I’ve been having ambiguous feelings about blogging lately, and waffling on my decision to be present online in various forms.

What a relief to discover I’m not alone out here. http://www.sonnenzimmer.com/

After a small fiasco at my usual place, I stopped by the lovely Grotto Spa at the Tigh Na Mara Resort to purchase some of my favourite Jane Iredale mineral pressed powder. This powder is so great. The minerals help keep skin clear, it has an SPF of 20, and it has a lovely smooth-yet-natural appearance on, in a lot of different colours, and it lasts for a very long time. Really the best makeup product I’ve found. If only I had a lip gloss that was so well-rounded…

So anyway, I asked for a spa menu, just to see what they had, and if maybe I could afford to go one day…
Look at that friendly receptionist. She looks just as friendly as the one I saw in real life.

Here’s a closeup of her:

But then, turn a few more pages, and she appears a second time (with a man.) She must be testing the tubs or something.

And then! Here she is again! With somebody else!

I hope they know about this. Because that could get pretty sticky for her coworkers.

My friend Tonia sent me this card years ago, and I still laugh every time I see it.

As family and friends know, we are knocking a big part of our house down and starting over. When I found this the other day, I knew we weren’t making a mistake.

Things are going pretty good in the garden so far. One morning I went out to check on the herbs, and look what had popped up:

It’s funny how local customs come upon you. The Alberni District Secondary School’s graduation ceremonies, for example. We had our own person to cheer for, but the arrival scene was such a fun spectacle, I wish Rod and I had some more neices and nephews who are graduating. I’ve never seen anything like this before!

Here in Port, the kids don’t wear caps and gowns, and their “prom” is on graduation night, so everybody wears their “grad” outfits to the graduation. Arrival is just short of a red carpet, with all the families and friends standing outside the doors, and one by one, the fanciest trucks, cars, limos, whatever coming around the bend to drop off the graduates in the early evening sun. It was a delightful, funny, sweet spectacle.

All the girls and their pouffy dresses and salon hair…

The Red Truck

Kenny's neice in his T-bird (brother driving)

My favourite entrance was he moving truck. The truck drove up, the driver got out, set up the lift, and rolled up the door. Out came four graduates all dressed up, lowered to the ground by the lift!

One of the best things about summer is having enough time to cook. Heck, it’s great having time to just think about food. This week, having munched my way through all the tortilla chips, and, OK, cookies, that we had sitting around in the house, I’ve been thinking a lot about replacing our stock with home made things. The first thing on my mind is bread.

I made popovers twice, with great success, with this recipe from Perfect Popovers:
http://home.insightbb.com/~bonnett/popover/popovers_step_by_step.htm

( P.S. In the wise words of Mom: “Don’t Open the Oven!” )

Today, I’m raising the stakes and attempting a no-knead bread recipe that I first read about in Vogue quite a while ago. Mark Bittman of the New York Times picked up on it, and did a story and a video about it sometime back. I’ve been meaning to try it ever since.

Since he says it’s so easy a six year old can make it, I’ve been calling it 6 Year Old Bread…

It looks like even the headline is protected by copyright, but, here’s the link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html#

And here’s the link to the video:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=35eac03d90314ffed6a0c0ae143ab87b1474fb89

Love this.
http://www.naturalhealth.com

After London, I headed down to Port Orchard, Washington to visit my Dad and his wife, Beth. They have just begun a new farmers market venture, selling lavender and eggs at two farmer’s markets from what they grow on their farm, Blue Sky Farm.

It was the eggs that got me thinking…

Apparently when you sell eggs in Washington legitimately, you can’t reuse the egg cartons. Every dozen eggs needs a fresh new carton. And those cartons, which are perfectly reusable (eggs come with their own built-in packaging, after all) cost 25 cents each! What a waste of resources and money.

So, here is my idea for the farmer’s market egg people of the world. Bring your own carton, just like bringing your own bag. The camping section of your local box store sells those brightly colored plastic egg cartons that people use for camping. They’re durable and you can clean them, and they’re pretty funky. You can convince your market egg dealer to let you load up your eggs that way, eliminating all that waste and, if you’re anything like Rod and I, ending the tower of used egg cartons that we have piled up in our pantry.

Back from two weeks of traveling.

First, to London for the St. Bride Print Library conference. Theme: Seeking Inspiration. My talk was about how design issues are intertwined with issues surrounding the logging and paper industry.

Tyler Moorehead spoke as one of the keynotes, and introduced a great idea to the audience of designers. The proposal, called A2B, is to change the size of standard office paper from A4 to B4, thus reducing office waste by 30%. It lead to a 20 minute question session, which, hey, meant the designers were thinking about it. Here’s the link to her website, Satellite, the Green Agency: http://www.satellitemc.com/

The rest of our trip was all art and friends and walking. I highly recommend London in May.