Collage – 100 days of Tombow

I have been given the opportunity to participate in Tombow’s “100 Days of Tombow”. Tombow sent me some of their amazing products, and in return I got to use them (and tell you what I did) and they donated money to the Council for Arts Education. A pretty amazing deal!
For 100 years Tombow has been creating innovative products that help everyday artists do their best work in art, craft and office supply environments.   Crafters worldwide have coined their experiences using these products as “Tombow Time”, and share virally how they create, celebrate and decorate with the help of Tombow’s extensive product portfolio.
Saturday, March 9, at the National Art Education Association Conference in Fort Worth, Texas, Tombow kicked off its “100 Days of Tombow” program by committing to provide up to $10,000 of Tombow art products to the Council for Arts Education, a national nonprofit dedicated to promoting and supporting art education and quality art programs nationwide.
Tombow seeks to leverage its centennial year by spearheading new avenues of creative growth for the next 100 years. To that end, it’s working with crafters and mommy bloggers to reach younger demographics and introduce Tombow to a fresh, new audience.  “We’re parlaying our 100-year platform to educate crafting bloggers in the young singles, newlywed and new mom audiences on ways to use our eco-friendly products to enrich their world with color, texture and design,” said Jeff Hinn – president, American Tombow.
For its “100 Days of Tombow” program, the company is working with 100 different bloggers across America to spotlight their creative musings using Tombow’s products, and showcasing how “Tombow Time” is enjoyed across the nation.
I have never participated in an event like this, but as soon as I heard about it I emailed the organizer. I have been using and loving Tombow’s products for quite some time. It’s hard to believe but I bought my first marker from them when I was in high school… 16 years ago! Even more amazing is that almost all the markers I originally bought I still have. They have a wonderful design that keeps them moist and fresh for years. Of course I don’t let Tuesday use them, I consider them my “special” markers, so when I was deciding what project to do I hesitated letting Tuesday use them. But she has taken a real interest in drawing and does so with so much intent now, no longer just scribbles. I decided to get out the three products I was sent: Dual Brush Markers, Irojiten Colored Pencils, and a Stamp Runner and work on a collage, with her nearby.

These markers have dual tips, so one side is a brush and the other a fine point. They do not smell! Some markers of this style absolutely reek and I would never let my young daughter use them, but these I feel are safe enough for her to use. You can see here how the marker works when you overlap it, quite beautiful. I also used their color pencils, and I liked them a lot. We’ve been deep in the Crayola trenches with colored pencils and these are about 100 times nicer, as you would expect. So did Tuesday want to join in?

Oh yes she did. I can not tell you how happy this makes me. I have been trying for so long to get her to do some collage work. We’ve checked out many books from the library with beautiful collage illustrations and she has shown no interested in it. While she did like the markers and pencils the real thing she loved was the stamp runner. And I don’t blame her. Glue can be hard to get right where you want it when you’re little. And then things shift around until they dry. With the stamp runner little dots of adhesive are applied with a pleasant click exactly where you want them. This proved irresistible to Tuesday. I’m happy to say I see many more collages in our future.

Here’s my finished collage. A future quilt block I think. I’ve taken to using print in lieu of low contrast fabric prints. I find this helps me visualize the play of those fabrics with higher contrast solids much better than just leaving white space.
If you have any interest in drawing I highly recommend these markers. I detest bloggers writing up things for money they clearly have no interest in and I would never do that to my readers. These are truly products I have used and loved for years and I am so thrilled I get to share them with you, and have a donation made to such a wonderful cause. A dream come true. Thanks so much to Tombow for the opportunity.
And seeing as how I’m obsessed with their products I do have one more thing to show you later this week. I just couldn’t stop myself!
Supplies Used

Salem Harvest, and lots of corn

I know I’ve mentioned Salem Harvest before, but I don’t think I’ve gone into great detail about it. And I should because it is amazing! For a variety of reasons farmers (or just people with a fruit tree in their backyard) donate crops to Salem Harvest so food that would otherwise go to waste ends up at the local food bank. I’ve been to harvests where land was for sale, and not being farmed, but blueberry plants were still producing. I’ve been to a harvest that gleaned what mechanical harvesters didn’t get. I’ve been to a harvest of green beans that the cannery didn’t need. And how does Salem Harvest get people to scramble, drop everything and come pick for them? You, the volunteer get to take half the produce you pick home! Usually I pick more than double what I would need, I think most people do, so the food bank ends up with LOTS of food. This year I’ve been to two harvests. The first one was one I had been waiting for; corn! I went with my friend and her little girl, Tuesday was having some grandma time.

