How to Season and Wash a Baking Stone

Scene: A lazy Saturday morning. Lisa is snoozing her life away snuggled under 7 blankets on her bed. Husband enters the room.

Husband: Lisa, wake up. I already took Blitzkrieg out side for a potty.

Me: “…….”

Husband: I made scones for breakfast.

Me: “!!!!!!!”

Yes, my wonderful Husband whipped up a batch of cherry scones and served them with teeny jars of clotted cream and lemon curd for breakfast. The cherry scones were a wonderful surprise because weekend morning breakfasts are usually a fend for yourself type of deal. The only exception is that one of us makes a gallon of coffee which we sip throughout the morning at our leisure.

Even better was that Husband used our baking stone to make the scones. A seasoned baking stone is a wonderful alternative to using a Teflon baking pan which can leach questionable substances into your food while you cook it. It also saves me a little bit of money because I don’t have to use cooking oils, butter, spray with a seasoned baking stone.

How Do You Plan Landscaping When You Suck At Gardening?

After watching our “easy to care for landscaping” die a little less than two years after buying The Condo I replanted those seven little solders all standing in a row…

…with my first attempt at grub resistant gardening. This is what my front flower beds looked like early last summer.

Mother Nature pulled a nice big April Fools Day prank on me (clever how I worked April Fool’s Day into today's post, huh?) Japanese Beetles took out my replanted bushes and white leaf mold took out the rest of the plants in the beds. Now I’m stuck with this:

Last fall I took all of the plants out of the flower bed, treated it with Milky Spore, and let the whole thing go dormant. Oh yeah, I put in a garden border with reclaimed bricks while I was at it, but that’s another post.

Apparently Blitzkrieg has a little rule that I can’t take photos for the blog unless he’s in them. What can I say? My dog loves the camera.

Now it’s time for planning the landscaping for those flower beds. The problem is I suck at landscaping. I have no idea what plant or how to decide.

I know that The Condo is in Zone 5, the front yard gets partial morning sun. The soil is clay and we are going to spend a bucket load of our budget on soil amendments. I know I don’t want to plant plants that attract Japanese Beetles (I know I'll never fully rid my yard of Japanese Beetles. I just want to encourage them to fly by my yard and eat at the neighbors) but other than that I don’t know what I want to plant other than some more lavender (it grows well in my crappy soil), perennials that that look pretty and are food/pest deterrent, and possibly a tea bush (Camellia Sinensis) but I don’t know if that will grow in my area. Will it?

How do you decide what to plant and where to put it in your landscaping? What resources do you use? Once you decide what you want to plant where do you get your plants? At the nursery or mail order? Any help or resources where you can point me to would be greatly appreciated.


This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday.

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In other Blog Business:

Are you going to BlogHer this year? If so, could you please login to BlogHer and vote for two Rooms of Our Own that I’m involved in and that aren’t getting a lot of votes? The Rooms of Our Own are causal meet up/networking opportunities held during lunch and are different than the panel discussions.

You don’t have to attend the sessions if you vote for them, but you’re welcome to!

Green Bloggers Room of Our Own (this is separate from the Green Blogger panel.)

When Your Family is Your Blogstalker/Troll Room of Our Own (fortunately I don’t have this issue, I’m promoting it for a blogger who obviously can’t mention it on her own blog.)

Thanks!

A Shopping Cart Made Into a CHAIR?

Now this is a creative reuse project that I love and totally want – a chair made out of an old discarded shopping cart!

I think one of the reasons I like reestore’s Annie chair is that it reminds me of a Bertoia chair. Again, which is something I want but don’t know where to put in my small living room so it stays at the store where I visit it often.

I wouldn’t mind having this once-was-a-washing-machine-drum-now-is-a-coffee- table either. Why didn’t I think of this before we had our old broken washing machine hauled off to be sold for scrap metal?

What I love about both of these reestore projects is that you don’t automatically realize what they are made out of just by looking at them. Especially the washing machine drum table. When I first looked at it I though it was a nice arty modern side table, something like the Bowhaus dog crate/coffee table combo.

It’s only until I read the description that says the Silvana is remade from a washing machine drum that I looked at it and said, “OH yeah, it does look like a washing machine drum.” Genuis!

Makes me want to check out a junkyard just to see what’s out there to remake.

What do you think? Would you consider buying either of these and putting them in your house? Yes? No? Maybe so?

What are Your Favorite Essential Oils?

