I started into this past weekend with only general plans and it developed into a wonderful, refreshing two days were things got accomplished and I spent time enjoying the great company of my friend Shannon and my husband John.

On Saturday, Shannon and I met at Third Street Stuff to work on putting together a web site for her. She is an amazing artist and she needed a place to show off her portfolio. Well we sipped coffee…. and I may have had a brownie…. and a couple of hours later, voila!, she has a brand new web site. Check it out! http://www.shannonjohnsonart.com/

We then decided to celebrate the new web site by grabbing John and heading to Joseph Beth Booksellers to have dinner in the cafe and to browse through the books. It was the perfect way to wrap up the day.

On Sunday, John, Shannon and I got up at 7:30 a.m. and headed for the Red River Gorge to enjoy the beautiful weather we were having and to get in a hike. We decide on the Indian Stairway Loop Trail and after a nice little climb up the face of a cliff, we got to enjoy some of the best views in the Gorge.

We even got to see a plant that apparently only grows in the Red River Gorge and is protected, The White-Haired Goldenrod.

The hike was wonderful and it felt great to sweat a little and get in some much needed sun and exercise. I managed to come out of the woods without a scratch on me and then I stepped off onto the highway running by the trail and immediately tripped and fell on the asphalt. I am now sporting some minor road-rash and bruises. I spent the whole morning climbing rocks and stepping over tree roots and then step on a perfectly flat surface and tripped over myself. Good grief!

Let’s all get together and dance. The world would be a much better place I think:

I LOVE this cake. It made me laugh and laugh. This makes me want to decorate a cake of my own and put something as awesome on it.

The chest hair is the best!!

A little over a month ago I wrote a post on some things I wanted to accomplish in this life and there was a list of 11 things that I wanted to start working on. Well I’m excited to say that I can now check some of those off my list and some others are well underway.

I have already mentioned how I have started planning my trip to Alaska and, although there are no definite plans there yet, I feel pretty confidant that I will be able to make those happen within the next year or so and I’m putting that on my underway area of the list.

Next on the list was the desire to sew my own curtains and shopping bags and today I ordered my very first sewing machine from Overstock.com! I’m really excited about it and I got a great deal. It is refurbished but the reviews were great and the price was right so now I await its arrival and then I plan on taking a sewing class.

Number 6 on that list was to build a compost bin and to acquire rain barrels. Check and check! I got an email from my awesome friend Terri yesterday and she had found an amazing deal on rain barrels on Craigslist and wanted to know if I wanted in on the deal. Of course I said YES, especially since they were about half the cost of ones I had seen other places, and then I dropped by her house to give her the money for them. She is going to detour by and pick them up for both of us on her way back from a family reunion this weekend. I hope she doesn’t have trouble with four rain barrels strapped to the top of her wagon!

While I was at her house she also gave me some plastic mesh that she had left over from when she built her compost bin and tonight John and I ran to Lowe’s to pick up some stakes for the corners and put together our very first compost bin. We are really excited about this and I think I can now check off #6 as complete!

The other two things that I have spent some time on but that still need some major work is the biking to work and the focus on shopping local. I have taken my bike out a few times and rode to the store but I till have not made it fully to work. I’m still trying to figure out the logistics of getting all my stuff there and trying to decide what I may need to buy to make that easier. I need to investigate this a little more and I’m sure I will need to come up with a little bit of cash somewhere to get what I need. As for shopping local, I have been going to the farmers market on Sundays and trying to buy as much as I can there and then trying to find the Kentucky grown products at the Good Foods Coop when I can as well. I know I can improve on this but I feel pretty good about my success here so far.

I’m enjoying this todo list thing. I really like checking things off and seeing progress that I have made so this works well for me. I think putting this out here for others to read makes me more accountable too. It’s a good thing!

I was tagged by my friend Patrick (a counter-tag if you will) to write the following post:

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”

Since I just tagged several of you for another meme I will not tag you again, but feel free to do your own if you like.