Bennet wasn’t a super fan of picking since we had to bend over a lot. We were picking the edges of this field because a windy rainy storm had knocked stocks down. The stocks on the ground and the ones leaning would make it difficult for the picking machine. We would pick the stocks and then trample them down perpendicular to the edge of the field. I’ve never picked corn before and it was fun! I didn’t know it was so so sweet right off of the stock. Once I gave Bennet an ear she was as happy as can be!

Don’t worry about cooking it mom!

We ended up with a ton of corn! My friend said, “once we shuck it all it won’t seem like so much corn.” um, it was a lot of corn. Lucky for us Bj is pro with the mandolin. He set it up and got to work filling every large container we own with corn kernels. But being the food hoarder I am apparently turning into that wasn’t good enough for me. I stayed up late getting sticky and milking the cobs:

So that I could make cream corn. I was able to can a lot of this with my friend’s help. She showed me how to use a pressure canner and made me realize that I was being silly indeed to be scared of it. Used properly and always attended there really is nothing to be scared of.

It’s a good thing because here is a little bit of what we put up (roasted corn salsa in the foreground, behind that canned whole kernel corn). Despite two MEGA days of canning I still ended up with ten bags of corn in a neighbor’s freezer! Good thing we have awesome neighbor’s who answer late night text pleas for space in their deep freeze! I’ve already traded that for some of Erin’s eggs, yum, yum!
There is no national registry for this type of volunteer harvest work that I can find. Do some googling in your area and ask around. You might be looking for neighborhood harvest, harvest parties, gleaning, food bank stocking, etc. Who knows maybe there is lots of produce grown in your area and it is going to waste. Perhaps you’re the one needed to get something like this off the ground. The volunteers who head up our local organization are amazing and they do lots of hard work, but they always look like they are having tons of fun in the process!

Recently Carmen was in town with her family and I thought this would be fun for her kids. They live in Alaska and don’t have the same type of growing climate so big fields of crops aren’t as common. I also introduced her parents (who are local) to the idea and this happy rainy Oregon portrait is all of them in a squash field. From what I understand this field was being harvested because the farmer was one of the people who got legislation passed in our state to allow farmers to write off these kinds of donations. She makes sure to always grow a crop for donation now.
Looking forward to the next harvest. Crossing my fingers for grapes!

No spend September, we’re not going to make it

Ah no spend September, I was so sure staying in our $400 budget would be easier than easy! I mean if worse came to worse we have beans and rice. But my putting up got the best of me, and probably it was canning that is going to send us over the edge. Actually the purchase that will put us over the edge is dance shoes. And yes, we did spend $50 on a dance outfit (required by the school) earlier this month. But I thought her shoes had a little more room. They had zero.zero room, ending with Tuesday dancing one lesson in tights only. Ok, ok, can’t put it off, so we’ll be picking up shoes this week. Darn it! Because we’re already at $396.38. Since the last update we’ve bought:
Tomatoes: $50
Produce: $6.66
Jars and lids: $43.61
More groceries related to canning (pectin, etc.): $17.02
A new gauge for my aunt’s pressure canner: $23.50
Ribs and salami: $37.68
Total week three: $178.47
I do sort of want to stamp a big fat FAIL on this week. But I won’t. I won’t do it because I still was super careful about what I spent. It may not seem like it, but let’s walk down the list. The tomatoes, produce, jars, lids and other produce related to canning. I put up a lot, lot of great stuff. I made pizza sauce, Italian sauce, grape jelly, and more. For sure I spent way less than these canned goods would cost me in the store. And besides the lids most of the $43.61 is jars that I will use year after year. I was a little down on myself for replacing my aunt’s gauge, when I didn’t end up using the pressure canner (I made chicken stock and the four pints I got didn’t warrant heating the thing up, so I just froze them). But then I thought how nice it was of her to lend it to me. I went and had it checked and the old one was off by more than two pounds of pressure. I would feel terrible if I gave the canner back to my aunt and something happened. So I’m glad I fixed it in the end. Really the meat was the one thing we didn’t need. Our awesome neighbors across the street had a mega smoker built. They told us they were going to fire it up last weekend and asked if we wanted to put meat in it. We couldn’t say no. We cooked three racks and Bj took the meat off of some of the bones so I could freeze it for another meal or two. We invited my brother and his fiancé over and made a party of it. Worth every penny. Tuesday basically lives on salami and since Bj was at Costco he picked some up.
I’d like to think of this list in terms of things we did NOT buy. No clothes, no toys, no books. No processed foods. No fast food, no eating out. All good, good things!

A picture that sums up this experiment pretty nicely; Tuesday helping with bread dough….

