face masks with honey and add ins like yogurt, turmeric or cinnamon

Food: I've been making and eating a lot of Veg Shepard’s pie. It's so comforting in cold weather & one batch can feed two people for days.

Reading: Deuce Cities Blog. Since buying a house I've gotten obsessed with a few home-fix-up type blogs. They are usually more down to earth and have a lot of DIYs. So many ideas!!

Watching: Shakespeare's Mother The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman

Music: Adele's song “send my love to your new lover”. There's just something about this song that is so fun and I love it.

Podcast: Gilmore Guys. It's pretty funny (though it can get annoying) and it's nice to go though the episodes without having to actually watch them (because I need to sit at my desk and draw, not because I don't want to watch them!)

Home: My new geode, pictured above. Soo sparkly.

What things have you been into this past month?

January Flowers

I can never resist tiny daffodils! Now I can plant them outside when they are done!

Making 2016 Goals

I prefer the word "goals" to "resolutions" I think it sounds more friendly & more like challenging things I want to do (which is what they are) rather than things I'm forcing myself to do.
I think I did pretty well with my list of goals from last year (you can read them here). I definitely did better with the small concrete things than I did with the more overarching goals such as "worry less" (fyi I did not worry less). I ran in my first race, started some new hobbies. Some of the things, like slowing down more in the evening, are just part of my life now. Something that wasn't on my list but I started doing early on last year was to only buy ethically made clothes or clothes made in the USA (for a lot of reasons). It turned out to not be too hard, and an added bonus to that has been that it's helped me save money so that's something I'm going to continue.
Here are some of my goals for 2016:

• Get serious about saving some money.

• Run in a 15k race.

• Meditate for at least 10 minutes at least 3 times a week.

• Go hiking at least three times a month.

• Attempt a few simple woodworking projects, specifically carve a wooden spoon

• Try and have my work life more on my terms. By far this is what I want to achieve the most. This might mean some painful separations, big decisions and reinvention, but I am feeling more like I know what I want it to look like finally, so it's something I need to do. This is a big one and has a sub list of goals to go with it, but I'll keep those in my private journal for now.


How about you, what are some of your goals for this new year?


Also should you still need a 2016 calendar, don't forget to check out my downloadable cat calendar!

Things

I made a decision last year that I wanted this blog to be only artwork and artwork related updates. Now I am majorly waffling on that decision, I think it has made this blog incredibly boring. Also, I have my Tumblr blog for that content & for another thing I don't even like to read other blogs like that, I find a mix of lifestyle and art way more interesting. I guess I thought it would seem more professional if clients came across my blog? However now I kind of think, who even cares! Probably no one.

Still, spending time editing photos is my least favorite thing to do so I don't think I'll be going crazy posting updates here or anything, just when I feel like it!

Kind of amazing I haven't even written about this here yet, though if you follow me on Instagram you'll know that...my boyfriend and I bought a house together!
We are incredibly excited and thankful and amazed that it worked out. We've been living there since November but I think it will be a while for it to really sink in that we own it and aren't just renting. We keep doing things like opening the door to the basement and saying "we have a basement!!" which is really pretty exciting if you've been living in one room studio apartments for years.

Things aren't how I want them yet (and from what I've heard from other home owners it will be on ongoing process forever). We need a new couch & I dream of a huge farmhouse table and kilim rugs buuut that will have to wait a bit while we save up. And in the mean time we are pretty content in these big bright rooms. You couldn't ask for more really.

More Delights of Autum

I wish I had something more interesting than snaps from some recent walks, but my mind is too full of work or anxiety, or anxiety about work, lately so this is all for the time being.

Delights of Autumn

Some photos taken in September from my phone.

Some delights of Autumn:

•Lighting candles on cloudy dark mornings
•Listening to the Fleet Foxes
•Having some Squash and sweet potatoes roasting in the oven for dinner
•Getting to wear rain boots again
•The smell of crunchy fallen leaves on a sunny day
•Woodsmoke on the air

Oneonta Gorge

Finally made it out to Oneonta Gorge this past weekend. It's not a long hike but it requires you to climb over a huge log jam and then walk up the creek, in water sometimes waist high. It's fun challenge and I told A. it made me feel like an explorer, even though there were about a million people all around me. Oneonta was just as beautiful and just as crowded as I expected. I'd like to go back at 7am on a weekday sometime if I can. Sorry for the blurriness of some of these photos, I was over-excited I guess.

Lately

I've been feeling bad about not updating this blog, but I just haven't felt very motivated to do so most of the summer. A lot of it has to do with not feeling like sitting on the computer editing photos. I do want to keep posting here about various things I'm up to, I do need to remember to take more photos when I'm actually out and about doing things though.
Well, here is a short recap of some things from the last few weeks anyway:


These were some of my favorite things in late July/August:
• Arnica cream for my poor tired muscles after running.
• Rosewater for my face.
• Figs (amazingly like jam inside!)
• A new tea from one of my favorite tea companies. This tea has lavender and bergamot together, it's like it was made for me.
• I read all of Willa Cather's Prairie Trilogy this summer. I would describe all as very moving, this was my favorite.


I had a show at one of my favorite galleries here in town. It was a nice break from my other illustration work. Also, while it was hot I finally got some shave ice, sadly only once but I could eat it every day if that food cart was nearer my house.


I've been eating very well, mostly vegetables, but I always try to find time for baking. I finally found a good biscuit recipe. These are another thing I could eat every day, but it's probably better to only have them on the weekends


It was too hot for this for a few months but the weather turned cooler recently and it immediately made me want to make stock.



I went on several hikes to waterfalls, because that's the best place to hike when it's hot.


I didn't get to pick any lavender myself this summer, but lucky for me my friends picked me some!


I finally made my own soy wax candles, hooray! I can't wait to fill my apartment with affordable candles this Fall.

I told myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't keep it up if I didn't feel like it, so I might take breaks here but I'm feeling a little more inspired lately so I'm going to try and get back into a posting routine.