New Thing #86: Created a Nature Journal

Art Media was having a sale, and I got a book called "Nature Journal: A Guided Journal for Illustrating and Recording Your Observations of the Natural World." It was SUCH a nice book, that I decided to make my own Nature Journal out of an old sketchbook that I got from mom. The paper is pretty thin, so I might have to alternate pages, I don't know yet. It's funny, I go out and buy a blank journal with instructions in it, but I think it's so nice that I use a blank sketch book that isn't being used for anything. Here is a sample page from someone else's nature book, but you can get the gist. Other examples include (from youth literature):

Lady Cottington's Pressed Fair Book

Gnomes

Spiderwick Chronicle's Guide to the World Around You

New Thing #85: Tried a Colgate Wisp

Ok, I'm all up for trying interesting and fun new products. Newest product to try: the Colgate wisp. These tiny little brushes are supposed to allow a person to "brush and go." That little blue ball in the center came off on the one I tried, but mom's stayed on forever. It does pack a ton of flavor. Though, I thought they might be good for kids but have an extremely sharp toothpick-style end to them. All and all, a real let down product but I will keep my pack in my purse to use "for emergencies."

New Thing #84: Creating an Excel 2010 Event Calendar

Per a good idea from a work assignment, I had to create a 2010 plan. While doing that I thought it would be great to use the same format to create a 2010 calendar for events in p-town. I'm not putting ongoing events / classes on that, but I am putting one-time-only things up there. Well, I am putting First Thursdays because that's only once a month. If it's more frequent then once a month, I'm not going to include. Anyway, it may prove to be a helpful tool, it might not.

New Thing #83: Attended OMSI: After Dark

I joined adults 21 and over for OMSI After Dark. The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry hosts a once a month activity for adults where they serve alcohol and bar all kids from entering the building from 7:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. on the fourth wednesday of each month during the summer. I was especially interested in going because they have a CSI: The Experience exhibit where you can go and solve the crimes for yourself :) It is leaving in early September and I had to see it prior to it going away. Amanda, my friend who, like me, loved the series before it got stupid, attended with me.

We did many of the small activities that you NEVER can get to when there are kids around: The hair bottle rockets and the ball room. We did the earthquake house and the static electricity ball (see my pic for more details, haha). We spent an hour waiting for the CSI exhibit, but once we got in, we went through twice, which was good. They had the miniatures there from the miniature killer episodes, which was awesome too! It was loads of fun! But as a side note, go through the exhibit first because otherwise the line gets longer and longer and we missed out on the special expert talks because we were in line, which was to bad.

New Thing #82: Fun With Propogating Succulents and Planting a Cactus

Kevin had this beautiful yellow pot that had his college cactus plant in it. The cactus had died. I had been saving "big yellow" for some indoor plant options because the pot is so pretty. I decided yesterday after Erin gave me a cactus that I would put a SMALL cactus scene in it. Rather then one LARGE cactus, I put 6 small cactuses in it: I had two clippings from Laura that are prickly and small and round. I got the one from erin which is three branches and shaped with small little points and bumps and the third I picked up at the nursery and it's a "panda" cactus which means it has little brown tips and is really soft. It is the one pictured here. I thought with those conflicting textures and heights, it would look really nice indoors in the winter. I also got a clipping off the panda which I'm propogating and I got a $3 cactus that is red and green and looks like a water lily. I also propogated that too in half because it had already a well developed baby with roots. So now I have 4 pots of cactuses! I also tried to fix my aloe plant because it was having a hard time after I overwatered it. I'm not sure if it's going to live or not but I sliced off a few of the shriveling stalks and hope that will work. The new growth looks firm and healthy, so it might be all right. But the other majority of the plant looks pissed still. After referring to the infinite wisdom of the internet, they said that aloe vera plants are remarkably hardly, so maybe it will live. Will keep you posted. Right now, the heat is good for it though. They will stay out for a while longer.

New Thing #81: Baked New Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (Great!)

For my 26th birthday barbeque, I baked two dozen+ thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies from “The New Best Recipe Cook Book.” That book is all about the “science” of cooking. These cookies turned out phenomenally well – the catch was that I added an extra egg yolk and higher proportion of brown sugar to white sugar. They had a ruffled texture on top (not smooth, slick or oily looking on top like normal home-baked cookies) and were very chewy. I didn’t have any chocolate chips so I substituted the dutch semi-sweet chocolate sprinkles. That was also really good. I gave everyone a little goodie bag of cookies when they left. Here is a picture of what they would look like with chocolate chips. Very, very good recipe!

Sugar Dance

This is a perfect example of Sugar's prance dance. This isn't Sugar, but it's an image I found on the internet but it made me nostalgic and happy that Sugar is my cat and still happy and healthy.

Happy 15th birthday Sugar!

New Thing #80: Zumba

Tried a Zumba class for the first time at the Y. It's this high-energy dance class were you shake your booty and pump your arms and rock out to latin music. It's really kinda nice. With my salsa class I took in college and with my background in dance, I found it really fun and challenging. It was fun to go "full out!"