mirror, mirror

the green mirror i've had since i graduated from college. my mom's friend was getting rid of a hideous white and gold striped mirror, but it was giant and i was poor, so i took it. i painted it lime, because my first post-grad apartment was orange and green. it was a small first floor one-bedroom in a mansion near cheesman park in denver. with tall ceilings, two fireplaces, original built-ins, and no air conditioning. so i tried to adult-ify my college decorating (shabby chic and tiffany's blue) with a very 1970s palette. 

anyway, i love mirrors. LOVE. and the giant dresser that has become the endless weekend project came with one. however, i do not care for the traditional dresser with attached mirror look. it's like how i don't like matching furniture sets. so i am going to get rid of the legs and refinish it for my dressing room. and by dressing room, i mean the tiny 7' x 8' bedroom that we have turned into a closet/dressing room for me. i have so many ideas! right now, we have old ikea furniture and an estate sale rug in there.

but we also left the walls minty green. which looks awesome with the rug. and most of my clothes. ick. so we'll see what i can pull together from what we have.

...also, has anyone else seen gallery girls on bravo?? yikes. never have i seen so many girls be so proud of their aversion to hard work. i love bad tv, but this one may be too annoying even for me. and i'm more partial to bad tv like honey boo boo : ) 

experiments in gardening

i take no credit for this rose. i inherited it. but i love it. i never thought i was a rose person... until i have them like crazy! they're tiny little roses. swoon.

i'll take all the credit for this one. unfortunately. you can see the sad little yellow tomato. all by its lonesome : ( they're partly droopy because i need to water them. but i think they may also just not be doing well. i have a bit of work to do this fall/winter to get the tiny bed ready for next year!!

this experiment was more successful. i let part of my basil go to seed, which means i let it flower and then dry up. then i sprinkled the seeds into small pots full of potting soil. this is about a month later! prolific, beautiful basil starts. for free : ) and so healthy and yummy. nothing too crazy, just normal basil. and actually the original plant is from whole foods. just a cheap-o small start picked up on sale. that was over two years ago - i've nursed it through winters and started little off-shoots to have basil year-round. 

worth it?

do you see that look on phil's face?? that look says "i know i'm fundamentally frugal, but this is a lot of work... couldn't we just buy a finished dresser and have more time for fun!?"

so, yes, refinishing furniture is a lot of work. especially because we want to do it right. so between coats two and a half and three of the primer, we had a real discussion about the "value" of cheap craigslist furniture that takes 6+ hours of work... we'll see once this is done what the verdict is - it seems so romantic on young house love... let's just say we are very glad we didn't buy a total fixer-upper :)

my happy place

this is my favorite spot in our house - the bathroom skylight. seriously. not having to turn on an ugly overhead light for my morning shower is amazing. i have always loved sunlight over artificial, but i never thought my daily bliss could come from a bathroom skylight! they are typical on our neighborhood (old-fashioned exhaust fan?), but ours was upgraded with the bath remodel to a non-operable, translucent glass that filters the light just so.

new rose

this is the new rose blooming in the front yard. photo taken on my iphone after work, no filter. it is that bright!

doing the math

this is the farm share i got this week.  the farm share cost $450 for june through the end of october. that's just about $21 a week. let's do a comparison against giant, a grocery store near me. which is cheaper than whole foods, where we typically shop since it is two blocks from the house. i used peapod, the online delivery service. i chose organic where available. while the farm share is not strictly organic, i feel like it's a better comparison for quality.

- small, seeded watermelon $7.99

- pint blueberries $4.99

- bulb of fennel $2.49

- 5 pears $6.45 ($1.29 each)

- eggplant: 1 purple, 2 white, 1 orange turkish $7.96 ($1.99 each, but the grocery store only has purple)

- 4 large heirloom tomatoes $5.56 ($1.39 each)

- 1 green pepper $1.99

- mixed small tomatoes $3.49

that's a total of $40.92. ummm so the answer is yes, it's worth it. no question! not only do we get to try all kinds of new things (orange turkish eggplants??), but it's less expensive for a better quality product. and we're supporting a local farm family. obviously i am passionate about this - i think it may be the focus of too many posts!

our next adventure? milk delivery! we should get put on a route in the next couple of weeks : ) i will definitely let you know how it goes - i am very excited. i've been wanting to do this for over a year now.  

blueberry buckle

we have gotten a lot of blueberries in our farm share this year. tons and tons. i have eaten them in my yogurt, juiced, or frozen most of them, but we were still having a hard time finishing them before they started to go bad. so i pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks, the family baker, to inspire me. i'm not sure if it's in print now, but i have always had excellent success with the recipes and they are super easy to follow. each entry includes other ideas for variations, entertaining tips, substitutions, and a little history of where the recipe originated. so i decided on a blueberry buckle to take to a backyard barbecue we had on sunday afternoon : )

it's basically cake batter with blueberries on top. a sweet, slightly lemon-y cake batter and farm-fresh blueberries!

then you dab the rest of the batter on top. it doesn't matter if it's ugly, or uneven. i think it's kind of supposed to be like that. 

then a super yummy crumb topping goes all over the top (and maybe the counter...).  so it's kind of like a breakfast-y coffee cake. but we ate it with ice cream and it was a hit! 

not only did tony dress to match the blueberries, but he had seconds! the best part of cooking and baking is having people to enjoy it. 

...oh and having home-made baked goodies for breakfast monday morning was a plus, too : )