Limiting myself to seven songs is going to be hard but here are a few that make it in my playlists almost without fail.

1. When U Love Somebody - Fruit Bats
   I sing this song loudly. The lyrics can be rather depressing I guess but boy the music is oh so awesome and happy.
2. Sing, Theresa Says - Greg Laswell
   Love this mans voice. This song makes me dance in my chair and think about noisy June bugs.
3. Fly Me Away - Goldfrapp
   “Miles and miles of sun
   Endless roads
   twist on
   Don’t wanna live a life
   In a world that’s all the same
   The crazy little things
   That you do are magical”
4. Heartbeats - José González
   After seeing him live and seeing his amazing abilities on the guitar, I can’t stop listening to him. I totally have a star crush on him
5. Ramblin’ Man - Lemon Jelly
   The summer makes me want to Ramble:
   “John you’ve been on the go ever since you were born and I
   imagine few people in the world today have travelled as much
   as you have. Now why? Well I dunno. I suppose some of us are cave dwellers, some of us live in houses, some of us like to be loose footed. I’m a ramblin’ man.”
6. Resurrection Fern - Iron & Wine
   His lyrics are so poetic. I love listening to the stories he tells in them.
7. Doors of Perception - Thievery Corporation
   This is the background music for many of my days. I love the entire “The Cosmic Game” album. Great for working, yoga, driving, chilling out. It’s good stuff.

James Robinson tagged me, so here it goes:

What i was doing ten years ago

I was working at The Council of State Governments as a graphic/web designer. I had also just bought my first house, a tiny little townhouse, and started putting down roots in Lexington, KY.

Five snacks i enjoy:

1. hummus and pita
2. tortillas and salsa (apparently I enjoy dipping foods)
3. cheese-its
4. crackers and cheese (It is different than cheese-its!)
5. frozen grapes

Five things on my to-do list today:

1. work on eXtension training Moodle courses
2. make corrections to the Imported Fire Ants decision tool
3. send out a quote for a freelance web design job
4. get together images and artist statement for a photography show that some friends and I are in at a local coffee shop.
5. take my niece and good friend to yoga class with me

Five favorite recipes:

1. Broccoli-cauliflower salad ( I can send it if anyone wants it…. It is always a hit at dinner parties)
2. Spiced Black Bean Burgers
3. My mom’s broccoli casserole
4. My mom’s sweet potato casserole
5. No Bake cookies

Five jobs i have had:

1. swimming pool concession stand
2. tutored children with dyslexia
3. fast food (Wendy’s) and cashier at Ponderosa Steak House
4. McAlpin’s (Now Dillard’s) cashier
5. web/graphic designer

Five of my bad habits:

1. procrastination
2. not exercising regularly
3. eating too many carbs and cheese (see the favorite snacks list above)
4. spending too much money on magazines and books (I’m trying to get back into the library swing)
5. Caffeine… I quit drinking soda but now I’m a coffee fiend.

All the places i have lived:

1. Ary, KY
2. Leburn, KY
3. Morehead, KY
4. Lexington, KY

Five random things:

1. I spent the first 7 years of my life growing up in a holler. It was awesome.
2. I have a HUGE family. My dad had 8 brothers and sisters and my mom had 5. I have a great aunt that had 16 children. Family gatherings were always chaotic.
3. I wore acid washed jeans and heavy metal concert tshirts in high school. My favorites bands were The Cult, Guns and Roses, Metallica, Anthrax…others until I discovered Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and, oddly enough, Jackson Brown. I discovered those in my older sister’s vinyl collection. Music has always been important in my life. I got a portable record player that I carried around with me when I was 3 or 4 and played everything from “Rubber Ducky You’re the One” to Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train” on 45s.
4. I graduated number 3 in my high school class and had to give a speech. I wasn’t thrilled about that. I never participated in group sports but was a member of the Honor and Art Honor Societies.
5. My husband and I dated for 11 years before we married. We have been married for almost four years now.

