Happy Birthday, Margret Atwood!

King Charles River, 1963

Happy Birthday to a favourite Author and fellow Lady Scorpio!!!!!

I just love Margret Atwood's writings. I get lost in her novels like no others, the more I read the more entranced I become by her words. I've never read more complex thoughtful insightful stories. She's a living legend and her body of work is beyond impressive; an inspiration of all time.

I've read these:

The Edible Woman*

Handmaiden's Tale

Oryx & Crake

Cat's Eye*

The Blind Assasin*

The Year of the Flood*

Robber's Bride*

Moral Disorder

*I have these books here with me on my bookshelf.

frijoles frescos!

                               
I haven't figured out exactly what type of beans these are but, I sure am enjoying them! They are gorgeous and so much fun to work with. We've started drying and collecting our favouritest ones. My boyfriend said the sweetest thing; he says, "One day we won't live in Guatemala and have access to these beans and you'll be so happy to have a dried little collection of them.", darn tootin' sweet boyfriend!

Growing up in the South in a truly 'Southern' family, I was always around bushels of fresh beans and peas. I loved sitting around the backyard in the shade tree shelling them with  my Granny and aunts. We usually 'put them up' (canned) and I am sure I ate plenty of fresh peas and beans but, I don't recall any kind of fresh beans like these at all.

Beans have to be one of my fondest foods. They are beyond healthful and combining them with grains such as rice offers such a complete meal. I recently made sure we ate beans and grains everyday for 2 weeks just to see if we'd feel different and we absolutely did! We noticed that overall we felt way more satisfied in the hungry & craving departments. I'm just going to colour us lucky that we love beans so much!!

colourful corn

It doesn't take much to amaze me and put a wonderous smile on my face! That's exactly what happened when I 'shucked' this corn. I've never seen corn like the corn I see here. And even more so, I have never tasted corn like the corn here. Truth be told, I wasn't all that much of a corn eater before I moved here. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike corn, I ate it and I liked it whether it was corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn pudding, corn bread, or hello popcorn! But. But, I didn't exactly think corn was offering me all that much. I didn't choose it as a side when cooking or use it as an ingredient much. But, here the corn is exciting and delicious. My favourite way to eat it is boiled then roasted on a grill, topped with lime & salt. This scrumptous treat is served on the street in corn husks. There is nothing like natural packaging!

mini succulent rock garden

I've been collecting little snippets of succulents here and there throughout Guatemala and planted the cutest little succulent garden from them. This is such a great outlet for snipping really small little tid bits off plants. It is really hard for me to pass up a fine looking succulent and not pinch a lil nub to take home. 

A few months back I did a fun package exchange with a pal in Tampa and I got a nice little bunch of crystals-rocks-gems. Housing them in my little succulent garden that basks in the moonlight and lulls in the sunshine has them super posi charged! I use them to enhance my special powers when needed by plucking the right one and lovingly carrying it around in my pocket. If I could I'd be teeny tiny & hang out in this lil succulent rock garden, I would lounge around in there all the time.

moon over miami

I just had the pleasure of spending a long weekend in Miami with a decade-long bestie. It was balm for the soul. We went to the Russian Bath House on Miami Beach; a wonderful, wonderful experience.
Miami is such a beautiful city. I am happy that I had the pleasure of living there for 4 years and would live there again for sure! Last weekend I admired the gorgeous Miami sunsets and even found myself staring in awe at the moon over the city every night I was there. It's one of those affairs one has with cities/places and this city has its tethers in me. I just love so very many of the houses and structures there...riding around the Gables is so easy on the eyes and just sends me into endless daydreams....I think Miami is just dreamy.

lovey plants from the market

I ran into these little dears for sale by an even more enchantingly dear lady from Chajul. She dug these plants up out of her garden, nestled them in a leaf secured with another plant fiber and brought them all the way to Xela. I of course could not resist purchasing one of each from her. The grassy plant I'm told will have beautifuly scented white flowers! And I'm a total sucker for succulents. I have to say I love love love the packaging. The cheese I buy at the market comes wrapped in leaves as do a few other things, I think it's rad!


Here's a map (below) showing where Chajul is in realtion to Xela (Quetzaltenango). It's a hellva chicken bus ride, a beautiful one no doubt but, it's a haul! Bless her dear darling heart.

I've never been in love with a peoples or place like I am with the lands and folks in Guatemala...I have immense love for Mayans of their ways and attitudes of life...it's a beautiful thing.

i love my dog skull!

Bird's eye view of Xela; the line is the road between Llanos del Pinal & Xela.

Two of my homies/lovies on top of Santa Maria!

Zach & Marcel

Santiaguito...erupts about every 20 minutes!

Zach and Marcel went on a dude hike up Volcan Santa Maria and they brought me a really super cool present. They found an old dog skull up on the side of the Volcan and carefully brought it to me!! It's a favourite prized possesion!!!

Happy Grass

Yesterday while out 'running' the dogs I decided to pluck up some fresh grass for my Guinea Girls, Esme & Enid. I've never given them straight grass before, they loved it!!

Xela Sunset

Another gorgeous sunset in Xela. The skies have been mind-blowing pink in the evenings lately, I should take a picture every night and do a series.

ovenless/stoveless and happy!

Moving into the warehouse spurred us to come up with our very own kitchen. I don't have a stove and didn't choose to have one. My kitchen consists of a large stainless steel sink that drains into a bucket (we water our garden with the water), an electric kettle, an electric wok, an electric grill and a crock pot. This was mostly the set up that just happened and we are super content and happy with it. The wok especially! The funny thing is thinking about standing in the thrift store and inspecting these kitchen 'appliances' and really asking ourselves if we should splurge the six bucks for a wok or a grill. We just love both of them. Every night we steam greens in the wok and almost every day we make our tortillas on the grill. Perfecto!

