Haiku Friday: Celebrate May Day and Beltane!

Beltane marks spring
jesters dance round May Pole ribbons

flower baskets bloom

May Day makes me feel nostalgic. Not for the coffee filter flowers I made for May Day baskets when I was a child but for the May Pole dances and brightly colored clothes of Beltane. My inner child loves Beltane. Why? Because once upon a time I was a professional jester.

Need Proof?

I designed and drafted the pattern for my favorite jester costume, hat, and props. I appliqued blue ribbon in a Celtic knot pattern at the bottom of the top skirt. The top skirt are overlapping panels that fly straight out when I turn.

5 Easy Ways to Lower Your Electric Bill

Trying to reduce our electricity usage by 20% this year, without replacing everything we own, had me singing The Condo Blues. (Condo Blues. What a great name for a blog, ya think?) After a couple of months into the New Year, I checked our electric bills. Our electricity usage didn’t go down from the previous month, it actually went up!

This is after I:

1. Switched my remaining incandescent light bulbs to CFLs

2. Switched to the Short Wash cycle on my dishwasher and continued to do only full loads in the dishwasher and air dry the dishes

Grub Resistant Gardening

I am allergic to anything green. Spending a lot of time digging in a garden guarantees me a welt-covered body. So when we found out that The Condo came with “low maintenance landscaping” I was all for condo living!

Unfortunately, within two years of owning The Condo three of the seven low maintenance bushes that came new with The Condo were dead.

How Make an Ironing Board Cover

The cover on my ironing board was stained. It never stayed on the ironing board when I was trying to iron something. I needed a replacement but never remembered to buy one. That was until I saw some flaming skull fabric at Joann Fabrics. "Hey!"says I, "I could make a new ironing board cover out of that fabric using my old ironing board cover as a pattern." So I did.

Here's how I made my ironing board cover.