Retta’s blog

Let's all get together and dance. The world would be a much better place I think:

I LOVE this cake. It made me laugh and laugh. This makes me want to decorate a cake of my own and put something as awesome on it.

The chest hair is the best!!

A little over a month ago I wrote a post on some things I wanted to accomplish in this life and there was a list of 11 things that I wanted to start working on. Well I'm excited to say that I can now check some of those off my list and some others are well underway.

I have already mentioned how I have started planning my trip to Alaska and, although there are no definite plans there yet, I feel pretty confidant that I will be able to make those happen within the next year or so and I'm putting that on my underway area of the list.

Next on the list was the desire to sew my own curtains and shopping bags and today I ordered my very first sewing machine from Overstock.com! I'm really excited about it and I got a great deal. It is refurbished but the reviews were great and the price was right so now I await its arrival and then I plan on taking a sewing class.

Number 6 on that list was to build a compost bin and to acquire rain barrels. Check and check! I got an email from my awesome friend Terri yesterday and she had found an amazing deal on rain barrels on Craigslist and wanted to know if I wanted in on the deal. Of course I said YES, especially since they were about half the cost of ones I had seen other places, and then I dropped by her house to give her the money for them. She is going to detour by and pick them up for both of us on her way back from a family reunion this weekend. I hope she doesn't have trouble with four rain barrels strapped to the top of her wagon!

While I was at her house she also gave me some plastic mesh that she had left over from when she built her compost bin and tonight John and I ran to Lowe's to pick up some stakes for the corners and put together our very first compost bin. We are really excited about this and I think I can now check off #6 as complete!

The other two things that I have spent some time on but that still need some major work is the biking to work and the focus on shopping local. I have taken my bike out a few times and rode to the store but I till have not made it fully to work. I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of getting all my stuff there and trying to decide what I may need to buy to make that easier. I need to investigate this a little more and I'm sure I will need to come up with a little bit of cash somewhere to get what I need. As for shopping local, I have been going to the farmers market on Sundays and trying to buy as much as I can there and then trying to find the Kentucky grown products at the Good Foods Coop when I can as well. I know I can improve on this but I feel pretty good about my success here so far.

I'm enjoying this todo list thing. I really like checking things off and seeing progress that I have made so this works well for me. I think putting this out here for others to read makes me more accountable too. It's a good thing!

James Robinson tagged me, so here it goes:

What i was doing ten years ago

I was working at The Council of State Governments as a graphic/web designer. I had also just bought my first house, a tiny little townhouse, and started putting down roots in Lexington, KY.

Five snacks i enjoy:

1. hummus and pita
2. tortillas and salsa (apparently I enjoy dipping foods)
3. cheese-its
4. crackers and cheese (It is different than cheese-its!)
5. frozen grapes

Five things on my to-do list today:

1. work on eXtension training Moodle courses
2. make corrections to the Imported Fire Ants decision tool
3. send out a quote for a freelance web design job
4. get together images and artist statement for a photography show that some friends and I are in at a local coffee shop.
5. take my niece and good friend to yoga class with me

Five favorite recipes:

1. Broccoli-cauliflower salad ( I can send it if anyone wants it.... It is always a hit at dinner parties)
2. Spiced Black Bean Burgers
3. My mom's broccoli casserole
4. My mom's sweet potato casserole
5. No Bake cookies

Five jobs i have had:

1. swimming pool concession stand
2. tutored children with dyslexia
3. fast food (Wendy's) and cashier at Ponderosa Steak House
4. McAlpin's (Now Dillard's) cashier
5. web/graphic designer

Five of my bad habits:

1. procrastination
2. not exercising regularly
3. eating too many carbs and cheese (see the favorite snacks list above)
4. spending too much money on magazines and books (I'm trying to get back into the library swing)
5. Caffeine... I quit drinking soda but now I'm a coffee fiend.

