I have been selling on etsy for a while, but through circumstance and budget haven;t bought anything on the site, until a few days ago. I decided that it was silly of me to have not bought anything from my fellow artisans and crafters. I wanted to purchase something and give someone else their first sale. I searched around on the "Pounce" option for buying and some of the selections were great, and some were obviously someone who just had one thing to sell, and when no one jumped on it simply forgot about etsy.

Finally I found the seller, Illustrationsoflove, who is an illustrator and fiber artist. I knew I had the right person when I saw her theme. She has a large Ball jar that throughout this year she is filling with scraps of paper upon which she has written something she is thankful for. Each day she draws a slip from the jar and creates a small illustration of that thing and posts it on etsy.

I purchased a small illustration that not only is cute and simple, but features my name! You can find it by going to her etsy page and looking under sold items, or I will post a picture when I have received it and have hung it on the walls of our home.

Last night after Jim came home from work we decided to run down to this little Chinese restaurant that we like along the Hiawatha near Minnehaha Falls and had dinner. Of course, I brought along my camera, and despite clouds looming nearby and a few rumbles of thunder we decided to make a quick stop at the falls to see how low the water was and to allow me a chance to practice with my Neutral Density filter.

I have a new love-- aside from writing and photography and camping and biking and home decorating and reading and film and travel and all of the other things that I have used to occupy my time-- I am now in love with my pasta machine.

I am attributing this love at least in part to my time as a preschool teacher who played with play-dough and still loved the feeling of squishing it and molding and cutting it. We were originally going to purchase the Kitchen Aid version that would attach to our stand mixer. However, the set of three attachments retails for $129 on amazon and is seldom seen in stores. Also, the rollers must be switched out from the receptacle on the mixer to be used, whereas with the table versions a crank merely has to be moved. What we ended up purchasing was a mixer very similar to the one pictured here, however, our machine cost less than this. We actually feel pretty fortunate because we think that the one on Amazon was made by the exact manufacturer, but sold under another name.


For my initial trial I decided to do a simple lemon basil recipe that was in the booklet that came with the pasta maker. I wanted to make one that seemed to be foolproof and that one had just a few ingredients. My fear was that somehow I wouldn't be able to successfully make anything close to resembling noodles, which I realize is a ridiculous fear considering the relative simplicity of making pasta compared to driving a car or editing a photo in Photoshop.


Pressing and cutting the noodles was fairly easy. The only even remotely complex parts were catching the dough in such a way that it didn't fold and insuring that the crank didn't fall out while in use or as I was moving the pasta.


Drying the pasta was another task. Some stores sell racks of rods to dry pasta on, and Jim and I will probably purchase some dowel rods which we will cut and sand, but for my first try I decided to put them on a cooking spoon over a pot and flour canister. I also laid a few out flat on a plate, but eventually found that it was easiest to place some butter knives between the pages of one of my favorite cookbooks-- which is also one of the biggest and hang them there. The only issue with this was that as the pasta dried it left creases in the bends that were easily broken. However, once the strands were in hot water these evened out.


For dinner tonight we ate the pasta and I made a butter and cream sauce with mushrooms and parm. and we had a Cornish game hen with juniper berries, bay leaves and peppercorn. Yum.

Honey is excited to try the process out himself and tomorrow we are planning to make spinach noodles and whole wheat pasta. We are also going to try using the rollers and a tool that I once devoted to crinkle soap slices as I cut them to make the edges of bow-tie pasta and ravioli. we are also hoping to find a good recipe for won ton and egg roll wrappers that we can roll out.


We are not going to only eat organic, and we are not going crazy with health food (I just used half a stick of butter and a cup of cream in a sauce) but we are trying to get more connected to what we are eating and purchase more staples and fresh ingredients and use those for cooking. This will lead to less preservatives and more frugality. We still have a love for pre-made and frozen Cordon Blu chicken breasts, and a good frozen pizza, but this is a simple way to eat food because it is really what we want, not because it is the sauce on sale.



My next culinary purchases will hopefully be a food mill and the tools that I need to do some canning when fall arrives. We just got a large stock pot from the free section that we can use for this, but I need the jars and the tongs to grab the jars. We would like to find a good farmer's market, but that can be hard in the city. There are a couple that operate downtown in places like the Nicollet Mall, but that is a main thoroughfare for city buses, and Jim is worried about the smoke when he has seen it on his lunch breaks. Hopefully at the State Fair we will find some good farmers who sell there wares, or at least some ideas for small stores that have what we want and don't charge you $5 for a squash.

I recently posted about my new freelancing work in stock photography and selling my creative photographs on Etsy.com. This is all part of our plans as a couple for our future. Our ideal is that after we have children I will be able to stay at home, being a mom and writing and doing stock photography as much as is reasonably possible. Right now I am not making enough to warrant staying home before children, but we are working so that at some point in the future I can make the transition reasonably easily.

Initially after becoming a mommy I will need a break from working just to focus on the wonderful changes in my life and to learn my new little one's personality, but eventually I would like to go back to working, even if only 15 or so hours a week. (And no, as far as I know, I am not pregnant right now)

I am currently looking for work outside the home, but am also expanding my freelancing from articles into the business world. This is more in line with my education. My major focused on writing in the business world-- specifically marketing and fund-raising. It is my hope to take my experience in teaching and childcare and bring this over to my professional life. One of the biggest complaints of the parents we served were the lack of communication (often merely their perception) but this is something that there are simple tactics to remedy, but that many childcare directors do not have the time or knowledge to fix.

