Monthly Archives: June 2012

Carmel: October 2007

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back in 2007, my mom and i met up with my best friend and her mom for a long weekend in carmel, california. back then, i only had 1camera, a canon elph, so developing them and arranging them in an album shouldn’t have been so hard. at the time, i even took the effort to go through the hundreds and hundreds, purge the really bad ones, photoshop some of my favorites and posted them online for others to see. and until now they solely lived in digital format. but now they have a proper home in a proper album for my mom to enjoy.

my mom was gone for a few days at my brother’s house so i had limited time to get the project done. i kept it simple by using supplies i already had. i ordered the prints from Shutterfly through their bulk pre-paid plan and they were delivered right to me. i spent roughly 6 hours or so physically putting the album together.

it felt great to have finally put this thing together and have a finished piece. it was a really fun trip and one of my favorite things in the world is visiting a new place and snapping hundreds of photos. normally, the whole photo album/scrapbooking thing gives me hives – there are way too many options, it can take a huge amount of time and money. but as the priest at my church in college used to say, “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”. i might just put together an album of last fall’s trip to disneyland and this spring’s trip to mexico together.

you know you’re getting old when…

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  • you put together the ultimate playlist of your favorite daily NPR podcasts and are super stoaked about it.
  • you look forward to fridays, not for the drinking and debauchery, but because that’s the day you dump your husband’s entire paycheck into the savings account.
  • you researched making your own almond butter at home.
  • you go into target and buy only what you came in for.
  • you wake up before 6am and like it.
  • you miss your mom when she’s away for a few days and aren’t annoyed when she calls to check up on you.

Kumquat Ice Cream

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i feel very lucky to live a mere 5 minutes away from the suisun valley, where wine, olives, and produce grow in abundance. earlier this year i considered joining a csa, but when i looked up where it was i realized i could ride my bike there if i really wanted to.

among the many produce stands in the valley is 99 cherry orchard. yes, you can pick your own cherries. yes, they have rustic, rusted sculptures out front. yes, they sell local honey. but what you notice most is the “homemade ice cream & pies” sign!

in the fall, they serve pumpkin ice cream. but this time around i tried their kumquat flavor, since trying a new ice cream flavor is on my summer manifesto. it was hard to know exactly what it would taste like since i’ve never had a kumquat (even though we have a tree in the backyard), but i prepared myself for something citrusy? and honestly, even after trying it i can’t exactly say what it tasted like. don’t get me wrong it was good. since it was also topped with a hot, fresh waffle. but i don’t think i found the holy grail of ice cream, which is still reserved for gifford’s peppermint ice cream.

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au natural

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i can already check off one of the items in my summer manifest: make my own natural body wash! in fact, this new concoction doubles as a shampoo. but let me back up to talk about my first endeavor in going au natural.

every winter, i dread how dry my skin gets. no matter how fast i run to the lotion bottle after my shower and no matter how much i slather on, my skin is still (to me) super dry. and i’m talking about super-strength industrial Keri (is so very, very) moisturizing lotion. so i decided, eff it, i’m just gonna drown my skin in oil. and i did. and it worked.

i’ve used olive oil, jojoba oil, and finally settled on coconut oil. mainly because i saw a jar of it at trader joe’s. it also has a slight hint of coconut smell (duh), which i love. after further research, it is also the most shelf stable oil, so i don’t have to worry about it going rancid on me, no matter where i store it, or how much the temperature fluctuates.

after even more research, i found out all the awesome uses for coconut oil. it has anti-bacterial/microbial properties, so you can use it as a deodorant. i tried it and it works! i used coconut oil under my pits all winter and spring. though now that it’s super hot here, i’ve switched back to my tried and true antiperspirant. it’s not a perfect natural solution, but i figure i’ve cut down my antiperspirant use down to 25% of the year.

i use it for all my moisturizing needs: total body, face, and hair. a little goes a long way. i have also integrated an oil cleansing method into my skin care routine. supposedly it also has a small amount of natural spf, though not enough if you’re gonna be out in the sun all day.

you can of course eat it and cook with it, which funny enough isn’t something i do. but like olive oil, coconut oil is a very healthy oil.

in my research i found there’s a whole bunch of people who swear by oil-pulling, where you kind of swish the oil around in your mouth everyday to ‘pull’ the toxins out of your body and stuff. that’s where i drew the line. i love the stuff, but yeah not gonna swish it around in my mouth.