All the places i have lived:

1. Ary, KY
2. Leburn, KY
3. Morehead, KY
4. Lexington, KY

Five random things:

1. I spent the first 7 years of my life growing up in a holler. It was awesome.
2. I have a HUGE family. My dad had 8 brothers and sisters and my mom had 5. I have a great aunt that had 16 children. Family gatherings were always chaotic.
3. I wore acid washed jeans and heavy metal concert tshirts in high school. My favorites bands were The Cult, Guns and Roses, Metallica, Anthrax...others until I discovered Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and, oddly enough, Jackson Brown. I discovered those in my older sister's vinyl collection. Music has always been important in my life. I got a portable record player that I carried around with me when I was 3 or 4 and played everything from "Rubber Ducky You're the One" to Sheena Easton's "Morning Train" on 45s.
4. I graduated number 3 in my high school class and had to give a speech. I wasn't thrilled about that. I never participated in group sports but was a member of the Honor and Art Honor Societies.
5. My husband and I dated for 11 years before we married. We have been married for almost four years now.

Five Folks i Would Like to Know Better:

1. Alexa
2. Terri
3. Jason
4. Patrick
5. Lori-Lyn

Exactly one month ago I wrote an entry about the things I want to do in this life and one of those things included a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska to see the Northern Lights. I have heard before that writing down your goals, illustrating them with images or simply visualizing yourself attaining those goals is a good way to make them happen. Since I wrote that post, I have checked prices on tickets, sent for a travel guide, planned the dates I want to go and even started thinking about how to get the money to make it happen.

Here is were things get interesting. While reading an entry on one of my favorite blogs today, I decided to check out the comments and then clicked through to the blog of one of the commentors and, lo and behold, she is leaving this weekend for a roadtrip to Alaska! She has the whole trip all mapped out in google maps. I sat forever clicking through the stops marked along the way, all the time getting more excited about my own journey there, hopefully in the beginning of next year. The other thing this discovery did was to give me other options than the ones I had limited myself to in my mind. Plane tickets are expensive and I had not even though about a possible road trip. It may be just as expensive but then again it may not. At least I have opened myself up to other ways of making this dream happen.

But wait there is more! Yet even later tonight, I was checking my flickr account to see if any of my contacts had updated their photos and one of my contacts that I don't follow closely had indeed uploaded some new photos so I thought I would quickly scan them. Well.... He is Alaska right now. I'm not even making this up! Yea, a lovely landscape photo of Denali National Park just looking up at me from his photostream.

And finally, I have managed to land a couple of extra freelance jobs just in the past month that could potentially pay for a couple  of plane tickets to Fairbanks or gas and hotel room costs along the way.

Maybe I'm super hyper to all things Alaska right now and am therefore seeing things that were there before and I had not noticed until it became an interest of mine, sort of like when you decide you want to purchase a particular car and then you see it everywhere. I'm going to say there is something way more cosmic going on here though. I think I have become open to the possibility of a great adventure and therefore it is making itself achievable. Isn't life interesting?

A couple of months ago I mentioned that I was using a laundry detergent that I had made myself from a recipe I had found online. Well, we have been using that for three months now, long enough for me to say we LOVE IT.

First, it is really cheap to make (about $10 for all ingredients and we have been using that first batch made in March until today when I had to make another!)

Second, It makes our clothes really soft and they smell clean, not clean as in perfumed like some detergents but fresh and odorless.

Third, It is super easy to make.

The recipe is below if you would like to try it for yourself. You don't have to use the brands in the photo but it is what we had available at our local Meijer.

12 cups Borax
8 cups Baking Soda
8 cups Washing Soda
8 cups Bar soap (grated)

* Mix all ingredients well and store in a sealed tub.
* Use 1/8 cup of powder per full load.

Found here (Recipe #9)

Sometimes seeing something in a different context makes all the difference. Stats and data are not always easy to visualize. Chris Jordan translate some very sad statistics into a more meaningful picture in a recent TED talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/279

Tonight my friend Shannon and I decided we would skip our weekly planned yoga class and head over to the Lexington Art League for an ARTalk. Tonight's artist was Phillip March Jones (I love that his middle name is March) and his presentation was fascinating and inspiring and witty and I'm gushing!

