I like the ideas in this Etsy Shop of painting surprising words on vintage china. It reminds me of Subversive Cross Stitch. (Via Rare Bird Finds)

I love Design Sponge’s sneak peak of artist Ann Wood’s Brooklyn apartment. Cardboard castles! Herds of tiny horses running on the wall! Antique lace! Pirate ships! It’s not that I think anyone should emulate Wood’s design style–it is clearly her own–but I appreciate how creative and whimsical her apartment is. It is more like a giant artist’s studio, or a toy box, than your typical grown-up living space. It makes me want to put more personality into my own house, rather than make it into some sort of mausoleum of pretty things. See the rest of the tour here.

Following yesterday’s thoughts on cat hair, I became interested in those blue dryer balls that can be used instead of dryer sheets in the wash. You get 2 for about $9 and they are supposed to add pockets of air and agitation to speed up drying time. The idea is that they are reusable, while dryer sheets are not, therefore they are more frugal in the long run–and better for the earth.

After reading around on some forums, it seems like a lot of people are dissatisfied with these dryer balls. While they do shorten drying time, they don’t make as dramatic a difference as the dryer sheets with issues like static. Plus, they are loud when they are bouncing around in the dryer.

Then I read of something that’s suppose to work just as well–tennis balls:

This makes sense. There’s no reason a tennis ball can’t do the same job as these blue gizmos, and for a fraction of the price. In fact, we have some tennis balls in the garage. I’m going to give them a try.

SavvyHousekeeping is mentioned in the current issues of Sunset Magazine. They used some of my musings on their article on raising chickens. Sweet! I am obviously a fan of the magazine.

This is my cat Quill. He’s the best cat ever. He comes running when you call him, he frolics through the grass like a puppy, and he catches gophers. The only problem: he sheds. I petted him a few minutes ago and am now covered with white hairs. So it goes.

The battle against cat hair is a slightly shameful one. If you’ve ever had to lint roll a guest to get cat’s hair off them, or if you’ve ever found cat hair in your mouth, you know what I’m talking about. Lately there’s been a slew of products on TV claiming to be specially designed for pet hair. I am curious but skeptical. It’s well known that cleaning companies take their usual products, change them slightly, and re-market them as specialty products in the hope of making some extra cash. So I’m not sure if these new pet-hair product work better than the usual methods–but I would love to hear of any that have surprised you.

In the meantime, here’s some things that help control cat’s hair:

* Brushing the Cat: That hair is going to come off one way or another so it might as well be on a brush instead of the furniture. Brushing the cat takes time and is annoying–especially if your cat doesn’t like being brushed–but it does help with the hair.

* Corner Comb: I haven’t tried this, but many groomers recommend a corner comb, a device that goes on your wall that the cat rubs against, like so:

It effectively combs them for you. I could see that corner getting pretty messy, however.

* Cat Bed. I bought each of my cats a bed and trained them to sleep there through a combination of catnip and encouragement. If they are sleeping on their own bed, they are not shedding on the furniture, and I can just wash the cat bed when it gets bad. This method works pretty well, although it’s hard to get them to sleep there all the time.

* Microfiber Glove. I was using one of those sticky lint rollers to pick up extra hair but then a friend gave me a red microfiber glove she got at the store:

It works better than the lint rollers, plus it’s reusable. In a pinch, packing tape wrapped around the hand or a wet rubber glove also works.

* Dryer Sheets. In the dryer, that is–I am not sure about rubbing dryer sheets on the cat. Some dryer sheets specially advertise getting pet hair off your clothes when you dry them, but it seems to me that all dryer sheets should work. The reason cat hair doesn’t come off your clothes when you wash them is static cling keeps the hairs, well, clinging. Dryer sheets are designed to reduce static cling, so they should remove cat hair. I haven’t used dryer sheets for a couple of years, but I’m thinking of starting up again because of this.

* Vacuum. Should you buy a special vacuum designed to remove cat hair? Consumer Reports says no. They tested 46 vacuums on pet hair and picked the two that worked best. They also happen to be good vacuums in general.

It’s the Kenmore Progressive model 35922, for $300. It rated excellent for both pet hair and overall cleaning.

Another option, the Eureka Boss Smart Vac Ultra model 4870 performed nearly as well for half the price, $150. Either one will pick up after your furry friend.

I guess there is no magic formula for taking care of cat hair. No matter how you slice it, it takes a lot of incremental cleaning to keep on top of it. But hey, they’re worth it.

(Courtesy Bernice Kim)

Whenever we barbecue ribs, we usually end up with a few leftovers. Even something as delicious as ribs can get tiring as a leftover, so I usually put the leftovers in other dishes to change it up a bit. Yesterday, I tried them in pasta sauce, and it was delicious. Here’s the recipe:

Leftover Ribs Pasta

Ingredients:

2 Tbs olive oil
The meat of 2 ribs, diced (a little over 1/2 cup)
3 mushrooms, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 C canned or frozen tomatoes
2 Tbs tomato paste
1/2 c wine
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 c Parmesan cheese
salt

Enough cooked pasta for two people

Directions:

1. Put the garlic and oil in a pan. Heat it up so that the garlic is sizzling.

2. Add the onions and cook until translucent.

3. Add the red pepper flakes.

4. Add the rib meat. Stir it in and let it cook about 2 minutes.

5. Add the mushrooms and cook until they soften, about 30 seconds.

6. Clear a spot in the middle of the pan and add the tomato paste. Let it toast in the oil, then stir it into the meat/mushrooms/onions.