I first got into essential oils back when I started performing at the Ohio Renaissance Festival. Many of the booths there sold (and still sell) essential oils straight up and in blends for any and all uses you can think of depending upon the vendor or the type of essential oil.

One of my favorite oils is lavender because it smells pretty and is very calming when I'm in Type A Stress Puppy mode. It's antibacterial, and it's also a natural pest deterrent, which is another reason I planted it in my garden. That makes it very easy to dry lavender and bring it into The Condo for all of my lavender needs.

But I'm getting a little tired of the lavender because I have a lot of stuff that's scented with it. My reed diffuser is out of essential oil and I need a change from the lavender. Give me some suggestions. What are your favorite essential oil scents?

Yes I realise that the lavender bucket photo is recycled from an earlier post. I could explain it away by saying that I'm all about recycling because well, I am. In reality, I built a new computer and I'm still working on loading software and files from the old build to my new build. Using photos I already have on my blog's server makes doing today's post a little bit easier while I'm in computer limbo. Thanks for understanding!

I’m on MSN Smart Money!

Thursday was a very, very good day. First off I spent the afternoon at the Columbus Auto Show courtesy of Ford. They invited seven local bloggers to the car show and showed us their new hybrid cars (I’ll blog about this later.) Oh and they took us out to lunch. Free lunch and car talk – cool. Included the local bloggerti – AWESOME! (Which only happened because I know Christina of A Mommy Story and she wrangled me an invite. She’s the big name local bloggerti. I just ride on her coattails.)

So I get home, thinking that’s a nice little perk and am feeling pretty happy. Then I open my email and find a message from MSN. They wanted to check some facts about my 20% Energy Savings Reduction Challenge because MSN Smart Money wrote an article about how I reduced my electricity use by 32% last year!

You, know it’s a good thing that I sit down when I use the computer because I think I would have fallen down otherwise.

This article couldn’t come at a better time. It’s a big reminder to keep up with the energy saving habits because American Electric Power (AEP) will be raising our electricity rates 8% in 2009, decreasing them to 7% in 2010 (how kind), and then jacking them back up to 8% in 2011.

Ouch!

Since it’s the first day of Spring – hurray! – it’s time to switch over from winter energy saving habits to summer energy saving habits. I’ve blogged about mine. Tell me, what are your energy saving habits?
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10 Green Decorating and Craft Projects

I’m searching around the Condo and the Internet for ideas on what to write about for St. Patrick’s Day. I have the Scotch-Irish bloomers that I made for a show. Not historically accurate by any means, but still fun way to hide my unmentionables in case my skirt flew up during a fast and vigorous Scottish Country Dance turn during the show.

I can’t believe I just showed my underwear to you people!

(Granted it’s underwear that goes over my underwear but it’s still underwear.)

But as the subject of a whole blog post - meh.

I think I’ll take it another way and
be lazy
do a recap of some the green (literal) and green (figurative) things we have around The Condo because I like to decorate with both types of green.

1. I made chew toys for Blitzkrieg’s dog cousin Chopper from scrap fabric. I’m also responsible for his festive t-shirt.

2. Blitzkrieg has he own green blanket I made from a cast off baby blanket and paw print scarves.

3. My first attempt at organic gardening! Sadly it doesn’t look this nice anymore. I replanted a couple of diseased plants and they spread pestilence throughout the garden bed . However, on the bright side, this year I get to completely redo the flower beds and make them 100% organic.

4. A green/green project. I repainted and recovered these old doctor’s office chairs that Husband had in his bachelor apartment. The chairs now sit on our front porch.

5. Organic gardening gone right. Once I figured out the nuances, I got a bunch of tomatoes from the plants growing in my upside down tomato planter .

6. Another double green project. The light fixture in my craft room I made from old stemware!

7. Don’t forget my green/green burlap rice bag turned shopping tote bag . I was so happy to find a good reuse for those old faded green curtains.

8. Something I see everyday – the green tissue paper wallpaper behind my desk in my computer room!

9. A row of green halogen desk lights on top of these bookshelves works as energy efficient overhead lighting in my computer room. Our builder didn’t install junction boxes in the ceiling of this room. This was a much easier fix. Cheaper too because I scored these sweet lights on sale at Target.

10. Lastly, Husband’s childhood Mego Hulk stands guard over the washer and dryer in the laundry room. He’s green/green too because I decorated the laundry room with what I already had. Yes, it looks like a dorm room but fun for visiting kids.

Now if only I could convince those visiting kids to do a load a laundry while they’re at it….


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