HJ Waxing Moon

I have a jar collection. It's a habit that borders on hoarding, in the sense that I compulsively save them because it seems a shame to get rid of something so useful, except that I actually use and cycle through my jars doing various projects. This is one of those projects. Since I'm allergic to grapes, we simply omit vermouth from any cocktails that call for them. Of course, it means the cocktails are not quite right. I got a wild idea one day to figure out what it would take to make our own, and discovered... it's actually really easy. It just required a lot of small jars. Which I happened to have on hand. There's plenty of recipes online, but it boils down to: Steep some flavorful things in a spirit. Carefully add the flavored spirits into some sort of dry wine, tasting as you go, until you get a flavor you like; the final result seems to be a goal of about 50/50 wine and vodka.  Of course, it's more complicated. For dark drinks, like Manhattans, a...

I bought these sandals. I needed something that would do for the summer that's that sort of mid-range dress-casual style, that would sort of "go with everything." I rarely wear white so that's right out, but black doesn't always work either. Then I saw these super cuties on sale at Payless and I had a coupon so I bought them. Problem is, when they came in (did I mention I do most of my shopping online?) they were... ok but not quite right. You see, it's the laces. As you can see, I tried a couple (dozen) different ways of lacing them. Each and every one caused painful pressure points from the round laces on the tops of my feet in minutes. No matter how I laced them, the ends were so long that the bows and tails would flop around and tickle my feet like I had bugs crawling all over them. Payless, if you can hear me: THIS IS NOT OKAY!!! I knew I had to do something. They sat in their box in the bottom of the closet for more weeks than I'm ready to ...

I'm pretty good about using things as I need them and not just using, say, a nightstand when I need a nightstand. Thinking outside the box, as it were. When I was growing up, I had a loft bed, and the top of my tall dresser was my nightstand. I've used file cabinets, actual nightstands, upside down trash cans, stools, chairs, and most recently: a small bookshelf. Bookshelves are great for nightstands. They don't come too far forward, so you aren't trying to scoot around them getting into bed. They have lots of storage space for the room they take up, and if you want things on them to be hidden you can put them in decorative boxes/baskets. The problem with my bookshelf was, it had to be placed in such a way as to either block the outlet from being usable at all, or else pulled 3-4 inches away from the wall to allow the plugs some room. Of course, pulling it away from the wall presents other problems, namely earrings and pill bottles getting dropped behind it. Not hel...

A couple years ago it must be now, I realized I could use wet and dry erase markers on glass. I saw a suggestion somewhere to put pretty fabric in a frame and use it like a white board. An idea was born. Months later, I found myself building a home office, and I needed a dry erase board to keep track of my project list for the business. I went to the thrift store and bought a frame, but since there were three more to match it, I bought them all in case I wanted more space for some reason. Boy, am I glad I did! This blog has featured my white board A LOT. I've wanted to upgrade to something nicer, but without a safe space to hang something with glass in it (since the white board lives on the pantry door), I hadn't done it yet. This week we moved our To Do list into our bedroom, right next to Mr. Moon's side of the bed. The 'Rents weren't using it, it allows more space for the menu AND for each day, and it allowed me to put some more personal notations on it that ...

I'm horrible at taking medications regularly. I've tried so many tricks and life hacks and tactics and ultimately they all fail to overcome my subconscious resistance to taking medication every day. I don't even know WHY I'm bad at it! A couple years ago, I got so annoyed by myself and my roommates leaving coats and purses everywhere that was NOT the coat closet that I snapped. The issue was that the coat closet was across the entire house from the door that we used, and no one could be expected to use it. So, I went on Freecycle and got a freestanding wooden coat/hat rack to put by the door we used. Results were instantaneous, and worst case scenario was that if someone dropped their belongings on a chair and came back to find them not there, they knew exactly where to look. It was a revelation. Instead of fighting to do things that I simply wasn't going to do, maybe I could find different ways of doing things that would work better. It seems so simple, really,...

First let me start by saying: The lot this house was built on was the rock pit for the subdivision, and if you dig more than about 2 inches into the dirt, you get rocks. Solid rocks. There's not much dirt to speak of, and tilling the "earth" for planting is a pain in the--well, everything. Plus, when you add dirt, it just filters into the rocks further to fill them in. As you can imagine, the entire yard got VERY dry this past summer! So, raised beds are the way to go here. Combine this with the old lady with bionic joints, the younger lady (that'd be me) with old lady joints, and kneeling on the ground to plant a garden is simply out of the question. We need raised beds to be at least 18 inches tall (preferably closer to 2 ft) just to be able to reach them from a chair, which means extra wood and dirt expense to build the 4 ft x 48 ft raised garden we want in the side yard. I mean it's literally two to three times what we NEED, since we only NEED a raised bed t...

You know those projects that have been hanging on your to-do list so long you barely recognize them as words anymore? Those things you leave shut tight behind a closed door hoping one day they will fix themselves or just disappear? Dude! Get On That Already! The challenge created by the good folks at Young House Love , to clean out those spaces that are filled with unfinished projects and un-used decor. Join in! What are you going to finish this week? --------------------- We started building a pot rack in MARCH! Took a few measurements, bought the supplies in April, started with the hole drilling, and there it sat waiting to be painted all summer long. Finally I got around to it the other day. So here's my step-by-step tutorial. Step 1: Take measurements. Decide where you want the thing to hang. Make sure it won't be hanging where anyone is likely to bang their head, nor block line of sight in the middle of a social common area. Remember that you need to measure this inclu...