ARTalks are regular events were an artist is invited to speak about their work and its evolution and the processes they use. First off, Jones's journals intrigue me. Many of his thoughts and drawings in the journals become larger paintings but the journals themselves are little works of art. And he has SO MANY journals. He is constantly writing and drawing in them. Second, his exploration with medium and techniques was really interesting. It was great to hear his thoughts behind the works and how those thoughts evolved. The one thing that he reminded me about the most was the need for a sense of exploration and play in creativity. He started a lot of his pieces just seeing how different elements (paint and beer in one painting) react to each other and he worked with the results. It was very liberating to hear him talk about that.

I came away from the talk tonight inspired and excited about my own art work. I often get caught up in the final results I want and don't do enough playing and experimenting. I think it might be time to brush off the moleskin journal and art supplies and see what happens.

A couple of Jones's journals from his website:

Read More about him on his mySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/phillipmarchjones

Between yard work, house stuff, freelance jobs and work in general I feel like I have been running full speed for some time now. I was looking through my photos I have taken over the past month, that I haven't had time to process and upload to flickr, and I realized that I have been busy! John and I created a new flower bed in the back yard and planted it full of herbs and veggies. Hopefully we will have tomatoes and peppers soon as well as some basil and oregano and much much more.

I have also been weeding, planting and mulching the front flower bed and it is really starting to come alive. There are a few areas I want to work on but I'm pretty pleased with the results so far.

Gratefully I have been able to spend a lot of time with friends the past few months. In April I went to the wedding of some good friends in Gatlinburg, TN and they asked me to take photos for them. It was one of the most beautiful weddings I have been to. It was outdoors near a stream and was attended by close family and friends only. It was a small, informal wedding and it was perfect. I decided I wanted to surprise them with a book so I came home and started the task of processing the photos I took and laying out a book using the online book template software from blurb.com. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago and sent it off to print. When I got it in the mail this past Friday, I was really excited to give it to them. It turned out great! The print job was wonderful. I gave them the book this weekend and they loved it! Mandy even teared up on me. That is a thank you that you don't get every day and I'm glad I decide to do this for them.

Speaking of flickr, I have met some wonderful new friends through flickr and it has been amazing. Not only do we have the photo taking hobby in common, we are all alike in many other ways. They are all interesting, wonderful people and I love when we get together because it always a lot of fun. Just a couple of weeks ago I had dinner at my house to get everyone together for one and also so that we could celebrate one of the flickr peeps new job and her journey south for that job. Kristy is now working for Teach for America and has moved to Louisiana. I know it wasn't easy for her to leave all her friends here but what an exciting journey she is making. She is going to do great and she has flickr and the internets to stay in touch with us all here. I'm already planning a trip to see her sometime as I have never been to Louisiana.

I love this photo below taken by Chris who is the photo above with Kristy. From left to right is Alexa, Kristy and myself, aka Swelldesigner, Posey Pinkerson and Attercat on flickr.

Ladies, originally uploaded by Universal Stopping Point.

This past weekend was a great reminder to me how special my family is to me and how little time I really get to spend with them. My nephew graduated from high school last Saturday which seems impossible to me. It seems like yesterday that I got a call telling me that my sister was in the hospital in labor and that our baby boy could be born any minute. Now he is thinking about his future career and working to save money for college. He has turned out to be so responsible and such a wonderful guy. I couldn't be prouder if he was mine.

His little sister is just as amazing and I can't wait to see where she ends up a few years down the road. She is already one of the sweetest, most loving kids I know. We are lucky with those two.

Mr. High School graduate and his sister

The following photo is one of my favorites I took over the weekend. I don't get my appreciation and love of the animal kingdom from a stranger. Merlin and my sister's dog Maggie love my dad. All I have to do is say "peepaw" to Merlin and he starts wagging his tail and whining. Nothing gets him more excited than a road trip to mammaw and peepaw's house.

Peepaw and grandpups

It is good to have such a wonderful supportive family. I'm so thankful for them and I need to spend more time letting them know it.