Five Folks i Would Like to Know Better:

1. Alexa
2. Terri
3. Jason
4. Patrick
5. Lori-Lyn

Exactly one month ago I wrote an entry about the things I want to do in this life and one of those things included a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska to see the Northern Lights. I have heard before that writing down your goals, illustrating them with images or simply visualizing yourself attaining those goals is a good way to make them happen. Since I wrote that post, I have checked prices on tickets, sent for a travel guide, planned the dates I want to go and even started thinking about how to get the money to make it happen.

Here is were things get interesting. While reading an entry on one of my favorite blogs today, I decided to check out the comments and then clicked through to the blog of one of the commentors and, lo and behold, she is leaving this weekend for a roadtrip to Alaska! She has the whole trip all mapped out in google maps. I sat forever clicking through the stops marked along the way, all the time getting more excited about my own journey there, hopefully in the beginning of next year. The other thing this discovery did was to give me other options than the ones I had limited myself to in my mind. Plane tickets are expensive and I had not even though about a possible road trip. It may be just as expensive but then again it may not. At least I have opened myself up to other ways of making this dream happen.

But wait there is more! Yet even later tonight, I was checking my flickr account to see if any of my contacts had updated their photos and one of my contacts that I don’t follow closely had indeed uploaded some new photos so I thought I would quickly scan them. Well…. He is Alaska right now. I’m not even making this up! Yea, a lovely landscape photo of Denali National Park just looking up at me from his photostream.

And finally, I have managed to land a couple of extra freelance jobs just in the past month that could potentially pay for a couple  of plane tickets to Fairbanks or gas and hotel room costs along the way.

Maybe I’m super hyper to all things Alaska right now and am therefore seeing things that were there before and I had not noticed until it became an interest of mine, sort of like when you decide you want to purchase a particular car and then you see it everywhere. I’m going to say there is something way more cosmic going on here though. I think I have become open to the possibility of a great adventure and therefore it is making itself achievable. Isn’t life interesting?

A couple of months ago I mentioned that I was using a laundry detergent that I had made myself from a recipe I had found online. Well, we have been using that for three months now, long enough for me to say we LOVE IT.

First, it is really cheap to make (about $10 for all ingredients and we have been using that first batch made in March until today when I had to make another!)

Second, It makes our clothes really soft and they smell clean, not clean as in perfumed like some detergents but fresh and odorless.

Third, It is super easy to make.

The recipe is below if you would like to try it for yourself. You don’t have to use the brands in the photo but it is what we had available at our local Meijer.

12 cups Borax
8 cups Baking Soda
8 cups Washing Soda
8 cups Bar soap (grated)

* Mix all ingredients well and store in a sealed tub.
* Use 1/8 cup of powder per full load.

Found here (Recipe #9)

Sometimes seeing something in a different context makes all the difference. Stats and data are not always easy to visualize. Chris Jordan translate some very sad statistics into a more meaningful picture in a recent TED talk.

Tonight my friend Shannon and I decided we would skip our weekly planned yoga class and head over to the Lexington Art League for an ARTalk. Tonight’s artist was Phillip March Jones (I love that his middle name is March) and his presentation was fascinating and inspiring and witty!

ARTalks are regular events were an artist is invited to speak about their work and its evolution and the processes they use. First off, Jones’s journals intrigue me. Many of his thoughts and drawings in the journals become larger paintings but the journals themselves are little works of art. And he has SO MANY journals. He is constantly writing and drawing in them. Second, his exploration with medium and techniques was really interesting. It was great to hear his thoughts behind the works and how those thoughts evolved. The one thing that he reminded me about the most was the need for a sense of exploration and play in creativity. He started a lot of his pieces just seeing how different elements (paint and beer in one painting) react to each other and he worked with the results. It was very liberating to hear him talk about that.

I came away from the talk tonight inspired and excited about my own art work. I often get caught up in the final results I want and don’t do enough playing and experimenting. I think it might be time to brush off the moleskin journal and art supplies and see what happens.

A couple of Jones’s journals from his website:

Read More about him on his mySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/phillipmarchjones