A Visit to Bellevue Botanical Gardens

I've been wanting to get out and about in nature recently. My birthday and one year wedding anniversary were last week and the idea was to go camping in Mt. Rainier Nat'l. Park. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling very well all last week, so my entire vacation was spent mostly at home. Ah, well. It was nice having some quality time lounging around at home. My Dad showed a lot of interest in getting out and about also, so he suggested going to the Bellevue botanical gardens.

This is a lovely garden. Some of it is wild, like this nurse tree above, and the rest is manicured and planned.

I took some random shots of beautiful plants and features. Here they are!

One of my favorite parts of the trip was the 'Ravine Experience'. It's a suspension bridge, but you'd think you were at an adventure theme park based on the sign.

 

 

 

 

 

The bridge is one of those great bridges that bounces around a little as you walk over it. I guess that's why the sign says 'take a walk on the wild side'!

Here is my last picture to share with you today. the best picture taken all day was taken by D and D.

 

I love how they both look so very amused with themselves!
If you get a chance and you happen to be on the east side, I'd recommend getting yourselves out to the Bellevue botanical gardens.

 



Ah, chickens.  I want chickens. This is something that keeps coming back into my life and helps propel it forward. Currently, I rent. It's not something I want to do, but coming up with a down payment for a home is challenging. Saving it is going to take much longer than I had hoped. Knowing that started me thinking about community P-patches, or more specifically, how one might start and run a community henhouse.  How would that work? There is the land to come up with. Privately owned? By whom? Publicly owned? How? How many chickens? How many people will participate? How much $ to start?  Some of it is less worrisome. The chicken coops themselves could be built by people who want to be involved that have the know-how and helped by the rest of us. Could it be integrated into a larger P-patch? I really like this idea, but am not sure where to start. Seattle Tilth may have some ideas. I'll have to think on it more. If anyone has any ideas, pleast don't hesitate!

But it doesn't end there. Eventually, we will begin Worm composting. It will be great for the garden I'd love to have. Yes, a lot of work, but I am really enjoying doing some of the small things I can right now like making things we enjoy eating (pizza, cookies) from scratch. Still junk food, but junk food with ingredients I can pronounce. Someday, someday...

Goals! Eyes on the prize...

My HB and I were talking the other day about owning our own home... again.  This is a common conversation.  He wants a place where the kids feel at home and welcome in their own rooms, etc.  Me? I want a chicken coop with hens and a garden.  Perhaps even a bee hive.  That last link is to a friend of mine who gave everything up to follow his dream of  building apiaries (sp?) and selling the best darn local honey around.  It's this kind of passion I love!  I enjoy supporting folks who have a fire burning in their lives because it helps stoke my own fire.  Recently, I found a blog called The Change Blog and this particular essay was about the 3 requirements for change. S/he writes about there being 2 types of people. Those who usually don’t know what they want in life so they don’t want to move for fear of going in the wrong direction, and, Those who do know what they want but become paralyzed because they are not sure how to get there or there are too many options to choose from. I took those quotes verbatim from the article by the way. I fall into the first group, so I thought. Throughout my life I've struggled with trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Turns out my biggest problem was I was thinking about jobs, work, professional aspirations. Now that I'm older, I realize that work was never going to be the end all say all for me. I just want a job that doesn't upset me too much and pays my bills with enough left over to save and have some things I want. What I should have been focusing on was the rest of my life. The part where I've learned to knit, and cook. The part where I research everything there is to know about raising/keeping chickens. Or whatever it is that motivates me to get up in the morning. Does any of this make sense? I have a passion for just living my life. It's unfortunate that work is the one minor downer in my life. Minor in that I feel slightly less when I have to work. It's that thing to be gotten through. Hopefully, reaching some of my goals will lead to more meaningful money-making in the future.  Back to the article. The author talks about everyday, writing down one thing you would do if you knew you couldn't fail. My very first thought was 'buy a house and build a chicken coop.' It flashed through my mind like it was just waiting to be asked. That's when I knew. We've been dawdling along, talking, talking, talking about it and doing nothing to get there. So, today, I drew this:

I know it's hard to see (funny enough, one of my what would you do if you couldn't fail items is learn to take decent pictures), but basically it's our monetary goal to buy a house with. We are starting with $500. We have more, but I like having an emergency buffer while we are trying to save up. I'm so happy with this decision. It's will be hard going, but I genuinely believe we could do this in 2 years time. That works out to about $100/week. We are going to make the kids a part of our savings goal for the home. They may think of things we haven't.  Excited!

Whew! Good to get that off my chest.
Here's what was old and now is new in our little apartment.

Granite countertops!

Really classes up the bacon grease there in the corner...

I put my old dresser in the entry hallway. It needs to be painted (I'm not a fan of yellow, so years ago I bought myself a yellow dresser.), but it sure is handy there in the entryway. Above the dresser is a very cool toy Tucan. You pull the string and it will languidly flap its wings. I love it! Thank you Dad! I think that's enough sharing for the day. Thanks for reading!



Favorite things (silly little blog)

Today at work I found a cute little peacock blue box with cherry blossoms all over it. Inside was a mug with a drawing of a dragon on it. It's not the cutest mug I've ever seen, but I fell in love with it. Apparently, this thing has been sitting in our lost and found for about a year. I asked a manager if I could go ahead and take it and she said 'Please do.' Taking that mug brought me a huge amount of joy. I just kept thinking about taking it home and putting it with my other favorite mugs. I try to practice one thing in, one thing out when it comes to where I live. The mugs, I realized today, are really special to me. I can't imagine throwing/giving one away. They are my, well, favorites. What I'm trying to say is, I didn't realize I was so in love with my mugs! So, here they are with stories attached.