the coconut oil has really helped my skin and i feel so much better knowing that i’m not slathering a whole bunch of chemicals onto the largest organ of my body. it grosses me out now to think about it. so now, as i use up my beauty products, i’m making a concerted effort to replace them with chemical-free, natural products.

recently, i’d made my way through a bottle of body wash. and i got all giddy at the excuse to try dr. bronner’s liquid castille soap. of all the different types, i chose the hemp almond one, mainly because i like the faint almond smell. they also have a peppermint one that i thought looked good since i also love mint. but i heard that it can be a bit tingly. and since i was going to use it as a body wash, i figured i’d avoid tingly.

supposedly this soap can be used 18 different ways. all i did was dilute it with equal parts water and added a bit of my favorite coconut oil. i tried it as a body wash and as a shampoo. so far, so good. the scent was nice and subtle (i HATE artificial scents) and the lather was really nice. i’ve tried a different natural shampooing method that involved baking soda which i hated because there was no lather and it was super gritty. since i made the effort to go au natural with the hair, i skipped conditioner and my usual shine serum since both contain a bunch of silicones. i figure if i’m going to let my hair do it’s own natural thing, i gotta get the whole routine down to bare basics. so it was coconut oil again to the rescue for after-shower conditioning.

the next morning, my hair looked great. it wasn’t the usual glossy shiny i’m used to from the shine serum i use, but i had no frizzies and i felt like it was more tame than normal. and had more body than normal. the next day, my hair was even better. today is the third day of not washing it and if i were going somewhere i would. but since i’m being lazy, i probably won’t wash it until before bed.

i got the big bottle of dr. bronner’s from target for i wanna say 16-ish dollars because i couldn’t wait to try it. i hear the prices are better on amazon. and considering i’m diluting it down, i forsee this bottle lasting a long time. so yay for natural and yay for affordable!

my summer 2012 summer manifesto

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ah, the official first day of summer. i don’t know about you, but we’ve been feeling very summer-like around here with temps close to 100 on some days. since i am a nerdy goal-oriented control-freak, i’ve compiled a list of a dozen* things i want to do this summer (ending september 22), some of which coincide with my master 2012 list. some of which are just for fun! in no particular order:

  1. Save 40% of our income
  2. Compile our Monterey Trip photos (from 4 years ago) into an album for Mom’s birthday.
  3. Start our Wedding/Honeymoon album (Notice I said start and not finish!)
  4. Make my own natural bodywash
  5. Try a new fruit or vegetable I’ve never had
  6. Eat seafood here. Preferably on a day I play hooky (shhhh)
  7. Try a new ice cream flavor I’ve never had
  8. Visit a new to me Farmer’s Market
  9. Visit a new to me thrift/antique store
  10. Ride our bikes here. ‘Cause even when it’s hot where we live, the temperature is always perfect for biking in SF
  11. Rock out to UJam once a week
  12. Remember to take pre-natal vitamins and put those vitamins to work, if you know what i mean ;)

What’re you doing this summer?

*The list was longer but I figured, ‘hey! it’s summer don’t stress yourself out!‘

thank you, steve jobs!

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i have been a mac user since my oregon trail days in elementary school. i have vague memories entering commands to get my cursor to move around the screen. Then in middle school, I worked on the school newspaper- on a mac. The same for yearbook in high school. Eventually in college, I found my way to the graphic design program and my loyalty to macs was forever solidified. Even for personal use. I’ve owned a PowerMac G3 ( the turquoise one!), a white Macbook, and finally a MacBook Pro. I turned my husband, a hard core gamer, into a mac user too!

My MacBook Pro has seen better days and I’m debating on what to get to replace it. If I even need to. My husband has a newish iMac, I have an iPhone, and I just figured out how to pair our wireless keyboard to the iPad that I’m writing this post on. For our web browsing needs, we’re set. I’d like a machine I can do photo editing on and the occasional freelance or work project. So it appears we could probably get away with just having the one iMac in our household. It just feels so weird to not have my own dedicated computer. I guess that means I’m spoiled that way.

But I just can’t rationalize the space and money a second computer would take up, even if it is the sexy new retina display MacBook Pro, when I would use it so infrequently for hardcore stuff. Yet I like having my own stuff. My own space. Ya know? I’m also debating on getting the new Adobe Creative Suite when they finally release that. But thinking about all of that and possibly dropping several thousands of dollars unsettles me. Being a creative professional is too expensive.

For now I’m psyched that blogging on the iPad is much easier with the keyboard. I hope that means more regular posting is in my future. I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve for the second half of 2012.