Wonderling

Egg Carton Lamp

This lamp is made from about 80 egg-carton-cups! I love the deep purple color, but I'm not sure I could spare that many cartons since I constantly have eggs to put them in......I'm thinking that there's something else I could recycle to make a lamp this pretty, I'm just not sure exactly what it would be yet! [via CRAFT]

Upgrade

I just found this amazing site called greenUpgrader. It has everything from "upcycling" to green product reviews. Here's their motto, "You don't have to give up living well to be "Green". We believe small choices we make can make a big impact."

Recyclable Organization!

I've been looking for a pocket-sized accounting ledger to keep track of what I spend "on the go", but I haven't found anything smaller than letter size. I'm at the end of the week from hell and it's threatening to continue through the weekend, so I took a breather and decided to look for small ledgers again and this amazing little website called pocketmod popped up bringing a ray of sunshine to my gray day.

The best part is that you can make anything into a pocketmod booklet. I've seen tourist guides to Italy, Mac OS mini-handbooks and all sorts of other sites with pocketmodded cuteness.

cooking: Quinoa and Veggies

a couple weeks ago I bought a basic (Betty crocker of course) cook book. I've had several but they never seem to make it through a move.

Stocking my kitchen with fresh veggies and grains, I went to work on some of the recipes.

This one is for "creamy quinoa" sounded really good.

some of my favorite veggies, summer squash and zucchini as well as some green onions

cooking the quinoa

I cooked the veggies until they were soft, but not smooshy. I also added some garlic.

after draining the quinoa, I stirred in cream cheese, then the veggies. I also fried a turbot fillet.

I'm not sure I'd make this again. At least not exactly like this. I didn't dislike the cream cheese element, but I didn't really like it either.

Because my apartment is host to every ant colony on the block I don't throw any food scraps away. All scraps go into this bowl, then out to the compost pile. I can't tell you how great it is to see how little garbage there is when you recycle and compost.

Automotive X Prize

I don't know if I'm just in a black hole where I don't get any good news or what, but I just found out about the automotive x prize. I wasn't even aware that cars could actually get 100mpg, let alone some of these examples that are getting 300mpg. crazy.

Collared

I've finally gotten a collar on Bear....one that isn't hot pink. His tags came from the county, so I figured it was time to fully domesticate him (although the tags were labeled: feline, male, Beatrix). He's spent most of the day almost getting his mouth around it.....we'll see how long it lasts.

I've also finished a few projects that were in dire need of finishing

1. My history essay. It's done, it's submitted, it's now in God's hands! ha!

2. My reading for the week....but, on to next week. ugh

3. I finally got fruits and veggies for smoothies in my *new* blender!

4 and last...I recorded a song that I'd like to have on the upcoming Paper Brain album.

Mike and I will go to look at a studio tomorrow that we're both really excited about. I think I've been in shock lately about how quickly things can progress. There's not a week from Feb to April that we don't have at least one show. It's all really really good.

One thing I'm really loathing right now is my lack of downtime. Well, really it's the lack of time to clean. My apartment was clean for a day, then I did laundry....now it's piles of clothes waiting to be hung and empty boxes that need to be recycled. I was also hoping to get some sewing projects in soon, but with all the reading for school I just can't justify it. ugh.

With that wonderful thought, I'm going to glance at Mr. Equiano, then try to watch Becoming Jane without falling asleep :)

to use or not to use....

With all of the debate on the safety of Nalgene bottles, tinychoices.com has done some research for you. It looks as if there's no real argument for or against the possibility of nasty, hormone stimulating chemicals leaking from your beloved nalgene (oh my goodness, a nalgene rep just walked into the office!! is this a sign?!?!). With all the non-science backed claims mounting it looks as if you're best bet for safe drinking water is your trusty old glass jar or a stainless steel canteen. Via notmartha.

In dreams

This is one of my favorite photos from the shoot (one of many!). There is also a video of us recording a new song for our limited release EP here that was shot this last weekend. We're really not that exciting. ha!

These jellyfish are made out of used plastic bottles that were shredded using the PET bottle shredder. Via Craft

 

I originally saw this on Craftster.org, but now there's a detailed tutorial on Cutoutandkeep! how spectacular :)

One Air Car please!

Finally they've started making a car that doesn't require fuel at all! The engine works using a compressed air tank and electricity and uses vegetable oil that rarely needs to be replaced or changed. Of course they are only available in Europe (manufactured in France and available sometime this year in Spain and India) and gas stations are not yet equipped with recharging stations, but it's a start! Link