Natural Weed Control

Are you spending more time pulling weeds than enjoying the garden you've doted on all summer? Are you worried about the effect on the health of your family by using awful toxic pesticides?

My alternative? We use fabric. Fabric groundcovers block sunlight which deters weeds while simultaneously keeping the soil moist so you don't have to water as much.

Any fabric will do, really. They sell the weed fabric at the big box stores for about $10-12 for a 50 foot roll. You thought gas was expensive? Try a gallon of Round Up for $20!

If you have an old army blanket in the basement that's half eaten by moths, throw that out in the yard! It will even compost over time!

You can lay fabric under decks, or gravel pathways, or brick/stone patios. If you use it in the garden, all you do is cut circles out of the fabric where you want to plant, throw some mulch over the rest of it and voila! You're green!

Fabric in the garden definitely works for me!

News which made my day

When Handsome and I bought our house, it needed quite a bit of work to make it work for us.

The itty bitty kitchen was very cut off from the itty bitty living room by a 3/4 wall with a barely there window cut out above the sink. The kitchen counters were pomegranate red and the floor was flesh colored. The carpets were dingy and the light fixtures were ghastly.

We worked every night after our "real" jobs for two months straight fixing that house up. We knocked down the wall between the kitchen and living room and made a breakfast bar out of what was left. It opened up the space tremendously.

We built a cabinet to house a double oven given to us by my father-in-law (oh, how I love that double oven!). We purchased new tiles for the kitchen floor, the entryway and bamboo flooring for the living room, hall and office area. While looking into kitchen countertops, we thought that wood would look splendid in the rustic Tuscan kitchen we were creating.

There was a problem. Nobody had wood countertops.

We couldn't find butcher block countertops for as much space as we needed for anything under $1000. We didn't have $1000 to spend on wood, for our counters.

But I was in love with the idea of wood, so we kept searching.

My search led me to IKEA. They had wooden countertops. For much less than $1000. Unfortunately, there are no IKEA stores within 500 miles of our newly remodeled house. Why does Texas have three and California have eight of these stores yet Colorado has NONE? *sigh*

Smack dab in the middle of our remodel project, we took a trip to Montana to celebrate my dad's wife's 60th birthday. The drive up to Montana is never as cool as the drive back, usually because we head up at night and are totally exhausted and then drive all the next day to get to their house. We usually drive up through Wyoming and cut across the vast expanse that is Montana. Sometimes we drive back the same way, varying slightly for sight-seeing purposes. This time, we had a whole house remodel to come home to, so no sight-seeing was in the plan.

However, as we were planning for this trip to Montana, an idea struck.

There was an IKEA not too terribly out of the way back from Montana. You know, in Utah.

Yep, we got our wooden countertops, loaded them up in ol' Ruby (our Jeep Liberty) and drove those 800 miles home with our new finds. Actually, the only way they would fit in Ruby is by laying the passenger seat back and stacking them on top of each other in the vehicle.

Visualize it.

I spent most of the ride home in the back seat, directly behind my awesome chauffer husband.

By the way, those countertops (96 inch long, 26 inch wide) were only $70 a pop! I KNOW!

Soooooo.... the reason for this entire post, besides cementing the memory of redesigning our kitchen and scoring the most awesomest kitchen countertops for a steal is this:

THEY ARE BRINGING IKEA TO DENVER!

I am a happy happy girl! What works for you?

Where I talk about my hair

I have just discovered Naturally Curly. I love this site.

I have naturally curly hair. When I lived in Virginia, I had humid hair = frizz. I would comb/brush it out and I could seriously rival Buckwheat.





If I put the right products in it, I would actually have curls! Then I moved to Colorado. Other issues, like the complete and utter lack of humidity, made my curls practically disappear.

Oh, and I never. ever. ever. use a hairdryer.

One time, in college, I got my hair professionally cut (did you ever spend any kind of money on anything like that in COLLEGE? What was I thinking?) I went to the "salon" and sat in the chair and the lady, seriously as old as my grandma but not as sweet, gave me a fairly cute hair cut. And then, she did the unthinkable. She brought out the blowdryer. And proceeded to turn my hair into a mushroom-shaped afro-looking white girl.

I can't think of any good reason why I did not thrust my hand up when she brought out the hair-gun. But I let her do what she did, possibly because, you know, she was the PROFESSIONAL. And I walked out of her shop looking like I stuck my finger in an electrical outlet.