Oops mama forgot how much the dough was going to rise!

And then one thing led to another

Does this ever happen to you? You have a plan, you gather materials, you are for sure going to work on something when you decide to just do one thing first. Then before you know it it’s 12:21 AM and you’re writing a blog post about something completely different. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, you’ll see I got a lot done… Just not what I was thinking I should do.

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Which is why these 100 odd pounds of tomatoes are still sitting in my garage. I was totally going to work on them tonight. My mother in law is here and we were going to get stuff done! But see that paper bag over there? Well it was full of apples. I’m applesauced out right now so when Tuesday and I saw an article in the Rachel Ray magazine about making cider (without a press) we decided to try it.

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Two quarts and a couple mug fulls later we had a pile of apple pulp that looked a lot like baby poop. I decided making muffins with some of it was a good idea, so then we did that. Ok phew, now I’ll go to bed to get up early and start canning.
By this time though Bennet is already up again (sigh). So after I get her down I figure I might as well wait the 12 minutes the diapers need to rotate them over to the dryer. Trying to break my terrible habit of leaving clothes in the wash overnight. Hmm what to do in the basement for 12 minutes. Well that nightgown is sitting there half sewn…
Now an hour later I’m tired. I made fresh cider, cleaned the kitchen, made muffins, cleaned the kitchen, washed diapers, and finished a nightgown for Tuesday. But did I get any canning done? I did not.
And so it goes.

No Spend September – Two weeks in

I didn’t think to blog about no spend September at the beginning of the month because, well, it sounds kind of boring doesn’t it? I think so far this month has been one of my favorite of all time. Wonderful weather certainly helps, but it’s more than that. It turns out I spent an inordinate amount of time shopping, “picking things up”, running errands, going to the grocery store or farm stand, surfing the web for new things, popping into Goodwills, hitting up garage sales, etc. Then when I get new (or usually “new”) things I have to clean them, mend them, put them away (cram them somewhere, let’s be honest), get rid of the old thing if we are replacing something. Phew just typing that is exhausting! After reading a couple of new (to me) blogs Bj and I decided to do a No Spend September. We are not actually spending nothing. We gave ourselves $400 for everything that was not a normal monthly expense, including classes, utilities, mortgage, mama’s helper, and the cleaners. The $400 does include groceries, gas and anything else we might need (basic idea for this here).
So is it scary and boring and am I just dying to spend money? Quite the opposite. This month has been awesome! By completely taking spending off the table and really talking about our values and goals for our family we have come inward and gotten to spend more time together. This is great because Bj usually gets up before us and works until 6 (at the earliest). Bennet has been going to be early (I mean it’s not like she stays asleep, but you know), so that leaves precious little time for us to be together as a family, I’m sure many of you can relate! We’re cooking almost every meal. We’re not driving if we can help it. But we are doing so much. First the numbers so far:
Lawn Mowing: $10
Dance Clothes: $50
Peppers & red onion: $2.44
Pop: $5.15
Haircut & tip: $11
Canning Jars: $16.50
Comedy show tickets: $47.50
Girls night: $20
Gas: $42
Groceries $13.30
The lawn mowing was a bit of a mistake. I meant to call the kid that has been coming to do it for the last month or so, but forgot. The dance clothes was unfortunate because I had just bought clearance dance wear for Tuesday. But the new school requires a special outfit (at least it’s really cute). Peppers, red onion, and the jars go to a big canning effort. I could have cut Bj’s hair, but I’m a little rusty. The comedy tickets are for a show in October. And girls night. Girls night was so awesome. I suggested a place close to my house and we all met here and walked. I never would have thought to do this even though the place is .7 miles away. Do you know how fun it was to walk together to a restaurant in lovely late summer weather? Sit out side and walk home? SO AMAZING. I looked at the menu ahead of time and my meal + diet coke was $16 + $4 tip. Totally worth it. And because I was conscious of the money I didn’t get an appetizer or dessert (usually I get both!). Guess what the Tibetan Pulled Pork Nachos were more than enough to fill me up. I fully filled the gas tank, even though I won’t use it all. And we stocked up mid-way through the month with things like yogurt, milk and garlic.
Things I’ve done this month because it has been no spend that I normally don’t do and were/are amazing:
-Pulled the girls in the trailer behind my bike for close by (under 1.5 miles) places. I even learned to fill the tires with the air compressor since it had been two years since I’d taken my bike out!
-Made bread and pizza dough with Tuesday instead of buying it (Bj even put some on the grill to make nan!)
-Harvested everything I could from everywhere I could. Including lots of free corn from Salem Harvest, and sunflower seeds for the birds from our own yard.
-Used up all that shit in the freezer and cupboard! This includes home canned tuna someone gave us that I thought looked funny in the jar. It was amazing!
-Was creative with recipes instead of going out for everything that was called for.
-Threw away a lot less food.
We did go to the grocery store and Costco at the end of August. I don’t consider this cheating since we do that anyway on a regular basis. We also started the month with half a tank of gas and 65 (partially rural) miles from home. I’m not going to do any half fill ups of gas, because that’s not what we do normally. I didn’t stop canning because not putting up food when it is practically free or dirt cheap seems super silly just to shave a few bucks off the list (Sciarrino found me the most amazing jars for that $16.50 anyway).
Questions? Have you done anything like this? I am still on a total high about it. It’s my normal new activity hyper enthusiasm mode. Bj tends to be weary of these periods, but it’s hard to be skeptical when all I want to do is stop spending money.