This is, of course, the one I found at work. I just think it's so ugly it's cute! The speckles and the eggshell green are perfect.

I adore stars. They make me feel gleeful inside. Remember those Rose is Rose cartoon in the paper on Sundays? Pasquale would feel gleeful and over his head would be dancing rainbows and hearts and candy canes. Stars make me feel like that. I got these on sale at a Starbucks somewhere, sometime. Still love, love, love them.

This mug is from our favorite breakfast place. Luna Park Cafe. My hubby-bunny (HB) and I love to eat there. We are big fans of the piles. I like to get the spinach with bacon and blue cheese. All of that is mixed with hash browns and topped with 2 eggs over easy. *sigh*. I love breakfast. I bought him one of these a few years ago, but right when we got home, I dropped and broke it. Oops. So, this one is a more recent and permanent (hopefully!) mug.

It's about ten years old. I had a couple of girlfriends I used to hang out with regularly for a short period of my life. One of the young ladies was visiting New York and I asked her if she would pick me up an I <3 NY t-shirt. She came back instead with this mug. She said she totally forgot to get one while in NYC and remembered to do it only at the airport. The T-shirts at the airport were crazy expensive, hence the mug. I really didn't mind. In return, when I visited London later the same year, I picked up Underground mugs for them. And me, of course. Unfortunately, those mugs broke.


This mug, however, is hands down my favorite! I have a friend named Shelly. We met about 10 years ago in our pre-algebra class at Seattle Central Community College. She is so talented and beautiful and absolutely hilarious! We don't keep in touch as much as we used to, but we try to keep up with each other on facebook... of course. She painted this mug for me. On the mug are her three kitties. Lucy is the only name I can remember because she was always the naughty one in the stories. That's Lucy-bell with the bell christmas ornament in her mouth. She's looking over her shoulder because she just got caught.

This mug is especially precious to me, though, because she drew Puss on it. Puss was my lovey boy for about 4 years. You can't tell from this angle, but the fur on his back is all matted. Shelly used to help me hold Puss down so we could shave his back. Poor baby! The matted fur would get so tight and pull on his skin. He was too fat at the time to reach the fur on his back to clean it. Puss died about 3 years ago, but I'll always, hopefully, if I'm careful, have this mug to remind me of him.

That's about it for favorite things today! Happy thoughts to all! Monica

The best time of the day!

Breakfast is my favorite time of day. Whatever time that may fall. Even better? Breakfast at a restaurant with family and/or friends. Happily, my bonus mom likes to go out for breakfast also, so this morning we ate at the Queen Anne Cafe.

I had a fantastic and HUGE artichoke omelette with hashbrowns and 9-grain toast. She had a scram with hashbrowns and 9-grain. Boring post? Only if you don't feel about breakfast as I do.

It's been a very long time since I've been to the top of Queen Anne. Lots of Queen Anne style homes and kitschy shops. Hilltop Yarn was both a kitschy shop and Queen Anne style home I used to visit regularly until it went out of business. Low-down dirty shame if you ask me.

My other favorite place to go is Communique cards & gifts. Here's why:

The stickers are fantastic! I'm a little weird about my sticker collection. I don't like packages of stickers, just loose ones and this is the only place I've seen in Seattle that has them. They carry puzzles, kids books and toys as well as probably 200-300 nutcrackers of all kinds. If you are a collector, or just enjoy looking at all the different kinds of nutcrackers, then this shop is the place to go! They also have all the requisite cards and holiday stuff you might need for any time of year.

For the rest of my day I plan on working on that wine cozy I keep threatening to finish soon. Happy thoughts to all!



Knitting

Like many things I am interested in doing, it sounds much better to do than it actually is to do. Knitting is no exception. Most of the time it is very dull work. Making a sweater sounds like a good idea until you are 2000 very small stitches in with no end in sight. It's great busy work when you have to take the bus, or just want to spend time with a loved one who is doing something else. Like, say, playing video games. So this year, I am searching the web for fairly easy, usable, fast knitting ideas that also teach me something new. My first project is this great wine cozy from knitty.com! 

Squee!

It's super simple, I can use sock yarn which loves to stripe naturally, and it is showing me something I haven't tried before. To create the base, I have to count up six rows, grab the loops hanging there and knit the bottom to that row of stitches to create a small shelf. Yeah, I'll know more when I get there.  Here's mine so far. 

This yarn is not quite right for this project, but I love the different colors and how they slowly change as I knit along. It's good for practice anyway.

Tonight I had dinner at the folks house. The hubby-bunny (Yep! That's what I'm calling him!) wasn't feeling well so he missed out! A lovely triple cream brie, buttery green olives, a skillet spaghetti and meatballs, antipasto salad which was to die for, and a bottle of Pour Me. Oh. Yum!!!

I guess that's all for today! Happy thoughts to you all!

What's in a name?

Welcome everyone! Welcome to my brand new blog, Squirrel! Why Squirrel! you ask? Well, I am one of those people who gets really excited about trying new things. Most recently, for instance, I've decided to train for, then run, a half marathon in October of this year, go back to school, volunteer at a cat shelter, redecorate our apartment using only things from thrift stores, find and knit cute, useful items for birthdays and christmas this year, learn how to maintain my bike (which has a flat tire and a broken gasket) using books from the library, and find time to write this blog. I'm sure writing this blog will help me sort out what is reasonable, and what I should put off until later. Squirrel! is in reference to any of those cartoons you've seen where there is a dog talking/doing something and s/he is suddenly distracted by, what else? A squirrel. Yep. That's me.

and take more pictures!

It'll take me a little while to figure out how to tweak my blog, and I'll work on pictures, but in the meantime, I'll keep you posted.