I recently bought the URL-- http://www.comprehensivecommunications.info/ and I am currently developing the website. It is still very much under construction and it has been hard lately to find the time to work on it, but I am slowly making progress. Hopefully soon I will be writing website copy, parent handbooks and daily communications for small childcare centers. I would also love to work with small non-profit organizations. I hope that I can use my skills to help organizations that I feel passionate about their cause in addition to simply looking to help support our family. So check it out (I seem to be writing that a great deal lately.) Blessings!

For quite some time I have been writing online for sites like Suite101, and have made some, but not a ton of money from this writing. It has been a good way to keep my name out there and to begin to write about things that interest me, things that I am interested in learning more about and things that I want to advocate. As I have learned more about photography and increased my skills with visual communication I have looked for ways to incorporate this into my freelancing life. I am not a professional photographer in the traditional sense, but I have been fortunate enough to use my photographs with things I have written for Kalamazoo Weekly and to enhance my online articles. I've also recently begun submitting my photos to stock photography websites like bigstockphoto.com and shutterfarm.com. I've included one of my recent stock shots that isn't the most exciting, but can be very useful.

I have wanted to explore more of the purely creative side of photography, so I recently began selling my photography on Etsy.com. This has been challenging and at times, frustrating, but it has been wonderful to be the sole gatekeeper for an online project as I am here for what I blog, and to determine my own success or failure. So far I have not devoted the time that it deserves and I need to devote more time to advertising and marketing myself if I want to be successful at it, but have been occupied with other things.

I hope that those of you who read this blog will explore my etsy store and give me your input via comment or email and tell me what you think. What can I do better, how can I market myself so that people will come upon my store. Also note that it is still in development and I am planning on adding more photos and perhaps cards that incorporate my photography and would be at a lesser price. I'd appreciate anyone's help!

Thanks!

P.S. My Featured Photo (on the right side of this page) right now is one of my favorite etsy shots that I took on Jim and my recent trip to St. cloud to practice with my new telephoto lens that Honey gave to me for my birthday.

It has been far too long since I last posted. I'm sorry Michigan family members and friends. I know that not all of you can access photos posted on facebook and flickr. I realized that I never posted about my birthday, or our recent trip to Michigan, our day trip to St. Cloud or our recent trip to Wisconsin or my new website. I guess life and stress have just caught up with me. I will try to address general things now and then get to specific events and photos soon.

Jim is doing really well with his position-- in July he met last year's sales numbers within the first week and is on track to do really well this month too. Later on in the year he is probably going to have to go to Las Vegas for a show for work and is probably one of the few people for whom this is not exciting. He has said to me, "Now I will not be able to say with pride that I have never been to Vegas." Jim isn't interested in gambling and if he was going to go just for the entertainment he would like me to be there with him.

I finally made the decision to resign from my nannying position. I do not have anything lined up at the moment, but the stress and negativity in that household were affecting me emotionally and having negative consequences for my health, which are already disappearing. Jim has already noticed that I am much more filled with joy and peace then I was before this decision was made. I will really miss Liam, but the family and I differed on several important child-rearing issues and ultimately it came down to my wanting to work in a position where I am really needed and fulfilling my purpose. I will not discuss everything having to do with this family on as public a format as this out of respect for Liam. Occasionally I have read friends' and acquaintance's blogs where I have thought-- "Ooh-- that is really juicy, but sharing that may come back and bite them in the butt later."

We are looking for a larger place-- preferably a townhouse for while we are looking for a house. We thought that we had a place to rent lined up, but recently got a phone call from the office saying that because the previous tenant had been there for so long the pipes need to be updated to meet current code restrictions, which means that it wouldn't be ready until after our lease is up here. Our current building is nice-- it is so convenient to town and there are sari shops, a couple non-profits and other businesses on the first floor and restaurants within walking distance and target and grocery stores within biking-distance. However, we think that part of the reason we have been so anxious for a home (aside from that once we have a house we are planning on trying to get pregnant, which we are both eager for) is that this place is limited on space and being up so high is somewhat disconnecting from the neighborhood and from nature.

Jim's old place before we got married was so wonderful-- two bedrooms, laundry room, built in cabinets and shelves with mirrors in the dining room, attic and convenient outside access. We fondly remember sitting in the living room in the fall and carving pumpkins with the screen door open and the rain falling outside. Or hearing the birds in the trees outside as we ate dinner-- everything combined to make it feel like a small house. To then move here to a one-bedroom apartment high up in the air and to add my possessions to the mix has made for some confined feelings. That is not to say that our living space is horrible. we have been able to decorate inexpensively and comfortably. Thankfully our taste in furniture and thrifty natures are in sync. Things like our new TV, our couch and other post-matrimonial purchases has made our home as cozy as this space can be.

We are trying to ride our bikes more, and to go on more long walks, but the humidity of late has made that really difficult. I didn't think it was possible, but MN has even more humidity than MI. The weather gauge on one station regularly classifies the weather as, tropical. The Cities are also an island of heat because of all of the blacktop, so we have tried to get out of town more often.

One thing we are anticipating eagerly is the MN State Fair, which is a BIG DEAL out here. I don't even know of a Michigan State Fair, so we are excited for such an uniquely MN and agri-centered event. The Twin Cities are very urban and have so much culture and modernity, but as we have explored more we have seen how the cities are an island almost separate from the rest of the state. Occasionally we see reports of cattle or horses being stolen, and increasingly reports of people releasing their horses to wander because they are unable to care for them in the current economy.

I will try to update soon with photos and individual posts about trips and events.


Blessings!