Thank you, blog updates, etc.

Wow thank you so much to all 96 of you who took the survey. I am so so grateful! I know you probably get thrown lots of those types of things in your weekly surfing so I really appreciate you doing it for me. I don’t have any huge plans or announcements. Like I said I started this blog a while ago and am just letting it follow the twists and turns of my life. I want it to be a fun place for me to record all the good things in my life, but also helpful and entertaining for those who visit. Mostly so I can get feedback and keep a dialog going with my readers (who I love!). I am not planning on shutting it down any time soon, don’t worry!
I’m not planning on monetizing it more than I do now. I have Amazon Affiliate links through my blog because that’s where I normally get things. Amazon Prime = many unnecessary purchases. I had someone ask me about affiliate links. Basically I link to Amazon, you click on the link, you buy something (doesn’t have to be what I linked to), and I get a % of the sale. I don’t know the exact % and I don’t know all the ins and outs because I just haven’t taken the time to read up on it. I tried to figure out how much I’ve made from the blog since I signed up maybe three years ago? But I could only get the last four full quarters, and in those I made $31.86, so obviously I’m raking in the dough. Ha. That does not cover the cost of the blog because lots of people still come through my typepad blog and I pay for that monthly ($14). Plus domain name costs and server stuff I don’t understand. I’m trying to be transparent, can you tell? 🙂 I think the affiliate links are the least annoying way to get money from a blog. I could probably do a better job of them, but in the end I’m utilizing this space for myself and not an advertiser so whatever.
Hmm, what else. What some facts about you the reader? Well, the 96 of you that answered:
46.88% between 25-34 (and no one reads under 18, things are going to racy… well probably not)
13.54% are outside the US, and 25% are in Oregon, cool!
Most of you work full time, and exactly a third are carers.
31.25% don’t have kids, but some of you are trying or pregnant
I know, I know, the social media question got messed up, you could only pick one… and I forgot Instagram!
Over half of you found me through another blog (thank you, thank you for linking to me bloggers!) and I told 30.67% of you about it, because I have a big mouth I guess.
Pretty much every kind of post seems to be somewhat popular, with family & kids being a front runner (might have something to do with the above 30.67%….). So basically I can stay random and talk about whatever I like, sweet!
Most people find the site easy, which is funny because I don’t think it is. I don’t like how the categories are laid out, and I’d like a side bar to quickly get to some of my favorite areas. Someone mentioned frustration at only 3 entries per page. I changed it to 5, but it’s usually so picture heavy I hesitate to go further than that, as it will load slowly for most. Any other comments about the layout of the blog, please let me know!
I’ll work on the tutorials that nearly everyone wanted, as well as favorite product posts (I love reading those too).
Comments ranged from “it seems so real” to “it seems fake” I struggle with this, as I’m sure most bloggers do. I love celebrating positive things in my life, which I suppose isn’t too realistic, as life has good and bad. I’m just not interested in the negative right now. Oh occasionally I’ll rant about sleep, or talk about loosing a family member… but really I can’t complain too much about my life. Even if something annoys me, I have to admit I have to have it better than most. And for that I’m extremely grateful.
Other comments talked about how nice it is to feel connected to the me and my family though they are so far away (long distance friends and family members I suppose – I couldn’t see who took the survey, unless you left a note telling me it was you). I agree, one reason to keep the blog going for sure! Photography tips are wanted, I’ll try to share my favorites. Someone brought up random wednesday. OMG I loved that. It may have to make a comeback (see old Free Association Wednesdays here). More snippets of our home, thrifting finds, posts from phone, things I make for the girls, and crafts in general.
So you like me. And I like you. And I look forward to blogging another 1,569 posts (holy shit isn’t it crazy I’ve blogged that much?!?!)