7. At wine and tomatoes to the sauce. Let it simmer on medium-high heat until the sauce has reduced by half and the ribs have further broken down in the sauce, about 20 minutes.

8. Meanwhile, make the pasta by boiling it in water and salt, about 15 minutes.

9. Taste the sauce. If your ribs were properly seasoned, it shouldn’t need much adjusting, but add more salt/wine/tomatoes accordingly.

10. Put the cooked pasta in your pasta sauce. Turn off the heat and toss. Add in 1/2 c of cheese and let it melt into the pasta and sauce. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

I love vertical gardens but find them too complicated to try to do at home. NotCot points out an elegant solution to having a vertical garden in your house–simply suspend the pots on a grid. That way you can water as usual, the plants can grow up not out, and so on.

If I had a sunny wall in my house, I would seriously consider something like this. You can even get grids to create a similar effect in your own house, like so:

Very cool.

This is the remainder of my fava bean harvest. I probably could have gotten some more beans out of the plants but I needed to make room for the tomatoes, so I picked the rest of the crop yesterday and pulled up the plants for my compost.

When I planted the favas in November, I knew nothing about fava beans, also called bell beans or broad beans. I had eaten them once or twice and I knew I liked them, but that was it. Now, naturally, I’m an expert. Favas are a cold-season crop and take a long time to produce beans. Because they put nitrogen into the soil, farmers use favas as cover crops. The plants get about 5 feet tall and don’t produce a ton for their size. I planted nine plants and harvested about 100 bean pods altogether.

The beans themselves are full of protein and quite delicious, especially when fresh. However, they are also labor intensive. Not only do you have to shell them from their pod, but each bean is surrounded by a bitter membrane that you have to remove. To do this, I popped them in a pot of boiling water for two minutes so that the membranes loosened. The inner bean is a grassy green and very tender:

Removing the membranes takes some time, but once you do it you have a pile of lovely beans that you can put in a salad or serve as a side dish. I made some for dinner last night. After removing the membranes, I pan-fried them with some oil, garlic, basil, salt, and pepper, like so:

Since the pan frying was only about heating the beans and adding flavor, the whole thing took about 5 minutes. The end result was a delicious, pillowy bean, kind of like a cross between a green bean and a potato. And because everything except the oil and spices came from my garden, the cost of making this side dish was around $.10.

Planting favas was an interesting experiment. While I wouldn’t bother with them if they were springtime plants, since they can be planted in the winter, they are a nice way to put your garden to use in the cold months. I will probably plant them again.

I love bath bombs, particularly the ones by Lush. I especially like when they release things in the water, like soap flower petals or glitter. Bath bombs can be expensive, though. A Lush bath bomb goes for about $5 each. Of course, they are on the high end, but still, any price is high when you consider that bath bombs are merely a combination of baking soda, citric acid, corn starch, oils, and salts.

At least, that’s according to this how-to on making your own bath bombs on Instructables. Looks like it’s a matter of mixing all the ingredients together and them putting it in molds–in this case, they used Christmas tree ornaments that open to hold things inside. The end result looks as good as most of the store bath bombs you can find. They would make an impressive gift for very little cost.

I am back from Puerto Rico and I am covered with mosquito bites. I swear I didn’t even see them on me! Mosquitoes in Puerto Rico must be extra sneaky. I did have some bug repellent, but it didn’t seem to work very well. I stopped using it after awhile because I read that DEET–a chemical compound that is in most mosquito repellents–kills the little critters that cause bioluminescence in Puerto Rico, and I didn’t want to add to that. Also the bug stuff washed right off me anyway, so it was useless after I went in the water.

Today, with mosquitoes on my mind, I looked up homemade mosquito repellents on Google. Wow are there are a lot of them. Apparently everything from parsley to green tea to wearing neon-colored clothes repel mosquitoes. So either mosquitoes are the easiest bugs in the world to fool or there are a load of urban myths surrounding homemade mosquito repellents.

After sorting through these remedies, I found a few that look to me to be the most likely to work. Here are a few:

American Beautyberry. Scientists have confirmed that American beautyberry works against mosquitoes. Apparently people have long crushed leaves of the plant and rubbed it on their skin to scare the little buggers off. The plant grows in the South, which is also where they have a lot of mosquitoes. Interesting how that works out.

Catnip. Iowa State University scientists found catnip works 10 times better at repelling mosquitoes than DEET. Crazy! I saw a lot of ways to make your own repellent with it, but I see no reason you can’t crush the leaves and combine with vinegar/alcohol in a spray container for an easy homemade repellent. Or you can steep 3 cups of the herb in water for a week and then spray that on your skin. Your cats will love you for it.

Citronella Grass. This is the same plant that is used in the candles and oil lamps stores sell to repel mosquitoes, so it would also work on the skin. It’s a tropical plant, so needs a lot of sun and little cold to grow, however it does pretty well in warmer climates.

Rosemary. I wasn’t able to confirm this 100 percent, but it looks like rosemary is a good bet against mosquitoes. At least it comes up consistently as a repellent in the same sources that mention the above three options. To try it, boil a bunch of it in water and spray it on the skin (after it cools of course). Rosemary is a great herb to grow anyway.

Other remedies I am less sure about include: eucalyptus oil, lemon verbena, vanilla extract, and lavender. Since I would rather put lavender on my skin than catnip oil, I like this idea, but I’m a little skeptical it would work. But who knows?

What has worked for you?