I rinse our veggies outside and let the water run directly into our garden.

It is so nice to do kitchen tasks outside!

Mike is a fantastic helper!

Huge leaves of Mong Toi.

Lovin' it!

Hay Bale Garden WE HAVE SPROUTS Part 3

I was greeted with sprouts yesterday morning!!

Everything but, the Chinese Celery has sprouted.

The California Spicy Lettuces are in the lead!

Look!!

platform bed: conquered for free!

When we moved into the warehouse we tossed the makeshift bed base I had. I thought we would simply leave mattress on the floor...that didn't last. I've been on the hunt for a solution to get the mattress off the floor for weeks. We live a few blocks from Ikea so, naturally I went in search of a reasonably priced one there. I found a few but there was always something about them that did not jive!

Driving around Tampa on an errand Zach and I were driving through little weird back neighbourhood and found this little production shoppe that had a stacks of pallets outside of different sizes and woods. We asked if we could take some and we picked these cute small pallets that are 19" x 26" and incredibly, 9 of them together in a grid, are the exact size of a queen size mattress!!!! They are perfect in everyway & they were free!!!

In wrapping this up, I realized not only did we accomplish this for free. We also recycled something and didn't partake in consumerism, yay!

And they maintained the extreme simplicity that we were both striving for.

a peek at the sidedish shelves

My little online vintage store, sidedish, has been through yet, another period of neglect. But, I am most happy to say that I have the time, inspiration and perfect space to give sidedish some love! While I may fall out of habit or not have time for sidedish here and there I never fail to collect pieces for sidedish. So, here I am once again with an empty store and an excellent stock of items!

Here are 2 snapshots from the shelves of sidedish.

I can't wait to have hens!

We've built, well, Zach has built a chicken house...we still haven't built the chicken run and aren't too sure where we want it. We're also holding out until a few more big chores are done to reward ourselves with getting hens! We've decided on Ameraucanas and Copper Black Marans.

This beautiful egg inspires me to hurry up and get some egg laying hens!!

our warehouse has one windowsill

I have always been a big lover of displaying things in windowsills. Naturally, that's where the best light is! So, having one lone sill makes it center stage for me! This is currently a little snippet from said sill. Those are 2 of my favourite vintage glass pieces and I found that beautiful dried pod on a walk with Mike & Zach.

Industrial Living Part 3-The Kitchen

I call it a kitchen.

It's not home until the Fiestaware

is out and ready for use. I've

cooked a few meals in my

new kitchenso far. Each meal

helps me fine tune the setup.

So far so good! Each meal

has been fun and delicious!

Today for lunch I cooked organic spinach in the wok with little baby tomatoes along with: fresh garlic, onions and sesame oil. It was delicious served over Basmati rice.

I got to wash the spinach outside in the sunshine!

I truly love having a partial outdoor kitchen!

Super happy to have time to juice as often as I like!! Today we had carrot and beet juice.

After we drank our juice I filled our glasses up with water to make use of every last drop of juice. As a result our water had the most beautiful colour to it. This picture shows how nicely the daylight is diffused in our warehouse home.

Industrial Living Part 2

So, we moved in on March 28th, 4 days early and with 30 minutes notice.

I did the very best I could with such little notice. All of the furniture went first and then after that it was just taking carloads of loose stuff for what seemed like 600 trips. As we've lived here our ideas for how the place have evolved and changed constantly.

For example:

This tub. We love it! Originally we were going to have it on the outside wall of the half bath. And then it got moved to the other side of that space when we moved the kitchen to that wall. Now, we are moving it outside to our covered open air space. And we plan on having a desk somewhat in its place shown above.

Here's the bathroom. The only slightly finished space. But, compare it to the pictures below!

Industrial Living Part 1

I have been daydreaming of living in commerical space for ages!

And finally I get to conquer the challenge of making it happen!

One weekend afternoon Zach and I were driving around the Heavy Industrial neighbourhood by Palmetto Beach and came across a ugly little building on a corner with a big fenced in lot area with a for rent sign in the front of it. I immeadiately stopped the car and as I took it in, I said, I love this place, we should try and rent it and live here!

It took us over a week to get in touch with anyone about renting it. We found out they were asking $700 a month. Upon seeing the space we saw how much work it really needs (especially for it to be our house) and we worked it out that we will pay $500 a month and fix the place up!

When you walk in the front door you enter the first of 2 big rooms. It is a big open room with 13' ceilings. The only thing in the room is the crudest 1/2 bath and a gross utility sink laying on the floor on an outside of the ugly bathroom build out.

The adjustments we are going to make to the above picture are: finish painting the interior walls white, make the bathroom door open out instead of in, put a free standing tub where the utility sink is, paint the floors (the colour is going to be one of many surprises!) and put a kitchen on the right side of the far wall below.

There is so much to do and I am so excited about all of it, it's hard to sit still most of the time!

So very much more to come....

Helsinki Please

I've been giving some good thought to visiting Helsinki, Finland.

Home of some damn good design!

guate rigs rule!

Let me just start by saying that it is a crying shame that I only captured 2 of the many amazing rigs I saw in Guatemala. It's not surprising there are these fantastic genius rigs everywhere you look. Everywhere your eye lands in Guate you see handicrafts and handmade stuffs galoure! It's just a dreamland for critters like me.

I think the use of this bottle is pure genius as a drainage spout!!




Whoa!! One of those big ol' rectangle plastic water bottles as a lamp shade! SWEET!

I love Guatemala and will be going back asap.