I had to go to the grocery store after that and I was literally in tears. Mortified, I ran into someone. I. KNEW. Ah, yes, in a town of a couple hundred, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. I should have just run home and taken a shower and prepped my hair. Except, you know, I had just paid for that lady to do that!

Anyhoo... As I got older, and have relayed that story a million couple times, I got to thinking about that lady who gave me the funky Buckswheat look that day. If I were a hair stylist, I would NOT want someone leaving my shop, looking like I looked, because if anyone asked where I got my hair done, I would have to tell them! I mean, I was some BAAAAD publicity that day!

So, anyway, back to the hair in question. It's like I have two sets of hair on my head. I have a kinda wavy overlay from the crown to the ends on the outermost layer of my hair. Underneath, it's Shirley Temple ringlets all the way.

I really wish all my hair would be like the underside. I like the curls, they are cool. You can pull on a ringlet and let it go, and it will bounce!

So, anyway, the girls at Naturally Curly have a whole new idea of how to take care of your curls. I'm going to try it. I will post before and after photos to see if my hair undergoes the revolution I hope it will!

For more WFMW ideas, please visit Shannon's site!

Father's Day

With my dad living so far away, I have to plan a way to celebrate Father's Day in advance. Sometimes it's hard, because of the history between us, to convey my feelings on Father's Day. The card shops never have the right card for my sentiments. If I get a generic card, I always feel like I'm not being entirely truthful.


He wasn't there for me when I was growing up.
He wasn't the ideal male figure in my life.
He wasn't the man who I looked up to for Mr. Fix-it help or youth sports coaching.


At some point, I decided to forego the traditional Hallmark cards and just buy blank ones to express myself on Father's Day. Since my dad is retired, and we're still physically and somewhat emotionally distant, I really falter on gift-giving decisions too. I mean, the ties are irrelevant now and I must've given him at least a hundred golf balls over the years.


This year, I went the edible route. There is a cookie shop that delivers all across the country. It's called Cookies By Design and they have cookies for all occasions. You can choose as few as a 3 cookie bouquet to 7 or 9 cookie bouquets. They are totally adorable!

And that works for me!

Super Easy Man-Pleaser

I have discovered that my husband is very easy to please.

Stop laughing!

Besides the obvious man-pleasers, I stumbled upon a very easy one. And I don't even have to be around!

That's right! He can enjoy this one all. by. himself!

OK, so on a Saturday morning, I will whip us up some pancakes. I like to make mine with the Jiffy mix (if you're a Bisquick user, don't judge, Jiffy is just MUCH less expensive. Like by half!) and milk. Then, I throw in a can of creamed corn.

Because what else are you going to do with creamed corn?

Since it is just Handsome and I, this makes a LOT of pancakes for the two of us. I flip the flapjacks until all the batter is gone and he can eat a pancake a day for the rest of the week at lunch.

Now, I'm not usually that forward thinking, nor am I that much of a Menu-Planner, but this definitely works for me!

Donating to charity without even trying!

It is actually very easy to donate to your favorite charity and it won't cost you a cent! How?

If you do any amount of shopping online, you can donate up to 26% of the money you spend to your favorite charity. The amount donated is already set, some stores donate more than others.

Check out http://www.igive.com/ which is the wonderful organization which shepherds all of the shopping and donation giving amongst 680 retailers and over 41,000 charities. You can take a tax deduction, or not, for your shopping/donation experience. It's totally up to you.

C'mon, you know you're going to shop online anyway! Why not shop for a good cause?

It works for me! Check out lots of other great tips that work for others at Shannon's.

Getting healthy, for free!

Let me tell you about some very cool FREE ideas to utilize while you may be sitting on your bum reading blogs.

1. Online pedometer. Google has made it easy to figure out how far you are hoofin' it. You just enter the starting address and click on each place you stop, or turn, and it can even figure out your return route in one click!

2. Online health tracker. Fitday has lots of foods already in its database, and you can easily add a food that it may not have. You can add your activities and see how many calories you're burning. It also has an online journal so you can keep track of how you're feeling, any obstacles and anything else you can think of!

3. Online recipes. Allrecipes, where would I be without you? I love the "Advanced Search" feature of this. I can input the ingredients I have, and a cooking method (i.e., slow cooker) and it will spit out all the recipes related to my search. Tons of low-fat, low-carb and other generally healthy recipes out there to discover!

These three websites definitely work for me! Visit Shannon for other awesome ideas!